EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.
(1042–1066.)
EDWARD, son of Ethelred, last visible scion of the old royal West
Saxon stock, seems to have succeeded, on Harthacnut’s death, without
opposition, to the throne of his forefathers. If the most powerful man
in the kingdom, Earl Godwine, had any reason to fear the accession of
the brother of the murdered Alfred, he determined to run all risks,
and by actively co-operating in the new king’s election to establish
a claim on his gratitude which might outweigh the remembrance of the
deeds done by the zealous adherent of Harold Harefoot. The large
influence of Godwine in the king’s counsels did not imply, as it
would have done some years before, the continuance in power of the
king’s mother. On the contrary, in the very next year after Edward’s
accession, and seven months after his coronation at Winchester, the
king, with his three most powerful subjects, Godwine, Leofric and
Siward, rode from Gloucester to Winchester (November 16, 1043), and
coming suddenly upon “the Lady” Emma, deprived her of all the vast
treasures that she had accumulated, “her lands, her gold, her silver
and her precious things untellable,” and ordained that she should
live thereafter, unimprisoned indeed, but deprived of all her ancient
state, in the royal city of Winchester. Thus she lived on for eight
years longer, till her death on March 14, 1052; but in all the stirring
scenes which preceded that event the busy, managing “Old Lady”[238]
seems to have taken no part. Her party, if she had one, struck down
by that hasty ride of the king and his three nobles, never after
raised its head. The reason assigned by the chronicler for this harsh
procedure toward the widow and mother of two kings, seems to bear the
stamp of truth. “This was done,” he says, “because she was, before,
very hard on the king her son, and she did less for him than he
would, both before he was king and afterward,” meaning no doubt both
before and after his association with Harthacnut. In other words, the
queen-dowager, who evidently disliked her first husband and gave all
her pent-up love to her second, had become so complete a Dane at heart
that she would not lift a finger to help the surviving son of Ethelred,
and for this unfriendliness she was sorely punished when he had power
to avenge his wrongs.
Soon after Emma’s downfall, the place of “Lady” in the palace of
Winchester was again filled, by the marriage of Edward to Edith,
daughter of Earl Godwine (January 23, 1045). It was a marriage only
in name; for the king, to the admiration of his monastic biographers,
retained through life the virgin purity of his saintliness; but the
daughter of Godwine undoubtedly exercised some influence on the
counsels of her royal spouse, though in what direction that influence
was exerted is one of the not fully solved riddles of this difficult
reign. The reign is difficult, chiefly because of the singular nullity
of the sovereign’s character. Religious and kindly natured, Edward (who
received after his death the half canonisation conveyed in the title of
“Confessor”) seems to have had scarcely a will or mind of his own. He
is always under the dominion of some stronger nature, Saxon earl, or
Norman bishop, or wedded queen: and it is rarely possible to discover
what were his own true sympathies and antipathies. We have constantly
to guess to which of his councillors we must attribute the praise or
the blame of the actions which were nominally his own.
To avoid confusion, it will be well to describe the events of this
reign under four heads: foreign relations; internal troubles; wars with
the Scots; and wars with the Welsh.
To us, who judge after the event, the dissolution of the splendid
Anglo-Scandinavian Empire of Canute seems a natural and inevitable
consequence of the death of its founder; but in all likelihood it was
not so regarded by contemporary observers. Both Magnus of Norway and
Sweyn of Denmark may well have aspired to rule England as heirs or
quasi-heirs of Canute the Rich, and in order to guard against their
attacks, the new King of England was compelled to keep a large fleet in
readiness, which was generally assembled at Sandwich.
Magnus of Norway was a bastard son of St. Olaf’s, whose very name bore
witness to the irritable temper of his father. His mother, Alfhild,
when in travail, was brought nigh unto death, and when the child was
born the by-standers were for long in doubt whether it were alive. But
the king was asleep, had given strict orders that he should never be
roused from his slumbers, and none, not even his favourite minstrel
Sigvat, dared to disobey. Fearing lest the child, dying unbaptised,
should become “the devil’s man,” a priest hastily baptised it, the
minstrel standing god-father, and giving it the name Magnus in honour
of Carolus Magnus, “the king whom he knew to be the best man in all
the world”. (And this was full two centuries after the death of
Charlemagne.) The anger of the awakened king, when he learned what had
happened during his slumbers, was charmed away by the smooth-tongued
Sigvat. Thus did the name Magnus enter not only into the dynastic
lists, but into the common family nomenclature of Norway and Iceland.
The child Magnus, grown to man’s estate and succeeding to his father’s
kingdom, vindicated the unconscious prophecy of his name, and was for
a time the greatest monarch of the North. Whereas in the previous
generation, Denmark had conquered Norway, it now seemed probable that
Norway would conquer Denmark, so hard was the king of the latter
country pressed by Magnus. This Danish king was Sweyn, not, of
course, the son of Canute, who had died some years before, but Sweyn
Estrithson, son of the murdered Ulf (of the overthrown chess-board) and
of Canute’s sister, Estrith. As Ulf’s sister was Gytha, wife of Earl
Godwine, Godwine’s many sons and daughters were of course first cousins
to the King of Denmark.
In the year 1047 Sweyn Estrithson, vigorously attacked by Magnus, sent
an earnest petition to England that fifty ships might be despatched to
his succour. “But this seemed an ill counsel to all people, because
Magnus had great sea-power, nor was it adopted.” Unhelped, Sweyn
was expelled from his kingdom. The Danes had to pay money to their
conquerors--a new and bitter experience for them--and to own Magnus for
their king. There, however, the career of Norwegian conquest stopped.
In that very year, Magnus, when riding through the forest, was thrown
violently by his shying steed against the trunk of a tree and received
an injury from which he died. His uncle, Harold Hardrada, who succeeded
him, and who will be heard of again in the history of England,
could not prevent Denmark from reverting to its former ruler, Sweyn
Estrithson, who founded there a dynasty which endured for 300 years.
Though schemes of conquest, such as are attributed to Magnus, died with
him, there was some renewal of the old piratical raids. In 1048 two
Norse buccaneers came with twenty-five ships to Sandwich, were repelled
from Thanet, but successfully raided Essex, and sailing thence to
“Baldwin’s land” (Flanders), found there a ready market for the fruits
of their cruel industry. The shelter given by Flanders to these and
other depredators, induced Edward to acquiesce the more willingly in a
proposal made to him by his kinsman, the Emperor Henry III., that he
should help to guard the narrow seas against Baldwin, who had broken
out into rebellion against the empire, had demolished the palace reared
by Charlemagne at Nimeguen, and had done many other ill turns to his
sovereign lord. To punish these despites Henry had gathered a large
army, and Edward helped him by keeping guard with a fleet at Sandwich.
No naval engagement followed, but the pressure thus effected by land
and sea was effectual, and before long “the emperor had of Baldwin all
that he would”.
The Emperor Henry III., who thus drew Edward into the circle of
European politics, was chiefly memorable for the beneficial influence
which he exerted on the papal court, procuring the election of bishops
of high character, generally Germans, instead of the dissolute lads who
had been too often of late intruded into the papacy. One of the best of
Henry’s German popes was Bruno of Toul, who ruled as Leo IX. from 1048
to 1054. To him in the year 1049 Edward, by the advice of his _witan_,
sent as ambassadors the Bishops of Sherborne and Worcester, to pray for
absolution from a vow of pilgrimage to the Holy Land, which he had made
in his years of poverty and apparently hopeless exile. The Witenagemot
represented to him with good reason that the fulfilment of such a vow
would now be inconsistent with his higher duties to his country and
his subjects; and the aid of the pope was sought to cut the casuistic
knot. In the following year the two bishops returned, bringing the
papal absolution from the vow of pilgrimage, coupled, it is said,
with an injunction to build or restore a monastery in honour of St.
Peter, and fill it with monks who should spend their days in prayer
and psalmody. The condition was one in itself delightful to the heart
of the pious king. From the unfulfilled vow of pilgrimage, from the
journey of the two bishops to Rome, and from the reply of the venerable
Leo, sprang that noble sanctuary, the name of which will endure as long
as men speak the English language, the great Abbey of Westminster.
* * * * *
The internal history of England during the twenty-two years of Edward’s
reign is chiefly a record of the struggles of two or three great nobles
for supremacy in his councils. It is true that some measures were taken
for lightening the burdens of the people. “In the year 1049,” says the
Abingdon chronicler, “King Edward paid off nine ships and they went
away with their ships and all: and five ships remained, and the king
promised them twelve months’ pay. In the next year he paid off all
the shipmen.” The result is told us by his brother chronicler: “In
1052 [1051] King Edward took off the army tax (_here-gyld_) which King
Ethelred formerly instituted. It was thirty-nine years since he began
it: and this _gyld_ oppressed the English people during all that time.
This tax ever claimed priority over all the other _gylds_ by which the
people were in various ways oppressed.” As has been pointed out,[239]
the tax here spoken of is not the Danegeld, a levy of money to be paid
as blackmail to foreign invaders, but it is _here-gyld_, “army tax,”
or rather, in strictness, “navy tax,” a levy of money to be paid to
the naval defenders of the country, an imposition therefore which
may be fittingly compared to the ship money of the Middle Ages. But
the previously quoted entry concerning the exactions in the reign of
Harthacnut shows how easily the _here-gyld_ might be increased till it
became an intolerable burden, and we can thus the better understand the
joy of the nation at its removal.
The position of Edward appears during the whole of his reign to have
been not unlike that of the later kings of the two first Frankish
dynasties. If he were not a mere _roi fainéant_, a puppet in the
hands of an all-powerful Mayor of the Palace, he was at any rate like
a Carolingian Louis or Lothair, with large theoretical claims, with
little real power, and quite overshadowed by a few great earls, who had
not indeed yet made their offices hereditary; who were still in theory
removable officers of the crown; but who ruled wide provinces, raised
considerable armies among their own _house-carls_, and above all,
possessed wealth probably much exceeding any that could be found in the
treasure-house of the king. One of these great French nobles, Hugh the
Great, had so played his cards as to prepare the way for the elevation
of his own son to the actual seat of royalty, when the time should come
for its relinquishment by the descendants of Charlemagne. It seems
not improbable that the example of Hugh the Great was much before the
eyes of Godwine, and that through life he kept steadily in view the
possibility that sons issuing from his loins might one day sit upon the
English throne, now after five centuries about to be left vacant by the
dying dynasty of Cerdic.
Godwine, Leofric and Siward: these were the three greatest names in the
English Witan when Edward came to the throne, and all three should be
still memorable to Englishmen; Godwine, by reason of his great place in
history, and the other two by reason of their renown in English poetry;
Leofric being commemorated in the Godiva of Tennyson, and Siward in the
Macbeth of Shakespeare.
The kingdom of England, imperfectly welded together by Egbert and
Alfred, and since then modified by the large infusion of Scandinavian
blood into its northern and eastern districts, showed throughout
this period a strong tendency to split up again into its three old
divisions, Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex. Northumbria, as we have
seen, was reconstituted as one earldom by the bloody deed of Siward the
Strong, who slew his uncle Eadwulf, and so joined Bernicia to Deira. A
strong, stern, unscrupulous Dane, whose martial character is attested
by the well-known story of his death (hereafter to be related), he
nevertheless seems to have ruled well his great province and was
apparently a loyal subject of King Edward.[240]
Leofric, son of Leofwine, was sprung, as has been said, from a family
which for more than two centuries had been eminent in Mercia, and it
is probable that he and his offspring bore with unconcealed dislike
the overshadowing competition of the great upstart house of Godwine.
He is often spoken of as Earl of Mercia, and perhaps had some sort
of pre-eminence over other earls in that district, but his immediate
jurisdiction seems to have been confined to the three counties of
Cheshire, Shropshire and Staffordshire. Godwine’s nephew by marriage,
Beorn, son of Ulf and Estrith, was quartered on his eastern flank in
Derby, Nottingham, Leicester and Lincoln. Sweyn, Godwine’s eldest
son, ruled the Mercian counties of Hereford, Gloucester and Oxford,
besides a part of Wessex. Well might the proud Mercian noble feel that
his title was but a mockery, while such large slices of Mercia were
given to his rivals. Both Leofric and his wife Godiva were munificent
benefactors to the Church. Whatever may be the foundation for the
beautiful legend of Godiva’s absolute surrender of herself for the
lightening of her people’s burdens, we certainly should not, from
his record in history, have inferred that her husband Leofric was an
avaricious or close-fisted lord.
We turn to the earldoms which throughout the greater part of Edward’s
reign were subject to the family of Godwine. He himself held, of
course, that great and enriching office, the earldom of Wessex, which
had been long ago conferred upon him by Canute, and which practically
included all the lands south of the Thames; excepting that Somerset and
Berkshire appear to have been carved out of them, to form what in later
times would have been called an appanage for his eldest son, Sweyn, in
addition to the three Mercian counties which, as we have already seen,
were included in his earldom. His second son, Harold, called Earl of
the East Angles, ruled not only the two strictly East Anglian shires,
but also Huntingdon, Cambridge and Essex, which probably included
Middlesex.[241] The three sons who came next in order, Tostig, Gyrth
and Leofwine, were but boys at the time of Edward’s accession and were
as yet unprovided with earldoms; but even so, it is evident if we look
at the map, that more than half, and that the fairest half, of England
was subject to Earl Godwine and his family.
Of the character of this man, certainly the most powerful and probably
the ablest Englishman of his time, very varying judgments were formed,
even in his lifetime; and after his death the antipathy of the Norman
and the regretful sympathy of the Saxon writers, naturally led to
very divergent estimates concerning it. Nor is the controversy even
yet ended; for the enthusiastic championship of the great historian
of the Norman Conquest has not unnaturally provoked an equally
vigorous storm of censure. To the present writer he does not appear a
high-minded patriot, nor yet, considering the age in which he lived,
a detestable villain. Hard, grasping, capable, remorseless, intent on
the aggrandisement of his family, and by no means successful in forming
their characters, he nevertheless may be credited with a certain amount
of love for his country, and for the Anglo-Danish race which now
peopled it. Himself English by birth and Danish by marriage and by all
his early official training, he was determined that, if he could help
it, no third element should be imported by the Norman sympathies of the
king, to oppress the common people and to snatch away the prizes of
government from the nobles. It is when he risks life and dearly loved
treasure in maintaining this contention, that he seems to us almost a
patriot.
The first shock to the stately edifice of Godwine’s power was given by
the disordered passions of his eldest son. In 1046, after a successful
campaign in Wales, “when Sweyn was on his homeward journey, he ordered
that the Abbess of Leominster [named Edgiva] should be fetched unto
him, and he had her as long as he pleased and afterwards let her go
home”. Such is the short dry record by the chronicler, of a deed which
shocked the not too sensitive conscience of the eleventh century,
and which appears to have led to the dissolution of the nunnery of
Leominster, the outlawry of Sweyn and the allotment of his earldom
to others. It seems, however, from later allusions to the matter,
that it was not the forcible abduction but the lascivious seduction
of a consecrated virgin of which the son of Godwine was guilty.
Sweyn betook himself in 1047 to that refuge of all English outlaws,
“Baldwin’s land,” and from thence after a time went to Denmark, where
by some crime or immorality of the nature of which we are not informed,
he “ruined himself with the Danes”. In 1049 he returned to England,
and began to hover about the coasts of Kent and Sussex, off which the
king was lying with a fleet, operating against Baldwin of Flanders and
watching the proceedings of another outlaw, Osgod Clapa. This man, who
had once been in high favour at the English court, had held the office
of Staller or Chamberlain, and had been honoured by the presence, the
ill-omened presence, of Harthacnut, at his daughter’s marriage feast,
but had now fallen into disgrace, and led for some years the life of
a buccaneer, imitating the ravages of the old Vikings and requiring
the manœuvres of a royal fleet to keep him at bay. The Chronicle has
much to tell us about Osgod Clapa’s and his wife’s movements, but he
possesses for us no political significance, and we have only to note
his death which happened “suddenly in his bed,” as the chronicler tells
us, in the year 1054.
Returning to the tempestuous career of the outlawed Sweyn, we find
that his petition for forgiveness was at first rejected by the king,
influenced as it was supposed by the criminal’s brother and cousin,
Harold and Beorn, who were averse to surrendering his forfeited
earldom. Then some change seems to have come over the more generous
Beorn, who, on Sweyn’s entreaty that he would intercede for him to
the king, consented to do so, and set off with him to march along the
Sussex shore, making for the king’s station at Sandwich (1049). Many
were the oaths which Sweyn had sworn to him, and “he thought that for
his kinship’s sake he would not deceive him.” Thus beguiled he fared
forward, putting himself ever more completely in the outlaw’s power;
and even when his cousin proposed that instead of journeying eastwards
to Sandwich, they should go westwards to the little town of Bosham, a
favourite haunt of the Godwine tribe, off which his ships were lying
at anchor, the unsuspecting earl consented. “For my sailors,” said
Sweyn, “will desert me, unless I show myself speedily among them.” But
when they had reached the place and Sweyn proposed that they should go
together on board of his ship, Beorn, whose suspicions were by this
time aroused, stoutly refused to do so. Resistance was now too late.
Sweyn’s sailors forcibly laid hold of Beorn, threw him into the boat,
and tightly bound him. They then rowed him to the ship, spread sail,
and ran before the wind to Exmouth, where the prisoner was slain and
buried in a deep grave, from which his friends afterwards lifted his
body, that they might carry him to Winchester and bury him beside his
uncle, King Canute. After such an atrocious and dastardly crime, one
would have expected that Sweyn, if he could not be laid hold of and
brought to justice, would at least have been banished from the society
of all honourable men. And for the moment, though he escaped as usual
to Baldwin’s land and dwelt at Bruges, he was solemnly proclaimed a
_nithing_ or vile person (the most ignominious term in the Teutonic
vocabulary) by the whole host, with the king, his brother-in-law, at
their head. Yet with that fatuous facility in wrong-doing which seems
to mark the conduct of all leading Englishmen in this bewildering
century, by the mediation of Ealdred, Bishop of Worcester (afterwards
Archbishop of York, and by no means the worst of the ecclesiastics
of the period), Sweyn was brought back from his exile in 1050, his
outlawry reversed, and his old earldom, which involved the rule over
five counties, restored once more to his own keeping. The only thing
that can be said in his favour is that he does seem to have felt some
remorse for his many crimes. When next year he shared the general
downfall of his house and was once more driven into banishment, instead
of scheming for his return and restoration to power, he went on
pilgrimage to Jerusalem, visited the sacred shrines, and died on his
homeward journey at Constantinople (Michaelmas, 1052).
The history of the Godwine family is now modified by events at King
Edward’s court, which gave them the opportunity of assuming the
character of national champions against the dominion of foreigners. We
hear a good deal about the Norman favourites who flocked to Edward’s
court, but it is not easy to ascertain how numerous these were, or
how far a king, all whose nearest relations were Normans, and who had
spent the best years of his life in a foreign land, exceeded the limits
of moderation and good policy in bestowing lands and offices on his
friends of foreign birth. Among these were the kinsfolk of his own
sister, Godiva, whom it would be hard to blame him for having invited
to his court, though one of them, her second husband, Eustace, Count
of Boulogne, when he came sorely offended the Saxons by his insolent
demeanour. Another, Ralph, sometimes called Ralph the Timid, Godiva’s
son by her first husband, was entrusted by his uncle with the earldom
of the Magasaetas, corresponding to the modern county of Hereford. A
feebly arrogant man, he too probably added not a little to Edward’s
unpopularity, and he appears to have gathered round him a number of his
countrymen, whom the Chronicle calls sometimes Frenchmen (_Frencysce_)
and sometimes Welshmen.[242] These men seem to have been already
anticipating the baronial oppressions of a later century, and building
their strongholds to overawe the common folk. Of one such fortress the
patriotic chronicler writes that the foreigners had erected a castle in
Herefordshire in the district of Earl Sweyn, and there wrought all the
harm and disgrace that they could do to the king’s men.
The ecclesiastically minded Edward, however, seems to have chosen his
chief friends from among the Franco-Norman churchmen whom he had known
in his youth. Chief among these was Robert Champart, formerly Abbot of
Jumièges on the Lower Seine, whom Edward made Bishop of London near the
beginning of his reign, and who, according to an often-quoted story,
obtained such an ascendency over the feeble mind of his patron that “if
he said that a black crow was white, the king would rather trust his
mouth than his own eyes”. Owing to the feeble health of the Archbishop
of Canterbury, Robert of London probably had from the first a
controlling voice in the affairs of the southern province, and when at
last, in October, 1050, the aged Eadsige was gathered to his fathers,
Edward desired to make his favourite ecclesiastic archbishop. There
was, however, an undercurrent of opposition; the chapter met in haste
without the royal mandate and elected one of their number, Aelfric,
archbishop. The monastic candidate was a relation of Earl Godwine’s,
who put forth all his influence to procure the confirmation of his
election, but in vain. The Norman’s power over the king was too great;
at the Witenagemot held in London at Midlent, 1051, Robert Champart
was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. He went speedily to Rome and
returned with the indispensable pallium. This rebuff to Earl Godwine
was perhaps the first indication of the precarious tenure of his power.
At any rate from this time onward, if not before, the influence of the
king’s clerical master was thrown heavily into the scale against him.
Such apparently was the state of affairs at the English court, and such
the smouldering fires of jealousy and distrust, when in the summer of
1051 Eustace of Boulogne came on a visit to his brother-in-law. The
visit paid, he and his retinue took the homeward road through Kent,
and after baiting at Canterbury, made for Dover as their resting-place
for the night. When the little troop were still some miles short of
Dover, he and his men dismounted, put on their coats of mail and thus
rode on, martial and menacing. When they reached Dover they showed at
once their intention to take up their quarters wherever it pleased
them. They were probably not without some legal justification for what
seems to us a somewhat high-handed procedure, for Count Eustace was
son-in-law and brother-in-law of English kings, and royal personages
in the west of Europe seem to have possessed in the eleventh century
some rights of compulsory hospitality similar to those of which we
hear so much in later centuries under the name of “purveyance”. It
was therefore probably not so much the claim itself as the insolent
manner in which it was urged by armed foreigners, which exasperated the
citizens of Dover. A quarrel arose between one of the Frenchmen and
the householder upon whom he was quartered. The householder received
a wound which he repaid by a mortal blow. Thereupon the count and his
men mounted their horses, and attacked the householder, whom they
slew on his own hearthstone. A general _mêlée_ followed, the result
of which was that twenty of the citizens were slain, and nineteen of
the strangers, many of whom were also wounded. Count Eustace, with the
survivors of his train, made his way back to the king, and in angry
tones, concealing his own followers’ misconduct, called for vengeance
on the men of Dover. Hereupon Earl Godwine was summoned to the royal
presence and ordered to execute the king’s wrath against the citizens.
This command he absolutely refused to obey. The men of Dover belonged
to the county which he had longest ruled and with which he was most
closely connected,[243] and he would have nothing to do with that which
he considered to be their unjust chastisement. It was then decided
(apparently under the Norman archbishop’s influence) that a Witenagemot
should be held at Gloucester, at which the old charge of complicity in
the death of the Etheling Alfred was to be brought against Godwine. The
great earl, moreover, had at this time on foot an expedition against
the “Wealas” (that is Frenchmen), who were distressing the inhabitants
of Herefordshire, from the castle which they had there erected. That
matter, and the counter-accusations brought by the “Wealas” against
Godwine, were apparently to be also discussed at the Gloucester meeting
of the _witan_.
Things seemed to be gathering up towards a civil war, in which Godwine
and his sons would have had against them, not only the king and his
French favourites, men like Robert of Jumièges and Ralph the Timid,
but also Siward of Northumberland and Leofric of Mercia, who were
hastening with their armies to the help of the king. This last fact
seems to show that the tyrannical conduct of Edward’s Norman kinsmen
was not the sole question at issue in this summer of 1051. Jealousy and
dread of the overmastering power of the house of Godwine also had their
share in the great debate, nor perhaps were the old rivalries between
the one southern and the two northern kingdoms altogether absent. It
seemed as though a collision between the _fyrds_ of Northumbria and
Mercia, and those of Wessex and East Anglia was inevitable; but even
at the eleventh hour wiser counsels prevailed. To some of the leaders
on the king’s side the thought occurred, that the impending battle
would be a grievous mistake, “inasmuch as almost all that England had
of noblest was in the two armies, and a battle between them would
but bring one common ruin and leave the land open to invasion by the
enemies of both”. On Godwine’s side also there was great unwillingness
“to be compelled to stand against their royal lord”. Thus a peace--as
it proved only a precarious peace--was patched up, and all subjects in
dispute were referred to a great national meeting of the _witan_, which
was to be held in London at Michaelmas.
By consenting to this delay, and by changing the venue from Gloucester
to London, the Godwine party seem to have thrown away their chances.
The earl and his sons came to his dwelling at Southwark with a great
multitude of West Saxons, “but his army ever waned, and all the more
the longer he stayed”. The magic of the king’s name was still too
mighty to be resisted. The thegns who were in subjection to Harold
were told to transfer their allegiance to the king himself; Sweyn the
seducer was once more outlawed; the negotiations soon became a mere
desperate appeal from the Godwine party for hostages and safe conduct,
and at last they received the royal ultimatum: “Five days in which to
clear out of the country, or judgment against you,” probably on the old
charge of complicity in the murder of Alfred, combined with new charges
of treachery against the king. Hereupon the whole family took their
departure. Godwine with his wife and three of his sons, Sweyn, Tostig
and Gyrth, went to the patrimonial Bosham, “shoved out their ships,
betook them beyond sea, and sought the protection of Baldwin, with
whom they abode the whole winter”. There was especial fitness in those
exiles seeking shelter in “Baldwin’s land,” for immediately before
the downfall of the Godwine family Tostig had become the bridegroom
of Judith, sister of Baldwin V., the reigning Count of Flanders. The
other two sons, Harold and Leofwine, rode hard to Bristol, vainly
pursued by Ealdred, Bishop of Worcester, whom the king had ordered to
capture them. Much buffeted by storms, they beat out from Avonmouth,
and at last arrived on the coast of Ireland, where they spent the
winter as guests of Diarmid, King of Leinster. To complete the ruin of
the family, Godwine’s daughter Edith, “who had been hallowed to Edward
as queen, was forsaken by him; all her property in land, in gold, in
silver and in all things was taken from her,” and she was committed
to the care of her husband’s half-sister, the Abbess of Wherwell in
Hampshire. Well may the chronicler who records these events say: “It
must have seemed a wonderful thing to any man that was in England, if
any man had said beforehand that so it should happen, inasmuch as he
was so high uplifted that he ruled the king and all England, and his
sons were earls and the king’s darlings, and his daughter [now sent to
a nunnery] was wedded and married to the king”.
Soon after the expulsion of Godwine and his sons a memorable event
occurred: the landing in England of William the Norman, who came on a
visit to the king in 1051. In 1035, the year of the death of Canute,
Robert Duke of Normandy, King Edward’s first cousin, had died at Nicæa
in Bithynia on his way home from the Holy Land. Before starting on this
pilgrimage he had presented to the nobles of Normandy his illegitimate
son, William, child of Herleva, the daughter of a tanner of Falaise,
and called upon them to recognise him as his successor. The child was
only about seven years old, but as his father said, “He is little but
he will grow, and if God please he will mend”. Moreover, his lord
paramount, the King of France, had promised to maintain him in his
duchy. The nobles were loath to accept as their future ruler one whose
illegitimacy for various reasons was considered more disgraceful than
that which tarnished the shield of many of his ancestors, but being in
some degree constrained, perhaps surprised, by the sudden action of
their masterful duke, they consented and acknowledged themselves the
“men” of the little bastard. When the tidings of Duke Robert’s death
in the distant Orient arrived, no rival candidate was set up, and the
plighted faith of the Norman nobles was not formally violated, but
there seems to have been a general relapse into anarchy. Private wars
between noble and noble were waged continually. Three guardians of the
boy-duke were slain, one after another, and two attempts were made
to kidnap, perhaps to murder him. But out of this welter of warring
ambitions and treasons sometimes fomented by the liege-lord in Paris
who had sworn to protect him, the young duke gradually grew up a bold,
athletic, soldierly man; chaste and clean-living, though himself the
child of illicit love; devout, though when occasion arose he could defy
the thunders of the Church; beyond everything self-centred and capable
of holding on through long years to an ambitious project once formed
with infinite patience, and of carrying it into bloody effect without
a shadow of remorse. Four years before his visit to England, in 1047,
William, with the help of his liege-lord, Henry of France, had defeated
the rebellious nobles of his duchy in the great battle of Val-es-dunes,
a few miles east of Caen. In 1048 he took the two strong castles of
Domfront and Alençon on the frontier between Normandy and Maine, thus
preparing the way for the conquest of the latter country which followed
six years later (1054), and which made him without question the most
powerful of all the vassals of the French king.
Even as it was, however, he was already a mighty prince when he came,
probably in the autumn of 1051, to visit his elderly cousin, a man in
all respects as utterly unlike himself as it is possible to imagine. A
fateful visit indeed was that, though its details are passed over in
provoking silence by all the chroniclers and biographers both of host
and guest. When we remember that the man who thus came as a visitor to
our land was he from whose loins have sprung all the sovereigns who
have ruled over us for eight centuries, how gladly would we have heard
some circumstances of this peaceful invasion: of his first sight of the
white cliffs of Dover; his voyage up the Thames; his intercourse haply
with some of the merchants of the rising city of London; his talks with
his temporarily widowed cousin in his palace in the west of London,
near the island of Thorney; but for all this we have only imagination
to draw upon. The strangest thing is that though during this visit
some promise was almost certainly made, or some expectation held out
by Edward, that William should be the heir of his kingdom, even this
though constantly alluded to by the Norman writers is never by them
definitely connected with this visit. Of one thing we may be tolerably
sure that the visit indicates the high-water mark of Norman influence
at Edward’s court. Robert of Jumièges, the all-powerful archbishop
of Canterbury; William, the king’s chaplain, bishop of London; Ulf,
another chaplain, and a scandal to his profession, bishop of the vast
diocese of Dorchester--all these were Normans, while Godwine, the
Englishman, and his progeny of earls were all absent from the kingdom.
Are we wrong in conjecturing that but for that absence the visit had
never been paid? However, after a stay probably of a few weeks, William
returned to his own land, and shortly after another member of his
house, that one to whom all his claims to interfere in English politics
were indirectly due, set forth on a longer journey. “On March 14, 1052,
died, the Old Lady, mother of King Edward and Harthacnut, named Imme
[Emma], and her body lies in the Old Minster [Winchester] with King
Canute.”
There can be no doubt that dislike of the arrogance of Edward’s Norman
favourites was one cause, though possibly not the sole cause, of the
remarkable revolution which took place in the year 1052. All through
the winter of 1051–52 Godwine in “Baldwin’s land” and Harold in Ireland
were preparing their forces, in order to compel a reversal of the
decree of exile against them. Edward’s counsellors were also on the
alert, and prepared at Sandwich a fleet of such strength that when
Godwine with his ships issued forth at midsummer from the neighbourhood
of Ostend he found the royal armament too strong for him and declined
battle. Then followed three months of indecisive action, in which,
curiously enough, the chief events recorded are the raiding expeditions
against certain districts of England, made by the men who professed to
come as her deliverers. “Earl Godwine hoisted sail with all his fleet
and went westwards right on to Wight and harried the country there so
long until the people paid them as much as they ordered them to pay.”
This sounds more like Vikings extorting _gafol_ than like the patriot
statesman coming to deliver his country from foreign oppression. “Then
did Harold return from Ireland with nine ships and landed at Porlock,
and much folk was there gathered against him, but he did not shrink
from procuring him food. He landed and slew a good lot of people[244]
and helped himself to cattle and men and property as it came handy,”
and then sailing round the Land’s End, joined his father at the Isle
of Wight, and so they sailed together to Pevensey. Meantime the royal
fleet was weakened by continual desertion. The old Kentish loyalty to
Earl Godwine revived in full force, and “all the _butse-carlas_ (common
sailors) of Hastings and all along by that coast, all the east end of
Sussex and Surrey and much else thereabouts came over to Godwine’s side
and declared that they would live and die with him.”
Thus Godwine’s fleet rounded Kent, reached the northern mouth of
the Stour and sailed up towards London; some of the ships, however,
improving the occasion by sailing inside the Isle of Sheppey and
burning the town of King’s Milton. On September 14 Godwine was at his
old home at Southwark, his troops drawn up in array on the Surrey
bank of the Thames, his ships waiting for a favourable tide to pass
through the bridge and encompass the king’s dwindling fleet. Battle,
however, between Englishmen and Englishmen, now as in the previous
year, was felt to be a terrible thing. The men of London were decidedly
favourable to the cause of the banished earls, and when their humble
petition to the king for the renewal of his favour to them met with
stern refusal, it was all that Godwine could do to prevent the popular
discontent from breaking out into some sudden act of mutiny. This
state of tension did not last long. The foreign favourites saw that
their cause was lost; they scattered, some to the west, some to the
north; Robert of Canterbury and Ulf of Dorchester rode out of the
eastern gate of the city, and after slaying and otherwise maltreating
many young men (who probably sought to stay their flight) reached the
Naze in Essex and there got on board a crazy ship, which crazy as it
was, seems to have borne them in safety over to Normandy. “Thus,”
says the chronicler, “did he, according to the will of God, leave his
pallium here in this land, and that archiepiscopal dignity which _not_
according to God’s will he had here obtained.”
The Frenchmen gone, peace was easily negotiated between the cipher-king
and his powerful ministers. To Earl Godwine, his wife, his sons and
his daughter, full restitution was made of all the offices and all the
property of which they had been deprived. “The Lady” was fetched back
from her convent and again installed in the palace. “Friendship was
made fast between Godwine’s family and the king; and to all men good
laws were promised, and outlawed were all the Frenchmen who before
perverted law and justice,[245] and counselled ill-will against this
land, save those (few) persons whom the king liked to keep about him,
because they were loyal to him and to his people.” At a great meeting
of the _witan_, held outside of London, Earl Godwine appeared and made
his defence, clearing himself, we are told, before his lord King Edward
and before all the people of the land, of all the things that were laid
to his charge and to that of his sons.
The chief agent in these negotiations was Stigand, Bishop of
Winchester, a very noticeable figure in the ecclesiastical history of
the times, a busy, diplomatising person who had been a keen partisan
of the Lady Emma’s; had shared her downfall and had afterwards been
appointed to the bishopric of Winchester, which he now exchanged
for the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury, practically, though not
canonically, vacant by the flight of Robert of Jumièges. His position,
which was already in the eyes of strict churchmen a doubtful one so
long as his predecessor lived, was not improved by his tardy journey
to Rome in the year 1058 in quest of his pallium, for he had the
misfortune to receive it from the hands of a Pope, Benedict X.,
who, though apparently chosen in a regular manner, did not second
Hildebrand’s reforms, and being deposed in favour of Nicholas II.,
bishop of Florence, figures in ecclesiastical history as an anti-pope.
A pallium conferred by such hands was held to bring with it no
blessing; on the contrary, by committing the English metropolitan to
the losing party, which opposed the famous Gregory VII., it had a very
important influence on subsequent events, and gave to the buccaneering
expedition of William the Bastard something of the character of a
religious crusade.
To the great earl himself the revolution of 1052 brought no long
enjoyment of power. Godwine fell sick soon after his landing in
England, and though he recovered for a time, his health was evidently
much shaken. In the following year, when King Edward was keeping
Easter at Winchester with Godwine, Harold and Tostig for his guests,
as they sat at meat, the earl “suddenly sank down by the king’s
footstool, bereft of speech and strength. They carried him into the
king’s bower, hoping that the attack would pass off, but it was not
so. He continued so, speechless and powerless, from Easter Monday
till the following Thursday [April 15, 1053], when he died. He lieth
there within the Old Minster; and his son Harold took to his earldom
(Wessex), resigning that which he had hitherto held (East Anglia),
which was given to Elfgar,” son of Leofric and Godiva. In the face of
this perfectly straightforward and circumstantial account given by
the Saxon chronicler, of the death of an elderly statesman, after a
hard and laborious life, from a stroke of apoplexy or paralysis, it
is unnecessary to reproduce the idle legends of Norman historians two
generations later, who represented that death as the fulfilment of a
blasphemous imprecation of the divine vengeance on himself if he had
had part or lot in the murder of the Etheling Alfred.
Earl Harold succeeded not only to the earldom but also to the political
predominance of his father, and for the remaining thirteen years of
Edward’s reign we may safely consider him as the real ruler of the
kingdom. Only it must be observed that though Harold was the king’s
efficient man of business, the chosen companion of his sports and
of his leisure was another brother, Tostig, who in the year 1055
received the earldom of Northumbria. This peculiar position of favour
in the palace and absenteeism from his province led to complications
which will be related hereafter. For the present our notice of the
internal affairs of the kingdom may close with the fact that in the
year 1057 the Etheling Edward, son of Edmund Ironside, came to England
accompanied by his wife, Agatha, a kinswoman of the Emperor Henry
III., and by what a Saxon ballad-maker quaintly calls “a goodly team
of bairns”. Probably it was the intention of the older Edward that his
namesake should succeed him on the throne, though he may have at times
vacillated between the more remote but known kinsman in Normandy and
the nearer stranger from Hungary. But whatever the king’s intentions
may have been, they were foiled by sickness or some less innocent
agency. “We know not,” says the chronicler, “for what cause that was
done that he might not see his kinsman, King Edward. Woe was that
wretched mishap, and harmful to all this people that he ended his life
so soon after he came to England, for the unhappiness of this poor
folk.” There is a mystery in all this which it is vain now to try to
penetrate. Only one cannot help again remarking the lack of virility in
these latest scions of the house of Cerdic. Assuredly neither William
the Bastard nor Harold Godwineson, would have been content to linger
out forty years of life in exile, nor when returned to their native
land would have been so easily snuffed out of existence as was this
prince, the descendant of fifteen generations of West Saxon kings.
* * * * *
We pass from the internal affairs of England to the notices, scanty,
but possessing for us a peculiar interest, concerning wars with
Scotland in the reign of Edward. We have seen that in 1018 the Scottish
king, Malcolm II., by his victory at Carham wrested from Northumbria
all its territory north of the Tweed. This king died in 1034, the
year before the death of Canute. His own death seems to have been a
violent one, but he had certainly murdered the man who, according to
the complicated law of succession then prevailing, had the best right
to succeed him on the throne, and had thus secured the succession for
his grandson, a lad named Duncan. The short reign of this young man--it
lasted only six years--was marked by some exciting events. In the year
1035 he led “an immense army” across the Border and laid siege to the
new city of Durham. The siege lasted a long time, but in a successful
sally of the besiegers the greater part of the Scottish cavalry was
destroyed, and in the disordered flight of the army the infantry were
also cut to pieces, and their heads being collected and brought within
the walls were stuck upon stakes to adorn the market place of the
city of St. Cuthbert. Then followed war, on the whole unsuccessful
war, between Duncan and his cousin Thorfinn, the Scandinavian earl
of Orkney and Caithness. Duncan was driven southward, and in August,
1040, he was murdered by the general who had hitherto been fighting
his battles, Macbeth, Mormaer or Earl of Moray. There was nothing in
this event to take it out of the ordinary category of royal murders in
Scotland at this time. It took place not under Macbeth’s own roof but
on neutral ground, at a place called Bothgowanan or the Smith’s bothie;
the victim was not the venerable greybeard whom Tragedy brings before
us, but a young man still “of immature age,” whose grandfather had not
many years before killed the brother of Macbeth’s wife and ousted her
family from the royal succession. In fact, we may almost say, looking
to the vicissitudes of the two families who at this time alternately
ruled Scotland, that it was Duncan’s turn to be murdered. Macbeth,
who reigned from 1040 to 1058, seems to have been on the whole a good
king, though reigning by a more than doubtful title. It is possible
that he imitated his contemporary Canute by going on pilgrimage, as a
chronicler tells us that in the year 1050 Macbeth, king of Scotland,
scattered silver broadcast among the poor of Rome.
Such was the man against whom, in 1054, Siward the Strong, earl of
Northumbria, moved with a large army accompanied by a fleet. Siward
being himself brother-in-law of the murdered Duncan was uncle of the
young Malcolm Canmore, who was now seeking to recover his father’s
throne. We have also a hint from a later historian that there were
Normans in the Scottish army. It is suggested, on rather slender
evidence, that these were some of Edward’s favourites, displaced by
the revolution of 1052, who had taken refuge at the court of Macbeth;
and it is possible that their presence there may have had something
to do with Siward’s expedition. However this may be, it is clear
that a battle was fought on July 27, in which the Northumbrian earl
was victorious, but at a heavy cost. His own son, Osbeorn, was slain
(“with all his wounds in front,” as his father rejoiced to hear), and
his sister’s son, Siward, as well as many of his own and the king’s
_house-carls_. Some of these _house-carls_, we are expressly told,
were Danes as well as Englishmen. There was a great and unprecedented
capture of booty, but Macbeth himself escaped. He reigned, though
probably with broken power, for four years longer, till 1058, in which
year he was finally defeated and slain by Malcolm III. This prince, who
is generally known by his epithet of Canmore (the Large-headed), is he
who by his marriage with Margaret, daughter of the Etheling Edward,
brought the blood of the old Saxon kings into the veins of the royal
family of Scotland and indirectly into that of England also. Matilda,
wife of Henry Beauclerk, daughter of Malcolm Canmore and Margaret, is
the link which connects the Saxon with the Norman dynasty, Alfred with
Victoria.
The year after his invasion of Scotland (1055) old Siward the Strong
died of dysentery. Of him is told the well-known story that when he
found his death drawing nigh, he said: “What a shame it is that I, who
could not find my death in so many battles, should now be reserved
for an inglorious death like that of a cow. At least arm me with
coat of mail, sword and helmet: place my shield on my left arm, my
gilded battle-axe in my right hand, that I, who was strongest among
soldiers, may die a soldier’s death.” His command was obeyed, and thus
honourably clad in armour he breathed out his soul. The great earldom
of Northumbria, made vacant by the death of Siward, was bestowed on
the king’s favourite brother-in-law, Tostig, who, however, held it not
for long. Siward’s son, Waltheof, seems to have been little more than
a child at his father’s death, but, though now passed over in the
distribution of earldoms, he received, ten years after, the earldom
of two southern counties, Northampton and Huntingdon, which had once
formed an outlying portion of his father’s dominions, and he had a
great share in the events which followed the Norman Conquest.
* * * * *
The affairs of Wales, during the reign of Edward the Confessor, centred
chiefly round the person of Griffith ap Llewelyn, “the head and shield
and defender of the Britons,” as he is called by a Welsh chronicler; a
terrible thorn in the side of England, as he must have appeared to his
Saxon contemporaries. This man, whose father, Llewelyn, died in 1021,
soon after achieving the supremacy in Wales, had been for sixteen years
throneless and probably an exile. In 1039 Griffith slew the King of
Gwynedd (North Wales), and being himself of a North Welsh house became
practically supreme over all the Britons. And not over the Britons only
did he win victories. “During his whole reign,” says the _Chronicle of
the Princes_, “he pursued the Saxons and the pagan nations and killed
and destroyed them and overcame them in a multitude of battles.” The
life of a Welsh king at this time was necessarily one of continual
turmoil. There was the ever-present rivalry between Gwynedd and Dyved
(North and South Wales), barely held in check from time to time by the
strong hand of such an one as Griffith. There were “the pagans,” the
Danes of Dublin and Wexford, always ready to cross the narrow seas and
harry the Welsh coast. Apparently the Christian Irish must sometimes
have shared in these raids, for “the Scots” (which doubtless still
means the Irish) are frequently alluded to as enemies of Griffith. In
addition to this there was the long feud with Mercia, which had lasted
for so many centuries, but which was now occasionally interrupted when
it served the purpose of both Wales and Mercia to combine against
Wessex.
In 1039, in the first year of Griffith’s reign, he won a great victory
over the Mercians at “the Ford of the Cross” by the river Severn,
slaying Leofric’s brother, Edwin, “and many good men besides,” as the
Saxon chronicler admits. Then there was a check to Griffith’s career
of victory. In 1042 he was taken prisoner by the pagans of Dublin,
but two years later we find him at the head of his forces, defeating
the Danish invaders with great slaughter. A namesake and rival,
Griffith, son of Rhyddarch, whose father had reigned in South Wales,
stirred up rebellion against him in 1046, but he was defeated by a
joint expedition of Griffith, son of Llewelyn, and Earl Sweyn, son of
Godwine. This co-operation of Wales and Mercia is memorable for more
reasons than one, since it was on his return from this expedition that
Sweyn Godwineson sinned that great sin with the Abbess of Leominster
which ruined his career and, for a time at least, blighted the fortunes
of his father.
There were some smaller skirmishes between Welshmen and Englishmen,
but, omitting these, we pass on to the year 1055, when a war broke
out which was partly caused by the discords and rivalries of English
nobles. Godwine was now dead, and Harold was all-powerful. Leofric of
Mercia, Godiva’s husband, still lived, but must have been an old man,
since we find his grandsons, only ten years later, men in the vigour
of manhood. For some reason or other--it is difficult not to see the
hand of the great rival family in the affair--a charge of treason
was brought against Leofric’s son, Elfgar, who had, we may remember,
received the earldom of East Anglia when it was resigned by Harold on
succeeding to Wessex. A general Witenagemot was now summoned to London,
before which “Earl Elfgar was charged with being a traitor to the king
and to all the people of the land, and he confessed this before all
who were gathered there, though the words shot forth from him against
his will”. So says the Peterborough chronicler, a strong partisan of
the Godwine family. The Abingdon chronicler, who disliked them, says
that “The Witenagemot in London outlawed Earl Elfgar without any guilt
on his part”. The Worcester chronicler vacillates and says, “almost
without guilt of his”. It is hopeless now, after the lapse of eight
centuries and a half, to retry a cause which excited such differences
of opinion among contemporaries. What is undoubted is that Elfgar’s
earldom was given to Tostig Godwineson, who had just received the great
earldom of Northumberland, and that the outlawed Elfgar betook himself
to Ireland, raised there a fleet of eighteen ships and sailed across to
Wales, where he threw himself on the hospitality and help of Griffith
ap Llewelyn. With a great force of Irishmen and Welshmen Griffith
marched against Ralph, the timid Earl of Hereford. This man, the king’s
nephew, had collected a large number of the militia, but, in order
probably that he might follow the French fashion of fighting, had
mounted them on horses, the consequence of which was that “ere a single
spear had been thrown, the English people fled, forasmuch as they had
horses, and a good lot of them were slain, about four or five hundred,
and not one on the other side”. Thus was Hereford laid at the mercy
of the invaders, among whom there were probably some of the “pagans”.
They carried the city by storm, burned both it and the minster, thereby
breaking the heart of the good Bishop Athelstan, its builder; slew the
priests in the minster and many others besides, and carried off all the
treasures.
A proclamation went throughout almost the whole of England for the
gathering of a _fyrd_ at Gloucester, and Harold took the command.
But then “people began to speak about peace”: a conference was held
at Billingsley in Shropshire; and, as the Worcester chronicler
sarcastically remarks, “when the enemy had done all the harm that
was possible, then people took counsel that Earl Elfgar should be
inlawed again and receive once more his earldom”. But though peace and
friendship were supposed to have been “fastened” at Billingsley, war
with Wales broke out again next year (1056), apparently in part owing
to the martial ardour of Harold’s mass-priest, Leofgar, who succeeded
the good old Athelstan as Bishop of Hereford. This extraordinary
person, to the amazement of the chronicler, had worn his moustaches
all through his priesthood until he was bishop;[246] and now “he
abandoned his chrism and his rood, his ghostly weapons, and took to his
spear and his sword after he had become bishop and so joined the army
against the Welsh king, and was there slain and his priests with him;
Elfnoth the sheriff also and many other good men; and the others fled
away” (June 13, 1056). A dreary campaign followed, with much waste of
horses and men, but at last old Leofric, with Harold and the universal
pacificator, Bishop Ealdred, succeeded in making a peace, one of the
conditions of which was Griffith’s oath that he would be King Edward’s
loving and loyal under-king. Two years after, however, Elfgar, now
Earl of Mercia and the head of his family (old Leofric having died
the year before), was again expelled and again restored by the help
of his Welsh friend, co-operating apparently with a certain Magnus,
who brought ships from Norway, but about whom our information is very
unsatisfactory.
It was probably about this time that the union between Wales and
Mercia was made yet closer by the marriage of Griffith to Aldgyth, the
beautiful daughter of Elfgar. His career, however, was drawing to a
close. Successful as his expeditions had generally been, his people
seem to have grown tired of the constant fever of strife with their
neighbours. In 1063 war again broke out, and this time Harold was
determined to deal a crushing blow. A sudden march to Griffith’s castle
at Rhuddlan, on the north coast of Wales, failed to accomplish the
arrest of the king, but was marked by the burning of the town and all
the ships in the harbour with their tackle. In May, Harold sailed from
Bristol all round Wales, receiving hostages and promises of obedience
from the people; and Tostig meanwhile operated with a land force in the
interior of the country. On August 5 Griffith was slain by some of his
own followers, “because of the war which he waged against Earl Harold,”
and his head, with the prow of his ship and the ornament thereon, was
brought as a trophy to the conqueror. Thus, as a Welsh chronicler says,
“The man who had been hitherto invincible was now left in the glens of
desolation, after taking immense spoils and after innumerable victories
and taking countless treasures of gold and silver and jewels and purple
vestures”.
The kingdom was handed over to two brothers of Griffith on the usual
conditions of oaths of fealty, hostages and tribute: but how little
such promises availed in the disordered condition of the country,
was seen two years after when a hunting lodge, which Harold, hoping
to have the king there as his guest, began to build at Portskewet in
Monmouthshire, was destroyed (August 24, 1065) by Caradoc, son of
another Griffith, who was ruling in South Wales. Nearly all the men
who were engaged on the work were slain, and the ample stores there
collected were carried away. “We do not know who first counselled this
piece of folly” (the building of a hunting-lodge in an enemy’s country)
is the dry remark of the Worcester Chronicle.
* * * * *
From these border wars we must now return to watch the course of
events at Edward’s court during the closing years of his reign. The
year 1064, which is an absolute blank in the Saxon Chronicles, is
generally chosen for an event, undated, perplexing and mysterious,
namely, Harold’s visit to the court of William the Norman, and his
oath of fealty to that prince. About this oath, his subsequent breach
of which figured so largely in the indictment preferred against him on
the battlefield of Hastings, Norman writers have much to say, Saxon
writers nothing, nor does the witness even of the Normans always agree
together. It is impossible to doubt the truth of the main outlines
of the story, but unfortunately it is equally impossible to fill in
the details. Did Harold go to Normandy with express purpose to assure
William of his nomination by Edward as the successor to his throne?
Did he go thither in order to obtain the liberation of two of his
kinsmen, hostages once given to the English king and transferred to
the keeping of the Norman duke? Or was his visit to Rouen involuntary
and accidental, the result of shipwreck and felonious detention by a
lawless count? All of these versions of the story have been given, and
though the last is the one which is generally received and on the whole
the most probable, to speak with any certainty on the question seems
impossible. All that will be attempted here will be to describe some
of the chief scenes of the fatal journey as they are depicted in that
all-but contemporary record, the Tapestry of Bayeux.
We see Harold taking leave of the aged king who, white-bearded, and
adorned with crown and sceptre, is seated on his throne. With hawk on
hand, preceded by his dogs and followed by his squire, Harold rides to
the family property at Bosham and enters the church at that place to
worship. He embarks, and crosses the channel with a favouring breeze
filling his sails. There is no suggestion in the pictures of storm or
shipwreck, though these seem to be almost required by the course of
events. Whatever the cause may have been, Harold, when he lands in
the territory of Guy, Count of Ponthieu, is arrested by the count’s
orders, and is conducted, still with the hawk on his hand, but with
dejected countenance and with spurless heels, to Beaurain, where he
is imprisoned. Parleys (no doubt as to the amount of ransom demanded)
follow with his captor: but at this point William of Normandy’s
messengers arrive, who vigorously plead the cause of Harold and press
for his liberation. The result of the negotiations and of the payment
by the Norman duke of a heavy ransom (as to this the Tapestry is
silent) is that Guy conducts his prisoner to William, who receives
him in his palace as an honoured guest. William and Harold undertake
together a campaign in Brittany under the shadow of Mont St. Michel.
The soldiers are seen crossing the river Couesnon (the boundary between
Normandy and Brittany), and holding high their shields above their
heads as they wade the water breast-high. Some of the men are in danger
of being swallowed up by the quicksands, from which they are drawn
by the strong arm of the tall-statured Harold. At the close of this
campaign Harold is knighted by Duke William, who with one hand places
the helmet on his head, and with the other fastens the straps of his
coat of mail.
Then follows at Bayeux the fateful scene of the oath-taking. The duke,
attended by his courtiers (a full assembled parliament according to the
poet Wace), sits on his throne, and Harold stands before him between
two great coffers, which (as we know from other sources) were filled
with the bones of some of the greatest saints in Normandy. He puts a
hand on each coffer-lid and swears; but what is the purport of the
oath? The Tapestry itself simply says that he makes his oath to Duke
William. Of the Norman writers some represent him as swearing that he
will marry William’s daughter, Adela (a little damsel not half his
age); others, as becoming in the fullest sense of the word William’s
vassal; others as undertaking to hand over to him the Castle of Dover;
but almost all give us the impression that in some way or other Harold
was cognisant of William’s determination to assert his claim as heir
to his cousin of England, and promised to aid him therein when the
occasion should arise. What burden an oath thus exacted under duress
should have laid upon the conscience of the swearer, and how the
contract was affected by the undoubted fact that the consent of the
_witan_ was necessary for any disposal of the crown either by Edward or
by Harold, are questions of casuistry on which much has been said, but
which need not be discussed here. We note, however, that the Tapestry
gives no support to the often-repeated story that Harold was beguiled
into taking the oath on relics of greater and more awful sanctity than
he was aware of. Whether the whole episode were mere misadventure or
the failure of some cunningly devised scheme on Harold’s part, one
cannot but marvel at the lightness of heart with which he threw himself
into the power of the most dangerous of all his rivals, at a time when
he needed all his vigilance and all his ability in order to secure the
splendid prize for which he had so long been labouring.[247]
The year following that usually assigned to Harold’s visit to Normandy
(1065) witnessed another revolution in the fortunes of one member of
the Godwine family. Tostig, Earl of Northumbria, was, as has been
said, an especial favourite at court, and seems to have been the best
beloved brother of the royal “Lady,” Edith. He was, not, however, by
any means equally popular with the men of his own Northumbrian earldom,
who seem to have complained both of his frequent absences and of the
stern, almost bloodthirsty, character of his government when he did
appear among them. There was a general rising of all the thegns in
Yorkshire and Northumberland; they decreed in some tumultuous assembly
the outlawry of their earl, then hunting in Wiltshire with the king;
they massacred all the men of his household, whether English or Danes,
upon whom they could lay their hands, and seized his weapons stored up
in the arsenal at York, his gold, his silver and all his money about
which they could obtain information. These massacres and robberies seem
to have taken place both at York and Lincoln; and the insurgent thegns
then proceeded to elect a new earl to reign over them. This was the
young Morkere, grandson of Leofric. Elfgar, the twice-banished Earl
of Mercia, was now dead; his eldest son, Edwin, had succeeded him in
Mercia, and to Edwin’s younger brother, Morkere, was given the splendid
but difficult office which had been wrested from Tostig. In support of
their rebellious acts--for they were nothing less--the northern thegns
marched to Northampton, where Morkere was joined by his brother, Edwin,
at the head of the Mercian _fyrd_ and--ominous conjunction---of many
Welsh auxiliaries. Once more civil war seemed inevitable, but the good
offices of Harold were sought for as mediator between the insurgents
and the king. He failed, however, to reconcile the Northerners and his
brother; and after two _gemots_ held at Northampton and at Oxford
the negotiations ended in an entire surrender to all the demands of
the rebels (October 28, 1065). The outlawed Tostig went over sea with
his wife and followers to his brother-in-law, Count Baldwin; the
grant of his earldom was confirmed to Morkere, and the insurgent army
at last returned northward, not, however, till they had so wasted
Northamptonshire with fire and sword and carried off such quantities
of cattle that it was years before that county recovered from their
ravages.
What was the precise part taken by Harold in this revolution, which
implied in some degree the depression of the house of Godwine and the
elevation of the rival house of Leofric, it is very difficult now
to discover. Everything that he did may be fully accounted for and
justified by a patriotic abhorrence of civil war, a recognition of the
fact that his brother’s government had been arbitrary and unpopular,
and a noble willingness to place the welfare of England before the
private advantage of his own family. On the other hand, there are
curious traditions as to an enmity subsisting from boyhood between the
two brothers, Harold and Tostig, and some even of their contemporaries
averred that the whole revolution was planned by Harold for the
overthrow of his brother. This suggestion seems most improbable, but it
is evident that, whether as a cause or consequence of the disgrace of
Tostig, Harold does from this time forward unite himself more closely
to the house of Leofric, whose granddaughter, Aldgyth, widow of the
Welsh king, Griffith, and sister of Edwin and Morkere, he seems to have
married about this time. This marriage, which rendered it impossible
for him to fulfil one at least of the articles of his covenant with
William of Normandy, may have been the first intimation to his great
rival that Harold regarded the promise made to him as of none effect.
Whatever may have been Harold’s feelings as to his brother’s disgrace,
there can be no doubt that it cut King Edward to the heart, and
probably, as one of his biographers hints, hastened his end. He was now
apparently a little over sixty years of age, a man of moderate stature,
with milk-white hair and beard, with broad and rosy face, white and
slender hands and a certain royalty of aspect. Already perhaps that
belief in the healing efficacy of his touch had begun to spread among
the multitude, which engendered the mass of miracles wherewith his
memory was afterwards loaded. These miracles being strangely supposed
to be in some way specially connected with the royal office, led to the
practice of “touching for the King’s evil,” which was continued till
the reign of the last Stuart.
Through all these later years of his reign he had been intently
watching the progress of his great church in the Island of Thorney by
the Thames. Its foundations of large square blocks of greystone, its
apsidal end, its central tower and two towers at the west end with
their beautiful bells, and the long rows of its columns with their
richly adorned bases and capitals, are enthusiastically described by
his biographer. He came to Westminster on December 21, 1065, “and
caused the minster to be hallowed which he had himself built to the
glory of God and St. Peter and all God’s saints, and the hallowing of
this church was on Childmass day” (December 28), but he was not himself
present at the hallowing, and his death took place on Twelfth night
(January 5, 1066).
The death-bed sayings of the old king, as reported by his biographer,
are perhaps best known in Tennyson’s poetical version of them, but
have, even unparaphrased, a poetical beauty of their own. After
describing the vengeance of God which was coming upon England for her
sins, and his pitiful prayer to the Most High that this punishment
might not endure for ever, he repeats the words which he has heard
from the saints whom he has seen in vision: “The green tree which
springs from the trunk, when it has been severed thence and removed
to a distance of three acres, shall return to its original trunk and
shall join itself to its root whence first it sprang. Then shall the
head again be green and bear fruit after its flower; and then may you
certainly hope for better times.” Most of the bystanders listened with
awe and wonder to the dying king’s prophecy, but Archbishop Stigand,
with his hard worldly wisdom, said: “The old man is in his dotage”.
But Edward not only uttered this perplexing prophecy; he also, there
can be little doubt, uttered some words which amounted to a bequest of
his crown, as far as he had power to bequeath it, not to William but to
Harold. There seems no reason why we should reject the story told in
the quaint verses of the Chronicle--
Nathless, that wisest man, Dying made fast the realm
To a high-risen man, Even to Harold’s self,
Who was a noble earl: He did at every tide
Follow with loyal love All of his lord’s behests,
Both in his words and deeds: Naught did he e’er neglect
Whate’er of right belonged Unto the people’s king.
“And now was Harold hallowed as king, but little stillness did he there
enjoy, the while that he wielded the kingdom.”