ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD HAREFOOT, HARDICANUTE, AND EDWARD THE CONFESSOR
Canute left three sons, by name Sweyn, Harold, and Hardicanute; but his
Queen, Emma, once the Flower of Normandy, was the mother of only
Hardicanute. Canute had wished his dominions to be divided between the
three, and had wished Harold to have England; but the Saxon people in
the South of England, headed by a nobleman with great possessions,
called the powerful Earl Godwin (who is said to have been originally a
poor cow-boy), opposed this, and desired to have, instead, either
Hardicanute, or one of the two exiled Princes who were over in
Normandy. It seemed so certain that there would be more bloodshed to
settle this dispute, that many people left their homes, and took refuge
in the woods and swamps. Happily, however, it was agreed to refer the
whole question to a great meeting at Oxford, which decided that Harold
should have all the country north of the Thames, with London for his
capital city, and that Hardicanute should have all the south. The
quarrel was so arranged; and, as Hardicanute was in Denmark troubling
himself very little about anything but eating and getting drunk, his
mother and Earl Godwin governed the south for him.
They had hardly begun to do so, and the trembling people who had hidden
themselves were scarcely at home again, when Edward, the elder of the
two exiled Princes, came over from Normandy with a few followers, to
claim the English Crown. His mother Emma, however, who only cared for
her last son Hardicanute, instead of assisting him, as he expected,
opposed him so strongly with all her influence that he was very soon
glad to get safely back. His brother Alfred was not so fortunate.
Believing in an affectionate letter, written some time afterwards to
him and his brother, in his mother’s name (but whether really with or
without his mother’s knowledge is now uncertain), he allowed himself to
be tempted over to England, with a good force of soldiers, and landing
on the Kentish coast, and being met and welcomed by Earl Godwin,
proceeded into Surrey, as far as the town of Guildford. Here, he and
his men halted in the evening to rest, having still the Earl in their
company; who had ordered lodgings and good cheer for them. But, in the
dead of the night, when they were off their guard, being divided into
small parties sleeping soundly after a long march and a plentiful
supper in different houses, they were set upon by the King’s troops,
and taken prisoners. Next morning they were drawn out in a line, to the
number of six hundred men, and were barbarously tortured and killed;
with the exception of every tenth man, who was sold into slavery. As to
the wretched Prince Alfred, he was stripped naked, tied to a horse and
sent away into the Isle of Ely, where his eyes were torn out of his
head, and where in a few days he miserably died. I am not sure that the
Earl had wilfully entrapped him, but I suspect it strongly.
Harold was now King all over England, though it is doubtful whether the
Archbishop of Canterbury (the greater part of the priests were Saxons,
and not friendly to the Danes) ever consented to crown him. Crowned or
uncrowned, with the Archbishop’s leave or without it, he was King for
four years: after which short reign he died, and was buried; having
never done much in life but go a hunting. He was such a fast runner at
this, his favourite sport, that the people called him Harold Harefoot.
Hardicanute was then at Bruges, in Flanders, plotting, with his mother
(who had gone over there after the cruel murder of Prince Alfred), for
the invasion of England. The Danes and Saxons, finding themselves
without a King, and dreading new disputes, made common cause, and
joined in inviting him to occupy the Throne. He consented, and soon
troubled them enough; for he brought over numbers of Danes, and taxed
the people so insupportably to enrich those greedy favourites that
there were many insurrections, especially one at Worcester, where the
citizens rose and killed his tax-collectors; in revenge for which he
burned their city. He was a brutal King, whose first public act was to
order the dead body of poor Harold Harefoot to be dug up, beheaded, and
thrown into the river. His end was worthy of such a beginning. He fell
down drunk, with a goblet of wine in his hand, at a wedding-feast at
Lambeth, given in honour of the marriage of his standard-bearer, a Dane
named Towed the Proud. And he never spoke again.
Edward, afterwards called by the monks The Confessor, succeeded; and
his first act was to oblige his mother Emma, who had favoured him so
little, to retire into the country; where she died some ten years
afterwards. He was the exiled prince whose brother Alfred had been so
foully killed. He had been invited over from Normandy by Hardicanute,
in the course of his short reign of two years, and had been handsomely
treated at court. His cause was now favoured by the powerful Earl
Godwin, and he was soon made King. This Earl had been suspected by the
people, ever since Prince Alfred’s cruel death; he had even been tried
in the last reign for the Prince’s murder, but had been pronounced not
guilty; chiefly, as it was supposed, because of a present he had made
to the swinish King, of a gilded ship with a figure-head of solid gold,
and a crew of eighty splendidly armed men. It was his interest to help
the new King with his power, if the new King would help him against the
popular distrust and hatred. So they made a bargain. Edward the
Confessor got the Throne. The Earl got more power and more land, and
his daughter Editha was made queen; for it was a part of their compact
that the King should take her for his wife.
But, although she was a gentle lady, in all things worthy to be
beloved—good, beautiful, sensible, and kind—the King from the first
neglected her. Her father and her six proud brothers, resenting this
cold treatment, harassed the King greatly by exerting all their power
to make him unpopular. Having lived so long in Normandy, he preferred
the Normans to the English. He made a Norman Archbishop, and Norman
Bishops; his great officers and favourites were all Normans; he
introduced the Norman fashions and the Norman language; in imitation of
the state custom of Normandy, he attached a great seal to his state
documents, instead of merely marking them, as the Saxon Kings had done,
with the sign of the cross—just as poor people who have never been
taught to write, now make the same mark for their names. All this, the
powerful Earl Godwin and his six proud sons represented to the people
as disfavour shown towards the English; and thus they daily increased
their own power, and daily diminished the power of the King.
They were greatly helped by an event that occurred when he had reigned
eight years. Eustace, Earl of Bologne, who had married the King’s
sister, came to England on a visit. After staying at the court some
time, he set forth, with his numerous train of attendants, to return
home. They were to embark at Dover. Entering that peaceful town in
armour, they took possession of the best houses, and noisily demanded
to be lodged and entertained without payment. One of the bold men of
Dover, who would not endure to have these domineering strangers
jingling their heavy swords and iron corselets up and down his house,
eating his meat and drinking his strong liquor, stood in his doorway
and refused admission to the first armed man who came there. The armed
man drew, and wounded him. The man of Dover struck the armed man dead.
Intelligence of what he had done, spreading through the streets to
where the Count Eustace and his men were standing by their horses,
bridle in hand, they passionately mounted, galloped to the house,
surrounded it, forced their way in (the doors and windows being closed
when they came up), and killed the man of Dover at his own fireside.
They then clattered through the streets, cutting down and riding over
men, women, and children. This did not last long, you may believe. The
men of Dover set upon them with great fury, killed nineteen of the
foreigners, wounded many more, and, blockading the road to the port so
that they should not embark, beat them out of the town by the way they
had come. Hereupon, Count Eustace rides as hard as man can ride to
Gloucester, where Edward is, surrounded by Norman monks and Norman
lords. ‘Justice!’ cries the Count, ‘upon the men of Dover, who have set
upon and slain my people!’ The King sends immediately for the powerful
Earl Godwin, who happens to be near; reminds him that Dover is under
his government; and orders him to repair to Dover and do military
execution on the inhabitants. ‘It does not become you,’ says the proud
Earl in reply, ‘to condemn without a hearing those whom you have sworn
to protect. I will not do it.’
The King, therefore, summoned the Earl, on pain of banishment and loss
of his titles and property, to appear before the court to answer this
disobedience. The Earl refused to appear. He, his eldest son Harold,
and his second son Sweyn, hastily raised as many fighting men as their
utmost power could collect, and demanded to have Count Eustace and his
followers surrendered to the justice of the country. The King, in his
turn, refused to give them up, and raised a strong force. After some
treaty and delay, the troops of the great Earl and his sons began to
fall off. The Earl, with a part of his family and abundance of
treasure, sailed to Flanders; Harold escaped to Ireland; and the power
of the great family was for that time gone in England. But, the people
did not forget them.
Then, Edward the Confessor, with the true meanness of a mean spirit,
visited his dislike of the once powerful father and sons upon the
helpless daughter and sister, his unoffending wife, whom all who saw
her (her husband and his monks excepted) loved. He seized rapaciously
upon her fortune and her jewels, and allowing her only one attendant,
confined her in a gloomy convent, of which a sister of his—no doubt an
unpleasant lady after his own heart—was abbess or jailer.
Having got Earl Godwin and his six sons well out of his way, the King
favoured the Normans more than ever. He invited over William, Duke Of
Normandy, the son of that Duke who had received him and his murdered
brother long ago, and of a peasant girl, a tanner’s daughter, with whom
that Duke had fallen in love for her beauty as he saw her washing
clothes in a brook. William, who was a great warrior, with a passion
for fine horses, dogs, and arms, accepted the invitation; and the
Normans in England, finding themselves more numerous than ever when he
arrived with his retinue, and held in still greater honour at court
than before, became more and more haughty towards the people, and were
more and more disliked by them.
The old Earl Godwin, though he was abroad, knew well how the people
felt; for, with part of the treasure he had carried away with him, he
kept spies and agents in his pay all over England.
Accordingly, he thought the time was come for fitting out a great
expedition against the Norman-loving King. With it, he sailed to the
Isle of Wight, where he was joined by his son Harold, the most gallant
and brave of all his family. And so the father and son came sailing up
the Thames to Southwark; great numbers of the people declaring for
them, and shouting for the English Earl and the English Harold, against
the Norman favourites!
The King was at first as blind and stubborn as kings usually have been
whensoever they have been in the hands of monks. But the people rallied
so thickly round the old Earl and his son, and the old Earl was so
steady in demanding without bloodshed the restoration of himself and
his family to their rights, that at last the court took the alarm. The
Norman Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Norman Bishop of London,
surrounded by their retainers, fought their way out of London, and
escaped from Essex to France in a fishing-boat. The other Norman
favourites dispersed in all directions. The old Earl and his sons
(except Sweyn, who had committed crimes against the law) were restored
to their possessions and dignities. Editha, the virtuous and lovely
Queen of the insensible King, was triumphantly released from her
prison, the convent, and once more sat in her chair of state, arrayed
in the jewels of which, when she had no champion to support her rights,
her cold-blooded husband had deprived her.
The old Earl Godwin did not long enjoy his restored fortune. He fell
down in a fit at the King’s table, and died upon the third day
afterwards. Harold succeeded to his power, and to a far higher place in
the attachment of the people than his father had ever held. By his
valour he subdued the King’s enemies in many bloody fights. He was
vigorous against rebels in Scotland—this was the time when Macbeth slew
Duncan, upon which event our English Shakespeare, hundreds of years
afterwards, wrote his great tragedy; and he killed the restless Welsh
King Griffith, and brought his head to England.
What Harold was doing at sea, when he was driven on the French coast by
a tempest, is not at all certain; nor does it at all matter. That his
ship was forced by a storm on that shore, and that he was taken
prisoner, there is no doubt. In those barbarous days, all shipwrecked
strangers were taken prisoners, and obliged to pay ransom. So, a
certain Count Guy, who was the Lord of Ponthieu where Harold’s disaster
happened, seized him, instead of relieving him like a hospitable and
Christian lord as he ought to have done, and expected to make a very
good thing of it.
But Harold sent off immediately to Duke William of Normandy,
complaining of this treatment; and the Duke no sooner heard of it than
he ordered Harold to be escorted to the ancient town of Rouen, where he
then was, and where he received him as an honoured guest. Now, some
writers tell us that Edward the Confessor, who was by this time old and
had no children, had made a will, appointing Duke William of Normandy
his successor, and had informed the Duke of his having done so. There
is no doubt that he was anxious about his successor; because he had
even invited over, from abroad, Edward the Outlaw, a son of Ironside,
who had come to England with his wife and three children, but whom the
King had strangely refused to see when he did come, and who had died in
London suddenly (princes were terribly liable to sudden death in those
days), and had been buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral. The King might
possibly have made such a will; or, having always been fond of the
Normans, he might have encouraged Norman William to aspire to the
English crown, by something that he said to him when he was staying at
the English court. But, certainly William did now aspire to it; and
knowing that Harold would be a powerful rival, he called together a
great assembly of his nobles, offered Harold his daughter Adele in
marriage, informed him that he meant on King Edward’s death to claim
the English crown as his own inheritance, and required Harold then and
there to swear to aid him. Harold, being in the Duke’s power, took this
oath upon the Missal, or Prayer-book. It is a good example of the
superstitions of the monks, that this Missal, instead of being placed
upon a table, was placed upon a tub; which, when Harold had sworn, was
uncovered, and shown to be full of dead men’s bones—bones, as the monks
pretended, of saints. This was supposed to make Harold’s oath a great
deal more impressive and binding. As if the great name of the Creator
of Heaven and earth could be made more solemn by a knuckle-bone, or a
double-tooth, or a finger-nail, of Dunstan!
Within a week or two after Harold’s return to England, the dreary old
Confessor was found to be dying. After wandering in his mind like a
very weak old man, he died. As he had put himself entirely in the hands
of the monks when he was alive, they praised him lustily when he was
dead. They had gone so far, already, as to persuade him that he could
work miracles; and had brought people afflicted with a bad disorder of
the skin, to him, to be touched and cured. This was called ‘touching
for the King’s Evil,’ which afterwards became a royal custom. You know,
however, Who really touched the sick, and healed them; and you know His
sacred name is not among the dusty line of human kings.