The Danish intrusion into South Britain : read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool, January 26, 1874 / by Joseph Boult.

  • Boult, Joseph.
Date:
[1874]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Danish intrusion into South Britain : read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool, January 26, 1874 / by Joseph Boult. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    on whicli they bartered amber, the ivory of the Walrus, furs, and other ravi' natural products, similar to those so recently obtained from the Eskimos. The descendants of people leading lives so secluded and barbarous would develop but very slowly, whilst the commerce of Britain throve and extended so that, as Worsaae says, the German Ocean was then known as England’s sea; and if a merchant throve so that he fared thrice over the wide sea in his own craft, he was thenceforth worthy of thane-right, that is, became a thane for life, or quamdiu se bene gesseritwealth accu- mulated in spite of desolating civil wars, and learning and art throve, so that when Charlemagne desired to promote intellectual study among his people he induced Alcuin to leave the attractions of the North-Anglian court to assist in that honourable project. Yet it is gravely asserted that such a people as the Britons were indebted to the Banes for the settlement, or re-settlement, of large tracts of country, the development of their commerce, the cultivation of a love for poetry and history, and the introduction of the Udal tenure of land; also of things or assizes, of trial by jury, of “ a numerous class of independent peasantry, who formed a striking con- trast to the oppressed Anglo-Saxon community,” the preser- vation of popular liberty, and, above all, the spread of Chris- tianity.^ It is impossible here to enter upon a detailed refutation of these claims; some of them are inconsistent with the evidence already submitted, others may be examined on future occasions; but surely there are obvious facts which are wholly inconsistent with such a draft upon credulity. The Danes were a nation of heathen barbarians. At the end of the eighth century, incited by the love of adventure and the lust for rapine, they began to harry the shores
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