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THE INVASIONS OF ENGLAND
THE INVASIONS OF ENGLAND
THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE THE REARGUARD OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION By EDWARD FOORD CONTAINING 32 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND 7 SKETCH-MAPS Price 7s. 6d. net WHAT TO SEE IN ENGLAND A GUIDE TO THE PLACES OF HISTORIC INTEREST, NATURAL BEAUTY, OR LITERARY ASSOCIATION By GORDON HOME NEW EDITION, CONTAINING 166 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS by THE AUTHOR AND FROM PHOTOGRAPHS, ALSO A MAP Price 3s. 6d. net PUBLISHED BY A. AND C. BLACK, LTD., 4, 5 AND 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON. W. AGENTS NEW
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PREFACE TO REISSUE
PREFACE TO REISSUE
It has quite recently been stated in an American journal that Herr Dernburg—the German official apologist to the United States—speaking of the shelling of Hartlepool and Yorkshire watering-places, was convinced that it would ‘bring home to the English people a keen realization of the fact that every serious attempt to invade England in the past has been successful.’ Had Herr Dernburg read any connected narrative of the invasions of England we are of opinion that he would never have made this sta
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PREFACE
PREFACE
Since the year 1794, when England seethed with excitement through fear of a French Republican invasion, no book has been produced dealing with the invasions of England. The historical and archæological work of the century that has passed has shed so much light on dark and shadowy periods of English history that the materials available for a new work on the subject have become increasingly extensive, and the authors have endeavoured to take full advantage of all this new material. They have, eith
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ENGLAND INVADED CHAPTER I CÆSAR’S INVASIONS
ENGLAND INVADED CHAPTER I CÆSAR’S INVASIONS
In the year 57 B.C. Gaius Julius Cæsar, Roman politician, statesman, and legislator, and already, though he had only girt on the sword at forty-three years of age, a famous soldier, was campaigning in northern Gaul. The year before, a mere carpet warrior, as his enemies would have men believe, he had come up the Rhone with six legions of sturdy swarthy Italian yeomen, and summarily put an end to the great Helvetic migration, a migration perhaps little less dangerous than that of the Cimbri and ‘
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CHAPTER II THE CLAUDIAN INVASION AND THE ROMAN CONQUEST
CHAPTER II THE CLAUDIAN INVASION AND THE ROMAN CONQUEST
Of the history of Britain during the century succeeding the Cæsarian expeditions we have some fairly satisfactory glimpses. The terror of Cæsar was sufficient, on the one hand, to prevent the British chiefs from interfering in Gallic affairs. It also appears to have deterred Caswallon from again attacking the philo-Roman Trinobantes, for numismatic evidence shows that they were independent at a much later epoch. But it does seem certain that it helped forward British unity, since we find a tende
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CHAPTER III THE ROMAN PROVINCE AND THE EARLIER TEUTONIC INVASIONS
CHAPTER III THE ROMAN PROVINCE AND THE EARLIER TEUTONIC INVASIONS
After Hadrian, in what Florus jokingly termed the great Emperor’s ‘walking about Britain,’ had reorganized the island, and established the famous military frontier, Britain settled down to a more or less eventful existence as a Roman province. The unfortunate results of the enterprise, into which Claudius had perhaps been led partly against his will, soon began to be apparent, even if to all thinking men they were not plain as early as the reign of Hadrian. The military boundary chosen by Trajan
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CHAPTER IV THE ENGLISH CONQUEST
CHAPTER IV THE ENGLISH CONQUEST
Although the English invasion of Britain is by far the most important of all those which have affected the island, it is impossible to focus any very clearly defined picture of the happenings during the long period of nearly two centuries that followed the so-called departure of the Romans. The picture is blurred, but certain strong outlines are conspicuous, and in this chapter an attempt has been made to concentrate attention on these salient features. The incident which led to the English inva
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CHAPTER V THE VIKING RAVAGES
CHAPTER V THE VIKING RAVAGES
From 596, the year of the coming of St. Augustine, to 793, England was practically untroubled by foreign invasion, except in so far as the raids of the still independent Kymry come under that heading. The period was by no means peaceful; the three great kingdoms—Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex—were frequently at strife, and once or twice the Welsh interfered with effect in their wars. Wessex was nearly always torn with intestine war. After 758 the condition of Northumbria was one of chronic anar
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CHAPTER VI ALFRED AND THE SAVING OF WESSEX
CHAPTER VI ALFRED AND THE SAVING OF WESSEX
The stubborn resistance of Aethelred and Alfred had for the moment saved Wessex; but its immediate effect was to throw the whole force of the Northmen upon the rest of England. The host with which Alfred had been contending withdrew to London, and there it stayed through the winter. A most remarkable fact is that while there Halfdene minted coins, bearing his own name indeed, but distinctively Roman in type. In 873 the unhappy Burhred of Mercia subsidized the invaders to depart, but, as usual, t
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CHAPTER VII THE CONQUEST OF THE DANELAW
CHAPTER VII THE CONQUEST OF THE DANELAW
Alfred’s death left Wessex and western Mercia still faced by a mass of more or less hostile Danish settlers in the Danelaw and Deira, but fairly well knit together by the consciousness of sufferings endured and victories gained in conjunction, and with a growing sense of national unity. At first it is doubtful whether Eadward I. intended to subjugate the Danelaw; but he was quickly made aware that there was hardly any alternative. His cousin Aethelwald, son of Aethelred I., who had been passed o
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CHAPTER VIII LATER VIKING RAIDS AND THE DANISH CONQUEST
CHAPTER VIII LATER VIKING RAIDS AND THE DANISH CONQUEST
Men who had seen the famous triumphal procession on the Dee in 973, when Eadgar the Peaceful, rowed by eight vassal princes, passed in his boat by the venerable walls of the ‘Chester’ of Valeria Victrix, must have groaned in spirit at the wretchedness that overwhelmed England in the reign of his worthless son, Aethelred ‘the Redeless.’ D D Aethelred is popularly known as ‘the Unready,’ but the Anglo-Saxon word rede means ‘counsel’ or ‘advice,’ and a better rendering of the king’s nickname is ‘il
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CHAPTER IX THE INVASIONS OF 1066
CHAPTER IX THE INVASIONS OF 1066
The passing from the scene of the strangely unsubstantial and shadowy figure of the sainted Eadward ‘the Confessor’ was the signal for the bursting of the storm that was to overwhelm Anglo-Saxon England. For the last thirteen years of his reign the country had been practically governed by his great minister, Harold Godwineson, Earl of Wessex. Harold’s character has suffered much at the hands of Norman chroniclers; there is no real reason to think that he was morally worse than most men of his ag
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CHAPTER X CONTINENTAL INVASIONS 1066–1545
CHAPTER X CONTINENTAL INVASIONS 1066–1545
Since 1066—a period of over eight centuries—there have been, apart from many sporadic raids, no great successful invasions of England. On two occasions relatively large forces have landed on these shores, but in both cases they had the support of a considerable part of the nation. The first of these occasions was in 1216. King John’s tyranny had at last produced something like a general revolt—at any rate among his barons. His assent to Magna Carta, given on June 15, 1215, had proved a farce, an
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CHAPTER XI SCOTTISH INVASIONS 1018–1424
CHAPTER XI SCOTTISH INVASIONS 1018–1424
Shakespeare in ‘King Henry V.’ puts into the King’s mouth the following lines: And the words express sufficiently well the popular opinion of Scotland as the especial and persevering enemy of England. Like a good many popular opinions, it is only partly true. Yet it has a foundation of fact, in so far that for some three centuries England and Scotland were generally at war. Still, this condition of chronic hostility was not reached until the reign of Edward I., and before then the two countries
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CHAPTER XII LATER SCOTTISH INVASIONS 1424–1542
CHAPTER XII LATER SCOTTISH INVASIONS 1424–1542
When in 1424 James I., after his long captivity in England, took over the government of Scotland, his energies were mainly directed to internal reform, though he made in 1436 a fruitless attempt to recover Roxburgh. James II. attacked Berwick in 1455, and raided the Border next year. In 1460 Roxburgh was recovered, though James himself was killed by a bursting cannon. England, involved in the Wars of the Roses, could do little. As the price of assistance rendered to the Lancastrians, Scotland re
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CHAPTER XIII THE SPANISH ARMADA 1588
CHAPTER XIII THE SPANISH ARMADA 1588
The Spanish attacks upon England during the reign of Elizabeth were hardly invasions in the strict sense of the word, since only once was a small force actually landed. Nevertheless, they cannot be ignored, if only for the reason that they came nearer to effecting a landing in force than any other of England’s oversea foes since that period. They furnish the spectacle of a remarkable display of patience and ill-directed determination, brought to nought by the might of sea power, happily guided a
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CHAPTER XIV THE AFTERMATH OF THE ARMADA
CHAPTER XIV THE AFTERMATH OF THE ARMADA
The defeat of the Armada of 1588 is commonly regarded as the end of any danger to England from Spain. This, however, is far from the truth. Had Elizabeth and her minister Burghley been less timid, it might have been. But they would not allow a great counter-attack on Spain to be delivered by the whole strength of England; and the semi-private expedition of Drake and Sir John Norreys in 1589, though gallantly made, was hampered by injudicious instructions, and eventually failed. Worse still, Drak
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CHAPTER XV DE RUIJTER AND WILLIAM OF ORANGE
CHAPTER XV DE RUIJTER AND WILLIAM OF ORANGE
When the danger from Spain had passed away, it was not long before England and the Dutch Republic began to take up a position of rivalry. The two States had fought side by side against Spain, but they had had trade differences, which culminated in an abominable massacre by the Dutch East India Company of English merchants at Amboyna, in the Moluccas. This was in 1623, and the Governments of James I. and Charles I. had failed to obtain any success by diplomatic means. The Dutch were supreme in th
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CHAPTER XVI THE ‘FIFTEEN’ AND THE ‘FORTY-FIVE’
CHAPTER XVI THE ‘FIFTEEN’ AND THE ‘FORTY-FIVE’
The efforts of the dispossessed Stuart dynasty to re-establish itself in the British Isles produced the last land invasions of England by way of Scotland. That of 1715 was insignificant. It cannot be said that either had the faintest chance of success unaided. Still, they were invasions in the true sense of the word and, as such, merit some notice. Though the Stuart James II. had been expelled in 1688, the dynasty continued in a sense to reign in the female branch until 1702, though with a gap c
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CHAPTER XVII FRENCH RAIDS 1690–1797 Teignmouth and Fishguard.
CHAPTER XVII FRENCH RAIDS 1690–1797 Teignmouth and Fishguard.
Aristophanes, in ‘The Acharnians,’ puts into the mouth of Dicæopolis some sarcastic observations as to what the Athenians would do if the Spartans manned a skiff and stole a pug-puppy from one of the islands. The poet’s imagined invasion of the Athenian Empire is very much on a par with the two French landings which have taken place in England since the year 1689. The Revolution left England under the rule of a monarch of her own choosing, but torn with faction, and committed of necessity to a w
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CHAPTER XVIII THE NAPOLEONIC DESIGN 1804
CHAPTER XVIII THE NAPOLEONIC DESIGN 1804
No work dealing with the invasions of England would be complete without some notice of the attempts, or supposed attempts, of Napoleon to invade this island. To discuss them in detail here is unnecessary, especially in view of the fact that more than one excellent work has been produced on the subject in recent years. In any case Napoleon did not approach success so nearly as Philip II. of Spain, since he never brought his fleet to the vital point. He was never able, even in the height of his po
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APPENDIX A THE SITE OF THE BATTLE OF ACLEA
APPENDIX A THE SITE OF THE BATTLE OF ACLEA
Aclea was formerly generally supposed to be Ockley in Surrey, near Horsham, but Mr. C. Cooksey (Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club) gives good reasons for believing it to be Church Oakley, near Basingstoke, close to the London-Winchester road. The Northmen had just sacked London, and one hardly sees why they should plunge into the Andredsweald when the capital of Wessex offered a fair prospect of booty. In Domesday Book also Oakley is called Aclei while Ockley is Hoclie. It is not true, as
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THE ENGLISH FLEET
THE ENGLISH FLEET
Of these, some 35 were detached or paid off on account of sickness, 145 were present at Calais, 8 were burnt as fireships, leaving 137 in action at Gravelines....
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THE SPANISH FLEET
THE SPANISH FLEET
Of these, apparently 3 large ships and 14 small craft parted company or were captured in the Channel, so that at Calais the total number was 124....
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