THE DAYS OF CNUT AND EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.
For a full century (871-975) England had been under the rule of
a series of kings of marked ability. Only the short reign of the
unfortunate Eadwig interrupts the succession of strong rulers. We have
seen how in that century England fought down all her troubles, and,
after appearing for a time to be on the brink of destruction, emerged
as a strong and united power. But on the death of Eadgar a new problem
had to be faced--the kingdom passed to two young boys, of whom the
second proved to be one of the most unworthy and incompetent monarchs
that England was ever to know.
[Sidenote: =Edward the Martyr. 975-978.--Insubordination of the great
ealdormen.=]
Edward the Younger, or the Martyr, as after-generations called him,
only sat for three years on his father's throne. He endeavoured to
follow in Eadgar's steps, and retained Dunstan as his chief councillor.
But he found the great ealdormen unruly subjects; they would not obey
a young boy as they had obeyed the great Eadgar. Dunstan was made
the chief mark of their envy, because he represented the policy of a
firm central government and a strong monarchical power. Probably they
would have succeeded in getting him dismissed at the Witan held at
Calne, if a supposed miracle had not intervened to save him. While his
adversaries were pleading against him, the floor of the upper chamber
where the Witan was sitting gave way, owing to the breaking of a beam,
and they were precipitated into the room below, some being killed and
others maimed. But the piece of flooring where Dunstan stood did not
fall with the rest, so that he remained unharmed amid the general
destruction, wherefore men deemed that God had intervened to bear
witness to his innocence.
But Dunstan was not to rule much longer. In 978 his young master was
cruelly murdered by his step-mother, Queen Aelfthryth, who knew that
the crown would fall to her own son if Edward died. For one day the
king chanced to ride past her manor of Corfe, and, stopping at the
door, craved a cup of wine. She brought it out to him herself, and
while he was drinking it to her health, one of her retainers stabbed
him in the back. His horse started forward, and he lost his seat and
was dragged some way by the stirrup ere he died. The queen's friends
threw the body into a ditch, and gave out that he had perished by an
accidental fall, but all the realm knew or suspected the truth.
[Sidenote: =Aethelred the Redeless, 978-1016.--Decline of the kingly
power.=]
Nevertheless, Aelfthryth's boy Aethelred got the profit of his mother's
wicked deed, for the Witan crowned him as the sole heir to King Eadgar.
His long reign was worthy of its evil commencement, for it proved one
unbroken series of disasters, and brought England at last to the feet
of a foreign conqueror. He ruled for thirty-eight years of misery and
trouble, for which he was himself largely responsible, for he was a
selfish, idle, dilatory, hard-hearted man, and let himself be guided by
unworthy flatterers and favourites, who sought nothing but their own
private advantage. Wherefore men called him Aethelred the Redeless,
that is the ill-counselled, because he would always choose the evil
counsel rather than the good. Yet the king was not wholly to blame for
the misfortunes of his reign, for the great ealdormen had their share
in the guilt. Freed from the strong hand of Dunstan, who was soon
driven away from the court, they acted as independent rulers, each in
his own ealdormanry, quarrelled with each other, and disobeyed the
king's commands. It was their divisions and jealousies and selfishness
that made the king's weakness and idleness so fatal, for, when they
refused to obey, he neither could nor would coerce them.
[Sidenote: =Viking invasions.--The Danegelt.=]
The curse of the reign of Aethelred the Redeless was the second coming
of the Danes and Northmen to England. For many years they had avoided
this island, because they knew that only hard blows awaited them there.
But they swarmed all over the rest of Europe, won Normandy from the
kings of the West Franks, and pushed their raids as far as the distant
shores of Andalusia and Italy. But the news that a weak young king,
with disobedient nobles to rule under him, sat on Eadgar's seat,
soon brought them back to England. First there came mere plundering
bands, as in the old days of the eighth century; but Aethelred did
not deal with them sharply and strongly. He bade the ealdormen drive
them off; but they were too much occupied with their own quarrels to
stir. Then the invaders came in greater numbers, and Aethelred thought
to bribe them to go away by giving them money, and raised the tax
called the _Danegelt_ to satisfy their rapacity. But it seemed that
the more that gold was given the more did Danes appear, for the news
of Aethelred's wealth and weakness flew round the North, and brought
swarm after swarm of marauders upon him. Then followed twenty miserable
years of desultory fighting and incessant paying of tribute. Sometimes
individual ealdormen fought bravely against the Danes, and held them
at bay for a space; sometimes the king himself mustered an army and
strove to do something for the realm; sometimes he tried to hire one
band of Vikings to fight against another, with the deplorable results
that might have been expected. His worst and most unwise action was the
celebrated massacre of St. Brice's Day, in 1002, when he caused all
the Danes on whom he could lay hands to be killed. In this case it was
not open enemies whom he slew, for it was a time of truce, but Danish
merchants and adventurers who had settled down in England and done him
homage. By this cruel deed Aethelred won the deadly hatred of Swegen,
King of Denmark, whose sister and her husband had been among the slain.
[Sidenote: =Ravages of Swegen of Denmark.--Eadric "the Grasper."=]
Swegen became Aethelred's bitterest foe, and repeatedly warred against
him, not with mere Viking bands, but with the whole force of Denmark
at his back, a great national army bent on serious invasion of the
land, not on transient raiding. The English were driven to despair by
Swegen's ravages, and the king did nothing to save them. He had now
fallen entirely into the hands of an unscrupulous favourite, named
Eadric Streona, or _the Grasper_, and was guided in all things by this
low-born adventurer. He even created him Ealdorman of Mercia, and
made him the second person in the land. Eadric cared only for ruining
any noble who could possibly be his rival, and for enlarging his
ealdormanry; of the defence of England he took no more thought than did
his master.
[Sidenote: =Swegen chosen king by the Witan.=]
At last, in 1013, there came a Danish invasion of exceptional severity.
The marauders dashed through the country from end to end; they took
Canterbury and slew the good Archbishop Elfheah (St. Alphege), because
he refused to pay them an exorbitant ransom. Then Eadric gathered
together the Witan, without the king's presence, and, with infamous
treachery to his benefactor, proposed to them to submit entirely to
the Danes. So when Swegen came over again in the next year, the whole
realm bowed before him, and the great men, headed by the traitor
Eadric, offered him the crown. Only London held out for King Aethelred,
and stood a long siege, till its citizens learnt that their master
had deserted them and fled over sea to the Duke of Normandy, whose
sister Emma he had married. Then they too yielded, and the Witan of
all England took Swegen as their king. But the Dane died immediately
after his election, and then the majority of the English refused to
choose his son Cnut as his successor. They sent to Normandy for their
old king, and did homage once more to Aethelred; but the traitor Eadric
resolved to adhere to Cnut, because he had lately murdered the thegns
of the Five Boroughs, and dreaded the wrath of their followers. So
Eadric's Mercian subjects and some of the men of Wessex joined the
Danes, and there was civil war once more in England, till Aethelred the
Ill-counselled died in 1016.
[Sidenote: =Edmund Ironside and Cnut, 1016.=]
Then his followers chose in his stead his brave son Edmund II., who
was called Ironside because of his prowess in war. The new king was
a worthy descendant of Alfred, and would have made no small mark in
better times, but he spent his short reign in one unceasing series of
combats with Cnut, a man as able and as warlike as himself. The two
young kings fought five pitched battles with each other, and fortune
swayed to Edmund's side; but in the sixth, at Assandun (Ashington, in
Essex), he was defeated, owing to the treachery of the wretched Eadric
the Grasper, who first joined him with a large body of Mercian troops,
and then turned against him in the heat of the battle (1016).
Then Edmund and Cnut, having learnt to respect each other's courage,
met in the Isle of Alney, outside the walls of Gloucester, and agreed
to divide the realm between them. Cnut took, as was natural, the
Anglo-Danish districts of Northumbria and the Five Boroughs, together
with Eadric's Mercian ealdormanry. Edmund kept Wessex, Kent, London,
and East Anglia. But this partition was not destined to endure. Ere
the year was out the foul traitor Eadric procured the murder of King
Edmund, and then the Witan of Wessex chose Cnut as king over the south
as well as the north. The late king's young brothers and his two little
sons fled to the Continent.
[Sidenote: =The empire of Cnut.=]
So Cnut the Dane became King of all England, and ruled it wisely and
well for nineteen years (1016-35). He proved a much better king than
people expected, for, being a very young man and easily impressed,
he grew to be more of an Englishman than a Dane in all his manners
and habits of thought. He ruled in Denmark and Norway as well as in
this island, but he made England his favourite abode, and regarded
it as the centre and heart of his empire. The moment that he was
firmly established on the throne, he took measures for restoring the
prosperity of the land, which had been reduced to an evil plight
by forty years of ill-governance and war. He swept away the great
ealdormen who had been such a curse to the land, slaying the traitor
Eadric the Grasper, and Uhtred the turbulent governor of Northumbria.
Then he divided England into four great earldoms, as these provinces
began to be called, for the Danish name _jarl_ (earl) was beginning
to supersede the Saxon name ealdorman. Of these he entrusted the two
Anglo-Danish earldoms, Northumbria and East Anglia, to men of Danish
blood, while he gave Wessex and Mercia to two Englishmen who had served
him faithfully, the earls Godwine and Leofric. The confidence in the
loyalty of his English subjects which Cnut displayed was very marked:
he sent home to Denmark the whole of his army, save a body-guard of
two thousand or three thousand _house-carles_, or personal retainers,
and did not divide up the lands of England among them. He kept many
Englishmen about his person, and even sent them as bishops or royal
officers to Denmark, a token of favour of which the Danes did not
altogether approve. He endeavoured to connect himself with the old
English royal house, by marrying Emma of Normandy, the widow of King
Aethelred, though she was somewhat older than himself, so Cnut's
younger children were the half-brothers of Aethelred's.
[Sidenote: =He gives Lothian to the King of Scotland.=]
Cnut gave England the peace which she had not known since the death
of Eadgar, for no one dared to stir up war against a king who was not
only Lord of Britain, but ruled all the lands of the Northmen, as far
as Iceland and the Faroes and the outlying Danish towns in Ireland.
The Welsh and Scots served Cnut as they had served Aethelstan and
Eadgar, and were his obedient vassels. In reward of the services of
Malcolm of Scotland Cnut gave him the district of Lothian, the northern
half of Bernicia, to hold as his vassal. This was the first piece of
English-speaking land that any Scottish king ruled, and it was from
thence that the English tongue and manners afterwards spread over the
whole of the Lowlands beyond the Tweed.
The rapid recovery of prosperity which followed on Cnut's strong and
able government is the best testimony to his wisdom. The wording of the
code of laws which he promulgated is a witness to his good heart and
excellent purposes. His subjects loved him well, and many tales survive
to show their belief in his sagacity, such as the well-known story of
his rebuke to the flattering courtiers who ascribed to him omnipotence
by the incoming waves of Southampton Water.
[Sidenote: =The sons of Cnut, 1035-1042.=]
Cnut died in 1035, before he had much passed the boundary of middle
age. He left two sons, Harold and Harthacnut, the former the child of
a concubine, the latter the offspring of Queen Emma. With his death
his empire broke up, for Norway revolted, and the Danes of Denmark
chose Harthacnut as their king, while those of England preferred the
bastard Harold. Only Godwine, the great Earl of Wessex, declared for
Harthacnut, and made England south of the Thames swear allegiance to
him. So Harold reigned for a space in Northumbria and Mercia, while
Denmark and Wessex obeyed his younger brother. The two sons of Cnut
were rough, godless, unscrupulous young men, and hated each other
bitterly, for each thought that the other had robbed him of part of his
rightful heritage. Moreover, Harold enraged Harthacnut by catching and
slaying his elder half-brother Alfred, the son of Aethelred and Emma,
whom he enticed over to England by fair words, and then murdered by
blinding him with hot irons.
After a space Harold overran Wessex, which Earl Godwine surrendered
to him because Harthacnut sent no aid from Denmark, where he tarried
over-long. But just after he had been saluted as ruler of all England,
Harold died, and his realm fell to his absent brother. Harthacnut
then came over with a large army, and took possession of the land. He
ruled ill for the short space of his life; it was with horror that men
saw him exhume his half-brother's corpse and cast it into a ditch. He
raised great taxes to support his Danish army, and dealt harshly with
those who did not pay him promptly. But just as all England was growing
panic-stricken at his tyranny, he died suddenly. He was celebrating the
marriage of one of his followers, Osgood Clapa, at the thegn's manor
of Clapham, in Surrey, when, as he raised the wine-cup to drink the
bridegroom's health, he fell back in an apoplectic fit, and never spoke
again (1042).
[Sidenote: =Edward the Confessor, 1042-1066.=]
The English Witan had now before them the task of choosing a new
king. Cnut's house was extinct, and with it died all chance of the
perpetuation of a northern empire in which England and Denmark should
be united. It was natural that the council should cast their eyes back
on the old royal house of Alfred, for its eldest member was at this
time in England. Harthacnut had called over from Normandy Edward, his
mother's second son by King Aethelred, the younger brother of that
Etheling Alfred whom Harold had murdered five years before.
It was with little hesitation, therefore, that the Witan, led by Earl
Godwine, the greatest of the rulers of the realm, elected Edward to
fill the vacant throne. The prince's virtues were already known and
esteemed, and his failings had yet to be learnt. Edward was now a man
of middle age, mild, pious, and well-meaning, but wanting in strength
and vigour, and needing some strong arm on which to lean. He had spent
his whole youth in Normandy, at the court of Duke Richard, his mother's
brother, and had almost forgotten England and the English tongue during
his long exile. Just as Cnut had become an Englishman, so Edward had
become for all intents and purposes a Norman.
[Sidenote: =Godwine, Earl of Wessex.--The king's Norman favourites.=]
During the first few years of his reign in England, the new king
was entirely in the hands of Godwine, the great Earl of Wessex. He
married the thegn's daughter Eadgyth (Edith), and entrusted him with
the greater part of the administration of the realm. But Edward and
Godwine were not likely to remain friends; there were several causes
of dispute between them. The most important was the fact that the king
secretly believed that Godwine had been a consenting party to the
murder of his brother Alfred by King Harold. But the most obvious was
Godwine's dislike for the Norman favourites of the king. For Edward
sent for all the friends of his youth from Normandy, and gave them
high preferment in England, making Robert of Jumièges Archbishop of
Canterbury, and bestowing bishoprics on other Norman priests, and an
earldom on Ralf of Mantes, his own nephew. He also showed high favour
to two more of his continental kinsmen, Eustace, Count of Boulogne, and
William the Bastard, the reigning duke of Normandy. William declared
that Edward had even promised to leave the crown of England to him at
his death; and it is possible that the king may have expressed some
such wish, but he had not the power to carry it out, for the election
of the English kings lay with the Witan, and not with the reigning
sovereign.
[Sidenote: =Exile and return of Godwine.=]
The troubles of Edward's reign began in 1050, starting from a chance
affray at Dover. Eustace of Boulogne was landing to pay a visit to the
king, when some of his followers fell into a quarrel with some of the
citizens. Men were slain on both sides, and the count was chased out of
the town with hue and cry. The king took this ill, and bade Godwine--in
whose earldom Dover lay--to punish the men who had insulted his noble
kinsman. But Godwine refused, saying--what was true enough--that the
count's followers were to blame, and the burghers in the right. Edward
was angry at the earl's disobedience, and called to him in arms those
of the English nobles who were jealous of Godwine, especially Leofric,
the Earl of Mercia, and Siward, the Earl of Northumbria. Godwine also
gathered a host of the men of Wessex, and it seemed that civil war
would begin. But the earl was unwilling to fight the king, and when
the Witan outlawed him, he fled over seas to Flanders with his sons,
Harold, Swegen, and Tostig. Edward then fell entirely into the hands
of his Norman favourites. He sent his wife, Godwine's daughter, to a
nunnery, and disgraced all who had any kinship with the exiled earl.
But the governance of the Norman courtiers was hateful to the English,
and when Godwine and his sons came back a year later, and sailed up
the Thames with a great fleet, the whole land was well pleased. No
one would fight against him, and the Norman bishops and knights about
the king's person had to fly in haste to save their lives. Then the
Witan inlawed Godwine again, and Edward was obliged to give him back
his ancient place (1052). So the great earl once more ruled England,
holding Wessex himself, while his second son Harold ruled as earl in
East Anglia, and his third son Tostig became the king's favourite
companion, though he was a reckless, cruel man, very unlike the mild
and pious Edward.
[Sidenote: =Death of Godwine.--His son Harold takes his place.=]
The house of Godwine kept a firm control over the realm during the last
fourteen years of Edward's reign. When Godwine died suddenly at a great
feast at Winchester,[7] his son Harold succeeded both to his earldom of
Wessex and to his preponderant power in England. The years of Harold's
governance were on the whole a time of prosperity, for he was a busy,
capable man, much liked by all the English of the south, though the
Mercians and Northumbrians did not love him so well.
Harold knew how to make the authority of the King of England over
his smaller neighbours respected. It was during his tenure of power
that Siward, earl of Northumbria, was sent into Scotland to put down
Macbeth, the lord of Moray, who had murdered King Duncan and seized his
crown. Siward slew Macbeth in battle at Lumphanan, and restored to the
throne of Scotland Malcolm, the eldest son of the late king (1054). A
little later Harold himself took the field to put down Gruffyd, the
King of North Wales, who had risen in rebellion. He drove the Welsh up
into the crags of Snowdon, and besieged them there till they slew their
own king and laid his head at the earl's feet.
[Sidenote: =Harold's detention in Normandy.=]
It was somewhere about this time that a misfortune fell upon Harold.
He was sailing in the Channel, when a storm arose and drove his ship
ashore on the coast of Ponthieu, near the Somme-mouth. Wido, the Count
of Ponthieu, an unscrupulous and avaricious man, threw the earl into
prison, and held him to ransom. But William, Duke of Normandy, who
was Wido's feudal superior, delivered him from bonds, and brought him
to his court at Rouen. Harold abode with the duke for some time, half
as guest, half as hostage, for William would not let him depart. He
went on an expedition against Brittany with the Normans, and received
knighthood at the duke's hands. After a time he was told that he
might return home if he would engage to use all his endeavours to get
William elected King of England at the death of Edward. The duke said
that he had gained such a promise from Edward himself, and thought he
could make sure of the prize with Harold's aid. Thus tempted, the earl
consented to swear this unwise and unjust oath, and in presence of the
whole Norman court vowed to aid William's candidature. When he had
sworn, the duke showed him that the shrine at which he had pledged his
faith was full of the bones of all the saints of Normandy, which had
been secretly collected to make the oath more solemn.
[Sidenote: =Dissensions in England.--Eadwine and Morcar.=]
So Harold returned to England, and--as it would appear--soon forgot
his oath altogether, or thought of it only as extorted by force and
fear. He had anxieties enough to distract his mind to other subjects.
First Mercia gave trouble, because Aelfgar, the son of Earl Leofric,
was jealous of Harold's predominance in the realm. He twice took arms
and was twice outlawed for treason. Nevertheless, Harold confirmed his
son Eadwine in the possession of the Mercian earldom. Next, Northumbria
broke out into armed rebellion. The king had made his favourite Tostig,
Harold's younger brother, earl of the great northern province when
the aged Siward, the conqueror of Macbeth, died. But Tostig ruled so
harshly and so unjustly, that the Anglo-Danes of Yorkshire rose in
rebellion, put Morcar, the son of Aelfgar of Mercia, at their head,
and drove Tostig away. When Harold investigated the matter, he found
that Tostig was so much in the wrong that he advised the king to
banish his brother, and to confirm Morcar in the Northumbrian earldom.
This resolve, though just and upright, weakened Harold's hold on the
land, for Mercia and Northumbria were thus put in the hands of the two
brothers, Eadwine and Morcar, who worked together in all things and
were very jealous of the great Earl of Wessex, in spite of his kindly
dealings with them (1065).
[Sidenote: =Death of King Edward.=]
Less than a year after Tostig's deposition King Edward died. The
English mourned him greatly, for, in spite of his weakness and his
tendency to favour the Normans over-much, he was an upright, kindly,
well-intentioned man, whom none could hate or despise. Moreover, his
sincere piety made the English revere him as a saint; it was said that
he had divine revelations vouchsafed to him, and that St. Peter had
once appeared to him in a vision and given him a ring. It is, at any
rate, certain that he built the Abbey of Westminster in St. Peter's
honour, and lavished on it a very rich endowment. The English looked
back to Edward's reign as a kind of golden age in the evil times that
followed, and worshipped him as a saint; but the good governance of the
realm owed far more to Godwine and Harold than to the gentle, unworldly
king.
[Sidenote: =Harold elected king by the Witan.=]
On Edward's death the Witan had to choose them a king. The next heir of
the house of Alfred was a child, Eadgar the Etheling, the great-nephew
of the deceased monarch. He was only ten years of age, and there was
no precedent for electing so young a boy to rule England. Outside the
royal line there were two persons who were known to desire the crown:
the first was the man who had for all practical purposes governed
England for the last fourteen years, Earl Harold of Wessex, the late
king's brother-in-law; the other was William the Norman. It was said
that Edward had once promised to use his influence in his Norman
cousin's favour, but it is certain that on his death-bed he recommended
Harold to the assembled thegns and bishops. The Witan did not waver
for a minute in their decision; they chose Harold, and he accepted
the crown without any show of hesitation. Yet it was certain that his
elevation would bring on him the bitter jealousy of the young Earls of
Mercia and Northumbria, who regarded themselves as his equals, in every
respect. And it was equally clear that William of Normandy, who had
counted on Harold's assistance in his candidature for the throne, would
vent his wrath and disappointment on the new king's head (Jan., 1066).
[Sidenote: =Claim of William of Normandy to the crown.=]
Harold attempted to conciliate the sons of Aelfgar by paying them every
attention in his power, and by marrying their sister Ealdgyth. But to
appease the stern Duke of Normandy he knew was impossible, and he
looked for nothing but war from that quarter. Indeed, he was hardly
mounted on the throne before William sent over ambassadors to formally
bid him fulfil his oath and resign the crown, or take the consequences.
It need hardly be added that Harold replied that the Witan's choice was
his mandate, and that his oath had been extorted by force.
[Sidenote: =He prepares to invade England.=]
The Duke of Normandy was firmly resolved to assert his baseless claim
to the throne by force of arms. He had a large treasure and many bold
vassals, but he knew that his own strength was insufficient for such
an enterprise as the invasion of England. Accordingly, he proclaimed
his purpose all over Western Europe, and offered lands and spoil in
England to every adventurer who would take arms in his cause. William's
military reputation was so great, that he was able to enlist thousands
of mercenaries from France, Brittany, Flanders, and Aquitaine. Of the
great army that he mustered at the port of St. Valery, only one-third
were native Normans. William took six months for his preparation; he
had to build a fleet, since Harold had a navy able to keep the Channel,
and to beat up every freelance that could be hired to take service with
him. Nor did he neglect to add spiritual weapons to temporal: he won
over the Pope to give his blessing on the invasion of England, because
Harold had broken the oath he swore on the bones of all the saints, and
had become a perjurer. There were other reasons for Pope Alexander's
dislike for the English. Stigand, Harold's Archbishop of Canterbury,
had acknowledged an anti-Pope, and Rome never forgave schism; moreover,
the house of Godwine had not been friendly to the monks, but had been
patrons of Dunstan's old foes, the secular canons. Alexander therefore
sent William his blessing, and a consecrated banner to be unfurled when
he should land in England.
Hearing of William's vast preparations, Harold arrayed a fleet to
guard the narrow seas, and bade the fyrd of all England to be ready to
muster on the Sussex coast. He was prepared to defend himself, and only
wondered at the delay in his adversary's sailing, a delay which was
caused by north-westerly winds, which kept the Normans storm-bound.
[Sidenote: =Harald Hardrada invades Northumbria.=]
Suddenly there came to Harold disastrous and unexpected news from the
north. His exiled brother Tostig had chosen this moment to do him an
ill turn. He had gone to the north, and persuaded Harald Hardrada, the
King of Norway, to invade England. Hardrada was the greatest Viking
that ever existed, the most celebrated adventurer by sea and land of
his age. When Tostig offered him the plunder of England, he took ship
with all his host and descended on Northumbria. Morcar, the young earl
of that region, came out to meet him, with his brother Eadwine at his
side. But Hardrada defeated them with fearful slaughter before the
gates of York, and took the city.
[Sidenote: =Harold marches northward.--Battle of Stamford Bridge.=]
When Harold of England heard this news he was constrained to leave the
south, and risk the chance of William's landing unopposed. He took with
him his house-carles, the great band of his personal retainers, and
marched in haste on York, picking up the levies of the midland shires
on the way.
So rapidly did Harold move, that he caught the Northmen quite
unprepared, and came upon them at Stamford Bridge, close to York, when
they least expected him. There he defeated the invaders in a great
battle. Its details are unfortunately lost, for the noble Norwegian
saga that gives the story of Hardrada's fall was written too long after
to be trusted as good history. It tells how the English king rode
forward to the invading army, and, calling to his brother, offered him
pardon and a great earldom. But Tostig asked what his friend Harald of
Norway should receive. "Seven feet of English earth, seeing that he is
taller than other men," answered Harold of England. Then Tostig cried
aloud that he would never desert those who had helped him in his day
of need, and the fight began. We know that both the rebel earl and the
Norse king fell, that the raven banner of the Vikings was taken, and
that the remnant only of their host escaped. It is said that they came
in three hundred ships, and fled in twenty-four.
[Sidenote: =Landing of the Normans.=]
Harold of England was celebrating his victory at York by a great feast
a few nights after the battle of Stamford Bridge, when a message was
brought him that William of Normandy had crossed the Channel and
landed in Sussex with a hundred thousand men at his back. Harold
hurried southward with his house-carles, bidding the Earls Eadwine
and Morcar bring on the levies of Mercia and Northumbria to his aid
as fast as they might. But the envious sons of Aelfgar betrayed their
brother-in-law, and followed so slowly that they never overtook
him. Harold marched rapidly on London, and gathered up the fyrd of
East Anglia, Kent, and Wessex, so that he reached the coast with
a considerable army, though it was one far inferior in numbers to
William's vast host. Not a man from Mercia or Northumbria was with him;
but the levies of the southern shires, where the house of Godwine was
so well loved, were present in full force.
[Sidenote: =The battle of Hastings.=]
William had now been on shore some ten or twelve days, and had built
himself a great intrenched camp at Hastings. But the King of England,
as befitted the commander of the smaller host, came to act on the
defensive, not on the offensive. He took post on the hill of Senlac,
where Battle Abbey now stands, and arrayed his army in a good position,
strengthened with palisades. He was resolved to accept battle, though
his brother Gyrth and many others of his council bade him wait till
Eadwine and Morcar should come up with the men of the north, and
meanwhile, to sweep the land clear of provisions and starve out
William's army. The Norman duke desired nothing more than a pitched
battle; he knew that he was superior in numbers, and believed that he
could out-general his adversary. When he heard that Harold had halted
at Senlac, he broke up his camp at Hastings, and marched inland. The
English were found all on foot, for they had not yet learnt to fight
on horseback, drawn up in one thick line on the hillside, around the
dragon-banner of Wessex and the standard of the Fighting Man, which was
Harold's private ensign. The king's house-carles, sheathed in complete
mail, and armed with the two-handed Danish axe, were formed round the
banners; on each flank were the levies of the shires, an irregular
mass where well-armed thegns and yeomen were mixed with their poorer
neighbours, who bore rude clubs and instruments of husbandry as their
sole weapons.
William's army was marshalled in a different way. The flower of the
duke's host was his cavalry, and the Norman knights were the best
horse-soldiery in Europe. His army was drawn up in three great bodies,
the two wings composed of his French, Flemish, and Breton mercenaries,
the centre of the native Normans. In each body the mounted men were
preceded by a double line of archers and troops on foot.
The two hosts joined in close combat, and for some hours the fighting
was indecisive. Neither the arrows of the Norman bowmen, nor the
charges of their knights, could break the English line of battle. The
invaders were driven back again and again, and the axes of the men of
Harold made cruel gaps in their ranks, cleaving man and horse with
their fearful blows. At last William bade his knights draw off for a
space, and bade the archers only continue the combat. He trusted that
the English, who had no bowmen on their side, would find the rain of
arrows so insupportable that they would at last break their line and
charge, to drive off their tormentors. Nor was he wrong; after standing
unmoved for some time, the English could no longer contain themselves,
and, in spite of their king's orders and entreaties, the shire-levies
on the wings rushed down the hill in wild rage and fell upon the
Normans. When they were scattered by their fiery charge, the duke let
loose his horsemen upon them, and the disorderly masses were ridden
down and slain or driven from the field. The house-carles of Harold
still stood firm around the two standards, from which they had not
moved, but the rest of the English army was annihilated. Then William
led his host against this remnant, a few thousand warriors only,
but the pick of Harold's army. Formed in an impenetrable ring, the
king's guards held out till nightfall, in spite of constant showers of
arrows, alternating with desperate cavalry charges. But Harold himself
was mortally wounded by an arrow in the eye, and one by one all his
retainers fell around him, till, as the sun was setting, the Normans
burst through the broken shield-wall, hewed down the English standards,
and pierced the dying king with many thrusts. With Harold there fell
his two brothers Gyrth and Leofwine, his uncle Aelfwig, most of the
thegnhood of Wessex, and the whole of his heroic band of house-carles.
THE ENGLISH KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF ECGBERT.
ECGBERT,
800-836.
|
AETHELWULF,
836-858.
|
+---------------+-------+-------+---------------+
| | | |
AETHELBALD, AETHELBERT, AETHELRED I., ALFRED,
855-860. 860-866. 866-871. 871-901.
|
+---------------------------+-------+
| |
EDWARD THE ELDER, Aethelflaed, = Aethelred.
901-925. Lady of Mercia.
|
+----------------+----------------+
| | |
AETHELSTAN, EDMUND I., EADRED,
925-940. 940-946. 946-955.
|
+--------+--------+
| |
EADWIG, EADGAR,
955-959. 959-975.
|
+-------------+-------------+
| |
EDWARD THE MARTYR, AETHELRED II.,
975-979. 979-1016.
|
+------------------+-----------+---------+
| | |
EDMUND II., Alfred the Etheling, EDWARD III.,
1016. slain 1036. the Confessor,
| 1042-1066.
Edward the Etheling.
|
+-------+-------+
| |
Eadgar the Margaret = Malcolm, King
Etheling. of Scots.
FOOTNOTE:
[7] The Norman historians of a later generation made a very impressive
scene of Godwine's death. The king and the earl were dining together,
it was said, when Edward spoke out his suspicion that Godwine had been
concerned in his brother Alfred's murder. "May the crust that I am
eating choke me," cried the earl, "if I had any hand in his death."
Forthwith he swallowed it, was seized with a fit, and died on the spot.