Ethelwulf, confiding in these two supporters, provided effectually for external emergencies, and did not neglect the interior concerns of his kingdom. For after the subjugation of his enemies, turning to the establishment of God’s worship, he granted every tenth hide of land within his kingdom to the servants of Christ, free from all tribute, exempt from all services. But how small a portion is this of his glory? Having settled his kingdom, he went to Rome, and there offered to St. Peter that tribute which England pays to this day,[123] before pope Leo the fourth, who had also, formerly, honourably received, and anointed as king, Alfred,[124] his son, whom Ethelwulf had sent to him. Continuing there a whole year, he nobly repaired the School of the Angles, which, according to report, was first founded by Offa, king of the Mercians, and had been burned down the preceding year.[125] Returning home through France, he married Judith, daughter of Charles, king of the Franks.
[Sidenote: [A.D. 814-840.] SUCCESSORS OF CHARLEMAGNE.]
For Louis the Pious, son of Charles the Great, had four sons; Lothaire, Pepin, Louis, and Charles, surnamed the Bald; of these Lothaire, even in his father’s life-time, usurping the title of emperor, reigned fifteen years in that part of Germany situated near the Alps which is now called Lorraine, that is, the kingdom of Lothaire, and in all Italy together with Rome. In his latter days, afflicted with sickness, he renounced the world. He was a man by far more inhuman than all who preceded him; so much so, as even frequently to load his own father with chains in a dungeon. Louis indeed was of mild and simple manners, but he was unmercifully persecuted by Lothaire, because Ermengarda, by whom he had his first family, being dead, he was doatingly fond of Charles, his son by his second wife Judith. Pepin, another son of Louis, had dominion in Aquitaine[126] and Gascony. Louis, the third son of Louis, in addition to Norica, which he had already, possessed the kingdoms which his father had given him, that is to say, Alemannia, Thuringia, Austrasia, Saxony, and the kingdom of the Avares, that is, the Huns. Charles obtained the half of France on the west, and all Neustria, Brittany, and the greatest part of Burgundy, Gothia, Gascony, and Aquitaine, Pepin the son of Pepin being ejected thence and compelled to become a monk in the monastery of St. Methard; who afterwards escaping by flight, and returning into Aquitaine, remained there in concealment a long time; but being again treacherously deceived by Ranulph the governor, he was seized, brought to Charles at Senlis, and doomed to perpetual exile. Moreover, after the death of the most pious emperor, Louis, Lothaire, who had been anointed emperor eighteen years before his father’s decease, being joined by Pepin with the people of Aquitaine, led an army against his brothers, that is, Louis, the most pious king of the Bavarians, and Charles, into the county of Auxerre to a place called Fontenai:[127] where, when the Franks with all their subject nations had been overwhelmed by mutual slaughter, Louis and Charles ultimately triumphed; Lothaire being put to flight. After this most sanguinary conflict, however, peace was made between them, and they divided the sovereignty of the Franks, as has been mentioned above. Lothaire had three sons by Ermengarda the daughter of Hugo: first, Louis, to whom he committed the government of the Romans and of Italy; next, Lothaire, to whom he left the imperial crown; lastly, Charles, to whom he gave Provence. Lothaire died in the year of our Lord’s incarnation 855, of his reign the thirty-third. Charles his son, who governed Provence, survived him eight years, and then Louis, emperor of the Romans, and Lothaire his brother, shared his kingdom of Provence. But Louis king of the Norici, that is, of the Bavarians, the son of Louis the emperor, in the year of our Lord’s incarnation 865, after the feast of Easter, divided his kingdom between his sons. To Caroloman he gave Norica, that is, Bavaria, and the marches bordering on the Sclavonians and the Lombards; to Louis, Thuringia, the Eastern Franks, and Saxony; to Charles he left Alemannia, and Curnwalla, that is, the county of Cornwall.[128] Louis himself reigned happily over his sons, in full power for ten years, and then died in the year of our Lord’s incarnation 876, when he had reigned fifty-four years. Charles king of the West Franks, in the thirty-sixth year of his reign, entering Italy, came to offer up his prayers in the church of the apostles, and was there elected emperor by all the Roman people, and consecrated by pope John on the 25th of December, in the year of our Lord’s incarnation 875. Thence he had a prosperous return into Gaul.