CHAPTER IX.

THE REIGN OF EADWARD FROM THE RETURN OF GODWINE TO THE DEATH OF EADWARD

THE ÆTHELING.[921]

1052–1057.

[Sidenote: Character of the Period.]

The two streams of English and Norman history were joined together for a

moment in the year when the sovereigns of England and Normandy met face

to face for the only time in the course of their joint reigns. Those

streams will now again diverge. England shook off the Norman influence,

and became once more, to all outward appearance, the England of

Æthelstan and Eadgar. For [Sidenote: Little direct connexion between

English and Norman affairs.] several years the history of each country

seems to have no direct influence upon the history of the other. But

this mutual independence is more apparent than real. England once more

became free from Norman influence as regarded her general policy; but

the effects of Eadward’s Norman tendencies were by no means wholly wiped

away. Normans still remained in the land, and the circumstances of the

deliverance of England were not without their effect as secondary causes

of the expedition of William. Through the whole period we may be sure

that the wise statesmen of both countries were diligently watching each

other’s actions. Harold and William, though not as yet open enemies or

avowed rivals, must have found out during these years that each was

called on by his own policy to do all that he could to thwart the policy

of the other. But though there was this sort of undercurrent closely

connecting the interests of the two countries, yet, in all the outward

events of history, it was a period of remarkable separation between

them. The events recorded by English historians within this period

belong almost exclusively to the affairs of our own island. It is a

period in which the relations between the vassal Kingdoms of Britain and

the Imperial power again assume special importance. But it is still more

emphatically marked by the death of the greatest of living Englishmen,

and the transmission of his power, and more than his power, to a

[Sidenote: Growth of the power of Harold.] worthy successor. We left

Godwine and Harold banished men. We have now to record their triumphant

return to a rejoicing nation. We have then to record the death of

Godwine, the accession of Harold to his father’s formal rank, and the

steps by which he gradually rose to be the virtual ruler of the Kingdom,

perhaps the designated successor to the Crown.

§ 1. _The Return and Death of Godwine._ 1052–1053.

[Sidenote: General regret at the absence of Godwine.]

If the minds of Englishmen had been at all divided in their estimate of

Godwine during his long tenure of power, it only needed his exile to

bring every patriotic heart to one opinion with regard to him. Godwine

doubtless had his enemies; no man ever stood for thirty years and more

at the head of affairs without making many enemies; and there were

points in his character which may have given reasonable offence to many.

Even if the whole of his enormous wealth was fairly and legally

acquired, its mere accumulation in the hands of one man[922] must have

excited envy in many breasts. His eagerness to advance his family may

well have offended others, and the crimes and the restoration of Swegen,

even under the guaranty of Bishop Ealdred, cannot fail to have given

general scandal. It is possible then that there were Englishmen, not

devoid of love and loyalty to England, who were short-sighted enough to

rejoice over the fall of the great Earl. But, when Godwine was gone, men

soon learned that, whatever had been his faults, they were far

outweighed by his merits. Men now knew that the Earl of the West-Saxons

had been the one man who stood between them and the dominion of

strangers. During that gloomy winter England felt as a conquered land,

as a land too conquered by foes who had not overcome her in open battle,

but who had, by craft and surprise, deprived her of her champions and

guardians. The common voice of England soon began to call for the return

of Godwine. The banished Earl was looked to by all men as the Father of

his Country; England now knew that in his fall a fatal blow had been

dealt to her own welfare and freedom.[923] Men began openly to declare

that it was better to share the banishment of Godwine than to live in

the land from which Godwine was banished.[924] [Sidenote: Godwine

invited to return.] Messages were sent to the court of Flanders, praying

the Earl to return. If he chose to make his way back into the land by

force, he would find many Englishmen ready to take up arms in his cause.

Others crossed the sea in person, and pledged themselves to fight for

him, and, if need were, to die in his behalf.[925] These invitations, we

are told, were no secret intrigue of a few men. The common voice of

England, openly expressed and all but unanimous, demanded the return of

the great confessor of English freedom.[926]

[Sidenote: The King’s preparations against Godwine.]

These open manifestations on behalf of the exiles could not escape the

knowledge of the King and his counsellors. It was thought necessary to

put the south-eastern coast into a state of defence against any

possible attack from the side of Flanders. The King and his

Witan[927]—one would like to have fuller details of a Gemót held under

such influences—decreed that ships should be sent forth to [Sidenote:

The fleet at Sandwich.] watch at the old watching-place of

Sandwich.[928] Forty ships were accordingly made ready, and they took

their place at the appointed station under the command of the King’s

nephew Earl Ralph, of Odda, the newly appointed Earl of the Western

shires.[929]

Precautions of this kind against the return of one for whose return the

mass of the nation was longing must have been unpopular in the highest

degree. And, if anything could still further heighten the general

discontent [Sidenote: Ravages of Gruffydd of North Wales. 1052.] with

the existing state of things, it would be the events which were, just at

this time, going on along the Welsh border. The Norman lords whom

Eadward had settled in Herefordshire proved but poor defenders of their

adopted country. The last continental improvements in the art of

fortification proved vain to secure the land in the absence of chiefs of

her own people. Gruffydd of North Wales marked his opportunity; he broke

through his short-lived alliance with England, and the year of the

absence of Godwine and his sons was marked by an extensive and

successful invasion of the land of the Magesætas.[930] Gruffydd

doubtless took also into his reckoning the absence of the local chief at

Sandwich. He crossed the border, he harried far and wide, and he seems

not to have met with any resistance till [Sidenote: His victory near

Leominster.] he had reached the neighbourhood of Leominster.[931] There

he was at last met by the levies of the country, together with the

Norman garrison of Richard’s Castle.[932] Perhaps, as in a later

conflict with the same enemy in the same neighbourhood, English and

foreign troops failed to act well together; at all events the Welsh King

had the victory, and, after slaying many men of both nations, he went

away with a large booty.[933] Men remarked that this heavy blow took

place exactly thirteen years after Gruffydd’s [Sidenote: 1039.] first

great victory at Rhyd-y-Groes.[934] Though the coincidence is thus

marked, we are not told, what day of what month was thus auspicious to

the Welsh prince; but the dates of the events which follow show that it

must have been early in the summer.

[Sidenote: Godwine petitions for his return.]

Godwine must by this time have seen that the path for his return was now

open, and it was seemingly this last misfortune which determined him to

delay no longer.[935] It was not till all peaceful means had been tried

and failed, that the banished Earl made up his mind to attempt a

restoration by force. He sent many messages to the King, praying for a

reconciliation. He offered now to Eadward, as he had before offered both

to Harthacnut and to Eadward himself, to come into the royal presence

and make a compurgation in legal form in answer to all the charges which

had been brought against him.[936] But all such petitions were in vain.

It marks the increasing intercourse between England and the continent,

that Godwine, when his own messages were not listened to, sought, as a

last resource, to obtain his object through the intercession of foreign

princes.[937] Embassies on his behalf were sent by his host [Sidenote:

Embassies from foreign princes on his behalf.] Count Baldwin and by the

King of the French. Baldwin, who had so lately been at war with England,

might seem an ill-chosen intercessor; but his choice for that purpose

may have been influenced by his close connexion with the Court of

Normandy. William was just now earnestly pressing his suit for Matilda.

The ally of the great Duke might be expected to have some influence, if

not with Eadward, at least with Eadward’s Norman favourites. King Henry,

it will be remembered, claimed some sort of kindred with Eadward, though

it is not easy to trace the two princes to a common ancestor.[938] But

King and Marquess alike pleaded in vain. Eadward was surrounded by his

foreign priests and courtiers, and no intercessions on behalf of the

champion of England were allowed to have any weight with the royal mind,

even if they were ever allowed to reach the royal ear.[939]

[Sidenote: Godwine determines on a return by force.]

The Earl was now satisfied that nothing more was to be hoped from any

attempts at a peaceful reconciliation. He was also satisfied that, if he

attempted to return by force, the great majority of Englishmen would be

less likely to resist him than to join his banners. He therefore,

towards the middle of the summer,[940] finally determined to attempt his

restoration by force of arms, and [Sidenote: Estimate of his conduct.]

he began to make preparations for that purpose. His conduct in so doing

hardly needs any formal justification. It is simply the old question of

resistance or non-resistance. If any man ever was justified in

resistance to established authority, or in irregular enterprises of any

kind, undoubtedly Godwine was justified in his design of making his way

back into England in arms. So to do was indeed simply to follow the

usual course of every banished man of those times who could gather

together the needful force. The enterprises of Osgod Clapa[941] at an

earlier time, and of Ælfgar at a later time, are not spoken of with any

special condemnation by the historians of the time. And the enterprise

of Godwine was of a very different kind from the enterprises of Ælfgar

and of Osgod Clapa. Ælfgar and Osgod may have been banished unjustly,

and they may, according to the morality of those times, have been guilty

of no very great crime by seeking restoration with weapons in their

hands. Still the question of their banishment or restoration was almost

wholly a personal question. The existence or the welfare of England in

no way depended on their presence or absence. But the rebellion or

invasion of Godwine was a rebellion or an invasion in form only. His

personal restoration meant nothing short of the deliverance of England

from misgovernment and foreign influence. He had been driven out by a

faction; [Sidenote: Comparison of Godwine with Henry of Bolingbroke

(1399) and William of Orange (1688).] he was invited to return by the

nation. The enterprise of Godwine in short should be classed, not with

the ordinary forcible return of an exile, but with enterprises like

those of Henry of Bolingbroke in the fourteenth century and of William

of Orange in the seventeenth. In all three cases the deliverer

undoubtedly sought the deliverance of the country; in all three he also

undoubtedly sought his own restoration or advancement. But Godwine had

one great advantage over both his successors. They had to deal with

wicked Kings; he had only to deal with a weak King. They had to deal

with evil counsellors, who, however evil, were still Englishmen. Godwine

had simply to deliver King and people from the influence and thraldom of

foreigners. He was thus able, while they were not able, to deliver

England without resorting to the death, deposition, or exile of the

reigning King, and, as far as he himself was personally concerned,

without shedding a drop of English blood.

The narrative of this great deliverance forms one of the most glorious

and spirit-stirring tales to be found in any age of our history. It is a

tale which may be read with unmixed delight, save for one event, which,

whether we count it for a crime or for a misfortune, throws a shadow on

the renown, not of Godwine himself, but of his nobler son. Harold and

Leofwine, we have seen, had made up their minds from the beginning to

resort to force, whenever the opportunity should come. They had spent

the winter in Ireland in making preparations for an expedition.[942]

They were by this time ready for action, and, now that their father had

found all attempts at a peaceful reconciliation to be vain, the time for

action seemed clearly to have come. [Sidenote: Harold and Leofwine sail

from Dublin.] It was doubtless in concert with Godwine that Harold and

Leofwine[943] now set sail from Dublin with nine ships. Their crews

probably consisted mainly of adventurers from the Danish havens of

Ireland, ready for any enterprise which promised excitement and plunder.

But it is quite possible that Englishmen, whether vehement partisans or

simply desperate men, may have also taken service under the returning

exiles. The part of England which they chose for their enterprise would

have been well chosen, if [Sidenote: They enter the Bristol Channel.]

they had been attacking a hostile country. They made for the debateable

land forming the southern shore of the Bristol Channel, where no doubt

large traces of the ancient British blood and language still

remained.[944] The country was left, through the absence of its Earl

Odda with the fleet, without any single responsible chief. [Sidenote:

The people of Somersetshire and Devonshire ill disposed towards them.]

But it soon appeared that, from whatever cause, the wishes of the people

of this part of the kingdom were not favourable to the enterprise of

Harold and Leofwine. Possibly the prevalence of Celtic blood in the

district may have made its inhabitants less zealous in the cause

[Sidenote: Possible grounds for their hostility.] of the English

deliverer than the inhabitants of the purely English shires. Possibly

the evil deeds of Swegen, whose government had included Somersetshire,

may have made men who had lived under his rule less attached to the

whole House of Godwine than those who had lived under the rule of Harold

or of Godwine himself. And we must remember that, up to this time,

Harold had done nothing to win for himself any special renown or

affection beyond the bounds of his own East-Anglian Earldom. As yet he

shone simply with a glory reflected from that of his father. And his

enterprise bore in some points an ill look. He had not shared the place

of exile of his father, nor had he taken any part in his father’s

attempts to bring about a peaceful restoration. He had gone, determined

from the first on an armed return, to a land which might almost be

looked on as an enemy’s country. He now came back at the head of a force

whose character could not fail to strike Englishmen with suspicion and

dread. We are therefore not surprised to hear that the men of Somerset

and Devon met him in arms. [Sidenote: Harold’s landing at Porlock;] He

landed on the borders of those two shires, in a wild and hilly region,

which to this day remains thinly peopled, cut off from the chief centres

even of local life, the last [Sidenote: description of the country.]

place within the borders of South Britain where the wild stag still

finds a shelter. The high ground of Exmoor, and the whole neighbouring

hilly region, reaches its highest point in the Beacon of Dunkery, a

height whose Celtic name has an appropriate sound among the remains of

primæval times with which it is crowned. It is the highest point in its

own shire, and it is overtopped by no point in Southern England, except

by some of the Tors of Dartmoor in the still further west. A descent,

remarkably gradual for so great a height, leads down to the small haven

of Porlock, placed on a bay of no great depth, but well defined by two

bold headlands guarding it to the east and west. The coast has been

subject to many changes. A submarine forest,[945] reaching along the

whole shore, shows that the sea must have made advances in earlier

times. And there is as little doubt that it has again retreated, and

that what is now an alluvial flat was, eight hundred years back, a

shallow and muddy inlet, accessible to the light craft of those days.

Harold therefore landed at a spot nearer than the present small harbour

to the small [Sidenote: Object of the enterprise.] town, or rather

village, of Porlock.[946] A landing in this remote region could

contribute but little to the advancement of the general scheme of

Godwine; the object of Harold must have been merely to obtain provisions

for his crews. He came doubtless, as we shall find his father did also,

ready for peaceable supplies if a friendly country afforded them, but

ready also to provide for his followers [Sidenote: Harold’s victory at

Porlock; he plunders the country, and sails to join his father.] by

force, if force was needed for his purpose.[947] But the whole

neighbourhood was hostile; a large force was gathered together from both

the border shires, and Harold, whether by his fault or by his

misfortune, had to begin his enterprise of restoration and deliverance

by fighting a battle with the countrymen whom he came to deliver. The

exiles had the victory, but it is clear that they had to contend with a

stout resistance on the part of a considerable body of men. More than

thirty good Thegns and much other folk were slain.[948] So large a

number of Thegns collected at such a point shows that the force which

they headed must have been gathered together, not merely from the

immediate neighbourhood of Porlock, but from a considerable portion of

the two shires.[949] We may conceive that the system of beacons, which

has been traced out over a long range of the hill-tops in the West of

England, had done good service over the whole country long before the

fleet of Harold had actually entered the haven of Porlock. But the crews

of Harold’s ships were doubtless picked men, and their success, over

even a much larger force of irregular levies, would have been in no way

wonderful. Harold now plundered without opposition, and carried off what

he would in the way of goods, cattle, and men.[950] He then sailed to

the south-west, he doubled the Land’s End,[951] and sailed along the

English Channel to meet his father.

[Sidenote: Estimate of Harold’s conduct.]

This event is the chief stain which mars the renown of Harold, and which

dims the otherwise glorious picture of the return of Godwine and his

house. Harold’s own age perhaps easily forgave the deed. No contemporary

writer speaks of it with any marked condemnation; one contemporary

writer even seems distinctly to look upon it as a worthy exploit.[952]

It was in truth nothing more than the ordinary course of a banished man.

Harold acted hardly worse than Osgod Clapa; he did not act by any means

so badly as Ælfgar. But a man who towers above his own generation must

pay, in more than one way, the penalty of his greatness. We

instinctively judge Harold by a stricter standard than that by which we

judge Ælfgar and Osgod Clapa. On such a character as his it is

distinctly a stain to have resorted for one moment to needless violence,

or to have shed one drop of English blood without good cause. The ravage

and slaughter at Porlock distinctly throws a shade over the return of

Godwine and over the fair fame of his son. It is a stain rather to be

regretted than harshly to be condemned; but it is a stain nevertheless.

It is a stain which was fully wiped out by later labours and triumphs in

the cause of England. Still we may well believe that the blood of those

thirty good Thegns and of those other folk was paid for in after years

by prayers and watchings and fastings before the Holy Rood of Waltham;

we may well believe that it still lay heavy on the hero’s soul as he

marched forth to victory at Stamfordbridge and to more glorious

overthrow at Senlac.

[Sidenote: Godwin sets sail. June 22, 1052.]

Harold and Leofwine were thus on their way to meet their father.

Meanwhile the revolution was going on rapidly on the other side of

England.[953] Godwine had gathered together a fleet in the Yser,[954]

the river of Flanders which flows by Dixmuyden and Nieuport, and falls

into the sea some way south-west of Bruges. He thence set [Sidenote: His

first appearance off the English coast.] sail, one day before Midsummer

eve, and sailed straight to Dungeness, south of Romney.[955] At Sandwich

the Earls Ralph and Odda were waiting for him, and a land force had also

been called out for the defence of the coast.[956] Some friendly

messenger warned the Earl of his danger, and he sailed westward to

Pevensey. In Sussex he was in his own country, among his immediate

possessions and his immediate followers, and he seems to have designed a

landing on the very spot where a landing so fatal to his house was made

fourteen years later. The King’s ships followed after him, but a violent

storm hindered either party from carrying out its designs. Neither side

knew the whereabouts of the other;[957] the King’s fleet [Sidenote: He

returns to Bruges.] put back to Sandwich, while Godwine retired to his

old quarters in Flanders.[958] Great discontent seems to have followed

this mishap on the King’s side. The blame was clearly laid on the Earls

and on the force which they commanded. Eadward may not have learned the

lesson of Cnut, and he perhaps thought that the elements were bound to

submit to his will. The fleet was ordered to return to London, where the

King would put at its head other Earls, and would supply them with other

rowers.[959] To London accordingly the fleet returned, but it was found

easier to get rid of the old force than to provide a new one; everything

lagged behind; probably nobody was zealous in the cause; even if any

were zealous, their zeal would, as ever happened in that age, give way

beneath the irksomeness of being kept under arms without any hope of

immediate action. At last the whole naval force, which was to guard the

coast and keep out the returning traitor, gradually dispersed, and each

man went to his own home.[960]

[Sidenote: Godwine sails the second time to Wight.]

The coast was now clear for Godwine’s return, and his friends in England

were doubtless not slow to apprize him that his path was now open. He

might now, it would seem, have sailed, without fear of any hindrance,

from the mouth of the Yser to London Bridge. But, with characteristic

wariness, he preferred not to make his great venture till he had

strengthened his force by the addition of the ships of Harold and

Leofwine, and till he had tried and made himself sure of the friendly

feeling of a large part of England. In the first district however where

he landed, he found the mass of the people either unfriendly to him or

kept in check by fear of the ruling powers. From Flanders he sailed

straight for the Isle of Wight, as a convenient central spot in which to

await the coming of his sons from Ireland. He seems to have cruised

along the coast between Wight and Portland, and to have harried the

country without scruple wherever supplies were refused to him.[961] But

of armed resistance, such as Harold had met with at Porlock, we hear

nothing, and there is nothing which implies that a single life was lost

on either [Sidenote: Meeting of Godwine and Harold: they sail eastward.]

side. At last the nine ships of Harold, rich with the plunder of Devon

and Somerset, joined the fleet of his father at Portland. We need hardly

stop to dwell on the mutual joy of father, sons, and brothers, meeting

again after so many toils and dangers, and with so fair a hope of

restoration for themselves and of deliverance for their country.[962] It

is more important to note that, from this time, we are expressly told

that all systematic ravaging ceased; provisions however were freely

taken wherever need demanded. But as the united fleet steered its course

eastward towards Sandwich, the true feeling of the nation showed itself

more and more plainly. As the deliverer sailed along the South-Saxon

coast, the [Sidenote: Zeal in their cause shown by the men of Sussex,

Kent, and Essex.] sea-faring men of every haven hastened to join his

banners. From Kent, from Hastings,[963] even from comparatively distant

Essex,[964] from those purely Saxon lands, whence the Briton had

vanished, and where the Dane had never settled, came up the voice of

England to welcome the men who had come to set her free. At every step

men pressed to the shore, eager to swell the force of the patriots, with

one voice pledging themselves to the national cause, and raising the

spirit-stirring cry, “We will live and die with Earl Godwine.”[965] At

Pevensey, at Hythe, at Folkestone, at Dover, at Sandwich, provisions

were freely supplied, hostages were freely given,[966] every ship in

their havens was freely placed at the bidding of their lawful Earl. The

great body of the fleet [Sidenote: They enter the Thames and sail

towards London.] sailed round the Forelands, entered the mouth of the

Thames, and advanced right upon London. A detachment, [Sidenote:

Unexplained ravages in Sheppey.] we are told, lagged behind, and did

great damage in the Isle of Sheppey, burning the town of King’s

Middleton. They then sailed after the Earls towards London.[967] The

language of our story seems to imply that neither Godwine nor Harold had

any hand in this seemingly quite wanton outrage. Needlessly to harm the

house or estate of any Englishman at such a moment was quite contrary to

Godwine’s policy, quite contrary to the course which both he and Harold

had followed since they met at Portland. The deed was probably done by

some unruly portion of the fleet, by some Englishman who seized the

opportunity to gratify some local jealousy, by some Dane who,

consciously or unconsciously, looked with a pirate’s eye on the corner

of Britain where his race had first found a winter’s shelter.[968]

[Sidenote: Godwine reaches Southwark. September 14, 1052.]

The fleet was now in the Thames. Strengthened by the whole naval force

of south-eastern England, the Earl had now a following which was

formidable indeed. The river was covered with ships; their decks were

thick with warriors harnessed for the battle.[969] In such guise the

Earl advanced to Southwark, and paused there, in sight doubtless of his

own house, of the house whence he and his sons had fled for their lives

a year before.[970] He had to wait for the tide, and he employed the

interval in sending messages to the citizens of London.[971] The

townsfolk of the great city were not a whit behind their brethren of

Kent and Sussex in zeal for the national cause. [Sidenote: London

declares for Godwine.] The spirit which had beaten back Swend and Cnut,

the spirit which was in after times to make London ever the stronghold

of English freedom, the spirit which made its citizens foremost in the

patriot armies alike of the thirteenth and of the seventeenth centuries,

was now as warm in the hearts of those gallant burghers as in any

earlier or later age. With a voice all but unanimous, the citizens

declared in favour of the great Earl; a few votes only, the votes, it

may be, of strangers or of courtiers, were given against the emphatic

resolution that what the Earl would the city would.[972]

[Sidenote: The King hastens to London with an army.]

But meanwhile where was King Eadward? At a later crisis of hardly

inferior moment we shall find him taking his pleasure among the forests

of Wiltshire, and needing no little persuasion to make him leave his

sport and give a moment’s thought to the affairs of his Kingdom. He must

have been engaged at this time in some such absorbing pursuit, as he

appears to have heard nothing of Godwine’s triumphant progress along the

southern coast till the Earl had actually reached Sandwich. The news

awakened him to a fit of unusual energy. The interests at stake were

indeed not small; the return of Godwine might cut him off from every

face that reminded him of his beloved Normandy; he might be forced again

to surround himself with Englishmen, and to recall his wife from her

cloister to his palace. In such a cause King Eadward did not delay. He

came with speed to London, accompanied by the Earls Ralph and Odda, and

surrounded by a train of Norman knights and priests, and sent out orders

for the immediate gathering in arms of such of his subjects as still

remained loyal to him.[973] But men had no heart in the cause; the

summons was slowly and imperfectly obeyed. The King contrived however,

before the fleet of Godwine actually reached the city, to get together

fifty ships,[974] those no doubt whose crews had forsaken them a few

weeks earlier. And he contrived, out of his own housecarls,

strengthened, it would seem, by the levies of some of the northern

shires, to gather a force strong enough to line the northern shore of

the Thames with armed men.[975]

[Sidenote: Godwine before London.]

The day on which Godwine and his fleet reached Southwark was an

auspicious one. It was the Feast of the [Sidenote: Monday, September 14,

1052.] Exaltation of the Holy Cross.[976] It was the day kept in memory

of the triumphant return and the devout humility of that renowned

Emperor who restored the glory of the Roman arms, who rivalled the great

Macedonian in a second overthrow of the Persian power, and who brought

with him, as the choicest trophy of his victories, that holiest

[Sidenote: 628.] of Christian relics which his sword had won back from

heathen bondage. Harold, like Heraclius, was returning to his own,

perhaps already the sworn votary of that revered relic whose name he

chose as his war-cry, and in whose honour he was perhaps already

planning that great foundation which was of itself enough to make his

name immortal. The day of the Holy Cross must indeed have been a day of

the brightest omen to the future founder of Waltham. And a memorable and

a happy day it was. Events were thickly crowded into its short hours,

events which, even after so many ages, may well make every English heart

swell with pride. It is something indeed to feel ourselves of the blood

and speech of the actors of that day and of its morrow. The tide for

which the fleet had waited came soon after the Earls had received the

promise of support from the burghers of London. The anchors were

weighed; the fleet sailed on with all confidence. The bridge was passed

without hindrance, and the Earls found themselves, as they had found

themselves a year before, face to face with the armies of their

sovereign. But men’s minds had indeed changed since the Witan of England

had passed a decree of outlawry against Godwine and his house. Besides

his fleet, Godwine now found himself at the head of a [Sidenote: Zeal of

Godwine’s followers.] land force which might seem to have sprung out of

the earth at his bidding. The King’s troops lined the north bank of the

Thames, but its southern bank was lined, at least as thickly, with men

who had come together, like their brethren of the southern coasts, ready

to live and die with the great Earl. The whole force of the

neighbourhood, instead of obeying the King’s summons, had come

unsummoned to the support of Godwine, and stood ready in battle array

awaiting his orders.[977] And different indeed was the spirit of the two

hosts. The Earl’s men were eager for action; it needed all his

eloquence, all his authority, to keep them back from jeoparding or

disgracing his cause by too hasty an attack on their sovereign

[Sidenote: Lukewarmness of the King’s troops.] or on their

countrymen.[978] But the Englishmen who had obeyed Eadward’s call were

thoroughly disheartened and lukewarm in his cause. The King’s own

housecarls shrank from the horrors of a civil war, a war in which

Englishmen would be called on to slaughter one another, for no object

but to rivet the yoke of outlandish men about their necks.[979] With the

two armies in this temper, the success of Godwine was certain; all that

was needed was for the Earl to insure that it should be a bloodless

success. The [Sidenote: Godwine demands his restoration;] object of

Godwine was to secure his own restoration and the deliverance of his

country without striking a blow. He sent a message to the King, praying

that he and his might be restored to all that had been unjustly taken

from [Sidenote: Eadward hesitates; increased indignation of Godwine’s

men;] them.[980] The King, with his Norman favourites around him,

hesitated for a while. The indignation of the Earl’s men grew deeper and

louder; fierce cries were heard against the King and against all who

took part with him; no power less than that of Godwine could have

checked the demand for instant battle.[981] The result of a battle could

hardly have been doubtful. Ralph the Timid and Richard the son of Scrob,

even the pious Earl Odda himself, would hardly, even at the head of more

willing soldiers, have found themselves a match for the warrior who had

fleshed his sword at Sherstone and Assandun, and who had made the name

of Englishman a name of terror among the stoutest [Sidenote: Godwine

restrains their eagerness.] warriors of the shores of the Baltic.[982]

But it was not with axe and javelin that that day’s victory was to be

won. The mighty voice, the speaking look and gesture, of that old man

eloquent could again sway assemblies of Englishmen at his will.[983] His

irresistible tongue now pleaded with all earnestness against any hasty

act of violence or disloyalty. His own conscience was clear from any

lack of faithfulness; he would willingly die rather than do, or allow to

be done on his behalf, any act of wrong or irreverence towards his Lord

the King.[984] The appeal was successful in every way. The eagerness of

his own men was checked, and time was given for wiser counsels to

[Sidenote: Embassy of Stigand; hostages exchanged and matters referred

to a Gemót.] resume their sway on the other side. Bishop Stigand and

other wise men, both from within and from without the city, appeared on

board the Earl’s ship in the character of mediators. It was soon agreed

to give hostages on both sides, and to defer the decision of all matters

to a solemn Gemót to be holden the next morning.[985] Godwine, Harold,

and such of their followers as thought good, now left their [Sidenote:

Godwine and Harold land.] ships, and once more set foot in peace on the

soil of their native island.[986] The Earl and his sons no doubt betook

themselves to his own house in Southwark, and there waited for the

gathering of the next day with widely different feelings from those with

which they had last waited in that house for the decisions of an

Assembly of the Wise.

But there were those about Eadward who could not with the like calmness

await the sentence of the great tribunal which was to give judgement on

the morrow. [Sidenote: Fears of the King’s Norman favourites.] There

were those high in Church and State who knew too well what would be the

inevitable vote of a free assembly of Englishmen. There were Thegns and

Prelates in Eadward’s court who saw in the promised meeting of the Witan

of the land only a gathering of men eager to inflict on them the

righteous punishment of their evil deeds. First and foremost among them

was the Norman monk whom the blind partiality of Eadward had thrust into

the highest place in the English Church. Robert of Jumièges, the man

who, more than any other one man, had stirred up strife between the King

and his people, the man who, more than any other one man, had driven the

noblest sons of England into banishment, now felt that his hour was

come. He dared not face the assembled nation which he had outraged; he

dared not take his place in that great Council of which his office made

him the highest member. The like fear fell on Ulf of Dorchester, the

Bishop who had done nought bishoplike, on William of London, and on all

the Frenchmen, priests and knights alike, who had sunned themselves in

the smiles of the court, but who shrank from meeting the assembly of the

people. Flight [Sidenote: General flight of the foreigners.] was their

only hope. As soon as the news came that peace was made, and that all

matters were referred to a lawful Gemót, the whole company of the

strangers who had been the curse of England mounted their horses and

rode for their lives. Eastward, westward, northward, Norman knights and

priests were seen hurrying. Godwine and Harold, in the like case, had

been treacherously pursued;[987] but these men, criminals as they were

fleeing from the vengeance of an offended nation, were allowed to go

whither they would unmolested. Whatever violence was done was wholly the

act of the strangers. Some rode west to the castle in Herefordshire,

Pentecost’s castle, the original cause of so much mischief; some rode

towards a castle in the north, belonging to the Norman Staller, Robert

the son of Wymarc.[988] The Bishops, perhaps the objects of a still

fiercer popular indignation than even the lay favourites, undertook a

still more perilous journey by themselves. What became of William of

London is not quite plain,[989] but we have [Sidenote: Flight of

Archbishop Robert and Bishop Ulf.] a graphic description of the escape

of the Prelates of Canterbury and Dorchester. Robert and Ulf, mounted

and sword in hand, cut their way through the streets, wounding and

slaying as they went;[990] they burst through the east gate of London;

they rode straight for the haven of Eadwulfsness;[991] there they found

an old crazy ship;[992] they went on board of her and so gat them over

sea. Never again did those evil Prelates trouble England with their

personal presence; but the tongue of Robert was still busy in other

lands to do hurt to England and her people. The patriotic chronicler

raises an emphatic note of triumph over the ignominious flight of the

stranger Primate. “He left behind his pall and all Christendom here in

the land, even as God it willed; for that he had before taken upon him

that worship, as God willed it not.”[993]

[Sidenote: Meeting of the _Mycel Gemót_. Tuesday, September 15th.]

In the morning the great Assembly met.[994] The great city and its

coasts were now clear of strangers, save such as had come in the train

of the deliverers.[995] The people of England—for such a gathering may

well deserve that name—came together to welcome its friends and to

pronounce sentence upon its enemies. The two armies and the citizens of

London formed a multitude which no building could [Sidenote: It meets in

the open air.] contain. That _Mickle Gemót_, whose memory long lived in

the minds of Englishmen, came together, in old Teutonic fashion, in the

open air without the walls of London.[996] The scene was pictured ages

before by the pencil of Tacitus and sung in yet earlier days by the

voice of Homer. It may still be seen, year by year, among the [Sidenote:

Its popular character.] mountains of Uri and in the open market-place of

Trogen. Other Assemblies of those times may have shrunk up into Councils

of a small body of Thegns and Prelates; but on that great day the

English people appeared, in all the fulness of its ancient rights, as a

coordinate authority with the English King.[997] Men came armed to the

place of meeting;[998] our fathers did so in their old homes beyond the

sea, and our distant kinsmen still preserve the same immemorial use in

the free assemblies of Appenzell.[999] But the enemy was no longer at

hand; in that great gathering of liberated and rejoicing Englishmen

sword and axe were needed only as parts of a solemn pageant, or to give

further effect to the harangue of a practised orator. There, girt with

warlike weapons, but shorn of the help and countenance of Norman knights

and Norman churchmen,[1000] sat the King of the English, driven at last

to meet face to face with a free assembly of his people. There were all

the Earls and all the best men that were in this land;[1001] there was

the mighty multitude of English freemen, gathered to hail the return of

the worthiest of their own blood. And [Sidenote: Godwine at the Gemót.]

there, surrounded by his four valiant sons, stood the great deliverer,

the man who had set the King upon his throne, the man who had refused to

obey his unlawful orders, who had cleared the land of his unworthy

favourites, but who had never swerved in his true loyalty to the King

and his Kingdom. The man at whose mere approach the foreign knights and

Prelates had fled for their lives,[1002] could now [Sidenote: He

supplicates the King;] afford to assume the guise of humble supplication

towards the sovereign who had received his Crown at his hands. Godwine

stood forth; he laid his axe at the foot of the throne, and knelt, as in

the act of homage, before his Lord the King.[1003] By the Crown upon his

brow, whose highest and brightest ornament was the cross of Christ, he

conjured his sovereign to allow him to clear himself [Sidenote: he

speaks to the people.] before the King and his people of all the crimes

which had been laid against him and his house.[1004] The demand could

not be refused, and the voice which had so often swayed assemblies of

Englishmen, was heard once more, in all the fulness of its eloquence,

setting forth the innocence of Godwine himself and of Harold and all his

sons.[1005] Few[1006] and weighty were the words which the great Earl

spoke that day before the King and all the people of the land.[1007] But

they were words which at once carried the whole Assembly with them.

Those who have heard the most spirit-stirring of earthly sounds, when a

sovereign people binds itself to observe the laws which it has itself

decreed, when thousands of voices join as one man in the repetition of

one solemn formula,[1008] can conceive the shout of assent with which

the assembled multitude agreed to the proposal that Godwine should be

deemed to have cleared himself of [Sidenote: The Assembly decrees his

acquittal and restoration.] every charge. The voice of that great

Assembly, the voice of the English nation, at once declared him

guiltless, at once decreed the restoration of himself, his sons, and all

his followers, to all the lands, offices, and honours which they had

held in the days before his outlawry. The old charges were thus again

solemnly set aside, and an amnesty was proclaimed for all the irregular

acts of the last three months of revolution. The last year was as it

were wiped out; Godwine was once more Earl of the West-Saxons, Harold

was once more Earl of the East-Angles, as if Eustace and Robert had

never led astray the simplicity [Sidenote: It decrees the outlawry and

deprivation of Archbishop Robert and many other Normans.] of the royal

saint. And yet more; it was not enough merely to put England again into

the state in which she stood at the moment of the banishment of Godwine.

It was needful to punish the authors of all the evils that had happened,

and to guard against the possible recurrence of such evils in days to

come. The deepest in guilt of all the royal favourites was felt to be

the Norman Archbishop. He had taken himself beyond the reach of justice;

but, had he been present, the mildness of English political warfare

would have hindered any severer sentence than that which was actually

pronounced. “He had done most to cause the strife between Earl Godwine

and the King”[1009]—the words of the formal resolution peep out, as they

so often do, in the words of the Chronicler—and, on this charge, Robert

was deprived of his see, and was solemnly declared an outlaw. The like

sentence was pronounced against “all the Frenchmen”—we are again reading

the words of the sentence—“who had reared up bad law, and judged unjust

judgements, and counselled evil [Sidenote: Normans excepted from the

sentence.] counsel in this land.”[1010] But the sentence did not extend

to all the men of Norman birth or of French speech who were settled in

the country. It was intended only to strike actual offenders. By an

exception capable of indefinite and dangerous extension, those were

excepted “whom the King liked, and who were true to him and all his

folk.”[1011] Lastly, in the old formula which we have so often already

[Sidenote: “Good law” decreed.] come across—“Good law was decreed for

all folk.”[1012] As in other cases, the expression refers far more to

administration than to legislation, to the observance of old laws rather

than to the enactment of new. The Frenchmen had reared up bad law; that

is, they had been guilty of corrupt and unjust administration; the good

law, that is, the good government of former times, was now to be

restored. There was no need to renew the Law of Eadgar or of Cnut or of

any other King of past times. The “good state,” as an Italian patriot

might have called it, was not, in the eyes of that Assembly, a vision of

past times, a tradition of the days of their fathers or of the old time

before them. It was simply what every man could remember for himself, in

the days before Robert, and men like Robert, had obtained exclusive

possession of the royal ear. There was no need to go back to any more

distant standard than the earliest years of the reigning King. Good Law

was decreed for all folk. Things were to be once more as they had been

in the days when Earl Godwine had been the chief adviser of the King on

whom he had himself bestowed the Crown.

[Sidenote: Personal reconciliation of Godwine and the King.]

The work of the Assembly was done; the innocent had been restored, the

guilty had been punished; the nation had bound itself to the maintenance

of law and right. Godwine was again the foremost man in the realm. But

though the political restoration was perfect, the personal

reconciliation seems still to have cost the King a struggle.[1013] It

required the counsel of wise men, and a full conviction that all

resistance was hopeless, before Eadward again received his injured

father-in-law to his personal friendship. At last he yielded; King and

Earl walked unarmed to the Palace of Westminster, and there, on his own

hearth, Eadward again admitted Godwine to the kiss of peace. To receive

again to his friendship the wife and sons of Godwine, Gytha, Harold,

Tostig, Gyrth, and Leofwine, probably cost him no special struggle. They

had never personally offended him, and they seem, even before their

outlawry, to have won his personal affection. But the complete

restoration of the family to its former honours required another step

which [Sidenote: Restoration of the Lady Eadgyth.] may perhaps have

caused Eadward a pang. When Godwine, his wife and his sons, were

restored to their old honours, it was impossible to refuse the like

restitution to his daughter. The Lady Eadgyth was brought back with all

royal pomp from her cloister at Wherwell; she received again all the

lands and goods of which she had been deprived, and was restored to the

place, whatever that place may have been, which she had before held in

the court and household of Eadward.[1014]

[Sidenote: Absence of Swegen;]

The restoration of the house of Godwine to its rank and honours was thus

complete, so far as the members of that house had appeared in person to

claim again that which they had lost. But in the glories of that day the

eldest born of Godwine and Gytha had no part. Swegen had shared his

father’s banishment; he had not shared his father’s return. His guilty,

but not hardened, soul had been stricken to the earth by the memory of

his crimes. [Sidenote: his pilgrimage to Jerusalem,] The blood of Beorn,

the wrongs of Eadgifu, lay heavy upon his spirit. At the bidding of his

own remorse, he had left his father and brothers behind in Flanders, and

had gone, barefooted, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Tomb. He fulfilled his

vow, but he lived not to return to his Earldom or to his native land.

While his father and brothers were making their triumphant defence

before their assembled countrymen, Swegen was toiling back, slowly and

wearily, through the dwelling-places of men of other tongues and of

other creeds. The toil was too great for a frame no doubt already bowed

down by remorse and penance. Cold, [Sidenote: and death in Lykia.

September 29, 1052.] exposure, and weariness were too much for him, and

fourteen days after Godwine’s solemn restoration in London, the eldest

son of Godwine breathed his last in some unknown spot of the distant

land of Lykia.[1015]

There is no doubt that the three great decrees, for the restoration of

Godwine and his family, for the outlawry of the Archbishop and the other

Normans, and for the renewal of the good laws, were all passed in the

great Gemót of this memorable Tuesday.[1016] Other measures which were

their natural complement may well have been dealt with in later, perhaps

in less crowded and excited, [Sidenote: Disposition of Earldoms; Ælfgar

gives way to Harold.] assemblies. Some of the greatest offices in Church

and State had to be disposed of. Godwine and Harold received their old

Earldoms back again. The restoration of Harold implied the deposition of

Ælfgar. It is singular that we find no distinct mention either of him or

of his father, or yet of Siward, through the whole history of the

revolution. The only hint which we have on the subject seems to imply

that they at least acquiesced in the changes which were made, and even

that Ælfgar cheerfully submitted to the loss [Sidenote: Ralph.] of his

Earldom.[1017] As Swegen did not return, there was no need to disturb

Ralph in his Earldom of the Magesætas. [Sidenote: Odda.] Odda must have

given up that portion of Godwine’s Earldom which had been entrusted to

him,[1018] but he seems to have been indemnified by the Earldom of the

Hwiccas, held most probably with the reservation of a superiority on the

part of Leofric.[1019]

[Sidenote: The vacant Bishopricks.]

The disposal of the Bishopricks which had become vacant by the flight of

their foreign occupants was a more important matter, at least it led to

more important consequences in the long run. At the moment of Godwine’s

restoration, it probably did not occur to any Englishman to doubt that

they were vacant both in fact and in law. Robert and Ulf had fled from

their sees; they had been declared outlaws by the highest authority of

the nation, or rather by the nation itself. Our forefathers most likely

thought very little about canonical subtleties. They would hardly argue

the point whether the Bishops had resigned or had been deprived, nor

would they doubt that the nation had full power to deprive them. In

whatever way the vacancies had occurred, the sees were in fact vacant;

there was no Archbishop at Canterbury and no Bishop at Dorchester. That

the King and his Witan would be stepping beyond their powers in filling

those sees was not likely to come into [Sidenote: Relation of Church and

State at the time. Identity of the two bodies.] any man’s head. We must

remember how thoroughly the English nation and the English Church were

then identified. No broad line was drawn between ecclesiastical and

temporal causes, between ecclesiastical and temporal offices. The

immediate personal duties of an Earl and of a Bishop were undoubtedly

different; but the two dignitaries acted within their shire with a joint

authority in many matters which, a hundred years later, would have been

divided between a distinct civil and a distinct ecclesiastical tribunal.

In appointing a Bishop, though we have seen that canonical election was

not shut out, we have also seen that the Witan of the land had their

share in the matter, and that it was by the King’s writ that the

Bishoprick was formally bestowed.[1020] What the King and his Witan

gave, the King and his Witan could doubtless take away, and they

accordingly proceeded to deal with the sees of the outlawed Bishops

exactly as they would have dealt [Sidenote: Vacancy of Canterbury filled

by Stigand. 1052.] with the Earldoms of outlawed Earls. It might almost

seem that the see of the chief offender, the Norman Primate, was at once

bestowed by the voice of the great Assembly which restored

Godwine.[1021] It was at all events bestowed within the year, while the

Bishopricks of London and Dorchester were allowed to remain vacant some

time longer. It may perhaps be thought that the appointment which was

actually made to the see of Canterbury bears signs of being an act of

the joyous fervour with which the nation welcomed its deliverance. It

might have been expected that the claims of Ælfric to the Primacy would

have revived on the expulsion of Robert. Ælfric had been canonically

elected by the monks of Christ Church; no one seems to have objected to

him except the King and his Frenchmen; he possessed all possible

virtues, and he was moreover a kinsman of Earl Godwine. But, in the

enthusiasm of the moment, there was one name which would attract more

suffrages than that of any other Prelate or Priest in England. On that

great Holy Cross Day the services of Stigand to the national cause had

been second only to those of Godwine himself. As Robert had been the

first to make strife, so Stigand had been the first to make peace,

between the King and the great Earl. For such a service the highest

place in the national Church would not, at the moment, seem too splendid

a reward. Ælfric was accordingly forgotten, and Stigand was, either in

the great Gemót of September or in the regular Gemót of the following

Christmas, appointed to the Archbishoprick of Canterbury. With the

Primacy, according to a practice vicious enough in itself, but which

might have been defended by abundance of precedents, he continued to

hold the see of Winchester in plurality.

[Sidenote: Importance of this appointment.]

This appointment of Stigand was one of great moment in many ways.

Amongst other things, it gave an [Sidenote: Handle given to the Normans

by Robert’s expulsion.] excellent handle to the wily Duke of the

Normans, and thus became one of the collateral causes of the Norman

Conquest. The outlawed Robert retired in the end to his own monastery of

Jumièges, and there died and was buried. But he did not die till he had

made Europe resound with the tale of his wrongs. The world soon heard

how a Norman Primate had been expelled from his see, how an Englishman

had been enthroned in his place, by sheer secular violence, without the

slightest pretence of canonical form. Robert told his tale at

Rome;[1022] we may be sure that he also told it at Rouen. William

treasured it up, and knew how to use it when the time came. In his bill

of indictment against England, the expulsion of Archbishop Robert

appears as a prominent count.[1023] It is bracketted with the massacre

of Saint Brice, with the murder of Ælfred, and with all the other

stories which, though they could not make William’s claim to the Crown

one whit stronger, yet served admirably to discredit the cause of

England in men’s minds. No one knew better than William how to make

everything of this sort tell. The restoration of Godwine was an

immediate check to all his plans; it rendered his hopes of a peaceful

succession far less probable. But the expulsion of Robert and the other

Normans was a little sweet in the cup of bitterness. The English, and

Earl Godwine himself, in their insular recklessness of canonical

niceties, had unwittingly put another weapon into the hands of the foe

who was carefully biding his time.

[Sidenote: Doubtful ecclesiastical position of Stigand.]

Even in England the position of Stigand was a very doubtful one.[1024]

He was _de facto_ Archbishop, he acted as such in all political matters,

and was addressed as such in royal writs. We hear of no opposition to

him, of no attempt at his removal, till William himself was King. He was

undoubtedly an able and patriotic statesman, and his merits in this way

doubtless prevented any direct move against him. And yet even

Englishmen, and patriotic Englishmen, seem to have been uneasy as to his

ecclesiastical position. For six years he was an Archbishop without a

pallium; it was one of the charges against him [Sidenote: He receives

the pallium from the Antipope Benedict. 1058.] that he used the pallium

of his predecessor Robert. At last he obtained the coveted ornament from

Rome, but it was from the hands of a Pontiff whose occupation of the

Holy See was short, and who, as his cause was unsuccessful, was not

looked on by the Church as a canonical Pope. In fact, in strict

ecclesiastical eyes, Stigand’s reception of the pallium from Benedict

the Tenth seems only to have [Sidenote: His ministrations commonly

avoided.] made matters worse than they were before. At any rate, both

before and after this irregular investiture, men seem to have avoided

recourse to his hands for any great ecclesiastical rite. Most of the

Bishops of his province were, during his incumbency, consecrated by

other hands.[1025] Even Harold himself, politically his firm friend,

preferred the ministry of other Prelates in the two great ecclesiastical

ceremonies of his life, the consecration of Waltham and his own

coronation. One of our Chroniclers, not indeed the most patriotic of

their number, distinctly and significantly denies Stigand’s right to be

called Archbishop.[1026] One cannot help thinking that all this

canonical precision must have arisen among the foreign ecclesiastics who

held English preferment, among the Lotharingians favoured by Godwine and

Harold, no less than among the King’s own Normans. But at all events the

scruple soon became prevalent among Englishmen of all classes. An

ecclesiastical punctilio which led Harold himself, on the occasion of

two of the most solemn events of his life, to offer a distinct slight to

a political friend of the highest rank, must have obtained a very firm

possession of the national mind.

[Sidenote: Ulf succeeded by Wulfwig. 1053–1067.]

The case of Stigand is the more remarkable, because no such difficulties

are spoken of as arising with regard to the position of another Prelate

whose case seems at first sight to have been just the same as his own.

If Robert was irregularly deprived, Ulf was equally so. Yet no objection

seems to have been made to the canonical character of Wulfwig, who, in

the course of the next year, succeeded Ulf in the see of

Dorchester.[1027] It is possible that the key to the difference may be

found in the fact of the long vacancy of Dorchester. This suggests the

idea of some application to Rome, which was successful in the case of

Wulfwig and unsuccessful in the case of Stigand. We can well conceive

that the deprivation of Ulf may have been confirmed, and that of Robert,

as far as the Papal power could annul it, annulled. It must be

remembered that Ulf, on account of his utter lack of learning, had found

great difficulty in obtaining the Papal approval of his first

nomination. The sins of Robert, on the other hand, seem to have been

only sins against England, which would pass for very venial errors at

Rome. This difference may perhaps account for the different treatment of

their two successors. At any rate, Wulfwig seems to have found no

opposition in any quarter to his occupancy of the great Mid-English

Bishoprick. And he seems to have himself set the example of the scruple

which has been just mentioned against recognizing Stigand in any

[Sidenote: Leofwine Bishop of Lichfield. 1053–1067.] purely spiritual

matter. Along with Leofwine, who in the same year became Bishop of

Lichfield, he went beyond sea to receive consecration, and the way in

which this journey is mentioned seems to imply that their motive was a

dislike to be consecrated by the hands of the new Metropolitan.[1028]

[Sidenote: William of London retains his Bishoprick.]

The see of London was treated in a different way from those of

Canterbury and Dorchester, and a way certainly most honourable to its

Norman occupant. We have seen that it is not certain whether Bishop

William accompanied Robert and Ulf in their escape from England.[1029]

It is certain that, if he left England, he was before long invited to

return and to reoccupy his see. This may have been the act of Harold

after the death of his father. It is an obvious conjecture that Harold

would be somewhat less strict in such matters than his wary and

experienced parent, and that he would listen with somewhat more favour

to the King’s requests for the retention or restoration of some of his

favourites.[1030] But it is certain that a Norman whom either Godwine or

Harold allowed either to retain, or to return to, the great see of

London must have been a man of a very different kind from Robert and

Ulf. We are expressly told that William’s Bishoprick was restored to him

on account of his good character.[1031] Indeed the character which could

obtain such forbearance for a Norman at such a moment must have been

unusually good, when we remember that he actually had an English

competitor for the see. Spearhafoc, it will not be forgotten, had been

regularly nominated to the Bishoprick, and though refused consecration,

had held its temporalities till the outlawry of Godwine allowed a Norman

to be put in his place.[1032] But the claims of Spearhafoc on the see of

London seem to have been as wholly forgotten as the claims of Ælfric on

the see of Canterbury. William retained the Bishoprick throughout the

reigns of Eadward and Harold, and he died, deeply honoured by the city

over which he [Sidenote: 1070.] ruled, four years after the accession of

his namesake.

[Sidenote: Normans allowed to remain or return.]

William was the only Norman who retained a Bishoprick, as Ralph was the

only stranger of any nation—for we can hardly count Siward as a

stranger—who retained an Earldom, after the restoration of Godwine. But,

under the terms of the exception to the general outlawry of Normans, a

good many men of that nation retained or recovered inferior, though

still considerable, offices. We have a list of those who were thus

excepted, which contains some names which we are surprised to find

there. The exception was to apply to those only who had been true to the

King and his people. Yet among the Normans who remained we find Richard

the son of Scrob,[1033] [Sidenote: Osbern of Richard’s castle.] and

among those who returned we find his son Osbern. These two men were

among the chief authors of all evil. Osbern was so conscious of guilt,

or so fearful of popular vengeance, that, in company with a comrade

named Hugh, he threw himself on the mercy of Earl Leofric. Osbern and

Hugh surrendered their castles, and passed with the Earl’s safe-conduct

into Scotland, where, along with other exiles, they were favourably

received by the reigning King Macbeth.[1034] Yet it is certain that

Osbern afterwards returned, and held both lands and offices in

Herefordshire.[1035] Others mentioned are Robert the Deacon, described

as the father-in-law of Richard, and who must therefore have been an old

man,[1036] Humphrey Cocksfoot, whom I cannot further identify, and

Ælfred the King’s stirrup-holder.[1037] The list might be largely

extended on the evidence of Domesday and the Charters. Some of the most

remarkable names are those of the Stallers, Robert the son of Wymarc and

Ralph,[1038] and the King’s Chamberlain, Hugh or Hugolin, a person who

has found his way from the dry entries in the Survey and the Charters

into the legend of his sainted master.[1039] Altogether the number of

Normans who remained in England during the later days of [Sidenote: Some

of them probably restored after Godwine’s death.] Eadward was clearly

not small. And, as some at least were evidently restored after flight or

banishment, the suggestion again presents itself that their restoration

was owing to special entreaties of the King after the death of Godwine.

Harold, in the first days of his administration, may hardly have been in

a position to refuse such entreaties. And, in any case, though we may

call it a weakness to allow men, some of whom at least were dangerous,

to remain in, or return to, the country, yet for a subject newly exalted

to give too willing an ear to the prayers of his sovereign, is a

weakness which may easily be forgiven.

The revolution was thus accomplished, a revolution of [Sidenote:

Estimate of Godwine’s conduct.] which England may well be proud. In the

words of a contemporary writer, the wisdom of Godwine had redressed all

the evils of the country without shedding a drop of blood.[1040] The

moderation of the Earl, the way in which he kept back his ardent

followers, the way in which he preserved his personal loyalty to the

King,[1041] are beyond all praise. He had delivered his country, he and

his had been restored to the favour of their prince, and he now again

entered on his old duties as Earl of the West-Saxons and virtual ruler

of the Kingdom of England. We may be sure that his popularity had never

been so high, or his general authority so boundless, as it was during

the short remainder of his life. For Godwine was not destined to any

long enjoyment of his renewed honour and prosperity; England was not

destined to look much longer [Sidenote: Godwine’s illness.] upon the

champion who had saved her. Soon after his restoration the Earl began to

sicken;[1042] but he still continued his attention to public affairs,

and we can see the working of his vigorous hand in the energetic way in

[Sidenote: Christmas Gemót at Gloucester. 1052–1053.] which a Welsh

marauder was dealt with at the Christmas Gemót of this year, held as

usual at Gloucester. Rhys, the brother of Gruffydd King of the

South-Welsh, had been guilty of many plundering expeditions at a place

called Bulendún, the position of which seems to be unknown. Early in the

year the Northern Gruffydd had ravaged the border at pleasure; now we

read, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, that a decree

of the Witan—a bill of attainder we may call it—was passed for the

[Sidenote: Rhys beheaded and his head brought to Eadward. January 5,

1053.] execution of the Welsh prince.[1043] The decree was duly carried

out, and the Christmas festivities were not over, when the head of Rhys

was brought to King Eadward, on the vigil of the Epiphany, exactly

thirteen years before his [Sidenote: Arnwig resigns the Abbey of

Peterborough. Leofric succeeds.] own death.[1044] It was seemingly in

the same Gemót that Arnwig, Abbot of Peterborough, resigned his abbey,

“and gave it to Leofric the monk by the King’s leave and that of the

monks.”[1045] This expression is remarkable, as illustrating that union

of royal, capitular, and we may add parliamentary, action, which we have

already noticed as prevailing in the appointment of English Prelates in

those days.[1046] The process was no doubt the same as that by which it

had been attempted to raise Ælfric to the see of Canterbury. The monks,

at the suggestion of Arnwig, elected Leofric as his successor. They

petitioned the King and his Witan to confirm the election. In this case

the [Sidenote: Leofric Abbot of Peterborough. 1053–1066.] confirmation

was granted, whereas in the case of Ælfric it had been refused. Abbot

Leofric, a nephew of his namesake the Earl, was a man of high birth and

of high spirit.[1047] He ruled the great house of Saint Peter with all

honour for thirteen years; he enriched the monastery with lands and

ornaments of all kinds, and won for it the favour of the King and all

the great men of the land. Peterborough, under his rule, became so rich

in the precious metals that men called the house Gildenborough.[1048]

But, in the eyes of English patriots, Abbot Leofric has won a still

higher fame by an act less clearly coming within the range of his

ecclesiastical duties. He was one of those great Lords of the Church who

did not feel that they were hindered by their monastic vows from

marching by the side of Harold to the great battle.[1049]

[Sidenote: Easter Gemót at Winchester. 1053.]

The next great festival of the Church, the next great assembly of the

English Witan, beheld the death of the most renowned Englishman of that

generation. The King kept the Easter festival at Winchester, and on the

Monday of that week of rejoicing, the Earl of the West-Saxons, with his

sons Harold, Tostig, and Gyrth, were admitted [Sidenote: Godwine’s

illness, April 12,] to the royal table. During the meal Godwine fell

from his seat speechless and powerless. His sons lifted him from the

ground, and carried him to the King’s own bower, in hopes of his

recovery. Their hopes were in vain; the Earl [Sidenote: and death, April

15.] never spoke again, and, after lying insensible for three days, he

died on the following Thursday. Such is the simple, yet detailed,

account which a contemporary writer gives us of an event which has,

perhaps even more than any other event of these times, been seized upon

as a subject for Norman romance and calumny. There was undoubtedly

something striking and awful in the sight of the first man in England,

in all the full glory of his recovered power, thus suddenly smitten with

his death-blow. He had been, as we have seen, ailing for some months,

but the actual stroke, when it came, seems to have been quite unlooked

for. It is not wonderful that, in such a death at such a moment, men saw

a [Sidenote: Norman fictions about the death of Godwine.] special work

of divine judgement. It is not wonderful that Norman enemies brought the

old scandals up again, and decked out the tale of the death of the

murderer of Ælfred with the most appalling details of God’s vengeance

upon the hardened and presumptuous sinner. I shall elsewhere discuss

their romantic inventions, which in truth belong less to the province of

the historian than to that of the comparative mythologist.[1050] It is

more important to note here that one English writer seems to see in

Godwine’s death the punishment of his real or supposed [Sidenote: Bounty

of Gytha.] aggressions on the property of the Church.[1051] On this last

score however the bounty of his widow did all that she could to make

atonement for any wrongdoings on the part of the deceased. The pious

munificence of Gytha is acknowledged even by those who are most bitter

against her husband, and it now showed itself in lavish offerings for

the repose of the soul of Godwine.[1052] His place of burial [Sidenote:

Godwine buried in the Old Minster.] need hardly be mentioned. The man

who was greater than a King, the maker and the father of Kings, found

his last resting-place among Kings. His corpse was laid by that of the

King under whom he had risen to greatness, by that of the Lady whose

rights he had so stoutly defended, by that of the first King whom he had

placed on the West-Saxon throne, by that of the murdered nephew whose

death had cast the first shade of gloom upon his house. The Earl of the

West-Saxons, dying in the West-Saxon capital, was buried with all pomp

in the greatest of West-Saxon sanctuaries, in the Old Minster of

Winchester.[1053] That renowned church was enriched with lands

[Sidenote: General grief of the nation.] and ornaments in memory of the

dead. But the noblest offering of all was the grief of the nation which

he had saved. His real faults, his imaginary crimes, were all forgotten.

Men remembered only that the greatest man of their blood and speech was

taken from them. They thought of the long years of peace and righteous

government which they had enjoyed under his rule; they thought of the

last and greatest of his great deeds, how he had chased the stranger

from the land, and had made England England once again. Around the bier

of Godwine men wept as for a father; they wept for the man whose hand

had guided England and her people through all the storms of so many

years of doubt and danger.[1054] They little deemed that, ages after his

death, calumnies would still be heaped upon his name. They deemed not

that the lies of the stranger would take such root that the deliverer

for whom they mourned would live in the pages of pretended history as

Godwine the traitor. The time is now come to redress the wrong, and to

do tardy justice to the fair fame of one of the greatest of England’s

worthies. [Sidenote: True estimate of Godwine’s character.] To know what

Godwine was, we have but to cast away the fables of later days, to turn

to the records of his own time, to see how he looked in the eyes of men

who had seen and heard him, of men who had felt the blessings of his

rule and whose hearts had been stirred by the voice of his mighty

eloquence. No man ever deserved a higher or a more lasting place in

national gratitude than the first man who, being neither King nor

Priest, stands forth in English history as endowed with all the highest

attributes of the statesman. In him, in those distant times, we can

revere the great minister, the unrivalled parliamentary leader, the man

who could sway councils and assemblies at his will, and whose voice,

during five and thirty years of political life, was never raised in any

cause but that of the welfare of England. Side by side with all that is

worthiest in our later history—side by side with his own counterpart two

ages afterwards, the second deliverer from the yoke of the stranger, the

victor of Lewes, the martyr of Evesham—side by side with all who, from

his day to ours, have, in the field or in the senate, struggled or

suffered in the cause of English freedom—side by side with the worthies

of the thirteenth and the worthies of the seventeenth century—will the

voice of truthful history, rising above the calumnies of ages, place the

name of the great deliverer of the eleventh, the Earl of happy

memory,[1055] whose greatness was ever the greatness of England, whose

life was one long offering to her welfare, and whose death came

fittingly as the crown of that glorious life, when he had once more

given peace and freedom to the land which he loved so well.

§ 2. _From the Accession of Harold to the Earldom of the West-Saxons to

his first War with Gruffydd._ 1053–1056.

The great Earl was dead, and the office which he had held, an office

which no man had ever held before him,[1056] was again at the disposal

of the King and his Witan. As Godwine’s death had happened at the Easter

festival, the Great Council of the nation was doubtless still in

session. We may therefore assume, with perfect safety, that the

appointments which the Earl’s death rendered needful [Sidenote: Nature

of the succession to Earldoms.] were made at once, before the Assembly

dispersed. The nature of the succession to these great governments must

by this time be perfectly well understood. The King and his Witan might

nominate whom they would to a vacant Earldom; but there was a strong

feeling, whenever there was no special reason to the contrary, in favour

of appointing the son of a deceased Earl. In Earldoms, like those of

Mercia and Northumberland, where an ancient house had been in possession

for several generations, this sort of preference had grown into the same

kind of imperfect hereditary right which existed in the case of the

Crown itself. It would have required a very strong case indeed for King

and Witan to feel themselves justified in appointing any one but a son

of Leofric to succeed Leofric in the government of Mercia. But in the

case of [Sidenote: Special position of East-Anglia.] Wessex and

East-Anglia no such inchoate right could be put forward by any man. The

old East-Anglian house had probably become extinct, either through the

slaughter of Assandun, or through the executions in the early days of

Cnut.[1057] If not extinct, it had, at all events, sunk into

insignificance, and had become lost to history. The Danish Thurkill had

founded no dynasty in his Earldom. We cannot even make out with

certainty the succession of Earls between [Sidenote: and Wessex.] him

and Harold. The Earldom of the West-Saxons was a mere creation of Cnut

himself. It would have broken in upon no feeling of ancient tradition,

if the office had been abolished, and if the King had taken into his own

hands the immediate government of the old cradle of his [Sidenote:

Reasons for retaining the West-Saxon Earldom.] house. But such a step

would have been distinctly a backward step. The King of the English was

now King in every part of his realm alike. Certain parts of his realm

might enjoy more of his personal presence than others; certain parts

might even be practically more amenable to his authority than others;

each great division of the Kingdom might still retain its local laws and

customs; but there was still only one English Kingdom; no part of that

Kingdom was a dependency of any other part; the King was King of the

West-Saxons in no other sense than that in which he was King of the

Northumbrians. But, if the local West-Saxon Earldom had been abolished,

instead of a King of the English, reigning over one united Kingdom,

there would again have been a King of the West-Saxons, holding

East-Anglia, Mercia, and Northumberland as dependent provinces. Here

then were good political reasons for retaining the institution of the

Great Cnut, and for again appointing an Earl of the West-Saxons.

Reverence also for the memory of the great man who was gone pleaded

equally for the same course. An Earl of the West-Saxons had done more

for England than any other subject had ever done. With Godwine and his

great deeds still living in the minds and on the tongues of men, there

could be little doubt as to giving him a successor; there could be

hardly more of doubt as to who that successor should be.

[Sidenote: Harold Earl of the West-Saxons. Easter, 1053.]

The choice of the King and his Witan fell upon the eldest surviving son

of the late Earl.[1058] Harold was removed from the government of the

East-Angles to the greater government of the West-Saxons. This was,

under such a King as Eadward, equivalent to investing him with the

practical management of the King and his Kingdom. Harold then, when he

could not have passed the age of thirty-two,[1059] became the first man

in England. His career up to this time had been stained by what in our

eyes seems to be more than one great fault, but it is clear that, in the

eyes of his contemporaries, his merits far outweighed his errors. He had

perhaps been guilty of selfishness in the matter of his brother

Swegen;[1060] he had certainly been guilty of [Sidenote: Joy of the

nation.] needless violence in the affair at Porlock. But the universal

joy of the nation at his new promotion[1061] shows that the general

character of his East-Anglian government must have given the brightest

hopes for the future. Grief for the loss of Godwine was tempered by

rejoicing at the elevation of one who at once began to walk in his

father’s [Sidenote: Character of his government.] steps. From

henceforth, as Earl and as King, the career of Harold is one of vigorous

and just government, of skill and valour in the field, of unvarying

moderation towards political foes. He won and he kept the devoted love

of the English people. And, what was a harder task, he won and kept,

though in a less degree than another of his house, the personal

confidence and affection of the weak and wayward prince with whom he had

to deal.

[Sidenote: Ælfgar Earl of the East-Angles.]

The translation of Harold to the greater government of Wessex made a

vacancy in his former Earldom of the East-Angles. It would probably have

been difficult to refuse the post to the man who had already held it for

a short space, Ælfgar, the son of Leofric of Mercia. His appointment

left only one of the great Earldoms in the House of Godwine, while the

House of Leofric now again ruled from the North-Welsh border to the

German Ocean.[1062] But it quite fell in with Harold’s conciliatory

policy to raise no objection to an arrangement which seemed to reverse

the positions of the two families. The possession of Wessex was an

object paramount to all others, and all the chances of the future were

in favour of the rising House. Ælfgar accordingly became Earl of the

[Sidenote: Character of Ælfgar and his sons.] East-Angles.[1063] His

career was turbulent and unhappy. The virtues of Leofric and Godgifu

seem not to have been inherited by their descendants.[1064] We hear of

Ælfgar and of his sons mainly as rebels in whom no confidence could be

placed, as traitors to every King and to every cause, as men who never

scrupled to call in the aid of any foreign enemy in order to promote

their personal objects. Rivalry towards Harold and his house was

doubtless one great mainspring of their actions, but the Norman

Conqueror and the last male descendant of Cerdic found it as vain as

ever Harold had found it to put trust in the grandsons of Leofric.

[Sidenote: Probable restoration of Bishop William and other Normans.]

I have already suggested that it was probably in consequence of the

death of Godwine and the succession of Harold that the restoration of

some of the King’s Norman favourites, especially of William Bishop of

London, was allowed.[1065] This may have taken place at this same Easter

festival; but it is more natural to refer it to some later Gemót of the

same year. It is certain that, during this second portion of the reign

of Eadward, a considerable number of Normans, or others bearing Norman

or French [Sidenote: Position of the Normans in the later days of

Eadward.] names, were established in England.[1066] It is equally

certain that their position differed somewhat from what it had been

before the outlawry of Godwine. The attempts to put them in possession

of the great offices of the Kingdom were not renewed. Ralph retained his

Earldom, William was allowed to return to his Bishoprick. The royal

blood of the one, the excellent character of the other, procured for

them this favourable exception, which, in the case of Ralph the Timid,

proved eminently unlucky. But we hear of no other Norman or French

Earls, Bishops, or Abbots. [Sidenote: Political office forbidden,]

Excepting a few of the favoured natives of Lotharingia, none but

Englishmen are now preferred to the great posts of Church and State. No

local office higher than that of Sheriff, and that only in one or two

exceptional cases,[1067] [Sidenote: but Court office allowed.] was now

allowed to be held by a stranger. But mere Court preferment, offices

about the King’s person, seem to have been freely held by foreigners to

whom there was no manifest personal objection. The King was allowed to

have about him his Norman stallers, his Norman chaplains, and, an

officer now first beginning· to creep into a little importance, his

Norman chancellor. And those Normans who were tolerated at all seem to

have been looked on with less suspicion than they had been during the

former period. They are now freely allowed to witness the royal

charters, which implies their acting as members of the national

assemblies.[1068] Their position is now clearly one of personal favour,

not of political influence. They are hardly mentioned in our history; we

have to trace them out by the light of entries [Sidenote: English

character of Eadward’s later policy.] in Domesday and of signatures to

Charters. Once only shall we have any reason to suspect that the course

of events was influenced by them. And in that one case their influence

is a mere surmise, and if it was exercised at all, it must have been

exercised in a purely underhand way. The policy of Eadward’s reign is

from henceforth distinctly an English policy. In other words, it is the

policy of Harold.

[Sidenote: Difference between the position of Godwine and that of

Harold.]

It is easy to understand that the feelings of Harold with regard to the

foreigners differed somewhat from those of his father. They belonged to

different generations. Godwine’s whole education, his whole way of

looking at things, must have been purely English. It is hardly needful

to make any exception on behalf of influences from Denmark. The rule of

Cnut was one under which Danes became Englishmen, not one under which

Englishmen became Danes. We can hardly conceive that Godwine understood

the French language. Such an accomplishment would in his early days have

been quite useless. We can well believe that, along with his really

enlightened and patriotic policy, there was in the old Earl a good deal

of mere sturdy English prejudice against strangers as strangers. But

every act of Harold’s life shows that this last was a feeling altogether

alien to his nature. His travels of inquiry abroad, his encouragement of

deserving foreigners at home, all show him to have been a statesman who,

while he maintained a strictly national policy, rose altogether above

any narrow insular prejudices. That he understood French well it is

impossible to doubt.[1069] If he erred at all, he was far more likely to

err in granting too much indulgence to the foreign fancies of his

wayward master. His policy of conciliation would forbid him to be

needlessly harsh even to a Norman, and he had every motive for dealing

as tenderly as possible with all the wishes and prejudices of the King.

Harold stood towards Eadward in a position wholly different from that in

which Godwine had stood. Godwine might claim to dictate as a father to

the man to whom he had given a crown and a wife. Harold could at most

claim the position of a younger brother. That Harold ruled Eadward there

is no doubt, but he very distinctly ruled by obeying.[1070] Habit,

temper, policy, would all lead him not to thwart the King one jot more

than the interests of the Kingdom called for. The [Sidenote: Compromise

between Harold and the King.] position of the strangers during the

remaining years of Eadward’s reign is a manifest compromise between

Eadward’s foreign weaknesses and Harold’s English policy. They were to

be allowed to bask in the sunshine of the court; they were to be

carefully shut out from political power. If Harold erred, his error, I

repeat, lay in too great a toleration of the dangerous intruders.

[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical appointments. Christmas, 1053–1054.]

The remaining events of the year of Godwine’s death are some

ecclesiastical appointments, which must have been made at the Christmas

Gemót, and a Welsh inroad, which seems to have happened about the same

time. In the one month of October three Prelates died,[1071] Wulfsige,

Bishop of Lichfield, and the Abbots Godwine of Winchcombe and [Sidenote:

Leofwine of Lichfield. 1053.] Æthelweard of Glastonbury. The see of

Lichfield was bestowed on Leofwine, Abbot of Earl Leofric’s favourite

monastery of Coventry.[1072] In this appointment we plainly see the hand

of the Mercian Earl, of whom, considering his name, the new Bishop is

not unlikely to have been a kinsman.[1073] [Sidenote: Wulfwig of

Dorchester. 1053.] At the same time, it would seem, the see of

Dorchester was at last filled by the appointment of Wulfwig, and the two

Bishops, as we have seen, got them beyond sea for consecration.[1074]

[Sidenote: Æthelnoth of Glastonbury. 1053–1082.] The new Abbot of

Glastonbury was Æthelnoth, a monk of the house, who bears an ill

character for dilapidation of the revenues of the monastery, but who

continued to weather all storms, and to die in possession of [Sidenote:

Bishop Ealdred holds Winchcombe.] his Abbey sixteen years after the

Norman invasion.[1075] The disposition of Winchcombe is more remarkable.

Ealdred, the Bishop of the diocese, who seems never to have shrunk from

any fresh duties, spiritual or temporal, which came in his way,

undertook the rule of that great monastery in addition to his episcopal

office.[1076] This may have been mere personal love of power or pelf;

but it may also have been a deliberate attempt, such as we shall see

made in other cases also, to get rid of a powerful, and no doubt often

troublesome, neighbour, by annexing an abbey to the Bishoprick. If such

was the design of Ealdred, it did not prove successful. [Sidenote: He

resigns it to Godric. July 17, 1054.] After holding Winchcombe for some

time, he next year, willingly or unwillingly, resigned it to one Godric,

who is described as the son of Godman, the King’s Chaplain.[1077]

Of the Welsh inroad, recorded by one Chronicler only, all that is said

is that many of the “wardmen” at Westbury were slain.[1078] This is

doubtless Westbury in Gloucestershire, on the Welsh side of the Severn.

The expression seems to imply the maintenance of a permanent force to

guard that exposed frontier.

[Sidenote: Position of Macbeth in Scotland.]

The next year was marked by a military and a diplomatic event, both of

which were of high importance. The former is no other than the famous

Scottish expedition of Earl Siward, an event which has almost passed

from the domain of history into that of poetry. Macbeth, it will be

remembered, was now reigning in Scotland.[1079] Like Siward

himself,[1080] he had risen to power by a great crime, the murder of his

predecessor, the young King Duncan. And, like Siward, he had made what

atonement he could by ruling his usurped dominion vigorously and well.

We have seen that there is no reason to believe that Macbeth had, since

he assumed the Scottish Crown, renewed the fealty which he had paid to

Cnut when he was under-King,[1081] or, in more accurate Scottish phrase,

Maarmor of Moray. We have also seen that he had been striving, in a

remarkable way, to make himself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness

in the quarter where that mammon was believed to have the greatest

influence, [Sidenote: Siward’s designs against Macbeth.] namely at the

threshold of the Apostles.[1082] We may be sure that Earl Siward, the

kinsman, probably the guardian, of the young prince whom Macbeth shut

out from the Scottish Crown,[1083] had all along looked on his

formidable northern neighbour with no friendly eye. It is not easy to

see why the attack on Macbeth, if it was to be made at all, was so long

delayed. It may be that the internal troubles of England had hitherto

forbidden any movement of the kind, and that Siward took advantage of

the first season of domestic quiet to execute a plan which he had long

cherished. It may be that the scheme fell in better with the policy of

Harold than with the policy of Godwine. Between Godwine and Siward,

between the West-Saxon and the Dane, there was doubtless a standing

rivalry, partly national, partly personal. But it would fall in with the

conciliatory policy of Harold to help, rather than to thwart, any

designs of the great Northern Earl which were not manifestly opposed to

the public welfare. At all events, in this year the consent of

Eadward[1084] was given, a consent which certainly implies the decree of

a Witenagemót, and which almost certainly implies the good will of

[Sidenote: Siward’s expedition against Macbeth. 1054.] Earl Harold. An

expedition on a great scale was undertaken against the Scottish

usurper.[1085] That it was undertaken on behalf of Malcolm, the son of

the slain Duncan, can admit of no reasonable doubt. To restore the

lawful heir of the Scottish Crown was an honourable pretext for

interference in Scottish affairs on which any English statesman would

gladly seize. And to Siward it was more than an honourable pretext; it

was asserting the rights and avenging the wrongs of a near kinsman. The

Earl of the Northumbrians accordingly attacked Scotland at the head of a

great force both by land and by sea. The army was largely composed of

the Housecarls of the King and of the Earl, picked and tried soldiers,

Danish and English. [Sidenote: Macbeth’s alliance with Thorfinn.]

Macbeth was supported[1086] by a Prince who had now become a neighbour

of England, and one probably quite as dangerous as himself. This was

Thorfinn, the famous Earl of the Orkneys, who had established his power

over the whole of the Western Islands, and even over the coast of

Scotland and Strathclyde as far south as Galloway. With his help, the

Scottish King ventured to meet the host of [Sidenote: Defeat of Macbeth.

July 27, 1054.] Siward in a pitched battle. He was encouraged by the

presence of a body of the Normans who had been driven out of England at

the return of Godwine. They are spoken of as if their number was large

enough to form a considerable contingent of the Scottish army. The fight

was an obstinate one. The Earl’s son Osbeorn and his sister’s son Siward

were slain, and with them a large number of the Housecarls, both those

of the Earl himself and of the King. The slaughter on the Scottish side

was more fearful still. Dolfinn, seemingly a kinsman of the Earl of

Orkney, was killed,[1087] and the Norman division, fighting no doubt

with all the gallantry of their race, enhanced by all the desperation of

exiles, were slaughtered to a man. We thus see that the battle was a

most stoutly contested one, and that, as usual, the slaughter fell

mainly on the best troops on both sides, the Normans on the Scottish

side and the Housecarls on the English. But the fortune of England

prevailed; the Scots, deprived of their valiant allies, were utterly

routed, and King Macbeth escaped with difficulty from the field. The

plunder was of an amount which struck the minds of contemporary writers

with wonder.[1088]

[Sidenote: Legends of Siward.]

Siward was a hero whose history has had a mythical element about it from

the beginning;[1089] it would have been wonderful indeed if this, the

last and greatest exploit of so renowned a warrior, had not supplied the

materials for song and legend. The tale is told how Siward, hearing of

the death of his son, asked whether his wounds were in front or behind.

Being told that all were in front, the old warrior rejoiced; he wished

no other end for either his son or himself. The story is eminently

characteristic; but, as it is told us, it is difficult to find a place

for it in the authentic narrative of the campaign. But fiction has taken

liberties with the facts of Siward’s Scottish campaign in far more

important points. As we have seen, the English victory was complete, but

Macbeth himself [Sidenote: Malcolm King of Scots. 1054.] escaped.

Malcolm was, as King Eadward had commanded, proclaimed King of Scots,

and a King of Scots who was put into possession of his Crown by an

invading English force most undoubtedly held that Crown as the sworn

[Sidenote: The war continued by Macbeth.] man of the English Basileus.

It took however four years before Malcolm obtained full possession of

his Kingdom. Macbeth and his followers maintained their cause in the

North, being, it would seem, still supported by help from

Thorfinn. Malcolm, on the other hand, was still supported by help from

England, and we shall find that he deemed it expedient to enter into a

very close relation with Siward’s successor in the Northumbrian Earldom.

At last [Sidenote: Macbeth finally defeated and slain. 1058.] Macbeth

was finally defeated and slain at Lumfanan in Aberdeenshire. An attempt

was made to perpetuate the Moray dynasty in the person of Lulach, a

kinsman, or perhaps a stepson, of Macbeth, a son of his wife Gruach

[Sidenote: Ephemeral reign of Lulach, and final establishment of

Malcolm. 1058.] by a former marriage. But this prince, who bears the

surname of the Fool, could not long resist the power of Malcolm; in a

few months’ time he was hunted down and slain. The rival dynasty was now

crushed; all Scotland came into the hands of Malcolm, who was solemnly

crowned at Scone. The power of Thorfinn was broken no less than the

power of Macbeth, and Malcolm apparently recovered the full possession

of Cumberland, possibly on the death of Thorfinn, when Malcolm married

his widow Ingebiorg, a marriage of whose results we shall hear again.

[Sidenote: Erroneous belief that Macbeth was killed in Siward’s

campaign.]

These Scottish affairs had but little interest for our English writers,

who were satisfied with recording the brilliant victory of Siward and

the rich booty which he won, without going on to dwell on events which

were almost purely Scottish. As their narrative ends with the defeat of

Macbeth and Malcolm’s first proclamation as King, it naturally passed

out of mind that that proclamation did not at once give him full

possession of all Scotland. The two defeats of Macbeth were confounded

together, and it was believed that the usurper met his death in the

battle which he fought against Siward. The error began very early, and

it obtained prevalence enough to become enshrined in the poetry which,

far more than any historical record, has made the name of Macbeth

immortal.