While Harold sleeps, let us here pause to survey for the first time
the greatness of that House to which Sweyn's exile had left him the
heir. The fortunes of Godwin had been those which no man not
eminently versed in the science of his kind can achieve. Though the
fable which some modern historians of great name have repeated and
detailed, as to his early condition as the son of a cow-herd, is
utterly groundless [99], and he belonged to a house all-powerful at
the time of his youth, he was unquestionably the builder of his own
greatness. That he should rise so high in the early part of his
career was less remarkable than that he should have so long continued
the possessor of a power and state in reality more than regal.
But, as has been before implied, Godwin's civil capacities were more
prominent than his warlike. And this it is which invests him with
that peculiar interest which attracts us to those who knit our modern
intelligence with the past. In that dim world before the Norman
deluge, we are startled to recognise the gifts that ordinarily
distinguish a man of peace in a civilised age.
His father, Wolnoth, had been "Childe" [100] of the South Saxons, or
thegn of Sussex, a nephew of Edric Streone, Earl of Mercia, the
unprincipled but able minister of Ethelred, who betrayed his master to
Canute, by whom, according to most authorities, he was righteously,
though not very legally, slain as a reward for the treason.
"I promised," said the Dane king, "to set thy head higher than other
men's, and I keep my word." The trunkless head was set on the gates
of London.
Wolnoth had quarrelled with his uncle Brightric, Edric's brother, and
before the arrival of Canute, had betaken himself to the piracy of a
sea chief, seduced twenty of the king's ships, plundered the southern
coasts, burnt the royal navy, and then his history disappears from the
chronicles; but immediately afterwards the great Danish army, called
Thurkell's Host, invaded the coast, and kept their chief station on
the Thames. Their victorious arms soon placed the country almost at
their command. The traitor Edric joined them with a power of more
than 10,000 men; and it is probable enough that the ships of Wolnoth
had before this time melted amicably into the armament of the Danes.
If this, which seems the most likely conjecture, be received, Godwin,
then a mere youth, would naturally have commenced his career in the
cause of Canute; and as the son of a formidable chief of thegn's rank,
and even as kinsman to Edric, who, whatever his crimes, must have
retained a party it was wise to conciliate, Godwin's favour with
Canute, whose policy would lead him to show marked distinction to any
able Saxon follower, ceases to be surprising.
The son of Wolnoth accompanied Canute in his military expedition to
the Scandinavian continent, and here a signal victory, planned by
Godwin and executed solely by himself and the Saxon band under his
command, without aid from Canute's Danes, made the most memorable
military exploit of his life, and confirmed his rising fortunes.
Edric, though he is said to have been low born, had married the sister
of King Ethelred; and as Godwin advanced in fame, Canute did not
disdain to bestow his own sister in marriage on the eloquent
favourite, who probably kept no small portion of the Saxon population
to their allegiance. On the death of this, his first wife, who bore
him but one son [101] (who died by accident), he found a second spouse
in the same royal house; and the mother of his six living sons and two
daughters was the niece of his king, and sister of Sweyn, who
subsequently filled the throne of Denmark. After the death of Canute,
the Saxon's predilections in favour of the Saxon line became apparent;
but it was either his policy or his principles always to defer to the
popular will as expressed in the national council; and on the
preference given by the Witan to Harold the son of Canute over the
heirs of Ethelred, he yielded his own inclinations. The great power
of the Danes, and the amicable fusion of their race with the Saxon
which had now taken place, are apparent in this decision; for not only
did Earl Leofric, of Mercia, though himself a Saxon (as well as the
Earl of Northumbria, with the thegns north of the Thames), declare for
Harold the Dane, but the citizens of London were of the same party;
and Godwin represented little more than the feeling of his own
principality of Wessex.
From that time, Godwin, however, became identified with the English
cause; and even many who believed him guilty of some share in the
murder, or at least the betrayal, of Alfred [102], Edward's brother,
sought excuses in the disgust with which Godwin had regarded the
foreign retinue that Alfred had brought with him, as if to owe his
throne to Norman swords, rather than to English hearts. Hardicanute,
who succeeded Harold, whose memory he abhorred, whose corpse he
disinterred and flung into a fen [103], had been chosen by the
unanimous council both of English and Danish thegns; and despite
Hardicanute's first vehement accusations of Godwin, the Earl still
remained throughout that reign as powerful as in the two preceding it.
When Hardicanute dropped down dead at a marriage banquet, it was
Godwin who placed Edward upon the throne; and that great Earl must
either have been conscious of his innocence of the murder of Edward's
brother, or assured of his own irresponsible power, when he said to
the prince who knelt at his feet, and, fearful of the difficulties in
his way, implored the Earl to aid his abdication of the throne and
return to Normandy.
"You are the son of Ethelred, grandson of Edgar. Reign, it is your
duty; better to live in glory than die in exile. You are of mature
years, and having known sorrow and need, can better feel for your
people. Rely on me, and there will be none of the difficulties you
dread; whom I favour, England favours."
And shortly afterwards, in the national assembly, Godwin won Edward
his throne. "Powerful in speech, powerful in bringing over people to
what he desired, some yielded to his words, some to bribes." [104]
Verily, Godwin was a man to have risen as high, had he lived later!
So Edward reigned, and agreeably, it is said, with previous
stipulations, married the daughter of his king-maker. Beautiful as
Edith the Queen was in mind and in person, Edward apparently loved her
not. She dwelt in his palace, his wife only in name.
Tostig (as we have seen) had married the daughter of Baldwin, Count of
Flanders, sister to Matilda, wife to the Norman Duke: and thus the
House of Godwin was triply allied to princely lineage--the Danish, the
Saxon, the Flemish. And Tostig might have said, as in his heart
William the Norman said, "My children shall descend from Charlemagne
and Alfred."
Godwin's life, though thus outwardly brilliant, was too incessantly
passed in public affairs and politic schemes to allow the worldly man
much leisure to watch over the nurture and rearing of the bold spirits
of his sons. Githa his wife, the Dane, a woman with a haughty but
noble spirit, imperfect education, and some of the wild and lawless
blood derived from her race of heathen sea-kings, was more fitted to
stir their ambition and inflame their fancies, than curb their tempers
and mould their hearts.
We have seen the career of Sweyn; but Sweyn was an angel of light
compared to his brother Tostig. He who can be penitent has ever
something lofty in his original nature; but Tostig was remorseless as
the tiger, as treacherous and as fierce. With less intellectual
capacities than any of his brothers, he had more personal ambition
than all put together. A kind of effeminate vanity, not uncommon with
daring natures (for the bravest races and the bravest soldiers are
usually the vainest; the desire to shine is as visible in the fop as
in the hero), made him restless both for command and notoriety. "May
I ever be in the mouths of men," was his favourite prayer. Like his
maternal ancestry, the Danes, he curled his long hair, and went as a
bridegroom to the feast of the ravens.
Two only of that house had studied the Humane Letters, which were no
longer disregarded by the princes of the Continent; they were the
sweet sister, the eldest of the family, fading fast in her loveless
home, and Harold.
But Harold's mind,--in which what we call common sense was carried to
genius,--a mind singularly practical and sagacious, like his father's,
cared little for theological learning and priestly legend--for all
that poesy of religion in which the Woman was wafted from the sorrows
of earth.
Godwin himself was no favourite of the Church, and had seen too much
of the abuses of the Saxon priesthood, (perhaps, with few exceptions,
the most corrupt and illiterate in all Europe, which is saying much,)
to instil into his children that reverence for the spiritual authority
which existed abroad; and the enlightenment, which in him was
experience in life, was in Harold, betimes, the result of study and
reflection. The few books of the classical world then within reach of
the student opened to the young Saxon views of human duties and human
responsibilities utterly distinct from the unmeaning ceremonials and
fleshly mortifications in which even the higher theology of that day
placed the elements of virtue. He smiled in scorn when some Dane,
whose life had been passed in the alternate drunkenness of wine and of
blood, thought he had opened the gates of heaven by bequeathing lands
gained by a robber's sword, to pamper the lazy sloth of some fifty
monks. If those monks had presumed to question his own actions, his
disdain would have been mixed with simple wonder that men so besotted
in ignorance, and who could not construe the Latin of the very prayers
they pattered, should presume to be the judges of educated men. It is
possible--for his nature was earnest--that a pure and enlightened
clergy, that even a clergy, though defective in life, zealous in duty
and cultivated in mind,--such a clergy as Alfred sought to found, and
as Lanfranc endeavoured (not without some success) to teach--would
have bowed his strong sense to that grand and subtle truth which
dwells in spiritual authority. But as it was, he stood aloof from the
rude superstition of his age, and early in life made himself the
arbiter of his own conscience. Reducing his religion to the simplest
elements of our creed, he found rather in the books of Heathen authors
than in the lives of the saints, his notions of the larger morality
which relates to the citizen and the man. The love of country; the
sense of justice; fortitude in adverse and temperance in prosperous
fortune, became portions of his very mind. Unlike his father, he
played no actor's part in those qualities which had won him the
popular heart. He was gentle and affable; above all, he was fair-
dealing and just, not because it was politic to seem, but his nature
to be, so.
Nevertheless, Harold's character, beautiful and sublime in many
respects as it was, had its strong leaven of human imperfection in
that very self-dependence which was born of his reason and his pride.
In resting so solely on man's perceptions of the right, he lost one
attribute of the true hero--faith. We do not mean that word in the
religious sense alone, but in the more comprehensive. He did not rely
on the Celestial Something pervading all nature, never seen, only felt
when duly courted, stronger and lovelier than what eye could behold
and mere reason could embrace. Believing, it is true, in God, he lost
those fine links that unite God to man's secret heart, and which are
woven alike from the simplicity of the child and the wisdom of the
poet. To use a modern illustration, his large mind was a "cupola
lighted from below."
His bravery, though inflexible as the fiercest sea-king's, when need
arose for its exercise, was not his prominent characteristic. He
despised the brute valour of Tostig,--his bravery was a necessary part
of a firm and balanced manhood--the bravery of Hector, not Achilles.
Constitutionally averse to bloodshed, be could seem timid where daring
only gratified a wanton vanity, or aimed at a selfish object. On the
other hand, if duty demanded daring, no danger could deter, no policy
warp him;--he could seem rash; he could even seem merciless. In the
what ought to be, he understood a must be.
And it was natural to this peculiar, yet thoroughly English
temperament, to be, in action, rather steadfast and patient than quick
and ready. Placed in perils familiar to him, nothing could exceed his
vigour and address; but if taken unawares, and before his judgment
could come to his aid, he was liable to be surprised into error.
Large minds are rarely quick, unless they have been corrupted into
unnatural vigilance by the necessities of suspicion. But a nature
more thoroughly unsuspecting, more frank, trustful, and genuinely
loyal than that young Earl's, it was impossible to conceive. All
these attributes considered, we have the key to much of Harold's
character and conduct in the later events of his fated and tragic
life.
But with this temperament, so manly and simple, we are not to suppose
that Harold, while rejecting the superstitions of one class, was so
far beyond his time as to reject those of another. No son of fortune,
no man placing himself and the world in antagonism, can ever escape
from some belief in the Invisible. Caesar could ridicule and profane
the mystic rites of Roman mythology, but he must still believe in his
fortune, as in a god. And Harold, in his very studies, seeing the
freest and boldest minds of antiquity subjected to influences akin to
those of his Saxon forefathers, felt less shame in yielding to them,
vain as they might be, than in monkish impostures so easily detected.
Though hitherto he had rejected all direct appeal to the magic devices
of Hilda, the sound of her dark sayings, heard in childhood, still
vibrated on his soul as man. Belief in omens, in days lucky or
unlucky, in the stars, was universal in every class of the Saxon.
Harold had his own fortunate day, the day of his nativity, the 14th of
October. All enterprises undertaken on that day had hitherto been
successful. He believed in the virtue of that day, as Cromwell
believed in his 3d of September. For the rest, we have described him
as he was in that part of his career in which he is now presented.
Whether altered by fate and circumstances, time will show. As yet, no
selfish ambition leagued with the natural desire of youth and
intellect for their fair share of fame and power. His patriotism, fed
by the example of Greek and Roman worthies, was genuine, pure, and
ardent; he could have stood in the pass with Leonidas, or leaped into
the gulf with Curtius.