reign of Edgar,[1] who found the fleet in fair order. He vastly increased it, and although he had happily but small occasion to use it—for strong navies make unwilling enemies-it is generally admitted that he raised it to a point of excellence which it had never before approached. His fault was too great a love of peace. Instead of chastising and driving off the Danish freebooters who clung tenaciously to English soil in several places, he admitted them to equality before the law with his Angles and Saxons, and by his unwise mildness he prepared the way for many subsequent troubles to his country. Such mildness was not understood in those times. It did not induce the Danes in England to become Englishmen; it led them rather to despise a people who could be voluntarily and deliberately guilty of the weakness of clemency. Edgar was too strong for them to strike at, but they foresaw that Edgar would not always rule, and that, pending the arrival of the day when it might be safe to strike, the advantages conceded to them would enable them to enormously improve their chances of ultimately subjugating the whole country.
He was, nevertheless, a great king. The wording of the charter, cited by Selden[2] as having been granted by him in 964 to the Church of Worcester, is probably spurious; but we do not depend upon that instrument, in which Edgar is made to claim lordship of "the islands, and of the ocean lying around Britain," for an estimate of the position to which the king—alas, only temporarily—raised his country at sea. The Saxon Chronicle tells us, quoting a metrical eulogy:—
"Was no fleet so insolent,
No host so strong,
That, mid the English race,
Took from him aught,
The while the noble king
Reigned on his throne. [3]
We need not attach implicit credence to Hoveden's statement[4] that Edgar's fleet consisted of three thousand six hundred sail, all "very
- ↑ Flor. of Winch.; Roger Hoveden; Bromton.
- ↑ 'Mare Clausum,' ii. 12; Will. of Malmesbury, ii. Kemble considers it a forgery: 'Cod. Dipl. Æv. Sax.' ii. 404. The wording, translated front the Latin, runs: "Edgar, King of England, and of all the Kings of the Islands, and of the Ocean lying around Britain, and of all the Nations included within the circuit thereof, Supreme Lord and Governor," etc. It is also found in 'Patent Rolls,' I Edw. IV., m. 23.
- ↑ Sax. Chron. 395.
- ↑ Hoveden, 244.
