SECTION XI. HAROUN AL RASCHID, KALIPH OF BAGDAD. 786 To 809-23 YEARS. Haroun Al Raschid, or Aaron the just, appears to have been one of the wisest of the Saracen princes. Although his empire was reduced to the parts about Bagdad and the north coast of Africa, his people presaged a prosperous reign, from some divers having picked up his valuable seal-ring, which he had thrown into the Tigris lest Al Hadi should possess it. His most considerable exploits were against the eastern empire: Nicephorus, soon after his accession in 802, wrote to the kaliph an insolent letter, demanding a return of all the money extorted from Irene; whereon Haroun advanced towards Constantinople. While on the march thither, the emperor sent the kaliph a present of several fine swords; and Haroun, understanding by this that Nicephorus was inclined to war, cut these weapons asunder, as if they had been so many radishes,' with his sword Samsamha, without the slightest injury to that scimetar: an exploit which speaks as well for the kaliph's strength of arm, as for the temper of Samsamha. Nicephorus soon after attacked the kaliphate, but lost 40,000 men, and was wounded thrice in an action with Haroun near Heraclea. While the kaliph was on his march against some rebels in Chorasan, 809, he was suddenly seized with an illness which forced him to resign the command of his large army to his son Al Mamun. Lying sick in the town of Rakka, he dreamed that an arm was stretched over his head, in the hand of which was some red earth; while a voice exclaimed, Haroun, see the earth wherein thou shalt be buried!' His physician assured him it was a delusion, and he again headed his troops, but in vain; for his distemper increasing, he was compelled to retire to Tus. 'Gabriel,' said the kaliph to his physician, 'send some one for a handful of the earth of this town;' and when his chief eunuch, Mesrour, brought it, Haroun cried out, In truth this is the very earth, and the arm which I saw in my dream!' In three days after, he died, aged 47. Haroun's claim to the title of just must be regarded with much allowance for eastern notions of despotic justice. He was, however, a patron of learning, and caused the Iliad and Odyssey to be translated into Arabic; and he sent a splendid embassy to Charlemagne, with a magnificent tent, a water-clock, an elephant, and the keys of the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem, implying a permission for European pilgrims to visit it. The rigour of Haroun's character was shown in the ruin of the Bermecides, a family of noble Persian descent. Yahia, the head of it, had been his tutor; and of his four sons, the eldest was a successful general, and the second Haroun's vizier, Giaffar. The generosity, affability, and munificence of the Bermecides, rendered them the delight of all ranks; and Giaffar gave the kaliph so much satisfaction, that he married him to his sister, the princess Abassa. In some matters relative to this marriage, the vizier displeased Haroun ; whereon the choleric Saracen ordered him to be put to death, and forbade that any one should again utter his name. Even during his last moments Haroun evinced a spirit of revenge; for a leader of the Chorasan rebels being brought into his presence, he said in a voice scarcely articulate, Kill him. The popular character of the kaliph is well shown in the Arabian Night's Entertainments, wherein Haroun, his consort Zobeide, Giaffar, and Mesrour, are conspicuously mentioned. I CHIEF EVENTS. : Peter's Pence. Offa, king of Mer- | prince of the Heptarchy, as to obtain an cia, after a life of violence and irre- alliance with Charlemagne, to whom ligion, made a pilgrimage to Rome to he introduced Alcuinus. His stone re-establish his character; and when coffin was dug up in Hemel-Hemstead there, engaged to pay a yearly donation churchyard, 1836, the inscription of for the support of an English college his name being quite legible. On in that city, to raise which he im- opening it, his bones were in distinct posed, in 790, the tax of a penny on form but they speedily crumbled every house possessed of thirty pence into dust, on exposure to the air. His a-year. This imposition, afterwards remains had thus lain in the soil of levied on all England, was denomi- the ground (not in a vault) 1042 nated Peter's-pence, as being collected years. for the successor of St. Peter; and The German Empire founded by though conferred at first as a gift, it | Charlemagne, 800. It was at first was afterwards claimed as a right by styled Allmandy, from all sorts of the Roman pontiffs. So large was the people having composed its_comrevenue from the tax, temp. Henry munity; whence its present French VIII., that it far exceeded the royal name of Allemagne. income. Offa was so important a EMINENT PERSON. Roland the Brave. The following is the most generally received story of Orlando. Deeply attached to the fair and excellent Hildegund, the young soldier, having pledged his troth, was summoned to a crusade against the pagan host. In his lamented absence, she heard that he was dead in battle. All her hopes of happiness appearing to be buried with him, she determined to renounce the world, and to take the veil. Scarcely was the solemn service at an end, when a trumpet announced the return of Roland, who had been wounded, but was now restored to health. It was however too late : Hildegund lived a nun in the convent of Nonnenwerther; and he, in order to be near her melancholy dwelling, built a hermitage for his residence, on the spot where Rolandseck now stands. At her death Roland sought for fate in the dangers of the field, and was killed at the battle of Roncesvalles. SECTION XII. AL AMIN AND AL MAIMON, KALIPHS OF BAGDAD. 809 TO 828. Al Amin succeeded his father Haroun ; but attempting to deprive his brother of the government of Chorasan, Al Maimon coined money as if kaliph, and officiated in the mosque, as Imaum. A contest soon ensued between the brothers, which ended in the siege of Bagdad by Thaher, the general of Al Maimon, and the death of Al Amin, 814. Al Maimon presented the courier who brought him the news of Thaher's success, with a million of dirrhems (100,000l. sterling), and received from him the ring or seal of the kaliphate, the sceptre, and imperial robe; he then appointed Thaher governor of Chorasan, by which that country was permanently separated from the Saracenic kingdom. Al Maimon was noted as an astronomer, and Greek scholar; he made observations on the obliquity of the ecliptic, caused a degree of the meridian to be measured, and ordered the Magna Constructio of Ptolemy to be translated into Arabic, which, under its new title of Almagest, was long held in especial esteem by the judicial astrologers of the middle ages. During his reign took place the conquest of Sicily by the African Moslemins, and the destruction of the Heptarchy by Egbert. CHIEF EVENTS. ancient provinces of Asturias and Biscay, the whole was now dignified with the title of the kingdom of Leon. Rise of Denmark. Through the warlike abilities of Regner Lodbrog, Denmark became an independent sovereignty, 897. Lodbrog appears to have been not only a soldier, but a poet breathing forth stanzas in the fanatical style of the ancient sibyls; and he ranks high among the skalds, or joint poets and historians of Scandinavia. As a warrior, he is said to have invaded England, 793, and to have burned and plundered Lindisfarn, and slain its monks. He was called Lodbrog, because he wore rough culottes to conquer an enormous serpent, by which act he won his bride Thora; in the straits of Eizar he poured out rivers of blood for the wolf, Capture of Crete. The Moors of Cordova had long attempted to colonize Crete (from Cres, its first monarch), and had built forts on the island which they called, in Arabic, Khandak, whence they made frequent assaults on the inhabitants. At length, in 823, they obtained full possession of the country, which, from the forts in question, received the uame of Khandy, now Candia. This fine spot in the Mediterranean is 300 miles long and 50 broad. It was the kingdom of the lawgiver Minos: the Spartans, Argives, and Athenians, afterwards sent colonies thither: and after the Moorish conquest, it fell successively into the power of the Eastern Empire, the Romans, Venetians, and Turks, the last of whom have had it from 1670 to the present day. Foundation of the Kingdom of the ocean was one wound, and the Leon. The renascent monarchy of Spain had been so augmented, 826, by the addition of Leon, Oviedo, Navarre, and Arragon, that, with the two raven waded in the gore of the slain.' --Such is the style in which his brother skalds have commemorated him. PERIOD THE TENTH. From the Fall of the Heptarchy to the Norman Conquest. SECTION I. EGBERT THE GREAT, KING OF ENGLAND. 828 TO 838-10 YEARS. Egbert being of a more ancient line of the kings of Wessex than Brithric, who had the throne at the period of his birth, Brithric displayed much jealousy of him during his youth, and caused him to seek refuge at the court of Charlemagne. Entering into the army of the emperor, he acquired the accomplishments and enlarged views of the world, which afterwards enabled him to make 172 so shining a figure, and which induced him to labour at softening down the rudeness of the Anglo-Saxon character to the standard of that of the French. It was not long before his talents were called into full action. Brithric had married Eadburga, daughter of Offa, king of Mercia, an intriguing woman, who had accidentally poisoned her husband, in her attempt to kill his friend, at a banquet. The nobles lost no time in recalling Egbert, who was duly acknowledged king of Wessex, 800; and he who had seen Charlemagne wield the sceptre over a host of petty sovereignties, reduced to subjection by his valour, perceived at once the advantage that would result, from one boundary and one set of laws, to the British, whom nature had fenced in by the sea. He gave reins, therefore, to his ambition; and by the year 828 had obtained sufficient ascendancy over the other states of the heptarchy to be acknowledged sovereign of all Angle-land,—the people of the island having long been called Angles by foreign nations. Circumstances had paved the way for this event. It had long been the practice, amounting sometimes to a sacred feeling of duty, that the younger sons of the Anglo-Saxon kings, should retire into monasteries and as monks must not marry, the original sovereign families were mostly extinct when Egbert became king of Wessex. As the only lineal descendant of Woden, a hero who had been deified by the ancient conquerors of the island, and from whom Hengist even had drawn his pedigree, he was regarded in a higher light than the other kings of the heptarchy, strangers as they were in blood to the original founders of the states; and even four of these were tributary to Mercia. When Mercia, therefore, had declared itself subject to Egbert, after the battle of Elandum in Wiltshire, he had little difficulty in bringing the rest under his authority. Thus, 400 years from the arrival of the. Saxons in Britain, were the kingdoms of the heptarchy united into one great state, conflicting interests made to cease, and political bickerings silenced by the common love of country. Egbert had scarcely reposed after the labours of his great work, when the Danes landed, and ravaged the isle of Shepey, 832; but the active prince overthrew them both in Dorset and Devon, and they never again ventured to annoy him. Egbert died 838; and was buried at Wincheser, which had been the seat of his government. EMINENT PERSONS. duke. So greatly was his memory esteemed, that the kings of Poland were to the last denominated Piastes. Piastus, a Polish wheelwright, hav- | ing hospitably entertained two pilgrims during a famine which occurred at Cracow, just at the death of duke Po- Nennius, abbot of Bangor, who piel, 836, the strangers persuaded the wrote a history of the Britons in Latin; people that he had powers superior to Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, who the common lot of mortals. Enthu-wrote against Judaism; and Albumasiasm seized the populace; and Pias-zar, the Arabian astrologer, whose tus was without ceremony declared works are still extant. SECTION II. ETHELWOLF, KING OF ENGLAND. 838 TO 857-19 YEARS. Ethelwolf began his reign by appointing his son, Athelstan, viceroy over Essex, Kent, and Sussex; an arrangement which had scarcely been effected, when the Danes landed at different points of the island, and committed great ravages. Ceorle, governor of Devonshire, gave some hope to the people by routing one party, and Athelstan sank nine of their ships near Sandwich; nevertheless a body of them took up their winter-quarters in Thanet, and in the spring of 852, burned Canterbury, and advanced into the heart of Surrey. Though routed by prince Ethelbald at Okeley, they passed the ensuing winter in the island, and could not be removed for some years from Shepey, whence they every now and then issued, and plundered the surrounding country. The troubles of the kingdom hindered not Ethelwolf from making a pilgrimage to Rome; whither he carried his fourth and favourite son, Alfred, then six years old. On his way home he married Judith, daughter of the emperor Charles the Bald ; but found, on landing in England, that his son Athelstan being dead, Ethelbald, his second son, was in arms against him. To prevent a civil war, he gave his undutiful child the western or most considerable portion of the kingdom, reserving to himself the eastern and more exposed part. Ethelwolf, after granting tithes to the clergy, died at Stambridge in Essex, and was buried at Steyning in Sussex. CHIEF EVENTS. The Battle of Fontenoy. On the death of Louis I. of France, his sons quarrelled for the succession, and a battle was fought at Fontenoy, in Burgundy, 840, which was one of the most bloody in the records of history. Lothaire, the eldest, was defeated and fled to Italy, of which kingdom he became possessed, assuming the title of emperor of the west; Louis had Germany; and France fell to Charles's share. Reduction of Wales. Roderick Mawr in 843 overthrew the petty kingdoms of Wales, and ruled over it as one state. At his death, 870, he divided it amongst his three sons; and the portions were called North Wales, South Wales, and Powis Land. tributed them amongst his diocesan clergy, the revenues of the church being then in common. This was called arbitrary consecration of tithes, and continued till the time of John; though, when dioceses were divided into parishes, the tithes of each parish were allotted to its own particular minister, excepting when the monks, or regular clergy, induced the people not to pay their dues to the secular or parochial clergy, but to bestow them on the convents and religious houses. Innocent III., in 1200, put an end to this system; and tithe from that day has been payable to the real parson, who may be either the incumbent, or the impropriator, lay or clerical, of the benefice. It is allowed that the payGrant of Tithes in England, 850. ment of tithes in kind, that is one hayEthelwolf, in this, imitated the kings of cock out of ten, one fowl out of ten, and Mercia, who had instituted them soon so on, is, in the main, both a discouafter Charlemagne's grant of them in ragement to agriculture, and a very preFrance, when that emperor made his carious income for the clergy. The infamous quadripartite division of them; cumbent of a parish, besides being put one to maintain the edifice of the to great expense in collecting his unchurch, the seco.id to support the poor, doubted right, is compelled to submitto the third the bishop, and the fourth the imposition, and often embroiled in painparochial clergy. Alfred and subse-ful litigation with his parishioners; quent sovereigns enjoined a penalty for the non-payment of tithes: and this is as much as can be traced out with regard to their legal original. On their first introduction, every man might confer them on what priests he pleased, or upon the bishop; which latter dis than which nothing can be more un- |