How King Edward the Confessor suffered his courtiers to rule him and
the kingdom, and promised that the Duke of Normandy should be king;
how some of his wise men made a book of laws; how Harold, the son
of Earl Godwin, was made king; how he was killed in the battle of
Hastings, and the Duke of Normandy became king.
I told you that when the Danes got so much the better of the English
as to make one of their own princes king, they drove away the princes
of Alfred’s family; and I told you, at the same time, that some of
these princes went to Normandy, which was governed by a duke instead
of a king. The duke at that time was brave and generous, and was kind
to the princes, and protected them from their enemies, and allowed
them to live at his court. One of the English princes was called
Edward; and, after the three Danish kings were dead, this Edward was
made king of England.
The people were all delighted to have a prince of Alfred’s family
once more to reign over them, for although Canute had been good to
them, they could not forget that he was one of the cruel Danes who
had so long oppressed the English; and, as to his sons, they never
did anything good, as I told you before; and the people suspected
them of having murdered a favorite young prince, called Alfred.
King Edward was very much liked at first; but he was idle, and
allowed sometimes one great man, and sometimes another, to govern him
and the kingdom, while he was saying his prayers, or looking over the
workmen while they were building new churches.
Now it is very right in everybody to say prayers; but when God
appoints us other duties to do, we should do them carefully. A king’s
duty is to govern his people well; he must not only see that good
laws are made, but he must also take care that everybody obeys them.
A bishop’s duty is to pray and preach, and see that all the clergymen
who are under him do their duty, and instruct the people properly.
A soldier’s duty is to fight the enemies of his country in war, and
to obey the king, and to live quietly in peace. A judge’s duty is to
tell what the law is, to order the punishment of bad people, and to
prevent wickedness. A physician’s duty is to cure sick people; and
it is everybody’s duty to take care of their own families, and teach
them what is right and set them good examples.
It has pleased God to make all these things duties, and He requires
us to do them; and He has given us all quite time enough to pray
rightly, if we really and truly love God enough to do our duties to
please Him. So King Edward, if he had loved God the right way, would
have attended to his kingdom himself, instead of letting other people
rule it.
However, in King Edward’s time, people thought that everybody who
prayed so much must be very holy, and therefore after his death he
received the name of Edward the Confessor, or Saint.
One of the great men who ruled England in Edward’s time was Godwin
Earl of Wessex. He was very clever, and very powerful. After his
death, his son Harold became Earl of Wessex, and did all the king
ought to have done himself, and tried to keep strangers out of the
country.
But King Edward, who had been kindly treated in Normandy, when the
Danes drove him out of England, had brought a great many Normans home
with him; and when they saw how pleasant England was, and what plenty
of corn, and cattle, and deer there was in it, and how healthy and
strong the people grew, they determined to try and get the kingdom
for their duke as soon as Edward was dead. And they told the duke
what they thought of, and he came from Normandy to see King Edward,
and to get him to promise that he should be king of England, as King
Edward had no son.
Now I think this was not right, because Edward had a relation who
ought to have been king, and his name was Edgar, and he was called
the Atheling, which means the Prince.
Perhaps if Edward the Confessor had taken pains to get the great
men in England to promise to take care of Edgar Atheling, and make
him king, they would have done so; but as they found he wanted to
give England to the Duke of Normandy, a great many of them thought
it would be better to have an English earl for a king, because the
English earl would be glad to protect his own countrymen, but that a
Duke of Normandy would most likely take their houses and lands and
give them to the Normans. So they were willing that Harold, the son
of Earl Godwin, who already acted as if he were under-king, should be
the real king after Edward’s death.
In the meantime King Edward was busy in building Westminster Abbey,
and encouraging Norman bishops and soldiers to come to England, where
he gave them some of the best places to live in.
I must tell you, however, of one very useful thing that was done in
the reign of Edward. He found that some part of England was ruled by
laws made by King Alfred or other English kings, before his time,
and some parts by laws made by the Danes, and that the people could
not agree about these laws; so he ordered some wise men to collect
all these laws together, and to read them over, and to take the best
English laws, and the best Danish laws, and put them into one book,
that all the people might be governed by the same law.
King Edward died after he had reigned twenty-two years in England,
and the English gave the kingdom to Harold the under-king. But he had
a very short reign. As soon as it was known in the North of England
that Edward was dead, Harold’s brother, Tostig, who had been driven
out of his earldom over that part of the country, came back with
the King of Norway to fight against Harold. But the other English
people joined Harold, and went to battle against Tostig, who was soon
killed, and Harold might have been king of all England.
But while Harold was in the North the Duke of Normandy came over to
England with a great number of ships full of soldiers, and landed
in Sussex. As soon as Harold heard of this, he went with his army
to drive the Normans away; but he was too late; they had got into
the country, and in a great battle fought near Hastings, Harold, the
English king, was killed, and the Duke of Normandy made himself king
of England.
I do not think the English would have allowed Duke William to be king
so easily, if he had not told them that Edward the Confessor had
promised that he should be king, and persuaded them that the prince
Edgar Atheling, who, as I told you, ought to have been king after
Edward, was too silly ever to govern the kingdom well.
[Illustration: William rallies the Normans at Hastings.]
But after the English Harold was killed, and Edgar Atheling, with his
sister, had gone to Scotland, to escape from the Normans, the English
thought it better to submit to William, who had ruled his own country
so wisely, that they hoped he would be a good king in England.
[Illustration: Battle of Hastings.]