The Invasions and the Projected Invasions of England, from the Saxon times. With remarks on the present emergencies

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THE INVASIONS AND THE PROJECTED INVASIONS OF ENGLAND. THE INVASIONS iND THE PROJECTED INVASIONS OF ENGLAND, FROM THE SAXON TIMES. WITH REMARKS ON THE PRESENT EMERGENCIES. BY E. S. CREASY, M.A., j/i ■ ni"'i.ir_i..!ic__,iw. ' Professor of History in the University of London, late Fellow of King's College, Camurultcp, Author of " The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the Worl J," £c. LONDON : RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, JPublisfjrr in ©rtinarg to fltx fElajrstn. 1852. LONDON : BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIAES. DEDICATED To JOHN ARTHUR ROEBUCK, M.P. BY THE AUTHOK. CONTENTS.

Chapter I. The Norman Conquest

— INVASIONS AND PROJECTS OF INVASION" BETWEEN 1066 AND 1485. — OUR NATIONAL DEFENCE IN THOSE AGES. At a crisis when the public mind is generally and anxiously directed to the liability of England to invasion, and to the state of our National Defences, it has seemed probable, that many would take an interest in, and that some might derive advantage from, a brief sketch of the attempts, which have been actually made to invade this country in former "times, and of the manner in which those attempts have been encountered. It has also appeared desirable to describe the projects and preparations which our enemies have at different periods made to invade us, but which never ripened into actual endeavours. E I have been partly led to this opinion by ob serving how often the very numerous writers on the present exposure of England to a sudden attack, have referred in corroboration of their arguments to these bygone events of history.

Those refer rences have not always been very accurate as to facts, and their respective authors differ materially among themselves as to deductions. But the frequency of these appeals to the past, as evidence of the probable future, is of itself a sufficient proof that a brief and accurate narrative of former hostile designs upon England would be practically useful, as well as gratifying to historical curiosity. My duties and studies having caused me of late years to pay much attention to the chief epochs, when the conquest of England by a foreign enemy has been adventured, I have thought that I might without presumption compile and lay before my fellow countrymen the narratives and statistics contained in the following pages. And, as our present peril is a matter that comes home to every man who acknow ledges a duty to his country, and who has those around him whose life and honour he holds dear, I have added to these historic sketches some of the reflections, which study of the Past and observa tion of the Present combine to originate, respecting the course that ought to be taken to place this island and this nation in such armed security, that not EOMAN INVASIONS. even the most rancorous and the most desperate foe would venture on an attempt either at marauding inroad or permanent subjugation.

There need be no shame in the confession of anxiety on such a topic, provided it be such anxiety as may fall " in virum constantem, non timidum et meticulosum." It is hardly necessary to recapitulate, or to do more than slightly advert to, the invasions of this island, that were effected or designed prior to the Norman conquest. It would be mere pedantry to talk of Cæsar's landings, or of the subsequent victories of the Romans over the Celts who then in habited Britain. Perhaps one would not go quite so far as Arnold does, when he maintains that " our history clearly begins with the coming over of the Saxons; the Britons and Romans had lived in our country, but they are not our fathers ; we are con nected with them as men indeed, but nationally speaking, the history of Cæsar's invasion has no more to do with us than the natural history of the animals which then inhabited our forests," But, without thus utterly repudiating all connexion with Caractacus and Boadicea, we may safely say that our interest in the state of this island dates only from the time when our English ancestors occupied it, and made it England.

And, indeed, the history of the descents which the Northmen and 1; othe^ made upon our coasts, after " the white horse of the Saxon had established his dominion from the Tweed to the Tamar," would be tediously out of place in this volume. I will only remark generally that Alfred, Athelstane, Edgar, and others of the wisest of our Saxon sovereigns, paid anxious attention to the maintenance of an efficient navy, while they also devoted unremitting care to the improvement of the national defences on land against such enemies, as their fleets might fail to encounter suc cessfully at sea. The conquest, however, of England by William the Norman, deserves more attention, on account of the magnitude of the invading armament, the complete success of the enterprise, the dreadful misery which it caused to the conquered English for many generations ; and also on account of some particular incidents in the war, which may not be uninstructive warnings to us, the remote descendants of the then contending but long since united races.

England had ample notice of the coming invasion from the coasts of Normandy in 1066. Every harbour or roadstead in the dominion of the Duke of Normandy, or his allies, was the scene of urgent preparation throughout the spring and summer of that year. As the old chronicle says, " Workmen were employed in all the ports, cutting of planks, framing of ships and boats, stretching sails, and rearing masts." William had need of ships of war that could cope with the Saxon vessels, should they cross his path across the channel, as well as of transports for the conveyance of his troops and military stores. Thierry esti mates the entire fleet which William formed and collected, as amounting to four hundred ships with large masts and sails, and more than a thousand transport boats. A manuscript which is preserved in the Bodleian Library, and which is believed to be nearly contemporaneous with the Conquest,* enumerates supplies of ships to William by his chief vassals, to the number of a thousand sail : and adds that, besides them, the Duke had many other ships, which certain vassals of his supplied, each according to his ability.

The army which this fleet was to waft to the conquest of England, was collected and organised by William, in all the plenitude of numbers and perfection of discipline, that the combined influ ences of wealth, power, fanaticism, love of ad venture, and military genius could accomplish. When, on the death of Edward the Confessor, in January, 1066, and the election of Earl Harold to * Cited in an Appendix to Vol. I. of Sir Harris Nicolas's " History of the Royal Navy." our throne, the Norman Duke determined to assert his claims to the crown of England by invading the kingdom, he forthwith applied all the energies of his mind and body, all the resources of his duchy, and all the influence he possessed among feudatories or allies, to the preparation of such a force, as should be worthy of the great cast upon which he resolved to risk himself and his fortunes.

There was no secrecy in his scheme : there was no thought of filching the crown of England by a sudden surprise. He sent his heralds openly to Harold to demand of him that he should give up the crown of England, and acknowledge William as his lawful King. And when Harold refused to lay down his royalty, William published, far and wide throughout Christendom, his intention of avenging himself upon his rival, and of pursuing and punishing the Saxon Ring, even in those places where he thought he stood the most securely. A keen and subtle observer of human nature and of the passions and prejudices of his age, the Norman Duke sought to enroll on his side moral as well as physical force; knowing well how power fully the first recruits and animates the latter. He therefore ostentatiously submitted to the decision of the Pope his claims to the English crown.

Harold refused to acknowledge this tribunal, or to answer before an Italian priest for his title as an English King. After a formal examination of William's complaints by the Pope and the Car dinals, it was solemnly adjudged at Rome shut England belonged to the Norman Duke; and a banner was sent to William from the Holy See, which the Pope himself had consecrated and blessed for the invasion of this island. " Soon as were made known the sanction and gifts of the Pope, all the continent stirred, as to the blast of the trump in the Crusade, of which that war was the herald. From Maine and from Anjou, from Poitou and Bretagne, from France and from Flanders, from Aquitaine and Burgundy, flashed the spear, galloped the steed. The robber-chiefs from the castles now grey on the Rhine ; the hunters and bandits from the roots of the Alps; baron and knight, varlet and vagrant, — all came to the flag of the Church, to the pillage of England.

For, side by side with the Pope's holy bull was the martial ban: — 'Good pay and broad lands to every one who will serve Duke William with spear, and with sword, and with cross bow.' And the Duke said to Fitzosborne, as he parcelled out the fair fields of England into Norman fiefs, — " ' Harold hath not the strength of mind to promise the least of those things that belong to me. But I have the right to promise that which is mine, and also that which belongs to him. He must be the victor who can give away both his own and that which belongs to the foe/ " * All the adventurous, all the fanatic, all the ambitious, and all the covetous spirits of continental Christendom, now flocked to the holy banner, which was thus raised by so bounteous a chief. " Money, armour, stores, provisions, and all other necessaries for the enterprise, were also freely bestowed.

Soldiers from the adjoining provinces, and adventurers of all classes, entreated to be allowed to join the expe dition ; some of whom stipulated for money, others for lands ; while others, with better taste, demanded a wealthy Saxon heiress as the price of their services. England appeared to be the modern Land of Promise ; and even ecclesiastical preferment was bartered by the future monarch for military aid ; a priest of Fecamp, named Renie, having obtained the promise of an English bishopric for a ship with twenty men-at-arms. "-j- While these preparations against Saxon England were making on the southern shore of the Channel, "the Last of the Saxon Kings'" was not idle. * William of Poictiers. " The naive sagacity of this bandit argument and the Norman's contempt for Harold's deficiency in ' strength of mind,' are exquisite illustrations of character."

Both the quotation in the text and the note are taken from Bulwer's " Harold." t Sir Harris Nicolas's " History of the Royal Navy." During the spring of 1066 he assembled at Sand wich, on the Kentish coast, the largest fleet and army, that England had yet seen, to resist the threatened invasion. The population of England, at that period, is variously estimated ; but the highest calculation does not exceed two millions. Military service was the acknowledged duty of every freeman ; and though the late reign of Edward the Confessor had been comparatively peaceful, the natives had not lost the martial aptitude which centuries of warfare against Briton, Scot, and Dane, had fostered in their race. Even, indeed, under the tame sceptre of the Confessor there had been sufficient Border warfare and intestine strife, to call the skill of Saxon captains, and the bravery of Saxon soldiers, into frequent and active employment.

Duke William had appointed as the rendezvous of his armament the mouth of the Dive, a little river between the Seine and the Orme; and his whole force was concentrated there and -ready for the attack upon England as early as the middle of August. The arm}' which he had collected amounted to fifty thousand knights and ten thousand soldiers of inferior degree. Many of the knights were mounted, but many must have served on foot ; as it is hardly possible to believe that William could have found transports for the e3 conveyance of fifty thousand war-horses across the Channel. For a long time the winds were adverse ; and the Duke employed the interval that passed before he could set sail, in completing the organ isation and in improving the discipline of his army, which he seems to have brought into the same state of perfection, as was, seven centuries and a half afterwards, the boast of another army assembled on the same coast, and which Napoleon designed (but providentially in vain) for a similar descent upon England.

In the meanwhile an attack by another foe upon another part of England effected an important diversion in favour of the Norman Duke, and removed from the southern coasts of England the army which had been so long waiting to repel his invasion. King Harald Hardrada, of Norway, the latest of the Scandinavian Vikings, and also the strongest and most chivalric of all his warrior race, had been induced by some Saxon refugees to attack England and endeavour to win its crown for himself. Tosti, the brother of the Saxon King- Harold, was the chief instigator us the Norse King to this enterprise. Harald Hardrada left the Norwegian coast at the head of one of the most formidable fleets that Scandinavia had ever sent forth. Early in September the Norwegians crossed the sea to the Orkneys, and thence sailed southward HARALD HARDRADA. 11 to the Humber, where they landed, and defeated, after a severe battle near York, Earls Edwin and Morcar, whom Harold had appointed governors of Northumbria.

The city of York opened its gates, and all the country, from the Tyne to the Humber, submitted to him. The tidings of the defeat of Edwin and Morcar compelled Harold to leave his position on the southern coast, and move instantly against the Norwegians. By a wonderfully rapid march he reached Yorkshire in four days, and took the Norse King and his confederates by surprise. Nevertheless, the battle which ensued, and which was fought near Stamford bridge on the 25th of September, was desperate, and was long doubtful. Unable to break the ranks of the Norwegian pha lanx by force, Harold at length tempted them to quit this close order by a pretended flight. Then the English columns burst in among them, and King Harald Hardrada, and all the flower of the nobility of Norway, perished on the spot.

In the words of the old Saxon chronicler, " When the Northmen were put to flight, the English from behind hotly smote them, until they came, some to their ships, some were drowned, and some also burned ; and thus in divers ways they perished, so that there were few left : and the English had possession of the place of carnage." The victory of the English over the Norwegians was splendid, but it was dearly bought by the fall of many of their best officers and men, and still more dearly by the opportunity which Duke William had gained of effecting an unopposed landing on the Sussex coast. King Harold's march northward against the Norwegians had left the south of England without an army of defence, and during his absence, the fleet which he had collected and so long kept together, with a view of intercepting the Norman invaders in the channel, had dispersed through want of provisions, and had left an unguarded sea, as well as an ungarrisoned coast.

During this all important interval the north-east winds, which had long cooped Duke William's aimament at the mouth of the Dive, at length veered to the west ward, and gave the Normans an opportunity of quitting the station where they had so long lingered in fretful inaction. They eagerly embarked and set sail ; but the wind soon freshened into a gale, and drove them along the French coast to St. Valery, where the greater part of them found shelter, but many of their vessels were wrecked, and the whole coast of Normandy was strewn with the bodies of the drowned. William's army began to grow discou couraged and averse to the enterprise, which the very elements thus seemed to fight against, though in reality the winds which had imprisoned them so long on the French coast had been their best possible friends, by retaining them on the south of the chan nel, until both the Saxon army and Saxon fleet had left their post of defence against them.

Despite his strength of soul and habitual presence of mind, William was a prey to uneasiness which he could hardly conceal. " He was frequently seen to go to the church of Saint Valery, the patron of the place, to remain there a long time in prayer, and each time that he quitted it, to look at the cock which surmounted the bell-tower, and showed the direction of the wind. If it seemed turning towards the south, the Duke appeared joyful: but if the wind blew from the north or west, his face and manner became still more depressed. Whether it was an act of sincere faith, or merely to furnish some occupation to his sad and discouraged troops, he took from the church the coffer which contained the relics of the saint, and had it carried in pro cession, with great ceremony, through the camp. The whole army joined in prayer.

The chiefs made rich offerings : every soldier, to the very lowest, gave his piece of money: and the following night, as if Heaven had granted a miracle, the wind changed, and the weather became calm and serene. At day-break of the 27th of September, the sun, hitherto each day enveloped in clouds, appeared in all his splendour. The camp was immediately raised, all preparations for embarkation executed with great ardour, and no less promptitude, and some hours before sun-set, the entire fleet was ready. Four hundred ships with large sails, and more than a thousand transport vessels, made for the open sea, amid the sound of trumpets and a shout of joy, sent forth from sixty thousand mouths as from one." * The Normans crossed an undefended sea to an undefended shore, and on the 28th of September, William landed his army without the slightest obstacle at convenient points between Bexhill and Winchelsea. f The Duke concentrated his army at Hastings, formed an intrenched camp on the heights near that place, and raised there two wooden castles, which had been brought in pieces ready prepared beforehand.

Bodies of troops overran the neighbouring country, pillaging and burning houses. The English fled from their dwellings, hiding their goods and cattle, and hastened in crowds to the churches and churchyards, which they deemed the surest asylums against enemies, who were Christians like themselves. But in their thirst for booty, the Normans paid little heed to the sanctity of places, and respected no asylums. Harold was at this time at York, resting from * Thierry's " Norman Conquest." + See " Ellis's Introduction to Doomsday " i. 314, and notes to Edgar Taylor's Translation of the Roman de Rou, p. 262. his fatigues, and rejoicing over the victory, which had rescued his country from her ancient Scandi navian foes. The counties, also, which had been overrun by Harald Hardrada, required his presence for the purpose of resettling their government ; but while he was thus engaged, a messenger arrived with the unwelcome intelligence that Duke William had landed with his armv, and had raised his standard upon the Anglo-Saxon territory.

Harold instantly hurried southward to meet this long-expected enemy, giving directions as he passed through the country to all the provincial governors to arm as many men as they could collect, and bring them to London with all speed, whither he himself pushed on by forced marches. He also gave directions that his fleet should immediately re-assemble upon the Sussex coast. Harold was well received in London, and his summons to arms was promptly obeyed. The militia of the west came without delay ; those from the north were later, having suffered severely in the late battle ; but it appeared probable that he would soon again find himself surrounded by a numerous army. Instead, however, of waiting in London until he could assemble the full power of the kingdom, Harold, irritated by the reports of the devastations committed by the Normans, and hoping probably to take them by surprise, as he had recently succeeded in overpowering Harald Hardrada, marched from London to the southern coast, at the head of an army far inferior in numbers to that of the invaders : but when, on approaching the Norman lines, he found that his new adversary was far too skilful to be assaulted unawares like the Norwegian Viking, he changed his tactics, and halted about seven miles from the Norman en trenchments.

The position taken by him was admirably chosen, as the slightest acquaintance with the locality, or even a glance at the map, will demonstrate. He occupied a small knoll of high ground, standing at a right angle to the neck of hills which trends from Hastings inwards. Harold's post at Senlac, as his station then was termed — or Battle, as the Conqueror afterwards named it — could not be attacked in front, without considerable disadvantage to the assailants, and could hardly be turned, without those engaged in the manœuvre exposing themselves to a fatal at tack on their flank. A rough and thickly wooded district in the rear of his camp offered facilities for rallying his men, and checking the advance of the enemies, if the fortune of the day should be against him; and it seemed scarcely possible that the Normans, if they received any defeat, could save themselves from utter destruction.

Still, Harold's army was far inferior in numbers to that of the Normans ; and his want of horse and archers to oppose the splendid chivalry and well-trained bow men of the Duke was so apparent, that the best of his captains advised him to retreat upon London, and lay waste the country, so as to starve down the strength of the invaders. The policy thus recommended was unquestionably the wisest, for the Saxon fleet had now re-assembled and intercepted all William's communications with Normandy; and as soon as the Duke's stores of provisions were ex hausted, he must have moved forward upon London, where Harold, at the head of the full military strength of the kingdom, could have defied his assault, and probably might have witnessed his rival's destruction by famine and disease, without having to strike a single blow.

But Harold's bold blood was up, and his kindly heart could not endure to inflict on his South Saxon subjects even the temporary misery of wasting the country. " He would not burn houses and villages, neither would he take away the substance of his people." I do not pause here to give the details of the battle of Hastings— one which the old writer Daniel has truly termed "a battle the most memorable of all others ; and however miserably lost, yet most nobly fought on the part of England." * That * I have fully described it in the second volume of " The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World." battle commenced early on the 14th day of October, 1066, and the setting sun of the same day saw the Normans conquerors and lords of England. The last of the Saxon Kings, and the bravest Thanes of the south and centre of the island, lay dead on the field of Senlac.

The two great Northern Earls, Edwin and Morcar, were timid and irresolute. The land was without vigorous native chiefs, and it was also almost entirely destitute of fortresses. Ordericus Vitalis, an old writer, has noticed the absence of fortified places in England, and attri buted to the want of them the ease with which the complete subjugation of England was effected- The result was, that as the shattered remains of the army had no place to which they could retreat and remain in safety until reinforcements arrived, and until further measures of defence could be organised, a single defeat placed the whole country in the power of the invader. Duke William had, indeed, some slight pretexts of right to the English crown, beside the cogent title of the sword. His relationship to Edward the Confessor, and the alleged bequest of the sovereignty of England to him by that King, gave a colourable excuse both to his own conduct in undertaking his great enterprise, and to the conduct of the Saxons who submitted to him, instead of prolonging a hopeless war after the battle of Hastings.

He was crowned King of England by the Saxon Archbishop with the ancient Saxon forms, and after taking the coronation oath of the Saxon Kings, on Christmas day, 1066. At first, his rule was comparatively mild. By confiscating the large estates of King Harold and his family, and his principal adherents, William obtained the means for appeasing (if he could not satisfy) the rapacity of his followers, while he left for a time the greater number of the English landowners in the enjoy ment of their property. But, under any disguise, conquest is to a brave people a bitter draught. The sense of foreign domination, and the insolence of William's Norman barons and prelates weighed heavily on the spirits of Saxon thane and Saxon ceorl. Then came fierce local risings, with delusive partial successes over the foreigners ; soon crushed by the disciplined troops and the high military genius of the Conqueror.

Then followed the revengeful cruelties of the King : the results not so much of hasty anger, as of a stern, remorseless policy. William resolved that his English subjects should fear him, if they hated him ; and no feeling of mercy ever made him pause in any measure that seemedadapted to increase and consolidate his power. The Saxon army, which perished with Harold, at Hastings, is said not to have been a very large one ; but the slaughters of the Saxons, which ■20 followed, in consequence of their subsequent insur rections against the Conqueror, were numerous and severe : nor can we estimate the total number that perished by the edge of the sword, during William's invasion and reign, at less than a hundred thousand. The number of exiles also was con siderable, as very many of the Saxons sought refuge in Scotland, and many fled beyond seas from the tyranny of their Norman lords.

But those, whom the massacres perpetrated in cold blood by William's command destroyed, were more in number than those who fell fighting, or fled into exile : and the famines and pestilences caused by his merciless devastations of wide tracts of populous and fertile territory, were more destructive still. One of his most atrocious acts of this kind was his laying waste the country between the Humber and the Tyne, partly out of anger for a rising of some of the inhabitants against him, and partly as a measure of precaution, because he ex pected an invasion from Denmark, and thought that the Danes would be most likely to land in the north of England, where great part of the population was akin to them. The Norman monkish chronicler, Ordericus Vitalis, who is generally William's unscrupulous panegyrist, thus speaks of his devastation of Northumbria : " He extended his posts over a space of one hundred miles.

He smote most of the inhabitants with the edge of the avenging sword ; he destroyed the hiding-places of others ; he laid waste their lands ; he burned their houses, with all that was therein. Nowhere else did William act with such cruelty ; and in this instance he shamefully gave way to evil passion ; while he scorned to rule his own wrath, and cut off the guilty and the innocent with equal severity. For, excited by anger, he bade the crops, and the herds, and the household stuff, and every description of food, to be gathered in heaps, and to be set light to and utterly destroyed altogether : and so that all sustenance for man or beast should be at once wasted throughout all the region beyond the Humber. Whence there raged grievous want far and wide throughout England ; such a misery of famine involved the helpless people, that there perished of Christian human beings of either sex and every age, upwards of a hundred thousand." * A large part of Hampshire was similarly made a wilderness by his orders, so as to supply him with a " New Forest," wherein he might pursue his favourite sport of the chase.

Many other acts of his might be mentioned, all tending to waste the people, who were his subjects, from off the face of the land : and an infinitely larger number of cruel and destructive acts were perpetrated by him and * Ordericus Vitalis, lib. his Norman followers, no special record of which has survived, but to which the lamentations of the old Saxon chroniclers bear emphatic, though confused testimony. One indeed of these old writers tells us that he forbears narrating in detail the conduct of the Normans to the mass of the population " because it was hard to express in words, and because it would appear incredible by reason of its excessive barbarity." Many more such phrases of the Saxon monks, who saw and mourned over the miseries of their countrymen, might be cited. And there is also the explicit proof which the figures in Domesday Book supply of the decay of the population of the great cities and towns during the first twenty years of the Norman rule in this country.