The history of the Norman conquest of England, its causes and its results, Volume 2 (of 6) — Freeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)

HISTORY OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST.

=London=

HENRY FROWDE

[Illustration: [Logo]]

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE
AMEN CORNER, E.C.

THE HISTORY
OF THE
NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND,
ITS CAUSES AND ITS RESULTS.

EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M.A.

LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE.

VOLUME II.

_THE REIGN OF EADWARD THE CONFESSOR._

Φιλεῖ γὰρ ὁ Θεὸς τοῖς οὔτε ἀγχίνοις οὔτε τι οἰκόθεν μηχανᾶσθαι οἵοις
τε οὖσιν, ἢν μὴ πονηροὶ εἶεν, ἀπορουμένοις τὰ ἔσχατα ἐπικουρεῖν τε
καὶ ξυλλαμβάνεσθαι, ὁποῖον δή τι καὶ τῷ βασιλεῖ τούτῳ
τετύχηκεν.—Procopius, Bell. Vand. i. 2.

=Oxford:=
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS.
M.DCCC.LXVIII.

[_All Rights reserved._]

PREFACE.

My first volume was preliminary. I am now able to announce the exact
extent and scheme of my book. My plan now extends to five volumes. The
present volume takes in the first stage of the actual struggle between
Normans and Englishmen, that is, the Reign of Eadward the Confessor. I
begin with Eadward’s election, and I continue the narrative to his
death. I take in also the early years of William in Normandy. In this
period the struggle is not as yet a struggle of open warfare: it is a
political struggle within the Kingdom of England. Harold and William
gradually come to be the leaders and representatives of their several
nations; but they are not, during the time embraced in the present
volume, brought into any actually hostile relation to one another.

The third volume will, as far as England is concerned, be devoted to the
single year 1066. But, along with the history of that great year, I
shall have to trace the later years of William’s Norman reign. The year
itself is the time of actual warfare between England and Normandy under
their respective sovereigns. It embraces the reign of Harold and the
interregnum which followed his death. I shall, in this volume, describe
the election of Harold, the campaigns of Stamfordbridge and Hastings,
and the formal completion of the Conquest by the acceptance and
coronation of William as King of the English. Of this volume a
considerable part is already written.

The fourth volume I shall devote to the reign of William in England. The
Conquest, formally completed by his coronation, has now to be
practically carried out throughout the land. The authority of William,
already formally acknowledged, is gradually established over England;
local resistance is overcome; the highest offices and the greatest
landed estates throughout England are gradually transferred from natives
to foreigners. Before William’s death the work was thoroughly done, and
the great Domesday Survey may be looked on as its record. The Conquest,
in its immediate results, is now fully accomplished.

The second, third, and fourth volumes will therefore embrace the main
narrative, the third being the centre of all. The fifth volume will
answer to the first. It will be supplementary, as the first was
preliminary. It will be devoted to the results of the Conquest, as the
first was devoted to its causes. It will not be necessary to prolong the
detailed history beyond the death of William the Conqueror, but it will
be necessary to give a sketch of the history down to Edward the First,
in order to point out the stages by which the Norman settlers were
gradually fused into the mass of the English nation. I shall also have
to examine the permanent results of the Conquest on government,
language, and the general condition of England.

I have again to give my best thanks for help of various kinds to several
of the friends whom I spoke of in my first volume. To them I must now
add Mr. Duffus Hardy and Mr. Edward Edwards. But, above all, I must
again express my deep thanks to Professor Stubbs, not only for the
benefit derived from his writings, but for his personal readiness to
correct and to suggest on all points. Without his help I may truly say
that this volume could not be what I trust it is.

SOMERLEAZE, WELLS,
_April 21st, 1868_.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VII.
FROM THE ELECTION OF EADWARD TO THE BANISHMENT OF GODWINE. 1042–1051.
A. D. PAGE
The struggle between Normans and Englishmen begins
with the accession of Eadward 4
Import of Eadward’s election; resolve of the English
people to have none but an English King 4
Other possible candidates; Swend Estrithson; Eadward
the son of Eadmund 5
Eadward the one available representative of the old
stock 5

§ 1. _The Election and Coronation of Eadward._ 1042–1043.
June, 1042 Popular election of Eadward 5
Delay of the coronation; its probable causes 6
Eadward probably absent from England and unwilling
to accept the Crown 6–7
Embassy to Eadward; negotiations between him and
Godwine 7–8
Eadward accepts the Crown and returns to England 8
Christmas? Witenagemót of Gillingham
1042–1043 9
Opposition to Eadward’s election in the interest of
Swend Estrithson 9
Eadward the only possible choice; nature of his
claims 10–14
April 3, Eadward crowned at Winchester
1043 14
Exhortation of Archbishop Eadsige; position of
Eadward; his relations to Godwine and the other
great Earls 14–16
Presence of foreign Ambassadors at the coronation;
Eadward’s foreign connexions; his relations with
Magnus of Denmark and with the French Princes 16–19
Gifts of the English nobles; Godwine gives a ship to
the King 19–20

§ 2. _Condition of England during the early years of Eadward._
Character of Eadward; his position as a Saint 20–21
Eadward’s memory acceptable to Englishmen and
Normans alike 22
Eadward’s personal character; purely monastic nature
of his virtues; points of likeness to his father 23–24
His love of hunting; contrast with the humanity of
Anselm 25–27
Personal appearance and habits of Eadward 27
His love of favourites; his fondness for foreigners;
promotion of Normans to high office 28–30
The Norman Conquest begins under Eadward 30
Relations between Eadward and Godwine; Norman
calumnies against Godwine and his sons 30–31
Character of Godwine; his relations to
ecclesiastical bodies; his over care for his own
household 31–33
His good and strict government of his Earldom 33–34
Godwine never reached the same power as Harold did
afterwards 35
Godwine’s eloquence; importance of speech at the
time 35
1043 Godwine’s family; Swegen raised to an Earldom 36
1045? Promotion of Beorn and Harold 36–37
Character of Harold; his military genius 37–39
His civil virtues; his singular forbearance; his
championship of England against strangers 39–40
His foreign travels; his patronage of Germans as
opposed to Frenchmen 40–41
Harold’s personal character; his alleged spoliation
of monasteries; his friendship with Saint
Wulfstan; his foundation of Waltham 41–42
Frankness and openness of his personal demeanour;
alleged charges of rashness 42–43
Story of Eadgyth Swanneshals 43
Comparison between Harold and Constantine
Palaiologos 43–44
Character of Swegen 44–45
Character of the Lady Eadgyth; her doubtful loyalty
to England; her relations to her husband 45–47
Greatness of Godwine and his house 47–48
The other Earldoms; Mercia under Leofric;
Northumberland under Siward 48–50
General condition of England; tendency not to
separation but to union; comparison with Frankish
history 50
Nature of the Earldoms as affected by the Danish
conquest; special position of Northumberland 50–51
The King’s Writs; light thrown by them on the
condition of Folkland 52–53
General powers of the Witan not lessened 53
1040 Affairs of Scotland; reign and death of Duncan 53–54
1040–1058 Reign of Macbeth; his distribution of money at Rome 54–55
1039–1063 Affairs of Wales; reign of Gruffydd of North Wales 55–56
1039 His victory over Eadwine at Rhyd-y-groes 56
1042 His wars in South Wales and victory at Aberteifi 56
Eadward’s relations with foreign powers; his
connexion with Germany 56
Claims of Magnus of Norway on the Crown of England 57
The reign of Eadward comparatively peaceful 57

§ 3. _From the Coronation of Eadward to the Remission of the War-tax._
1043–1051.
1043–1051 Character of the first nine years of Eadward 58
Relations between Eadward and his mother; probable
offence given by Emma 58–61
November Witenagemót of Gloucester; Eadward and the Earls
16, 1043 despoil Emma of her treasure 61–62
Probable connexion of Emma with the partizans of
1043–1046 Swend; banishments of Osbeorn, Osgod Clapa,
Gunhild, and others 62–64
April–Nov. Stigand appointed Bishop of the East-Angles and
1043 deposed 64–65
Importance of ecclesiastical appointments; mode of
appointing Bishops; increased connexion with Rome;
prevalence of simony 65–68
Siward Abbot of Abingdon appointed Coadjutor to
1044–1050 Archbishop Eadsige; he retires to Abingdon and
dies 68–69
July 25, Death of Ælfweard, Bishop of London
1044 69
August 10, Restoration of Stigand; Robert of Jumièges Bishop of
1044 London 70–71
Baneful influence of Robert; his calumnies against
Godwine; his connexion with the Norman Conquest 70–71
1044–1047 Condition of Northern Europe; war between Swend and
Magnus; conduct of Godescalc 72–73
1044–1045 Magnus claims the English Crown; answer of Eadward;
preparations against Magnus 73–74
Early life and exploits of Harold Hardrada; his
1030–1044 escape from Stikkelstad; he enters the Byzantine
service 74–76
1038–1040 He commands the Warangians in Sicily 76
His crusade or pilgrimage; he escapes from
Constantinople and joins Swend in Sweden 76–78
1045 Swend and Harold attack Magnus and save England from
invasion 78
Jan. 23, Marriage of Eadward and Eadgyth; promotions of
1045 Harold and Beorn 79
Death of Brihtwold, Bishop of the Wilsætas; Hermann
of Lotharingia succeeds; policy of the promotion
of German prelates 79–81
March 23, Death of Bishop Lyfing; his career and character
1046 81–83
1046–1072 Leofric succeeds him in Cornwall and Devonshire 83
1050 He removes the see to Exeter, and subjects his
Canons to the rule of Chrodegang 83–85
1046–1062 Ealdred succeeds Lyfing at Worcester; his character 85–86
Gruffydd ap Llywelyn reconciled with the King; his
joint expedition with Swegen against Gruffydd ap
Rhydderch 87
Swegen’s abduction of Eadgifu; he throws up his
Earldom and retires to Denmark; suppression of
Leominster Abbey 87–89
Banishment of Osgod Clapa 89–90
1047 Affairs of Scandinavia; Harold joins Magnus and
receives a share of the Kingdom of Norway 90–91
Swend asks help from England; his request is
supported in the Witenagemót by Godwine, but
rejected on the motion of Leofric 91–92
Magnus defeats Swend; he occupies Denmark and dies
suddenly 92–93
1048–1061 Harold succeeds in Norway, Swend in Denmark; their
long warfare 93
Norwegian and Danish embassies to England; help
1048 again refused to Swend; peace concluded with
Harold 93
1046–1047 Physical phænomena 93–94
Aug. 29, Ælfwine, Bishop of Winchester, dies; Stigand
1047 succeeds 94
1048 Ravages of Lothen and Yrling; the King and the Earls
pursue the pirates, but they escape to Flanders 94–96
Relations with Flanders; their analogy with the
relations with Normandy in 991 and 1000 96
Alliance with the Emperor Henry; his nomination of
German Popes 96
1048–1054 Pontificate of Leo the Ninth 96–97
1047 Godfrey of Lotharingia and Baldwin of Flanders rebel
against the Emperor 97
1049 Leo excommunicates Godfrey; Godfrey submits, but
Baldwin continues his ravages 97–98
Denmark and England join the Emperor against
Baldwin; the English fleet watches the Channel;
submission of Baldwin 98–99
Baldwin’s submission lets loose the English exiles;
Osgod Clapa at sea; Swegen seeks reconciliation
with Eadward 99–100
Harold and Beorn oppose his restoration; his
outlawry is renewed 100–101
Beorn entrapped and slain by Swegen 102–104
Swegen declared Nithing by the army; nature of the
military Gemót 104–105
Swegen escapes to Flanders and is received by
Baldwin; universal indignation against him in
England 105–107
Midlent, Swegen restored to his Earldom by the intervention
1050 of Bishop Ealdred 107–109
1049 Various military operations; movements of Osgod
Clapa 109–110
July Ships from Ireland in the Bristol Channel joined by
Gruffydd of South Wales 110
July 29 Campaign of Bishop Ealdred; his defeat by Gruffydd 110–111
Increasing connexion of England with the continent;
1049–1050 English attendance at synods; synods at Rheims and
Mainz 111–113
Deaths of Bishops and Abbots; Siward dies, and
1049 Eadsige resumes the primacy; Eadnoth of Dorchester
dies and is succeeded by Ulf the Norman 113
Midlent, Witenagemót of London; reduction of the fleet;
1050 Swegen inlawed 114–115
The King’s vow of pilgrimage to Rome; Bishops
Ealdred and Hermann sent to obtain a dispensation 115–116
Synods of Rome and Vercelli; Lanfranc and Berengar;
Ulf confirmed in his Bishoprick; pilgrimage of
Macbeth? 116–118
Death of Archbishop Eadsige; the monks of Christ
Oct. 29 Church elect Ælfric, who is supported by Godwine
but rejected by the King 118–120
Midlent, Witenagemót of London; Robert of Jumièges appointed
1051 to Canterbury, Spearhafoc to London, and Rudolf to
the Abbey of Abingdon 120–121
Robert returns from Rome with the pallium; he
July 27 refuses to consecrate Spearhafoc, who holds his
see without consecration 121–123
The remaining ships paid off; remission of the
Midlent? Heregeld; distinction between Danegeld and
Heregeld 123–125

§ 4. _The Banishment of Earl Godwine._ 1051.
The foreign influence at its height; contrast
between Danish and Norman influences; revolt of
England against the strangers 125–129
Universal indignation at the appointment of Robert;
his cabals against Godwine 129–130
September Visit of Eustace of Boulogne to Eadward at
Gloucester; his outrages at Dover on his return 130–133
Eustace accuses the men of Dover to Eadward; Eadward
commands Godwine to inflict military chastisement
on them; Godwine refuses, and demands a legal
trial 133–137
Robert excites the King against Godwine; the Witan
summoned to Gloucester to hear charges against the
Earl 137–138
Outrages of the Normans in Herefordshire; building
of castles; Richard’s Castle 138–140
Godwine and his sons gather the force of their
Earldoms at Beverstone; Siward, Leofric, and Ralph
gather theirs at Gloucester 141
Negotiations between Godwine and the King; Godwine’s
Sept. 8 offers refused through the influence of the
Frenchmen; he demands the surrender of Eustace and
the other criminals 142–143
The full force of the Northern Earldoms assembles at
Gloucester; Eadward refuses to surrender Eustace 143–144
Eagerness of the Northumbrians for battle; march of
the West-Saxons and East-Angles on Gloucester 144–146
Mediation of Leofric; adjournment to a Gemót in
London 146–147
Gemót of London; Eadward at the head of an army;
Sept. 29 outlawry of Swegen renewed; Godwine and Harold
summoned to appear as criminals 147–149
Final summons to the Earls; their demand for a
safe-conduct is refused 149–150
Godwine and his family outlawed; Godwine, Swegen,
&c., take refuge in Flanders 151
Harold determines on resistance; he and Leofwine
sail from Bristol to Dublin, where they are
received by King Diarmid; vain pursuit of Bishop
Ealdred 152–155
Eadgyth sent to Wherwell 155–156
General character of the story; explanation of
Godwine’s conduct: effect of his fall on the minds
of his contemporaries 157–160
Oct. Temporary triumph of the Norman party; advancement
1051–Sept. of Ralph, Odda, and Ælfgar
1052 160–161
Spearhafoc deposed and William appointed Bishop of
London 161
Visit of Duke William 161–162

CHAPTER VIII.
THE EARLY YEARS OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 1028–1051.

§ 1. _Birth, Character, and Accession of William._ 1028–1035.
Character and greatness of William; lasting results
of his career 163–164
English and Norman portraits of him 165–166
His strength of will, military genius,
statesmanship, and unscrupulousness as to means 166–167
His personal virtues; general excellence of his
ecclesiastical appointments 167–168
Effects of his reign in Normandy, France, and
England 168–169
General excellence of his government in Normandy 169–170
His reign in England; skill displayed in his claim
on the English Crown, in his acquisition of it,
and in his subsequent government 170–171
Severity of his police 171–172
The worst features of his character brought out in
England; crimes and misfortunes of his later years 172–174
William’s surnames; the Great, the Conqueror, and
the Bastard 174
Laxity of the Norman Dukes as to marriage and
legitimacy; special illegitimacy of William 174–175
Story of William’s birth; description of Falaise;
historical associations of the castle 175–177
English legend of the birth of William 177–178
1026–1028 Story of Robert and Herleva; advancement of her
family; birth of William 178–180
Question of the succession; state of the Ducal
family; various candidates, but none free from
objection 180–182
Unpopularity of the prospect of William’s succession 182
The great Norman houses; their connexion with
English history 182–183
Greatness and wickedness of the house of Belesme;
crimes of William Talvas; he curses young William
in his cradle 183–187
1034–1035 Robert announces his intention of pilgrimage 187
He proposes William as his successor; his succession
unwillingly accepted 188–189
1035 Robert dies on pilgrimage and William succeeds 189
Childhood of William; necessary evils of a minority 189–191
Anarchy of the time; building of castles; frequency
of assassinations 191–193
Effects of William’s government in Normandy 193

§ 2. _From the Accession of William to the Battle of Val-ès-dunes._
1035–1047.
Guardians of William; Alan of Britanny; Osbern;
Gilbert 193–194
1039–1040 Murders of Alan and Gilbert 195
House of Montgomery; history of Roger of Montgomery
and his wife Mabel 195–197
Attempt of William of Montgomery on Duke William at
Vaudreuil; murder of Osbern; escape of the Duke;
friendship of the Duke for William Fitz-Osbern 197–198
Rebellion and death of Roger of Toesny; houses of
Grantmesnil and Beaumont 199
Ralph of Wacey chosen as the Duke’s guardian 200–201
Relations between Normandy and France; general good
understanding since the Commendation to Hugh the
Great; return of ill-feeling on the accession of
William; ingratitude of King Henry 201–203
Castle of Tillières demanded by Henry; Gilbert
Crispin refuses to surrender, and is besieged; the
castle surrendered, burned, and restored by Henry
contrary to his engagements 203–205
Treason of Thurstan Goz; capture of Falaise Castle
by the Duke 205–207
Developement of William’s character 207–208
Abuse of ecclesiastical appointments by the Norman
Dukes 208
Position of the Norman Prelates; their subjection to
the Ducal authority 209
1037–1055 Death of Archbishop Robert; succession and primacy
of Malger 209–210
1048–1098 Odo Bishop of Bayeux; his character in England and
in Normandy 210–212
Ecclesiastical movement in Normandy; foundation of
monasteries 213
Character of the monastic reformations in various
ages 213–214
Abbeys of Bec and Saint Evroul 214–216
994–1034 Descent, birth, and early life of Herlwin 216–219
1034–1037 Herlwin’s foundation at Burneville 219
1037–1078 He removes the monastery to Bec; his administration 220–222
1005–1039 Descent, birth, and character of Lanfranc 222–225
1039–1042 He teaches at Avranches 225
1042–1045 He becomes a monk and Prior of Bec; his favour with
William 225–227
1049–1050 He attends the synods of Rome and Vercelli 227
575 Monastery of Saint Evroul; history of its founder
Ebrulf or Evroul 228–229
943 The house escapes the Danish ravages, but is
plundered by Hugh the Great 229–230
The monastery forsaken and restored by Restold 230
c. 1015 Geroy and his family; their relations to the house
of Belesme 230–232
William the son of Geroy blinded by William Talvas 232
1050 Saint Evroul restored by William the son of Geroy
and his nephews Hugh and Robert of Grantmesnil 233
1050–1063 Succession of Abbots; intrigues and abbacy of the
co-founder Robert 233–234
Connexion of the religious movement in Normandy with
the Conquest of England 234
Origin of the Truce of God; custom of private war;
comparison between the Truce and the Crusades 234–236
A reform in those times necessarily ecclesiastical 237
1034 The Truce first preached in Aquitaine 237–239
1041 The Truce preached in a relaxed form in Burgundy and
Lotharingia 239–240
1042–1080 The Truce received in Normandy at the Councils of
Caen and Lillebonne 240–241
1047 Wide spread conspiracy against William 241
Intrigues of Guy of Burgundy with the Lords of the
Bessin and the Côtentin; scheme for a division of
the Duchy 242–243
Geographical division of parties; Rouen and the
French lands loyal; Bayeux and the Danish lands
join in the rebellion 243–244
The rebel leaders; Neal of Saint Saviour 245
Randolf Viscount of Bayeux 246
Hamon Dentatus of Thorigny 246
Grimbald of Plessis 247
Attempt to seize William at Valognes; his escape 247–249
Progress of the rebellion; William seeks help of
King Henry; probable motives of Henry for granting
it 250–252
Battle of Val-ès-dunes; its importance in the life
of William 252
Val-ès-dunes a battle between Romanized and Teutonic
Normandy 253–254
Description of the field 254
Junction of the Ducal and French forces; Ralph of
Tesson joins the Duke 255–257
The Battle a mere combat of cavalry 257–258
Personal exertions and overthrow of King Henry;
death of Hamon 258–260
Exploits and good fortune of William 260–261
Defeat of the rebels; flight of Randolf; bravery of
Neal 261–263
Escape of Guy; he defends himself at Brionne 263–264
1047–1050? Siege and surrender of Brionne; William’s treatment
of the vanquished 264–267
Guy returns to Burgundy; fate of Grimbald 267–268
Establishment of William’s power in Normandy;
supremacy of the French element confirmed 269–270

§ 3. _From the Battle of Val-ès-dunes to William’s Visit to England._
1047–1051.
The Counts of Anjou; their connexion with Normandy
and England; characteristics of Angevin history 270–271
464 Saxon occupation of Anjou 271
870? Ingelgar first Count; legend of the origin of the
family 271–273
888 Succession of Counts; Fulk the Red 273
938 Fulk the Good; his proverb about unlearned Kings 273–274
958 Geoffrey Grisegonelle; his wars 274
978 His services to King Lothar in the war with Otto 274
987 Fulk Nerra, warrior and pilgrim 274
992 His war with Odo of Chartres 274
1016 Battle of Pontlevois; defeat of Odo 274
1028–1035 Fulk’s pilgrimages to Jerusalem 275
1040 Geoffrey Martel; origin of his surname 276
April 22, Geoffrey imprisons William Duke of Aquitaine,
1033 marries Agnes, and rebels against his father 276–277
1033–1037 Last days of Odo of Chartres; his war with King
Henry and attempt on the Kingdom of Burgundy 277
His sons Stephen and Theobald; their wars with King
1044 Henry and with Geoffrey; Geoffrey receives Tours
from Henry and imprisons Theobald 277–278
1048 Duke William helps King Henry against Geoffrey; his
personal exploits 279–280
Position of Maine under Geoffrey 280
1015–1036 Succession of Counts; Herbert Wake-the-Dog and Hugh 280
1048–1049 Fortresses of Domfront and Alençon; disloyalty of
Alençon; it receives an Angevin garrison 281–282
William’s march to Domfront; traitors in the Norman
camp 283–284
Geoffrey comes to relieve Domfront and decamps 284–286
William’s sudden march to Alençon; insults offered
to him; his capture of the town and cruel
vengeance 287–288
Domfront surrenders; William fortifies Ambières 289
Story of William the Warling; he is charged with
treason by Robert the Bigod 290–291
Duke William makes him leave Normandy, and gives his
county of Mortain to his own half-brother Robert 292
1049–1054 Prosperous condition of Normandy 293
1049–1053 William’s courtship and marriage with Matilda of
Flanders 293
1051–1052 Condition of England 294
1051 William’s visit to England; estimate of him in
English eyes 295
Eadward’s alleged promise of the Crown to William
probably made at this time 296–301
Constitutional value of such a promise; its
revocation in favour of Harold 301
Improbability of any other time for the promise 302–303
Nature of William’s claims 304
William’s visit an important stage in the history 305
March 6, Death of Ælfgifu-Emma
1052 306

CHAPTER IX.
THE REIGN OF EADWARD FROM THE RETURN OF GODWINE TO THE DEATH OF EADWARD
THE ÆTHELING. 1052–1057.

Character of the period; little direct connexion
between English and Norman affairs 307–308

§ 1. _The Return and Death of Godwine._ 1052–1053.
1052 General regret at the absence of Godwine; he
receives invitations to return 308–310
Eadward gathers a fleet at Sandwich to oppose
Godwine 310
Ravages of Gruffydd of North Wales; his victory near
Leominster 311–312
Godwine petitions for his restoration; embassies of
foreign princes on his behalf; his restoration is
refused 312–313
Godwine determines on a return by force; estimate of
his conduct 313–315
Harold and Leofwine sail from Dublin and enter the
Bristol Channel 315
The people of Somersetshire and Devonshire ill
disposed towards them; probable grounds for their
hostility 316
Harold’s landing and victory at Porlock; estimate of
his conduct 316–319
June 22 Godwine sets sail; his first appearance off the
English coast 319–320
Both fleets dispersed by a storm; Godwine returns to
Bruges 320–321
Godwine sails the second time to Wight; meeting of
Godwine and Harold; they sail eastward together 321–322
Zeal in their cause shown by the men of Sussex,
Surrey, Kent, and Essex 322–323
They enter the Thames and sail towards London 323
Sept. 14 Godwine reaches Southwark; London declares for him 323–324
The King hastens to London with an army 324–325
Godwine before London; zeal of his followers and
lukewarmness of the King’s troops 326–327
Godwine demands his restoration; Eadward hesitates 328
The indignation of Godwine’s men restrained by the
Earl 328–329
Embassy of Stigand; hostages exchanged; and matters
referred to a Gemót on the morrow 329
Godwine and Harold land 329
Fears of the King’s Norman favourites; general
flight of the foreigners 329–331
Robert and Ulf cut their way out of London; the
Sept. 15 _Mycel Gemót_ assembles without the walls of
London; its popular character 332–333
Godwine at the Gemót; he supplicates the King and
speaks to the people 333–334
Votes of the Assembly; acquittal and restoration of
Godwine; outlawry of Archbishop Robert and many
other Normans; “Good law decreed for all folk” 335–337
Personal reconciliation between Godwine and the King 337
Restoration of Eadgyth 337–338
Absence of Swegen; his pilgrimage to Jerusalem 338
Sept. 29 He dies in Lykia 338
Disposal of Earldoms; restoration of Harold;
Earldoms of Ralph and Odda 339
The vacant Bishopricks; relations between Church and
State 339–340
Stigand appointed to Canterbury; his doubtful
ecclesiastical position; handle given to the
Normans by Robert’s expulsion 340–344
1053–1067 Wulfwig succeeds Ulf at Dorchester 344
1053–1067 Leofwine Bishop of Lichfield; Leofwine and Wulfwig
seek consecration beyond sea 344
1051–1070 William of London retains his Bishoprick 345–346
Normans allowed to remain or return; some of them
probably restored after Godwine’s death; Osbern of
Richard’s Castle 346–348
Estimate of Godwine’s conduct; his illness 348
1052–1053 Christmas Gemót at Gloucester 348
Jan. 5, Rhys ap Rhydderch beheaded and his head brought to
1053 Eadward 349
1053–1066 Arnwig resigns the Abbey of Peterborough; succession
and administration of Leofric 349–350
1053 Easter Gemót at Winchester 350
April 12 Godwine taken ill at the King’s table 350
April 15 His death and burial; gifts of his widow Gytha 350–352
General grief of the nation; true estimate of
Godwine’s character 352–354

§ 2. _From the Accession of Harold to the Earldom of the West-Saxons to
his first War with Gruffydd._ 1053–1056.
Nature of the succession to Earldoms; different
positions of Mercia and Northumberland and of
Wessex and East-Anglia 354–355
Reasons for retaining the West-Saxon Earldom 355–356
Easter, Harold Earl of the West-Saxons; Ælfgar Earl of the
1053 East-Angles; character of Ælfgar and his sons 356–357
Probable restoration of Bishop William and other
Normans 358
Position of the Normans in Eadward’s later days;
political office forbidden, but court office
allowed; Eadward’s later policy thoroughly English 358–359
Different positions of Godwine and Harold with
regard to the foreigners 359–360
Christmas, Ecclesiastical appointments; Leofwine of Lichfield
1053–1054 and Wulfwig of Dorchester 361
1053–1082 Æthelnoth Abbot of Glastonbury 361
1053–July Bishop Ealdred holds the Abbey of Winchcombe with
17, 1054 his See 361–362
Welsh inroad at Westbury 362
1054 Macbeth in Scotland; Siward’s expedition against
him; Macbeth’s alliance with Thorfinn 362–364
July 27 Siward defeats Macbeth; Malcolm declared King of
Scots; legends about Siward 364–365
1054–1058 The war continued by Macbeth; his final defeat and
death 365–366
1058 Ephemeral reign of Lulach; Malcolm King over all
Scotland 366
Erroneous popular conception of the war with Macbeth 366
1054 State of the royal family; position of Ralph; of the
descendants of Eadmund Ironside 367–370
The Ætheling Eadward invited to England; import of
the invitation 370–372
July Embassy of Ealdred and Ælfwine to the Emperor Henry;
Ealdred’s long stay at Köln 372–374
Death of Osgod Clapa 374
1055 Death of Earl Siward; his foundation at Galmanho;
his son Waltheof 374–375
March Tostig appointed Earl of the Northumbrians; novelty
of the appointment; its doubtful policy 375–379
Character and government of Tostig; his personal
favour with Eadward; legends about him and Harold 379–383
Tostig’s sworn brotherhood with Malcolm 384–385
March 20 Banishment of Ælfgar 385–386
Ælfgar hires ships in Ireland; he ravages
Herefordshire in alliance with Gruffydd 386–388
October 24 Battle near Hereford; defeat of the English through
the innovations of Earl Ralph 388–390
Gruffydd and Ælfgar sack and burn Hereford 390–392
Harold sent against the Welsh; comparison of his
earlier and later Welsh campaigns 393–394
Harold restores and fortifies Hereford 394–395
Christmas Peace of Billingsley; general mildness of English
1055–1056 political warfare 395
Ælfgar restored to his Earldom 396
Feb. 10, Death of Æthelstan Bishop of Hereford; invasion of
1056 Magnus and Gruffydd 396–397
March Short and warlike episcopate of Leofgar of Hereford;
27–June 16 his death in battle; character of the war with
Gruffydd 397–398
1056–1060 Ealdred holds the See of Hereford with that of
Worcester 398
1056 Gruffydd reconciled to Eadward; his oath of homage;
he is mulcted of his lands in Cheshire 398–400
Cooperation of Harold, Leofric, and Ealdred 400–401

§ 3. _From Harold’s first Campaign against Gruffydd to the Deaths of
Leofric and Ralph._ 1055–1057.
Christmas Ecclesiastical affairs; Hermann of Ramsbury tries to
1055–1056 annex the Abbey of Malmesbury to his Bishoprick;
his scheme hindered by Harold 401–405
1056–1058 Hermann retires to Saint Omer; he returns and unites
the Sees of Ramsbury and Sherborne 405–406
August 31, Death of Earl Odda
1056 407

1056–1071 Æthelric of Durham resigns his See; succession of
his brother Æthelwine 407–408
1057 The Ætheling Eadward comes to England; his intended
succession to the Crown; his death 408–410
Probable reasons why he never saw the King 410–412
Surmise of Sir F. Palgrave that Harold caused his
death; its injustice 412–414
Death of Heaca, Bishop of the South-Saxons; Æthelric
succeeds 414
August 31 Death of Earl Leofric; fate of Godgifu 414–415
Dec. 21 Death of Earl Ralph; his possible pretensions to the
Crown 415–416
Christmas Redistribution of Earldoms; Ælfgar Earl of the
1057–1058 Mercians; marriage of his daughter Ealdgyth with
Gruffydd 416
Herefordshire added to Harold’s Earldom; Harold the
son of Ralph 417
Gyrth Earl of the East-Angles and of Oxfordshire;
policy of detached shires 418
Leofwine Earl of Kent, Essex, &c.; London not under
any Earl 419
1058–1065 The House of Godwine at its highest point of
greatness 419–420
Harold’s prospects of the Crown 420
Position of Harold; effects of Eadward’s promise to
William; the candidates of the patriotic party,
first the Ætheling, then Harold 420–422
Quasi-royal position of Harold; probably no formal
act, but a general understanding in his favour 424–427
Harold chief ruler of England 427

CHAPTER X.
THE REIGN OF EADWARD, FROM THE DEATH OF THE ÆTHELING TO THE DEATH OF
THE KING. 1057–1066.

§ 1. _The Ecclesiastical Administration of Earl Harold._ 1058–1062.
Dominant position of Harold; predominance of
ecclesiastical affairs; Harold in relation to the
Church 428–430
1058? Harold’s pilgrimage to Rome; he studies the politics
of the French Princes on his way 430–431
1057–1061 Succession of Popes; Stephen the Ninth; Benedict the
Tenth; Nicholas the Second 431–432
Benedict probably in possession at the time of
1058 Harold’s visit; he grants the pallium to Stigand,
probably through Harold’s influence 432
Temporary recognition of Stigand after his receipt
of the pallium; the new Bishops Æthelric and
Siward are consecrated by him 433
Harold returns to England 433–434
Second outlawry and return of Ælfgar 434–435
Ecclesiastical history of Gloucester; death of Abbot
681–1058 Eadric; Bishop Ealdred rebuilds and consecrates
the church and appoints Wulfstan Abbot 435–436
1058 Ealdred restores the See of Ramsbury to Hermann and
makes the pilgrimage to Jerusalem 436–437
April 23, Mannig resigns the abbacy of Evesham and is
1059 succeeded by Æthelwig 437–438
Deposition of Pope Benedict; its effect on the
position of Stigand 439
May 3, Consecration of Harold’s minster at Waltham
1060 439
Nature and importance of the foundation; its
character generally misunderstood 439–440
Harold’s acquisition of Waltham; he rebuilds the
church and founds a secular college 441–442
Distinction between the foundation of secular
colleges and of monasteries 442
Harold’s zeal for education; Adelard of Lüttich 443–444
Continuance of the struggle between regulars and
seculars; Harold a friend of the seculars; general
witness to his character borne by the foundation 444–446
The church consecrated by Archbishop Cynesige; the
foundation charter dated two years later 446–447
Dec. 22 Death of Cynesige 447
Dec. 25 Ealdred appointed Archbishop of York in the Gemót at
Gloucester 447–448
1060–1079 Ealdred resigns the See of Hereford and is succeeded
by Walter 448
1060–1088 Death of Duduc Bishop of Wells; he is succeeded by
Gisa 449–450
Later careers of Walter and Gisa; Gisa’s changes at
Wells; comparisons between the foundations of
Harold and Gisa 451–453
April 15, Gisa and Walter consecrated at Rome
1061 453–454
April Death of Wulfric, Abbot of Saint Augustine’s; his
18–May 26 successor Æthelsige receives the benediction from
Stigand 454–455
Journey to Rome of Ealdred, Tostig, and Gyrth 455–456
Pope Nicolas confirms the privileges of Westminster,
but refuses the pallium to Ealdred, and deprives
him of his See 456–457
Tostig and the Bishops robbed on their way home 457
They return to Rome, and the Pope yields the pallium
to the threats of Tostig 457–459
Ill effects of the practice of pilgrimage; Malcolm
invades Northumberland during the absence of
Tostig 459–460
Lent, 1062 Vacancy of the See of Worcester; papal legates in
England 460–461
Ealdred hesitates between Abbot Æthelwig and
Wulfstan Prior of Worcester 461–462
1012–1062 Life and character of Wulfstan 462–464
Easter Wulfstan elected Bishop; the election confirmed by
1062 the Witan 464–466
Sept. 8 Wulfstan consecrated by Ealdred, but makes
profession to Stigand 466–467
Easter The King’s charter to the College at Waltham.
1063 467
Ælfwig, uncle of Harold, appointed Abbot of New
Minster 467–468

§ 2. _The Welsh War and its Consequences._ 1062–1065.
Renewed ravages of Gruffydd; probable death of
1062 Ælfgar, who is succeeded in his Earldom by his son
Eadwine 468–469
Christmas Gemót at Gloucester; Harold’s sudden march to
1062–1063 Rhuddlan 468–470
Harold’s great Welsh campaign; its permanent effect
on men’s minds; testimony of John of Salisbury and
of Giraldus Cambrensis 470–471
May 26, Harold and Tostig invade Wales; Harold adopts the
1063 Welsh tactics; all Wales reduced to submission 472–474
August 5 Gruffydd murdered by his own people 475
The Welsh Kingdom granted to Bleddyn and Rhiwallon 475–476
Alleged legislation about Wales 476–477
1064? Harold marries Ealdgyth; the marriage probably a
political one 477–478
August 1, Harold builds a hunting-seat for Eadward at
1065 Portskewet 479
August 24 Caradoc son of Gruffydd of South Wales kills the
workmen 480

§ 3. _The Revolt of Northumberland._ 1065.
Oppressive government of Tostig in Northumberland 481
1064 Charges against him; murder of Gamel and Ulf 482
Dec. 28 Murder of Gospatric in the King’s Court; attributed
to Tostig and Eadgyth 482
Oct. 3, Revolt of Northumberland; rebel Gemót at York
1065 483
Constitutional position of Northumberland; frequent
absence of Tostig; his deputy Copsige 483–485
Acts of the rebel Gemót; vote of deposition and
outlawry against Tostig; Morkere elected Earl 485
Objects of Eadwine and Morkere; they aim at the
division of the Kingdom; constant treasons of
Eadwine 486–487
Oswulf Earl in Bernicia or Northumberland 487
The Northumbrians put to death Amund and Reavenswart 488
October 4 General massacre of Tostig’s followers and plunder
of his treasury 489
Morkere and the Northumbrians march to Northampton;
Eadwine joins them; presence of Welshmen in his
army 489–490
Ravages of the Northumbrians in Northamptonshire and
the neighbouring shires 490–491
Negotiations between the King and the rebels; Harold
carries a summons to lay down their arms and
submit their grievances to legal discussion 491
Answer of the Northumbrians 491–492
Eadward holds a Gemót at Bretford; debates in the
Council 492–493
Tostig charges Harold with stirring up the revolt;
Harold denies the charge on oath 493–494
Eadward’s eagerness for war; he is kept back by
Harold and others 494–495
Position of Harold; his public duty and private
interest in the controversy; complete agreement of
the two 495–498
Gemót of Oxford; acts of the York Gemót confirmed;
October 28 Waltheof made Earl of Northamptonshire and
Huntingdonshire; renewal of Cnut’s Law 498–500
Nov. 1 Banishment of Tostig; he takes refuge in Flanders 500–501

§ 4. _The Last Days of Eadward._ 1065–1066.
Eadward’s last sickness; his devotion to Saint Peter 501–503
His foundation at Westminster in honour of the
1051–1065 Apostle; reverse order of proceeding at
Westminster and at Waltham 503–504
653–1051 Early history of Westminster 504–505
Permanence of Eadward’s minster and palace; existing
remains of his buildings 506–508
1065 Completion of the church; the first great example of
Norman architecture in England 508–510
Legends 510–513
Sept. 1065 Consecration of Eadgyth’s church at Wilton 513
Dec. 25–28 Midwinter Gemót at Westminster; consecration of the
church 513–514
Jan. 5, Death of Eadward
1066 515
Jan. 6 Burial of Eadward and coronation of Harold 515
Summary 515–516

APPENDIX.
NOTE A. The Election and Coronation of Eadward 517
B. The Legendary History of Eadward 525
C. Eadward’s Fondness for Foreign Churchmen 535
D. English and Norman Estimates of Godwine and Harold 536
E. The Alleged Spoliations of the Church by Godwine and
Harold 543
F. The Children of Godwine 552
G. The Great Earldoms during the Reign of Eadward 555
H. The Legend of Emma 568
I. The Welsh Campaign of 1049 571
K. Danegeld and Heregeld 574
L. The Banishment of Godwine 575
M. The Surnames of William 581
N. The Birth of William 583
O. The Battle of Val-ès-dunes 590
P. The Counts of Anjou and of Chartres 591
Q. The Imprisonment of William of Aquitaine 594
R. The Ravages attributed to Harold and Godwine 596
S. The Narratives of the Return of Godwine 598
T. The Pilgrimage of Swegen 603
U. The Ecclesiastical Position of Stigand 605
W. The Death of Earl Godwine 608
X. The War with Macbeth 613
Y. The Mission of Ealdred and the Return of the
Ætheling Eadward 619
Z. The Supposed Enmity between Harold and Tostig 623
AA. Æthelstan, Bishop of Hereford 628
BB. The Family of Leofric 629
CC. Harold the Son of Ralph 632
DD. The Quasi-Royal Position of Earl Harold 634
EE. Harold’s Foreign Travels and Pilgrimage 635
FF. The Quarrel between Earl Harold and Bishop Gisa 637
GG. Ælfwig Abbot of New Minster 644
HH. The Revolt of Northumberland 646

ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.

p. 14, note 4, for “manude” read “monude.”

p. 46, note 1, for “men” read “man.”

p. 50, side-note, for “Earldom” read “Earldoms.”

p. 52, l. 7. There is another writ which, though neither Northumberland
nor any Northumbrian Earl is distinctly mentioned, is clearly meant to
run in Northumberland more than anywhere else. This is the writ in Cod.
Dipl. iv. 230, addressed, according to a form found elsewhere, to the
Bishops, Earls, and Thegns of all those shires in which Archbishop
Ealdred had any lands “Eadward cyngc grét míne biscopas and míne eorlas
and ealle mýne þegenas on ðam scýran ðær Ealdred ærcebisceop hæfeð land
inne freóndlíce”). Among these shires Gloucestershire is doubtless
included, but Yorkshire must have stood foremost.

p. 70, note 1. See p. 438.

p. 82, l. 5. There is an odd notice of Lyfing’s plurality of Bishopricks
in a deed in Cod. Dipl. vi. 195. It is a conveyance of lands to
Sherborne made in a Scirgemót of Devonshire held at Exeter under the
presidency of Earl Godwine. Lyfing is one of the witnesses, and he is
described as “Lyfing bisceop be norðan,” as if a Devonshire man’s
notions of Worcester were not very clear. Worcester was clearly the see
which Lyfing loved best.

p. 89, note 3. I ought here to have added another entry in the same
folio of Domesday, which I knew perfectly well, but which did not catch
my eye when I wrote this note. In the second column of fol. 180 are the
words “Abbatissa tenet Fencote, et ipsa tenuit T. R. E.” This, and the
entry about “victus monialium,” are the whole account of the monastery.
This entry however may well agree with my view of the case. Fencote is
but a small dependency of Leominster, and it was probably a portion set
aside for Eadgifu’s personal maintenance. If so, she survived her error
forty years.

p. 108, l. 14. Perhaps more accurately, in the Earldom of Ralph, under
the superior authority of Leofric. See p. 563.

p. 115, note 5. On seeming anachronisms of this kind see p. 634. Cf. p.
111, note 1.

p. 134, note 2. On the bare possibility that Tostig may have held some
subordinate government as early as this time, see p. 567.

p. 165, l. 3. To prevent misconception, it may be needful to explain to
some readers that there was a Napoleon Buonaparte, who was crowned at
Paris (see vol. i. p. 268) and who died at Saint Helena, and who slew
more men in unjust wars than probably any one man in Europe since Caius
Julius Cæsar.

p. 180, l. 11, for “so perilous an enterprise” read “the same perilous
enterprise.”

p. 209, l. 2, for “Princes” read “Prince.”

p. 248, l. 15, after “half dressed” read “himself.”

p. 249, note 3, for “of the Monasticon” read “in the Monasticon.”

p. 278, note 1, for “contigerât” read “contigerat.”

p. 284, note 2. I have to thank my friend Mr. Dimock for the explanation
that “accipiter” is the goshawk, while the sparrow-hawk is “nisus.” From
the point of view of the small birds the difference is perhaps not very
important.

p. 287, note 2, for “than that at Alençon” read “than he was at
Alençon.”

p. 322, l. 24, after “from Kent” read “from Surrey.”

P· 337, l. 17. See p. 602.

p. 342, note 2, for “_filli_” read “_filii_.”

p. 347, note 3. Of Ralph the Staller I shall have to speak more at large
in my next volume. I suspect him to be the Ralph mentioned in the
Chronicles under the year 1075.

p. 349, note 2. On Leofric’s plurality of abbeys see also the
Peterborough Chronicle, 1066.

p. 359, note 1. “Bundinus,” that is Bondig, was an Englishman. I shall
have to speak of him again.

p. 368, l. 8, for “around” read “beneath.”

p. 373, l. 3, for “West-Frankish” read “East-Frankish.”

p. 418, l. 4 from bottom, for “whenever” read “wherever.”

p. 423, l. 8 from bottom, dele “indeed.”

p. 433, l. 15, for “fell vacant in the course of the year” read “were
now vacant.” It seems uncertain whether Heaca died in 1057 or in 1058
(see p. 414): if the former year is right, the see of Selsey must have
remained vacant a year. As this is not likely, the expression in the
text is probably true, but it is better to leave the matter uncertain.

Ib. note 1, for “disposition” read “disposal.”

p. 436, l. 10. The three Wulfstans—Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester,
Archbishop of York, and founder of Gloucester Abbey—Wulfstan, monk of
Worcester and Abbot of Gloucester—and Saint Wulfstan, Prior and Bishop
of Worcester,—must be carefully distinguished from each other. All were
alive at once, and the last two were strictly contemporary, and all had
more or less to do with Worcester and Gloucester.

p. 441, l. 8. I shall discuss in my third volume the possibility of this
Esegar being the “Ansgardus” of Guy of Amiens. The idea had not occurred
to me when I wrote this part of the text.

p. 448, l. 18, for “two” read “four” = 1056–1060.

p. 451, note 6. On this Azor and others of the name, see p. 642.

p. 461, note 5, for “436” read “438.”

p. 465, note 5, for “1262” read “1062.”

p. 467, note 3. This charge against Ealdred is confirmed by the entries
in Domesday, 164 _b_. “Eldred archiepiscopus tenuit Stanedis. De dominio
Sancti Petri de Glouuecestre fuit.” “Sanctus Petrus de Glouuecestre
tenuit Lecce, et Eldred archiepiscopus tenuit cum abbatiâ.” Both these
are lordships in Gloucestershire, which were still held by the see of
York at the time of the Survey. It is not so clear when we read of a
third lordship in the same list; “Eldredus archiepiscopus tenuit
Otintune.... Thomas archiepiscopus tenet. Sanctus Petrus de Glouuecestre
habuit in dominio donec Rex Willelmus in Angliam venit.” Does this mean
that Ealdred, who was, for some time at least, in William’s favour,
continued his spoliations of the monks of Gloucester after his
accession?

p. 479, l. 12, for “seem well” read “well seem.” See p. 651.

p. 487, l. 9, and 497, l. 19. See p. 651.

p. 511, l. 16. The Bishop meant would doubtless be Stigand as Bishop of
the diocese; by the same showing the Abbot would most likely be Harold’s
uncle Ælfwig, the Abbot of the neighbouring house of New Minster.

p. 531, l. 24. Cf. Ovid, Metamorph. x. 467;

“Forsitan ætatis quoque nomine, Filia, dicat.”

p. 541, l. 10, for “this” read “his.”

p. 545, l. 7, for “againt” read “against.”

p. 553, l. 14. The list in the Knytlirga Saga, c. 11, is no less
strange; Harold, Tostig, “Maurakaare,” Waltheof, and Swend.

p. 598, l. 9 from bottom, for “late” read “later,” and in last line but
one dele “than.”

p. 607, l. 11 from bottom, for “præsente” read “præsentem.”

p. 611, l. 13 from bottom, for “minded” read “reminded.”

THE HISTORY

OF THE

NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND.

CHAPTER VII.

FROM THE ELECTION OF EADWARD TO THE BANISHMENT OF GODWINE.[1] 1042–1051.

We have thus far gone through the course of those events which acted as
the more distant causes of the Norman Conquest; with the accession of
Eadward we [Sidenote: The struggle between Normans and Englishmen begins
with the accession of Eadward.] stand on the threshold of the Conquest
itself. The actual subjugation of England by force of arms is still
twenty-four years distant; but the struggle between Norman and
Englishman for dominion in England has already begun. That such would be
the result of Eadward’s accession was certainly not looked for by those
who raised him to the throne. Never was any prince called to assume a
crown by a more distinct expression of the national will. “All folk
chose Eadward to King.” The [Sidenote: Import of Eadward’s election;
resolve of the English people to have none but an English King.] choice
expressed the full purpose of the English nation to endure no King but
one who was their bone and their flesh. No attachment to the memory of
the great Cnut could survive the utter misgovernment of his sons. The
thought of another Danish King was now hateful. Yet the royal house of
Denmark contained at least one prince who was in every way worthy to
reign. Could the [Sidenote: Other possible candidates; Swend
Estrithson;] national feeling have endured another Danish ruler, Swend
Estrithson might have governed England as prudently and as prosperously
as he afterwards governed Denmark. But the great qualities of Swend had
as yet hardly shown themselves. He could have been known at this time
only as a young adventurer, who had signally failed in the only great
exploit which he had attempted.[2] And, above all things, the feeling of
the moment called for an Englishman, for an Ætheling of the blood of
Cerdic. One [Sidenote: Eadward the son of Eadmund.] such Ætheling only
was at hand. One son of Eadmund Ironside was now grown up to manhood,
but he had been from his infancy an exile in a distant land. Most likely
no one thought of him as a possible candidate for the Crown; it may well
be that his very existence was [Sidenote: Position of Eadward.]
generally forgotten. In the eyes of Englishmen there was now only one
representative of the ancient royal house. Eadward, the son of Æthelred
and Emma, the brother of the murdered and half-canonized Ælfred, had
long been familiar to English imaginations, and, since the accession of
his half-brother Harthacnut, the English Court had been his usual
dwelling-place. Eadward, and Eadward alone, stood forth as the heir of
English royalty, the representative of English nationality. In his
behalf the popular voice spoke out at once and unmistakeably. “Before
the King buried were, all folk chose Eadward to King at London.”

§ 1. _The Election and Coronation of Eadward._ 1042–1043.

[Sidenote: Popular election of Eadward. June, 1042.]

The general course of events at this time is perfectly plain, but there
is a good deal of difficulty as to some of the details.[3] The popular
election of Eadward took place in June, immediately on the death of
Harthacnut, and even before his burial; but it is very remarkable that
[Sidenote: His coronation delayed till the next year.] the coronation of
the new King did not take place till Easter in the next year.[4] This
delay is singular, and needs explanation. The consecration of a King was
then not [Sidenote: Importance of the coronation-rite.] a mere pageant,
but a rite of the utmost moment, partaking almost of a sacramental
character. Without it the King was not King at all, or King only in a
very imperfect sense. We have seen how impossible it was for the
uncrowned Harthacnut to retain his hold upon Wessex.[5] The election of
the Witan gave to the person chosen the sole right to the Crown, but he
was put into actual possession of the royal office only by the
ecclesiastical consecration. Eadward then, for nearly ten months after
his first election, could not be looked on as “full King,”[6] but as at
most King-elect. What could be the cause of such a delay? The notion of
a general war with the Danes in England, which might otherwise account
for it, I have elsewhere shown to be without foundation.[7] The
circumstances of the time would seem to have been singularly unsuited
for any delay. We should have expected that the same burst of popular
feeling which carried Eadward’s immediate and unanimous election would
also have demanded the exclusion of any possible competitor by an
immediate [Sidenote: Probable causes of the delay; Eadward most likely
absent from England, and unwilling to accept the Crown.] coronation. But
the fact was otherwise. The explanation of so singular a state of things
is most likely to be found in certain hints which imply that it was
caused, partly by Eadward’s absence from England, partly by an
unwillingness on his part to accept the Crown. There is strong reason to
believe that Eadward was not in England at the moment of his
half-brother’s death. Harthacnut had indeed recalled him to England, and
his court had become the English Ætheling’s ordinary dwelling-place. But
this fact in no way shuts out the possibility that Eadward may have been
absent on the Continent at any particular moment, on a visit to some of
his French or Norman friends, or on a pilgrimage to some French or
Norman sanctuary. Meanwhile the sudden death of Harthacnut left the
throne vacant. As in other cases before and after,[8] the citizens of
London, whose importance grows at every step, together with such of the
other Witan as were at hand, met at once and chose Eadward King. As he
was absent, and his consent was doubtful, an embassy [Sidenote: Embassy
to Eadward.] had to be sent to him, as embassies had been sent to his
father Æthelred[9] and to his brother Harthacnut,[10] inviting him to
return and receive the Crown. That embassy, we are told, consisted of
Bishops and Earls; we can hardly doubt that at the head of their several
orders stood two men whom all accounts set before us as the leaders in
the promotion of Eadward. These were Lyfing, Bishop of [Sidenote:
Negotiations between Eadward and Godwine.] Worcester, and Godwine, Earl
of the West-Saxons.[11] A remarkable negotiation now took place between
the Earl and the King-elect. Details of private conversations are always
suspicious, but the dialogue attributed to the Earl and the Ætheling
contains nothing but what is thoroughly suited to the circumstances of
the case. We can fully understand that Eadward, either from timidity or
from his monastic turn, might shrink from the labour and responsibility
of reigning at all, and that, with his Norman tastes, he might look
forward with very little satisfaction to the prospect of reigning over
Englishmen. Such scruples [Sidenote: Speech of Godwine.] were driven
away by the arguments and eloquence of the great Earl. The actual speech
put into his mouth may be the composition of the historian, but it
contains the arguments which cannot fail to have been used in such a
case. It was better to live gloriously as a King than to die
ingloriously in exile. Eadward was the son of Æthelred, the grandson of
Eadgar; the Crown was therefore his natural inheritance. His personal
position and character would form a favourable contrast to those of the
two worthless youths who had misgoverned England since the death of
Cnut.[12] His years and experience fitted him to rule; he was of an age
to act vigorously when severity was needed; he had known the ups and
downs of life; he had been purified by poverty and exile, and would
therefore know how to show mercy when mercy was called for.[13] If he
had any doubts, he, Godwine, was ready to maintain his cause; his power
was great enough both to procure the election of a candidate, and to
secure [Sidenote: Eadward accepts the Crown.] his throne when
elected.[14] Eadward was persuaded; he consented to accept the Crown; he
plighted his friendship to the Earl, and it may be that he promised to
confer honours on his sons and to take his daughter in marriage. But
stories of private stipulations of this kind are always doubtful. It is
enough that Godwine had, as all accounts agree, the chief hand in
raising Eadward to the throne.

[Sidenote: He returns to England.]

Eadward now seems to have returned to England, probably in company with
Godwine and the other am[Sidenote: Witenagemót of Gillingham. 1042–3.]
*bassadors. The Witan presently met at Gillingham in Wiltshire; and it
would seem that the acceptance of Eadward’s claims was now somewhat less
unanimous than it had been during the first burst of enthusiasm which
followed the death of Harthacnut. Godwine brought forward Eadward as a
candidate, he urged his claims with all his powers of speech, and
himself set the example of [Sidenote: Opposition to Eadward’s election;]
becoming his man on the spot. Still an opposition arose in the Assembly,
which it needed all the eloquence of Godwine and Lyfing to overcome.
They had even, as it would seem, to stoop to a judicious employment of
the less noble arts of statesmanship. The majority indeed were won over
by the authority of the man whom all England looked on as a father.[15]
But the votes of some had to be gained by presents, or, in plain words,
by bribes.[16] Others, it would seem, stood out against Eadward’s
[Sidenote: apparently in the interest of Swend.] election to the last.
This opposition, we cannot doubt, came from a Danish party which
supported the claims of Swend Estrithson. That prince, on return from
his first unsuccessful war with Magnus, had found his cousin Harthacnut
dead, and Eadward already King as far as his first election could make
him so.[17] But the delay of the coronation, the uncertainty of
Eadward’s acceptance of the Crown, might well make the hopes of
[Sidenote: Alleged negotiations between Eadward and Swend.] Swend and
his partisans revive. We can hardly believe the tale, though it rests
apparently on the assertion of Swend himself, that he demanded the
Crown, and that Eadward made peace with him, making the usual compromise
that Swend should succeed him on his death, even though he should leave
sons.[18] Such an agreement would of course be of no force without the
consent of the Witan. That consent may have been given in the Assembly
at Gillingham; but such an arrangement seems hardly credible. The
English nation no doubt fully intended that the Crown should remain in
the House of Cerdic, and Godwine probably already hoped that in the next
generation the blood of Cerdic would be united with the blood of
Wulfnoth. But it is certain that Swend was in some way or other
reconciled to Eadward and Godwine, for we shall presently find Swend
acting as the friend of England, and Godwine acting as the special
champion of the interests of Swend.[19] The son of Ulf was, it will be
remembered, the nephew of Gytha, and this family connexion no doubt
pleaded for him as far as was consistent with Godwine’s higher and
nearer objects. One of Swend’s brothers, Beorn, remained in England,
where he was soon raised to a great Earldom, and seems to have been
counted in all respects as a member of the house of Godwine. But the
friends of Swend in general were set down for future punishment.[20] In
the end confiscation or banishment fell on the most eminent of them.
Among them was Osbeorn, another brother of the Danish King, whom we
shall hear of in later times as betraying the claims of his brother, and
therewith the hopes of England, into the hand of the Norman Conqueror.

[Sidenote: Eadward the only possible choice.]

Eadward was thus raised to the throne mainly through the exertions of
the two patriotic leaders, Godwine and Lyfing. It is vain to argue
whether Godwine did wisely in pressing his election. There was in truth
no other choice. The only other possible candidates were Swend, and
Magnus of Norway, of whose claims we shall hear again presently. But
English feeling called for an English King, and there was no English
King but Eadward to be had. That Godwine could have procured his own
election to the Crown, that the thought of such an election could have
occurred to himself or to any one else, is an utterly wild surmise.[21]
If Godwine met with some opposition when pressing the claims of Eadward,
that opposition would have increased tenfold had he ventured to dream of
the Crown for himself. The nomination of the West-Saxon Earl would have
been withstood to the death, not only by a handful of Danes, but by
Leofric and Siward, probably, in Siward’s case at least, at the head of
the whole force of their Earldoms. The time was not yet come for the
election of a King not of the royal house. There was no manifest
objection to the election of Eadward, and, though Godwine was
undoubtedly the most powerful man in England, he had not reached that
marked and undisputed preeminence which was enjoyed by his son
twenty-four years later. No English candidate but Eadward was possible.
And men had not yet learned, Godwine himself probably had not fully
learned, how little worthy Eadward was to be called an English
candidate.[22] And when in after years they learned the unhappy truth,
still there does not seem to have been at any time the least thought of
displacing Eadward in favour of either of his Scandinavian competitors,
or even of calling in Swend to succeed him. In raising Eadward to the
throne, Godwine acted simply as the mouthpiece of the English people.
The opposition, as far as we can see, came wholly from the Danes of what
we may call the second importation, those who had come into England with
Cnut and Harthacnut. There is nothing to show that the old-settled
Danish population of Northumberland acted apart from the rest of the
country.

[Sidenote: Claims of Eadward to the Crown; different statements of his
right according to the political views of the writers.]

Eadward then was King. He reigned, as every English King before him had
reigned, by that union of popular election and royal descent which
formed the essence of all ancient Teutonic kingship.[23] But it would
seem that, even in those days, the two elements in his title, the two
principles to whose union he and all other Kings owed their kingly rank,
spoke with different degrees of force to different minds. Already, in
the eleventh century, we may say that there were Whigs and Tories in
England. At any rate there were men in whose eyes the choice of the
people was the primary and legitimate source of kingship. There were
also men who were inclined to rest the King’s claim to his Crown mainly
on his descent from those who had been Kings before him. The difference
is plainly shown in the different versions of the Chronicles. One
contemporary winter, a devoted partisan of Godwine, grounds the King’s
right solely on the popular choice—“All folk chose Eadward to King.”
That the entry was made at the time is plain from the prayer which
follows, “May he hold it while God grants it to him.”[24] Another
version, the only one in any degree hostile to the great Earl, seems
purposely to avoid the use of any word recognizing a distinct right of
choice in the people. “All folk received Eadward to King, as was his
right by birth.”[25] A third writer, distinctly, though less strongly,
Godwinist, seems pointedly to combine both statements; “All folk chose
Eadward, and received him to King, as was his right by birth.”[26] There
can be no doubt that this last is the truest setting forth both of the
law and of the facts of the case. The people chose Eadward, and without
the choice of [Sidenote: Union of elective and hereditary right.] the
people he would have had no right to reign. But they chose him because
he was the one available descendant of the old kingly stock, because he
was the one man at hand who enjoyed that preference by right of birth,
which required that, in all ordinary cases, the choice of the electors
should be confined to the descendants of former Kings. It might
therefore be said with perfect truth that Eadward was chosen because the
Kingdom was his by right [Sidenote: Eadward not next in succession
according to modern notions.] of birth. But it must not be forgotten,
what is absolutely necessary for the true understanding of the case,
that this right by birth does not imply that Eadward would have been,
according to modern ideas, the next in succession to the Crown.
Eadward’s right by birth would have been no right by birth at all in the
eyes of a modern lawyer. The younger son of Æthelred could, according to
our present ideas, have no right to succeed while any representative of
his elder brother survived. The heir, in our sense of the word, was not
the Eadward who was close at hand in England or Normandy, but the
Eadward who was far away in exile in Hungary or Russia. Modern writers
constantly speak of this last Eadward and of his son Eadgar as the
lawful heirs of the Confessor. On the contrary, according to modern
notions, the Confessor was their lawful heir, and, according to modern
notions, the Confessor must be pronounced to have usurped a throne
[Sidenote: The right of the elder branch not thought of.] which of right
belonged to his nephew. In his own time such subtleties were unknown.
Any son of Æthelred, any descendant of the old stock, satisfied the
sentiment of royal birth, which was all that was needed.[27] To search
over the world for the son of an elder brother, while the younger
brother was close at hand, was an idea which would never have entered
the mind of any Englishman of the eleventh century.

[Sidenote: Eadward crowned at Winchester, April 3, 1043.]

The coronation ceremony probably followed soon after the meeting at
Gillingham. It was performed on Easter Day at Winchester,[28] the usual
place for an Easter Gemót, by Archbishop Eadsige, assisted by Ælfric of
York and most of the other Prelates of England.[29] We are expressly
[Sidenote: Exhortation of Eadsige; condition of the Kingdom.] told that
the Metropolitan gave much good exhortation both to the newly made King
and to his people.[30] The peculiar circumstances of the time might well
suggest such a special admonition. There was a King, well nigh the last
of his race, a King chosen by the distinct expression of the will of the
people, as the representative of English nationality in opposition to
foreign rule. But the King so chosen as the embodiment of English
feeling was himself an Englishman in little more than in the accident of
being born on English ground[31] as the son of a father who was a
disgrace to the English name. There was a Kingdom to be guarded against
foreign claimants, and there were the wounds inflicted by two
unfortunate, though happily short, reigns to be healed at home. The
duties which were laid upon the shoulders [Sidenote: Relations between
Eadward and Godwine.] of the new King were neither few nor easy. He had
indeed at hand the mightiest and wisest of guardians to help him in his
task. But we can well understand that the feelings of Eadward towards
the man to whom he owed his Crown were feelings of awe rather than of
love. There could be little real sympathy between the stout Englishman
and the nursling of the Norman court, between the chieftain great alike
in battle and in council and the timid devotee who shrank from the toils
and responsibilities of an earthly Kingdom. And we can well believe
that, notwithstanding Godwine’s solemn acquittal, there still lingered
in the mind of Eadward some prejudice against the man who had once been
charged with his [Sidenote: Relations of the three great Earls.]
brother’s death. And again, though it was to Godwine and his West-Saxons
that Eadward mainly owed his Crown, yet Godwine and his West-Saxons did
not make up the whole of England. Their counsels and interests had to be
reconciled with the possibly opposing counsels and interests of the
other Earldoms and of their rulers. Eadward could not afford to despise
the strong arm of the mighty Dane who ruled his countrymen north of the
Humber. He could not afford to despise the possible prejudices of the
great Earl of central England, who, descendant of ancient Ealdormen,
perhaps of ancient Kings, may well have looked with some degree of
ill-will on the upstarts North and South of him. Eadward, called to the
throne by the unanimous voice of the whole nation, was bound to be King
of the English and not merely King of the West-Saxons. He was bound yet
more strongly to be King of the English in a still higher sense, to cast
off the trammels of his Norman education, and to reign as became the
heir of Ælfred and Æthelstan. We have now to see how far the good
exhortations of Eadsige were effectual; how far the King chosen to the
Crown which was his right by birth discharged the duties which were laid
upon him alike by his birth and by his election.

[Sidenote: Foreign Ambassadors at Eadward’s coronation.]

It was perhaps ominous of the character of Eadward’s future reign that
his coronation was attended by an apparently unusual assemblage of the
Ambassadors of foreign princes.[32] It was natural that Eadward should
be better known, and that his election should awaken a greater interest,
in other lands than could usually be the case with an English King. He
was connected by birth or marriage with several continental sovereigns,
and his long residence in Normandy must have brought him more nearly
within [Sidenote: Eadward’s foreign connexions.] the circle of ordinary
continental princeship than could commonly be the case with the Lord of
the island Empire, the Cæsar as it were of another world. The
revolutions of England also, and the great career of Cnut, had evidently
fixed the attention of Europe on English affairs to an unusual degree.
Add to this that, when a King was chosen and crowned immediately on the
death of his predecessor, the presence of congratulatory embassies from
other princes was hardly possible. But the delay in Eadward’s
consecration allowed that great Easter-feast at Winchester to be adorned
with the presence of the representatives of all the chief sovereigns of
Western Christendom. Some there were whom England was, then as ever,
bound to welcome as friends and brethren, and some whose presence,
however friendly was the guise of the moment, might to an eye which
could scan the future [Sidenote: Ambassadors from King Henry.] have
seemed a foreboding of the evil to come. First came the ambassadors of
the prince who at once held the highest place on earth and adorned it
with the noblest display of every kingly virtue. King Henry of Germany,
soon to appear before the world as the illustrious Emperor,[33] the
great reformer of a corrupted Church, sent an embassy to congratulate
his brother-in-law[34] on the happy change in his fortunes, to exchange
promises of peace and friendship, and to present gifts such as Imperial
splendour and liberality might deem worthy of the one prince whom
[Sidenote: from the King of the French;] a future Emperor could look on
as his peer.[35] The King of the French too, a prince bearing the same
name as the mighty Frank,[36] but far indeed from being a partaker in
his glory, sent his representatives to congratulate one whom he too
claimed as a kinsman,[37] and to exchange pledges of mutual good-will
between the two realms. [Sidenote: from other German and French
princes;] And, along with the representatives of Imperial and royal
majesty, came the humbler envoys of the chief Dukes and princes of their
two kingdoms, charged with the like professions of friendship—our
flattering historian would fain have us believe, of homage.[38] Among
these we can hardly doubt that a mission from the Court of Rouen held a
distinguished place. It may be that, even then, the keen eye of the
youthful Norman was beginning to look with more than a neighbour’s
interest upon the land to which he had in some sort given her
newly-chosen King. We [Sidenote: from Magnus of Denmark.] are even told
that an embassy of a still humbler kind was received from a potentate
who soon after appeared on the stage in a widely different character.
Magnus of Norway had received the submission of Denmark on the death of
Harthacnut, by virtue of the treaty by which each of those princes was
to succeed to the other’s dominions.[39] He now, we are told, sent an
embassy to Eadward, chose him as his father,[40] promised to him the
obedience of a son, and strengthened the promise with oaths and
hostages. Now in the language used with regard both to Magnus and to the
German and French princes, there is doubtless much of the exaggeration
of a panegyrist, anxious to raise his hero’s reputation to the highest
point. But it is possible that Magnus might just now take some pains to
conciliate Eadward, in order to hinder English help from being continued
to his competitor Swend. In the reception of the Imperial and the Danish
envoys there is nothing which has any special meaning; but it is
specially characteristic of this reign that the congratulations of the
French princes [Sidenote: Eadward’s gifts to the French princes.] were
acknowledged by gifts from the King personally, and that some of them
were continued in the form of annual pensions.[41] These were
undoubtedly, even if the Norman Duke himself was among the pensioners,
the gifts of a superior to inferiors; the point is that the connexion
between England and the different French states, Normandy above them
all, was constantly increasing in amount, and receiving new shapes at
every turn.

[Sidenote: Gifts of the English nobles.]

Besides the gifts of foreign princes, the new King also received many
splendid presents from his own nobles. First among them all shone forth
the magnificent offering [Sidenote: Godwine presents a ship to the
King.] of the Earl of the West-Saxons.[42] Godwine had given a ship to
Harthacnut as the price of his acquittal on his memorable trial;[43] he
now made the like offering to Eadward as a token of the friendship which
was to reign between the newly-chosen King and his greatest subject. Two
hundred rowers impelled the floating castle. A golden lion adorned the
stern; at the prow the national ensign, the West-Saxon Dragon, shone
also in gold, spreading his wings, the poet tells us, over the
awe-struck waves.[44] A rich piece of tapestry, wrought on a purple
ground with the naval exploits of former English Kings,[45] the
sea-fights, no doubt, of Ælfred, the peaceful triumphs of Eadgar,
[Sidenote: [992.]] perhaps that noblest fight of all when the fleets of
Denmark gave way before the sea-faring men of the merchant-city,[46]
formed an appropriate adornment of the offering of the English Earl to
the first—men did not then deem that he was to be the last—prince of the
newly-restored English dynasty.

§ 2. _Condition of England during the early years of Eadward._

[Sidenote: Character of Eadward.]

Before we go on to the events of the reign of Eadward, it will be well
to endeavour to gain a distinct idea of the King himself and of the men
who were to be the chief actors in English affairs during his reign. In
estimating the character of Eadward, we must never forget that we
[Sidenote: His position as a Saint.] are dealing with a canonized saint.
In such cases it is more needful than ever to look closely to a man’s
recorded acts, and to his character as described by those who wrote
before his formal canonization. Otherwise we shall be in danger of
mistaking hagiology for history. When a man is once canonized, his acts
and character immediately pass out of the reach of ordinary criticism.
Religious edification, and not historical truth, becomes the aim of all
who speak or write of one who has been formally enrolled as an object of
religious reverence.[47] We must also be on our guard even in dealing
with authors who wrote before his formal canonization, but after that
popular canonization which was so often the first step towards it. It
was of course the general reverence in which a man was held, the general
belief in his holiness and miraculous powers, which formed the grounds
of the demand for his formal canonization. But, while we must be
specially on our guard in weighing the character of particular acts and
the value of particular panegyrics, we must remember that the popular
esteem which thus led to canonization proves a great deal as to
[Sidenote: Nature of his claims to sanctity.] a man’s general character.
It proves still more when, as in the case of Eadward, there was no one
special act, no one marked deed of Christian heroism or Christian
endurance, which formed the holy man’s claim to popular reverence.
Eadward was not like one of those who died for their faith or for their
country, and who, on the strength of such death, were at once revered as
martyrs, without much inquiry into their actions and characters in other
respects. He was not even like one of those, his sainted uncle and
namesake for instance,[48] who gained the honours of martyrdom on still
easier terms, by simply dying an unjust death, even though no religious
or political principle was at stake. The popular reverence in which
Eadward was held could rest on no ground except the genuine popular
estimate of his general character. There were indeed strong political
reasons which attached men to his memory. He was the one prominent man
of [Sidenote: Eadward’s memory acceptable both to Englishmen and to
Normans on political grounds.] the days immediately before the Conquest
whom Normans and Englishmen could agree to reverence. The English
naturally cherished the memory of the last prince of the ancient stock.
They dwelt on his real or supposed virtues as a bright contrast to the
crimes and vices of his Norman successors. Under the yoke of foreign
masters they looked back to the peace and happiness of the days of their
native King. The King who reigned on the English throne without a spark
of English feeling became the popular embodiment of English nationality,
and men called for the Laws of King Eadward as in earlier times they had
called for the Laws of Cnut or of Eadgar.[49] On the other hand, it
suited the policy of the Normans to show all respect to the kinsman of
their own Duke, the King by whose pretended bequest their Duke claimed
the English Crown, and whose lawful successor he professed himself to
be. In English eyes Eadward stood out in contrast to the invader
William; in Norman eyes he stood out in contrast to the usurper Harold.
A King whom two hostile races thus agreed in respecting could not fail
to obtain both popular and formal canonization on somewhat easy
[Sidenote: Popular reverence for him grounded also on personal
qualities.] terms. Still he could hardly have obtained either the one or
the other only on grounds like these. He must have displayed some
personal qualities which really won him popular affection during life
and maintained him in popular reverence after death. It is worth while
to study a little more at length the character of a man who obtained in
his own age a degree of respect which in our eyes seems justified
neither by several of his particular actions nor by the general tenour
of his government.

That Eadward was in any sense a great man, that he displayed any of the
higher qualities of a ruler of those days, no one probably will assert.
He was doubtless in some respects a better man than Cnut, than Harold,
or than William; as a King of the eleventh century no one will venture
to compare him with those three mighty ones. His wars were waged by
deputy, and his civil government [Sidenote: Eadward’s personal
character.] was carried on largely by deputy also. Of his many personal
virtues, his earnest piety, his good intentions in every way, his
sincere desire for the welfare of his people, there can be no doubt.
Vice of every kind, injustice, wanton cruelty, were hateful to him. But
in all kingly qualities he was utterly lacking. In fact, so far as a
really good man can reproduce the character of a thoroughly bad one,
Eadward reproduced the character of his father Æthelred. Writers who
lived before his canonization, or who did not come within the magic halo
of his sanctity, do not scruple to charge him, as his father is
[Sidenote: Points of likeness to his father.] charged, with utter sloth
and incapacity.[50] Like his father, he was quite incapable of any
steady attention to the duties of royalty;[51] but, like his father, he
had occasional fits of energy, which, like those of his father, often
came at the wrong time.[52] His contemporary panegyrist allows that he
gave way to occasional fits of wrath, but he pleads that his anger never
hurried him into unbecoming language.[53] It hurried him however, more
than once, into very unbecoming intentions. We shall find that, on two
memorable occasions, it needed the intervention of his better genius, in
the form first of Godwine and then of Harold, to keep back the saintly
King from massacre and civil war.[54] Here we see the exact parallels to
Æthelred’s mad expeditions against Normandy, Cumberland, and Saint
David’s.[55] But Eadward was not only free from the personal vices and
cruelties of his father; there can be no doubt that, except when carried
away by ebullitions of this kind, he sincerely endeavoured, according to
the measure of his ability, to establish a good administration of
justice throughout his dominions. But the duties of secular government,
although doubtless discharged conscientiously and to the best of his
ability, were with Eadward always something which went against the
[Sidenote: His virtues wholly monastic.] grain. His natural place was,
not on the throne of England, but at the head of a Norman Abbey.
Nothing, one would think, could have hindered him from entering on the
religious life in the days of his exile, unless it were a vague kind of
feeling that other duties were thrown upon him by his birth. For all his
virtues were those of a monk; all the real man came out in his zeal for
collecting relics, in his visions, in his religious exercises, in his
gifts to churches and monasteries, in his desire to mark his reign, as
its chief result, by the foundation of his great Abbey of Saint Peter at
Westminster. In a prince of the manly piety of Ælfred things of this
sort form only a part, a pleasing and harmonious part, of the general
character. In Eadward they formed the whole man. His time was oddly
divided between his prayers and the pastime which seems least suited to
the character of [Sidenote: His love of hunting.] a saint. The devotion
to the pleasures of the chase was so universal among the princes and
nobles of that age that it is needless to speak of it as a feature in
any man’s character, unless when some special circumstance forces it
into special notice. We remark it in the two Williams, because it was
their love of hunting which led them into their worst acts of
oppression; we remark it in Eadward, because it seems so utterly
incongruous with the other features of his character.[56] There were men
even in those times who could feel pity for animal suffering and who
[Sidenote: Contrast with the humanity of Anselm.] found no pleasure in
the wanton infliction of pain. Tenderness for animals is no unusual
feature in either the real or the legendary portraits of holy men.
Anselm, the true saint, like Ceadda in earlier times, saved the life of
the hunted beast which sought his protection, and made the incident the
text of a religious exhortation to his companions. He saw a worthy
object for prayer in the sufferings of a bird tortured by a thoughtless
child, and his gentle heart found matter for pious rejoicing in the
escape of the feathered captive.[57] Humanity like this met with very
little response in the breast of the saintly monarch. The piercing cry,
the look of mute agony, of the frightened, wearied, tortured beast
awakened no more pity in the heart of the saintly King than in that of
the rudest Danish Thegn who shared his savage pastime. The sufferings of
the hart panting for the water-brooks, the pangs of the timid hare
falling helpless into the jaws of her pursuers, the struggles of the
helpless bird grasped in the talons of the resistless hawk, afforded as
keen a delight to the prince who had never seen steel flash in earnest,
as ever they did to men whom a life of constant warfare in a rude age
had taught to look lightly on the sufferings and death even of their own
kind.[58] Once, we are told, a churl, resisting, it well may be, some
trespass of the King and his foreign courtiers on an Englishman’s
freehold, put some hindrance in the way of the royal sport. An unsaintly
oath and an unkingly threat at once rose to the lips of Eadward; “By God
and his Mother, I will hurt you some day if I can.”[59] Had Anselm, in
the might of his true holiness, thus crossed the path of his brother
saint, he too, as the defender of the oppressed, might have become the
object of a like outburst of impotent wrath. A delight in amusements of
this kind is hardly a fair subject of blame in men of any age to whom
the rights of the lower animals have perhaps never been presented as
matter for serious thought. But in a man laying claim to special
holiness, to special meekness and gentleness of character, we naturally
look for a higher standard, a standard which a contemporary example
shows not to have been unattainable even in that age.

[Sidenote: Personal appearance and habits of Eadward.]

In person Eadward is described as being handsome, of moderate height,
his face full and rosy, his hair and beard white as snow.[60] His beard
he wore long, according to what seems to have been the older fashion
both of England and of Normandy.[61] Among his younger contemporaries
this fashion went out of use in both countries, and the Normans shaved
the whole face, while the English left the hair on the upper lip only.
He was remarkable for the length and whiteness of his hands. When not
excited by passion, he was gentle and affable to all men; he was liberal
both to the poor and to his friends; but he had also the special art of
giving a graceful refusal, so that the rejection of a suit by him was
almost as pleasing as its acceptance by another.[62] In public he
preserved his kingly dignity intact; but he took little pleasure in the
pomp of royalty or in wearing the gorgeous robes which were wrought for
him by the industry and affection of his Lady.[63] In private company,
though he never forgot his rank, he could unbend, and treat his familiar
friends as an equal.[64] He avoided however one bad habit of his age,
that of choosing the time of divine service as the time for private
conversation. It is mentioned as a special mark of his devotion that he
scarcely ever spoke during mass, except when he was interrupted by
others.[65] The [Sidenote: His favourites at different periods of his
reign.] mention of his friends and familiar companions leads us directly
to his best and worst aspects as an English King. Like his father, he
was constantly under the dominion of favourites. It was to the evil
choice of his favourites during the early part of his reign that most of
the misfortunes of his time were owing, and that a still more direct
path was opened for the ambition of his Norman kinsman. In the latter
part of his reign either happy accident, or returning good sense, or
perhaps the sheer necessity of the case, led him to a better choice.
Without a guide he could not reign, but the good fortune of his later
years gave him the wisest and noblest of all guides. The most honourable
feature in the whole life of Eadward is that the last thirteen years of
his reign were virtually the reign of Harold.

[Sidenote: Eadward’s fondness for foreigners.]

But in the days before that great national reaction, in the period
embraced in the present Chapter, it is the peculiar character of the
favourites to whose influence Eadward was given up which sets its
special mark on the time. The reign of Eadward in many respects
forestalls the reign of Henry the Third. The part played by Earl Godwine
in many respects forestalls the part played [Sidenote: His connexion
with Normandy.] by Earl Simon of Montfort. Eadward was by birth an
Englishman; but he was the son of a Norman mother; he had been carried
to Normandy in his childhood; he had there spent the days of his youth
and early manhood; England might be the land of his duty, but Normandy
was ever the land of his affection. With the habits, the feelings, the
language, of the people over whom he was called to rule he had
absolutely no sympathy. His heart was French. His delight was to
surround himself with companions who came from the beloved land and who
spoke the beloved tongue, to enrich them with English estates, to invest
them with the highest offices of the English Kingdom. Policy might make
him the political ally of his Imperial brother-in-law, but a personal
sentiment made him the personal friend of his Norman cousin. The needs
of his royal position made him accept Godwine as his counsellor and the
daughter of Godwine as his [Sidenote: Promotion of Normans to high
office.] wife. But his real affections were lavished on the Norman
priests[66] and gentlemen who flocked to his Court as to the land of
promise. These strangers were placed in important offices about the
royal person,[67] and before long they were set to rule as Earls and
Bishops over the already half-conquered soil of England. Even when he
came over as a private man in the days of Harthacnut, Eadward had
brought with him his French nephew,[68] and Ralph the Timid Earl was but
the precursor of the gang of foreigners who were soon to be quartered
upon the country, as these were again only the first instalment of the
larger gang who were to win for themselves a more lasting [Sidenote: The
Norman Conquest begins under Eadward.] settlement four and twenty years
later. In all this the seeds of the Conquest were sowing, or rather, as
I once before put it,[69] it is now that the Conquest actually begins.
The reign of Eadward is a period of struggle between natives and
foreigners for dominion in England. The foreigners gradually win the
upper hand, and for a time they are actually dominant. Then a national
reaction overthrows their influence, and the noblest of living
Englishmen becomes the virtual ruler. But this happy change did not take
place till the strangers had become accustomed to look on English
estates and honours as their right, a right which they soon learned to
think they might one day assert by force of arms. The foreign favourites
of Eadward were in truth the advanced guard of William. The conquests of
England by Swend and Cnut, the wonderful exploits of his own countrymen
in the South of Europe, no doubt helped to suggest to the Norman Duke
that it was not impossible to win England for himself with his sword.
But it must have been the feeling, on the part both of himself and of
his subjects, that England was a land already half won over to Norman
rule, which made the succession to the English Crown the cherished aim
of the life of the mighty ruler who was now growing up to manhood and to
greatness on the other side of the sea.

[Sidenote: Relations between Eadward and Godwine.]

The elevation of Eadward to the throne of course involved the
establishment in still greater honour and authority of the man to whom
his elevation was mainly owing, the great Earl of the West-Saxons. I
have already thrown out some hints as to what the real relations between
[Sidenote: Norman calumnies against Godwine and his sons.] Eadward and
Godwine probably were.[70] There is not a shadow of evidence for the
calumnies of the Norman writers which represent Godwine and his sons as
holding the King in a sort of bondage, as abusing his simplicity and
confidence, sometimes as behaving to him with great personal insolence,
sometimes, they even venture to add, practising all kinds of injustice
and oppression throughout the Kingdom. The English writers tell a widely
different tale. The contrast between the two accounts is well set forth
by a writer whose sympathies lie wholly on the Norman side, but who
makes at least an effort to deal fairly between the two. In the English
version Godwine and his sons appear as high-minded and faithful
counsellors of the King, who stood forward as the leaders of the
national feeling against his foreign favourites, but who were never
guilty of any undutiful word or deed towards the prince whom they had
themselves raised to power.[71] Eadward probably both feared and
suspected Godwine. But there is nothing to show that, up to the final
outbreak between Godwine and the foreigners, the great Earl had ever
deviated from even formal loyalty to his sovereign. There is distinct
evidence that more than one of his sons had gained Eadward’s warmest
personal affection. From [Sidenote: Character of Godwine.] all that we
can see, Godwine was not a man likely to win the same sort of personal
affection from Eadward, perhaps not even from the nation at large, which
was afterwards won by Harold. That Godwine was the representative of all
English feeling, that he was the leader of every national movement, that
he was the object of the deepest admiration on the part of the men at
least of his own Earldom, is proved by the clearest of evidence. But it
is equally clear that Godwine was essentially a wary statesman, and in
no sense a chivalrous hero. We have seen that, mighty as was the power
of his eloquence, he did not trust to his eloquence only.[72] He knew
how to practise the baser as well as the nobler arts of statesmanship.
He knew how to win over political adversaries by bribes, threats, and
promises, and how to find means of chastisement for those who remained
to the last immoveable by the voice of the charmer. When we think of the
vast extent of his possessions,[73] most or all of which must have been
acquired by royal grant, it is almost impossible to acquit him of
[Sidenote: His relation to ecclesiastical bodies.] a grasping
disposition. It is also laid to his charge that, in the acquisition of
wealth, he did not always regard the rights of ecclesiastical
bodies.[74] This last charge, it must be remembered, is one which he
shares with almost every powerful man of his time, even with those who,
if they took with one hand, gave lavishly with the other. And
accusations of this sort must always be taken with certain deductions.
Monastic and other ecclesiastical writers were apt to make little or no
distinction between acts of real sacrilege, committed by fraud or
violence, and the most legal transactions by which the Church happened
to be [Sidenote: Godwine’s lack of bounty to the Church.] a loser. Still
it should be noticed that Godwine stands perhaps alone among the great
men of his own age in having no ecclesiastical foundation connected with
his name. As far as I am aware, he is nowhere enrolled among the
founders or benefactors of any church, religious or secular.[75] Such a
peculiarity is most remarkable. How far it may have arisen from
enlightenment beyond his age, how far it was the result of mere
illiberality or want of religious feeling, it is utterly impossible to
say. But it is clear that Godwine is, in this respect, distinguished in
a marked way from his son, whose liberality, guided as it was by a wise
discretion, was conspicuous among his other great qualities. Again, it
is hardly impossible to acquit Godwine of being, like most fathers who
have the [Sidenote: Godwine’s over care for his own household.]
opportunity, too anxious for the advancement of his own family. He
promoted his sons, both worthy and unworthy, to the greatest offices in
the Kingdom, at an age when they could have had but little personal
claim to such high distinctions. In so doing, he seems to have
overstepped the bounds of policy as well as those of fairness and good
feeling. Such an accumulation of power in one family could not but raise
envy, and higher feelings than envy, in the breasts of rivals, some of
whom may have had as good or better claims to promotion. That Godwine
sacrificed his daughter to a political object is a charge common to him
with princes and statesmen in all ages. Few men in any time or place
would have thrown away the opportunity of having a King for a
son-in-law, and, as Godwine doubtless hoped, of becoming, at least in
the female line, the ancestor of a line of princes.

[Sidenote: Godwine’s government of his Earldom.]

The faults of the great Earl then are manifest. But his virtues are
equally manifest. In the eyes of contemporary Englishmen such faults as
I have mentioned must have seemed little more than a few specks on a
burnished mirror. His good government of his Earldom is witnessed, not
only by the rhetoric of his panegyrist, which however may at least be
set against the rhetoric of his accusers, but by the plain facts of the
welcome which greeted him on his return from banishment, and the zeal
[Sidenote: His strict administration of justice.] in his behalf
displayed by all classes.[76] As a ruler, Godwine is especially praised
for what in those days was looked on as the first virtue of a ruler,
merciless severity towards all disturbers of the public peace. In our
settled times we hardly understand how rigour, often barbarous rigour,
against thieves and murderers, should have been looked on as the first
merit of a governor, one which was always enough to cover a multitude of
sins. Public feeling went along with the prince or magistrate who thus
preserved the peace of his dominions, however great might be his own
offences in other ways, and however cruel in our eyes might be the means
by which he compassed this first end of government. To have discharged
this great duty stands foremost in the panegyrics of Godwine and of
Harold.[77] It was accepted at the hands of the Norman Conqueror as
almost an equivalent for the horrors of the Conquest.[78] It won for his
son Henry a splendid burst of admiration at the hands of a native writer
who certainly was not blind to the oppression of which that prince
himself was guilty.[79] A certain amount of tyranny was willingly
endured at the hands of a man who so effectually rid the world of
smaller tyrants. And, in opposition to the praise thus bestowed on
Godwine, Harold, William, and Henry, we find the neglect of this
paramount duty standing foremost in the dark indictments against the
ruffian Rufus[80] and the heedless Robert.[81] Godwine is set forth to
us, in set phrases, it may be, but in phrases which do not the less
express the conviction of the country, as a ruler mild and affable to
the good, but stern and merciless to the evil [Sidenote: Godwine never
reached the same power as Harold afterwards.] and unruly.[82] But with
all his vigour, all his eloquence, it is clear that Godwine never
reached to the same complete dominion over King and Kingdom which, in
later years, fell to the lot of his nobler son. He always remained an
object of jealousy, not only to the French favourites of Eadward, but to
the Earls of the other parts of England. We shall find that his eloquent
tongue could not always command a majority in the Meeting of the
Wise.[83] [Sidenote: Importance of eloquence.] But the importance
attributed to his oratory, the fluctuations of success and defeat which
he underwent in the great deliberative Assembly, show clearly how
advanced our constitution already was in an age when free debate was so
well understood, and when free speech was so powerful.[84] In this
respect the Norman Conquest undoubtedly threw things back. We shall have
to pass over several centuries before we come to another chief whose
influence clearly rested to so great a degree on his power of swaying
great assemblies of men, on the personal affection or personal awe with
which he had learned to inspire the Legislature of his country.

[Sidenote: Godwine’s family.]

The marriage of Godwine with his Danish wife Gytha had given him a
numerous and flourishing offspring. Six sons and three daughters
surrounded the table of the Earl of the West-Saxons. In the names which
several of them bore we may discern the influence of their Danish
mother.[85] The sons of Godwin were Swegen,[86] Harold, Tostig, Gyrth,
Leofwine, and Wulfnoth. His daughters were Eadgyth, Gunhild, and perhaps
a third, Ælfgifu.[87] As twenty-three years had now passed since
Godwine’s marriage, we may assume that all of them were already born,
though some of the younger ones may still have been children. The elder
sons had reached manhood, and we shall find two at least of them filling
the rank of Earl during the period [Sidenote: Swegen Earl, 1043.] with
which we are now dealing. Swegen, the eldest son, seems to have been
invested with an Earldom from the very beginning of Eadward’s reign, as
he signs a charter with that rank in the King’s second year.[88] Gytha’s
[Sidenote: Beorn Earl, 1045?] nephew, Beorn, also remained in England,
while his brother Osbeorn was banished, and while his other brother
Swend was putting forth his claims to the Crown of Denmark. He had
doubtless attached himself firmly to the interests of his uncle. He was
also, probably at a somewhat later time, raised to an Earldom,
apparently the Earldom of the Middle-Angles, lately held by Thored.[89]
The Earldom held by Swegen was geographically most anomalous. It took in
the Mercian shires of Hereford, Gloucester, and Oxford, and the
West-Saxon shires of Berkshire and Somerset.[90]

[Sidenote: First appearance of HAROLD the son of GODWINE. [Earl of the
East-Angles, 1045?]]

But, along with the comparatively obscure names of Swegen and Beorn, a
greater actor now steps upon the field. We have now reached the first
appearance of the illustrious man round whom the main interest of this
history will henceforth centre. The second son of Godwine lived to be
the last of our native Kings, the hero and the martyr of our native
freedom. We have indeed as yet to deal with him only in a subordinate
capacity, and in some sort in a less honourable character. The few
recorded actions of Harold, Earl of the East-Angles, could hardly have
enabled men to look forward to the glorious career of Harold, Earl of
the West-Saxons, and of Harold, King of the English. To his first great
government, a trying elevation indeed for one in the full vigour of
youth and passion, he was apparently raised about three years after the
election of Eadward, when he himself could not have passed his
twenty-fourth year. While still young, he experienced somewhat of the
fluctuations of human affairs, and he seems to have learned wisdom by
experience. Still there must have been in him from the beginning the
germs of those great qualities which shone forth so conspicuously in his
later career. [Sidenote: His character.] It is not hard to paint his
portraiture, alike from his recorded actions, and from the elaborate
descriptions of [Sidenote: Contemporary testimonies.] him which we
possess from contemporary hands. The praises of the great Earl sound
forth in the latest specimen of the native minstrelsy of Teutonic
England. And they sound forth with a truer ring than the half
conventional praises of the saintly monarch, whose greatest glory, after
all, was that he had called Harold to the [Sidenote: Evidence of the
Biographer.] government of his realm.[91] The biographer of Eadward, the
panegyrist of Godwine, is indeed the common laureate of Godwine’s whole
family; but it is not in the special interest of Harold that he writes.
He sets forth the merits of Harold with no sparing hand; he approves of
him as a ruler and he admires him as a man; but his own personal
affection plainly clings more closely to the rival brother Tostig. His
description of Harold is therefore the more trustworthy, and it fully
agrees with the evidence of his recorded actions. Harold then, the
second son of Godwine, is set before us as a man uniting every gift of
mind and body which could attract to him the admiration and affection of
the age in which he lived.[92] Tall in stature, beautiful in
countenance, of a bodily strength whose memory still lives in the rude
pictorial art of his time,[93] he was foremost alike in the active
courage and in the passive endurance of the warrior. [Sidenote: His
military genius.] In hunger and watchfulness, in the wearing labours of
a campaign no less than in the passing excitement of the day of battle,
he stood forth as the leader and the model of the English people.[94]
Alike ready and vigorous in action, he knew when to strike and how to
strike; he knew how to measure himself against enemies of every kind,
and to adapt his tactics to every position in which the accidents of
warfare might place him. He knew how to chase the light-armed Briton
from fastness to fastness, how to charge, axe in hand, on the bristling
lines of his Norwegian namesake, and how to bear up, hour after hour,
against the repeated onslaughts of the Norman horsemen and the more
terrible thundershower of the Norman arrows. It is plain that in him, no
less than in his more successful, and therefore more famous, rival, we
have to admire, not only the mere animal courage of the soldier, but
that true skill of the leader of armies which would have placed both
Harold and William high among the captains of any age.

[Sidenote: Harold’s civil virtues.]

But the son of Godwine, the heir of his greatness, was not merely a
soldier, not merely a general. If he inherited from his father those
military qualities which first drew on Godwine the notice alike of the
English Ætheling[95] and of the Danish King, he inherited also that
eloquence of speech, that wisdom in council, that knowledge of the laws
of the land,[96] which made him the true leader and father of the
English people. Great as Harold was in war, his character as a civil
ruler is still more remarkable, still more worthy of admiration. One or
two actions of his earlier life show indeed that the spirit of those
days [Sidenote: His singular forbearance.] of violence had laid its hand
even on him. But, from the time when he appears in his full maturity as
the acknowledged chief of the English nation, the most prominent feature
in his character is his singular gentleness and mercy. Never, either in
warfare or in civil strife, do we find Harold bearing hardly upon an
enemy. From the time of his advancement to the practical government of
the Kingdom, there is not a single harsh or cruel action with which he
can be charged. His policy was ever a policy of conciliation. His
panegyrist indeed confines his readiness to forgive, his unwillingness
to avenge, to his dealings with his own countrymen only.[97] But the
same magnanimous spirit is shown in cases where his conduct was less
capable of being guided by mere policy than in his dealings with Mercian
rivals and with Northumbrian revolters. We see the same generous temper
in his treatment of the conquered Princes of Wales and of the defeated
invaders of Stamfordbridge. As a ruler, he is described as walking in
the steps of his father, as the terror of evildoers [Sidenote: His
championship of England against strangers.] and the rewarder of those
who did well. Devoted, heart and soul, to the service of his country, he
was no less loyal in personal attention and service to her wayward and
half-foreign King.[98] Throughout his career he was the champion of the
independence of England against the dominion of strangers. To keep the
court of England free from the shoals of foreigners who came to fatten
on English estates and honours, and to meet the same enemies in open
arms upon the heights of Senlac, were only two different ways of
discharging the great duty to which his whole energies were devoted. And
yet no man was ever more free from narrow insular prejudices, from any
unworthy [Sidenote: His foreign travels.] jealousy of foreigners as
such. His own mind was enlarged and enriched by foreign travel, by the
study of the politics and institutions of other nations on their own
soil. He not only made the pilgrimage to Rome, a practice which the
example of Cnut seems to have made fashionable among English nobles and
prelates, but he went on a journey through various parts of Gaul,
carefully examining into the condition of the country and the policy of
its rulers, among whom we may be sure that the renowned Duke of Rouen
was not forgotten.[99] And Harold was ever ready to welcome and to
reward real merit in men of foreign birth. He did not scruple to confer
high offices on strangers, and to call men of worth from foreign lands
to help him in his most cherished undertakings. [Sidenote: Harold’s
patronage of Germans as opposed to Frenchmen.] But, while the bounty of
Eadward was squandered on Normans and Frenchmen, men utterly alien in
language and feeling, it was the policy of Harold to strengthen the
connexion of England with the continental nations nearest to us in blood
and speech.[100] All the foreigners promoted by Harold, or in the days
of his influence, were natives of those kindred Teutonic lands whose
sons might still almost be looked upon as fellow-countrymen.

[Sidenote: His personal character.]

Such was Harold as a leader of Englishmen in war and in peace. As for
his personal character, we can discern that in the received piety of the
age he surpassed his [Sidenote: His alleged spoliation of monasteries.]
father. The charge of invasion of the rights of ecclesiastical bodies is
brought against him no less than against Godwine; but the instance which
has brought most discredit upon his name can be easily shown to be a
mere tissue of misconceptions and exaggerations.[101] But it is far
[Sidenote: His friendship with Saint Wulfstan.] more certain that Harold
was the intimate friend of the best and holiest man of his time.
Wulfstan, the sainted Bishop of Worcester, was the object of his deepest
affection and reverence; he would at any time go far out of his way for
the benefit of his exhortations and prayers; and the Saint repaid his
devotion by loyal and vigorous [Sidenote: His foundation of the College
at Waltham. [1060–2.]] service in the day of need.[102] Of his
liberality his great foundation at Waltham is an everlasting monument,
and it is a monument not more of his liberality than of his wisdom. To
the monastic orders Harold seems not to have been specially
liberal;[103] his bounty took another and a better chosen direction. The
foundation of a great secular College, in days when all the world seemed
mad after monks, when King Eadward and Earl Leofric vied with each other
in lavish gifts to religious houses at home and abroad, was in itself an
act displaying no small vigour and independence of mind. The details too
of the foundation were such as showed that the creation of Waltham was
not the act of a moment of superstitious dread or of reckless bounty,
but the deliberate deed of a man who felt the responsibilities of lofty
rank and boundless wealth, and who earnestly sought the welfare of his
Church and nation [Sidenote: His personal demeanour frank and open.] in
all things. As to his personal demeanour, he was frank and open in his
general bearing, to a degree which was sometimes thought to be
prejudicial to his interests.[104] Yet he could on occasion dissemble
and conceal his purpose, a gift which seems sometimes to have been
misconstrued,[105] and which apparently led him to the one great error
of his life. He appears not to have been wholly free from [Sidenote:
Charges of rashness.] the common fault of noble and generous
dispositions. The charge of occasional rashness was brought against him
by others, and it is denied by his panegyrist in terms which seem to
imply that the charge was not wholly groundless.[106] And we must add
that, in his private life, he did not, at least in his early days,
imitate either the monastic asceticism of the King or the stern domestic
purity of his rival [Sidenote: His connexion with Eadgyth Swanneshals.]
the Conqueror. The most pathetic incident connected with his name, tells
us of a love of his early days, the days apparently of his East-Anglian
government, unrecognized by the laws of the Church, but perhaps not
wholly condemned by the standard of his own age, which shows, perhaps
above every other tale in English history or legend, how much the love
of woman can do and suffer.[107]

[Sidenote: Harold Earl of the East-Angles, 1045; Earl of the
West-Saxons, 1053; King, 1066.]

Such was the man who, seemingly in the fourth year of Eadward, in the
twenty-third or twenty-fourth of his own age, was invested with the rule
of one of the great divisions of England; who, seven years later, became
the virtual ruler of the Kingdom; who, at last, twenty-one years from
his first elevation, received, alone among English Kings, the Crown of
England as the free gift of her people, and, alone among English Kings,
died, axe in hand, on her own soil, in the defence of England against
foreign invaders. One prince alone in the later history of Europe rivals
the peculiar glory which attaches to the name of Harold. For him we must
seek in a distant age and in a distant land, but in a land connected
with our own by a strangely abiding tie. English warriors, soldiers of
Harold, chafing under the yoke of the Norman Conqueror, sought service
at the court of the Eastern Cæsar, and there retained for ages their
national tongue, their national weapon,[108] and the proud inheritance
of their [Sidenote: Comparison of Harold with Constantine Palaiologos.]
stainless loyalty. The memory of England and of Harold becomes thus
strangely interwoven with the memory of the one prince of later times
who died in a still nobler cause than that of the freedom of England.
The King who died upon the hill of Senlac finds his only worthy peer in
the Emperor who died before the Gate of Saint Rômanos. The champion of
England against the Southern invader must own a nobler martyr still in
the champion of the faith and liberty of Christendom against the
misbelieving horde who have ever since defiled the fairest and most
historic regions of the world. The blood of Harold and his faithful
followers has indeed proved the most fertile seed of English freedom,
and the warning signs of the times seem to tell us that the day is fast
coming when the blood of Constantine shall no longer send up its cry for
vengeance unheeded from the earth.

[Sidenote: Character of Swegen.]

The second son of Godwine was no doubt raised to greatness in the first
instance mainly because he was a son of Godwine; but his great qualities
gradually showed that the rank to which he was raised by his father’s
favour was one which he was fully entitled to retain by his own merits.
The earlier elevation of the great Earl’s eldest born was less
fortunate. Swegen lived to show that he had a soul of real nobleness
within him; but his crimes were great, he was cut off just as he was
beginning to amend his ways, and he has left a dark and sad memory
behind him. A youth, evidently of no common powers, but wayward,
violent, and incapable of self-control, he was hurried first into a
flagrant violation of the sentiment of the age, and next into a still
fouler breach of the eternal laws of right. His end may well arouse our
pity, but his life, as a whole, is a dark blot on the otherwise
chequered escutcheon of the house of Godwine. It was clearly felt to be
so; the panegyrist of the family never once brings himself to utter the
[Sidenote: Of the Lady Eadgyth. 1045.] name of Swegen. Only one other
child of Godwine calls for personal notice at this stage of our history.
Eadgyth, his eldest daughter, became, nearly two years after Eadward’s
coronation,[109] the willing or unwilling bride of the saintly monarch.
She is described as being no less highly gifted among women than her
brothers were among men; as lovely in person and adorned with every
female accomplishment, as endowed with a learning and refinement unusual
in her age, as in point of piety and liberality a fitting help-meet for
Eadward himself.[110] But there are some strange inconsistencies in the
facts which are recorded of her. Her zeal and piety did not hinder her
from receiving rewards, perhaps, in plain words, from taking bribes.
Undoubtedly this is a subject on which the feelings of past times
differed widely from those of our own; but we are a little staggered
when we find the saintly King and his pious Lady receiving money from
religious houses to support claims which, if just, should have been
supported for nothing, and, if unjust, should not have been supported at
all.[111] But Eadgyth has been charged with far heavier offences than
this. She [Sidenote: Suspicions of her loyalty to England.] seems to
have become in some degree infected with her husband’s love of
foreigners, perhaps even in some sort to have withdrawn her sympathies
from the national cause. She has won the doubtful honour of having her
name extolled by Norman flatterers as one whose heart was [Sidenote: Her
alleged share in the murder of Gospatric.] rather Norman than
English.[112] And all her reputation for gentleness and piety has not
kept her from being branded in the pages of one of our best chroniclers
as an accomplice in a base and treacherous murder.[113] Her character
thus [Sidenote: Her relation to her husband.] becomes in some sort an
ænigma, and her relation to her husband is not the least ænigmatical
part of her position. One of Eadward’s claims to be looked on as a saint
was the general belief, at least of the next generation, that the
husband of the beautiful Eadgyth lived with her only [Sidenote:
Eadward’s alleged chastity.] as a brother with a sister.[114] If this
story be true, a more enlightened standard of morality can see no
virtue, but rather a crime, in his conduct. We can see nothing to admire
in a King who, in such a crisis of his country, himself well nigh the
last of his race, and without any available member of the royal family
to succeed him, shrank, from whatever motive, from the obvious duty of
raising up [Sidenote: Evidence of the earliest writers.] direct heirs to
his Crown. But it seems probable that this report is merely part of the
legend of the saint and not part of the history of the King. His
contemporary panegyrists undoubtedly praise Eadward’s chastity. But it
is not necessary to construe their words as meaning more than might be
asserted of Ælfred, of William, of Saint Lewis, or of Edward the First.
The conjugal faith of all those great monarchs remained, as far as we
know, unbroken; but not one of them thought it any part of his duty to
observe continence towards his own wife. Still, from whatever cause, the
marriage of Eadward and Eadgyth was undoubtedly childless; and the
relations of the royal pair to each other in other respects are hardly
more intelligible. Eadgyth is described as the partaker of all her
husband’s good works, and as nursing him with the most affectionate care
during his last illness.[115] Yet, at the moment of his reign when he
could most freely exercise a will of his own, if he did not absolutely
of his own accord banish her from his court, he consented, seemingly
without any reluctance, to her removal from him by the enemies of her
family and her country.[116] The anxiety of Eadward’s Norman favourites
to separate Eadgyth from her husband is, after all, the most honourable
record of her to be found among the singularly contradictory
descriptions of her character and actions.

[Sidenote: Greatness of Godwine and his house.]

We thus find, within a few years after the accession of Eadward, the
whole of the ancient Kingdoms of Wessex, Sussex, Kent, Essex,
East-Anglia, and part of Mercia, under the government of Godwine, his
two elder sons, and his nephew. His daughter meanwhile shared the throne
of England with a King whom he had himself placed upon it. Such
greatness could hardly be lasting. It rested wholly on Godwine’s own
personal character and influence, for the fame of Harold was yet to be
won. The [Sidenote: The other Earldoms;] part of Mercia which was not
otherwise occupied remained, [Sidenote: Mercia under Leofric;] as
before, in the hands of Leofric the son of Leofwine. This Earl and his
famous wife Godgifu, the Lady Godiva of legend,[117] were chiefly
celebrated for their boundless liberality to ecclesiastical
foundations.[118] Worcester, Leominster, Evesham, Chester, Wenlock, Stow
in Lindesey, and, above all, Coventry, were special objects of their
bounty. They seem not to have been satisfied with mere grants of lands
and privileges, but to have taken a special interest in the buildings
and ornaments of the houses which they favoured. The minster of
Coventry, rebuilt and raised to cathedral rank after their time, has
utterly vanished from the earth, and recent changes have abolished even
the titular position of the city as a see of a Bishop. But at Stow, the
ancient Sidnacester, a place even then of infinitely less consideration
than Coventry, portions of the church enriched by Leofric still
remain.[119] Leofric, his son Ælfgar, his grandsons and his
granddaughter, play an important part in the history of this period down
to the complete establishment of the Norman power in [Sidenote:
Relations between Leofric and Godwine.] England. It is clear that
Leofric must have been more personally annoyed by the rise of Godwine
and his house than any other of the great men of England. A race whom he
could not fail to look down upon as upstarts hemmed him in on every side
except towards the North. Later in the reign of Eadward, we shall find
the rivalries and the reconciliations of the two houses of Godwine and
Leofric forming a considerable portion of the history. But, while
Leofric himself lived, he continued to play the part which we have
already seen him playing,[120] that part of a mediator between two
extreme parties, which was dictated to him by the geographical position
of his Earldom.

[Sidenote: Northumberland under Siward.]

North of the Humber, the great Dane, Siward the Strong, still ruled over
the Earldom which he had won by the murder of his wife’s uncle.[121] The
manners of the Northumbrians were so savage, murders and hereditary
deadly feuds were so rife among them, that it is quite possible that the
slaughter of Eadwulf may, by a party at least, have been looked on as a
praiseworthy act of vigour. Perhaps however, as we go on, we may discern
signs that Siward and his house were not specially popular in
Northumberland, and that men looked back with regret to the more regular
line of their native Earls. At any rate, Siward remained for the rest of
his days in undisturbed possession of both the Northumbrian governments,
and along with these he seems to have held the Earldoms of Northampton
and Huntingdon within the proper limits of Mercia.[122] He ruled, we are
told, with great firmness and severity, labouring hard to bring his
troublesome province into something like order.[123] Nor was he lacking
in that bounty to the Church, which might seem specially needful as an
atonement for the crime by which he rose to power.[124]

[Sidenote: England not tending to separation but to union.]

The mention of these great Earls suggests several considerations as to
the constitutional and administrative systems of the time. It is quite a
mistake to think, as often has been thought, that the position of these
powerful viceroys at all proves that England was at this time tending to
separation. It was in truth tending to closer union, and the position of
the great Earls is really one of the [Sidenote: Comparison with Frankish
history.] signs of that tendency. A mistaken parallel has sometimes been
drawn between the condition of England under Eadward and the condition
of France under the later Karlings. The transfer of the English sceptre
to the house of Godwine is of course likened to the transfer of the
French sceptre to the house of Hugh of Paris. But, if we are to look for
a parallel in the history of Gaul, we shall find one, by no means exact
but certainly the closer of the two, in the state of things under the
later Merwings, and in the transfer of the Frankish sceptre to the
Carolingian dynasty. The position of Godwine and Harold is, of the two,
more akin to the position of Charles Martel and Pippin than it is to
that of Hugh the Great and Hugh Capet. [Sidenote: Nature of the Earldom
as affected by the Danish Conquest.] The Earls of Eadward’s reign were,
as I have already explained,[125] not territorial princes, gradually
withdrawing themselves from the authority of their nominal overlord, but
great magistrates, wielding indeed a power well nigh royal within their
several governments, but wielding it only by delegation from the common
sovereign. The Danish Conquest, and the fearful slaughter of the ancient
nobility in the wars of Swend and Cnut, had done much to break up the
force of ancient local associations and the influence of the ancient
local families. Many of these families, the East-Anglian Earls for
instance, doubtless became extinct. From the accession of Cnut we find a
new state of things. The rule of the old half-kingly families, holding
an almost hereditary sway over whole kingdoms, and apparently with
subordinate Ealdormen in each shire, gradually dies out. Cnut divided
the Kingdom as he pleased, appointing Danes or Englishmen, and
Englishmen of old or of new families, as he thought good. England was
now divided among a few Earls, who were distinctly representatives of
the King. In Northumberland and Mercia the claims of ancient princely
families were to some extent regarded; in Wessex and East-Anglia not at
all. The rank of Earl is now held by a very few persons, connected
either with the royal family or with the men whose personal influence
was great at the time.[126] The Earls of Eadward’s reign are always
either his own kinsmen or else [Sidenote: Position of Northumberland.]
kinsmen of Godwine or Leofric. Siward alone keeps his Earldom for life;
but, while he lives, his influence hardly extends beyond his own
province, and, after his death, Northumberland falls under the same law
as the rest of the Kingdom. No doubt Northumberland still retained more
of the character of a distinct state than any other part of England;
still the forces of Northumberland march at the command of the
King,[127] and the Northumbrian Earldom is at the disposal of the King
and his Witan.[128] We do not however find the same signs of the
constant immediate exercise of the royal power in Northumberland which
we find in Wessex, Mercia, and East-Anglia. We have throughout this
reign a series of writs [Sidenote: Evidence of the King’s writs.]
addressed to the Bishops and Earls of those districts, which show that
an Earl of one of those great Earldoms commonly acted as the local Earl
of each shire in his province, with no subordinate Earl or Ealdorman
under him. While such writs are exceedingly common in Wessex and
East-Anglia, one such writ only exists addressed to a Northumbrian Earl,
and that is in the days of Tostig.[129] In Siward’s days possibly the
King’s writ hardly ran in Northumberland. Those addressed to the Earls
of the house of Leofric are also rare. It is clear that the King’s power
was more fully established under the Earls of Godwine’s family than
elsewhere. No doubt the royal authority was formally the same in every
part of the Kingdom, but the memories and traces of ancient independence
in Northumberland and Northern Mercia made its practical exercise more
difficult in those districts.

[Sidenote: Further evidence of the writs as to a change in the condition
of the Folkland.]

The class of writs of which I have just spoken throw some light on
constitutional questions in another way. They come in under Cnut,[130]
and they become very common under Eadward, being found alongside of
documents of the more ancient form. They are announcements which the
King makes to the Bishop, Earl, Sheriff, Thegns, and others of some one
shire, or sometimes to the Bishops, Earls, and Thegns of the whole
Kingdom, which do not, like documents of the ancient form, bear the
signatures of any Witan. They are the manifest prototypes of the royal
writs of later times. They are, like the other documents, mostly grants
of one kind or another; only they seem to proceed from the King’s
personal authority, without any confirmation from a national Gemót. Now
it is hardly possible that the mass of grants of this sort which are
preserved can all of them have been grants out of the King’s private
estate. And, if they are grants of folkland to be turned into bookland
on whatever tenure, allodial or feudal, a very important question
arises. If the King could make such grants by his own authority, a
change must have taken place in the ideas entertained as to folkland. In
short, the change which was completed after the Conquest[131] must have
already been in progress. The Folkland must have been beginning to be
looked on as _Terra Regis_. In short, strictly feudal ideas were
gradually coming in on this as on other matters. And doubtless, in this
respect, as in others, the Danish Conquest did much to prepare the way
for the [Sidenote: General powers of the Witan not lessened.] Norman.
But, if the Witenagemót insensibly lost its authority in a matter in
which we may well believe that its voice had long been nearly formal, it
retained its general powers undiminished. It still, as of old, elected
Kings, outlawed Earls, discussed and determined the foreign relations of
the Kingdom. The fame of Eadward as a lawgiver is mythical; but the fame
of government carried on in strict conformity to the laws and
constitution of the country, is one which fairly belongs to him, or
rather to the illustrious men by whom his power was practically wielded.

[Sidenote: Scotland under Macbeth.]

I have now to end this sketch by a brief view of the condition of the
subordinate Kingdoms and of the relations of England to foreign
countries. Scotland was now ruled by the famous Macbeth. He had, as
Maarmor or under-King of Moray, done homage to Cnut[132] along with his
[Sidenote: Reign and death of Duncan. 1040.] superior Malcolm. Duncan,
the youthful grandson of Malcolm, unsuccessful, as we have seen, in his
invasion of England,[133] was equally so in his warfare with the
Northmen of Orkney.[134] Soon after this last failure, he was murdered
by his own subjects, Macbeth being at least the prime mover in the
deed.[135] The murdered prince had married a kinswoman of the Earl of
the Northumbrians,[136] by whom he left two infant sons, Malcolm,
afterwards famous as Malcolm Canmore, and Donald Bane. But the
[Sidenote: Reign of Macbeth. 1040–1058.] Crown was assumed by Macbeth,
on some claim, it would seem, of hereditary right, either in himself or
in his wife Gruach.[137] Macbeth, and still more Gruach, have been so
immortalized in legend that it is not easy to recall them to their true
historical personality. But, from what little can be recovered about
them, they certainly seem not to have been so black as they are painted.
The crime of Macbeth against Duncan is undoubted; but it was, to say the
least, no baser than the crime of Siward against Eadwulf; and Macbeth,
like Siward, ruled well and vigorously the dominion which he had won by
crime. All genuine Scottish tradition points to the reign of Macbeth as
a period of unusual peace and prosperity in that disturbed [Sidenote:
Macbeth distributes money at Rome. 1050.] land.[138] Macbeth and Gruach
were also bountiful to churches in their own land, and Macbeth’s
munificence to certain unknown persons at Rome was thought worthy of
record by chroniclers beyond the bounds of Scotland.[139] One hardly
knows whether this was merely by way of alms, like the gifts of Cnut,
and it seems uncertain whether Macbeth, like Cnut and Harold, personally
made the Roman pilgrimage.[140] The words however in which the gifts of
Macbeth are spoken of might almost imply that his bounty had a political
object. It is possible that, even at this early time, the Scottish King
may have thought it desirable to get the Roman Court on his side, and he
may have found, like later princes and prelates, that a liberal
distribution of money was the best way of winning the favour of the
Apostolic See. The high character of the reigning Pontiff, Leo the
Ninth, puts him personally above all suspicion of unlawful gain; but
then, as afterwards, subordinates were probably less scrupulous. The few
notices which we find of Scottish affairs during the early years of
Eadward might suggest that Macbeth felt his position precarious with
regard to his English overlord. He had done homage to Cnut, but there is
no record of his having renewed it to Eadward. There is however no sign
of open enmity for many years.

[Sidenote: Gruffydd of North Wales. 1039–1063.]

In Wales a remarkable power was growing up, which will often call for
notice throughout the whole of the reign of Eadward. The year before the
death of Harold, Gruffydd the son of Llywelyn became King of Gwynedd or
North Wales, a description which now begins to be used in its modern
sense. He ruled with great vigour and ability. He gradually extended his
dominion over the whole of Wales, not scrupling to avail himself of
Saxon help against enemies of his own race. On the other hand, he more
than once, sometimes alone, sometimes in concert with English traitors,
proved himself a really formidable enemy to England. He was the last
prince under whom any portion of the Welsh nation played a really
important part in the history of Britain. He was, for Wales in the
narrower sense, pretty well what Cadwalla had been, ages before, for
Strathclyde.[141] In the [Sidenote: 633.] very first year of his reign,
he made an inroad into Mercia, [Sidenote: His victory at Rhyd-y-Groes.
1039.] which has been already spoken of.[142] He penetrated as far as
Rhyd-y-Groes, near Upton-on-Severn, a spot still retaining its British
name,[143] and there he fought the battle in which Eadwine, the brother
of Earl Leofric, was killed. [Sidenote: His wars in South Wales.] At the
time of Eadward’s accession he was busily engaged in various conflicts
with the princes of South Wales, who did not scruple to call in the help
of the heathen Danes of Ireland against him.[144] In the year of
[Sidenote: 1042.] Eadward’s election, he had just won a great victory
over a combined host of this kind at Aberteifi or Cardigan.[145]

[Sidenote: Eadward’s friendly relations with foreign powers.]

The relations of King Eadward to foreign powers were, for the most part,
friendly. With Normandy and other French states they were, as we have
seen and shall see, only too friendly. But this was a time of growing
intercourse, not with France only, but with Continental nations
generally. Pilgrimages to Rome, and other foreign journeys and
embassies, were becoming far more usual than before among eminent
Englishmen, both clergy and laity. Earl Harold’s travels, undertaken in
order to study the condition and resources of foreign countries on
[Sidenote: Connexion with Germany.] the spot, form a memorable
example.[146] The connexion between England and Germany was now very
close; the great Emperor Henry the Third sedulously sought the
friendship of his English brother-in-law; and there is, as we have seen,
little doubt that the German connexion was cultivated by the patriotic
party as a counterpoise to the French tendencies of the King.[147] The
promotion of German churchmen began early in Eadward’s reign, when it
could hardly have taken place except with the sanction of Godwine. The
only danger that seemed to threaten [Sidenote: Relations with the North;
claims of Magnus.] lay in the North. Magnus of Norway conceived himself
to have acquired, by virtue of his agreement with Harthacnut, a claim on
the Crown of England;[148] but his wars with Swend hindered him from
putting it forward for some years to come.

[Sidenote: The reign of Eadward comparatively peaceful.]

The reign of Eadward was, on the whole, a reign of peace. His admirers
use somewhat exaggerated language on the subject,[149] as his reign was
certainly more disturbed than those of either Eadgar or Cnut. Still,
compared with most periods of the same length in those troubled times,
the twenty-four years of Eadward form a period of unusual tranquillity.
Foreign war, strictly so called, there was none. England was threatened
by Norway, and she herself interfered in the affairs of Flanders; but no
actual fighting seems to have taken place on either occasion. Within the
island matters were somewhat less quiet. Scotland was successfully
invaded, and the old royal line restored. A few incursions of
Scandinavian pirates are recorded, and Gruffydd of Wales remained for
many years a thorn in the side of his English neighbours. But the main
interest of this reign gathers round domestic affairs, round the
revolts, the banishments, and the reconciliations of the great Earls,
and, still more, round that great national movement against French
influence in Church and State, of which Godwine and his family were the
representatives and leaders.

§ 3. _From the Coronation of Eadward to the Remission of the War-Tax._
1043–1051.

[Sidenote: Character of the years 1043–1051.]

This first period of the reign of Eadward is not marked by any very
striking events till we draw near to its close. At home we have to mark
the gradual expulsion, already spoken of, of those who had been
conspicuous in opposing Eadward’s election, and, what is of far more
importance, the gradually increasing influence of the foreign
favourites. This is most easily traced in the disposition of
ecclesiastical preferments. The foreign relations of England at this
time lay mainly with the kingdoms of the North, where the contending
princes had not yet wholly bidden farewell to the hope of uniting all
the crowns of the Great Cnut on a single brow. But the relations between
England and the Empire were also of importance, and the affairs of
Flanders under its celebrated Count Baldwin the Fifth form a connecting
link between those of England, Germany, and Scandinavia. The usual
border warfare with Wales continues; with the renowned usurper of
Scotland there was most likely a sort of armed truce. These various
streams of events seem for some years to flow, as it were, side by side,
without commingling in any marked way. But towards the end of our period
they all in a manner unite in the tale of crime and misfortune which led
to the disgrace and downfall of the eldest son of Godwine, but which
thereby paved the way for the elevation of the second.

[Sidenote: Relations between Eadward and his mother.]

The first act of the new King was one which was perhaps neither unjust
nor impolitic, but which, at first sight, seems strangely incongruous
with his character for sanctity and gentleness. With all his fondness
for Normans, there was one person of Norman birth for whom he felt
little love, and to whom indeed he seems to have owed but little
gratitude. This was no other than his own mother. It is not very easy to
understand the exact relations between Emma and her son. We are told
that she had been very hard upon him, and that she had done less for him
than he would—contributed too little, it would seem, from her
accumulated hoards—both before he became King and since.[150] Now it is
not clear what opportunities Emma had had of being hard upon her son
since the days of his childhood. During the greater part of their joint
lives, Eadward had been an exile in Normandy, while Emma had shared the
throne of England as the wife of Cnut. Her fault must rather have been
neglect to do anything for his interests, refusal, it may be, to give
anything of her wealth for the relief of his comparative poverty, rather
than any actual hardships which she could have inflicted on him. She
had, as we have seen, altogether thrown in her lot with her second
husband, and had seemingly wished her first marriage to be wholly
forgotten.[151] But there seems not to be the slightest ground for the
scandal which represented her as having acted in any way a hostile part
to her sons after the death of Cnut.[152] All the more probable versions
of the death of Ælfred represent her as distinctly favourable to his
enterprise.[153] She had herself suffered spoliation and exile in the
days of Harold;[154] she had returned with Harthacnut, and, in his days,
she seems almost to have been looked on as a sharer in the royal
authority.[155] That authority she had at least not used to keep back
her favourite son from the recall of his banished half-brother. It is
not wonderful if, under these circumstances, there was little love
between mother and son. Still there does not, up to the death of
Harthacnut, seem to have been any unpardonable offence [Sidenote:
Probable offence of Emma.] committed on the part of Emma. But the charge
that she had done less for Eadward than he would, since he came to the
Crown, seems to have a more definite meaning. It doubtless means that
she had refused to contribute of her treasures to the lawful needs of
the State. It may also mean that she had been, to say the least, not
specially zealous in supporting Eadward’s claims to the Crown. She is
described as dwelling at Winchester in the possession, not only of great
landed possessions, the morning-gifts of her two marriages, but of
immense hoarded wealth of every kind.[156] Harthacnut had doubtless
restored, and probably increased, all that had been taken from her by
Harold. Of her mode of employing her wealth we find different accounts;
putting the two statements together, we may perhaps infer that she was
bountiful to churches and monasteries, but niggardly to the poor.[157]
But neither this bounty nor this niggardliness was a legal crime, and it
is clear that some more definite offence must have lurked behind. Her
treasures, or part of them, may have been gained by illegal grants from
Harthacnut; it is almost certain, from the language of our authorities,
that they had been illegally refused to the public service. But what
happened seems to imply some still deeper offence. [Sidenote:
Witenagemót of Gloucester. November, 1043.] The conduct of Emma became
the subject of debate in a meeting of the Witan; her punishment was the
result of a decree of that body, and all that was done to her was done
with the active approval of the three great Earls, Godwine, Leofric, and
Siward.[158] In the month of November after Eadward’s coronation, a
Gemót—perhaps a forestalling of the usual Midwinter Gemót—was held at
Gloucester. That town seems now to take the place which was held by
Oxford a little earlier[159] as the scene of courts and councils.[160]
It became during this reign, what it remained during the reign of the
Conqueror, the place where the King wore his Crown at the Christmas
festival, as he wore it at Winchester at Easter. It was convenient for
such purposes as lying near at once to the borders of two of the great
Earldoms. It lay also near to the borders of the dangerous Welsh, whose
motions, under princes like the two Gruffydds, it was doubtless often
expedient to watch with the whole wisdom and the whole force of the
realm. The result of the deliberations of the Wise Men was that the King
in person, accompanied by the [Sidenote: Eadward and the Earls despoil
Emma of her treasures. November 16, 1043.] three great Earls,[161] rode
from Gloucester to Winchester, came unawares[162] upon the Lady,
occupied her lands,[163] and seized all that she had in gold, silver,
jewels, and precious stones. They left her, however, we are told, enough
for her maintenance, and bade her live quietly at Winchester.[164] She
now sinks into utter insignificance for the remainder of her days.[165]

Now the last order, to live quietly at Winchester, seems to imply some
scheme or intrigue on the part of Emma more serious than even an illegal
refusal to contribute of her wealth to the exigencies of the State. Is
it possible that she had been one of the opponents of her son’s
election? A woman who had so completely transferred her affection to her
second husband and his children, even though she had no hand in actual
conspiracies against the offspring of her first marriage, may
conceivably have preferred the nephew of Cnut to her own son by
Æthelred. If so, her punishment was only the first act of a sort of
persecution which during the next three or four years seems to have
fallen upon all who had supported the claims of Swend to the Crown. The
whole party became marked men, and were gradually sent out of the
Kingdom as occasion served.[166] A few of their names may probably be
recovered. We have records of several cases of banishment and
confiscation during the early years of Eadward, which are doubtless
those of the partisans of Eadward’s Danish opponent. First and foremost
was a brother of Swend himself, Osbeorn, who, like his brother Beorn,
seems to have [Sidenote: Banishments of Swend’s partisans. 1043–1046.]
held the rank of Earl in England. The brothers must have taken different
sides in the politics of the time, as Osbeorn was banished, while Beorn
retained his Earldom.[167] The banishment of Osbeorn did not stand
alone. The great [Sidenote: 1046.] Danish Thegn Osgod Clapa was banished
a few years later,[168] and it was probably on the same account that
Æthelstan the son of Tofig lost his estate at Waltham,[169] [Sidenote:
1044.] and that Gunhild, the niece of Cnut and daughter of Wyrtgeorn,
was banished together with her two sons Heming and Thurkill.[170] She
was then a widow for the second time through the death of her husband
Earl Harold.[171] He had gone on a pilgrimage to Rome, and was on his
way back to Denmark, when he was treacherously murdered by Ordulf, the
brother-in-law of Magnus of Norway.[172] That Harold was bound for
Denmark, and not for England, where his wife and children or
stepchildren were, may perhaps tend to show that he was already an exile
from England. It is not impossible that Godescalc the Wend ought to be
added to the list.[173]

Whether the fall of Emma was or was not connected with the penalties
which thus fell on the relics of the Danish party, it certainly carried
with it the momentary [Sidenote: Stigand, appointed Bishop of Elmham,
and deposed. April-November, 1043.] fall of one eminent Englishman. The
disgrace of the Lady was accompanied by the disgrace of the
remarkable—we might almost say the great—churchman by whose counsels she
was said to be governed. We have already seen Stigand, once the Priest
of Assandun,[174] appointed to a Bishoprick and almost immediately
deprived of it.[175] The like fate now happened to him a second time. He
was, it would seem, still unconsecrated;[176] but, seemingly about the
time of Eadward’s coronation, he was named and consecrated to the
East-Anglian Bishoprick of Elmham.[177] But the spoliation of Emma was
accompanied by the deposition of Stigand from the dignity to which he
had just been raised. He was deprived of his Bishoprick, and his goods
were seized into the King’s hands, evidently by a sentence of the same
Gemót which decreed the proceedings against the Lady. Whatever Emma’s
fault was, Stigand was held to be a sharer in it. The ground assigned
for his deposition was that he had been partaker of the counsels of the
Lady, and that she had acted in all things by his advice.[178] That
Stigand should have supported the claims of Swend is in itself not
improbable. He had risen wholly by the favour of Cnut, his wife, and his
sons. The strange thing is that so wary a statesman should not have seen
how irresistibly the tide was setting in favour of Eadward. One thing is
certain, that, if Stigand mistook his interest this time, he knew how in
the long run to recover his lost place and to rise to places far higher.

[Sidenote: Importance of ecclesiastical appointments at this time.]

During the whole of this period ecclesiastical appointments claim
special notice. They are at all times important witnesses to the state
of things at any particular moment, and in a period of this kind they
are the best indications of the direction in which popular and royal
favour is setting. The patrons or electors of an ecclesiastical office
can choose far more freely, they can set themselves much more free from
the control of local and family influences, than those who are called on
to appoint to temporal offices. For King Eadward to appoint a French
Earl would prove much more than his appointment of a French Bishop. It
would prove much more as to his own inclinations; it would prove much
more again as to the temper of the people by whom such an appointment
was endured. To appoint a French or German Earl as the successor of
Godwine or Leofric would doubtless have been impossible. But Eadward
found means to fill the sees of Canterbury, London, and Dorchester with
French Prelates. In those matters he had a freer choice, because, in the
case of an ecclesiastical office, no hereditary claim or preference
could possibly be put forward. The same freedom of choice still remains
to the dispensers of church patronage in our own times. The Lord
Lieutenant, the Sheriff, the ordinary magistrates, of any county are
necessarily chosen from among men belonging to that county. But the
Bishop, the Dean, the ordinary clergy, may never have set foot in the
diocese till they are called on to exercise their functions within it.
Then, as now, various influences limited the choice of temporal
functionaries which did not limit the choice of spiritual functionaries.
It is therefore of special moment to mark the course of ecclesiastical
appointments at this time, as supplying our best means of tracing the
growth of the foreign influence and the course of the resistance made to
it.

[Sidenote: Mode of appointing Bishops.]

It is not very clear what the exact process of appointing a Bishop at
this time was. It is clear that the royal will was the chief power in
the appointment. It is clear that the official document which gave the
Bishop-elect a claim to consecration was a royal writ, to which now,
under the French influences of Eadward’s court, a royal seal, in
imitation of continental practice, was beginning to be attached.[179] It
is also clear that the appointment was regularly made in full
Witenagemót.[180] This of course implies that the Witan had at least the
formal right of saying Yea or Nay to the King’s nomination. But we hear
at the same time of capitular elections,[181] which clearly were not a
mere form, though it rested with the King to accept or reject the
selected candidate. No doubt some process was in use, in which the
Chapter, the Witan, and the King all took their parts,[182] but in
ordinary speech the appointment is always said to rest with the King,
who is constantly described as giving a Bishoprick to such and such a
man. The King too at this time exercised the right, which afterwards
became the subject of so much controversy, of investing the Bishop-elect
with the ring and staff.[183] It is clear also, from the case of Stigand
just recorded, that the King and his Witan had full power of [Sidenote:
Increased connexion with Rome.] deposing a Bishop. On the other hand,
probably owing to the number of foreign ecclesiastics now in the
Kingdom, references to the Court of Rome become from this time far more
frequent. For an Archbishop to go to Rome for his pallium was nothing
new; but now we hear of Bishops going to Rome for consecration or
confirmation, and of the Roman Court claiming at least a veto on the
nomination of the English King.[184]

[Sidenote: Prevalence of simony.]

It is perhaps more startling to find that the court of Saint Eadward was
no more free from the suspicion of simony than the courts of ruffians
like Harold and Harthacnut.[185] It is clear however that it was neither
on the King personally nor on the Earl of the West-Saxons that this
disgraceful imputation rested. One can hardly help suspecting that it
was the itching palms of the King’s foreign favourites which proved the
most frequent resting-place for the gold of those who sought for
ecclesiastical dignities by corrupt means. In the year after Eadward’s
coronation we meet with a story which brings out all [Sidenote: Siward
appointed coadjutor to Archbishop Eadsige. 1044.] these points very
strongly. Archbishop Eadsige found himself incapacitated by illness from
discharging his functions, and wished either to resign his see or, as it
would rather seem, to appoint a coadjutor. But he feared lest, if his
intentions were made publicly known, some man whom he did not approve of
might beg or buy the office.[186] He therefore took into his counsels
none but the two first men in the realm, Earl Godwine and King Eadward
himself. Godwine would naturally be glad of the opportunity to put some
check on the growing foreign influences, and Eadward, easily as he was
led astray, would doubtless be anxious, when the case was fairly placed
before him, to follow any course which tended to preserve the purity of
ecclesiastical rule. By the authority then of Eadward and Godwine, but
with the knowledge of very few other persons,[187] Siward, Abbot of
Abingdon, was consecrated as Coadjutor-Archbishop.[188] He acted on
behalf of the Primate [Sidenote: He returns to Abingdon and dies.
1048–50.] for about six years, till illness caused him in his turn to
resign his office and return to Abingdon, where he died.[189] On this
Eadsige again assumed the administration of the Archbishoprick,[190] for
a short time before his own death.

[Sidenote: Death of Bishop Ælfweard of London. July 25, 1044.]

But a more memorable appointment was made in the course of the same
year. Ælfweard, Bishop of London and Abbot of Evesham, a Prelate whose
name has already occurred in our history,[191] fell sick of leprosy. He
returned to his Abbey, but the brotherhood with one consent refused him
admission. They met, we are told, with the just reward of their
churlishness. Ælfweard turned away to the distant Abbey of Ramsey, where
he had spent his early years, and where he was gladly received. He soon
after died, leaving great gifts to the hospitable monks of Ramsey.[192]
Rumour however added that they largely consisted of his own former gifts
to Evesham, and that he even did not scruple to remove from that
undutiful house some precious things which had been the gifts of other
benefactors.[193] Two great spiritual preferments were thus vacated, one
of them, the see of London, one of the most important in the Kingdom.
The lesser office at Evesham was conferred on an Englishman, Wulfmær or
Mannig, a monk of the house;[194] but in the nomination to the great
East-Saxon Bishoprick, the foreigners obtained one of their [Sidenote:
He is succeeded by Robert of Jumièges. August 10?] most memorable
triumphs. In a full Witenagemót, holden in London in the month of
August, the Bishoprick of the city in which the Assembly was held was
bestowed on one Robert, a Norman monk, who had first been Prior of Saint
Ouen’s at Rouen, and afterwards Abbot of the great house of
Jumièges.[195] He has there left behind him a noble memorial in the
stately minster which still survives in ruins, [Sidenote: Baneful
influence of Robert.] but in England it is not too much to say, that he
became, in this high post and in the still higher post which he
afterwards reached, the pest of the Kingdom. His influence over the mind
of the feeble King was unbounded.[196] We are ludicrously told that, if
Robert said that a black crow was white, King Eadward would at once
believe him.[197] He is described at all hands as being the chief
stirrer up of strife between Eadward and his native subjects. He it was
who separated the husband from the wife, and [Sidenote: His calumnies
against Godwine.] the King from his most faithful counsellors. He it was
whose slanderous tongue again brought up against the great Earl[198]
that charge of complicity in the death of Ælfred of which he had been
solemnly pronounced guiltless by the [Sidenote: His connexion with the
Norman invasion.] highest Court in the realm.[199] And the career of
Robert is one of great historical importance. It is closely connected
with the immediate causes—it may even be reckoned among the immediate
causes—of the Norman invasion.[200] Robert’s appointment to the see of
London may be fairly set down as marking a distinct stage in the
progress of Norman influence in England. He was the first man of utterly
alien speech who had held an English Bishoprick since the days of Roman,
Scottish, or Cilician missionaries. [Sidenote: [1052.]] His overthrow at
a later time was one of the first-fruits of the great national reaction
against the strangers, and its supposed uncanonical character was one of
the many pretences put forth by William to justify his invasion of
England.

This appointment of Robert shows the great advance of the Norman
influence. But it had not as yet reached its height. Godwine and the
popular party seem to have been able to make a kind of compromise with
the King. It was necessary to yield to the King’s strong personal
inclination in the case of Robert; but the other vacant preferments were
secured for Englishmen. We have seen that Ælfweard’s Abbey was not
allowed to be held in plurality by his successor in the Bishoprick, but
was bestowed [Sidenote: Stigand Bishop of Elmham.] on an Englishman of
high character. Stigand too had by this time made his peace with Eadward
and Godwine, and now began to climb the ladder of preferment afresh. He
now again received the Bishoprick of [Sidenote: Banishment of Gunhild
and her sons.] Elmham or of the East-Angles.[201] And it was in the same
year, and seemingly at the same Gemót, that Gunhild, “the noble wife,”
the widow of the Earls Hakon and Harold, the mother of Heming and
Thurkill, was banished together with her sons.[202]

This last event was one of that series of banishments which have been
already spoken of as gradually falling on all who had made themselves in
any way prominent in opposition to the election of Eadward. But it was
most likely not unconnected with the present threatening state
[Sidenote: Condition of Northern Europe.] of affairs in Northern Europe.
The early years of Eadward in England were contemporary with the great
struggle between Swend and Magnus for the Crown of Denmark. [Sidenote:
War of Swend and Magnus. 1044–1047.] The details of that warfare are
told in our Scandinavian authorities with the usual amount of confusion
and contradiction, and it seems hopeless to think of altogether
reconciling their conflicting statements. Our own Chronicles, as usual,
supply the most promising means of harmonizing them in some small
degree. We have seen that Magnus was in actual possession of both Norway
and Denmark at the time of Eadward’s coronation.[203] Swend, after
several battles, had found himself forsaken [Sidenote: Connexion of
Godescalc with Swend and Magnus.] by every one, and had taken refuge in
Sweden.[204] Godescalc the Wend, who had accompanied him from England,
had forsaken him with the rest,[205] and had entered on that mingled
career as missionary and warrior among his heathen countrymen of which I
have already spoken.[206] In this warfare he most likely acted as an
ally of Magnus, who was also renowned for victories over the same
enemy.[207] [Sidenote: Triumphant position of Magnus.] Magnus, now at
the height of his power, King of Denmark and Norway, conqueror of his
heathen neighbours, enjoying, as it would seem, the respect and
attachment of the people of both his Kingdoms, regretted and retracted
the engagements of fidelity, perhaps even of submission, which he had
made to Eadward when his own [Sidenote: He claims the English Crown.
1045.] position seemed less secure. He now fell back on the claim by
virtue of which he had possessed himself of Denmark, and which, in his
eyes, gave him an equal right to the possession of England. Magnus sent
an embassy to England, claiming the Crown, and setting forth his
right.[208] He and Harthacnut had agreed that whichever of them outlived
the other should succeed to his dominions. Harthacnut was dead; Magnus
had, by virtue of that agreement, succeeded to the Crown of Denmark; he
now demanded Harthacnut’s other Kingdom of England. [Sidenote: Eadward’s
answer.] Eadward, we are told, answered in a magnanimous strain, in
which he directly rested his right to the English Crown on the choice of
the English people.[209] While his brother lived, he had served him
faithfully as a private man, and had put forward no claim by virtue of
his birth. On his brother’s death, he had been chosen King by the whole
nation and solemnly consecrated to the kingly office. Lawful King of the
English, he would never lay aside the Crown which his fathers had worn
before him. Let Magnus come; he would raise no army against him, but
Magnus should never mount the throne of England till he had taken the
life of Eadward.[210] Magnus, so the Norwegian Saga tells us, was so
struck with this answer, that he gave up all thoughts of attacking
England, and acknowledged Eadward’s right to the English Crown. This
account, as perhaps Eadward’s answer also, savours somewhat of romance.
But that Magnus did contemplate an invasion of England is certain, and,
as England had given him no cause for war, an invasion of England would
seem to imply a [Sidenote: Preparations against Magnus. 1044–5.] claim
on the English Crown. The Norwegian King was looked on as dangerous in
the year after Eadward’s coronation, and in the next year he was kept
back from an invasion of England only by a renewal of the war in the
North. In both these years Eadward found it necessary to gather a fleet
together at Sandwich.[211] In the first year the fleet amounted to
thirty-five ships only; in the second year we are told that it was a
fleet such as no man had ever seen before.[212] In this last case we are
distinctly told that its object was to repel an expected invasion on the
part of Magnus.

[Sidenote: The war renewed by Swend in partnership with HAROLD
HARDRADA.]

The war was now renewed by Swend, seemingly in partnership with an actor
of greater, though perhaps less [Sidenote: Early life and exploits of
Harold. 1030–1044.] merited, renown than himself.[213] Harold the son of
Sigurd, the half-brother of Saint Olaf, had escaped as a stripling from
the field of Stikkelstad, where his brother, according to one view,
received the crown of martyrdom, while, according to another, he
received only the just reward of hasty and violent, however well-meant,
interference with the ancient institutions of his country. Harold,
surnamed Hardrada—the stern in council—lived to become the most renowned
warrior of the North, the last Scandinavian King who ever set foot as an
enemy on purely English ground, the last invader who was to feel the
might of Englishmen fighting on their own soil for their own freedom,
and who was, in his fall, to pave the way for the victory of an invader
yet mightier than himself. The fight of Stamfordbridge, the fight of the
two Harolds, will form one of the most striking scenes in a later stage
of our history. As yet, Harold was known only as the hero of a series of
adventures as wild and wonderful as any that have ever been recounted in
poetry or romance. [Sidenote: Escape of Harold from Stikkelstad.]
Wounded at Stikkelstad, the young prince was saved by a faithful
companion, and was cherished during the following winter by a yeoman
ignorant of his rank. He passed through Sweden into Russia, where he
formed a [Sidenote: He goes to Constantinople.] friendship with King
Jaroslaf of Novgorod. Thence, after a few years, he betook himself, with
a small train [Sidenote: State of the Empire.] of companions, to the
Byzantine Court. He found the Eastern Empire in one of those periods of
decay which so strangely alternate in its history with periods of
regeneration at home and victory abroad. The great Macedonian dynasty
was still on the throne; but the mighty Basil was in his grave, and the
steel-clad lancers of the New Rome were no longer the terror of Saracen,
Bulgarian, [Sidenote: Reign of Zôê. 1028–1050.] and Russian. The Empire
which he had saved, and which he had raised to the highest pitch of
glory, had now become the plaything of a worthless woman, and the diadem
of the Cæsars was passed on at every caprice of her fancy from one
husband or lover to another. The Norwegian prince reached the Great
City, the _Mickelgard_ of Northern story, in the period of Byzantine
history known as the Reigns of the Husbands of Zôê.[214] The Eastern
Cæsars had already begun to gather the Northern adventurers who appeared
at their doors as friends or as [Sidenote: The Warangians.] enemies into
that famous Warangian body-guard, the counterpart of the Housecarls of
Cnut, which as yet seems to have been recruited wholly from Scandinavia,
but which was afterwards to be reinforced by so large a body of exiles
from our own land.[215] Harold apparently received the command of this
force, and at their head he is said to have performed a series of
amazing exploits.[216] It would almost seem as if the arrival of these
Northern auxiliaries had inspired the Empire with a new life. Certain
[Sidenote: Their services under Harold in Sicily. 1038–1040.] it is
that, just about this time, we find the Byzantine armies, after an
interval of torpor, once more in vigorous action, and that in the very
region in which the Norwegian Saga places the most memorable exploits of
Harold. He waged war, we are told, against the Saracens both in Sicily
and in Africa; he fought eight pitched battles, and took castle after
castle from the misbelievers. That is, there can be little doubt, Harold
and his followers served in the Sicilian expedition of Maniakês, who was
at this time waging a vigorous war against the Saracens of Sicily, and
who recovered many of their towns to the Empire.[217] It does not appear
that Maniakês actually ventured on an African campaign, but, as the
Saracens of Africa undoubtedly aided their Sicilian brethren,[218] a
landing of Imperial troops on their coast is quite possible. At all
events, warfare with African Saracens anywhere might easily, in the
half-legendary language of the Sagas, grow [Sidenote: His Crusade or
Pilgrimage.] into a tale of an actual invasion of Africa. Harold is next
represented as entering on another series of adventures for which it is
more difficult to find a place in authentic history. He set out, we are
told, on a premature Crusade; he marched with his followers to
Jerusalem, clearing the way of robbers, and winning back countless towns
and castles to the allegiance of Christ and Cæsar. Here we have of
course the mere reflexion of the age of the writer, who could not
conceive so famous a warrior as entering the Holy City in any character
but that of a conqueror. But that Harold, as a peaceful pilgrim, the
brother of a canonized Saint, visited Jerusalem, prayed and gave gifts
at the Holy Sepulchre, and bathed in the hallowed stream of Jordan, is
quite in the spirit of the age and of the man.[219] He shared in the
penitential devotion of Robert the father of Norman William and of
Swegen the brother of English Harold; and, more fortunate than either,
he returned in safety and glory to his own land. He came back to
Constantinople to find himself maligned at the Imperial Court, and to be
refused the hand of a niece of the Empress.[220] Scandal went so far as
to say that the cause of this refusal was that Zôê, a woman whose
passions survived to an unusually late period of life, herself cast an
eye of love on the valiant [Sidenote: Harold escapes from
Constantinople.] Northman. Harold now made his escape from
Constantinople, after—so his Northern admirers ventured to say—putting
out the eyes of the Emperor Constantine Monomachos. This of course is
pure fiction. The historical truth of Harold’s warlike exploits is in no
way impugned by the silence of the Byzantine writers; but so striking an
event as the blinding of an Emperor could hardly fail to have found a
native chronicler. But we may believe, if we please, that Harold carried
off the princess by force, that the Scandinavian galleys burst the chain
which guarded the Bosporos, that Harold then left his fair prize on
shore, bidding her tell her Imperial kinswoman how little her power
availed against either the might or the craft of the [Sidenote: He
returns to Russia,] Northman. Harold now returned to Russia. He had
carried off the Byzantine princess only as a bravado; his heart was
fixed on Elizabeth, the daughter of his former host Jaroslaf of
Novgorod. He now hastened to her father’s court, obtained her in
marriage, and passed over with [Sidenote: and finds Swend in Sweden.]
her into Sweden. He there found Swend, defeated and in banishment. With
him he concerted measures for a joint expedition against Magnus, now in
possession of [Sidenote: Swend and Harold attack Magnus, and save
England from invasion. 1045.] Denmark.[221] There can be little doubt
that it was this joint expedition of Swend and Harold which saved
England from a Norwegian invasion. King Eadward watched at Sandwich with
his great fleet during the whole summer, expecting the approach of the
enemy. But Magnus came not. Harold and Swend together, by their invasion
of Denmark, gave him full occupation throughout the year.[222]

[Sidenote: Eadward marries Eadgyth. January 23, 1045.]

It was apparently early in this year of expected invasion that Eadward
at last married Eadgyth the daughter of Godwine.[223] It is not easy to
see why the marriage had been so long delayed; but, if the Norman
influence was advancing, the wary Earl might well deem that no time was
to be lost in bringing about the full completion of a promise which the
King was probably not very eager to fulfil. Godwine’s power however was
not as yet seriously shaken. [Sidenote: Earldoms given to Harold and
Beorn.] It was also probably in this year, as we have seen, that his son
Harold and his wife’s nephew Beorn received their Earldoms.[224] The
ecclesiastical appointments of the year seem also to point to the
predominance of the patriotic [Sidenote: Death of Bishop Brihtwold.]
party. In this year died Brihtwold, Bishop of Wilton or Ramsbury, a
Prelate who had in past times been honoured with a vision portending
Eadward’s accession to the Crown, and who had had the good luck of
living to [Sidenote: Hermann of Lotharingia succeeds. 1045.] see his
prophecy fulfilled.[225] The appointment of his successor should be
carefully noticed. He was Hermann of Lotharingia, a chaplain of the
King’s, the first of the series of German or other Imperialist Prelates
of whom [Sidenote: Promotion of German Prelates.] I have already
spoken.[226] The promotion of Germans in England was not wholly new. It
seems to have begun under Cnut, and it was probably a fruit of his
friendship [Sidenote: Duduc Bishop of Wells. 1033–1060.] with the
Emperor Conrad. In his time the Saxon Duduc had obtained the see of
Wells,[227] and another German, [Sidenote: Wythmann Abbot of Ramsey.]
Wythmann by name, had held the great abbey of Ramsey.[228] Had the
appointment of Hermann stood alone, we might have simply looked on it as
the result of Eadward’s connexion with King Henry. Or we might even have
looked on it in a worse light, as a sign that Eadward preferred
foreigners of any sort to his own countrymen. But several considerations
may lead us to [Sidenote: The German appointments probably favoured by
Godwine.] look on the matter in another way. These German appointments
are clearly part of a system; the system is continued after the death of
Henry the Third, when the close connexion between Germany and England
ceases; Harold himself, in the height of his power, appears as a special
promoter of German churchmen. We can therefore hardly fail to see in
these appointments, as I have already hinted, an attempt of Godwine and
the patriotic party to counterbalance the merely French [Sidenote:
Policy of Lotharingian appointments.] tendencies of Eadward himself. We
must observe that most of these Prelates were natives of Lotharingia, a
term which, in the geography of that age, includes—and indeed most
commonly means—the Southern Netherlands. That is to say, they came from
the border land of Germany and France, where the languages of both
kingdoms were already familiar to every educated man.[229] We can well
understand that, in those cases in which the patriots found it
impossible to procure the King’s consent to the appointment of an
Englishman, they might well be content to accept the appointment of a
German of Lotharingia as a compromise. One whose blood, speech, and
manners had not wholly lost the traces of ancient brotherhood would be
more acceptable to Godwine and to England than a mere Frenchman. And one
to whom the beloved speech of Gaul was as familiar as his mother-tongue
would be more acceptable to the denationalized Eadward than one of his
own subjects. This policy was probably as sound as any that could be hit
upon in such a wretched state of things. But its results were not wholly
satisfactory. I know of no reason to believe that any of these
Lotharingian Prelates actually proved traitors to England; but they
certainly did not, as a class, offer the same steady resistance to
French influences as the men who had been born in the land. And, if they
were not Normannizers, they were at least Romanizers. They brought with
them habits of constant reference to the Papal See, and a variety of
scruples on points of small canonical regularity, to which Englishmen
had hitherto been strangers. Still something was gained, if Godwine, on
the death of Brihtwold, could procure the appointment of a Lotharingian,
instead of a French, successor.[230] A slight counterpoise was thus
gained to the influence of the Norman Bishop of London. But, at the next
great ecclesiastical [Sidenote: Death of Bishop Lyfing. March 23 1046.]
vacancy, the patriotic party were more successful. In the course of the
next year England lost one of her truest worthies; the great Earl lost
one who had been his right hand man in so many crises of his life, in so
[Sidenote: His career and character.] many labours for the welfare of
his country. Lyfing, the patriot Bishop of Worcester, died in March in
the following year. Originally a monk of Winchester, he was first raised
to the Abbacy of Tavistock. While still holding [Sidenote: 1027.] that
office, he had been the companion of Cnut in his Roman pilgrimage, and
had been the bearer of the great King’s famous letter to his English
subjects.[231] The consummate prudence which he had displayed in that
and in other commissions,[232] had procured his appointment to the
Bishoprick of Crediton or Devonshire. With that see the Bishoprick of
Cornwall had been finally united during his episcopate.[233] With that
double see he had held, according [Sidenote: 1038.] to a vicious use not
uncommon at the time, the Bishoprick of Worcester in plurality.[234] In
that office, he had steadily adhered to the cause of the great Earl
through all the storms of the days of Harold and Harthacnut, and he had
had a share second only to that of Godwine himself in the work of
placing Eadward upon the throne.[235] Either his plurality of benefices
had given, as it reasonably might, offence to strict assertors of
ecclesiastical rule,[236] or, what is at least as likely, the patriotic
career of Lyfing had made him, like Godwine himself, a mark for Norman
slander, whether alive or dead. His death, we are told, was accompanied
by strange portents, which were however quite as capable of a favourable
as of an unfavourable interpretation.[237] But his memory was loved and
cherished in the places where he was best known. Long after the Norman
Conquest, the name of the Prelate whose body rested in their minster
still lived in the hearts and on the mouths of the monks of
Tavistock.[238] And the simple entry of a Chronicler who had doubtless
heard him with his own ears bears witness to that power of speech in the
exercise of which he had so often stood side by side with his
illustrious friend. The other Chronicles merely record his death; the
Worcester writer adds the speaking title, “Lyfing the eloquent.”[239]

[Illustration: THE DIOCESES OF ENGLAND UNDER EADWARD THE CONFESSOR.]

[Sidenote: Leofric, Bishop of Crediton or Exeter. 1046–1072.]

The great mass of preferment held by Lyfing did not pass undivided to a
single successor. The Bishopricks of Devonshire and Cornwall remained
united, as they have done ever since. They were conferred on the King’s
Chancellor, Leofric, who is described as a Briton, that is, doubtless, a
native of the Cornish portion of his diocese.[240] His name however
shows that he was of English, or at least of Anglicized, descent. But in
feeling he was neither British nor English; as Hermann was a
Lotharingian by birth, Leofric was equally a Lotharingian by
education.[241] Four years after his appointment, he followed [Sidenote:
He removes the see to Exeter. 1050.] the example of Ealdhun of Durham in
removing his episcopal see to a new site.[242] He did not however, like
Ealdhun, create at once a church and a city;[243] he rather forestalled
the practice of Prelates later in the century by transferring his throne
to the greatest town of his diocese. The humbler Crediton had to yield
its episcopal rank to the great city of the West, the city which
Æthelstan had fortified as a cherished bulwark of his realm,[244] the
city whose valiant burghers had beaten back the Dane in his full might,
and which had fallen into his hands only when the Norman traitor was set
to guard its walls.[245] She whose fatal presence had caused that great
misfortune still [Sidenote: 1003–1050.] lived. The first years of Emma
in England beheld the capture and desolation of her noble morning-gift.
Her last years saw the restored city become the spiritual capital of the
great western peninsula. And, within the lifetime [Sidenote: 1067.] of
many who saw that day, Exeter was again to stand a siege at the hands of
a foreign King, and again to show forth the contrast between citizens as
valiant as those who drove Swend from before their walls and captains as
incompetent or as treacherous as Hugh the Churl. The church of Saint
Peter in Exeter now became the cathedral church of the western diocese,
and there Leofric was solemnly enthroned in his episcopal chair by the
saintly King and his virgin wife.[246] Hitherto the church had been
occupied by nuns. They were now removed, and the chapter of the Bishop
was formed of secular Canons. Leofric however required them to conform
to the stricter [Sidenote: He subjects his Canons to the rule of
Chrodegang.] discipline which he had learned in Lotharingia. The rule of
Chrodegang of Metz, the model rule of secular Canons, though it did not
impose monastic vows, yet imposed on those who conformed to it much of
the strictness of monastic discipline.[247] The clerks who submitted to
it were severed, hardly less than actual monks, from all the ordinary
habits of domestic life. They were condemned to the common table and the
common dormitory; every detail of their life was regulated by a series
of minute ordinances; they were cut off from lay, and especially from
female, society, and bound to a strict obedience to their Bishop or
other ecclesiastical superior. Still they were not monks; they were even
strictly forbidden to wear the monastic garb,[248] and the pastoral
duties of baptism, preaching, and hearing confession were strictly
enforced upon them. In accordance with the precepts of Chrodegang, the
Canons of Exeter were required to eat in a common hall and to sleep in a
common dormitory. Their temporal concerns were managed by an officer,
who provided them with daily food, and with a yearly change of raiment.
This sort of discipline never found favour in England. All who were not
actual monks clave earnestly to the usage of separate houses, in which
they were often solaced by the company of wives and children. Every
earlier and later attempt to introduce the Lotharingian rule in England
utterly failed.[249] Leofric’s discipline seems to have lasted somewhat
longer than commonly happened in the like cases. Vestiges of the severer
rule still remained at Exeter in the next century, but even then the
purity of ancient discipline had greatly fallen off.[250]

[Sidenote: Ealdred, Abbot of Tavistock, Bishop of Worcester, 1046;
Archbishop of York, 1061–1069.]

One of the sees vacated by the death of Lyfing thus fell to the lot of a
zealous ecclesiastical reformer, but a man who plays no important part
in the general history of the time. The fate of Lyfing’s other
Bishoprick was widely different. It was bestowed on a Prelate who,
without ever displaying any very great qualities, played a prominent,
and on the whole not a dishonourable, part for many years to come. The
early career of the famous Ealdred, who now succeeded Lyfing in the see
of Worcester, had led him through nearly the same stages as that of his
predecessor. Like him, he had been a monk at Winchester; like him, he
had been thence called to the government of one of the great monasteries
of the West. The Abbey of Tavistock, [Sidenote: 997.] destroyed by
Danish invaders in the reign of Æthelred,[251] had risen from its ashes,
and it now proved a nursery of [Sidenote: Character of Ealdred.]
Prelates like Lyfing and Ealdred.[252] The new Bishop was a man of
ability and energy. He exhibits, like Harold, the better form of the
increasing connexion between England and the continent. As an ambassador
at the Imperial court, as a pilgrim at Rome and Jerusalem, he probably
saw more of the world than any contemporary Englishman. He was renowned
as a peacemaker, one who could reconcile the bitterest enemies.[253] But
he was also somewhat of a time-server, and, in common with so many other
Prelates of his time, he did not escape the charge of simony. This
charge is one which it is easy to bring and often hard to answer, but
the frequency with which it is brought shows that the crime itself was a
familiar one. Like many other churchmen of his time, Ealdred did not
scruple to bear arms both in domestic and in foreign warfare, but his
campaigns were, to say the least, not specially glorious. His most
enduring title to remembrance is that it fell to his lot to place,
within a single year, the Crown of England on the brow, first of Harold
and then of William, and to die of sorrow at the sight of his church and
city brought to ruin by the mutual contentions of Normans, Englishmen,
and Danes.

[Sidenote: Gruffydd ap Llywelyn reconciled with the King. 1046.]

We shall find the new Bishop of Worcester appearing a few years later in
arms against the Welsh, to whose incursions the southern part of his
diocese lay open. But as yet it was only his powers of persuasion and
peacemaking which he was called upon to exercise in that quarter. It was
probably by Ealdred’s intervention that a reconciliation was now brought
about between the famous King of North Wales, Gruffydd ap Llywelyn,[254]
and his English overlord.

[Sidenote: Expedition of Swegen and Gruffydd against Gruffydd ap
Rhydderch. 1046.]

Gruffydd’s immediate neighbour to the east was Swegen, whose anomalous
Earldom took in the border shires of Gloucester and Hereford. Gruffydd
accordingly gave hostages, and accompanied Swegen in an expedition
against the other Gruffydd, the son of Rhydderch, the King of South
Wales.[255] On his triumphant return Swegen was guilty of an act which
embittered the remainder of his days, a breach of the laws of morality
which the ecclesiastical feelings of the time clothed with tenfold
guilt. He sent for Eadgifu, Abbess of Leominster, kept her [Sidenote:
Swegen seduces Eadgifu, Abbess of Leominster.] awhile with him, and then
sent her home.[256] Like the Hamor of patriarchal story, he next sought,
with a generosity as characteristic of his wayward temper as any
[Sidenote: He seeks in vain to marry her.] of his worst deeds, to make
reparation by marriage.[257] But the law of the Church stood in his way.
Richard of Normandy, as we have seen, found it easy to raise his
mistress to all the honours due to a matron and the wife of a sovereign.
The Lady Emma herself, wife and mother of so many Kings, was the
offspring of an union which the Church had thus hallowed only after the
fact.[258] But no such means of reparation were open to the seducer of a
consecrated virgin. The marriage was of course forbidden, [Sidenote: He
throws up his Earldom, and goes to Denmark.] and Swegen, in his
disappointment, threw up his Earldom, left his country, and betook
himself, first to Flanders, the usual place of refuge for English
exiles, and thence to the seat of war in the North.[259] A formal
sentence of outlawry seems to have followed, as the lordships of Swegen
were confiscated, and divided between his brother Harold and his cousin
Beorn.[260] On Eadgifu and her monastery the hand of ecclesiastical
discipline seems [Sidenote: Fate of Leominster monastery.] to have
fallen heavily. The nunnery of Leominster, one of the objects of the
bounty of Earl Leofric,[261] now vanishes from history. The natural
inference is that the misconduct of Eadgifu led, not only to her own
disgrace, but to the dissolution of the sisterhood over which she had so
unworthily presided.[262] We hear of no later marriage on the part of
Swegen, but in after years we shall meet with [Sidenote: Hakon son of
Swegen.] a son of his, probably a child of the frail Abbess of
Leominster. Born under other circumstances, he might have been head of
the house of Godwine. As it was, the son of Swegen and Eadgifu was the
child of shame and sacrilege, and the career to which he was doomed was
short and gloomy.

[Sidenote: Banishment of Osgod Clapa. 1046.]

The banishment of the Staller Osgod Clapa, at the bridal of whose
daughter King Harthacnut had come to his untimely end, took place this
year.[263] Like the banishment of Gunhild, this measure was evidently
connected with the movements in the North of Europe. Osgod was doubtless
one of those who had been marked men ever since the election of
Eadward,[264] and who, in the present state of Scandinavian affairs,
were felt to be dangerous. The immediate peril came from Magnus; but
there could be little doubt that, of the three princes who were
disputing the superiority of Scandinavia, the successful one, whether
Magnus, Harold, or Swend, would assert some sort of claim to the
possession of England. Magnus had [Sidenote: 1066.] done so already.
Harold lived to invade England and to perish in the attempt. It was only
the singular prudence of Swend which kept him back from any such
enterprise till he was able to interfere in English affairs in the guise
[Sidenote: 1069.] of a deliverer. Partisans of any one of the contending
princes were clearly dangerous in England. Osgod was driven out,
seemingly by a decree of the Christmas Gemót,[265] and he presently,
after the usual sojourn in Flanders, betook himself to the seat of war
in Denmark.[266]

[Sidenote: Affairs of Scandinavia.]

Osgod and Swegen most probably took service with Swend Estrithson. The
presence of Swegen would doubtless be welcome indeed to that prince’s
partisans. The nephew of Ulf, the cousin of their own leader, the son of
the great English Earl, renowned in the North as the conqueror of the
Wends,[267] was a recruit richly to be prized. And the cause of Swend
Estrithson just then greatly needed recruits. His hopes, lately so
flourishing, had been [Sidenote: Harold Hardrada joins Magnus and
receives a share of the Kingdom of Norway. 1047.] again dashed to the
ground. Magnus had contrived to gain over his uncle Harold to his side,
by the costly bribe of a share in the Kingdom of Norway. The gift indeed
was not quite gratuitous. Besides cooperating in the war with Swend,
Harold was to share with Magnus the treasures which he had gathered in
his Southern warfare.[268] The two Kings now joined their forces, and
drove Swend out of Jütland and the Danish Isles. He retained only
Scania, that part of the old Danish realm which lies on the Swedish side
of the Sound, and which is now politically part of Sweden.[269] In the
next year Swend was [Sidenote: Swend asks for English help.] again
aiming at the recovery of his Kingdom. It was probably the presence of
English exiles in his camp, which suggested to him the idea of obtaining
regular help from England as an ally of the English King. He [Sidenote:
His request is discussed by the Witan;] sent and asked for the help of
an English fleet. In those days questions of peace and war were not
decided either by the Sovereign only, or by the Sovereign and a few
secret counsellors; they were debated openly by the Witan of the whole
land. The demand of Swend was discussed in full Gemót. Swend had
certainly acted, whether of set purpose or not, as a friend of England;
the diversion caused by him had saved England from a Norwegian invasion.
But, setting aside any feelings of gratitude on this account, any
feelings of attachment to the kinsman of Cnut and of Godwine, it does
not appear that England had any direct interest in embracing the cause
of Swend. A party which sought only the immediate interest of England
might argue that the sound policy was to stand aloof, and to leave the
contending Kings of the North to wear out each other’s power and their
own. Such however [Sidenote: Godwine supports the claim of Swend;] was
not the view taken by Godwine. In the Gemót in which the question was
debated, the Earl of the West-Saxons supported the petition of his
nephew, and proposed that fifty ships should be sent to his help. It is
clear that such a course might be supported by plausible arguments. It
is clear that equally plausible arguments might be brought forward on
the other side. And if, as is possible, this question was discussed in
the same Gemót in which sentence of outlawry was pronounced against
Swegen the son of Godwine, it is clear that the father of the culprit
would stand at a great disadvantage in supporting the request of the
prince with whom that culprit had taken service. It marks the still
abiding influence of Godwine that he was able to preserve the
confiscated lordships of Swegen for Harold and Beorn. But in his
recommendation of giving armed support to Swend Estrithson all his
[Sidenote: but his demand is opposed by Leofric, and rejected. 1047.]
eloquence utterly failed. The cause of non-intervention was pleaded by
Earl Leofric, and his arguments prevailed. All the people, we are
told—the popular character of the Assembly still impresses itself on the
language of history—agreed with Leofric and determined the proposal of
Godwine to be unwise. The naval force of Magnus, it was said, was too
great to be withstood.[270] Swend Estrithson had therefore to carry on
the struggle with his own unaided forces. Against the combined powers of
Magnus [Sidenote: Magnus defeats Swend and occupies Denmark.] and Harold
those forces were utterly unavailing. Swend was defeated in a great
sea-fight; Magnus took possession of all Denmark, and laid a heavy
contribution upon the realm.[271] Swend again took refuge in Sweden, and
now began to meditate a complete surrender of his claims upon Denmark.
Just at this moment, we are told, a messenger appeared, bringing the
news of the sudden death of [Sidenote: Sudden death of Magnus. 1047.]
Magnus.[272] The victorious King had perished by an accident not unlike
that which had caused the death of Lewis of France.[273] His horse,
suddenly startled by a hare, dashed his rider against the trunk of a
tree.[274] On his death-bed he bequeathed the crown of Norway to his
uncle Harold [Sidenote: Harold succeeds in Norway, Swend in Denmark.]
and that of Denmark to his adversary Swend. Such a bequest is quite in
harmony with the spirit of the correspondence between Magnus and
Eadward.[275] Swend returned [Sidenote: Their long warfare. 1048–1061.]
and took possession of his Kingdom, and though he was for years engaged
in constant warfare with Harold, he [Sidenote: Their embassies to
England.] never wholly lost his hold upon the country. The first act of
both the new Kings was to send embassies to England. Harold offered
peace and friendship; Swend again asked for armed help against
Harold.[276] The debate of the [Sidenote: Help again refused to Swend,
and peace concluded with Harold. 1048.] year before was again reopened.
Godwine again supported the request of his nephew, and again proposed
that fifty ships should be sent to his help. Leofric again opposed the
motion, and the people again with one voice supported Leofric. Help was
refused to Swend and peace was concluded with Harold.[277] Swend,
despairing of English aid, seems to have sought for protection in
another quarter, and to have acknowledged himself a vassal of the
Empire.[278]

[Sidenote: Physical phænomena. 1046–7.]

These two years seem to have been marked by several physical phænomena.
In the former we hear of the [Sidenote: May 1, 1048.] unusual severity
of the winter, accompanied by an extraordinary fall of snow.[279] In the
latter several of the midland shires were visited by an earthquake.[280]
We read also of epidemics both among men and beasts, and of the
appearance called wild fire.[281] A few ecclesiastical appointments are
also recorded; but one only calls for notice. [Sidenote: Death of
Ælfwine of Winchester, Aug. 29, 1047. Stigand succeeds.] Ælfwine, Bishop
of Winchester, died, and his Bishoprick fell neither to Frenchmen nor to
Lotharingian. Stigand rose another step in the ladder of promotion by
his translation from the humbler see of Elmham to the Bishoprick of the
Imperial city.[282]

[Sidenote: Ravages of Lothen and Yrling. 1048.]

As far as we can make out through the confused chronology of these
years, it was in the year of the peace with Norway that England
underwent, what we have not now heard of for many years, an incursion of
Scandinavian pirates.[283] Two chiefs, named Lothen and Yrling, came
with twenty-five ships, and harried various parts of the coast. This
event must have been in some way connected with the course of the war
between Harold and Swend. Probably some enterprising Wikings in the
service of one or other of those princes found a moment of idleness just
as the two Kings were taking possession of their crowns, and thought the
opportunity a good one for an attack on England. Such an attack was
doubtless unexpected, especially as such good care had been taken to
keep on good terms with both the contending Kings. But possibly the more
daring policy of Godwine would really have been the safer.[284] Had
fifty English ships, whatever their errand, been afloat in the Northern
seas, Lothen and Yrling could hardly have come to plunder the shores of
England. Anyhow the story shows us the sort of spirit which still
reigned in the North. There were still plenty of men ready to seek their
fortunes in any part of the world as soon as a moment of unwelcome quiet
appeared at home. Harold and Swend at least did the world some service
by finding employment for such men in warfare with one another. The
Wikings harried far and wide. From Sandwich they carried off a vast
booty in men, gold, and silver.[285] In the Isle of Wight they must have
met with more resistance, as many of the best men of the island are said
to have been slain.[286] In Thanet too the landfolk withstood them
manfully, refused them landing and water, and drove them altogether
away.[287] Thence they sailed to Essex, where they plundered at their
pleasure.[288] By this time the King [Sidenote: Eadward and the Earls
pursue the pirates, but they escape to Flanders.] and the Earls had got
together some ships. The Earls were doubtless Godwine and Harold, on
whose governments the attack had been made, and the words of our
authorities seem to imply that Eadward was really present in
person.[289] They sailed after the pirates, but they were too late. The
enemy had already made his way to the common refuge of banished
Englishmen and of foes of England. The Wikings were now safe in the
havens of Flanders—of Baldwines land; there they found a ready market
for the spoils of England, and thence they sailed back to their own
country.[290]

[Sidenote: Analogy with the relations with Normandy in 991 and 1000.]

We here seem to be reading over again the history of the events which
led to the first hostile relations between England and Normandy.[291]
The Northmen are again plundering England, and a continental power again
gives them so much of help and comfort as is implied in letting them
sell their plunder in his havens. This time the offending power was not
Normandy but Flanders, and Eadward, unlike his father, had no lack of
powerful friends on the [Sidenote: Alliance with the Emperor Henry.]
continent. The great prince who had, a year before,[292] been raised to
the throne of the world was, as we have seen,[293] on the most intimate
terms with his English brother, and it is plain that close alliance with
the Empire formed part of the policy of the patriotic party. The
illustrious Cæsar had filled the Papal chair with a Pontiff like-minded
[Sidenote: The German Popes.] with himself. A series of German Popes of
Imperial nomination had followed one another in a quick succession of
short reigns, but they had had time to show forth in their virtues a
marked contrast to the utter degradation of the Italian Pontiffs who had
gone [Sidenote: Leo the Ninth. 1048–1054.] immediately before them. The
throne of Peter was now filled, at the Imperial bidding, by Bruno,
Bishop of Toul, a native of Elsass and kinsman of the Emperor, who had
taken the name of Leo the Ninth.[294] He was now in his second year of
office, having· been appointed in the year of the peace between England
and Norway. It was perhaps only a later legend which told how, on his
way to Rome, he fell in with the famous Hildebrand, then in exile, how
he listened to his rebukes for the crime of accepting a spiritual office
from an earthly lord, how he entered Rome as a pilgrim, and did not
venture to ascend the Pontifical throne till he was again more regularly
chosen thereto by the voice of the Roman clergy and people.[295] But, in
any case, this concession to ecclesiastical rule or prejudice had abated
nothing of Leo’s loyalty to his Teutonic sovereign, nothing of his zeal
for the welfare, both spiritual and temporal, of lands which the Italian
Pontiffs so seldom visited. The Pope was now at Aachen, [Sidenote:
Rebellion of Godfrey and Baldwin against the Emperor. 1047.] ready with
his spiritual weapons to help the Emperor against a league of his
rebellious vassals. They had waged war against their suzerain; they had
burned the city and church of Verdun; they had destroyed the noble
palace of the Emperor at Nimwegen. Foremost among the offenders were
Theodoric of Holland, Baldwin of Flanders, and Godfrey of Lotharingia.
Godfrey was specially guilty. After a former rebellion he had been
imprisoned and released, and now he was foremost in the new
insurrection, especially in the deed of sacrilege at Verdun.[296] The
Pope therefore did not hesitate to issue [Sidenote: Leo excommunicates
Godfrey. 1049.] his excommunication against him. Godfrey yielded; the
ban of the father of Christendom bent his soul; he submitted to
scourging, he redeemed his hair at a great sum, he contributed largely
to the rebuilding of the cathedral which he had burned, and himself
laboured at the work [Sidenote: Continued ravages of Baldwin.] like a
common mason. But Baldwin of Flanders, possibly trusting to his
ambiguous position as a vassal both of the Empire and of the French
Crown, was more obstinate, and still continued his ravages. The Emperor
accordingly called on his vassals and allies for help against a prince
whose power might well seem dangerous even to Kings [Sidenote: Swend and
Eadward join the Emperor against Baldwin.] and Cæsars. King Swend of
Denmark—so low had Denmark fallen since the days of Cnut—obeyed the
summons as a vassal.[297] King Eadward of England contributed his help
as an ally, and as one who was himself an injured party. The reception
of English exiles at Baldwin’s court, the licence allowed to
Scandinavian pirates of selling the spoils of England in Baldwin’s
havens, caused every Englishman to look on the Count of Flanders as an
enemy. The help which had been refused to Swend was therefore readily
granted to Henry. The King of the English was not indeed asked to take
any share in continental warfare by land. The share of the enterprise
assigned to him was to keep the coast with his ships, in case the
rebellious prince should attempt to escape by sea.[298] Again, as in the
days of Æthelstan and Eadmund, an English fleet appeared in the Channel,
ready, if need be, to take a part in continental warfare. But now, as in
the days of [Sidenote: Baldwin defeated without actual English help.]
Æthelstan and Eadmund,[299] nothing happened which called for its active
service. Eadward and his fleet watched at Sandwich, while the Emperor
marched against Baldwin by land. But the Count of Flanders, instead of
betaking himself to the sea, submitted in all things to the will of the
mighty overlord whom he had provoked.[300]

[Sidenote: The submission of Baldwin lets loose the English exiles.]

The immediate object for the assembling of the fleet had been attained;
but the events which immediately followed showed that the fleet was just
as likely to be needed for protection at home, as for a share in even
just and necessary warfare abroad. The submission of Baldwin to the
Emperor seems to have let loose the English exiles who had been flitting
backwards and forwards between Flanders and Denmark,[301] and who had
possibly taken a part on Baldwin’s side in the last campaign. Both Osgod
Clapa and Swegen the son of [Sidenote: Swegen and Osgod return.] Godwine
now appeared at sea. Swegen had only eight ships; but Osgod had—we are
not told how—gathered a force of thirty-nine. While the King was still
at Sandwich, Swegen returned to England. He sailed first to Bosham, a
favourite lordship of his father’s, and one whose name we shall again
meet with in connexion with events of still greater moment to the house
of Godwine. He there left his ships, and went to the King at Sandwich,
[Sidenote: Swegen’s reconciliation with Eadward. 1049.] and offered to
become his man.[302] His natural allegiance as an English subject was
perhaps held to be cancelled by his outlawry or by his having become the
man of Swend of Denmark or of some other foreign prince. A new personal
_commendation_ was seemingly needed for his reconciliation with his
natural sovereign. He seems to have asked for his Earldom again; at any
rate, he was tired of the life of a sea-rover, and asked that his lands
which had been confiscated might be given back to him for his
maintenance. He seems to have found favour, either with the King
personally or with some of those who were about him, for it was
proposed, if not actually resolved, that Swegen should be restored to
all his former possessions.[303] But the strongest opponents of such a
course [Sidenote: Harold and Beorn oppose his reconciliation.] were
found in the kinsmen to whom his confiscated lands had been granted, his
cousin Beorn and his brother Harold. They both refused to give up any
part of what the King had given them.[304] Swegen’s petition was
accordingly refused; [Sidenote: Swegen’s outlawry is renewed.] his
outlawry was confirmed; only, as seems to have been usual in such cases,
he was allowed four days to get him out of the country. How far Harold
and Beorn were actuated in this matter by mere regard to their own
interests, how far by a regard to the public good, how far by that
mixture of motives which commonly determines men’s actions, we have no
means of judging. This is not the only act of Harold’s early life which
may be taken to show that he had not yet acquired those wonderful gifts
of conciliation and self-restraint which mark his more mature career. Of
the character of Beorn we know nothing except from this story; what we
hear of him directly afterwards certainly sets him before us in a
generous and amiable light. The tale is told us in a perfectly
colourless way, without any hint how the conduct of the two cousins was
judged of in the eyes of contemporaries in general or in those of Earl
Godwine. At all events, Swegen went away from Sandwich disappointed. He
thence went to Bosham, where his ships were lying in the land-locked
haven of that place. This was just at the moment when the fleet, no
longer needed for service against Baldwin, was beginning to disperse. We
see that this fleet also had been gathered in the ancient way by the
contingents or contributions of the shires,[305] and that only a small
number of the ships were in the King’s permanent service. Those of the
crews who had come from distant, especially inland, districts were
naturally weary of tarrying when there was no prospect of active
service, and the contingent of Mercia was accordingly allowed to return
home.[306] The King remained at Sandwich with a few ships only.
Meanwhile a rumour came that hostile ships had been seen ravaging
[Sidenote: Godwine at Pevensey.] to the west. The Earl of the
West-Saxons accordingly sailed forth to the rescue, with forty-two ships
belonging to the men of his Earldom.[307] He took also two ships of the
King’s, commanded respectively by Harold and by his third son Tostig, of
whom we now hear for the first time.[308] Stress of weather however
hindered them from getting further west than Pevensey. While they lay
there, a change, of the motive of which we are not told, was made in the
command of the two royal ships which had accompanied Godwine. Harold
gave up the ship which he had commanded to his cousin Beorn.[309] This
accidental change possibly saved Harold’s life.[310] For Swegen now came
from Bosham to Pevensey, and there found his father and cousin. He there
spoke with both of them. The result of their discourse was that Beorn
[Sidenote: Beorn entrapped and slain by Swegen.] was persuaded to
undertake the office of intercessor with the King on Swegen’s behalf.
What arrangement was to be proposed—whether Beorn brought himself to
consent to the sacrifice which he had before refused—whether Swegen was
to be again invested with his Earldom or only with his private
lordships—whether Harold, Beorn, or Swegen was to be compensated in any
other way for the surrenders which one or more of them would have to
make—of all this nothing is explained to us. We hear however that Beorn,
trusting to his kindred with Swegen,[311] did not hesitate to set out to
ride with him to the King at Sandwich. He even agreed to a proposal of
Swegen’s, according to which they left the road from Pevensey to
Sandwich, and went westward to Bosham. For this deviation from his
original scheme Swegen made an excuse, which was doubtless more
intelligible then than it is now, namely a fear lest the crews of his
ships should forsake him, if they were not confirmed in their faith to
him by the presence of Beorn. The young Earl fell into the snare, and
accompanied his cousin to the haven of Bosham. But when Swegen pressed
him to go on board one of his ships, Beorn’s suspicions were at last
aroused, and he vehemently refused. At last Swegen’s sailors bound him,
put him in a boat, rowed him to the ships, and there kept him a
prisoner. They then hoisted their sails and steered for Dartmouth.[312]
There Beorn was killed by Swegen’s orders, but his body was taken on
shore and buried in a church. As soon as the murder became known, Earl
Harold,[313] with others of Beorn’s friends, and the sailors from
London—a clear mark of Beorn’s popularity—came and took up the body,
carried it to Winchester, and there buried it in the Old Minster by the
side of Beorn’s uncle King Cnut.

[Sidenote: Swegen declared _Nithing_ by the armed Gemót.]

The general indignation at the crime of Swegen was intense. The King and
the army publicly declared the murderer to be _Nithing_.[314] This was
the vilest epithet in the English language, implying utter
worthlessness. It was evidently used as a formal term of dishonour. We
shall find [Sidenote: 1087.] it at a later time resorted to by a Norman
King as a means of appeal to his English subjects. William Rufus, when
he needed English support, proclaimed in the like sort that all who
failed to come to his standard should be declared to be _Nithing_. But
this proclamation has a deeper importance than the mere use of this
curious expression of public [Sidenote: Functions of the Witan
discharged by the army.] contempt. It is to be noted that the
proclamation is described as the act of the King and his army. Here is
clearly a case of a military Gemót.[315] The army, as representing the
nation, assumes to itself in time of war the functions which belonged to
the regular Gemót in time of peace. The army declares Swend to be
_Nithing_, and it was doubtless the army, in the same sense, which had
just before hearkened to, and finally rejected, his petition for
restoration to his estates. So it was the army, Cnut’s [Sidenote: 1014.]
Danish army, which assumed to itself the functions of the English Witan
by disposing of the English Crown on the death of King Swend.[316] In
the ancient Teutonic constitution the army was the nation and the nation
was the army. In the primitive Gemóts described by Tacitus,[317] to
which all men came armed, no distinction could be [Sidenote: Nature of
the military Gemót.] drawn between the two. But it should be noticed
that the word used is not that which denotes the armed levy of the
Kingdom, but that which expresses the army in its special relation to
the King.[318] This fact exactly falls in with the practical, though not
formal, change which had taken place in the constitution of the ordinary
Gemóts.[319] The military Gemót which passed this sentence on Swegen was
not the whole force of England, for we were just before told that the
contingents both of Mercia and Wessex had left Sandwich. This assembly
must have consisted of the King’s _Comitatus_ of both kinds, of the
Thegns bound to him by the older and more honourable tie, and also of
the standing force of the Housecarls, or at any rate of their
officers.[320] Setting churchmen aside—though we have seen that even
churchmen often bore arms both by land and by sea—such a body would
probably contain a large proportion of the men who were likely to attend
an ordinary Witenagemót. By an assembly of this kind, acting, whether
constitutionally or not, in the character of a National Assembly, the
outlawry and disgrace of Swegen were decreed.

[Sidenote: Swegen, deserted by most of his ships, escapes to Flanders.]

It would seem that this decree preceded the translation of Beorn’s body
to Winchester, a ceremony which may not improbably have been ordered by
the Assembly. For it was before that translation[321] that the men of
Hastings, most probably by some commission from the King or his military
council, sailed forth to take vengeance on the murderer. Swegen was
already forsaken by the greater part of his following. Of his eight
ships six had left him. Their crews were probably rough Wikings from the
North, men familiar with all the horrors of ordinary pirate warfare, not
troubled with scruples about harrying a land whose people had never
wronged them, but who nevertheless shrank from the fouler wickedness of
slaying a kinsman by guile. Two ships only remained with Swegen, those
doubtless whose crews had been the actual perpetrators of the deed. The
men of Hastings chased and overtook these ships, slew their crews, and
brought the ships to the King.[322] How Swegen himself escaped it is not
easy to see; possibly the men of Hastings still scrupled personally to
lay hands upon a son of Godwine. At any rate the murderer baffled
pursuit, and again took shelter in his old quarters. Baldwin, so lately
restored to his dominions, again began his old practice of receiving
English exiles, and Swegen spent the whole winter at the court of
Flanders under the full protection of its sovereign.[323]

[Sidenote: Character of the act of Swegen.]

The story of the murder of Beorn is told in so minute and graphic a way
that it seems impossible to throw doubt on any part of the tale. And
every account represents the deed as a deed of deliberate
treachery.[324] An act of mere violence would not have greatly offended
the morality of that age. Had Swegen killed even a kinsman in a moment
of provocation or in a fair fight to decide a quarrel, his guilt would
not have seemed very black. Had he even used craft in carrying out an
ancestral deadly feud, he might have quoted many precedents in
Northumbrian history, and, among them, an act in the life of the
reigning Earl of the North hardly inferior in guilt to the worst
[Sidenote: Universal indignation against Swegen.] aspect of his
own.[325] But to kill a kinsman, a confiding kinsman, one who had just
granted a somewhat unreasonable prayer, was something which offended the
natural instincts not only of contemporary Englishmen but of
Scandinavian pirates. At the moment Swegen seems to have found no
friends; the voice of all England was against him; there is no sign that
any of his family stood by him; the sympathies of Harold clearly lay
with his murdered cousin. It is hardly possible to conceive a blacker or
more unpardonable crime. One would have thought that Swegen would have
failed to find patrons or protectors in any [Sidenote: His reception by
Baldwin.] corner of Christendom. Yet, strange to say, the murderer,
forsaken by all, was at once received with favour by Baldwin, even
though Baldwin must have known that by receiving him he was running the
risk of again offending the King of the English and even the Emperor
himself. [Sidenote: His outlawry is reversed and he returns to England.
Midlent, 1050.] And what followed is stranger still. In the next year,
in a Witenagemót held in London in Midlent, Swegen’s outlawry was
reversed, and he was restored to his Earldom.[326] And, strangest of
all, his restoration is attributed, not to the influence of Godwine or
his family, not to any revulsion of feeling on the part of the King or
the nation, but [Sidenote: Swegen reconciled to Eadward by Bishop
Ealdred.] to the personal agency of Bishop Ealdred the Peacemaker. He it
was who, it would seem, crossed over to Flanders, brought Swegen to
England, and procured his restoration at the hands of the King and his
Witan.[327] There is nothing to show that Ealdred was specially under
the influence of Godwine. We shall before long find him acting in a
manner which, to say the least, shows that he was not one of Godwine’s
special followers. His episcopal city and the greater part of his
diocese lay within the Earldom of Leofric; no part of it lay within the
Earldom of Godwine.[328] And, if part of his diocese lay within the
Earldom of the man whom he sought to restore, that only makes him the
more responsible for the act which was so directly to affect a portion
of his own flock. In the restoration of Swegen, Ealdred seems to have
acted purely in his capacity of peacemaker.[329] At first sight it might
seem that Ealdred strove to win the blessing promised to his class by
labouring on behalf of a sinner whom the most enlarged charity could
hardly excuse. The very strangeness of the act suggests that there must
have been some explaining cause, intelligible at the time, but which our
authorities have not recorded. The later history of Swegen shows that,
if he was a great sinner, he was also a great penitent. We can only
guess that Ealdred already marked in him some signs of remorse and
amendment, that he had received from him some confession of his crime,
to which we possibly owe the full and graphic accounts of the murder of
Beorn which have been handed down to us.[330] If so, it was doubtless
wise and charitable not to break a bruised reed; still again to entrust
the government of five English shires to the seducer of Eadgifu and
murderer of Beorn was, to say the least, a perilous experiment.

We must now go back to the time when King Eadward had just dismissed the
Mercian contingent after the reconciliation [Sidenote: Various military
operations of the year 1049.] between Baldwin and the Emperor. While the
unhappy events which I have just narrated were going on, Englishmen had
cause to be alert in more than one quarter of the island against
assaults of various kinds. In the comparatively peaceful reign of
Eadward this year stands forth as marked by warlike operations of every
sort. England had to resist the assaults of foreign enemies, of
faithless vassals, and of banished men seeking their restoration.
[Sidenote: Movements of Osgod Clapa.] Besides the small force of Swegen,
Osgod Clapa was, as has been already said,[331] at sea with a much
larger number of ships. He first appeared at Wulpe near Sluys on the
coast of Flanders, and the news of his arrival there was brought to
Eadward at the moment when the King was left at Sandwich at the head of
a very small force. The Mercian contingent had just been dismissed, and
Godwine, with the force of Wessex, had sailed westward. Eadward was
therefore nearly defenceless. He therefore countermanded the orders for
the dismissal of the Mercian vessels, and as many of them as was
possible were brought [Sidenote: He returns to Denmark.] back. Osgod
however did not act personally as the enemy of England. He merely took
his wife from Bruges, where she had been left, and sailed back to
Denmark with [Sidenote: Piracy and destruction of his fleet.] six ships.
The remainder of his fleet took to piracy off Eadulfsness in Essex, and
there did much harm. But a violent storm arose and destroyed all the
vessels except four.[332] These were chased and captured, and the crews
slain, whether by Eadward’s own fleet in pursuit or by some of the
foreign allies of England is not very clear.[333]

[Sidenote: Ships from Ireland in the Bristol Channel; joined by Gruffydd
of South Wales. July, 1049.]

The rumour which had called Godwine westward from Sandwich was not
wholly a false one. The ships which were then said to be ravaging the
south coast, were doubtless Danish pirate vessels from Ireland, the same
which, in the course of July, sailed up the Bristol Channel as far as
the mouth of the Usk.[334] There they were welcomed by the South-Welsh
King Gruffydd,[335] who was doubtless rejoiced at the prospect of such
allies, alike against the English and against his Northern namesake, the
momentary confederate of England. After a certain amount of harrying
along the coast of the Channel, the combined forces of Gruffydd and the
pirates crossed the Wye, and slew and [Sidenote: They invade
Gloucestershire, and defeat Bishop Ealdred.] plundered within the
diocese of Worcester. It is not clear who was the Earl responsible for
the safety of the country since the banishment of Swegen. It was
probably the King’s nephew, Ralph the Timid, whose name begins about
this time to appear in the Charters with the title of Earl.[336] If this
be so, this was the first appointment of a foreigner to a great temporal
office, a further step in the downward course, still more marked than
that of appointing foreign Prelates. Under such a chief as Ralph no
vigorous resistance was to be looked for, and the person who really took
upon himself the defence of the country was Bishop Ealdred. He gathered
a force from among the inhabitants of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire;
but part of his army consisted of Welshmen, whether mere mercenaries
hired for the occasion, or Welshmen living as immediate subjects of
England. But whoever these Welshmen were, their sympathies lay wholly
with Gruffydd and not with Ealdred. They sent a secret message to the
Welsh King, suggesting an immediate attack on the English army. Gruffydd
willingly answered to the call. With his twofold [Sidenote: July 29,
1049.] force, Welsh and Danish, he fell on the English camp early in the
morning, slew many good men, and put the rest, together with the Bishop,
to flight.[337] Of the further results of this singular and perplexing
campaign, especially when and how the retreat of the invaders was
brought about, we hear nothing.

[Sidenote: Increasing connexion with the continent.]

Everything which happened about this time sets before us the great and
increasing intercourse which now prevailed between England and the
continent. Our fathers [Sidenote: English attendance at Synods.] were
now brought into a nearer connexion with both the spiritual and the
temporal chiefs of Christendom than they had ever known before. We have
already seen England in close alliance with the Empire; we have now to
contemplate her relations with the Papacy. The active and saintly
Pontiff who now presided over the Church held at this time a series of
Councils in various places, at most of which English Prelates attended.
Leo, after receiving the submission of Godfrey at Aachen, entered
France, at the request of Heremar, Abbot of Saint Remigius at Rheims, to
hallow the newly built church of his monastery.[338] [Sidenote: Synod of
Rheims.] He then held a synod, which sat for six days, and passed
several canons of the usual sort, against the marriage of priests and
against their bearing arms.[339] The days of Otto the Great seemed to
have returned, when the Pope and the Emperor,[340] seemingly without
reference to the Parisian King, held a Council on French ground,
attended by a vast multitude of Prelates, clergy, and laity from the
Imperial Kingdoms and from other parts of Europe. There, besides the
Metropolitan of the city in which the synod was held, was the Archbishop
of Burgundy, as our Chronicles call him,[341] that is, the Archbishop of
the great see of Lyons, Primate of all the Gauls, but no subject or
vassal of the upstart dynasty of Paris. There were the Archbishops of
Trier and Besançon; and from England came Duduc, the Saxon Bishop of
Wells, and the Abbots Wulfric of Saint Augustine’s and Ælfwine of
Ramsey, whom King Eadward had sent to bring him word of all that should
be done for the good of Christendom.[342] [Sidenote: Synod of Mainz.] It
does not appear that any English Prelates were present at the synod
which Leo held soon after at Mainz;[343] but the two Italian synods
which were held soon after were, as we shall see, connected in a
singular manner with English affairs. There seems to have been about
[Sidenote: Deaths of Bishops and Abbots.] this time a kind of mortality
among the English Prelates. Among those who died was the Abbot of
Westminster or Thorney, the humbler foundation which was soon to give
way to the great creation of the reigning King. He bore the name of
Wulfnoth, a name which suggests the likelihood of kindred with the house
of Godwine. Another was Oswiu, the Abbot of the other Thorney in the fen
land, the neighbour of Peterborough and Crowland. This [Sidenote: Siward
dies, and Eadsige resumes the Primacy. 1049.] year too died Siward the
Coadjutor-Archbishop, and Eadsige again resumed his functions for the
short remainder [Sidenote: Eadnoth of Dorchester dies; Ulf succeeds.
1049.] of his life.[344] Eadnoth too, the good Bishop of
Dorchester,[345] the builder of Stow in Lindesey, died this year, and
his death offered a magnificent bait to Norman ambition and greediness.
The great Bishoprick stretching from the Thames to the Humber, was
conferred by the King on one of his Norman chaplains, who however bore
the Scandinavian name of Ulf. As to the utter unfitness of this man for
such an office there is an universal consent among our authorities. The
King, even the holy Eadward, did evil in appointing him; the new Prelate
did nought bishoplike; it were shame to tell more of his deeds.[346]

The year which followed was one of great note in ecclesiastical history.
In England the first event recorded is [Sidenote: Witenagemót of London.
Midlent, 1050.] the usual meeting of the Witan in London at Midlent. The
proceedings of this Gemót, like those of many others about this time,
give us a glimpse of that real, though very imperfect, parliamentary
life which was then growing up in England, and which the Norman Conquest
threw back for many generations. Then, as now, there were economists
pressing for the reduction of the public expenditure, and what we should
now call the Navy Estimates were chosen as being no doubt a popular
subject for attack. The narrative of the naval events of the last year
shows that, on special occasions, naval contingents were called for,
according to the old law,[347] from various parts of the Kingdom, but
that the King still kept a small naval force [Sidenote: Reduction of the
Fleet.] in constant pay. This force had, under Cnut and Harold,
consisted of sixteen ships;[348] it seems now to have consisted only of
fourteen. The experience of the last year showed that England was still
open to attack from the West; but the great fear, fear of invasion from
the North, had now quite passed away. It seemed therefore to be a
favourable moment for further reductions. By the authority of this Gemót
nine ships were accordingly paid off, the crews receiving a year’s pay,
and the standing force was cut down to six.[349] It was in this same
assembly that Swegen [Sidenote: Swegen inlawed.] was _inlawed_,[350]
that is, his outlawry was reversed, by the intercession of Bishop
Ealdred. That Prelate, as we have seen, seems to have gone over to
Flanders, and to have brought Swegen back with him.[351]

[Sidenote: Mission of Ealdred and Hermann to Rome.]

But Ealdred had soon to set forth on a longer journey. He and the
Lotharingian Bishop Hermann were now sent to Rome on the King’s
errand.[352] What that errand was we learn only from legendary writers
and doubtful charters, but, as their accounts completely fit in with the
authentic history, we need not scruple to [Sidenote: The King’s vow of
pilgrimage to Rome.] accept their general outline.[353] The King had in
his youth vowed a pilgrimage to Rome, and the non-fulfilment of this vow
lay heavy on his conscience. It probably lay heavier still when he saw
so many of his subjects of all ranks, led by the fashionable enthusiasm
of the time, making both the pilgrimage to Rome and also the more
distant pilgrimage to Jerusalem.[354] A broken vow was a crime; still
Eadward had enough of political sense and right feeling left to see that
his absence from his Kingdom at such a time as the present would be a
criminal forsaking of his kingly duty. The Great Cnut might venture on
such a journey; his eye could see and his hand could act from Rome or
Norway or any other part of the world. But the personal presence of
Eadward was the only check by which peace could be for a moment
preserved between the true sons of the soil, and the strangers
[Sidenote: Eadward sends the Bishops to obtain a dispensation. 1050.]
who were eating into its vitals. The King laid his case before his
Witan; the unanimous voice of the Assembly forbade him to forsake his
post; the legend adds that the Witan farther counselled him to satisfy
his conscience by obtaining a Papal dispensation from his vow. This was
the King’s errand on which Ealdred and Hermann were sent to attend the
great synod[355] held this year at Rome. They made good speed with their
journey; starting at [Sidenote: The Synod of Rome.] Midlent, they
reached the Holy City on Easter Eve.[356] In that synod they stood face
to face with a man then known [Sidenote: LANFRANC.] only as a profound
scholar and theologian, the bulwark of orthodoxy and the pattern of
every monastic virtue, but who was, in years to come, to hold a higher
place in the English hierarchy, and to leave behind him a far greater
name in English history, than either of the English Prelates whose
blessing he may now have humbly craved. In that synod of Rome the
doctrines of Berengar of Tours were debated by the assembled Fathers,
and the foremost champion of the faith to which Rome still cleaves was
Lanfranc of Pavia. Suspected of complicity with the heretic, he produced
the famous letter in which Berengar had maintained the Eucharist to be a
mere figure of the Body of Christ.[357] How far Ealdred or Hermann took
part in these theological debates we know not; but they are said to have
successfully accomplished their own errand. The King’s vow of pilgrimage
was dispensed with, on condition of the rebuilding and endowment on a
grander scale of that renowned West Minster whose name was to be
inseparably bound together with that of the sainted King.[358] Before
the year was out the unwearied Leo held [Sidenote: Synod of Vercelli.]
another synod at Vercelli. Here the theological controversy was again
raised, and Lanfranc again shone forth as the irresistible smiter of
heresy. Berengar was finally condemned, notwithstanding his appeals to
the elder teaching of John Scotus, and his protests that those who
rejected John Scotus rejected Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, and all the
Fathers of the Church.[359] These disputes, renowned in the Church at
large, are wholly passed over by our insular Chroniclers. To them the
famous Synod of Vercelli seems to have been memorable only as showing
the Roman Court in what was apparently a new relation towards the
Prelacy of England. Before the assembled Fathers came [Sidenote:
Confirmation of Ulf of Dorchester.] the newly appointed Bishop of
Dorchester, Ulf the Norman, seeking, it would seem, for consecration or
confirmation. His unfitness for his post was manifest; he was found
incapable of going through the ordinary service of the Church. The Synod
was on the point of deposing him, of breaking the staff which, according
to the ceremonial of those times, he had already received from the King.
But the influence which was already all-powerful at Rome saved him. He
retained his Bishoprick; but only at the cost of a lavish expenditure of
treasure, of which we may be sure that no portion found its way into the
private [Sidenote: Possible pilgrimage of Macbeth.] coffers of Leo.[360]
It was in this same year that Macbeth made that mysterious bestowal of
alms or bribes at Rome from which some have inferred a personal
pilgrimage on the part of the Scottish usurper.[361] It is not beyond
the bounds of possibility that one who seems to us hardly more real than
the creations of Grecian tragedy may have personally appeared at Rome or
at Vercelli, that he may have shown his pious indignation at the
heresies of the Canon of Tours, or have felt his soul moved within him
at the incapacity of the Bishop of Dorchester. A personal meeting
between Leo, Lanfranc, Ealdred, and Macbeth would form no unimpressive
scene in the hands of those who may venture on liberties with the men of
far-gone times which to the historian are forbidden.

Ealdred and Hermann thus came back from Rome with the wished for
dispensation from the King, and Ulf came back from Vercelli to hold the
great see of Mid-England, and to rule it in his unbishoplike fashion for
a little time. [Sidenote: Death of Archbishop Eadsige. October 9, 1050.]
But before long a still greater ecclesiastical preferment became vacant.
Eadsige, who had so lately resumed his archiepiscopal functions, died
before the end of the year.[362] The day of complete triumph for the
Norman monks and chaplains who surrounded Eadward now seemed to have
come. A Frenchman might now sit on the throne of Augustine. Patriotic
Englishmen were of course proportionably alarmed, and among them none
more so than those who were most immediately concerned, the Chapter of
the metropolitan church. The monks of Christ Church met, and made what
is called a canonical election.[363] In the eye of English law such a
process was little more than a petition to the King and his Witan for
the appointment of the man of their choice. That choice fell on a member
of their own body, their selection of whom showed that seclusion from
the world had not made them incapable of a happy union of the dove
[Sidenote: The monks of Christ Church elect Ælfric.] and the serpent.
There was in their house a monk, Ælfric by name, who had been brought up
in the monastery from his childhood, and who enjoyed the love of the
whole society. Notwithstanding his monastic education, he was held to be
specially skilled in the affairs of the world. And he had a further
merit as likely as any of the others to weigh either with an English
Chapter or with an English Witenagemót; he was a near kinsman of Earl
Godwine.[364] The monks petitioned the Earl, the natural patron of a
corporation within his government, to use his influence to obtain the
King’s confirmation of their choice.[365] Godwine was doubtless nothing
loth to avail himself of so honourable an opportunity to promote an
Englishman and a kinsman. But his influence was crumbling away. Four
years before he had been able to obtain the confirmation of Siward as
Eadsige’s coadjutor; he was now unable to obtain the confirmation of
Ælfric, or of any other man of native birth, [Sidenote: Ælfric rejected
by the King, and Robert Bishop of London appointed to the see of
Canterbury. Midlent, 1051.] as Eadsige’s successor. The saintly King
paid no regard to the canonical election of the Convent, and in the
Midlent Witenagemót of the next year, the Archbishoprick of Canterbury
was bestowed on the King’s French favourite, Robert, Bishop of
London.[366] The national party however prevailed so far as to secure an
English successor [Sidenote: Spearhafoc appointed to London, and Rudolf
to the Abbey of Abingdon.] to the see which Robert vacated. Spearhafoc,
Abbot of Abingdon, a man famous for his skill in the goldsmith’s
craft,[367] was named to the see of London by the King’s writ under his
seal.[368] The Abbacy of Abingdon was given to a man whose description
raises our curiosity; he was one Rudolf, described as a kinsman of King
Eadward and as a Bishop in Norway.[369] For a native Northman to have
been a kinsman of the son of Æthelred and Emma is hardly possible,
unless the common ancestor was to be looked for so far back as the days
before the settlement of Rolf. A Norman is hardly likely to have desired
or obtained preferment in so unpromising a land; but it is highly
probable that Cnut, who appointed several Englishmen to Bishopricks in
Denmark, may have made use of a see in Norway either to reward or to
remove some remote and unrecorded member of the English royal family. It
is therefore very probable that Rudolf may have been an Englishman.[370]
He was an aged man and weary of his office. The hand of Harold Hardrada
pressed heavily on the Church. Pilgrim of the Holy Sepulchre as he was,
he is charged with destroying ecclesiastical buildings, and even with
sending Christian men to martyrdom.[371] Rudolf sought and found a place
of more quiet, if of somewhat less honour, in the dominions of his
kinsman. The monks of Abingdon received him, not very willingly, it
would seem, but they were won over by the prospect that the old man
would not live very long, and by the King’s promise that at the next
vacancy free election should be allowed.[372] Presently the new
Archbishop [Sidenote: Robert returns from Rome. July 27, 1051.] Robert
came back from Rome with his pallium; he was enthroned in the
metropolitan church, and soon hastened to the royal presence.[373]
Spearhafoc, the Bishop-elect of London, came with the royal writ, and
demanded [Sidenote: He refuses to consecrate Spearhafoc.] consecration
of his Metropolitan. Robert refused, saying that the Pope had forbidden
him to consecrate Spearhafoc.[374] Things had come to such a pass, that
an Englishman, appointed to an English office by the King and his Witan,
was to be kept out of its full possession by one foreigner acting at the
alleged bidding of another. There were times when the Roman see showed
itself a real refuge for the oppressed, and, as far as good intentions
went, so it doubtless was in the days of good Pope Leo. But Englishmen
now needed protection against no one except against the foreign
favourites of their own King, and it was on behalf of those foreign
favourites, and against Englishmen, that these stretches of Papal
authority were now made. The unworthy Ulf was allowed, by the power of
bribes, to retain his see—for he was a stranger. Spearhafoc, on what
ground we know not—except so far as his English birth was doubtless a
crime in the eyes of Robert—was refused the rite which alone could put
him into full possession of his office. A second demand was again made
by the Bishop-elect, and consecration was again refused [Sidenote:
Spearhafoc occupies the Bishoprick without consecration.] by the Norman
Archbishop.[375] Spearhafoc, rejected, unconsecrated, nevertheless went
to Saint Paul’s, and took possession of the see which he held by the
King’s full and regular grant.[376] No doubt he did not pretend to
discharge any purely episcopal functions, but he kept possession of the
see and its revenues, and probably exercised at least its temporal
authority. This he did, the Chronicler significantly adds, all that
summer and autumn.[377] Before the year was out, the crisis had come,
and had brought with it the momentary triumph of the strangers.

One act more must be recorded before we come to the end of this portion
of Eadward’s reign. In a meeting of the Witan, seemingly that in which
Robert, Spearhafoc, [Sidenote: The remaining ships paid off and the
_Heregyld_ remitted.] and Rudolf received their several appointments,
the remaining five ships of the standing or mercenary naval force were
paid off.[378] The war-contribution or _Heregyld_ was therefore no
longer exacted. This tax had now been [Sidenote: 1012.] paid for
thirty-eight years, ever since Thurkill and his fleet entered the
service of Æthelred.[379] This impost had all along been felt to be a
great burthen; we are told that it was paid before all other taxes, the
other taxes themselves, it would seem, being looked upon as heavy.[380]
The glimpse which is thus given us of the financial system of the time
is just enough to make us wish for fuller knowledge. We must remember
that in a rude state of society any kind of taxation is apt to be looked
on as a grievance. It requires a very considerable political
developement for a nation to feel that the power of the purse is the
surest safeguard of freedom. But there must have been something
specially hateful about this tax to account for the way in which it is
spoken of by the contemporary chroniclers, and for the hold which, as
the legends show,[381] it kept on the popular imagination. The holy
King, we are told, in company with Earl Leofric, one day entered the
treasury in which the money raised by the tax was collected; he there
saw the Devil sitting and playing with the coin; warned by the sight, he
at once [Sidenote: Distinction between Danegeld and _Heregyld_.]
remitted the tax. In this story the tax is called Danegeld, and as many
of the sailors in the English service were likely to be Danes, the
_Heregyld_ seems to have been confounded with the Danegeld, and to have
been popularly called by that name.[382] The Danegeld was in strictness
a payment made to buy off the ravages of Danish invaders, a practice of
which we have seen instances enough and to spare in the days of
Æthelred. But the tax now taken off was simply a war-tax for the
maintenance of a fleet, a fleet whose crews may have been to a great
extent Danes, but Danes who were not the enemies of England, but engaged
in her service. The two ideas however easily ran into one another; it
might be difficult to say under which head we ought to place some of the
payments made both under Cnut and under Harthacnut. But the _Heregyld_,
in its more innocent shape, would, according to modern ideas, be an
impost absolutely necessary for the defence of the country. If the tax
were remitted, no naval force would be retained, except the contingents
of the shires, which could not in any case be very readily forthcoming.
But, besides the general dislike to taxation [Sidenote: Import of the
remission.] of any kind, this particular tax was a painful and hateful
badge of national disgrace. It was a memory of times when England could
find no defence against strangers except by taking other strangers into
her pay. Its remission was doubtless looked on as a declaration that
England no longer needed the services of strangers, or of hired troops
of any kind, but that she could trust to the ready patriotism and valour
of her own sons. The Law required every Englishman to join the royal
standard at the royal summons.[383] The effectual execution of that law
was doubtless held to be a truer safeguard than the employment of men,
whether natives or strangers, who served only for their pay. Such
reasonings had their weak side even in those days, but they were
eminently in the spirit of the time. The measure was undoubtedly a
popular one, and we are hardly in a position to say that, under the
circumstances of the time, it may not have been a wise one.

§ 4. _The Banishment of Earl Godwine._ 1051.

[Sidenote: The foreign influence at its height.]

The influence of the strangers had now reached its height. As yet it has
appeared on the face of the narrative mainly in the direction given to
ecclesiastical preferments. During the first nine years of Eadward’s
reign, we find no signs of any open warfare between the national and the
Normannizing parties. The course of events shows that Godwine’s power
was being practically undermined, but he was still outwardly in the
enjoyment of royal favour, and his vast possessions were still being
added to by royal grants.[384] It is remarkable how seldom, at this
stage of Eadward’s reign, the acts of the Witan bear the signatures of
any foreigners except churchmen.[385] We meet also with slight
indications showing that the King’s foreign kinsmen and the national
leaders were not yet on [Sidenote: Its seemingly stealthy character.]
terms of open enmity.[386] It was probably the policy of the strangers
to confine their action in public matters to influencing the King’s mind
through his ecclesiastical favourites, while the mass of them were
gradually providing in other ways for their own firm establishment in
the land. But the tale which I now have to tell clearly reveals the fact
that the number of French landowners in England was already
considerable, and that they had made themselves deeply hateful to the
English people. Stealthily but surely, the foreign favourites of Eadward
had eaten into the vitals of England, and they soon had the means of
showing how bitter was the hatred which they bore towards the champions
of English freedom. [Sidenote: Comparison between Danish and Norman
influences.] England now, under a native King of her own choice, felt,
far more keenly than she had ever felt under her Danish conqueror, how
great the evil is when a King and those who immediately surround him are
estranged in feeling from the mass of his people. The great Dane had
gradually learned to feel and to reign as an Englishman, to trust
himself to the love of his English subjects, and to surround the throne
of the conqueror with the men whom his own axe and spear had overcome.
Even during the troubled reigns of his two sons, the degeneracy was for
the most part merely personal. Harthacnut indeed laid on heavy and
unpopular taxes for the payment of his Danish fleet;[387] but it does
not appear that, even under him, Englishmen as Englishmen were subjected
to systematic oppression and insult on the part of strangers. And, after
all, the Danish followers of Cnut and his sons were men of kindred blood
and speech. They could hardly be looked on in any part of England as
aliens in the strictest sense, while to the inhabitants of a large part
of the Kingdom they appeared as actual countrymen. But now, as a
foretaste of what was to come fifteen years later, men utterly strange
in speech and feeling stood around the throne, engrossed the personal
favour of the King, perverted the course of justice, shared among
themselves the highest places in the Church, and were already beginning
to stretch out their hands to English lands and lordships as well as to
English Bishopricks. The Dane, once brought to the knowledge of a purer
faith and a higher civilization, soon learned to identify himself with
the land in which he had settled, and to live as an Englishman
[Sidenote: Incapacity of the French to appreciate English institutions.]
under the Law of England. But to the French favourites of Eadward the
name, the speech, the laws of England were things on which their
ignorant pride looked down with utter contempt. They had no sympathy
with that great fabric of English liberty, which gave to every freeman
his place in the commonwealth, and even to the slave held out the
prospect of freedom. Gentlemen of the school of Richard the Good,[388]
taught to despise all beneath them as beings of an inferior nature,
could not understand the spirit of a land where the Churl had his rights
before the Law, where he could still raise his applauding voice in the
Assemblies of the nation, and where men already felt as keenly as we
feel now that an Englishman’s house is his castle. Everything in short
which had already made England free and glorious, everything which it is
now our pride and happiness to have preserved down to our own times, was
looked on by the foreign counsellors of Eadward as a mark of manifest
inferiority and barbarism. [Sidenote: Diversity in speech;] The Dane
spoke a tongue which hardly differed more widely from our own than the
dialects of different parts of the Kingdom differed from one another.
But the ancient mother-speech, once common to Dane and Frank and Angle
and Saxon, the speech of which some faint traces may still have lingered
at Laôn and at Bayeux, had now become only one of many objects of
contempt in the eyes of men whose standards were drawn from the
[Sidenote: in military tactics.] Romanized courts of Rouen and Paris.
The Dane met the Englishman in battle, face to face and hand to hand,
with the same tactics and the same weapons. Shield-wall to shield-wall,
sword to sword or axe to axe, had men waged the long warfare which had
ranged from the fight [Sidenote: 871–1016.] of Reading to the fight of
Assandun. To the Frenchman the traditions of Teutonic warfare appeared
contemptible.[389] His trust was placed, not in the stout heart and the
strong arm of the warrior, but in the horse which is as useful in the
flight as in the charge, and in the arrow which places the coward and
the hero upon a level.[390] Men brought up in such feelings as these,
full too no doubt of the insolent and biting wit of their nation, now
stood round the throne of the King of the English. They were not as yet,
to any great extent, temporal rulers of the land, but they had already
begun to be owners of its soil; they were already the Fathers of the
Church; they were the personal friends of the King; they were the
channels of royal favour; their influence could obtain the highest
ecclesiastical office, when it was refused alike to the demand of the
Earl of the West-Saxons and to the prayer of the canonical electors. In
the company of these men the King was at home; among his own people he
was a [Sidenote: Evils of a denationalized Court, especially in early
times.] stranger. The sight of a denationalized Court, a Court where the
national tongue is despised and where the sounds of a foreign speech are
alone thought worthy of royal lips, a Court in which the heart of the
sovereign beats more warmly for foreign favourites or foreign kinsmen
than for the children of the soil, is a sight which in any age is enough
to stir up a nation’s blood. But far heavier is the wrong in an age when
Kings govern as well as reign, when it is not the mere hangers-on of a
Court, but the nation itself, which is made personally to feel that
strangers fill the posts of honour and influence, on its own soil and at
its own cost. Often indeed since the days of Eadward has the Court of
England been the least English thing within the realm of England. But,
for ages past, no sovereign, however foreign in blood or feeling, could
have ventured to place a stranger, ignorant of the English tongue, on
the patriarchal throne of Dunstan and [Sidenote: Revolt of England
against the foreign influence.] Ælfheah. Against such a state of things
as this the heart of England rose. And the soul of the patriotic
movement, the leader of the patriotic struggle, was the man whom Norman
calumny has ever since picked out as its special victim, but with whom
every true English heart was prepared to live and die. The man who
strove for England, the man who for a while suffered for England, but
who soon returned in triumph to rescue England, was once more Godwine,
Earl of the West-Saxons.

[Sidenote: Indignation at the appointment of Robert to Canterbury.]

The refusal of the King to confer the Archbishoprick of Canterbury on a
kinsman of the great Earl regularly chosen by the Convent of the
metropolitan church, its bestowal instead on an intriguing monk from
Jumièges, had no doubt deeply embittered the feelings of Godwine and of
all true Englishmen. All the sons of the Church, we are told, lamented
the wrong;[391] and we may be sure that the feeling was in no way
confined to those who are no doubt chiefly intended by that description.
It now became the main object of the foreign Archbishop to bring about
the ruin of the English Earl. Robert employed his [Sidenote: Robert’s
cabals against Godwine. 1051.] influence with the King to set him still
more strongly against his father-in-law, to fill his ears with calumnies
against him, above all, to bring up again the old charge, of which
Godwine had been so solemnly acquitted, which made him an accomplice in
the death of Ælfred.[392] A dispute about the right to some lands which
adjoined the estates both of the Earl and of the Primate further
embittered the dissension between them.[393] Godwine’s influence was
manifestly fast giving way, and an open struggle was becoming imminent.
Just at this moment, an act of foreign insolence and brutality which
surpassed anything which had hitherto happened brought the whole matter
to a crisis.

[Sidenote: Marriages of Godgifu daughter of Æthelred with Drogo of
Mantes and Eustace of Boulogne.]

We have seen that Eadward’s sister Godgifu—the Goda of Norman
writers—the daughter of Æthelred and Emma, had been married to Drogo,
Count of Mantes or of the French Vexin. Their son, Ralph the Timid, was
now high in favour at the court of his uncle.[394] Drogo had accompanied
Duke Robert on his pilgrimage, and, like him, had died on his
journey.[395] His widow, who must now have been a good deal past her
prime,[396] had nevertheless found a second French husband in Eustace,
Count of Boulogne. This prince, whom English history sets before us only
in the darkest colours, was fated by a strange destiny to be the father
of one of the noblest heroes of Christendom, of Godfrey, Duke of
Lotharingia and King of Jerusalem. We cannot however claim the great
Crusader as one who had English blood in his veins through either
parent. The second marriage of Godgifu was childless, and the renowned
sons of Eustace, Godfrey and his brother Baldwin, were the children of
his second [Sidenote: Visit of Eustace to Eadward. September, 1051.]
wife Ida. The Count of Boulogne, now brother-in-law of the King of the
English, presently came, like the rest of the world, to the English
Court. The exact object of his coming is not recorded, but we are told
that whatever he came for he got.[397] Some new favours were doubtless
won for foreign followers, and some share of the wealth of England for
himself. It was now September, and the King, as seems to have been his
custom, was spending the autumn at Gloucester.[398] Thither then came
Count Eustace, and, after his satisfactory interview [Sidenote: Return
of Eustace.] with the King, he turned his face homewards. We have no
account of his journey till he reached Canterbury;[399] there he halted,
refreshed himself and his men, and rode on towards Dover. Perhaps, in a
land so specially devoted to Godwine, he felt himself to be still more
thoroughly in an enemy’s country than in other parts of England. At all
events, when they were still a few miles from Dover, the Count and all
his company took the precaution of putting on their coats of mail.[400]
They entered [Sidenote: Outrages of Eustace and his party at Dover.] the
town; accustomed to the unbridled licence of their own land, puffed up
no doubt by the favourable reception which they had met with at the
King’s Court, they deemed that the goods and lives of Englishmen were at
their mercy. Who was the villain or the burgher who could dare to refuse
ought to a sovereign prince, the friend and brother-in-law of the
Emperor of Britain? Men born on English soil, accustomed to the
protection [Sidenote: 1020–1051.] of English Law, men who for one and
thirty years[401] had lived under the rule of Godwine, looked on matters
in quite another light. The Frenchmen expected to find free quarters in
the town of Dover, and they attempted to lodge themselves at their
pleasure in the houses of the burghers. There was one Englishman
especially—his name unluckily is not preserved—into whose house a
Frenchman was bent on forcing himself against the [Sidenote: The
burghers resist,] owner’s will. The master of the house resisted; the
stranger drew his weapon and wounded him; the Englishman struck the
intruder dead on the spot.[402] Count Eustace mounted his horse as if
for battle;[403] his followers mounted theirs, the stout-hearted
Englishman was slain within his own house. The Count’s party then rode
through the town, cutting about them and slaying at pleasure. But the
neighbours of the murdered man had now come together; the burghers
resisted valiantly; a [Sidenote: and drive the French out of the town.]
skirmish began; twenty Englishmen were slain, and nineteen Frenchmen,
besides many who were wounded. Count Eustace and the remnant of his
party made their way out of the town, and hastened back to King Eadward
at Gloucester. [Sidenote: Eustace accuses the men of Dover to the King.]
They there told the story after their own fashion, throwing of course
all the blame upon the insolent burghers of Dover.[404] It is not hard
to throw oneself into the position of the accusers. To chivalrous
Frenchmen the act of the English burgher in defending his house against
a forcible entry would seem something quite beyond their understandings.
To their notions the appeal to right and law to which Englishmen were
familiar, would seem, on the part of men of inferior rank, something
almost out of the course of nature. We often see the same sort of
feeling now-a-days in men whom a long course of military habits, a life
spent in the alternation of blind obedience and arbitrary command, has
made incapable of understanding those notions of right and justice which
seem perfectly plain to men who are accustomed to acknowledge no master
but the Law.[405] The crime of Eustace was a dark one; but we may be
inclined to pass a heavier judgement still on the crime of the English
King, who, on the mere accusation of the stranger, condemned his own
subjects without a hearing. When Eustace had told his tale, the King
became very wroth with the burghers of Dover,[406] and this time he
thought that he had not only the will [Sidenote: Eadward commands
Godwine to inflict military chastisement on the town.] but the power to
hurt.[407] He sent for Godwine, as Earl of the district in which the
offending town lay. The English champion was then in the midst of a
domestic rejoicing. He had, like the King, been strengthening himself by
a foreign alliance, and had just connected his house with that of a
sovereign prince. Tostig, the third son of Godwine, had just married
Judith, the daughter or near kinswoman of Baldwin of Flanders.[408] Such
a marriage could hardly have been contracted without a political object.
An alliance with a prince reigning in the debateable land between France
and Germany, a land which, though its princes were rapidly becoming
French, had by no means wholly lost its Teutonic character, was quite in
harmony with the Lotharingian connexion so steadily maintained by
Godwine and Harold. At the same time, an alliance with a prince who had
been so lately in arms against England may not have tended to increase
Godwine’s favour with the King. The Earl left the marriage-feast of his
son, and hastened to the King at Gloucester. Eadward then told him what
insults had been offered within his Earldom to a sovereign allied to
himself by friendship and marriage. Let Godwine go, and subject the
offending town to all the severity of military chastisement.[409]
Godwine had once before been sent on the like [Sidenote: Comparison
between the cases of Worcester under Harthacnut and Dover under
Eadward.] errand in the days of Harthacnut.[410] He had then not dared
to refuse, though he had done what he could to lighten the infliction of
a harsh and unjust sentence. And, after all, the two cases were not
alike. In the case of Worcester, Godwine was required to act as a
military commander against a town which was not within his government,
and whose citizens stood in no special relation to him. The citizens of
Worcester too had been guilty of a real crime. Their crime was indeed
one which might readily have been pardoned, and the punishment decreed
was out of all proportion to the offence. Still the death of the two
Housecarls fairly called for some atonement, though certainly not for an
atonement of the kind commanded by Harthacnut. At that time too it was
probably sound policy in Godwine to undertake the commission in which he
was joined with the other great Earls of England, and merely to do his
best to lighten its severity in act. But in the present case all the
circumstances were different. Dover was a town in Godwine’s own Earldom;
it would almost seem that it was a town connected with him by a special
tie, a town whose burghers formed a part of his personal following.[411]
At all events it was a town over which he exercised the powers of the
highest civil magistracy, where, if it was his duty to punish the
guilty, it was equally his duty to defend and shelter the innocent. Such
a town he was now bidden, without the least legal proof of any offence,
to visit with all the horrors of fire and sword. Godwine was not long
[Sidenote: Godwine refuses to obey the King’s orders.] in choosing his
course. Official duty and public policy, no less than abstract justice
and humanity, dictated a distinct refusal. Now or never a stand was to
be made against the strangers. Now that Englishmen had been insulted and
murdered by the King’s foreign favourites, the time was indeed come to
put an end to a system under which those favourites were beginning to
deal with England as with a conquered country. The eloquent voice of
[Sidenote: He demands a legal trial for the burghers.] the great Earl
was raised, in the presence of the King, probably in the presence of
Eustace and the other strangers, in the cause of truth and justice.[412]
In England, he told them, there was a Law supreme over all, and courts
in which justice could be denied to no man. Count Eustace had brought a
charge against the men of Dover. They had, as he alleged, broken the
King’s peace, and done personal wrong to himself and his companions. Let
then the magistrates of the town be summoned before the King and his
Witan, and there be heard in their own defence and in that of their
fellow-burghers. If they could make a good excuse for their conduct, let
them depart unhurt; if they could be proved to have sinned against the
King or against the Count, let them pay for their fault with their
purses or with their persons. He, as Earl of the West-Saxons, was the
natural protector of the men of Dover; he would never agree to any
sentence pronounced against them without a fair trial, nor would he
consent to the infliction of any sort of illegal hardship upon those
whom he was bound to defend. The Earl then went his way; he had done his
own duty; he was accustomed to these momentary ebullitions of wrath on
the part of his royal son-in-law, and he expected that the affair would
soon be forgotten.[413]

But there were influences about Eadward which cut off all hope of any
such peaceful settlement of the matter. Eustace probably still lingered
about the King, to repeat his own story, to enlarge on the insolence of
the men of Dover, and on the disobedience—he would call it the
[Sidenote: Archbishop Robert excites the King against Godwine.]
treason—of the West-Saxon Earl himself. And there was another voice ever
at the royal ear, ever ready to poison the royal mind against the
English people and their leader. The foreign monk who sat on the throne
of so many English saints again seized the opportunity to revive the
calumnies of past times. He once more impressed upon the King that the
man who refused to obey his orders, the man who had protected, perhaps
excited, rebellious burghers against his dearest friends, was also the
man who had, years before, betrayed his brother to a death of
torment.[414] The old and the new charges worked [Sidenote: The Witan
summoned to Gloucester to hear charges against Godwine.] together on the
King’s mind, and he summoned a Meeting of the Witan at Gloucester, to
sit in judgement, no longer on the men of Dover, who seem by this time
to have been forgotten, but on Godwine himself.[415] The Earl now saw
that he must be prepared for all risks. And, just at this moment,
another instance of the insolence and violence of the foreigners in
another part of the Kingdom served [Sidenote: Building of Richard’s
Castle in Herefordshire.] to stir up men’s minds to the highest pitch.
Among the Frenchmen who flocked to the land of promise was one named
Richard the son of Scrob, who had received a grant of lands in
Herefordshire. He and his son Osbern had there built a castle on a spot
which, by a singularly lasting tradition, preserves to this day the
memory of himself and his building.[416] The fortress itself has
vanished, but its site is still to be marked, and the name of Richard’s
Castle, still borne by the parish in which it stood, is an abiding
witness of the deep impression which its erection made on the minds of
the men of those times. [Sidenote: Import of the building of castles.]
The building of castles is something of which the English writers of
this age frequently speak, and speak always with a special kind of
horror.[417] Both the name and the thing were new. To fortify a town, to
build a citadel to protect a town, were processes with which England had
long been familiar.[418] To contribute to such necessary public works
was one of the three immemorial obligations from which no Englishman
could free himself.[419] But for a private landowner to raise a private
fortress to be the terror of his neighbours was something to which
Englishmen had hitherto been unaccustomed, and for such a structure the
English language had hitherto contained no name. But now the tall,
square, massive donjon of the Normans, a building whose grandest type is
to be seen in the Conqueror’s own Tower of London and in the more
enriched keep of Rochester, began, doubtless on a far humbler scale, to
rear itself over the dwellings of Englishmen. Normandy had, during the
minority of William, been covered with such buildings, and his wise
policy had levelled many of them with the ground.[420] Such buildings,
strange to English eyes, bore no English name, but retained their French
designation of _castles_.[421] Such a castle at once became a centre of
all kinds of oppression. Men were harboured in it, and deeds were done
within its impregnable walls, such as could find no place in the open
hall of the ancient English Thegn. So it was with the castle which was
now raised within the government of the eldest son of Godwine. The
Welshmen, as they are called—that is, not Britons, but Frenchmen,
_Gal-Welsh_, not _Bret-Welsh_—built their castle, and “wrought all the
harm and _besmear_”—an expressive word which has dropped out of the
language—“to the King’s men thereabouts that they might.”[422] Here then
was another wrong, a wrong perhaps hardly second to the wrong which had
been done at Dover. Alike in Kent and in Herefordshire men had felt the
sort of treatment which they were to expect if the King’s foreign
favourites were to be any longer tolerated. The time was now come for
Englishmen to make a stand.

[Sidenote: Godwine and his sons meet at Beverstone with the force of
their Earldoms.]

The Earl of the West-Saxons was not a man to be wanting to his country
at such a moment. He, with his sons Swegen and Harold, gathered together
the force of their three Earldoms at Beverstone in Gloucestershire. This
is a point on the Cotswolds, not far from the Abbey of Malmesbury, still
marked by a castle of far later date, the remaining fragments of which
form one of the most remarkable antiquities of the district. At this
time it seems to have been a royal possession, and it may not unlikely
have contained a royal house, which would probably be at the disposal of
Swegen as Earl of the shire.[423] At Beverstone then assembled the men
of Wessex, of East-Anglia, and of that part of Mercia which was under
the jurisdiction of Swegen. They came, it would seem, ready either for
debate or for battle, as might happen. We must here again remember what
the ancient constitution of our National Assemblies really was. If all
actually came who had a strict right to come, the Gemót was a ready-made
army. On the other hand we have seen that an army, gathered together as
an army, sometimes took on itself [Sidenote: The forces of Siward,
Leofric, and Ralph assemble at Gloucester.] the functions of a
Gemót.[424] Meanwhile, while Godwine assembled his men at Beverstone,
the forces of the Earldoms of Siward, Leofric, and Ralph were assembling
round the King at Gloucester. Each of the two gatherings might pass for
the local Witenagemót of one half of England. At the head of the men of
three Earldoms Godwine was still bolder than when he had stood alone in
the royal presence. He had then only refused to punish the innocent; he
now demanded the punishment of the guilty. His first steps however were
conciliatory. He first demanded an audience for himself and his sons, as
Earls of the three Earldoms; they were ready and anxious to take counsel
with the King and his Witan on all matters touching the honour of the
King and his people.[425] He even offered to renew his compurgation on
the old charge [Sidenote: Godwine’s offers to the King refused through
the influence of Frenchmen.] of the death of Ælfred.[426] But the
Frenchmen swarmed around the King; they filled his ears with the usual
charges against Godwine and his sons; they assured him that the only
object of the Earls was to betray him.[427] Eadward therefore refused
the audience, and declined to receive the compurgation.[428] Godwine
then took a higher [Sidenote: Godwine demands the surrender of Eustace
and the other criminals. September 8, 1051.] tone; messages were sent in
his name and in the name of the men of the three Earldoms, demanding the
surrender of Eustace and his men and of the Frenchmen at Richard’s
Castle.[429] The demand was a bold one; Godwine asked for the surrender
of the person of a foreign prince, the King’s own favourite and
brother-in-law. But the demand, if bold, was perfectly justifiable. The
two parties of Frenchmen had been guilty of outrageous crimes within the
jurisdictions of Godwine and Swegen respectively. The King, instead of
bringing them to justice, was sheltering them, and even listening to
their charges against innocent men. Their lawful judges, the Earls of
the two districts, were ready, at the head of the Witan of their
Earldoms, to do that justice which the King had refused. The demand was
seemingly backed by threats of an appeal to that last argument by which
unrighteous rulers must be brought to reason. Godwine and his followers
threatened war against Eadward, as the later Barons of England
threatened war against John.[430] The King was frightened and perplexed.
[Sidenote: The Northern Earls bring their full forces.] He sent to
hasten the coming of Siward, Leofric, and Ralph, and bade them bring a
force strong enough to keep Godwine and his party in check. Seemingly
they had at first brought or sent only a small body of men; when they
heard the full state of the case, they hastened to the King with the
whole force of their Earldoms, and restored confidence to his timid
mind.[431] This was the sort of occasion which was sure to awaken those
provincial jealousies which in that age were often lulled to sleep, but
which were never completely got rid of. The northern and southern parts
of England were again arrayed against [Sidenote: 1035.] each other, just
as they had been in the great Gemót of Oxford sixteen years before.[432]
The French followers of Ralph and the French friends of Eadward were
doubtless glad of any excuse to shed the blood or to seize the lands of
Englishmen. Siward and his Danes were seemingly not displeased with a
state of things in which jealousy of the West-Saxon Earl could be so
honourably cloaked under the guise of loyalty to the West-Saxon King.
They were therefore quite ready to play into the hands of the strangers.
They [Sidenote: The King finally refuses to surrender the Frenchmen.]
were still on their march, but seemingly close to the town, when Eadward
gave his final answer to the messengers of Godwine; Eustace and the
other accused persons should not be given up. The messengers had hardly
left Gloucester, [Sidenote: The Northumbrians ready for battle.] when
the Northern host entered the city, eager to be led to battle against
the men of Wessex and East-Anglia.[433] Godwine and his followers saw by
this time that there was little hope of bringing the King to reason by
peaceful means. Every offer tending to reconciliation had been spurned;
every demand of the Earls and their people had been refused. The
punishment of the innocent had been commanded; the punishment of the
guilty had been denied; the old charges, of which Godwine had been so
[Sidenote: 1040.] solemnly acquitted eleven years before, were again
raked up against him by the slanderous tongue of a foreign [Sidenote:
March of the West-Saxons and East-Angles on Gloucester.] priest. Loath
as the Earl and his followers were to fight against their Lord the
King,[434] they saw no hope but in an appeal to arms, and the men of the
three Earldoms made themselves ready for battle. From the heights of the
Cotswolds on which they had been gathered, they marched down the
hill-side which overlooks the fairest and most fertile of English
valleys.[435] The broad Severn wound through the plain beneath them;
beyond its sandy flood rose, range beyond range, the hills which guarded
the land of the still unconquered Briton. Far away, like a glimpse of
another world, opened the deep vale of the Welsh Axe,[436] the mountain
land of Brecheiniog, where, in the furthest distance, the giant Beacons
soar, vast and dim, the mightiest natural fortress of the southern
Cymry. Even then some glimpses of days to come may have kindled the soul
of Harold, as he looked forth on the land which was, before many years,
to ring with his renown, and to see his name engraved as conqueror on
the trophies of so many battle-fields. They passed by relics of
unrecorded antiquity, by fortresses and tombs reared by the hands of men
who had been forgotten before the days of Ceawlin, some perhaps even
before the days of Cæsar. They passed by the vast hill-fort of Uleybury,
where the Briton had bid defiance to the Roman invader. They passed by
the huge mound, the Giants’-Chamber of the dead, covering the remains of
men whose name and race had passed away, perhaps before even the Briton
had fixed himself in the islands of the West.[437] Straight in their
path rose the towers, in that day no doubt tall and slender, of the
great minster of the city which was their goal, where their King sat a
willing captive in the hands of the enemies of his people. And, still
far beyond, rose other hills, the heights of Herefordshire and
Shropshire, the blue range of Malvern and the far distant Titterstone,
bringing the host as it were into the actual presence of the evil deeds
with which the stranger was defiling that lovely region. Godwine had
kept his watch on the heights of Beverstone, as Thrasyboulos had kept
his on the heights of Phylê,[438] and he now came down, with the truest
sons of England at his bidding, ready, as need might be, to strive for
her freedom either in the debates of the Witan or in the actual
[Sidenote: War hindered by the intervention of Leofric.] storm of
battle. But there were now men in the King’s train at Gloucester who
were not prepared to shed the blood of their countrymen in the cause of
strangers. Eadward had now counsellors at his side who had no mind to
push personal or provincial jealousy to the extent of treason to their
common country. Earl Leofric had obeyed the command of the King, and had
brought the force of Mercia to the royal muster at Gloucester. Some
jealousies of Godwine may well have rankled in his breast, but love of
his country was a stronger feeling still. He was not ready to sacrifice
the champion of England to men who had trampled on every rule of English
law and of natural right, men who seemed to deem it a crime if
Englishmen refused to lie still and be butchered on their [Sidenote: He
effects a compromise, and procures the adjournment of the Gemót.]
hearth-stones. The good old Earl of the Mercians now, as ever,[439]
stood forth as the representative of peace and compromise between
extreme parties. The best men of England were arrayed in one host or the
other. It were madness indeed for Englishmen to destroy one another,
simply to hand over the land to its enemies without defence.[440] But,
while two armed hosts stood ready for battle, there was no room for
peaceful debate. Let both sides depart; let hostages be given on both
sides, and let the Meeting of the Witan stand adjourned, to assemble
again, after a few weeks, in another place. Meanwhile all enmities on
either side should cease, and both sides should be held to be in full
possession of the King’s peace and friendship.[441] The proposal of
Leofric was accepted by both parties, and the Gemót was accordingly
adjourned, to meet in London at Michaelmas.

[Sidenote: Gemót of London. September 29, 1051.]

The objects of Leofric in this momentary compromise were undoubtedly
honourable and patriotic. But King Eadward and his foreign advisers seem
to have been determined to make the most of the breathing-space thus
given them for the damage of the national cause. The [Sidenote: Eadward
appears at the head of an army.] King employed the time in collecting an
army still more powerful than that which had surrounded him at
Gloucester. He seems to have got together the whole force of
Northumberland and Mercia, and to have summoned the immediate following
of the King, the royal Housecarls, and perhaps the King’s immediate
Thegns, even within Godwine’s own Earldom.[442] The King’s quarters were
probably at his favourite palace of Westminster. Godwine came,
accompanied by a large force of the men [Sidenote: The King’s demands of
Godwine.] of his Earldom, to his own house in Southwark.[443] Several
messages passed to and fro between him and the King. But it soon became
clear that, though the King’s full peace and friendship had been assured
to Godwine, there was no intention in the royal councils of showing him
any favour, or even of treating him with common justice. The two parties
had separated at Gloucester on equal terms. Each had been declared to be
alike the King’s friends; each alike had given hostages to the other;
the matters at issue between them were to be fairly discussed in the
adjourned Gemót. Instead of this agreement being carried out, Godwine
and his sons found themselves dealt [Sidenote: The outlawry of Swegen
renewed. Injustice of its renewal.] with as criminals. The first act of
the Assembly, seemingly before Godwine and his sons had appeared at all,
was to renew the outlawry of Swegen.[444] No act could be more unjust.
His old crimes could no longer be brought up against him with any
fairness. The time when they might have been rightly urged was on the
motion for the repeal of his former outlawry.[445] But, whether wisely
or unwisely, that outlawry had been legally reversed; Swegen had been
restored to his Earldom, a restoration which of course implied the
absolute pardon of all his former offences. Since that time, we hear of
no fresh crime on his part, unless it were a crime to have been a
fellow-worker with his father, his brother, and the men of his Earldom,
in resistance to the wrongs inflicted by the strangers. To condemn
Swegen afresh for his old offences was a flagrant breach of all justice;
to condemn him for his late conduct was a breach of justice equally
flagrant in another way. Besides this, his condemnation on this last
ground would carry with it an equal condemnation of Godwine and Harold.
Swegen then was outlawed, and that, [Sidenote: Godwine and Harold
summoned before the King.] as far as we can see, without a hearing; and
Godwine and Harold were summoned to appear before the King, seemingly as
criminals to receive judgement. Bishop Stigand, in whose diocese Godwine
was then living, procured some delay;[446] but Archbishop Robert took
advantage of that very delay, still further to poison the King’s mind
against the Earl.[447] Godwine, after the treatment which his eldest son
had just received, declined to appear, unless he received an assurance
of the King’s favour, guaranteed by the placing of special hostages in
his hands, as pledges for his personal safety during the interview. The
King’s answer was apparently a demand that the Earls should allow, or
perhaps compel, all the King’s Thegns who had joined them, to go over to
the King’s side.[448] The demand was at once obeyed. By this time the
tide was clearly turning against Godwine, and the force which he had
brought with him to Southwark [Sidenote: Final summons of the Earls.]
was getting smaller and smaller.[449] The King again summoned the Earls
to appear, with twelve companions only. We can hardly believe that
Stigand was compelled, however against his will, to announce as a
serious message to Godwine that the King’s final resolution was that
Godwine could hope for his peace only when he restored to him his
brother Ælfred and his companions safe and sound.[450] It is
inconceivable that such words can have formed part of a formal summons,
but it is quite possible that they may have been uttered in mockery,
either by [Sidenote: Their demand for a safe-conduct is refused.] the
King or by his Norman Archbishop. But whatever was the form of the
summons, Godwine and Harold refused to appear, unless they received
hostages and a safe-conduct for their coming and going.[451] Without
such security they could not appear in an Assembly which had sunk into a
mere gathering of their enemies.[452] They had obeyed, and would obey,
the King in all things consistent with their safety and their honour.
But both their safety and their honour would be at stake, if they
appeared before such a tribunal without any sort of safeguard, and
without their usual retinue as Earls of two great Earldoms.[453] The
demand was perfectly reasonable.[454] Godwine and his son could not be
expected to appear, without safeguards of any kind, in such an assembly
as that which now surrounded the King. The adjourned Gemót had been
summoned for the free and fair discussion of all disputes between two
parties, each of which was declared to be in the full enjoyment of the
King’s peace and friendship. It was now turned into a Court, in which
one son of Godwine had been outlawed without a crime or a hearing, in
which Godwine himself was summoned to receive judgement on charges on
one of which he had been years before solemnly acquitted. The hostages
and the safe-conduct were refused. The refusal was announced by Stigand
to the Earl as he sat at his evening meal. The Bishop wept; the Earl
sprang to his feet, overthrew the table,[455] sprang on his horse, and,
with his sons, rode for his life all that night.[456] In the morning the
King held his Witenagemót, [Sidenote: Godwine and his family outlawed.]
and by a vote of the King and his whole army,[457] Godwine and his sons
were declared outlaws, but five days were allowed them to get them out
of the land.[458] By this [Sidenote: Godwine, Swegen, &c., take refuge
in Flanders.] time Godwine, Swegen, Tostig, and Gyrth, together with
Gytha and Judith, the newly-married wife of Tostig, had reached either
Bosham or the South-Saxon Thorney.[459] There could be little doubt as
to the course which they were to take. Flanders, Baldwines land, was the
common refuge of English exiles, and Godwine and the Flemish Count are
said to have been bound to one another by the tie of many mutual
benefits.[460] It was at the court of Baldwin that Swegen had taken
refuge in his exile, and the Count was the near kinsman, perhaps the
father, of Tostig’s bride, whose wedding-festivities had been so cruelly
interrupted by these sudden gatherings of Gemóts and armies.[461] For
Bruges then they set sail in a ship laded with as much treasure as it
would hold.[462] They reached the court of Flanders in safety; they were
honourably received by the Count,[463] and passed the whole winter with
him.[464]

Godwine then, with the greater part of his family,[465] had found
shelter in the quarter where English exiles of that age commonly did
find shelter. But two of his sons sought quite another refuge. To seek
shelter in Flanders, a land forming the natural point of
intercommunication between England, France, and Germany, was the obvious
course for one whose first object, as we shall presently see, was to
obtain his restoration by peaceful diplomacy. Such were the designs of
Godwine, the veteran statesman, the man who never resorted to force till
all other means [Sidenote: Harold determines on resistance.] had been
tried in vain. But Harold, still young, and at all times more vehement
in temper than his father, had not yet learned this lesson. His high
spirit chafed under his wrongs, and he determined from the first on a
forcible return to his country, even, if need be, by the help of a
foreign force. This determination is the least honourable fact recorded
in Harold’s life. It was indeed no [Sidenote: Estimate of his conduct.]
more than was usual with banished men in his age. It is what we have
already seen done by Osgod Clapa;[466] it is what we shall presently see
done by Ælfgar the son of Leofric; it was in fact the natural resource
of every man of those times who found himself outlawed by any sentence,
just or unjust. If we judge Harold harshly in this matter, we are in
fact doing him the highest honour. So to judge him is in fact
instinctively to recognize that he has a right to be tried by a higher
standard than the mass of his contemporaries. Judged by such a standard,
his conduct must be distinctly condemned; but it should be noticed that,
among the various charges, true and false, which were brought against
Harold, we never find any reference to this, which, according to our
ideas, seems [Sidenote: He determines to seek help from the Irish
Danes.] the worst action of his life. In company with his young brother
Leofwine,[467] he despised the peaceful shelter of Bruges, and preferred
to betake himself to a land where, above all others, it would be easy to
engage warlike adventurers in his cause. The eastern coast of Ireland,
with the numerous towns peopled by Danish settlers, lay admirably suited
for their purpose. Thither then [Sidenote: Harold and Leofwine go to
Bristol; growing importance of that port.] the two brothers determined
to make their way, with the fixed purpose of raising forces to effect
their own return and to avenge their father’s wrongs.[468] For the port
of their departure they chose Bristol, a town in Swegen’s Earldom,
unknown to fame in the earlier days of our history, but which was now
rising into great, though not very honourable, importance. The port on
the Avon, the frontier stream of Wessex and Western Mercia, was the
natural mart for a large portion of both those countries. Commanding, as
it did, the whole navigation of the Channel to which it gives its name,
Bristol was then, as now, the chief seat of communication between
England and the South of Ireland. That is to say, it was in those days
the chief seat of the Irish slave-trade.[469] In the haven of Bristol
Earl Swegen had, for what cause we are not told, a ship made ready for
himself.[470] The two brothers made the best of their way towards
Bristol, in order to seize this ship for the purpose of their voyage to
Ireland. Perhaps they had, wittingly or unwittingly, allowed their
purpose of appealing to arms to [Sidenote: Ealdred sent to overtake
them.] become known. This would be the only excuse for an act on the
King’s part, which, in any other case, would be one of the most
monstrous and unprovoked breaches of faith on record. It is not likely
that the five days, which had been allowed the outlaws to leave the
country, were yet passed. Harold and Leofwine would be sure to make
better speed than that. Yet Bishop Ealdred, whose diocese of Worcester
then took in the town of Bristol, was sent after them from London with a
party to overtake them, if possible, before they got on ship-board. But
the Bishop and his company were not zealous on an errand which had at
least the appearance of shameless perfidy. They failed to overtake the
fugitives; “they could not or they would not,” says the Chronicler.[471]
Harold and [Sidenote: They escape, reach Ireland, and are well received
by King Diarmid.] Leofwine reached Bristol in safety. They went on board
Swegen’s ship; stress of weather kept them for a while at the mouth of
the Avon, but a favourable wind presently carried them to Ireland.[472]
They were there favourably received by Dermot or Diarmid Mac
Mael-na-mbo, King of Dublin and Leinster.[473] He was a prince of native
Irish descent, who had lately obtained possession of the Danish
[Sidenote: 1050.] district round Dublin, and whose authority seems to
have been recognized by the Danes as well as by the Irish.[474] In such
a state of things it would not be difficult to find bold spirits ready
for any adventure, and a King whose position must have been somewhat
precarious would doubtless welcome any chance of getting rid of some of
them. Diarmid gave Harold and Leofwine as kind a reception at Dublin as
the rest of the family had found from Baldwin at Bruges, and they stayed
at his court through the whole winter, plotting schemes of vengeance.

[Sidenote: The Lady Eadgyth sent to the Abbey of Wherwell.]

One member only of the family of Godwine still remained to be disposed
of. What had been the position or the feelings of Eadgyth during the
scenes which have been just described we have no means of knowing; but
she too was doomed to have her share in the misfortunes of her father’s
house. The English Lady, the daughter of Godwine, could not be allowed
to share the honours of royalty, now that all her kinsfolk were driven
from the land,[475] now that the reign of the Normans was about to set
in. The language of one contemporary authority seems almost to imply an
actual divorce, of which Archbishop Robert was of course the main
instigator.[476] The lawfulness or possibility of divorce in such a case
might form a curious subject of speculation for those who are learned in
the Canon Law. Eadward consented, perhaps willingly, to the separation;
he allowed the Lady to be deprived of all her goods, real and
personal;[477] but he interfered at least to save her from personal
ignominy. Eadgyth was sent, with no lack of respect or royal
attendance,[478] to the royal monastery of Wherwell,[479] and was there
entrusted to the safe keeping of the Abbess. This Abbess was a sister of
the King,[480] no doubt one of the daughters of Æthelred by his first
wife. One of the widows of the slain and banished Earls, the relict of
the traitor Eadric or of the hero Ulfcytel,[481] had taken the veil in
the holy house of Eadgar and Ælfthryth,[482] and she could there confer
with her guest on the uncertainty of human happiness and the emptiness
of human greatness.

[Sidenote: General character of the story; its difficulties.]

The whole of this history of the fall of Godwine is most remarkable; and
it is singular that, though it is told in great detail in three distinct
accounts, so much still remains which is far from intelligible. The
first point which at once strikes us is the strength of Godwine in the
Gemót of Gloucester and his weakness in the Gemót of London. Next year
indeed we shall see the tide turn yet again; we shall behold Godwine
return in triumph with the good will of all England. This is of course
no difficulty; it would be no difficulty, even if popular feeling had
been thoroughly against Godwine during the former year. Englishmen
welcomed Godwine back again, because they had learned what it was to be
without him. But the change of Godwine’s position during that eventful
September of which we have just gone through the history is certainly
perplexing. At Beverstone and at Gloucester he appears at the head of
the whole force of Wessex, East-Anglia, and part of Mercia. All are
zealous in his cause, ready, if need be, to fight in his quarrel against
the King himself. He is clearly not without well-wishers even in the
ranks of the Northern [Sidenote: Sudden collapse of the power of
Godwine.] Earldoms. A compromise is brought about in which his honour is
carefully guarded, and in which his party and the King’s are studiously
put on equal terms. In the London Gemót, a few weeks later, all is
changed. His followers gradually drop away from him; he does not venture
to take his place in the Assembly which he had so often swayed at his
pleasure; he is dealt with as an accused, almost as a convicted,
criminal; he is subjected with impunity to every sort of unjust and
irritating treatment; and he is at last driven to flee from the land,
without a blow being struck, almost without a voice being raised, in his
behalf. Such a falling away is difficult to understand; it is hard to
see how Godwine could have given fresh offence to any one in the time
between the conference at Gloucester and his appearance at Southwark.
Norman flatterers and talebearers may have fanned the King’s prejudice
against him into a still hotter flame; but there is at first sight
nothing to account for the desertion [Sidenote: Position of the Northern
Earls.] of his own followers. As for the Northern Earls and their
followers, they had no ground of jealousy against Godwine in London
which they had not equally at Gloucester; and at Gloucester they clearly
were not disposed to push matters to extremities. Still it was clearly
the number and strength of the following of Siward and Leofric in the
London Gemót which decided the day against Godwine. The Earl of the
West-Saxons was entrapped. He and his party came as to a peaceful
assembly, and they found the King and his foreign followers bent on
their destruction, and a powerful military force assembled to crush
them. But why did even Siward lend himself to a scheme like this? Why,
still more, did Leofric forsake the part, which he had so often and so
worthily played, of mediator between extreme parties? Unless we are to
suppose, which one would not willingly do, that Leofric was won by the
bait of Harold’s Earldom for his son, we can only suppose that a
mistaken feeling of loyalty hindered him from opposing a project on
which he saw that the King was fully bent. It is in his position and
that of Siward that the main difficulty lies. When Godwine found himself
face to face with all the strength of Northern England, the rest of the
story [Sidenote: Explanation of Godwine’s position and conduct.] becomes
more intelligible. He had come expecting a fair discussion of all the
questions at issue. But fair discussion was not to be had amid the clash
of the axes of Siward’s Danes and of the lances of Ralph’s Frenchmen.
Godwine had really no choice but to fight or to yield. Had he chosen to
fight, the whole force of Wessex and East-Anglia would no doubt soon
have been again at his command. But he shrank from a civil war; he saw
that it was better policy to bide his time, to yield, even to flee,
certain that a revulsion of national feeling would soon demand his
recall. Such a course was doubtless wise and patriotic; but it was not
one which would be at the time either acceptable or intelligible to the
mass of his followers. If he meant to resist, he should doubtless have
resisted at once; the hopes of an insurrection always lie in promptness
and energy; every hour of delay only adds to the strength of the other
side. We can thus understand how men began to fall off from a chief who,
it might be said, dared not meet his sovereign either in arms or in
council. Still, after all, there is something [Sidenote: His complete
and sudden fall.] strange in the details of the story. There is
something amazing in so sudden and so utter a fall, not only from the
general exaltation of himself and his family, but from the proud and
threatening position which he had so lately [Sidenote: Impression on his
contemporaries.] held at Beverstone and Gloucester. It is not wonderful
that Godwine’s fall from such an unparalleled height of greatness made a
deep impression on the minds of the men of his own age. The Biographer
of Eadward, who had before likened the children of Godwine to the rivers
of Paradise,[483] now deems it a fitting occasion to call upon his Muse
to set forth the sufferings of the innocent, and to compare the outlawed
Earl to Susanna, Joseph, and other ancient victims of slander.[484] The
plain English of the Chronicler who is less strongly committed to
Godwine’s cause speaks more directly to the heart; “That would have
seemed wonderful to ilk man that in England was, if any man ere that had
said that so it should be. For that ere that he was so upheaven, so that
he wielded the King and all England, and his sons were Earls and the
King’s darlings, and his daughter to the King wedded and married.”[485]
He fell from his high estate; but in his fall he doubtless foresaw that
the day of his restoration was not far distant. Another Gemót of London
was soon to repeal the unrighteous vote of its predecessor; the champion
of England was to return for a moment to his old honours and his old
power, and then to hand them on to a son even more worthy of them than
himself.

[Sidenote: Complete temporary triumph of the Norman party. October
1051—September 1052.]

But for the moment the overthrow of the patriotic leaders was complete.
The dominion of the strangers over the mind of the feeble King was fully
assured. The Norman Conquest, in short, might now seem to have more than
begun. Honours and offices were of course divided among the foreigners
and among those Englishmen who had stood on the King’s side. Through the
banishment of Godwine and his sons three great Earldoms were vacant. No
one Earl of the West-Saxons seems to have been appointed. Probably, as
in the early days of Cnut,[486] the Imperial Kingdom, or at least its
greater portion, was again put [Sidenote: Partition of honours among the
King’s friends.] under the immediate government of the Crown. The
anomalous Earldom of Swegen was dismembered. The [Sidenote: Ralph;]
King’s nephew Ralph seems to have been again invested with the
government of its Mercian portions.[487] Of the two West-Saxon shires
held by Swegen, Berkshire is not [Sidenote: Odda;] mentioned, but
Somersetshire was joined with the other western parts of Wessex to form
a new government under Odda, a kinsman of the King’s.[488] His Earldom
took in the whole of the ancient _Wealhcyn_, but it is now Cornwall only
which is distinguished as Welsh. The policy of Æthelstan[489] had been
effectual, and no part of the land east of the Tamar is now recognized
as a foreign land. Odda was a special favourite of the monks, and is
spoken of as a man of good and clean life, who in the end became a monk
himself.[490] The third Earldom, that of East-Anglia, [Sidenote:
Ælfgar.] hitherto held by Harold, was bestowed on Ælfgar, the son of
Leofric,[491] of whom we hear for the first time during these
commotions. He had himself, it would seem, played a prominent part in
them,[492] and one would wish to believe that his promotion was the
reward of acts of his own, rather than of his father’s seeming desertion
of the patriotic [Sidenote: Spearhafoc deposed,] cause. Among churchmen,
Spearhafoc, who had throughout the summer and autumn held the see of
London without consecration,[493] had now to give up his doubtful
possession. [Sidenote: and William made Bishop of London. 1051.] The
Bishoprick was then given to a Norman named William, a chaplain of the
King’s.[494] A man might now go from the Straits of Dover to the Humber,
over Kentish, East-Saxon, and Danish ground, without once, in the course
of his journey, going out of the spiritual jurisdiction of Norman
Prelates. It is due however to Bishop William to say that he bears a
very different character in our history from either his Metropolitan
Robert or his fellow-suffragan Ulf. Banished for a while, he was
restored when the patriotic party was in the height of its power—a
distinct witness in his favour, perhaps a witness against his English
competitor.[495] William kept his Bishoprick for many years, and lived
to welcome his namesake and native prince to the throne of England. But
he had not to wait for so distant an opportunity of displaying his new
honours [Sidenote: Visit of Duke William to England. 1051.] in the eyes
of his natural sovereign. While Godwine dwelt as an exile at Bruges,
while Harold was planning schemes of vengeance in the friendly court of
Dublin, William the Bastard first set foot on the shores of
England.[496]

We are thus at last brought face to face with the two great actors in
our history. Harold has already appeared before us. We have seen him
raised at an early age to the highest rank open to a subject; we have
seen him, in the cause of his country, deprived of his honours and
driven to take refuge in a foreign land. His great rival we have as yet
heard of only at a distance; he now comes directly on the field. There
can be no doubt that William’s visit to England forms a stage, and a
most important one, among the immediate causes of the Norman Conquest. I
pause then, at this point, to take up the thread of Norman history, and
to give a sketch of the birth, the childhood, the early reign, of the
man who, in the year of Godwine’s banishment, saw, for the first time,
the land which, fifteen years later, he was to claim as his own.

[Illustration: NORMANDY AND THE NEIGHBOURING STATES.]

CHAPTER VIII.

THE EARLY YEARS OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.[497]
A.D. 1028–1051.

§ 1. _Birth, Character, and Accession of William._ A.D. 1028–1035.

[Sidenote: Character and greatness of WILLIAM.]

William, King of the English and Duke of the Normans, bears a name which
must for ever stand forth among the foremost of mankind. No man that
ever trod this earth was ever endowed with greater natural gifts; to no
man was it ever granted to accomplish greater things. If we look only to
the scale of a man’s acts, without regard to their moral character, we
must hail in the victor of Val-ès-dunes, of Varaville, and of Senlac,
the restorer of Normandy, the Conqueror of England, one who may fairly
claim his place in the first rank of the world’s [Sidenote: Lasting
results of his career.] greatest men. No man ever did his work more
effectually at the moment; no man ever left his work behind him as
[Sidenote: A good side to his character.] more truly an abiding
possession for all time. And, when we consider all the circumstances of
his life, when we judge him by the standard of his own age, above all,
when we compare him with those who came after him in his own house, we
shall perhaps be inclined to dwell on his great qualities, on his many
undoubted virtues, rather than to put his no less undoubted crimes in
their darkest light. As we cannot refuse to place him among the greatest
of men, neither will a candid judgement incline us to place him among
the worst of men. If we cannot give him a niche among pure patriots and
heroes, he is quite as little entitled to a place among mere tyrants and
destroyers. William of Normandy has no claim to a share in the pure
glory of Timoleôn, Ælfred, and Washington; he cannot even claim the more
mingled fame of Alexander, Charles, and Cnut; but he has even less in
common with the mere enemies of their species, with the Nabuchodonosors,
the Swends, and the Buonapartes, whom God has from time to time sent as
simple scourges of a guilty world. Happily there are few men in history
of whom we have [Sidenote: English and Norman portraits of him.] better
materials for drawing the portrait. We see him as he appeared to
admiring followers of his own race; we see him also as he appeared to
men of the conquered nation who had looked on him and had lived in his
household.[498] We have to make allowance for flattery on the one side;
we have not to make allowance for calumny on the other. The feeling with
which the Normans looked on their conquering leader was undoubtedly one
of awe rather than of love; and the feeling with which the vanquished
English looked on their Conqueror was undoubtedly one of awe rather than
of simple hatred. Assuredly William’s English subjects did not love him;
but they felt a sort of sullen reverence for the King who was richer and
mightier than all the Kings that were before him. In speaking of him,
the Chronicler writes as it were with downcast eyes and bated breath, as
if he were hardly dealing with a man of like passions with himself, but
was rather drawing the portrait [Sidenote: Justice done to him by the
English Chronicler.] of a being of another nature. Yet he holds the
balance fairly between the dark and the bright qualities of one so far
raised above the common lot of man. He does not conceal his crimes and
his oppressions; but he sets before us the merits of his government and
the good peace that he made in this land; he judicially sums up what was
good and what was evil in him; he warns men to follow the good and to
avoid the evil, and he sends him out of the world with a charitable
prayer for the repose of his soul. And, at the moment when he wrote, it
was no marvel if the Chronicler was inclined to dwell on the good rather
than on the evil. The Crown of William passed to one who shared largely
in his mere intellectual gifts, but who had no fellowship with the
greater and nobler elements of his character. To appreciate William the
Conqueror we have but to cast our glance onwards to William the Red. We
shall then well understand how men writhing under the scorpions of the
son might look back with regret to the whips of the father. We can
understand how, under his godless rule, men might feel kindly towards
the memory of one who never wholly cast away the thoughts of justice and
mercy, and who, in his darkest hours, had still somewhat of the fear of
God before his eyes.

[Sidenote: Strength of will in William.]

In estimating the character of William, one feature stands out
preeminently above all others. Throughout his career, we admire in him
the embodiment, in the highest degree that human nature will allow, of
the fixed purpose and the unbending will. From time to time there have
been men who seem to have come into the world to sway the course of
events at their good pleasure, men who have made destiny itself their
vassal, and whose decrees it seems in vain for lesser men to seek to
withstand. Such was the man who, with the blood of thousands reeking on
his hands, could lay down despotic power, could walk unattended to his
house, and calmly offer to give an account for any of his actions;[499]
and such in might, though assuredly not such in crime, was our first
Norman King. Whatever the will of William decreed, he found a means to
bring it about. Whatever his hand found to do, he did [Sidenote: His
military genius.] it with all his might. As a warrior, as a general, it
is needless to sound his praises. His warlike exploits set him among the
foremost captains of history, but his warlike exploits are but the
smallest part of his fame. Others beside him could have led the charge
at Val-ès-dunes; others beside him could have chosen the happy moment
for the ambush at Varaville; others beside him could have endured the
weariness of the long blockade beneath the donjon of Brionne. Others, it
may even be, beside him could have cut their way through palisade and
shield-wall and battle-axe to the royal Standard of England. [Sidenote:
His statesmanship.] But none in his own age, and few in any age, have
shown themselves like him masters of every branch of the consummate
craft of the statesman. Calm and clear-sighted, he saw his object before
him; he knew when to tarry and when to hasten; he knew when to strike
and how to strike, and how to use alike the noblest and the vilest of
[Sidenote: His unscrupulousness as to means.] men as his instruments.
Utterly unscrupulous, though far from unprincipled, taking no pleasure
in wrong or oppression for its own sake, always keeping back his hands
from needless bloodshed, he yet never shrank from force or fraud, from
wrong or bloodshed or oppression, when they seemed to him the
straightest paths to accomplish his purpose. His crimes admit of no
denial; but, with one single exception, they never were wanton crimes.
And when we come to see the school in which he was brought up, when we
see the men whom he had to deal with from his childhood, our wonder
really ought to [Sidenote: His personal virtues.] be that his crimes
were not infinitely blacker. His personal virtues were throughout life
many and great. We hear much of his piety, and we see reason to believe
that his piety was something more than the mere conventional [Sidenote:
His religious zeal.] piety of lavish gifts to monasteries. Punctual in
every exercise of devotion, paying respect and honour of every kind to
religion and its ministers, William showed, in two ways most unusual
among the princes of that age, that his zeal for holy things was neither
hypocrisy, nor fanaticism, nor superstition. Like his illustrious
contemporary on the Imperial throne, he appeared as a real
ecclesiastical reformer, and he allowed the precepts of his religion to
have a distinct influence on his private life. He was one of the few
princes of that age whose hands [Sidenote: General excellence of his
ecclesiastical appointments.] were perfectly clean from the guilt of
simony. His ecclesiastical appointments for the most part do him honour;
the patron of Lanfranc and Anselm can never be spoken of without
respect. In his personal conduct he practised at least one most unusual
virtue; in a profligate age he was a model of conjugal fidelity. He was
a good and faithful friend, an affectionate brother—we must perhaps add,
too indulgent a father. And strong as was his sense of religion, deep as
was his reverence for the Church, open-handed as was his bounty to her
ministers, no prince that ever reigned was less disposed to yield to
ecclesiastical usurpations. No prince ever knew better how to control
the priesthood within his own dominions; none knew better both how to
win the voice of Rome to abet his purposes, and how to bid defiance to
her demands when they infringed on the rights of his Crown and the laws
of his Kingdom. While all Europe rang with the great strife of Pope and
Cæsar, England and Normandy remained at peace under the rule of one who
knew how, firmly and calmly, to hold his own against Hildebrand himself.

[Sidenote: Effects of his reign in Normandy, France, and England.]

But to know what William was, no way is so clear as to see what William
did in both the countries over which he was so strangely called to rule.
We are too apt to look on him simply as the Conqueror of England. But so
to do is to look at him only in his most splendid, but at the same time
his least honourable, aspect. William learned to become the Conqueror of
England only by first becoming the Conqueror of Normandy and the
Conqueror of France. He found means to conquer Normandy by the help of
France and to conquer France by the help of Normandy. He turned a
jealous overlord into an effective ally against his rebellious subjects,
and he turned those rebellious subjects into faithful supporters against
[Sidenote: His early struggles.] that jealous overlord. He came to his
Duchy under every disadvantage. At once bastard and minor, with
competitors for his coronet arising at every moment, with turbulent
barons to hold in check and envious neighbours to guard against, he was,
throughout the whole of his early life, beset by troubles, none of which
were of his own making, and he came honourably out of all. The
[Sidenote: Excellence of his rule in Normandy.] change which William
wrought in Normandy was nothing less than a change from anarchy to good
order. Instead of a state, torn by internal feuds and open to the
attacks of every enemy, his Duchy became, under his youthful rule, a
loyal and well-governed land, respected by all its neighbours, and
putting most of them to shame by its prosperity. In the face of every
obstacle, the mighty genius of the once despised Bastard raised himself
and his principality to a place in the eyes of Europe such as Normandy
and its prince had never held before. And these great successes were
gained with far less of cruelty or harshness than might have been looked
for in so [Sidenote: His general forbearance and occasional cruelty.]
ruthless an age. He shared indeed in the fierce passions of his race,
and in one or two cases his wrath hurried him, or his policy beguiled
him, into acts at which humanity shudders. At all stages of his life, if
he was debonair to those who would do his will, he was beyond measure
stern to all who withstood it.[500] Yet, when we think of all that he
went through, of the treachery and ingratitude which he met with on
every side, how his most faithful friends were murdered beside him, how
he himself had to flee for his life or to lurk in mean disguises, we
shall see that it is not without reason that his panegyrist praises his
general forbearance and clemency. In short, the reign of William as Duke
of the Normans was alike prosperous and honourable in the highest
degree. Had he never stretched forth his hand to grasp the diadem which
was another’s, his fame would not have filled the world as now it does,
but he would have gone down to his grave as one of the best, as well as
one of the greatest, rulers of his time.

[Sidenote: His reign in England.]

If we turn from William Duke of the Normans to William King of the
English, we may indeed mourn that, in a moral sense, the fine gold has
become dim, but our admiration for mere greatness, for the highest craft
of the statesman and the soldier, will rise higher than ever. No doubt
he was highly favoured by fortune; nothing but an extraordinary
combination of events could have made the Conquest of England possible.
But then [Sidenote: Difficulties of his undertaking.] it is the true art
of statesmanship, the art by which men like William carry the world
before them, to know how to grasp every fortunate moment and to take
advantage of every auspicious turn of events. Doubtless William could
never have conquered England except under peculiarly favourable
circumstances; but then none but such a man as William could have
conquered England under any circumstances at all. He conquered and
retained a land far greater than his paternal Duchy, and a land in
[Sidenote: Skill displayed in his claim on the English Crown;] which he
had not a single native partisan. Yet he contrived to put himself
forward in the eyes of the world as a legal claimant, and not as an
unprovoked invader. We must condemn the fraud, but we cannot help
admiring the skill, by which he made men believe that he was the true
heir of England, shut out from his inheritance by a perjured usurper.
Never was a more subtle web of fallacy woven by the craft of man; never
did diplomatic ingenuity more triumphantly obtain its end. He contrived
to make an utterly unjust aggression bear the aspect, not only of
righteous, but almost of holy, warfare. The wholesale spoiler of a
Christian people contrived to win for himself something very like the
position of a Crusader. And, landed on English ground, with no rights
but those of his own sword, with no supporters but his own foreign
[Sidenote: in his acquisition of it;] army, he yet contrived to win the
English Crown with every circumstance of formal legality. He was
elected, crowned, and anointed like his native predecessors, and he
swore at the hands of an English Primate to observe the ancient laws of
England. By force and by craft, but with the outward pretext of law
always put prominently forward, he gradually obtained full possession of
the whole land; he deprived the nation one by one of its native
[Sidenote: and in his subsequent government.] leaders, and put in their
places men of foreign birth and wholly dependent on himself. No prince
ever more richly rewarded those to whom he owed his Crown, but no prince
ever took more jealous care that they should never be able to bring his
Crown into jeopardy. None but a man like him could have held down both
conquerors and conquered, and have made his will the only law for Norman
and Englishman alike. His consummate policy guarded against the dangers
which he saw rife in every other country; he put the finishing stroke to
the work of Ecgberht, and made England the most united Kingdom in
Western Christendom. Normans and Englishmen conspired against him, and
called the fleets and hosts of Denmark to their help. But William held
his own alike against revolters at home and against invaders from
abroad. Norman and English rebels were alike crushed; sometimes the Dane
was bought off, sometimes he shrank from the firm array with which the
land was guarded. All opposition was [Sidenote: Severity of his police.]
quelled by fire and sword; but when it was quelled, whenever and
wherever William’s rule was quietly accepted, his hand was heavy upon
all smaller disturbers of the peace of the world. Life, property, female
honour, stood indeed but a small chance while the process of Conquest
was going on, but, when William’s work was fully accomplished, they were
safer under him than they had ever been under England’s native Kings. As
the stern avenger of crime, even the conquered learned to bless him, and
to crown his good deeds with a tribute of praise hardly inferior to that
which waits on the name of his illustrious rival.[501]

[Sidenote: The worst features of his character brought out in England.]

Here then was a career through which none but one of the greatest of
mankind could have passed successfully. But it was a career which
brought out into full play all those darker features of his character
which found but little room for their developement during his earlier
reign in his native Duchy. There is no reason to believe that William
came into England with any fixed determination to rule otherwise in
England than he had already ruled in Normandy. Cnut can hardly fail to
have been his model, and William’s earliest days in England were far
more promising than the earliest days of Cnut. At no time of his life
does William appear as one of those tyrants who actually delight in
oppression, to whom the infliction of human suffering is really a source
of morbid pleasure. [Sidenote: His false position gradually developed
itself, and led him to oppression.] But, if he took no pleasure in the
infliction of suffering, it was at least a matter about which he was
utterly reckless; he stuck at no injustice which was needed to carry out
his purpose. His will was fixed, to win and to keep the Crown of England
at all hazards. We may well believe that he would have been well pleased
could he have won that Crown without bloodshed. But, rather than not win
it, he did not shrink from the guilt of carrying on a desolating war
against a people who had never wronged him. We may well believe that,
when he swore to govern his new subjects as well as they had been
governed by their own Kings, it was his full purpose to keep his oath.
That he acted on any settled scheme of uprooting the nationality, the
laws, or the language of England is an exploded fable.[502] But he could
not govern England as he had governed Normandy; he could not govern
England as Cnut had governed England; he could not himself be as Cnut,
neither could his Normans be as Cnut’s Danes. He gradually found that
there was no way for him to govern England save by oppressions,
exactions, and confiscations, by the bondage or the death of the noblest
of the land. He made the discovery, and he shrank not from its practical
consequences. A reign which had begun with as good hopes as the reign of
a foreign conqueror could begin with gradually changed into one of the
most tremendous tyrannies on record. Northumberland was hard to be kept
in order, and Northumberland was made a desert. [Sidenote: General
change for the worse in his character.] This was the dictate of a
relentless policy; but when William had once set forth on the downward
course of evil, he soon showed that he could do wrong when no policy
commanded it, merely to supply means for his [Sidenote: Formation of the
New Forest.] personal gratification. To lay waste Hampshire merely to
make a hunting-ground was a blacker crime than to lay waste
Northumberland to rid himself of a political danger. He could still be
merciful when mercy was not dangerous, but he had now learned to shed
innocent blood without remorse, if its shedding seemed to add safety to
his throne. The repeated revolts of Eadgar were forgiven as often as
they occurred; but Waltheof, caressed, [Sidenote: Death of Waltheof.]
flattered, promoted, was sent to the scaffold on the first convenient
pretext. It is hardly superstitious to point out, alike with ancient and
with modern authorities,[503] that the New Forest became a spot fatal to
William’s house, and that, after the death of Waltheof, his old
prosperity [Sidenote: Crimes and misfortunes of his last years.] forsook
him. Nothing indeed occurred to loosen his hold on England; but his last
years were spent in bickerings with his unworthy son, and in a petty
border warfare, in which the Conqueror had, for the first time, to
undergo defeat. At last he found his death-wound in an inglorious
quarrel, in the personal commission of cruelties which aroused the
indignation of his own age; and the mighty King and Conqueror, forsaken
by his servants and children, had to owe his funeral rites to the
voluntary charity of a loyal vassal, and within the walls of his own
minster he could not find an undisputed grave.

[Sidenote: William’s surnames: the _Great_, the _Conqueror_, the
_Bastard_.]

Such was William the Great, a title which, in the mouths of his
contemporaries, he shared with Alexander and with Charles, but which in
later times has been displaced by the misunderstood description of
Conqueror.[504] But, before he had won any right to either of those
lofty titles, William was already known by another surname [Sidenote:
Laxity of the Norman Dukes as to marriage and legitimacy.] drawn from
the circumstances of his birth. Of all princely lines the ducal house of
Normandy was that which paid least regard to the canonical laws of
marriage or to the special claims of legitimate birth.[505] The Duchy
had been ruled by a whole succession of princes who either were sprung
from that irregular kind of union which was known as the Danish
marriage,[506] or else were the sons of concubines raised to the rank of
wives after the birth of their children. But, among all this brood of
spurious or irregular heirs, the greatest of the whole line was the one
to whom the reproach, if reproach it was deemed, [Sidenote: Special
illegitimacy of William.] of illegitimate birth clave the most
abidingly. William the son of Robert was emphatically William the
Bastard, and the name clave to him through life, on the Imperial throne
of Britain no less than on the ducal chair of Normandy. For, of all the
whole line, William was the one whose bastardy was the most undoubted,
the least capable of being veiled under ambiguous and euphemistic
phrases. The position of Popa and Sprota was a doubtful one;[507] it
may, according to Danish ideas, have been perfectly honourable. The
children of Richard and Gunnor were, according to the law recognized
everywhere but in our own country, legitimated by the subsequent
marriage of their parents. But we may doubt whether the notion of the
Danish marriage survived as late as the days of Robert, and it is
certain that no ecclesiastical sacrament ever gave William a right,
according to the law of the Church, to rank as the lawful son of his
father. The mother of William is never spoken of in the respectful terms
which we find applied to the mother of Richard the Fearless. Throughout
the whole of Duke Robert’s life, she remained in the position of an
acknowledged mistress, and her illustrious son came forth before the
world with no other description than the Bastard.

[Sidenote: Story of William’s birth.]

The irregular birth of one so renowned naturally became the subject of
romance and legend. And the spot on which William first saw the light is
one which seems to call for the tribute of the legend-maker as its
natural due. [Sidenote: Position of Falaise.] The town of Falaise, in
the Diocese of Seez, is one of the most famous spots both in the earlier
and in the later history of Normandy, and none assuredly surpasses it in
the striking character of its natural position. Lying on the edge of the
great forest of Gouffer, the spot had its natural attractions for a line
of princes renowned, even above others of their time, for their devotion
to the sports of the field. The town itself lies in a sort of valley
between two eminences. The great Abbey, a foundation of a later date
than the times which we are concerned with, has utterly vanished; but
two stately parish churches, one of them dating from the days of Norman
independence, bear witness to the ecclesiastical splendour of the place.
Passing [Sidenote: Historical associations of the Castle.] by them, the
traveller gradually ascends to the gate of the Castle, renowned alike in
the wars of the twelfth, the fifteenth, and the sixteenth centuries. A
tall round tower still bears the name of the great Talbot, the guardian
of [Sidenote: 1417–1450.] the castle in the great English war, and who
afterwards won a still higher fame as the last champion of the ancient
[Sidenote: 1453.] freedom of Aquitaine against the encroachments of the
Kings of Paris.[508] But this witness of comparatively recent strife is
but an excrescence on the original structure. It is the addition made by
an English King to one of the noblest works of his Norman forefathers.
The Castle where legend fixes the birth of William of Normandy, and
where [Sidenote: 1175.] history fixes the famous homage of William of
Scotland, is a vast donjon of the eleventh or twelfth century.[509] One
of the grandest of those massive square keeps which I have already
spoken of as distinguishing the earliest military architecture of
Normandy, crowns the summit of a precipitous rock, fronted by another
mass of rock wilder still, on which the cannon of England were planted
during [Sidenote: The rocks give its name to the town.] Henry’s siege.
To these rocks, these _felsen_, the spot owes its name of Falaise,[510]
one of the many spots in Normandy where the good old Teutonic speech
still lingers in local nomenclature, though in this case the Teutonic
name has also preserved its permanent being in the general vocabulary of
the Romance speech. Between these two rugged heights lies a narrow dell,
through which runs a small beck, a tributary of the neighbouring river
Ante. The dell is crowded with mills and tanneries, but the mills and
tanneries of Falaise have their share in the historic interest of the
place. The mills play no inconsiderable part in the [Sidenote: The
Tanneries of Falaise.] records of the Norman Exchequer,[511] and the
tanneries at once suggest the name of the greatest son of Normandy. In
every form which the story has taken in history or legend, the mother of
the Conqueror appears as the [Sidenote: William the son of a Tanner’s
daughter.] daughter of a tanner of Falaise, plying his unsavoury craft
on the spot where it has continued to be plied through so many ages. The
conquered English indeed strove to claim the Norman Duke as their own,
by representing his mother as a descendant of their own royal
house.[512] But, even in this version, the traditional trade of her
father [Sidenote: English legend of the birth of William.] is not
forgotten. The daughter of the hero Eadmund disgraced herself by a
marriage or an intrigue with her father’s tanner, to whom in process of
time she bore three daughters. The pair were banished from England, and
took refuge on the opposite coast. In the course of their wanderings
they came to beg alms at the gate of Duke Richard the Good. The Prince
discovered the lofty birth of the mother, and took the whole family into
his favour. The youngest daughter became the mistress of his son Robert,
and of them sprang the mighty William, great-grandson of Eadmund
Ironside no less than of Richard the Fearless.

Such a tale is of course valuable only as illustrating the universal
tendency of conquered nations to try to alleviate the shame and grief of
conquest by striving to believe that their tyrants are at least their
countrymen. The story of William’s English origin clearly comes from the
same mint as the story in which Egyptian vanity gave out that Kambysês
was Egyptian by his maternal origin,[513] as the story which saw in
Alexander himself a scion of the royal house of Persia.[514] It seems
however to preserve one grain of truth in the midst of so much that is
mythical. It represents the connexion between Robert and his mistress as
having begun before he ascended the ducal throne. There can be little
doubt that this was the case, though the story is generally told as if
Robert had been already Duke [Sidenote: Story of Herleva.] of the
Normans. But it is more likely that Robert was as yet only Count of the
Hiesmois, and, as such, Lord of Falaise, when his eye was first caught
by the beauty of Arlette, or rather Herleva, the daughter of Fulbert the
Tanner. Some say he first saw her engaged in the dance,[515] others when
she was busied in the more homely work of washing linen in the beck
which flows by her father’s tannery at the foot of the castle.[516] The
prince himself, a mere stripling, saw and loved her. He sought her of
her father, who, after some reluctance, gave up his child to his lord,
by the advice, according to one account, of a holy hermit his
brother.[517] She was led the same evening to the castle; the poetical
chroniclers are rich in details of her behaviour.[518] She became the
cherished mistress of Robert, and her empire over his heart was, we are
told, not disturbed by another connexion, lawful or unlawful.[519]
[Sidenote: Advancement of her family.] After the example of former
princes, Robert in after times raised the kinsfolk of his mistress to
high honours. Half the nobility of Normandy had sprung from the brothers
and sisters of Gunnor, so now Fulbert the Tanner, the father of Herleva,
was raised to the post of ducal chamberlain,[520] and her brother Walter
was placed in some office which, in after times, gave him close access
to the person of his princely nephew.[521] After Robert’s death,
[Sidenote: Her marriage with Herlwin of Conteville.] Herleva obtained an
honourable marriage, and became, by her husband Herlwin of
Conteville,[522] the mother of two sons who will fill no small space in
our history. But her union with the Duke produced but one son, perhaps
but [Sidenote: Legends of omens.] one child.[523] That child however was
one whose future greatness was, so we are told, prefigured by omens and
prodigies from the moment of his birth, and even from the moment of his
conception. On the night of her first visit to the castle, Herleva
dreamed that a tree arose from her body which overshadowed all Normandy
and all England.[524] At the moment of his birth, the babe seized the
straw on the chamber floor with so vigorous a grasp that all who saw the
sight knew that he would become a mighty conqueror, who would never let
go anything that he had once laid [Sidenote: Birth of William.
1027–1028.] his hand upon.[525] Leaving tales like these apart, it is
certain that William, the bastard son of Robert and Herleva, was born at
Falaise, perhaps in the year in which the great Cnut made his famous
pilgrimage to the threshold of the Apostles.[526]

[Sidenote: Question of the succession: state of the Ducal family.]

Before Robert undertook so perilous an enterprise, it was clearly
needful for him to regulate the succession to the Duchy. The reigning
prince had neither brother nor legitimate child. The heir, according to
modern notions of heirship, was a churchman, Robert, Archbishop of
[Sidenote: Robert Archbishop of Rouen. 989–1037.] Rouen. This Prelate we
have already seen in rebellion against his namesake the Duke,[527]
probably on account of this very claim to the succession. He was one of
the children of Richard the Fearless, legitimated and made capable of
ecclesiastical honours by the late marriage of his parents. Indeed,
according to one account, the marriage of Richard and Gunnor was
contracted expressly to take away the canonical objections which were
raised against the appointment of a bastard to the metropolitan
see.[528] Archbishop Robert was thus an uncle of Duke Robert and a
great-uncle of the child William. Besides his Archbishoprick, he held
the County of Evreux as a lay fee. Like the more famous Odo of Bayeux,
he drew a marked distinction between his ecclesiastical and his temporal
character. As Count of Evreux, he had a wife, Herleva by name,[529] and
was the father of children of whom we shall hear again in our history.
In his latter days, his spiritual character became more prominent; he
repented of his misdeeds, gave great alms to the poor, and began the
rebuilding of the metropolitan church.[530] There were also two princes
whose connexion with the ducal house was by legitimate, though only
female, descent. One was [Sidenote: Guy of Burgundy;] Guy of Burgundy, a
nephew of Duke Robert, being grandson of Richard the Good through his
daughter [Sidenote: Alan of Britanny;] Adeliza.[531] The other was
Robert’s cousin, Count Alan of Britanny, the son of Hadwisa daughter of
Richard the Fearless.[532] Nearer in blood, but of more doubtful
legitimacy, were Robert’s own half-brothers, the sons of Richard
[Sidenote: Malger;] the Good by Papia. These were the churchman Malger,
who afterwards succeeded Archbishop Robert in the [Sidenote: William of
Arques;] see of Rouen,[533] and William, who held the County and
[Sidenote: Nicholas.] castle of Arques near Dieppe.[534] There was also
the monk Nicholas, the young, and no doubt illegitimate, son of
[Sidenote: No candidate free from objection.] Richard the Third.[535]
None of these were promising candidates for the ducal crown. Robert, the
lineal heir, might be looked on as disqualified by his profession; Alan
and Guy were strangers, and could claim only through females; the nearer
kinsmen were of spurious or doubtful birth, and some of them were liable
also to the same objection as Robert. Had any strong opposition existed,
William of Arques would probably have been found the best card to play;
but there was no candidate whose claims were absolutely without cavil;
there was none round whom national feeling could instinctively centre;
there was none who was clearly marked out, either by birth or by merit,
as the natural leader of the Norman people. This state of things must be
borne in mind, in order to understand the fact, otherwise so
extraordinary, that Robert was able to secure the succession to a son
who was at once bastard and minor. There were strong objections against
young William; but there were objections equally strong against
[Sidenote: Unpopularity of William’s succession.] every other possible
candidate. Under these circumstances it was possible for William to
succeed; but it followed, almost as a matter of course, that the early
years of his reign were disturbed by constant rebellions. William’s
succession was deeply offensive to many of his subjects, especially to
that large portion of the Norman nobility who had any kind of connexion
with the ducal house. From the time of the child’s birth, there can be
little doubt that his father’s intentions in his favour were at least
suspected, and the suspicion may well have given rise to some of the
rebellions by which Robert’s reign was disturbed.[536]

[Sidenote: The great Norman houses; their connexion with English
history.]

At this stage of our narrative it becomes necessary to form some clear
conception of the personality and the ancestry of some of the great
Norman nobles. Most of them belonged to houses whose fame has not been
confined to Normandy. We are now dealing with the fathers of the men, in
some cases with the men themselves, who fought round William at Senlac,
and among whom he divided the honours and the lands of England. These
men became the ancestors of the new nobility of England, and, as their
forefathers had changed in Gaul from Northmen into Normans, so now, by a
happier application of the same law, they gradually changed from Normans
into Englishmen. Many a name famous in English history, many a name
whose sound is as familiar to us as any word of our own Teutonic speech,
many a name which has long ceased to suggest any thought of foreign
origin, is but the name of some Norman village, whose lord, or perhaps
some lowlier inhabitant, followed his Duke to the Conquest of England
and shared in the plunder of the conquered. But the names which are most
familiar to us as names of English lords and gentlemen of Norman descent
belong, for the most part, to a sort of second crop, which first grew up
to importance on English soil. The great Norman houses whose acts—for
the most part whose crimes—become of paramount importance at the time
with which we are now dealing, were mostly worn out in a few
generations, and they have left but few direct representatives on either
side of the sea.

[Sidenote: Greatness of the House of Belesme.]

High among these great houses, the third in rank among the original
Norman nobility,[537] stood the house of Belesme, whose present head was
William, surnamed Talvas.[538] The domains held by his family, partly of
the Crown of France, partly of the Duchy of Normandy, might almost put
him on a level with princes rather than with ordinary nobles. The
possession from which the family took its name lay within the French
territory, and was a fief of the French Crown. But, within the Norman
Duchy, the Lords of Belesme were masters of the valley bounded by the
hills from which the Orne flows in one direction and the Sarthe in
another. Close on the French frontier, they held the strong fortress of
Alençon, the key of Normandy on that side. They are called Lords of the
city of Seez,[539] and, at the time of which we are speaking, a member
of their house filled its episcopal throne.[540] Their domains stretched
to Vinoz, a few miles south-east of Falaise, and separated from the town
by the forest of Gouffer. Ivo, the first founder of this mighty house,
had been one of the faithful guardians of the childhood of Richard the
Fearless, and had been enriched by him as the reward of his true service
in evil days.[541] But with Ivo the virtue of his race seems to have
died out, and his descendants appear in Norman and English history as
[Sidenote: Their supposed hereditary wickedness.] monsters of cruelty
and perfidy, whose deeds aroused the horror even of that not over
scrupulous age. Open robbery and treacherous assassination seem to have
been their daily occupations. The second of the line, William of
Belesme, had rebelled against Duke Robert, and had defended his fortress
of Alençon against him.[542] His eldest son Warren murdered a harmless
and unsuspecting friend, and was for this crime, so the men of his age
said, openly seized and strangled by the fiend. Of his other sons, Fulk,
presuming to ravage the ducal territory, was killed in battle, Robert
was taken prisoner by the men of Le Mans and beheaded by way of
reprisals for a murder committed by his followers. The surviving heir of
the possessions and of the wickedness of his race was his one remaining
son William Talvas.[543] This man, we are told, [Sidenote: William
Talvas; his crimes.] being displeased by the piety and good manners of
his first wife Hildeburgis, hired ruffians to murder her on her way to
church.[544] At his second wedding-feast he put out the eyes, and cut
off the nose and ears, of an unsuspecting guest.[545] This was William
the son of Geroy, one of a house whose name we shall often meet again in
connexion with the famous Abbeys of Bec and Saint Evroul. A local war
ensued, in which William Talvas suffered an inadequate punishment for
his crimes in the constant devastation of his lands. At last a more
appropriate avenger arose from his own house. The hereditary wickedness
of his line passed on to his daughter Mabel and his son Arnulf. Mabel,
the wife of Roger of Montgomery, will be a prominent character in our
story for many years. Arnulf rebelled against his father, and left him
to die wretchedly in exile. An act of wanton rapacity was presently
punished by a supernatural avenger; Arnulf, like his uncle Warren, was
strangled by a dæmon in his bed.[546] Such was the character of the
family whose chief, first in power and in crime among the nobility of
Normandy, stood forth, as the story goes, as the mouthpiece of that
nobility, to express the feelings with which the descendants of the
comrades of Rolf, the descendants of Richard the Fearless, even the
descendants of the brothers and sisters of Gunnor, looked on the
possible promotion of the Tanner’s grandson to be their lord.

[Sidenote: William Talvas curses young William.]

William Talvas, says the tale, in the days of his prosperity, was one
day in the streets of Falaise, a town where the close neighbourhood of
his possessions doubtless made him well known. The babe William, the son
of the Duke and Herleva, was being nursed in the house of his maternal
grandfather. A burgher, meeting the baron, bade him step in and see the
son of his lord. William Talvas entered the house and looked on the
babe. He then cursed him, saying that, by that child and his
descendants, himself and his descendants would be brought to shame.[547]
A curse from the mouth of William Talvas might almost be looked on as a
blessing, and the form of the prediction was such as to come very near
to the nature of a panegyric. It is indeed the highest praise of the
babe who then lay in his cradle, that he did something to bring to
shame, something to bring under the restraints of law and justice, men
like the hoary sinner who instinctively saw in him the destined enemy of
his kind. But the words, when uttered, would be meant and understood
simply as a protest against the insult which was preparing for the
aristocratic pride of the great Norman houses. Possibly indeed the tale,
like other tales of the kind, may have been devised after the event;
still it would mark none the less truly the feelings with which a man
like William Talvas, boasting of a descent from the original conquerors
of the land, looked on the unworthy sovereign whom destiny seemed to be
providing for them.

[Sidenote: Robert announces his intention of pilgrimage. 1034–5.]

Duke Robert however was bent on his purpose. He gathered an assembly of
the great men of his Duchy, among whom the presence of Archbishop
Robert, perhaps as being a possible competitor for the succession, is
specially mentioned.[548] The Duke set forth his intention of visiting
the Holy Sepulchre, and told his hearers, that, aware of the dangers of
such a journey, he wished to settle the succession to the Duchy before
he set out. The voice of the Assembly bade him stay at home and continue
to discharge the duties of government in person, especially at a time
when there was no one successor or representative to whom they could be
entrusted with any chance of the general good will. It was of course
desirable to stave off the question. Robert might yet have legitimate
heirs; or, in the failure of that hope, the Norman chiefs might
gradually come to an agreement in favour of some other candidate. Let
the Duke stay at home and guard his Duchy against the pretensions of the
Breton and the Burgundian.[549] But Robert would brook no delay in the
accomplishment of his pious purpose; he would go at [Sidenote: He
proposes William as his successor.] once to the Holy Land; he would
settle the succession before he went. He brought forward the young
William, and acknowledged him as his son. He was little, he told them,
but he would grow; he was one of their own stock, brought up among
them.[550] His overlord the King of the French had engaged to
acknowledge and protect him.[551] He called on them to accept, to
choose—the never-ceasing mixture of elective and hereditary claims
appears here as everywhere—the child as their future Lord, as his
successor in the Duchy, should he never return from the distant land to
which he was bound.[552] The Normans were in a manner entrapped. There
can be no doubt that nothing could be further from the wishes of the
majority of the Assembly than to agree to the Duke’s proposal; but there
was nothing else to be done. If Robert could not be prevailed on to stay
at home, some settlement must be made; and, little as any of them liked
the prospect of the rule of the young Bastard, there was no other
candidate in whose favour all parties could come to an agreement
[Sidenote: William’s succession accepted.] on the spot. Unwillingly then
the Norman nobility consented; they accepted the only proposal which was
before them; they swore the usual oaths, and did homage to the son of
Herleva as their future sovereign.[553] The kinsmen of Gunnor, the
descendants of the comrades of Rolf, became the men of the Tanner’s
grandson, and he himself was received as the man of King Henry at
Paris.[554] As far as forms went, no form was wanting which could make
William’s succession indisputably lawful. Duke Robert then set forth on
the pilgrimage from which he never returned. Within a few months, his
short life and [Sidenote: William succeeds his father in the Duchy.
1035.] reign came to an end at Nikaia.[555] Thus, in the same year which
beheld the great Empire of Cnut parted among his sons, did William, the
seven years old grandson of the Tanner Fulbert, find himself on the seat
of Rolf and Richard the Fearless, charged with the mission to keep down,
as his infant hands best might, the turbulent spirits who had been
unwillingly beguiled into acknowledging him as their sovereign.

[Sidenote: Necessary evils of a minority.]

Anarchy at once broke forth; all the evils which attend a minority in a
rude age were at once poured forth upon the unhappy Duchy. We see the
wisdom with which the custom of our own and of most contemporary lands
provided that the government of men should be entrusted to those only
who had themselves at least reached man’s estate. In England the
exceptional minorities of the sons of Eadmund and of Eadgar had been
calamitous, but they were nothing to compare to the minority of William
of Normandy. In England the custom of regular national assemblies, the
habit of submitting all matters to a fair vote, the recognition of the
Law as supreme over every man, hindered the state from falling into
utter dissolution, even in those perilous times. The personal reign of
Æthelred proved far weaker than the administration which Dunstan carried
on in his name in his early years. But in Normandy, where constitutional
ideas had found so imperfect a developement as compared with England,
there was nothing of this kind to fall back upon. Nothing but the
personal genius of a determined and vigorous Prince could keep that
fierce nobility in any measure of order. With the accession of an infant
there at once ceased to be any power to protect or to punish. “Woe
[Sidenote: Childhood of William.] to the land whose King is a child” is
the apt quotation of an historian of the next age.[556] The developement
of the young Duke both in mind and body was undoubtedly precocious; but
his early maturity was mainly owing to the stern discipline of that
terrible childhood. It was in those years that he learned the arts which
made Normandy, France, and England bow before him; but, at the age of
seven years, William himself was no more capable than Æthelred of
personally wielding the rod of rule. The child had good and faithful
guardians, guardians perhaps no less well disposed to fulfil their trust
towards him than Dunstan had been towards the children of Eadgar. But
there was no one man in Normandy to whom every Norman could look up as
every Englishman had looked up to the mighty Primate, and the bowl and
the dagger soon deprived the young Prince of the support of his wisest
and truest counsellors. The minority of William was truly a time when
every man did that which was right in his own eyes. And what seemed
right in the eyes of the nobles of Normandy was commonly [Sidenote:
Utter anarchy of the time.] rebellion against their sovereign, ruthless
oppression of those beneath them, and endless deadly feuds with one
another. We have already seen some specimens of their crimes in the
doings of the house of Belesme. That house is indeed always spoken of as
exceptionally wicked; but a state of things in which such deeds could be
done, and could go unpunished, must have come very nearly to a complete
break-up of society. The general pictures which we find given us of the
time are fearful beyond expression. Through the withdrawal of all
controlling power, every landowner became a petty sovereign, and began
to exercise all the sovereign rights of slaughter and devastation.
[Sidenote: Building of castles.] The land soon bristled with castles.
The mound crowned with the square donjon rose as the defence or the
terror of every lordship.[557] This castle-building [Sidenote: Building
of castles.] is now spoken of in Normandy with a condemnation nearly as
strong as that with which it was spoken of in England, when, a few years
after this time, the practice was introduced into England by the Norman
favourites of Eadward.[558] But there is a characteristic difference in
the tone of the two complaints. The English complaint always is that the
Frenchmen built castles and oppressed the poor folk,[559] or that they
did all possible evil and shame to their English neighbours.[560] The
Norman complaint, though not wholly silent as to the oppression of the
humbler ranks,[561] yet dwells mainly on the castle-building as a sign
of rebellion against the authority of the Prince, and as an occasion of
warfare between baron and baron. And it would have been well for the
reputation of the Norman nobles of that age if they had confined
themselves to open warfare with one another and open rebellion against
their sovereign. [Sidenote: Frequency of assassinations.] But they sank
below the common morality of their own age; private murder was as
familiar to them as open war. The house of Belesme had a bad preeminence
in this as in other crimes; but, if they had a preeminence, they were
far from having a monopoly. Probably no period of the same length in the
history of Christendom contains the record of so many foul deeds of
slaughter and mutilation as the early years of the reign of William. And
they were constantly practised, not only against avowed and armed
enemies, but against unarmed and unsuspecting guests. Some of the tales
may be inventions or exaggerations; but the days in which such tales
could even be invented must have been full of deeds of horror. Isolated
cases of similar crimes may doubtless be found in any age; but this
period is remarkable alike for the abundance of crimes, for the rank of
the criminals, and for the impunity which they enjoyed. To control these
men was the duty laid upon the almost infant years of William, a duty
with which nothing short of his own full and matured powers might seem
fit to grapple. Yet over all these difficulties the genius of the
[Sidenote: Effects of William’s government in Normandy.] great Duke was
at last triumphant. His hand brought order out of the chaos, and changed
a land wasted by rebellion and intestine warfare into one of the most
prosperous regions of Europe, a land flourishing as no Norman ruler had
seen it flourish before. When we think of the days in which William
spent his youth, of the men against whom his early years were destined
to be one continued struggle, we shall be less inclined to lift up our
hands in horror at his later crimes than to dwell with admiration on the
large share of higher and better qualities which, among all his evil
deeds, clave to him to his dying day.

§ 2. _From the Accession of William to the Battle of Val-ès-dunes._
1035–1047.

[Sidenote: Guardians of William.]

We have seen among what kind of men the young Duke of the Normans had to
pass the first years of his life and sovereignty. But his father, in
leaving his one lamb among so many wolves, had at least provided him
with trustworthy [Sidenote: Alan of Britanny.] guardians. Alan of
Britanny, a possible competitor for the Duchy, a neighbouring prince
with whom Duke Robert had so lately been at war,[562] was disarmed when
his overlord committed his son to his faith as kinsman and vassal, and
even invested him with some measure of authority in Normandy
itself.[563] The immediate care of the young Duke’s person was given to
one Thurcytel or Thorold, names which point to a genuine Scandinavian
descent in their bearer, and which would make us look to the Bessin as
the probable place of his birth.[564] Other [Sidenote: Osbern.]
guardians of high rank were the Seneschal Osbern, and Count Gilbert,
both of them connected in the usual way with the ducal family. Osbern
was the son of Herfast, a brother of the Duchess Gunnor; he was also
married to a daughter of Rudolf of Ivry, the son of Asperleng and
Sprota, the savage suppressor of the great [Sidenote: Gilbert.] peasant
revolt.[565] Gilbert’s connexion was still closer. He was illustrious
alike in his forefathers and in his descendants. He sprang of the ducal
blood of Normandy, and of his blood sprang the great houses of Clare and
Pembroke in England. His father Godfrey was one of those natural
children of Richard the Fearless who did not share the promotion of the
offspring of Gunnor.[566] He was lord of the border fortress of Eu,
renowned in Norman history as early as the days of Rolf;[567] he was
lord too of the pleasant valley of the Risle, separated only by one
wooded hill from the more memorable valley which is hallowed by the
names of Herlwin, Lanfranc, and Anselm. [Sidenote: Alan poisoned.
1039–1040.] All these worthy men paid the penalty of their fidelity.
Count Alan died of poison, while he was besieging the castle of
Montgomery, the stronghold of a house which we shall often have again to
mention. He died at Vinmoutier, and was buried in the abbey of Fécamp.
Breton slander afterwards threw the guilt of this crime upon the Duke
himself,[568] the person who had least to gain by it. Norman slander
threw it on Alan’s own subjects;[569] but one can hardly doubt that, if
the poisoned bowl was administered at all, it was administered by some
one or [Sidenote: Murder of Gilbert.] other of the rebellious Norman
nobles.[570] Count Gilbert was murdered by assassins employed by Ralph
of Wacey, son of Archbishop Robert.[571] The sons of the murdered man
fled to Flanders, and took refuge with the common protector of banished
men, Count Baldwin. The lands of Gilbert were divided among various
claimants; the County of Eu seems to have passed into the hands of his
uncle William;[572] but his famous castle of Brionne fell to the lot of
Guy of Burgundy, of whom, and of whose possession of the fortress, we
shall hear much as we go on.[573]

[Sidenote: Castle and house of Montgomery.]

Another still more criminal attempt directly introduces us for the first
time to another of the great Norman houses, and one whose name has been
more abiding than any other. I have just before mentioned Count Alan’s
siege of the castle of Montgomery. The name of that castle, a hill
fortress in the diocese of Lisieux, enjoys a peculiar privilege above
all others in Norman geography. Other spots in Normandy have given their
names to Norman houses, and those Norman houses have transferred those
names to English castles and English towns and villages. But there is
only one shire in Great Britain which has had the name of a Norman house
impressed [Sidenote: Roger of Montgomery and his five sons.] upon it for
ever. Roger, the present Lord of Montgomery, was, at the time of Duke
Robert’s death, in banishment at Paris.[574] His five sons remained in
Normandy, and were among the foremost disturbers of the peace of the
country.[575] But one of the five, Hugh, had a son, named, like his
[Sidenote: The younger Roger.] grandfather, Roger, who bore a better
character and was destined to a higher fate. He had, through his mother,
a connexion of the usual kind with the ducal house. Weva, a sister of
Gunnor, was the wife of Thorulf of Pont-Audemer, the son of Torf,[576]
and her daughter Joscelina was the wife of Hugh of Montgomery, and the
mother of the younger Roger.[577] On this Roger, William Talvas, in his
old age, [Sidenote: His wife Mabel, daughter of William Talvas.]
bestowed the hand of his daughter Mabel, who transferred the name, the
honours, and the hereditary wickedness of the house of Belesme to her
sons of the house of Montgomery.[578] Mabel, small in stature,
talkative, and cruel, guilty of fearful crimes and destined to a fearful
doom,[579] fills a place in history fully equal to that filled by her
husband. Of him we shall hear again as literally the foremost among the
conquerors of England; we shall see him enriched with English estates
and honours, bearing the lofty titles of Earl of Arundel and Shrewsbury,
and, once at least, adorned with the loftier title which had been borne
by Æthelred and [Sidenote: 1087.] Leofric. Once, and that while engaged
in rebellion against his prince, he flits before us for a moment as
Roger Earl of the Mercians.[580] A munificent friend of monks both in
England and in Normandy, he has left behind him a different reputation
from that of either his father, his wife, or his sons. In one of those
sons we shall see the name of his maternal ancestors revive, and, with
their name, a double portion of their wickedness.

But we have as yet to deal with the house of Montgomery [Sidenote:
Attempt of William of Montgomery on Duke William at Vaudreuil.] only in
its least honourable aspect. William, son of the elder, and uncle of the
younger, Roger, stands charged with an attempt, aimed no longer at
guardians or tutors, but at the person of the young Duke himself.
William was staying with his guardian Osbern at Vaudreuil, a castle on
an island in the Eure, said to have been the place of captivity of the
famous Fredegunda in Merowingian times.[581] Thorold, it would seem, had
been already murdered, but his assassins are spoken of only in general
terms.[582] But Osbern still watched over his young lord day [Sidenote:
Murder of Osbern; escape of the Duke.] and night. While at Vaudreuil he
was butchered by William of Montgomery in the very bedchamber of the
Duke, and the young prince owed his own safety on this, and on many
other occasions, to the zealous care of his maternal uncle Walter. Many
a time did this faithful kinsman carry him from palace and castle to
find a lurking-place from those who sought his life in the cottages of
the poor.[583] The blood of Osbern was soon avenged; a faithful servant
of the murdered Seneschal presently did to William of Montgomery as
William of Montgomery had done to Osbern.[584] In the state of things in
Normandy at that moment crime could be punished only by crime. The
remembrance of the faithful Osbern lived also in the memory of the
Prince whose childhood he had so well [Sidenote: Friendship of the Duke
with William Fitz-Osbern.] guarded. His son William grew up from his
youth as the familiar friend and counsellor of his namesake the Duke.
This is that famous William Fitz-Osbern who lived to be, next to the
Duke himself, the prime agent in the Conquest of England, who won, far
more than the Duke himself, the hatred of the conquered people, and who
at last perished in a mad enterprise after a crown and a wife in
Flanders.

The next enemy was Roger of Toesny, whom we have already heard of as a
premature Crusader, the savage foe [Sidenote: Rebellion and death of
Roger of Toesny.] of the Infidels of Spain.[585] Disappointed in his
dream of a Kingdom in the Iberian peninsula, he returned to his native
land to find it under the sway of the son of the Tanner’s daughter. The
proud soul of the descendant of Malahulc scorned submission to such a
lord; “A bastard is not fit to rule over me and the other Normans.”[586]
He refused all allegiance, and began to ravage the lands of his
neighbours. The one who suffered most was Humfrey de Vetulis, a son of
Thorulf of Pont-Audemer, and of Weva the sister of Gunnor. He sent his
son Roger of Beaumont against the aggressor. A battle followed, in which
Roger of Toesny and his two sons were killed, and Robert of Grantmesnil
received a mortal wound.[587] This fight was fought rather in defence of
private property than in the assertion of any public principle. But the
country gained by the destruction of so inveterate an enemy of peace as
Roger of Toesny. And here, as at every step of this stage of our
narrative, we become acquainted with men whose names are to figure in
the later portion of [Sidenote: Houses of Grantmesnil and Beaumont.] our
history. Robert of Grantmesnil was the father of Hugh of Grantmesnil,
who had no small share in the conquest of England and the division of
its spoil. Roger of Beaumont became the patriarch of the first house of
the Earls of Leicester. One of his descendants played an honourable part
in the great struggle between King and Primate in the latter half of the
twelfth century;[588] and his honours passed by female succession to
that great deliverer who made the title of Earl of Leicester the most
glorious in the whole peerage of England.[589]

[Sidenote: Ralph of Wacey chosen as the Duke’s guardian.]

By this time William was getting beyond the years of childhood, and he
was beginning to display those extraordinary powers of mind and body
with which nature had endowed him. He could now in some measure exercise
a will of his own. He still needed a guardian, but, according to the
principles of Roman Law, he had a right to a voice in determining who
that guardian should be. He summoned the chief men of his Duchy, and, by
their advice, he chose as his own tutor and as Captain-General of the
armies of Normandy,[590] Ralph the son of Archbishop Robert. The choice
seems a strange one, as Ralph was no other than the murderer of
William’s former guardian Count Gilbert.[591] But it may have been
thought politic for the young Duke to strengthen his hands by an
alliance with a former enemy, and to make, as in the case of Count Alan
of Britanny, a practical appeal to the honour of a possible rival. The
appointment of Ralph seems in fact to have had that effect. A time of
comparative internal quiet now followed. But there still were traitors
in the land. Many, we are told, of the Norman nobles, even of those who
professed the firmest fidelity to the Duke, and were loaded by him with
the highest honours, still continued to plot against him in secret.[592]
For a while they no longer revolted openly on their own account; but
there was a potentate hard by whose ear was ever open to their
suggestions, and who was ever ready to help them in any plots against
their sovereign and their country.

[Sidenote: Relations between Normandy and France hitherto friendly.]

From this point a new chapter opens in the relations between Normandy
and France. We have seen that, ever since the Commendation made by
Richard the Fearless to Hugh the Great,[593] the relations between the
Norman Princes and the Dukes and Kings of Paris had been invariably
[Sidenote: 945.] [Sidenote: 987.] friendly.[594] It was to Norman help
that the Parisian dynasty in a great measure owed its rise to
royalty;[595] it [Sidenote: 1031.] was to Norman help that the reigning
King of the French owed his restoration to his throne.[596] Henry of
Paris, made King by the help of Robert, had received Robert’s son as his
vassal,[597] and had promised to afford him the protection due from a
righteous overlord to a faithful vassal. But we [Sidenote: Return to
ill-feeling from the accession of William.] now, from the accession of
William, begin to see signs of something like a return on the French
side to the old state of feeling in the days when the Normans were still
looked on as heathen intruders, and their Duke was held to be Duke only
of the Pirates.[598] We find the French applying contemptuous epithets
to the Norman people,[599] and we find the King of the French ready to
seize every opportunity for enriching himself at the expense of the
Norman Duke.

[Sidenote: Causes of this change of feeling.]

It is not easy at first sight to explain this return to a state of
things which seemed to have passed away for more than a generation.
Still we must not forget that any prince reigning at Paris could hardly
fail to look with a grudging eye on the practically independent power
which cut him off from the mouth of his own river. The great feudatory
at Rouen seemed, in a way in which no other feudatory seemed, to shut up
his overlord in a kind of prison. The wealth and greatness and
prosperity of Normandy might seem, both historically and geographically,
to be something actually taken away from the possessions of France. This
feeling would apply to Normandy in a way in which it did not apply to
the other great fiefs of Flanders and Aquitaine. And the feeling would
on every ground be stronger in the mind of a King reigning at Paris than
in that of a King reigning at Laôn. To a French King at Paris the
Normans were the nearest and the most powerful of all neighbours, those
whose presence must have made itself far more constantly felt than that
of any other power in Gaul. Hitherto this inherent feeling of jealousy
had been kept in check by the close hereditary connexion between the two
states. The league established between Richard and Hugh had hitherto
been kept unbroken by their descendants. But the main original object of
that league, mutual support against the Carolingian King at Laôn, had
ceased to exist when the Parisian Duke assumed the royal dignity. Since
that time, the league could have rested on little more than an
hereditary sentiment between the Norman and French princes, which
probably was never very deeply shared by their subjects on either side.
And now that sentiment was giving way to the earlier and more
instinctive feeling which pointed out the Rouen Duchy as the natural
enemy of the Parisian Kingdom. It had once been convenient to forget, it
was now equally convenient to remember, that the original grant to Rolf
had been made at the immediate expense, not of the King of Laôn but of
the Duke of Paris.[600] Under these changed circumstances, the old
feeling, dormant for a time, seems to have again awakened in all its
strength. And now that Normandy held out temptations to every aggressor,
now that Norman nobles did not scruple to invite aid from any quarter
against a prince [Sidenote: Ingratitude of King Henry.] whose years were
the best witness of his innocence, every feeling of justice and
generosity seems to have vanished from the mind of King Henry. The King
who owed his Crown to the unbought fidelity of Duke Robert did not
scruple to despoil the helpless boy whom his benefactor had [Sidenote:
Dispute about Tillières.] entrusted to his protection. The border
fortress of Tillières formed the first pretext. That famous creation of
Richard the Good had been raised as a bulwark, not against the King, but
against the troublesome Count of Chartres.[601] But Odo had found it
convenient to surrender the disputed territory of Dreux to the
Crown;[602] the Arve therefore now became the boundary between Normandy
and the royal domain. Tillières was accordingly declared to be a
standing menace to Paris, whose retention was inconsistent with any
friendly relations between King and Duke.[603] The loyal party in
Normandy thought it better to yield than to expose their young Duke to
fresh jeopardy.[604] But the actual commander of the fortress was of
another mind. [Sidenote: Gilbert Crispin besieged in Tillières.]
Tillières had been entrusted by Duke Robert to Gilbert Crispin, the
ancestor of a race by whom, after its restoration to Normandy, the
border fortress was held for several generations.[605] He scorned to
agree to a surrender which he looked on as dangerous and
disgraceful;[606] he shut himself up in the castle with a strong force,
and there endured a siege at the hands of the King. Besides his own
subjects, Henry had a large body of Normans in the besieging host.[607]
It is not clear whether these were Normans of the disaffected party, or
whether the Duke’s own adherents, when they had once pledged themselves
to surrender the castle, deemed it expedient to display this excess of
zeal against a comrade who had carried his loyalty to the extreme of
[Sidenote: Tillières surrendered and burned.] disobedience. It is
certain that it was only in deference to orders given in the Duke’s
name, and which seem to imply the Duke’s personal presence,[608] that
the gallant Gilbert at last surrendered his trust. The fortress of which
Normandy had been so proud was handed over to the French King, and was
at once given to the flames, to the sorrow of every true Norman
heart.[609] The King pledged himself, as one of the conditions of the
surrender, not to restore the fortress for four years.[610] But, if the
Norman writers may be trusted, he grossly belied his faith. His somewhat
unreasonable demand had been granted, and no further provocation seems
to have been given on the Norman side. But, now that the protecting
fortress [Sidenote: Henry invades Normandy and restores Tillières.] was
dismantled, Henry ventured on an actual invasion. He retired for a
while; but he soon returned and crossed the border. He passed through
the County of Hiesmes, the old appanage of Duke Robert; from the valley
of the Dive he passed into the valley of the Orne, and burned the Duke’s
own town of Argentan. He then returned laden with booty, and, on his way
back, in defiance of his engagements, he restored and garrisoned the
dismantled fortress of Tillières.[611] The border fortress, so long the
cherished defence of Normandy, now became the sharpest thorn in her
side.

It is impossible to doubt that this devastation of the County of Hiesmes
was made by special agreement with the man who was most bound to defend
it. The commander of the district was Thurstan surnamed Goz, the son of
Ansfrid the Dane.[612] In this description, so long after the first
occupation of the country, we must recognize a son of a follower of
Harold Blaatand,[613] not a son of an original companion of Rolf. And a
son of a follower of Harold Blaatand must have been by this time a man
advanced in life. But neither his age and office, nor his Scandinavian
[Sidenote: Treason of Thurstan Goz.] descent and name, hindered Thurstan
from playing into the hands of the French invaders. Seeing that the Duke
had been thus compelled to yield to the King, Thurstan [Sidenote: He
garrisons Falaise Castle against the Duke.] looked upon the moment as
one propitious for revolt. He took some of the King’s soldiers into his
pay, and with their help he garrisoned the castle of Falaise against the
Duke.[614] Young William’s indignation was naturally great. To select
that particular spot as a centre of rebellion was not only a flagrant
act of disloyalty, but the grossest of personal insults. Acting under
the guidance of his guardian Ralph of Wacey, he summoned all loyal
Normans to his standard, and advanced to the siege of his [Sidenote: The
castle besieged and taken by the Duke and Ralph of Wacey.] birthplace.
The castle was attacked by storm, a fact which shows that the town was
loyal, proud as it well might be of numbering among its sons not only a
sovereign, but a sovereign who was beginning to be renowned even in his
boyhood. It was only on the side of the town that the castle could be
assaulted in this way. William himself could hardly have swarmed up the
steep cliffs which looked down upon the dwelling of his grandfather, nor
could he, like the English invader four centuries later, command the
fortress by artillery planted on the opposite heights. By dint of sheer
personal strength and courage, the gallant Normans assaulted the massive
walls of the Norman fortress, in the heart of the Norman land, which
French hirelings, in the pay of a Norman traitor, were defending against
the prince to whom that fortress owes a renown which can never pass
away. Their attacks made a breach, perhaps not in the donjon itself, but
at any rate in its external defences; night alone, we are told, put an
end to the combat, and saved Thurstan and his party from all the horrors
of a storm. But the rebel chief now saw that his hopes were vain; he
sought a parley with the Duke, and was allowed to go away unhurt on
condition of perpetual banishment from Normandy. [Sidenote: Thurstan’s
descendants, the Earls of Chester.] Thurstan’s son, Richard, Viscount of
Avranches, proved a loyal servant to William, and in the end procured
the pardon of his father.[615] The son of the loyal Richard, the
grandson of the rebel Thurstan, finds a place in English history by the
name of Hugh the Wolf, the first of the mighty but short-lived line of
the Counts Palatine of Chester.[616]

[Sidenote: Developement of Williams’s character.]

The young Duke’s great qualities were now fast displaying themselves. At
the earliest age which the rules of chivalry allowed, he received the
ensigns of knighthood from King Henry, and his subjects now began, not
without reason, to look forward to a season of peace and order under his
rule.[617] We hardly need the exaggerated talk of his extravagant
panegyrist to feel sure that William, at an unusually early age, taught
men to see in him the born ruler. We hear, not only of his grace and
skill in every warlike exercise, not only of his wisdom in the choice of
his counsellors, but of his personally practising every virtue that
becomes a man and a prince. William, we are told, was fervent in his
devotions, righteous in his judgements, and he dealt out a justice as
strict as that of Godwine or Harold upon all disturbers of the public
peace.[618] All this we can well believe. Of all these virtues he
retained many traces to the last. A long career of ambition, craft, and
despotic rule, never utterly seared his conscience, never brought him
down to the level of those tyrants who neither fear God nor regard man.
And in the fresh and generous days of youth, we can well believe that
one so highly gifted, and who as yet had so little temptation to abuse
his gifts, must have shone forth before all men as the very model of
every princely virtue. In one important point however, the public acts
of William, or of those who acted in his name, hardly bear out the
language of his [Sidenote: Ecclesiastical appointments abused by the
Norman Dukes.] panegyrists. His first ecclesiastical appointments were
quite unworthy of the prince who was, somewhat later in life, to learn
to appreciate and to reward the virtues of Lanfranc and Anselm. The two
greatest preferments of the Norman Church fell vacant during this
period, and the way in which they were filled illustrates a not uncommon
practice of the Norman princes which had few or no parallels in England.
There have been few instances in England in any age of great spiritual
preferments being perverted into means of maintenance for cadets or
bastards of the royal house. In Normandy, at least since the days of
Richard the Fearless, the practice had been shamefully common, and in
the early days of William the scandal still continued.

It must be remembered that the Prelates of Normandy, [Sidenote: Position
of the Norman Prelates.] like the Prelates of the other great fiefs of
the French Crown, were, in every sense, the subjects of the Princes
within whose immediate dominions they found themselves. Here was one
great point of difference between the condition of France and the
condition of Germany. In Germany all the great churchmen, in every part
of the country, held immediately of the Emperor. Every Bishop was
therefore reckoned as a Prince. The episcopal city also commonly became
a Free City of the Empire, and, as such, a commonwealth enjoying
practical independence. [Sidenote: Their subjection to the Ducal
authority.] No such oases of ecclesiastical or municipal privilege
interrupted the continuous dominion of a Norman or Aquitanian Duke. The
Metropolitan of Rouen or of Bourdeaux might be either the loyal subject
or the refractory vassal of his immediate Prince; but in no case was he
a coordinate sovereign, owning no superior except in the common
overlord. It is only among the Bishops within the Crown lands, those
who, in the extemporized jurisprudence of a later age, sat as Peers of
France, alongside of the great Dukes and Counts, that the slightest
signs of any such hierarchical independence can be discerned. At an
earlier age we have indeed seen the metropolitan see of Rheims holding a
position which faintly approached that of Mainz or Köln;[619] but even
Rheims had now considerably fallen from its ancient greatness, and no
such claims to princely authority were at any time put forward by the
proudest Prelate of Rouen or Bayeux. It was as Count of Evreux, rather
than as Primate of Normandy, that Archbishop Robert had been able to
make himself so troublesome to [Sidenote: Death of Archbishop Robert.
1037.] his nephew and sovereign. That turbulent Prelate, after an
episcopate of forty-eight years, had amended his ways, and had at last
vacated both County and Archbishoprick by death.[620] In his temporal
capacity he was succeeded by a son and a grandson, after whom the County
of Evreux passed by an heiress to the house of Montfort, giving the
Count-Primate the honour of being, through female descendants, a
forefather of the great Simon.[621] The vacancy of the Archbishoprick
placed the greatest spiritual preferment in the Duchy at the disposal of
the young Duke. The choice of the new Primate was as little directed by
considerations of ecclesiastical merit as that of his predecessor, and
it proved in every way unfortunate. At the [Sidenote: Malger, Archbishop
of Rouen. 1037–1055.] head of the Norman Church William’s counsellors
placed his uncle Malger, one of the sons of Richard the Good by
Papia.[622] We shall presently find him displaying no very priestly
qualities, and the only act of his life which could be attributed to
Christian or ecclesiastical zeal was one which wounded the Duke himself
in the tenderest point. [Sidenote: ODO, Bishop of Bayeux. 1048–1098.] So
too, when, some years later, the great see of Bayeux fell vacant,
William bestowed it on his half-brother Odo, the son of Herleva by her
husband Herlwin of Conteville.[623] Odo, like Hugh of Rheims in earlier
times,[624] must have been a mere boy at the time of his
appointment;[625] but he held the see of Bayeux for fifty years,[626]
and, during most part of that time, his name was famous and terrible on
both sides of the Channel. The character which he left [Sidenote: His
character in England,] behind him was a singularly contradictory
one.[627] In England he was remembered only as the foremost among the
conquerors and oppressors of the land, the man who gained for himself a
larger share of English hatred than William [Sidenote: 1086]. himself,
the man whose career of wrong was at last cut short by his royal
brother, who, stern and unscrupulous as he was, at least took no
pleasure in deeds of wanton oppression. Of Odo’s boundless ambition and
love of enterprise there is no doubt. The one quality led him to aspire
to the Papal throne;[628] the other led him first to forsake his diocese
to rule as an Earl in England, and then to forsake it again to follow
his nephew Duke Robert to the first Crusade. That he was no strict
observer of ecclesiastical rules in his own person is shown by the fact
that he left behind him a son, on whom however he at least bestowed the
ecclesiastical name of John.[629] Still Norman [Sidenote: and in
Normandy.] ecclesiastical history sets Odo before us in a somewhat
fairer light than that in which we see him in English secular history.
He at least possessed the episcopal virtue of munificence, and, whatever
were the defects of his own conduct, he seems to have been an encourager
of learning and good conversation in others. He was bountiful to all,
specially to those of his own spiritual household. He [Sidenote: His
works at Bayeux. Cathedral consecrated, 1077.] rebuilt his own church at
Bayeux, where parts of his work still remain. The lower part of the
lofty towers of the western front, the dim and solemn crypt beneath the
choir, of that stately and varied cathedral, are relics of the church
reared by its most famous Bishop. These precious fragments, severe but
far from rude in style, form a striking contrast to the gorgeous arcades
which in the next century supplanted Odo’s nave, and to the soaring
choir and apse raised by a still later age. Besides renewing the fabric,
he increased the number of the clergy of his church, and founded or
enriched a monastery in the outskirts of the city, in honour of Saint
Vigor, a canonized predecessor in the see of Bayeux.[630] The name of
Odo is one which will be constantly recurring in this history, from the
day when his Bishop’s staff and warrior’s mace were so successfully
wielded against the defenders of England, till the day when he went
forth to wield the same weapons against the misbelievers of the East,
and found on his road a tomb, far from the heavy pillars and massive
arches of his own Bayeux, among the light and gorgeous enrichments with
which the art of the conquered Saracen knew how to adorn the palaces and
churches of the Norman lords of Palermo.[631]

But, though the appointments of Malger and Odo might bode but little
good for the cause of ecclesiastical reformation, it is certain that a
great movement was at this time [Sidenote: Ecclesiastical movement in
Normandy; foundation of monasteries.] going on in the interior of the
Norman Church. The middle of the eleventh century was, in Normandy, the
most fruitful æra of the foundation of monasteries. The movement in that
direction, which had begun under Richard the Fearless, had continued
under Richard the Good, and it seems to have reached its height under
Robert and William. A Norman noble of that age thought that his estate
lacked its chief ornament, if he failed to plant a colony of monks in
some corner of his possessions.[632] No doubt the fashion of founding
monasteries became, in this case, as in other cases earlier and later,
little more than a mere fashion. Many a man must have founded a
religious house, not from any special devotion or any special
liberality, but simply because it was the regular thing for a man in his
position to do.[633] And, as an age of founding monasteries must also be
an age in which men are unusually eager to enter the monastic
profession, we may infer that many men took that profession on them out
of mere imitation or prevalent impulse, without any real [Sidenote:
Character of the monastic reformations in various ages.] personal call
to the monastic life. Still, though movements of this sort may end in
becoming a mere fashion, they never are a mere fashion at their
beginning. The Norman Benedictine movement in the eleventh century, the
English Cistercian movement in the twelfth century, the still greater
movement of the Friars in the thirteenth century—we may add the
revulsion in favour of the Seculars in the fourteenth century, and the
great Jesuit movement in the sixteenth—all alike point to times when all
classes of men were dissatisfied with the existing state of the Church,
and were filled with a general desire for its reformation. The evil in
every case was that the monastic reformations were never more than
temporary. Some new foundations were created, perhaps even some old ones
were reformed; the newly kindled fire burned with great fervour for a
generation or two; a crop of saints arose, with their due supply of
legends and miracles. But presently love again waxed cold; the new
foundations fell away like the elder ones, and the next age saw its new
order arise, to run the same course of primitive poverty and primitive
holiness, degenerating into wealth, indolence, and corruption. Still
there is a peculiar charm in contemplating the early years, the infant
struggles, the simple and fervent devotion, of one of these religious
brotherhoods [Sidenote: Two monasteries claiming special notice, Bec and
Saint Evroul.] in the days of its first purity. And, among the countless
monasteries which arose in Normandy at this time, there are two which
claim some special notice at the hands of an historian whose chief aim
is to connect the history of Normandy with that of England. The famous
Abbey [Sidenote: Three Archbishops of Canterbury from Bec;] of Bec
became the most renowned school of the learning of the time, and, among
the other famous men whom it sent forth, it gave three Primates to the
throne of Augustine. Thence came Lanfranc, the right hand man of the
[Sidenote: LANFRANC, 1070–1089.] Conqueror—the scholar whose learning
drew hearers from all Christendom, and before whose logic the heretic
stood abashed—the courtier who could win the favour of Kings without
stooping to any base compliance with their will—the ruler whose crozier
completed the conquest which the ducal sword only began, and who knew
how to win the love of the conquered, even while rivetting their
fetters. [Sidenote: ANSELM, 1093–1109.] Thence too came also the man of
simple faith and holiness, the man who, a stranger in a strange land,
could feel his heart beat for the poor and the oppressed, the man who
braved the wrath of the most terrible of Kings in the cause at once of
ecclesiastical discipline and of moral righteousness. Such are the
truest claims of Anselm to the reverence of later ages, but it must not
be forgotten that, if Bec sent forth in Lanfranc the great reformer of
ecclesiastical discipline, it sent forth also in his successor the
father of the whole dogmatic theology of later times. [Sidenote:
Theobald, 1139–1161.] The third Metropolitan who found his way from Bec
to Canterbury cannot compete with the fame of either of his great
predecessors; yet Theobald lives in history as the first to discern the
native powers of one whose renown presently came to outshine the renown
of Lanfranc and Anselm. The early patron of Thomas the burgher’s son of
London may fairly claim some reflected share of the glory which
surrounds the name of Thomas the Chancellor of England, the Primate and
the Martyr of Canterbury. [Sidenote: Ouche or Saint Evroul.] By the side
of the house which sent forth men like these the name of the other
Norman monastery of which I speak may seem comparatively obscure. Yet
the Abbey of Ouche or Saint Evroul has its own claim on our respect. It
was the spot which beheld the composition of the record from which we
draw our main knowledge of the times following [Sidenote: The home of
Orderic Vital.] those with which we have immediately to deal; it was the
home of the man in whom, perhaps more than in any other, the characters
of Norman and Englishman were inseparably mingled. There the historian
wrote, who, though the son of a French father, the denizen of a Norman
monastery, still clave to England as his country and gloried in his
English birth[634]—the historian who could at once admire the greatness
of the Conqueror and sympathize with the wrongs of his victims, who,
amid all the conventional reviling which Norman loyalty prescribed,
could still see and acknowledge with genuine admiration the virtues and
the greatness even of the perjured Harold.[635] To have merely produced
a chronicler may seem faint praise beside the fame of producing men
whose career has had a lasting influence on the human mind; yet, even
beside the long bead-roll of the worthies of Bec, some thought may well
be extended to the house where Orderic recorded the minutest details of
the lives alike of the saints and of the warriors of his time.

[Sidenote: Early history of Bec.]

The tale of the early days of Bec is one of the most captivating in the
whole range of monastic history or monastic legend. It has a character
of its own. The origin of Bec differs from that of those earlier
monasteries which gradually grew up around the dwelling-place or the
burial-place of some revered Bishop or saintly hermit. It differs again
from the origin of those monasteries of its own age which were the
creation of some one external founder. Or rather it united the two
characters in one. It gradually rose to greatness from very small
beginnings; but, gradual as the process was, it took place within the
lifetime of one man. And that man was at once its founder and its first
ruler. The part of Cuthberht at Lindisfarne, the parts of William and of
Lanfranc at Caen, [Sidenote: Herlwin, founder of Bec, born 994.] were
all united in Herlwin, Knight, Founder, and Abbot. This famous man
passed thirty-seven years of his life as a man of the world, a Norman
gentleman and soldier. His father Ansgod boasted of a descent from the
first [Sidenote: His descent] Danes who occupied Neustria,[636] that is
to say, from the original companions of Rolf as distinguished from the
later settlers under Harold Blaatand.[637] And this descent agrees with
the geographical position of his estates, which lay, though on the left
bank of the Seine, yet on the right bank of the Dive, within the limits
of the original grant of Charles the Simple.[638] On the spindle side he
boasted of a still higher ancestry; his mother Heloise is said, on what
authority it is not very clear, to have been a near [Sidenote: and early
life.] kinswoman of the reigning house of Flanders.[639] He was a vassal
of Count Gilbert of Brionne, the faithful guardian of William, in the
neighbourhood of whose castle his own estates lay. He had proved his
faithfulness to his immediate lord by many services of various kinds,
and he had won the favour, not only of Count Gilbert but of their common
sovereign Duke Robert. On one occasion, an injury received from the
Count had caused him to forsake [Sidenote: His virtues.] his service.
But presently the Count was engaged in a more dangerous warfare with
Ingelram, Count of Ponthieu. Herlwin with his followers came at a
critical moment to Gilbert’s help, and the Count restored all, and more
than all, that he had taken away from one who so well knew how to return
good for evil.[640] At another time Gilbert sent Herlwin to the ducal
court on an errand of which his conscience disapproved;[641] he failed
to execute the unjust commission; in revenge the Count ravaged the lands
of Herlwin and did great damage to their poor occupiers.[642] Herlwin
went to the Count, and made light of his own injury, but prayed that in
any case the losses of the poor might be made good to them. Such a man
was already a saint in practice, if not in profession; and we have no
right to assume that, in this carrying out of Christian principles into
daily life, Herlwin stood alone among the gallant gentlemen of Normandy.
But the misfortune always was that men like Herlwin, who were designed
to leaven the world by their virtues, were in that age open to so many
temptations to forsake the world [Sidenote: He contemplates monastic
retirement.] altogether. Herlwin began to feel himself out of place in
the secular world of Normandy, full, as it was in those days, of strife
and bloodshed, where every man sought to win justice for himself by his
own sword. But he was hardly more out of place in the Norman
ecclesiastical world, where priests not only married freely, but bore
arms and lived the life of heathen Danes,[643] and where even monks used
their fists in a way which would hardly have been becoming in
laymen.[644] The faith of Herlwin nearly failed him when he saw the
disorder of one famous monastery; but he was comforted by accidentally
beholding the devotions of one godly brother, who spent the whole night
in secret prayer. He was thus convinced that the salt of the earth had
not as yet wholly lost its savour.[645]

[Sidenote: Herlwin begins his foundation at Burneville. 1034.]

Herlwin now, at the age of forty, retired from the world, and received
the habit of religion from Herbert, Bishop of Lisieux.[646] Count
Gilbert released him from his service, and seemingly released his lands
from all feudal dependence on himself.[647] Herlwin then began the
foundation of a monastery on his own estate of Burneville near
Brionne.[648] A few devotees soon gathered round him. They lived a hard
life, Herlwin himself joining them in tilling the ground, and in raising
with his own hands the church and the other buildings needed by the
infant brotherhood.[649] The [Sidenote: He becomes Priest and Abbot.
1037.] church, when finished, was consecrated by Bishop Herbert, who at
the same time ordained Herlwin a priest, and gave him the usual
benediction as Abbot of the new society.[650] About the same time he for
the first time learned to read, and that to such good purpose that he
gradually became mighty in the Scriptures, and that without ever
neglecting the daily toil which his austere discipline imposed upon
himself.[651] His mother Heloise also, struck by the example of her son,
gave up her dower-lands, and became a sort of serving sister to the
brotherhood, washing their clothes, and doing for them other menial
services.[652] But after a while it was found that the site of
Burneville was unsuited for a religious establishment; it seems not to
have been well supplied with the two great monastic necessities of wood
[Sidenote: He removes the monastery to Bec.] and water.[653] Herlwin
therefore determined to remove his infant colony to a spot better suited
to his purpose, a spot to which his own name has ever since been
inseparably attached. A wooded hill divides the valley of the Risle,
with the town and castle of Brionne, from another valley watered by a
small stream, or, in the old Teutonic speech of the Normans, a
_beck_.[654] That stream gave its name to the most famous of Norman
religious houses, and to this day the name of Bec is never uttered to
denote that spot without the distinguishing addition of the name of
Herlwin. [Sidenote: Present condition of the spot.] The hills are still
thickly wooded; the beck still flows, through rich meadows and under
trees planted by the water-side, by the walls of what once was the
renowned monastery to which it gave its name. But of the days of Herlwin
no trace remains besides these imperishable works of nature. A tall
tower, of rich and fanciful design, one of the latest works of mediæval
skill, still attracts the traveller from a distance; but of the mighty
minster itself all traces, save a few small fragments, have
perished.[655] The monastic buildings, like those of so many other
monasteries in Normandy and elsewhere in Gaul, had been rebuilt in the
worst days of art, and they are now applied to the degrading purposes of
a receptacle of French cavalry. The gateway also remains, but it is,
like the rest of the buildings, of a date far later than the days of
Herlwin. The truest memorial of that illustrious Abbey is now to be
found in the parish church of the neighbouring village. In that lowly
shelter is still preserved the effigy with which after times had marked
the resting-place of the Founder. Such are all the traces which now
remain of the house which once owned Lanfranc and Anselm as its inmates.

[Sidenote: Herlwin’s government as Abbot.]

In this valley it was that Herlwin finally fixed his infant settlement,
devoting to it his own small possessions in the valley itself, and
obtaining from Count Gilbert a grant of the adjoining wood, one of the
most precious possessions of the lordship of Brionne.[656] There Herlwin
built his first church, and added a wooden cloister, which he afterwards
exchanged for one of stone.[657] There he ruled his house in peace and
wisdom, his knowledge of the outer world, and especially his familiarity
with the laws of Normandy, standing him, we are told, in good
stead.[658] Bec seemed destined to the ordinary lot of a monastic
house—to a short succession of men of primitive zeal and primitive
virtue, followed by a period of worldly prosperity, leading to its usual
results of coldness and laxity. And such doubtless would have been its
fate, the glory of Bec would have been as transitory as that of other
monastic houses, but for the appearance of [Sidenote: Effects of the
admission of Lanfranc.] one illustrious man, who came to be enrolled as
a private member of the brotherhood, and who gave Bec for a while a
special and honourable character with which hardly any other monastery
in Christendom could compare. Abbot [Sidenote: Herlwin’s death. 1078.]
Herlwin survived his first conversion forty-four years;[659] his first
humble church was pulled down and rebuilt, and [Sidenote: The church
consecrated by Lanfranc. 1077.] the new fabric was hallowed in his
presence by one whom he had himself received to the monastic order, one
who had made Bec the light of the world, and who then returned to his
old home in all the greatness of the Patriarch of the nations beyond the
sea.[660] If the first origin of the house was owing to the simple
devotion of its founder and Abbot Herlwin, its lasting fame and
splendour were no less owing to the varied learning and soaring genius
of its renowned Prior Lanfranc.

[Sidenote: Origin and character of Lanfranc.]

The future Primate of England was one of the most illustrious witnesses
to that feature in the Norman character which made the men of that race
welcome strangers from every quarter, and which led to the settlement of
so many eminent men of various nations, both in Normandy itself and in
the conquered lands of Britain and Sicily.[661] In the days of Richard
the Good, monks and priests had flocked into Normandy, even from such
distant lands as Greece and Armenia, and the Norman Duke had kept up a
close intercourse even with the monks of Mount Sinai.[662] The first
great teacher of Bec came from a nearer, though [Sidenote: His birth at
Pavia. 1005.] still a distant, region. Lanfranc, Prior of Bec, Abbot of
Saint Stephen’s, Archbishop of Canterbury, was a native of the Lombard
city of Pavia, and was born of a family which, though perhaps not
technically noble, was at any rate [Sidenote: His learning;] eminent and
honourable.[663] He was full of all the secular learning of the time,
and his range of study seems to have taken in the unusual accomplishment
of a knowledge of Greek.[664] A knowledge of that tongue was then
probably less rare than it became somewhat later, and it is an
accomplishment which might be looked for in Italy, even in the northern
part of the peninsula, more naturally than [Sidenote: his knowledge of
Greek,] in any country north of the Alps. At the time of Lanfranc’s
birth and youth, a large part of Southern Italy was still subject to the
Eastern Emperors, and the use of the Greek language survived, both in
Sicily and on the main land, long after the establishment of the Norman
dynasty. A knowledge of that tongue must therefore have been highly
expedient for those who were likely to have any intercourse, diplomatic
or commercial, with the parts of Italy where it was spoken; still we
cannot suppose that its acquirement formed any part of the ordinary
course of study [Sidenote: and of Civil Law.] of a Lombard scholar. But
the great object of Lanfranc’s study was one specially adapted to the
Imperialist city where he was born, the study of the Civil Law. It was
an hereditary calling in his family; his father Hanbald had been a
lawyer of distinction,[665] and his son more than maintained the credit
of his house. As a pleader, he was eminently successful; the veterans of
the courts could not resist the eloquence and the learning with which he
spoke, and his legal opinions were accepted as decisive by the
magistrates of his native city.[666] His father died while Lanfranc was
still young, and his honours and offices were offered to his son.[667]
Why a man who had such fair prospects at home should have forsaken that
home for the distant and barbarous Normandy, it is not easy to
guess.[668] We are told only that he heard that Normandy was a land
which [Sidenote: He opens a school at Avranches. 1039.] lacked learning,
and that its young Duke was disposed to give encouragement to learned
men.[669] At all events, early in the period of anarchy which formed the
early years of the reign of William, Lanfranc came into Normandy with a
following of scholars, and opened a school in the episcopal city of
Avranches.[670] The cathedral church of that [Sidenote: 1172.] city
beheld in after times the penance by which the greatest successor of
William atoned for his share in the death of the most renowned among the
successors of Lanfranc. But the glory of Avranches has passed away. From
it, alone among the seven episcopal towns of Normandy, minster and
Bishoprick have wholly vanished.[671] But, for those few years of the
life of Lanfranc, Avranches must have been an intellectual centre
without a rival on this side of the Alps. The fame of the great teacher
was spread abroad, and scholars flocked to him from all quarters. But as
yet his learning was wholly secular; his pursuits were peaceful, but he
thought perhaps less of divine things than Herlwin had thought when he
rode after Count Gilbert to battle. At last divine grace touched his
heart; a sudden conversion made him resolve to embrace the monastic
[Sidenote: He becomes a monk at Bec. 1042.] profession. He left
Avranches suddenly, without giving any notice to his friends and
scholars, and set forth to seek for the poorest and most lowly monastery
that could be found, for one which his own fame had never reached.[672]
A happy accident led him to Bec, which then fully answered his
ideal.[673] Received as a monk by Abbot Herlwin, he strove to hide
himself from the world; he even at one time thought of leaving the
monastery, and leading a life of utter solitude in the wilderness.[674]
But the [Sidenote: He becomes Prior. 1045.] Abbot required him on his
obedience to remain, and he was advanced to the dignity of Prior.[675]
He had already proved his fitness to command by his readiness to obey.
His predecessor in the Priorship, an unlearned man, had bidden him, when
reading in the refectory, to shorten the second syllable of _docere_.
The great scholar did as he was bid, deeming holy obedience to be
something higher than the rules of Donatus.[676] But such necessity was
not long laid upon him; such a light as his could not long be hid under
a bushel; his fame was again spread abroad, and, with it, the fame of
the house in which he sojourned. Clerks and scholars, men of noble
birth, even sons of princes, flocked to profit by the instruction of the
learned Prior, and enriched the Abbey with costly gifts for his
sake.[677] The society increased so fast that the buildings were found
to be too small, and the site not healthy enough for so great a
multitude.[678] By the persuasion of Lanfranc, Herlwin was induced to
change his abode once more, and to raise a third house, larger and more
stately than either of its predecessors,[679] but still within the same
valley and [Sidenote: His favour with William.] upon the banks of the
same beck. At last the name of the Prior of Bec reached the ears of Duke
William himself. Lanfranc became his trusted counsellor,[680] and we
shall presently find him acting zealously and successfully on his
sovereign’s behalf, in pursuit of the object which, next to the Crown of
England, was nearest to William’s heart. [Sidenote: He appears at the
Synods of Rome and Vercelli. 1049, 1050.] The fame of Lanfranc soon
spread beyond the bounds of Normandy; he appeared, as we have already
seen, at a succession of synods, as the champion of the received
doctrine of the Church.[681] The theological position of Lanfranc I
leave to be discussed by others;[682] it is enough to say that, summoned
before Pope and Council as a suspected heretic, he came away from Rome
and Vercelli with the reputation of the most profound and most orthodox
doctor of his time.[683]

[Sidenote: The monastery of Ouche or Saint Evroul.]

The monastery of Ouche or Saint Evroul had, as far as the eleventh
century was concerned, an origin of a different kind from that of Bec;
but its story is really little more than that of Bec carried back into
an earlier age. That is to say, while Bec was altogether a new
foundation, Saint Evroul was, like many other religious houses both in
England and Normandy, a restoration of an earlier one. In both countries
the Scandinavian invaders had destroyed or pillaged countless churches
and monasteries. Many of these last, sometimes after complete
destruction, sometimes after dragging on a feeble existence during the
intermediate time, rose again, like Crowland and Jumièges, in more than
their former greatness. But the case of Saint Evroul was a peculiar one.
Its temporary fall was owing, not to the devastations of heathen
Northmen, but to the wars between Christian [Sidenote: Story of Ebrulf
or Evroul. 575.] Normandy and Christian France. The history of its
founder, Ebrulf or Evroul, a saint of the sixth century, is, in many
respects, a forestalling of the history of Herlwin of Bec.[684] Of noble
birth in the city of Bayeux,—perhaps therefore of Saxon, rather than of
either Frankish or Gaulish, blood,—high in favour at the court of
Hlothar the son of Hlodwig, he lived, even as a layman, the life of a
saint.[685] At last he forsook the world; his wife and himself both took
monastic vows; but Ebrulf, as Lanfranc had wished to do, presently
forsook his monastery for a deeper seclusion. With three companions
only, he sought out a lonely spot by the river Charenton, close by the
forest of Ouche, on the borders of the dioceses of Lisieux, Evreux, and
Seez. There he lived a hermit’s life, adorned, as we are told, by many
miracles,[686] and his cell, like the cell of Guthlac at Crowland,
became the small beginning of a [Sidenote: Monastery of Saint Evroul; it
escapes the Danish ravages;] famous monastery. The secluded site of the
house saved it from the ravages of the Northmen, and the votaries of
Saint Evroul, with almost unique good luck, remained undisturbed, while
Hasting and Rolf were overthrowing so many holy places of their brethren
elsewhere.[687] But, during the troubled minority of Richard the
Fearless, when King Lewis of Laôn and Duke Hugh of Paris were invading
the defenceless Duchy,[688] the monks of Saint Evroul received two
seemingly honourable, but, as it [Sidenote: but is pillaged by Hugh the
Great. 943.] turned out, highly dangerous, guests. These were Herlwin,
Abbot of Saint Peter’s at Orleans, the Chancellor of Hugh the Great, and
Ralph of Drangy his Chamberlain.[689] Both, we are told, were men of
great piety, but they showed their piety in a strange fashion. Soon
after their visit, Duke Hugh gave orders for the ravage of that part of
Normandy. His devout officers either despised or scrupled at plunder of
a more vulgar kind;[690] they remembered the hospitality of the monks of
Saint Evroul, and requited it by carrying off all the ornaments of their
church, including, what they most valued, the relics of their founder
and other saints. The holy spoil was duly shared among various churches
of the Duchy of France,[691] and a large [Sidenote: The monastery
forsaken.] body of the monks of Saint Evroul followed the objects of
their veneration. A few however remained behind, and the brotherhood
still dragged on a feeble existence for some time. At last the house of
Saint Evroul was utterly forsaken and forgotten, and miracles were
needed to point [Sidenote: The church restored by Restold.] out the spot
where it had stood. A pious priest[692] from Beauvais, Restold by name,
moved by a divine vision, came and dwelt on the spot, and found
benefactors willing to repair the ruined church.[693] At last one
special benefactor [Sidenote: Geroy and his family.] arose. Geroy, a man
of great valour and piety, was lord of Escalfoy by the forest of Ouche,
and of Montreuil near the Dive.[694] Of mingled French and Breton
extraction, he had been attached to the fortunes of the elder William of
Belesme, probably as a vassal of some of the estates held by him under
the Crown of France. In a [Sidenote: c. 1015.] fight against Count
Herbert of Maine, when William and all the rest of his followers had
fled, Geroy regained the day by his single valour.[695] In return for
this exploit, William introduced him at the court of Richard the Good,
by whom he was allowed to succeed to the lordships already spoken
of.[696] They had been the property of Helgo, a Norman noble, to whose
daughter Geroy had been betrothed, but the marriage was hindered by the
premature death of the bride.[697] By another wife he had a numerous
family, many of whom were distinguished in Norman [Sidenote: William son
of Geroy.] history.[698] He was himself succeeded by his second son
William who, like his father, was attached to the house of Belesme, and
also distinguished himself in the war with Maine.[699] He had however to
contend for the possession of his estates against the violence of Count
Gilbert of Brionne, a man who, on this as on some other occasions,[700]
seems to have failed to carry into his private relations those
principles of honourable conduct which in so marked a way distinguished
his administration of public affairs. William was a brave soldier and a
faithful vassal, ready to undergo any personal loss on behalf of his
lord or of his friend.[701] He was also bountiful to the Church, though
he strictly maintained the ecclesiastical privileges of his own
lordships.[702] Twice he made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, once during
the height of his prosperity, and once after the great misfortune which
clouded his later days. For [Sidenote: Blinded by William Talvas.] he it
was whom the fierce Talvas, in defiance of every tie of gratitude, of
hospitality, and of feudal honour, blinded and mutilated when he came as
a guest to his bridal.[703] The daughter of Talvas too, the cruel Mabel,
pursued the house of Geroy throughout life with unrelenting hatred.[704]
[Sidenote: He grants Saint Evroul to Bec.] In his old age he became a
monk at Bec, a house to which he had already been a benefactor.[705] He
had given to Herlwin and his monks the lands of Saint Evroul and the
church lately restored by Restold. It now became a cell to the Abbey,
inhabited by a small body of monks with Lanfranc at their head.[706] But
presently William’s nephews, Hugh and Robert of Grantmesnil,[707] were
designing the foundation of a monastery near the lordship on the Oudon
from which they took their name. Of these two brothers, Robert became a
monk of Saint Evroul; of Hugh we shall hear again in the history both
[Sidenote: Restoration of Saint Evroul. 1050.] of Normandy and of
England. Their pious uncle approved of the design, but pointed out that
the site which they had chosen was lacking in the two great monastic
necessaries of wood and water.[708] Let them rather join with him in
restoring to its ancient splendour the fallen house of Saint Evroul,
placed on a spot suited for every monastic want.[709] Uncle and nephews
joined their energies and their purses; the rights of Bec over the
church and lands were exchanged for another estate, and the new Saint
Evroul arose with the full licence of Duke William, of Archbishop
Malger, and of the other Prelates of Normandy. Monks were brought from
Jumièges, and a brother of [Sidenote: 1050.] that house, Theodoric by
name, became the first Abbot of the new foundation.[710] But the house
seems to have been [Sidenote: 1058.] far less fortunate than Bec in its
rulers. Theodoric after a while laid aside his office, driven to
resignation, it is said, by the cabals of the co-founder Robert of
Grantmesnil, who, having made his profession in the house, had obtained
[Sidenote: 1059.] the rank of Prior.[711] Robert was chosen to the
[Sidenote: 1063.] Abbotship, but, a few years after, he was himself
deposed, or driven to resignation, by Duke William,[712] and long
controversies followed between him and his successor Osbern.[713]

I have given a sketch of the origin of these two famous monasteries,
partly because their stories bring before us so many members of the
leading Norman families, but mainly [Sidenote: Connexion of the
religious movement in Normandy with the Conquest of England.] as
illustrating the great religious movement which was then at work in
Normandy, and which was not without its share in bringing about the
Conquest of England. When we come to a later stage in our history, we
shall see with what art William, and his trusty counsellor Lanfranc,
contrived to appeal to the religious feelings of the Normans, to
represent the English King as a sinner against the local saints of
Normandy, and to represent the Conquest of England as a holy war
undertaken to chastise the ungodly. Such a vein of sentiment could
hardly have been safely appealed to except at a time when there was a
great religious stir in the national mind. One side of this movement is
shown in the foundation of so many monasteries, in the zeal with which
men gave of their substance for their erection, in the eagerness with
which men, often the same men, pressed to become members of the holy
brotherhoods. But a still more honourable fruit of the religious mind of
Normandy, one however which Normandy only shared with many other parts
of Europe, is to be found in the acceptance during this period of the
famous Truce of God.

[Sidenote: The Truce of God.]

This extraordinary institution is the most speaking witness, at once to
the ferocity of the times, and also to the deep counter feeling which
underlaid men’s minds. Clergy and laity alike felt that the state of
things which they saw daily before their eyes was a standing sin against
God and man, repugnant alike to natural humanity and to the precepts of
the Christian religion. States were everywhere so subdivided,
governments were everywhere so weak, that, in most parts of Europe,
every man who had the needful force at his command simply did that which
was right in his own eyes. We cannot doubt that in those parts of
Britain where the authority of the English Kings was really established,
the evil was smaller than it was in any part of Gaul.[714] Neither can
we doubt that in Normandy, during the minority of William, the evil was
even greater than it was in other parts of Gaul. But the extreme
disorder of that minority was simply an exaggerated form of what might
be called the normal state of things throughout the greater part of
Western [Sidenote: Private war.] Europe. Every man claimed the right of
private war against every other man who was not bound to him by any
special tie as his lord or his vassal. And the distinction between
private war and mere robbery and murder was not always very sharply
drawn. It is clear that, in such a state of things, an utterly
unscrupulous man, to whom warfare, however unjust, was a mere trifle,
had a decided advantage over his more peaceable neighbours. A few such
men as William Talvas might throw a whole province into disorder; and
men who were in no way naturally disposed to wrong or violence were
necessarily driven to constant warfare in sheer self-defence. The poor
and the weak were of course the chief victims; when one gentleman
harried the lands of another, the immediate tillers of the earth must
have suffered far more severely than their master. It was the tenants of
Herlwin, rather than Herlwin himself, who had most bitterly to complain
[Sidenote: Undercurrent against the violence of the time.] of the
ravages of Count Gilbert.[715] The lower classes then had especial
reason to curse the lawlessness of the times; yet we can well believe
that there were many men of higher rank, who were dragged into these
wretched contests against their own will, and who would have been well
pleased to keep their swords sheathed, save when the lawful command of
their sovereign required them to be drawn. These two contending feelings
can always be traced side by side. Every attempt to put any kind of
check on the violence of the times was always received with general good
will; and yet the practical result of so many praiseworthy attempts was,
after all, something extremely small. The men who were ready to keep the
peace, and to observe the rules made to preserve it, were left in a
manner at the mercy of those who refused to obey any rule whatsoever.
Whatever laws were made to preserve the peace, the peaceable man was
still, as before, driven to fight in his own defence. Still the movement
in favour of law and order was a very remarkable and a very general one.
The call to observe peace towards Christians at home was a call, quite
as general, though much more gradual, than the call to wage war against
the [Sidenote: Comparison between the Truce of God and the Crusades.]
Infidels in other lands. But the call to the Crusade fell in with every
side of the temper of the times; the proclamation of the Truce of God
fell in with only one, and that its least powerful, side. Good and bad
men alike were led by widely different motives to rush to the Holy War.
The men who endeavoured to obey the Truce of God must often have found
themselves the helpless victims of those who despised it.

A movement on behalf of peace and good will towards [Sidenote: The form
taken by the movement necessarily ecclesiastical.] men could not fail in
those days to assume an ecclesiastical form. As of old the Amphiktyonic
Council, the great religious synod of Greece, strove to put some bounds
to the horrors of war as waged between Greek and Greek,[716] so now, in
the same spirit, a series of Christian synods strove, by means of
ecclesiastical decrees and ecclesiastical censures, to put some bounds
to the horrors of war as [Sidenote: Moderation of the reform attempted.]
waged between Christian and Christian. And at both times the spiritual
power showed its wisdom in not attempting too much. War was not wholly
forbidden in either case, for such a precept would have been hopelessly
impossible to carry out. But certain extreme measures were to be
avoided, certain classes of persons were to be respected, certain holy
seasons were to be kept altogether free from warfare. Such at least was
the form in which the Truce of God was preached in Normandy. But
Normandy was one of the last countries to receive the Truce, and it
seems not to have appeared there in its earliest shape. It would rather
seem as if the first attempts at its establishment had tried to compass
too much, and as if later preachers of peace had been driven to content
themselves with a much less close approach to [Sidenote: The Truce first
preached in Aquitaine. 1034.] universal brotherhood. The movement began
in Aquitaine, and the vague and rhetorical language of our authority
would seem to imply that all war, at any rate all private war, was
forbidden under pain of ecclesiastical censures.[717] It must not be
forgotten that, in that age, it [Sidenote: Difficulty of defining public
and private war.] must have been exceedingly difficult to draw the
distinction between public and private war. In England indeed, where an
efficient constitutional system existed, the distinction was plain.
Except when sudden invasion required the immediate action of the local
power, no war could be lawful which was not decreed by the King and his
Witan. There might be rebellions and civil wars, but there was no
recognized private warfare in the continental sense. But in Gaul it
would have been impossible to deny the right of war and peace to the
great vassals of the Crown, to the sovereigns of Normandy and Aquitaine.
And, if the vassals of the Crown might make war on each other, on what
principle could the same right be refused to their vassals, to the Lords
of Alençon and Brionne? Among the endless links of the feudal chain, it
was hard to find the exact point where sovereignty ended and where
simple property began. A preacher therefore who denounced private war
must have had some difficulty in [Sidenote: Enthusiastic reception of
the Truce.] so doing without denouncing war altogether. But the
doctrine, hard as it might be to carry out in practice, was rapturously
received at its first announcement. As the first preaching of the
Crusade was met with one universal cry of “God wills it,” so the
Bishops, Abbots, and other preachers of the Truce were met with a like
universal cry of Peace, Peace, Peace.[718] Men bound themselves to God
and to one another to abstain from all wrong and violence, and they
engaged solemnly to renew the obligation every five years.[719] From
Aquitaine the movement spread through Burgundy, royal and ducal.[720]
But it seems to have been gradually found that the establishment
[Sidenote: Relaxation about 1041.] of perfect peace on earth was
hopeless. After seven years from the first preaching of peace, we find
the requirements of its apostles greatly relaxed. It was found vain to
forbid all war, even all private war. All that was now attempted was to
forbid violence of every kind from the evening of Wednesday till the
morning of Monday.[721] It [Sidenote: Reception of the Truce in Burgundy
and Lotharingia.] was in this shape that the Truce was first preached in
northern and eastern Gaul. The days of Christ’s supper, of His passion,
of His rest in the grave and His resurrection, were all to be kept free
from strife and bloodshed. The Burgundian Bishops were zealous in the
cause; so especially was Richard, Bishop of Verdun in Lotharingia.[722]
But Bishop Gerard of Cambray maintained, on the other [Sidenote:
Opposition of Gerard of Cambray.] hand, that the whole affair was no
concern of the ecclesiastical power. It was, he argued, the business of
temporal rulers to fight, and the business of spiritual men to pray; the
pious scheme of his brethren could never be carried out, and the attempt
to enforce it could lead only to an increase of false-swearing.[723]
This Prelate, in his worldly wisdom, seems to have looked deeper into
the hearts of the men of his time than his more hopeful and enthusiastic
brethren. At last the new teaching reached Normandy. The luxury of
mutual destruction was dear to the Norman mind; for a long time any
restraint upon it was strongly resisted, and even the preaching of
Bishop Richard himself had for a long time no effect.[724] Miracles were
needed to convince so stiff-necked a generation, but at last the
apostolic labours of Hagano, the successor of Richard, [Sidenote: The
Truce received at the Councils of Caen [1042],] brought even Normandy to
a better mind.[725] The young Duke and his counsellors were urgent in
behalf of the Truce, and it was at last received by the Clergy and Laity
of Normandy in the famous Council held for that purpose at Caen.[726] We
are told that it was most carefully observed;[727] but, nearly forty
years after, when the long reign of William was drawing towards its end,
it had to be [Sidenote: and Lillebonne [1080].] again ordained in
another Council at Lillebonne, and all the powers of the State,
ecclesiastical and temporal, were called on to help in enforcing its
observance.[728]

The men who laboured to put even this small check on the violence of the
times are worthy of eternal honour, and it is probable that the
institution of the Truce of God really did something for a while to
lessen the frightful anarchy into which Normandy had fallen. But we can
hardly doubt that a far more effectual check was supplied by the
increasing strength of William’s government, as he drew nearer to
manhood, and more and more fully displayed the stern and vigorous
determination of his character. But neither the one nor the other could
avail wholly to preserve Normandy for some years to come [Sidenote: Wide
spread conspiracy against William. 1047.] either from civil war or from
foreign invasion. A far more deeply spread conspiracy than any that we
have as yet heard of was now formed against the Duke. We have now
reached one of the great epochs in the life of the Conqueror; we shall
soon have to tell of his first battle and his first victory. Within a
few years after the proclamation of the Truce of God, not this or that
isolated Baron, but the whole of the most Norman part of Normandy
[Sidenote: Intrigues of Guy of Burgundy.] rose in open revolt against
its sovereign. The prime mover in the rebellion was Guy of
Burgundy.[729] He [Sidenote: His friendship with the Duke, and his large
possessions.] had been brought up with the Duke as his friend and
kinsman,[730] and he had received large possessions from his bounty.
Among other broad lands, he held Vernon, the border fortress on the
Seine, so often taken and retaken in the wars between France and
Normandy. He held also Brionne, the castle on the Risle, lately the home
of William’s faithful guardian Count Gilbert.[731] But the old jealousy
was never lulled to sleep; the sway of the Bastard was insupportable,
and, the greater the qualities that William displayed, the more
insupportable was it doubtless felt to be. William had now reached
manhood. After such a discipline as he had gone through, his nineteen
years of life had given him all the caution and experience of a far more
advanced age. He was as ready and as able to show himself a born leader
of men as Cnut had been at the same time of life.[732] The turbulent
spirits of Normandy began to feel that they had found a master; unless a
blow were struck in time, the days of anarchy and licence, the days of
castle-building and oppression, would [Sidenote: He plots with the lords
of the Bessin and Côtentin.] soon be over. Guy of Brionne therefore
found many ready listeners, especially among the great lords of the true
Norman land west of the Dive. He, the lawful heir of their Dukes, no
bastard, no tanner’s grandson, but sprung of a lawful marriage between
the princely houses of Burgundy and Normandy, claimed the Duchy as his
right by birth.[733] But, if the lords of the Bessin and the [Sidenote:
Scheme for a division of the Duchy.] Côtentin would aid him in
dispossessing the Bastard, he would willingly share the land with
them.[734] This most probably means that he would content himself with
the more purely French parts of the Duchy, the original grant to Rolf,
and would leave the Barons of the later settlements in the enjoyment of
independence. We can thus understand, what at first sight seems
puzzling, why the cause of Guy was taken up with such zeal. Otherwise it
is hard to see why the chiefs of any part of Normandy, and, above all,
the chiefs of this more strictly Scandinavian part, should cast aside a
prince who was at any rate a native Norman, in favour of one whose
connexion with Normandy was only by the spindle side, and who must have
seemed [Sidenote: Geographical division of Parties;] in their eyes
little better than a Frenchman. We can thus also understand the
geographical division of parties during the war which followed. William
is faithfully supported by the French districts to the East; by Rouen
and the [Sidenote: Rouen and the French lands loyal to William.] whole
land to the right of the Dive. These are the districts which the
division between Guy and the confederate Lords would have given to the
Burgundian prince, and which no doubt armed zealously against any such
arrangement. To them the overthrow of William’s authority meant their
own handing over to a foreign ruler. But to [Sidenote: Bayeux and the
Danish lands join the rebellion.] the inhabitants, at any rate to the
great lords, of the Lower Normandy, the Scandinavian land, it would seem
that the struggle against the ducal power was simply a struggle for
renewed independence. We are told that the sympathies of the mass of the
people, even in the Bessin and the Côtentin, lay with William.[735] This
is quite possible. The peasant revolt may well have left behind it some
root of abiding bitterness, bitterness which would show itself far more
strongly against the immediate lords of the soil than against the
distant sovereign, who is, in such cases, always looked to as a possible
protector. But the great lords of the western districts joined eagerly
in the rebellion; and the smaller gentry, willingly or unwillingly,
followed their banners. The descendants of the second colony of
Rolf,[736] of the colonies of William Longsword and Harold Blaatand,
drew the sword against the domination of the districts which, even a
hundred years before, had become French.[737] Saxon Bayeux and Danish
Coutances rose against Romanized Rouen and Evreux. We know not whether
the old speech and the old worship may not still have lingered in some
out-of-the-way corners; it is certain that the difference in feeling
between the two districts was still living and working, just as the
outward difference is still to this day stamped on their inhabitants.
[Sidenote: Rebel leaders;] The foremost men of western Normandy at once
attached themselves to Guy, and joined zealously in his plans. First in
the revolt was Nigel or Neal of Saint Saviour, Viscount[738] of
Coutances, the son of the chief who had, forty-six [Sidenote: Neal of
Saint Saviour.] years before, beaten back the host of Æthelred.[739] The
elder Neal had died, full of years, during the days of anarchy,[740] and
his son was destined to an equally long possession of his honours. In
the very heart of his peninsula stood his castle by the Ouve, already
consecrated by a small college of Canons, the foundation of his
grandfather Roger, soon to give way to his own famous Abbey of Saint
Saviour.[741] This point formed the natural centre of the whole
conspiracy. From that castle, Neal, the ruler of the Côtentin, commanded
the whole of that varied region, its rich meads, its hills and valleys,
its rocks and marshes, the dreary _landes_ by the great minster of
Lessay, the cliffs which look down on the fortress of Cæsar, and which
had stood as beacons to guide the sails of Harold Blaatand to the
rescue.[742] The Viscount of Saint Saviour now became the chief leader
of the rebellion, won over by the promises and gifts of Guy, who did not
scruple to rob his mother of her possessions, and to bestow them on his
ally.[743] With Neal [Sidenote: Randolf, Viscount of Bayeux.] stood
Randolf, Viscount of Bayeux, who, from his castle of Brichessart, held
the same sway over the Saxons of the Bessin which Neal held over the
Danes of the Côtentin.[744] [Sidenote: Hamon Dentatus.] In the same
company was Hamon, lord of Thorigny, lord too of the steep of Creuilly,
where a vast fabric of later times has displaced his ancient donjon, and
where the adjoining church bears witness to the splendour and bounty of
the generation immediately following his own.[745] Some personal
peculiarity entitled him to bear, in the language of our Latin
chroniclers, one of the most glorious cognomina of old Rome, and Hamon
_Dentatus_ became the forefather of men famous in British as well as in
Norman history.[746] One loyal chronicler, in his zeal, speaks of the
rebel by the strange name of Antichrist;[747] but, as in the case of
Thurstan of Falaise, the stain was wiped out in the next generation. His
son, Robert Fitz-Hamon, was destined to set the seal to the work of Offa
and of Harold, to press down the yoke for ever upon the necks of the
southern Cymry, and to surround his princely fortress of Cardiff with
the lowlier castles of his twelve homagers of [Sidenote: Grimbald of
Plessis.] the land of Morganwg. Hardly less famous was a third Baron
from the Saxon land, Grimbald of Plessis, whose ancestors and whose
descendants have won no renown, but whose own name still remains
impressed upon his fortress, and whose sister’s son became the
forefather of a mighty house in England. Of her stock came William of
Albini, who, like the Tudor of later days, won the love of a widowed
Queen, and whose name still lives among his works in the fortresses of
Arundel and Castle Rising.[748] By the help of these men the claims of
the Burgundian became widely acknowledged. They swore to support his
rights, and to deprive the Bastard of the Duchy which he had invaded,
whether by force of arms or by the baser acts [Sidenote: Preparations
for the revolt.] of treachery. They put their castles into a state of
thorough defence; they stored them for a campaign or a siege,[749] and
made ready for the most extensive and thoroughly organized revolt which
the troubled reign of the young Duke had yet beheld.

The revolt began, as an earlier revolt had begun,[750] with a
treacherous attempt to seize or murder the Duke, in which Grimbald seems
to have been the immediate agent.[751] [Sidenote: Attempt to seize
William at Valonges.] The opportunity was tempting, as William was now
at a point in Neal’s own Viscounty, at no great distance from his own
castle. He was at Valognes, the old town so rich in Roman remains, and
the rich and fanciful outline of whose Gothic cupola is one of the most
striking objects in the architecture of the district. Perhaps some scent
of the coming danger had reached him, and he had ventured into the
enemy’s country in order to search out matters for himself. But, in any
case, he did not neglect the chosen amusement to which he and his race
were given up, even beyond other men of their time. Several days had
been spent in the employment of William’s favourite weapon the bow[752]
against either savage or harmless victims. At [Sidenote: William warned
by his fool.] last, one night, when all his party, except his immediate
household, had left him, while he was yet in his first sleep, Gallet his
fool, like his uncle Walter at an earlier stage of his life,[753] burst
into his room, staff in hand, and aroused him. If he did not arise and
flee for his life, he would never leave the Côtentin a living man. The
Duke arose, [Sidenote: His escape.] half dressed in haste, leaped on his
horse, seemingly alone, and rode for his life all that night. A bright
moon guided him, and he pressed on till he reached the estuary formed by
the rivers Ouve and Vire. There the ebbing tide supplied a ford, which
was afterwards known as the Duke’s Way. William crossed in safety, and
landed in the district of Bayeux, near the church of Saint Clement. He
entered the building, and prayed for God’s help on his way. His natural
course would now have been to strike for Bayeux; but the city was in the
hands of his enemies; he determined therefore to keep the line between
Bayeux and the sea, and thus to take his chance of reaching the loyal
districts. As the sun rose, he drew near to the church and castle of
Rye,[754] the dwelling-place of a faithful vassal named Hubert. The Lord
of Rye was standing at his own gate, between the church and the mound on
which his castle was raised.[755] William was still urging on [Sidenote:
His reception by Hubert of Rye.] his foaming horse past the gate; but
Hubert knew and stopped his sovereign, and asked the cause of this
headlong ride. He heard that the Duke was flying for his life before his
enemies. He welcomed his prince to his house, he set him on a fresh
horse, he bade his three sons ride by his side, and never leave him till
he was safely lodged [Sidenote: He reaches Falaise.] in his own castle
of Falaise.[756] The command of their father was faithfully executed by
his loyal sons. We are not surprised to hear that the house of Rye rose
high in William’s favour; and we can hardly grudge them their share in
the lands of England, when we find that Eudes the son of Hubert, the
King’s _Dapifer_ and Sheriff of Essex, was not only the founder of the
great house of Saint John at Colchester, but won a purer fame as one of
the very few Normans in high authority who knew how to win the love and
confidence of the conquered English.[757]

[Sidenote: Progress of the rebellion.]

The Bessin and the Côtentin were now in open rebellion. We are told that
men cursed the rebels, and wished well to the Duke in their hearts. But
the revolted Barons had for the time the upper hand. They seized on the
ducal revenues within their districts, and robbed and slew many who
still clave to their allegiance. The dominion of the male line of Rolf,
the very existence of Normandy as an united state, seemed in jeopardy.
William did not venture to meet his enemies with the forces of the
districts which [Sidenote: He seeks help of the King of the French.]
still remained faithful. He was driven to seek for foreign aid, and he
sought it in a quarter where one would think that nothing short of
despair could have led him to think of seeking for it. He craved help of
one who was indeed bound to grant it by every official and by every
personal tie, but who had hitherto acted towards William only as a
faithless enemy, ready to grasp at any advantage, however mean and
treacherous. The Duke of the Normans, driven to such humiliation by the
intrigues of an ungrateful kinsman, crossed the French border, and made
his suit to his [Sidenote: Henry comes to his help in person.] Lord King
Henry at Poissy.[758] He met with favour in the eyes of his suzerain; a
French army, with the King at its head, was soon ready to march to the
support of Duke William against his rebels. It is hard to see why Henry,
whose whole earlier and later conduct is of so opposite a kind, stood
forth for this once faithfully to discharge the duties of an honourable
overlord towards an injured [Sidenote: His probable motives.] vassal.
One would have thought that a revolt which, above all others, tended to
the dismemberment of Normandy would have been hailed by Henry as exactly
falling in with the interests of the suzerain power. Instead of the one
strong and united state which had hitherto cut him off from the whole
coast from Britanny to Ponthieu, there was now a chance of the
establishment of two or three small principalities, each insignificant
in itself, and all probably hostile to one another. Such states would
run a fair risk of being recovered one by one by their overlord. Henry
had himself in past years encroached on the Norman territory, and he had
not scrupled to give encouragement to Norman traitors against their own
sovereign. Yet the common interest of princes may have led him to see
that it was bad policy to abet open rebellion, and he may have doubted
whether the aggrandizement of the mutinous Barons of the Bessin and the
Côtentin would be any real gain to France. Such neighbours might prove
far more turbulent as vassals, and might not be much more easy to subdue
as enemies, than the comparatively firm and orderly government of the
Dukes of Rouen. At all events French aid was freely granted to the
princely suppliant.[759] The King set forth at the head of his army to
join the troops which William had gathered from the loyal districts, and
to share with them in a decisive encounter with the rebel forces.

[Sidenote: BATTLE OF VAL-ÈS-DUNES, 1047;]

The French and the loyal Normans joined their forces some miles to the
east of Caen, in the neighbourhood of the memorable field of
Val-ès-dunes. The spot is not one specially attractive in itself; it is
not one of those spots which seem marked out by the hand of nature as
specially designed to become the scene of great historical events. But
we shall see that, for the purposes of the particular battle which was
fought there, no ground could have been better suited. Nor, at first
sight, does the fight of Val-ès-dunes, an engagement of cavalry between
two Norman factions, seem to have any claim to a place among the
[Sidenote: its importance in the life of William.] great battles of
history. But Val-ès-dunes was the first pitched battle of the Conqueror;
it was the field on which he first won a right to that lofty title, and
the lessons which he learned there stood him in good stead on a far more
awful day. And, more than this, it was there that William conquered his
own land and his own people, and by that earlier conquest both schooled
and strengthened himself for his mightier conquest beyond the sea.
Normandy had first to be firmly grasped, and her fierce Barons to be
brought under the yoke, before the hand of William could be stretched
forth to fix its grasp on England, and to press the yoke upon the necks
of her people. In a word, the strife with Randolf and Neal and their
revolted provinces was the needful forerunner of the strife with Harold
and his Kingdom. The tourney of Norman horsemen upon the open slope of
Val-ès-dunes was William’s school of fence for the sterner clashing of
axe and spear upon the palisaded heights of Senlac.

[Sidenote: Val-ès-dunes a battle between Romanized and Teutonic
Normandy.]

And there is another aspect in which the two battles have a common
feature. Val-ès-dunes, no less than Senlac, was a struggle between the
Roman and the Teuton. The fact was not indeed forced in the same way
upon men’s minds by the outward contrast of language, of tactics, of
every badge of national difference. Still it is none the less true that,
at Val-ès-dunes, the old Scandinavian blood of Normandy found its match,
and more than its match, in the power of France and of the French
portions of the Norman Duchy. Danish Coutances and Saxon Bayeux were
brought face to face with Romanized [Sidenote: District which supported
William.] Rouen and Evreux and with royal Paris itself. From all the
lands east of the Dive men flocked to the Ducal standard. The episcopal
cities of Lisieux and Evreux, along with primatial Rouen, sent forth
their loyal burghers, and the men of the surrounding districts pressed
no less eagerly to the muster. They came, according to the old division,
which the suppression of the peasant revolt had not wholly broken up,
arranged in companies which still retained the name of _communes_,
suggesting the freedom which they had perhaps not wholly lost.[760] From
beyond the Seine came the troops of Caux, and from the south of the
Duchy came the men of Auge, and of Duke Robert’s County of Hiesmes. And
who can doubt that foremost among them all were the burghers of
William’s own Falaise, zealous on behalf of a Prince who was also their
own immediate countryman? But the whole west of Normandy, the land where
the old Norman speech and spirit had longest lingered, was arrayed on
the side of the rebels. Except the contingent of his own birthplace and
its neighbourhood, no part of the Duke’s force seems to have come from
the lands west of the Dive; all else came from the old domain of Rolf,
the oldest, but, then as now, not the most Norman Normandy.[761]

[Sidenote: Description of the field of battle.]

The field of battle lies just within the hostile country.[762]
South-east of Caen, in continuation of the high ground of Allemagne[763]
immediately south of the town, stretches a long, broad, and slightly
elevated plain, sloping gently towards the east.[764] It hardly deserves
to be called a hill, and the indentations with which its sides are
broken hardly deserve to be called valleys.[765] Several villages and
churches, Secqueville, Bellengreville, Billy, Chicheboville, form the
boundaries of the field, but the plain itself is open and without any
remarkable feature. A ridge somewhat higher than the rest of the ground,
known as Mount Saint Lawrence, is the only conspicuous point of the
plain itself, and this marks the western boundary of the actual
battle-ground. The little stream of the Muance, a tributary of the Orne,
bounds the plain to the south-east.[766] To the north lies the high
ground of Argences, over which William advanced with the troops of the
loyal districts. The French auxiliaries, approaching from the south by
way of Mezidon, first reached the little village of Valmeray, where a
ruined tower of later date marks the site of the church of Saint Brice
in which King Henry heard mass [Sidenote: Junction of the Ducal and
French forces.] before the battle.[767] Meanwhile the Duke’s forces
crossed the Muance at the ford of Berengier,[768] and at once joined the
French. King and Duke now ranged their troops in the order in which it
was most natural to meet an enemy advancing from the west. The Normans,
who had come from the north, formed the right wing, while the French,
coming from the south, naturally formed the left.[769] There was pitched
the royal standard, on which we are told that the presumption of the
upstart house of Paris had dared to emblazon the eagle of Julius and
Charles.[770] King Henry and Duke William, each baton in hand,[771] were
now marshalling their troops, and the battle seemed about to begin,
when, if we may trust our only detailed narrative of that day’s fight,
one side was cheered and the other dispirited by an unlooked for
incident.

Ralph of Tesson was lord of the forest of Cingueleiz, [Sidenote: Ralph
of Tesson joins the Duke.] the forest some way to the south of Caen,
between the rivers Orne and Lise, and his chief seat was at Harcourt
Thury. He was a lord of great power, and his contingent is said to have
mustered no less than a hundred and twenty knights with their banners
and tokens.[772] He had no ground of offence against the Duke; yet he
had joined in the conspiracy, and had sworn on the saints at Bayeux to
smite William wherever he found him.[773] But his heart smote him when
he found himself standing face to face against his lord in open battle.
His knights too pressed around him, and reminded him of his homage and
plighted faith, and how he who fought against his natural lord had no
right to fief or honour.[774] On the other hand the Viscounts Neal and
Randolf pressed him to stand firmly by them, and promised great rewards
as the price of his adherence. For a while he stood doubtful, keeping
his troop apart from either army. We are told that the King and the Duke
marked them as they stood, and that William told Henry that he knew them
for the men of Ralph of Tesson, that their leader had no grudge against
him, and that he believed that they would all soon be on his side.
Presently the arguments of his own knights prevailed with Ralph; he bade
them halt, and he himself spurred across the field, shouting as his
war-cry the name of his lordship of Thury.[775] He rode up to the Duke,
he struck him with his glove, and so performed his oath to smite William
wherever he found him.[776] The Duke welcomed the returning penitent,
and Ralph rode back to his men. His detachment stood aside for a space
till the two hosts were engaged in the thick of the battle. He then
watched his opportunity, and made a vigorous charge on the side of the
Duke.

[Sidenote: Character of the battle; a mere combat of cavalry.]

Such an auspicious reinforcement might well stir up the spirits of the
young Duke and his followers. Every man was eager for battle. A fierce
combat of cavalry began. We have heard of the infantry of the communes
as appearing at the ducal muster, but we hear nothing of them in the
battle. We hear nothing of the Norman archers, who were to win so
terrible a renown upon a later field. All is one vast tourney, mounted
knights charging one another with shield, sword, and lance. The first
great battle of William, like the first great battle of Alexander,[777]
was truly a battle of chivalry in every sense of the word, a hand to
hand personal fight between mounted nobles on either side. On pressed
the Duke, sword in hand, seeking out the perjured Viscounts,[778] and
shouting the war-cry of Normandy, “_Dex aie_.”[779] On the same side
rose the shout of “_Montjoye-Saint-Denys_,” the national war-cry of the
French Kingdom. From the rebel host arose the names of various local
saints, patrons of the castles and churches of the revolted leaders,
Saint Sever, Saint Amand, and others of less renown.[780] On the rebel
left rode the men of the Bessin, on the right those of the Côtentin. The
men of the peninsula thus came face to face with the [Sidenote: Personal
exertions of King Henry.] royal troops; the King of the French, as in
the old days of Lewis and Harold,[781] had to meet in close fight with
the fiercest and most unconquerable warriors of the Norman name. And
well and bravely did King Henry do his duty on that one day of his life.
Even in the Norman picture, it is around the King, rather than around
the Duke, that the main storm of battle is made to centre. The knights
now met on each side, lance to lance, and, when their lances were
shivered, sword to sword. There was no difference of tactics, no
contrast between one weapon and another; the fight of Val-ès-dunes was
the sheer physical encounter of horse and man, the mere trial of
personal strength and personal skill in knightly exercises. The King, as
in such a fight any man of common courage must do, exposed himself
freely to danger; but, as far as his personal adventures went, the royal
share in the battle was somewhat unlucky. Once, if not twice, the King
of the French, the overlord of Normandy, was hurled from his horse by
the thrust of a Norman lance. A knight of the Côtentin first overthrew
him by a sudden charge. The exploit was long remembered in the rhymes of
his warlike province,[782] but the hero of it purchased his renown with
his life. The King was unhurt, but the report of such an accident might
easily spread confusion among his army. Like more renowned warriors
before and after, like Eadmund at Sherstone,[783] like William at
Senlac, it was needful that he should show himself to his followers, and
wipe out the misfortune by fresh exploits. Henry was therefore soon
again in the thickest of the fight; but, less fortunate than either
Eadmund or William, the like mishap befell him a second time.[784] The
King presently encountered one of the three great chiefs of the
rebellion; another thrust, dealt by the lance of Hamon, again laid Henry
on the ground; but a well timed stroke from a French knight more than
avenged this second overthrow; the Lord of Thorigny was carried off dead
on his shield like an old Spartan.[785]

The King honoured his valiant adversary, and, by his express order,
Hamon was buried with all fitting splendour before the Church of Our
Lady at Esquai on the Orne.[786]

The King is thus made decidedly the most prominent figure in the
picture, and, somewhat inglorious as were Henry’s personal experiences
that day, it is to him and his Frenchmen that the Norman poet does not
scruple to attribute the victory.[787] The fight appears throughout as
[Sidenote: Exploits and good fortune of William.] a fight between
Normans and Frenchmen.[788] But the Duke of the Normans himself was not
idle. If his royal ally was personally unlucky, it was on this day that
William began that career of personal success, of good fortune in the
mere tug of battle, which, till the clouded evening of his life, was as
conspicuous as the higher triumphs of his military genius and his
political craft. Men loved to tell how the young Duke slew with his own
hand the beloved vassal of Randolf, Hardrez, the choicest warrior of
Bayeux;[789] how the veteran champion, in the pride of his might, rode
defiant in the front rank; how the Duke rode straight at him, not
justing with his lance as in a mimic tourney, but smiting hand to hand
with the sword. The poet rises to an almost Homeric flight, when he
tells us how William smote the rebel below the chin, how he drove the
sharp steel between the throat and the chest, how the body fell beneath
his stroke and the soul passed away.[790]

[Sidenote: Randolf loses heart and flees.]

The fortune of the day was now distinctly turning against the rebels;
but, had all of them displayed equal courage, the issue of the struggle
might still have been unfavourable to King and Duke. Neal of Saint
Saviour still fought among the foremost of the men of his peninsula, but
the heart of his accomplice from Bayeux began to fail him. Randolf had
seen his most cherished vassal fall by the hand of his young sovereign;
his heart quailed lest the like fate should be his own; he feared lest
Neal had fled; he feared that he was betrayed to the enemy; he repented
that he had ever put on his helmet; it was sad to be taken captive, it
was a still worse doom to be slain. The battle ceased to give him any
pleasure;[791] he gave way before every charge; he wandered in front and
in rear; at last he lost heart altogether; he dropped his lance and his
shield, he stretched forth his neck,[792] and rode [Sidenote: Neal
continues the fight to the last.] for his life. The cowards, we are
told, followed him; but Neal still continued the fight, giving and
taking blows till his strength failed him. The French pressed upon him;
their numbers increased, the numbers of the Normans lessened; some of
his followers had fled, others lay dead and dying around him. At last
the mighty lord of the Côtentin saw that all hope was lost. On the
rising ground of Saint Lawrence the last blow seems to have been struck.
The spot was afterwards marked by a commemorative chapel, which was
destroyed by the Huguenots in the religious wars. On its site it
doubtless was that the valiant Neal at last turned and left the field,
seemingly the last man of the whole rebel army.

[Sidenote: Rout of the Rebels.]

The rout now became general. The example of Randolf drew after it far
more followers than the example of Neal. The rebels rode for their lives
in small parties, the troops of the King and the Duke following hard
upon them, and smiting them from the rear. From the ridge of Saint
Lawrence they rode westward, to reach the friendly land of Bayeux;[793]
they rode by the Abbey of Fontenay and the quarries of Allemagne; but
the flood of the Orne checked their course; men and horses were swept
away by the stream, or were slaughtered by the pursuers in the attempt
to cross; the mills of Borbillon, we are told, were stopped by the dead
bodies.[794]

[Sidenote: Completeness of the victory.]

The victory was a decisive one, and it was one which proved no less
decisive in its lasting results than it had been [Sidenote: The French
auxiliaries return.] as a mere success on the field of battle. King
Henry, who had done his work well and faithfully, now went back to his
own land, and left William to complete the reduction of his revolted
subjects. One of them, the original author of the plot, still offered
him a long and vigorous resistance. Of the conduct of Guy of Burgundy in
the field we hear nothing, except an incidental mention of a wound which
he received there.[795] Indeed, since the appearance of his three great
Norman adherents, the [Sidenote: Escape of Guy.] Burgundian prince has
nearly dropped out of sight.[796] He now reappears, to receive from the
Norman writers a vast out-pouring of scorn on account of his flight from
the field,[797] though it does not appear to have been in any way more
ignominious than the flight of the mass of his Norman allies. At any
rate he was not borne away in the indiscriminate rush of his comrades
towards the Orne. He escaped, with a large body of companions,[798] in
quite the opposite direction, to his own castle of Brionne on the
[Sidenote: He defends himself at Brionne.] Risle. There he took up a
position of defence, and was speedily followed and besieged by Duke
William. The castle of Brionne of those days was not the hill fortress,
the shell of a donjon of that or of the next age, which now looks down
upon the town and valley beneath. The stronghold of Count Guy had
natural defences, but they were defences of another kind. The town
itself seems to have been strongly fortified; but the point of defence
which was most relied on at Brionne was the fortified hall of stone
which stood on an island in the river.[799] William had, before now, by
one vigorous assault, brought his own native Falaise to surrender;[800]
but, though we are expressly told that the stream was everywhere
fordable, the island fortress seems to have been deemed proof against
any attacks [Sidenote: Siege of Brionne 1047–1050?] of this kind. A
regular siege alone could reduce it, and William was driven to practise
all the devices of the military art of his day against his rebellious
cousin. He built a castle, this time very possibly of wood, on each side
of the river, and thus cut off the besieged from their supplies of
provisions.[801] Constant assaults on the beleaguered castle are spoken
of, but their aim seems to have been mainly to frighten the besieged
rather than to produce any more practical effect;[802] hunger was the
sure and slow means on which William relied to bring Guy to reason. The
siege was clearly a long one, though it is hardly possible to believe,
on the incidental statement of a single authority, that it was spread
over a space of three years.[803] [Sidenote: Surrender of Brionne.] At
last the endurance of Guy and his companions gave way, and he sent
messengers praying for mercy. The Duke required the surrender of the
castle; but touched, we are told, by the tie of kindred blood, he bade
Guy [Sidenote: William’s clemency to the vanquished.] remain in his
court.[804] Nor was the Duke’s hand, on the whole, heavy on the other
offenders. No man was put to death, though William’s panegyrist holds
that death [Sidenote: Rarity of political executions.] was the fitting
punishment for their offences.[805] But in those days, both in Normandy
and elsewhere, the legal execution of a state criminal was an event
which seldom happened. Men’s lives were recklessly wasted in the endless
warfare of the times, and there were men, as we have seen, who did not
shrink from private murder, even in its basest form.[806] But the formal
hanging or beheading of a noble prisoner, so common in later times, was,
in the eleventh century, distinctly an unusual sight.[807] And, strange
as it may sound, there was a sense in which [Sidenote: William’s
ordinary treatment of enemies.] William the Conqueror was not a man of
blood. He would sacrifice any number of lives to his boundless ambition;
he did not scruple to condemn his enemies to cruel personal mutilations;
he would keep men for years, as a mere measure of security, in the
horrible prison-houses of those days; but the extinction of human life
in cold blood was something from which he shrank. His biographer
exultingly points out this feature in his character, and his recorded
acts do not belie his praise.[808] Once only did he swerve from this
rule, when he sent the noble Waltheof to the scaffold. And, as that act
stands out conspicuously from its contrast to his ordinary conduct, so
it is the act from which it is impossible not to date the decline of his
high fortune. And, at the time of his first great victory, William was
of an age which is commonly disposed to be generous, and none of the
worse features of his character had hitherto come to the surface. With
one exception only, no very hard punishments were inflicted on the
conquered [Sidenote: Destruction of the castles.] rebels. The mass of
the rebellious Barons paid fines, gave hostages, and had to submit to
the destruction of the castles which they had raised without the ducal
licence.[809] To this, and to other measures of the same kind, it is
owing that such small traces of the Norman castles of the eleventh
century now remain. Neal of Saint Saviour had to retire for a time to
Britanny, but his exile must have been short, as we find him, seemingly
in the very next year, again in office and in the ducal favour. He
survived his restoration forty-four years;[810] he lived to repay at
Senlac the old wrong done by Englishmen to his father’s province; but,
almost alone among the great Norman chiefs, he received [Sidenote: Guy
returns to Burgundy.] no share in the spoils of England. As for Guy, he
presently left the country of his own free will. His sojourn at
William’s court must have been little else than an honourable
imprisonment, and it would seem that he now found little respect or
sympathy in Normandy.[811] He returned to his native land, the
Burgundian Palatinate, and there, we are told, spent the rest of his
days in plotting against his brother, the reigning Count William.[812]
[Sidenote: Fate of Grimbald.] One criminal only was reserved for a
harsher fate. Grimbald was taken to Rouen, and there kept in prison—such
as prisons were in those days—and in fetters. He was looked on as the
foulest traitor of all; he it was whom the Duke charged with the
personal attempt on his life at Valognes.[813] Grimbald confessed the
crime, and named as his accomplice a knight named Salle the son of Hugh.
The accused denied the charge, and challenged Grimbald to the judicial
combat. Before the appointed day of battle came, Grimbald was found dead
in his prison. He was buried with his fetters on his legs, his lands
were confiscated, and part of them was given to the church of Bayeux.
Plessis became a domain of the see, and other portions of the estates of
Grimbald became the corpses of various prebends in the cathedral
church.[814]

[Sidenote: Establishment of William’s power in Normandy.]

The power of William was now on the whole firmly established. He had
still to repel many attacks from hostile neighbours, and we shall have
yet to record one more considerable revolt within the Norman territory.
But the Norman Barons now knew that they had a master.[815] For some
years to come, internal discord, strictly so called, underwent a sort of
lull to a degree most remarkable in such an age. Under the firm and
equal government of her great Duke, Normandy began to recover from her
years of anarchy, and to rise to a higher degree of prosperity than she
had ever yet attained to.[816] [Sidenote: Effect of the struggle.] The
Duchy became, more completely than it had ever been before, a member of
the European and of the Capetian [Sidenote: The supremacy of the French
element confirmed.] commonwealth. The Capetian King indeed soon learned
again to look with a grudging eye on his northern neighbour; but the
general result of the struggle must have been to make Normandy still
more French than before. The French and the Scandinavian elements had
met face to face, and the French element had had the upper hand.
Frenchmen and French Normans had overthrown the stout Saxons of the
Bessin and the fierce Danes of the Côtentin. The distinction between the
two parts of Normandy is still one which even the passing traveller may
remark; but, from the day of Val-ès-dunes, it ceased to manifest itself
in the great outward expressions of language and political feeling. The
struggle which began during the minority of Richard the Fearless was now
finally decided at the close of the minority of William the Bastard. The
Count of Rouen had overcome Saxons and Danes within his own dominions,
and he was about to weld them into his most trustworthy weapons
wherewith to overcome Saxons and Danes beyond the sea. The omen of the
fight against Neal and Hamon might well have recurred to the mind of
William, when Neal himself and the son of Hamon marched forth at his
side from the camp at Hastings, and went on to complete the conquest of
England at Exeter and York.

§ 3. _From the Battle of Val-ès-dunes to William’s Visit to England._
1047–1051.

William was thus at peace at home; his next war was indeed one of his
own seeking, but it was one from which he could not have shrunk without
breaking through every [Sidenote: The Counts of Anjou; their connexion
with Norman and English history.] tie alike of gratitude and of feudal
duty. This is the first time that I have had directly to mention a
power, which had been, for more than a hundred years, steadily growing
up to the south of Normandy, and which was to exercise a most important
influence on the future history of Normandy and, through Normandy, on
that of England. I mean the dynasty of the Counts of Anjou. That
[Sidenote: 1154.] house, the house which mounted the throne of England
in the person of a great-grandson of William, produced a succession of
princes to whose personal qualities it must mainly have been owing that
their dominions fill the place which they do fill in French and in
European history. [Sidenote: Characteristics of Angevin history.] Anjou
holds a peculiar position among the great fiefs of France. It was a
singular destiny which gave so marked a character, and so conspicuous a
history, to a country which seems in no way marked out for separate
existence by any geographical or national distinction. Normandy,
Britanny, Flanders, Aquitaine, Ducal Burgundy, all had a being of their
own; they were fiefs of the Crown of France, but they were in no sense
French provinces. But Anjou was at most an outpost on the Loire, a
border district of France and Aquitaine; beyond this position it had
nothing specially to distinguish it from any other part of the great
[Sidenote: Saxon occupation. 464.] Parisian Duchy.[817] A momentary
Saxon occupation in the fifth century[818] cannot be supposed to have
left behind it any such abiding traces as were certainly left by the
settlement of the same people at Bayeux, perhaps even by their less
famous settlement at Seez.[819] It was wholly to the energy and the
marked character of its individual rulers that Anjou owes its distinct
and prominent place among the principalities of Gaul. The restless
spirit of the race showed itself sometimes for good and sometimes for
evil, but there was no Count of Anjou who could be called a fool, a
coward, or a _fainéant_. The history or legends of the family which was
to rise to such greatness laid claim [Sidenote: Ingelgar, first Count.
870?] to no very remote or illustrious pedigree.[820] The first Count of
Anjou, who held a part only of the later County,[821] was invested with
that dignity either by Charles the Bald or by his son Lewis the
Stammerer.[822] He bore the name of Ingelgar, and he seems to be the
first member of the family who can be unhesitatingly set down as
historical. His grandfather, [Sidenote: Peasant origin of the family.]
Torquatius or Tortulfus, was, according to the legend, a peasant, and
seems to have sprung from that Breton race of which his descendants
became the most persevering enemies. It must have been a later version
of the tale which invented for him a Roman name and a Roman
descent.[823] [Sidenote: Torquatius and Tertullus.] The son of
Torquatius, Tertullus, rose, we are told, to importance at the court of
Charles, and founded the [Sidenote: Historical value of these tales.]
greatness of his house.[824] Whatever may be the amount of strictly
historical truth preserved in these stories, they are, in one point of
view, of no small historical value. Like the similar story of the origin
of Godwine, they point to a belief, which can hardly have been
ill-founded, that, in Gaul in the ninth century and in England in the
eleventh, ignoble birth did not disqualify a man from rising to the
highest dignities, or from founding a dynasty of Princes or even of
Kings.[825] But, when we reach Ingelgar, we seem to stand on more
distinctly historical ground. He held Amboise in Touraine as an allodial
possession,[826] and he was, as we have seen, invested with the
Countship of Anjou on the hither side of the Mayenne. But it is plain
that no detailed account of his actions, or of those of his immediate
successors, was preserved.[827] [Sidenote: Fulk the Red. 888.] His son
Fulk the Red received from Charles the Simple the remaining portion of
the County of Anjou, that beyond the Mayenne, and he vigorously defended
his enlarged dominions against the attacks of Northmen and Bretons.[828]
[Sidenote: Fulk the Good. 938.] This Romulus was appropriately succeeded
by a Numa, Fulk the Good, renowned for his piety, his almsdeeds, his
just and peaceful government, and for being the traditional author of
the proverb that an unlettered King is but [Sidenote: Geoffrey
Grisegonelle. 958.] a crowned ass.[829] His son, Geoffrey
Grisegonelle,[830] renewed the warlike fame of his house; he fought with
his neighbours of Britanny and Aquitaine; and he is said to [Sidenote:
978.] have borne an important share in the wars between King Lothar and
the Emperor Otto the Second.[831] After [Sidenote: Fulk Nerra. 987.] him
came his son Fulk,[832] surnamed Nerra or the Black, renowned as a
warrior and still more renowned as a pilgrim, and who is the first
prince of his house whose name has found its way into the general
history of France. He overthrew his brother-in-law Conan of Britanny in
one or [Sidenote: 992.] more pitched battles, which French, as well as
Breton and [Sidenote: His war with Odo of Chartres.] Angevin, writers
thought worthy of record. He was also engaged in a war with his
neighbour Odo the Second, Count of Blois and Chartres, the grandson of
the famous Theobald, a war which passed on as an inheritance to the next
generation, and which proved the origin of the first entanglements
between Normandy and Anjou.[833] It sounds like an incursion from
another hemisphere, when we read how Aldebert, Count of Perigueux,
Perigueux with its cupolas and its Roman tower, far away in the heart of
Aquitaine, appeared as an ally of the Angevin [Sidenote: Fulk gains and
loses Tours. 990.] Count. He took Tours and gave it to Fulk, but the
citizens were ill disposed to their new master, and Odo [Sidenote:
Battle of Pontlevois. 1016.] recovered it after a short time. Later in
his reign, Fulk defeated Odo in a great battle at Pontlevois in the
territory [Sidenote: 1031.] of Touraine, and afterwards gained or
recovered Saumur. We have already met with him in the character of a
mediator between contending candidates for the Crown of France,[834] and
he appears also in the less honourable light of an assassin, who removed
a courtier of King Robert who stood in the way of the plans of his own
termagant niece Queen Constance.[835] We hear also heavy complaints of
him as a violator of ecclesiastical rule, by setting up the usurped
authority of the See of Rome against the rights [Sidenote: His
pilgrimages. 1028, 1035.] of the independent metropolitans of Gaul.[836]
But he is perhaps best known for his two pilgrimages to the Holy
Sepulchre, for the ready ingenuity which he displayed on his first
journey, and for the extreme of penitential humiliation by which he
edified all men on the second.[837] Less happy in his private than in
his public career, he was troubled in his last years by a rebellion of
his son;[838] he was charged, truly or falsely, with the murder of one
wife, and with driving another from him by ill-treatment.[839] A reign
of unusual length made him, during a few years, a contemporary of the
Great William, and at last he left his dominions to a son under whom
Normans and Angevins met for the first time in open warfare.

[Sidenote: Geoffrey Martel. 1040.]

This son, Geoffrey by name, rejoiced in the surname of Martel, which he
bestowed upon himself to express the heavy blows which, like the victor
of Tours, he dealt around upon all his enemies.[840] He began his career
in his father’s lifetime. A dispute for the possession of the County of
Saintonge led to a war between him and William the Sixth or the Fat,
Duke of Aquitaine and [Sidenote: He imprisons William of Aquitaine.
April 22, 1033.] Count of Poitou.[841] Geoffrey was successful; he took
the Aquitanian prince prisoner, and kept him in close bondage, till his
wife Eustacia ransomed him at a heavy price. According to one version,
the ransom consisted only of gold and silver, the spoil or contribution
of the monasteries of his Duchy. Others however assert that it was
nothing short of the cession of Bourdeaux and other cities, and an
engagement to pay tribute for the rest of his dominions. Three days
after this hard bought deliverance, William died. Immediately
afterwards, or, according to some accounts, in the course of the year
before, Geoffrey married Agnes, the step-mother of his victim, the widow
of William’s father, William the Fifth or the Great. The marriage was,
on some ground or other, branded as incestuous, and it was this
imprisonment of William and [Sidenote: Geoffrey rebels against his
father. 1033.] this marriage with Agnes which, we are told, gave rise in
some way to Geoffrey’s rebellion against his father and to the discord
between Fulk and his second wife Hildegardis the mother of Geoffrey.

The imprisonment of William of Aquitaine evidently made a deep
impression upon men’s minds at the time; but it was the standing war
with the house of Chartres which brought Anjou into direct collision
with Normandy, and thereby, at a somewhat later time, into connexion
[Sidenote: Last days of Odo of Chartres.] with England. The last
energies of Odo were mainly directed to objects remote from Anjou, and
even from Chartres and Blois. He was one of the party which opposed the
succession of King Henry, and in so doing he must have crossed the
policy of Henry’s great champion [Sidenote: His war with King Henry.
1034.] Duke Robert. In a war which followed with the King Odo was
unsuccessful,[842] but his mind was now set upon greater things. Already
Count of Champagne, he aimed [Sidenote: His attempt on the Kingdom of
Burgundy. 1033.] at restoring the great frontier state between the
Eastern and the Western Franks, at reigning as King of Burgundy, of
Lotharingia, perhaps of Italy. After meeting [Sidenote: His defeat and
death at Bar. 1037.] for a while with some measure of success, he was at
last defeated and slain by Duke Gozelo, the father of Godfrey of whom we
have already heard,[843] in a battle near Bar in the Upper
Lotharingia.[844] His great schemes died with him. His sons were only
Counts and not Kings, and their father’s dominions were divided between
them. The [Sidenote: His sons Stephen and Theobald.] sons of both of
them obtained settlements in England, and a grandson of one figures
largely in English history. Stephen reigned in Champagne; his son Odo
married a sister of the Conqueror, and was one of the objects of his
brother-in-law’s bounty in England.[845] Theobald inherited Blois and
Chartres. His son Stephen married [Sidenote: Their wars with King Henry
and with Geoffrey.] William’s daughter Adela, and thereby became father
of a King of the English. But at present we have to deal with Count
Theobald as a vassal of France at variance with his overlord, as a
neighbour of Anjou inheriting the hereditary enmity of his forefathers.
Touraine, part of which was already possessed by Geoffrey,[846] and,
above all, the metropolitan city of Tours, were ever the great objects
of Angevin ambition. It was a stroke of policy on the part of Henry,
when he formally deprived the rebel Theobald of [Sidenote: Geoffrey
receives Tours as a grant from Henry, and imprisons Theobald. 1044.]
that famous city, and bestowed it by a royal grant on the Count of
Anjou.[847] Geoffrey was not slow to press a claim at once fresh and
most plausible. He advanced on the city to assert his rights by force.
Saint Martin, we are specially told, favoured the enterprise.[848] The
brothers resisted in vain. Stephen was put to flight; Theobald was taken
prisoner, and was compelled, like William of Aquitaine, to obtain his
freedom by the surrender of the city.[849]

Both French and Angevin writers agree in describing Geoffrey as taking
possession of Tours with the full consent of King Henry. Yet, in the
first glimpse of Angevin affairs given us by our Norman authorities, the
relations between the King of the French and the Count of Anjou are set
forth in an exactly opposite light. Geoffrey is [Sidenote: William helps
King Henry against Geoffrey. 1048.] engaged in a rebellious war against
Henry, and the Duke of the Normans appears simply to discharge his
feudal duty to his lord, and to return the obligation incurred by the
King’s prompt and effectual help at Val-ès-dunes.[850] These two
accounts are in no way inconsistent; in the space of four years the
relations between the King and so dangerous a vassal as Geoffrey may
very well have changed. Henry may well have found that it was not sound
policy to foster the growth of one whose blows might easily be extended
from Counts to Kings. The campaign which followed is dwelt on at great
length by our Norman authorities and is cut significantly short by the
Angevins. [Sidenote: Personal exploits of William.] In its course, we
are told, William gained the highest reputation. The troops of Normandy
surpassed in number the united contingents of the King and of all his
other vassals.[851] The Duke’s courage and conduct were preeminent, and
they won him the first place in the King’s counsels.[852] But on one
point Henry had to remonstrate with his valiant ally. He was forced,
says the panegyrist, to warn both William himself and the chief Norman
leaders against the needless exposure of so precious a life.[853]
William at no time of his life ever shrank from danger, and we may be
sure that, at this time of his life especially, he thoroughly enjoyed
the practice of war in all its forms. But William’s impulses were
already under the control of his reason. He knew, no doubt, as well as
any man, that to plunge himself into needless dangers, and to run the
risk of hairbreadth scapes, was no part of the real duty of a prince or
a general. But he also knew that it was mainly by exploits of this kind
that he must dazzle the minds of his own generation, and so obtain that
influence over men which was needful for the great schemes of his
life.[854] In any other point of view, one would say that it was
unworthy of William’s policy to win the reputation of a knight-errant at
the expense of making for himself a lasting and dangerous enemy in the
Count of Anjou.

[Sidenote: Position of Maine under Geoffrey.]

The undisputed dominions of the two princes nowhere touched each other.
But between them lay a country closely connected both with Normandy and
with Anjou, and over which both William and Geoffrey asserted rights.
This was the County of Maine, a district which was always said to have
formed part of the later acquisitions of Rolf,[855] but of which the
Norman Dukes had never taken practical possession. The history of the
Cenomannian city and province will be more fittingly sketched at another
stage of William’s [Sidenote: Count Herbert. 1015.] career; it is enough
to say here that Geoffrey was now practical sovereign of Maine, in the
character of protector, [Sidenote: Hugh. 1036.] guardian, or conqueror
of the young Count Hugh, the son of the famous Herbert, surnamed
_Wake-the-dog_.[856] William and Geoffrey thus became immediate
neighbours, and Geoffrey, with the craft of his house, knew how to
strike a blow [Sidenote: The fortresses of Domfront and Alençon.] where
William was weakest. Two chief fortresses guarded the frontier between
Maine and Normandy. Each commanded its own valley, its own approach into
the heart of the Norman territory; each watched over a stream flowing
from Norman into Cenomannian ground. These were Domfront towards the
western, and Alençon towards the eastern, portion of the frontier.
Domfront commanded the region watered by the Mayenne and its
tributaries, while Alençon was the key of the valley of the Sarthe, the
keeper of the path which led straight to the minster of Seez and to the
donjon of Falaise. Of these two strongholds, Alençon stood on Norman,
Domfront on Cenomannian soil.[857] But Norman writers maintained that
Domfront, no less than Alençon, was of right a Norman possession, both
fortresses alike having been reared by the licence of Richard the
[Sidenote: Disloyalty of Alençon.] Good.[858] But even Alençon, whatever
may have been its origin, was at this time far from being a sound member
of the Norman body-politic. As a lordship of William Talvas, it shared
in the ambiguous character, half Norman, half French, which attached to
all the border possessions of the house of Belesme. And, as events
presently showed, its inhabitants shared most fully in the spirit in
which the Lord of Alençon had cursed the Bastard in his cradle.[859] We
are told also that the citizens both of Alençon and of Domfront disliked
the rule of William, on account of the strict justice which he
administered and the checks which he put on their marauding
practices.[860] This complaint sounds rather as if it came from
turbulent barons than from burghers; yet it is quite possible that the
burghers of a frontier town, especially on a frontier which was very
doubtful and ill defined, may have indulged in those breaches of the
peace which it was William’s greatest praise, both in Normandy and in
England, to chastise without mercy. [Sidenote: Alençon garrisoned by
Geoffrey.] At any rate, the people of Alençon were thoroughly disloyal
to Normandy, and they willingly received the Angevin Count and his
garrison.[861] William returned the blow of [Sidenote: William marches
ta Domfront;] Geoffrey’s hammer in kind. Leaving Alençon for a while to
itself, he crossed the frontier, Angevin or Cenomannian as we may choose
to call it, and laid siege to Domfront. [Sidenote: his exploits on the
way.] On his march he found that treason was not wholly extinguished,
even among his own troops. He had gone on a foraging or plundering party
with fifty horse;[862] a traitor, a Norman noble, sent word of his
whereabout to the defenders of the town, who sent forth, we are told,
three hundred horse and seven hundred foot to attack the Duke
unexpectedly. It sounds like romance when we read that William at once
charged and overthrew the horseman nearest to him, that the rest were
seized with a sudden panic and took to flight, that the Duke and his
little band chased them to the gates of Domfront, and that William
carried off one prisoner with his own hands.[863] Such stories are no
doubt greatly exaggerated; the details may often be pure invention; but,
as contemporary exaggerations and inventions, they show the kind of
merit which Normans then looked for in their rulers, and they show the
kind of exploit of which William himself was thought capable. [Sidenote:
Traitors in the Norman camp.] And the perfectly casual mention of the
traitor in the Norman camp is instructive in another way. We have here
no doubt merely an example of what often happened, and the way in which
treason is spoken of as an everyday matter sets vividly before us the
difficulties with which William, even now after the victory of
Val-ès-dunes, had still to contend at every step.[864]

[Sidenote: Siege of Domfront.]

William now laid siege to Domfront. The town was strong both by its
fortifications and by its natural position. The spirit of the citizens
was high, and they were further strengthened by the presence of a chosen
body of Angevin troops sent by Count Geoffrey. An assault was hopeless
where two steep and narrow paths were the only ways by which the
fortress could be approached even on foot.[865] William surrounded it
with four towers,[866] and the Norman army sat down before it. The Duke
was foremost in every attack, in every ambush, in every night march to
cut off the approach of those who sought to bring either messages or
provisions to the besieged town.[867] Yet we are told that he found
himself so safe in the enemy’s country that he often enjoyed the sports
of hunting and hawking, for which the neighbouring woods afforded
special opportunities.[868] [Sidenote: 1048–1049.] The siege had
continued for some time in this way, and it was now seemingly
winter,[869] when news was brought that Count Geoffrey was advancing
with a large [Sidenote: Geoffrey comes to relieve Domfront.] force to
the relief of the town. A tale of knight-errantry follows, the main
substance of which, coming as it does from a contemporary writer, we
have no ground for disbelieving, even though some details may have been
heightened to enhance the glory of William. The story is worthy of
attention as showing that, amid all the apparent rudeness of the times,
some germs of the later follies of chivalry had already begun to show
themselves. As the Angevin army [Sidenote: Messages between William and
Geoffrey. Early example of knight-errantry.] approached, William sent a
message to Geoffrey by the hands of two of his chosen friends, two
youths who had grown up along with him, and who were destined to share
with him in all his greatest dangers and greatest successes. Both were
men who lived to be famous in English history, Roger of Montgomery, the
son-in-law of the terrible Talvas,[870] and William, the son of that
Osbern who had lost his life through his faithfulness to his
master.[871] These two trusty companions were sent to see Count
Geoffrey, and to get from him an explanation of his purpose. Geoffrey
told them that, at daybreak the next morning, he would come and beat up
William’s quarters before Domfront. There should be no mistake about his
person; he would be known by such a dress, such a shield,[872] such a
coloured horse. The Norman messengers answered that he need not trouble
himself to come so far as the Norman quarters; he whom he sought would
come and visit him nearer home. Duke William would be ready for battle,
with such a horse, such a dress, such manner of weapons.[873] The
Normans appeared the next morning, eager for fight, [Sidenote: Geoffrey
decamps.] and their Duke the most eager among them.[874] But no enemy
was there to await them; before the Normans came in sight, the Count of
Anjou and his host had decamped. Geoffrey doubtless, like some later
generals, retired only for strategical reasons; but the Norman writers
can see no nobler motive for his conduct than his being seized with a
sudden panic.[875] Here, and throughout the war, the lions stand in need
of a painter, or rather their painters suddenly refuse to do their duty.
We have no Angevin account of the siege of Domfront to set against our
evidently highly coloured Norman picture.

[Sidenote: William marches suddenly to Alençon, and besieges the town.]

The whole country now lay open for William to harry; but he knew better
than to waste time and energy on mere useless ravages.[876] He
determined rather to strike another sudden blow. Leaving a force before
Domfront, he marched all night, through the enemy’s country, along the
course of the Mayenne, passing by Mehendin, Pointel, and
Saint-Samson.[877] He thus suddenly appeared before Alençon with the
morning light.[878] A bridge over the Sarthe, strongly fortified with a
ditch and a palisade, divided the Norman from the Cenomannian
territory.[879] This bridge now served as a barrier against a Duke of
the Normans attacking his own town from the Cenomannian [Sidenote:
Insults offered to William at Alençon.] side. The defenders of the
bridge, whether Angevins or disaffected Normans, received the Duke with
the grossest personal insult. They spread out skins and leather jerkins,
and beat them, shouting, “Hides, hides for the Tanner.”[880] The Duke of
the Normans had acted a merciful and generous part towards the rebels of
Val-ès-dunes and Brionne; but the grandson of Fulbert of Falaise could
not endure the jeers thus thrown on his descent by the spindle side.
Anything like a personal insult is commonly far more unpardonable in
princely eyes than a real injury. The one act of cruelty which
[Sidenote: 1296.] stains the reign of our great Edward is the slaughter
of the inhabitants of Berwick in revenge for a jesting and not very
intelligible ballad sung against him from the walls.[881] So now William
swore, according to his fashion, by the Splendour of God,[882] that the
men who thus mocked him should be dealt with like a tree whose branches
are cut off by the pollarding-knife.[883] He kept his word. A vigorous
assault was made upon the bridge. Houses were unroofed, and the timbers
were thrown into the fosse.[884] Fire was set to the mass; the wood was
dry, the flame spread, the palisades and gates were burned down, and
[Sidenote: He takes the town, and mutilates his prisoners.] William was
master of the bridge, and with it of the town of Alençon. The castle
still held out. The Conqueror, faithful to his fearful oath, now gave
the first of that long list of instances of indifference to human
suffering which have won for him a worse name than many parts of his
character really deserve. Thirty-two of the offenders were brought
before him; their hands and feet were cut off,[885] and the dismembered
limbs were thrown over the walls of the castle, as a speaking menace to
its defenders.[886] The threat did its work; the garrison surrendered,
bargaining only for safety for life and limb.[887] Alençon, tower and
town, was thus taken so speedily that William’s panegyrist says that he
might renew the boast of Cæsar, “I came; I saw; I conquered.”[888]
Leaving [Sidenote: Domfront surrenders.] a garrison in Alençon, the Duke
hastened back to Domfront, the fame of his conquest and of his cruelty
going before him. The man before whom Alençon had fallen, before whom
the Hammer of Anjou had fled without striking a blow, had become an
enemy too fearful for the men of Domfront to face.[889] They surrendered
on terms somewhat more favourable than those which had been granted to
the defenders of the castle of Alençon; they were allowed to retain
their arms as well as their lives and limbs.[890] William entered
Domfront, and displayed the banner of Normandy over the donjon.[891] The
town henceforth became a standing menace on the side of Normandy against
Maine, and it formed, together with Alençon, the main defence of the
southern frontier of the Duchy. If William undertook the war to
discharge his feudal duty towards King Henry, he certainly did not lose
the opportunity for permanently strengthening his own dominions. In
fact, in our Norman accounts, the King of the French has long ago
slipped away from the scene, and the Count of Chartres has vanished
along with him. William and Geoffrey remain the only figures [Sidenote:
William fortifies Ambières.] in the foreground. The Duke, having secured
his frontier, marched, seemingly without resistance, into the undoubted
territory of Maine; he there fortified a castle at Ambières, and
returned in triumph to Rouen.[892]

The men of Alençon had jeered at the grandson of the Tanner; but the
sovereign who so sternly chastised their jests was determined to show
that the baseness of his mother’s origin in no way hindered him from
promoting his kinsmen on the mother’s side. If one grandson of Fulbert
wore the ducal crown of Normandy, another already wore the mitre of
Bayeux; and another great promotion, almost equivalent to adoption into
the ducal [Sidenote: William the Warling;] house, was now to be bestowed
upon a third. The county of Mortain—Moritolium in the Diocese of
Avranches[893]—was now held by William, surnamed Warling, son of Malger,
a son of Richard the Fearless and Gunnor.[894] [Sidenote: his connexion
with the ducal family.] He was therefore a first cousin of William’s
father, a descendant of the ducal stock as legitimate as any other
branch of it. We have not heard his name in the accounts of any of the
former disturbances; but it is clear that he might, like so many others,
have felt himself aggrieved by the accession of the Bastard. Among
[Sidenote: Robert the Bigod.] the knights in Count William’s service was
one, so the story runs, who bore a name hitherto unknown to history,
though not unknown to legend and fanciful etymology, but a name which
was to become more glorious on English ground than the names of
Fitz-Osbern and Montgomery. The sons of Robert the Bigod[895] were to
rule where Harold now held his Earldom, and his remote descendant was to
win a place in English history worthy of Harold himself, as the man who
wrested the freedom of England from the greatest of England’s later
Kings.[896] The patriarch of that great house was now a knight so poor
that he craved leave of his lord to leave his service, and to seek his
fortune among his countrymen who were carving out for themselves
lordships and principalities in Apulia. The Count bade him stay where he
was; within eighty days he, Robert the Bigod, would be able, there in
Normandy, to lay his hands on whatever good things [Sidenote: He charges
William with treason.] it pleased him. In such a speech treason plainly
lurked; and Robert, whether out of duty to his sovereign or in the hope
of winning favour with a more powerful master, determined that the
matter should come to the ears of the Duke. The Bigod was a kinsman of
Richard of Avranches, the son of Thurstan the rebel of Falaise,[897] and
Richard was now high in favour at the court of William. By his means
Robert obtained an introduction to the Duke,[898] and told him of the
treasonable words of the Count of Mortain. William accordingly sent for
his cousin, and charged him with plotting against the state. He had, the
Duke told him, determined again to disturb the peace of the country, and
again to bring about the reign of licence. But, while he, Duke William,
lived, the peace which Normandy so much needed should, by God’s help,
never be disturbed again.[899] Count [Sidenote: William the Warling goes
to Apulia.] William must at once leave the country, and not return to it
during the lifetime of his namesake the Duke. The proud Lord of Mortain
was thus driven to do what his poor knight had thought of doing. He went
to the wars in Apulia in humble guise enough, attended by a [Sidenote:
Robert, Count of Mortain.] single esquire. The Duke at once bestowed the
vacant County of Mortain on his half-brother Robert, the son of Herlwin
and Herleva. Of him we shall hear again in the tale of the Conquest of
England. Thus, says our informant, did William pluck down the proud
kindred of his father and lift up the lowly kindred of his mother.[900]

[Sidenote: Estimate of William’s conduct.]

This affair of William of Mortain is one of which we may well wish for
further explanation. We are hardly in a position to judge of the truth
or falsehood of the charge brought by Robert the Bigod against his
lord.[901] We have no statement from the other side; we have no defence
from the Count of Mortain; all that we are told is that, when arraigned
before the Duke, he neither confessed nor denied the charge.[902] We
need not doubt that William was honestly anxious to preserve his Duchy
from internal disturbances. But in this case his justice, if justice it
was, fell so sharply and speedily as to have very much the look of
interested oppression. It was impossible to avoid the suspicion that
William the Warling was sacrificed to the Duke’s wish to make a
provision for his half-brother. We are not surprised to find that the
charge of having despoiled and banished his cousin on frivolous
pretences was brought up against William by his enemies in later times,
and was not forgotten by historians in the next generation.[903]

The energy of William had thus, for the time, [Sidenote: Prosperous
condition of Normandy. 1049–1054.] thoroughly quelled all his foes, and
his Duchy seems for some years to have enjoyed as large a share of peace
and prosperity as any state could enjoy in those troubled times. The
young Duke was at last firmly settled in the ducal seat, and he now
began to think of strengthening himself by a marriage into the family of
some neighbouring prince. And he seems to have already made up his mind
in favour of the woman who retained [Sidenote: William seeks Matilda of
Flanders in marriage.] his love during the remainder of their joint
lives, Matilda,[904] the daughter of Baldwin, Count of Flanders. He must
have been in treaty for her hand very soon after the Angevin war, as the
marriage was forbidden by a decree [Sidenote: 1049.] of the Council of
Rheims.[905] But the marriage itself did [Sidenote: 1053.] not take
place till several years later, and the negotiation opened so many
questions, and was connected with so many later events, that I reserve
the whole subject of [Sidenote: William’s objects, Duchy, Wife, and
Kingdom, all pursued in the like spirit.] William’s marriage for a later
chapter. William had to struggle through as many difficulties to obtain
undisputed possession of his wife as he had to obtain undisputed
possession of either his Duchy or his Kingdom. And he struggled after
all three with the same deliberate energy, ever waiting his time, taking
advantage of every opportunity, never baffled by any momentary repulse.
His struggle for Normandy was now, for the time, over; he had fairly
conquered his own Duchy, and he had now only to defend it. His struggle
for Matilda had already begun; a struggle almost as hard as the other,
though one which was to be fought, not with bow and spear, but with the
weapons of legal and canonical disputation. Whether he had already begun
to lift up his eyes to the succession of his childless cousin, whether
he had already formed the hope that the grandson of the despised Tanner
might fill, not only the ducal chair of Normandy, but the Imperial
throne of Britain, is a question to which we can give no certain answer.
But there can be little doubt that, soon after this time, the idea was
forcibly brought before his mind. And, with characteristic pertinacity,
when he had once dreamed of the prize, he never slackened in its pursuit
till he could at last call it his own.

[Sidenote: Condition of England. 1051–1052.]

Normandy was now at rest, enjoying the rest of hard-won peace and
prosperity. England was also at rest, if we may call it rest to lie
prostrate in a state of feverish stillness. She rested, as a nation
rests whose hopes are crushed, whose leaders are torn from her, which
sees for the moment no chance of any doom but hopeless submission
[Sidenote: William’s visit to England. 1051.] to the stranger. It was at
this crisis in the history of the two lands that the Duke of the Normans
appeared as a guest at the court of England.[906] Visits of mere
friendship and courtesy among sovereign princes were rare in those days.
The rulers of the earth seldom met, save when a superior lord required
the homage of a princely vassal, or when Princes came together, at the
summons of the temporal or the spiritual chief of Christendom, to
discuss the common affairs of nations and churches. Such visits as those
which William and Eustace of Boulogne paid at this time to Eadward were,
in England at least, altogether novelties. And they were novelties which
were not likely [Sidenote: Estimate of William in English eyes.] to be
acceptable to the national English mind. We may be sure that every
patriotic Englishman looked with an evil eye on any French-speaking
prince who made his way to the English court. Men would hardly be
inclined to draw the distinction which justice required to be drawn
between Eustace of Boulogne and William of Rouen. And yet, under any
other circumstances, England, or any other land, might have been proud
to welcome such a guest as the already illustrious Duke. Under
unparalleled difficulties he had displayed unrivalled powers; he had
shone alike in camp and in council; he had triumphed over every enemy;
he had used victory with moderation; he was fast raising his Duchy to a
high place among European states, and he was fast winning for himself
the highest personal place among European Princes. Already, at the age
of twenty-three, the Duke of the Normans might have disputed the palm of
personal merit even with the great prince who then filled the throne of
the world. He had, on a narrower field, displayed qualities which fairly
put him on a level with Henry himself. But, in English eyes, William was
simply the most powerful, and therefore the most dangerous, of the
greedy Frenchmen who every day flocked in greater numbers to the court
of the English King. William came with a great following; he tarried
awhile in his cousin’s company; he went away loaded with gifts and
honours.[907] [Sidenote: Eadward’s alleged promise of the Crown to
William probably made at this time.] And we can hardly doubt that he
also went away encouraged by some kind of promise, or at any rate by
some kind of implied hope, of succeeding to the Kingdom which [Sidenote:
General appearance of things favourable to William.] he now visited as a
stranger. There was indeed everything to raise the hope in his breast.
He landed in England; he journeyed to the court of England; his course
lay through what were in truth the most purely English parts of England;
but the sons of the soil lay crushed without a chief. On the throne sat
a King of his own kin, English in nothing but in the long succession of
glorious ancestors of whom he showed himself so unworthy. His heart was
Norman; his speech was French; men of foreign birth were alone welcome
at his court; men of foreign birth were predominant [Sidenote: Norman
predominance in England.] in his councils. The highest places of the
Church were already filled by Norman Prelates. The Norman Primate of all
England, the choicest favourite of the King, the man at whose bidding he
was ready to believe that black was white, would doubtless be the first
to welcome his native sovereign to his province and diocese. The great
city which was fast becoming the capital of England, the city beneath
whose walls Eadward had fixed his chosen dwelling, had been made to own
the spiritual rule of another Norman priest. A short journey, a
hunting-party or a pilgrimage, would bring King and Duke within the
ecclesiastical jurisdiction of a third Norman, the unworthy stranger who
disgraced the episcopal throne of Dorchester. Among the temporal chiefs
of the Kingdom there was already one French Earl, kinsman alike of
William and of Eadward, who would not fail in showing honour to the most
renowned of his speech and kindred. Norman Stallers, Treasurers,
personal officers of every kind, swarmed around the person of the King.
Norman Thegns were already scattered through the land, and were already
filling the land with those threatening castles, of which the wise
policy of William had destroyed so many within his own dominions. Robert
the son of Wymarc, Richard the son of Scrob, and the whole herd of
strangers who were fattening on English soil, would flock to pay their
duty to a more exalted countryman who came on the same errand as
themselves. They would tell him with delight.and pride how the insolence
of the natives had been crushed, how the wrongs of Count Eustace had
been avenged, and how the rebel leaders had been driven to flee from
justice. They would speak of England as a land which Norman influences
had already conquered, and which needed only one exertion of the strong
will and the strong hand to enable the Norman to take formal possession.
The land was fast becoming their own. Some wild tribes, in parts of the
island to which William’s journey was not likely to extend, might still
remain under aged chieftains of English or Danish birth. But even these
rude men had been found, whether through fear or policy, ready to fall
in with the plans of the Norman faction, and to range themselves against
the champions of the national cause. And the richest and most civilized
parts of the land, the very parts which had been so lately held by the
sturdiest champions of Norman innovations, had now become one great
field for Normans of every class to settle in. From Kent to Hereford
they might enrich themselves with the lands and largesses which a
gracious King was never weary of showering upon them. That King was
childless; he had no heir apparent or presumptive near to him;[908] he
had had a brother, but that brother had been done to death by English
traitors, with the fallen captain of traitors at their [Sidenote: Lack
of direct heirs in the royal house.] head. Not a single near kinsman of
the royal house could be found in England. The only surviving male
descendant of Æthelred was the banished son of Eadmund, who, far away in
his Hungarian refuge, perhaps hardly occurred to the minds of Norman
courtiers. William was Eadward’s kinsman; it was convenient to forget
that, though he was Eadward’s kinsman, yet not a single drop of royal or
English blood flowed in his veins. It was convenient to forget that,
even among men of foreign birth, there were those who were sprung, by
female descent at least, from the kingly stock of England. Ralph of
Hereford was the undoubted grandson of Æthelred, but the claims of the
timid Earl of the Magesætas could hardly be pressed against those of the
renowned Duke of the Normans. It [Sidenote: Constitutional aspect of the
promise.] was convenient to forget that, by English Law, mere descent
gave no right, and that, if it had given any right, William had no claim
by descent to plead. It was easy to dwell simply on the nearness by
blood, on the nearness by mutual good offices, which existed between the
English King and the Norman Duke. There was everything to suggest the
thought of the succession to William’s own mind; there was everything to
suggest it to the foreign counsellors who stood around the throne of
Eadward. Probably William, Eadward, and Eadward’s counsellors were alike
ignorant or careless of the English Constitution. They did not, or they
would not, remember that the Kingdom was not a private estate, to be
passed from man to man either according to the caprice of a testator or
according to the laws of strict descent. They did not remember that no
man could hold the English Crown in any way but as the free gift of the
English people. The English people would seem to them to be a conquered
race, whose formal consent, if it needed to be asked at all, could be as
easily extorted as it had been by Swend and Cnut. If they dared to
refuse, they might surely be overcome by the Norman no less easily than
they had been overcome by the Dane. It would probably seem to them that
the chances were all in favour of William’s being able to succeed
quietly as the heir or legatee of Eadward. If those chances failed, it
would still be open to him to make his entry by arms as the avenger of
the blood of Ælfred and his companions.

[Sidenote: No direct evidence on the point.]

The moment was thus in every way favourable for suggesting to William on
the one hand, to Eadward on the other, the idea of an arrangement by
which William should succeed to the English Crown on Eadward’s death. We
have no direct evidence that any such arrangement took place at this
time, but all the probabilities of the story lead irresistibly to the
belief that such was the case. The purely English writers are silent,
but then they are silent as to any bequest or arrangement in William’s
favour at any time. They tell us nothing as to the nature of his claim
to the Crown; they record his invasion, but they record nothing as to
its motives.[909] The Norman writers, on the other hand, so full of
Eadward’s promise to William, nowhere connect it with William’s visit to
England, which one only among them speaks of at all.[910] But Norman
writers, Norman records, the general consent of the age, confirmed
rather than confuted [Sidenote: Negative evidence of the English
writers.] by the significant silence of the English writers, all lead us
to believe that, at some time or other, some kind of promise of the
succession was made by Eadward to William. The case of Eadward’s promise
is like the case of Harold’s oath. No English writer mentions either;
but the silence of the English writers confirms rather than disproves
the fact of both. All those Norman calumnies which they could deny, the
English writers do most emphatically deny.[911] The fact then that they
never formally deny the reports, which they must have heard, that Harold
swore an oath to William, that Eadward made a promise in favour of
William, may be accepted as the strongest proof that some kind of oath
was sworn, that some kind [Sidenote: _Some_ promise of Eadward, and
_some_ oath of Harold, historical, but the Norman details untrustworhy.]
of promise was made. Had either Eadward’s promise or Harold’s oath been
a pure Norman invention, William could never have paraded both in the
way that he did in the eyes of Europe; he could never have turned them
to the behoof of his cause in the way that he so successfully did. I
admit then some promise of Eadward, some oath of Harold. But that is
all. The details, Eadward and some oath of Harold, historical, but the
Norman details untrustworthy. as they are given by the various Norman
writers, are so different, so utterly contradictory, that we can say
nothing, on their showing, as to the time, place, or circumstances of
either event. We are left with the bare fact, and for anything beyond it
we must look to the probabilities of the case. The oath of Harold I
shall discuss at the proper time; at present we are concerned with the
bequest of the English Crown said to have been made by Eadward in favour
of William.

Every one who has grasped the true nature of the English Constitution,
as it stood in the eleventh century, [Sidenote: No power of bequest in
the King, only of recommendation.] will fully understand that, strictly
speaking, any bequest of the kind was altogether beyond the power of an
English King. The Law of England gave the King no power to dispose of a
Crown which he held solely by the free choice of the Witan of the land.
All that Eadward could constitutionally do was to pledge himself to make
in William’s favour that recommendation to the Witan which the Witan
were bound to consider, though not [Sidenote: Eadward’s change of
purpose; his final recommendation of Harold.] necessarily to consent
to.[912] That, when the time came, Eadward did make such a
recommendation, and did not make it in favour of William, we know for
certain. The last will of Eadward, so far as such an expression can be
allowed, was undoubtedly in favour of Harold. We shall see, as we go on,
that there is the strongest reason to believe that Eadward at one time
designed his namesake the Ætheling as his successor. It is even possible
that his thoughts were at one time directed towards his nephew Ralph of
Hereford. In a weak prince like Eadward changes of purpose of this kind
are in no way wonderful. And in truth the changes in the condition of
the country were such that a wiser King than Eadward might well have
changed his purpose more than once between the visit of William and his
own death. Now there is not the slightest sign of any intention on
behalf of William during the later years of Eadward; first the Ætheling,
and then the great Earl, are the persons marked out in turn for the
succession. And yet, as we have seen, it is impossible not to believe
that some promise was, at some time or other, made in William’s favour.
The details of the Norman stories are [Sidenote: Impossibility of the
Norman accounts.] indeed utterly incredible.[913] The version which is
least grotesquely absurd represents Eadward as promising the Crown to
his dear cousin and companion William, when they were both boys or
youths living together in Normandy. It is enough to upset this tale,
taken literally, if we remember that Eadward, who is here represented as
the familiar and equal companion of the boy William, was, when he left
Normandy, nearly forty years old, some five and twenty years older than
his cousin. He is moreover made to dispose of a Crown which was not yet
his, and which he afterwards assumed with a good deal of unwillingness.
Yet this story is distinctly less absurd than the other versions. It is
even possible that William or his advisers may have begun to look on the
succession to the English Crown as a matter within the scope of their
policy, from the time when the English embassy came to bring the
King-elect Eadward from Normandy to his own Kingdom.[914] It is a far
wilder story which describes Archbishop Robert as going over to announce
to William the decree of the English Witan in his favour, a decree
confirmed by the oaths of the Earls Leofric, Siward, and—Godwine! But
even this story is less marvellous than that which represents Harold
himself, at a time when he was the first man in England, and when his
own designs on the Crown must have been perfectly well known, as sent by
Eadward into Normandy to announce to the Duke the bequest which the King
had made in his favour. All these stories are simply incredible; they
are simply instances of that same daring power of invention by virtue of
which Dudo of Saint Quintin describes William Longsword and Richard the
Fearless as reigning over half the world,[915] by virtue of which Guy of
Amiens describes Robert the Devil [Sidenote: William’s visit the only
opportunity for the promise.] as the actual conqueror of England.[916]
Yet some promise must be accepted, and some time and some place must be
found for it. What time and place are so obvious William’s visit the
only opportunity for the promise. as the time and place when Eadward and
William, once and once only during their joint reigns, met together face
to face? Every earlier and every later time seems utterly impossible;
this time alone seems possible and probable. At the moment everything
would tend to suggest the idea both to the King and to the Duke. The
predominance of the Norman faction, the actual presence of the Norman
Duke, the renown of his exploits sounding through all Europe, the lack
of any acknowledged English heir, the absence of any acknowledged
English leader, all suggested the scheme, all seemed [Sidenote: Later
circumstances unfavourable to William.] to make it possible. Everything
at that moment tended in favour of William’s succession; every later
event, every later change of circumstances, tended in favour of the
succession of any one rather than of William. At that moment the Norman
party were in the full swing of power. Before another year had passed,
the cause of England had once more triumphed; Eadward had Englishmen
around him; he gradually learned to attach himself to men of his own
race, and to give to the sons of Godwine that confidence and affection
which he never gave to Godwine himself. He either forgot his promise to
William, or else he allowed himself to be convinced that such a promise
was unlawful to make and impossible to fulfil. But William never forgot
it. We may be sure that, from that time, the Crown of England was the
great object of all his hopes, all his thoughts, all his policy. Even in
his marriage it may not have been left quite out of sight. The marriage
of William and Matilda was undoubtedly a marriage of the truest
affection. But it was no less undoubtedly a marriage which was prompted
by many considerations of policy. And, among other inducements, William
may well have remembered that his intended bride sprang by direct, if
[Sidenote: Matilda’s descent from Ælfred.] only by female, descent from
the stock of the great Ælfred.[917] His children therefore would have
the blood of ancient English royalty in their veins. Such a descent
would of course give neither William, nor Matilda, nor their children,
any real claim; but it was a pretension one degree less absurd than a
pretension grounded on the fact that Eadward’s mother was William’s
great-aunt. [Sidenote: Nature of William’s claims.] And William knew as
well as any man that, in politics, a chain is not always of the strength
only of its weakest link. He knew that a skilful combination of
fallacious arguments often has more practical effect on men’s mind than
a single conclusive argument. He contrived, in the end, by skilfully
weaving together a mass of assertions not one of which really proved his
point, to persuade a large part of Europe that he was the true heir of
Eadward, kept out of his inheritance by a perjured usurper. That all
these schemes and pretensions date from the time of William’s visit to
Eadward, that the Norman Duke left the English court invested, in his
own eyes and in those of his followers, with the lawful heirship of the
English Crown, is a fact which seems to admit of as little doubt as any
fact which cannot be proved by direct evidence.[918]

[Sidenote: William’s visit an important stage in the history.]

In short, it marks one of the most important stages of our history, when
“William Earl came from beyond sea with mickle company of Frenchmen, and
the King him received, and as many of his comrades as to him seemed
good, and let him go again.”[919] From that day onwards, we feel that we
have been brought nearer, by one of the longest stages of our journey,
to the fight of Senlac and the coronation of Westminster.

[Sidenote: Lack of details.]

William then visited England at the moment while Godwine was sheltered
at the court of Bruges, while Harold was planning vengeance at the court
of Dublin, while Eadgyth was musing on the vanity of earthly things in
her cell at Wherwell. He therefore met none of the family who were most
steadily hostile to all his projects. But we ask in vain, Did he meet
the stout warrior Siward? Did he meet the mediator Leofric? Did he meet
the Primate who was, fifteen years later, to place the Crown on his own
brow, or that more stout-hearted Primate who either refused or was
deemed unworthy to bear any part in that great ceremony? And we cannot
but ask, Did he meet the now aged Lady, through whom came all his
connexion with England or English royalty, the wife and mother of so
many kings, the victim of so many spoliations? With what grace could
Eadward bring his kinsman into the presence of the parent through whom
alone William could call him kinsman, but between whom and himself there
had been so little love? At all events, if Eadward was now for a season
set free from the presence of his wife, he was soon set free for ever
from the [Sidenote: Death of Emma. March 6, 1052.] presence of his
mother. Early in the next year died Ælfgifu-Emma, the Old Lady, the
mother of Eadward King and of Harthacnut, and her body lay in the Old
Minster by Cnut King.[920]

The course of our story has thus brought us once more to the shores of
our own island. In our next Chapter we shall have to begin the picture
of the bright, if brief, regeneration of England. We shall have to
listen to the spirit-stirring tale, how the champions of England came
back from banishment, how the heart of England rose to welcome her
friends and to take vengeance on her enemies, how for fourteen years
England was England once again under the rule of the noblest of her own
sons.

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.

In the course of this year, seemingly at a Gemót held at Midsummer,
possibly that in which the expedition [Sidenote: State of the
succession. 1054.] against Macbeth was decreed,[1090] a most important
step was taken with regard to the succession to the Crown. It was a step
which proved altogether fruitless, but it is most important as showing
what men’s feelings and wishes were at the time. It proves incontestably
that now, two years after the return of Godwine, the idea of the
succession of William had quite passed away, and that the idea of the
succession of Harold had not yet occurred to men’s minds. The state of
the royal house was such as to cause the deepest anxiety. The English
people, though they cared little for any strict law of succession, still
reverenced the blood of their ancient princes, and had ever been wont,
save under the irresistible pressure of foreign conquest, to choose
their Kings only from among the descendants of former Kings. But now the
line of their former Kings seemed to be altogether dying out. Eadward
was without children or hopes of children. There was no man in the land
sprung from the male line of Æthelred and Eadgar. It is quite possible
that there may have been men descended from earlier Kings; but, if so,
they could only have been distant kinsmen, whose royal descent was well
nigh forgotten, and who were no longer allowed to count as Æthelings.
There was indeed a grandson of Æthelred dwelling in the Kingdom in the
person of Ralph of Hereford. [Sidenote: Position of Ralph.] Ralph would
very likely have been the successor to whom Eadward’s personal
inclinations would have led him. He shared with William of Normandy the
merit of being a stranger speaking the French tongue, and he had the
advantage over William of being really a descendant of English royalty.
And the tie which bound Ralph to Eadward was a very close one. Old
Teutonic feelings held the son of a sister to be hardly less near and
dear than a son of one’s own loins,[1091] and we have seen some
indications that this feeling was not wholly forgotten in England in the
eleventh century. The sister’s son of Brihtnoth and the sister’s son of
Siward[1092] are mentioned in a special way among the chosen companions
of their uncles, around whose banners they fought and died. Eadward, in
his heart of hearts, would naturally fall back upon Ralph, his own
nephew, the son of the daughter of Æthelred and Emma, as a candidate
whom the English people might perhaps be persuaded to accept, when the
cause of the Norman became hopeless after Godwine’s revolution.
[Sidenote: No preference given by female descent.] But however sacred
was the relation between a man and his sister’s son, it was not one
which by the Law of England conferred any right to the royal succession.
The preference attaching to kingly blood was confined to those who were
of kingly blood by direct male descent; it does not appear that the son
of a King’s daughter had any sort of claim in a royal election beyond
any other man in the realm. And, as for Ralph himself, his foreign
origin and his personal conduct were, either of them, quite enough to
make him thoroughly distasteful to the English people. Men had had quite
enough of him as Earl, and they certainly had no wish to have any
further experience of him as King. In the present lack of heirs, men’s
thoughts turned to a branch of the royal family whose very existence
[Sidenote: The sons of Eadmund Ironside.] was perhaps well nigh
forgotten. Seven and thirty years before, the infant sons of Eadmund
Ironside, Eadmund and [Sidenote: 1017.] Eadward, had found a shelter
from the fears of Cnut under the protection of the sainted Hungarian
King Stephen.[1093] [Sidenote: Eadward the Ætheling; his marriage and
children.] Eadmund died, seemingly while still young. Eadward was still
living. He had, seemingly through the influence of Stephen’s Queen
Gisela, sister of the Emperor Henry the Second, obtained in marriage a
lady of royal descent named Agatha, who seems most probably to have been
a niece of the Hungarian Queen and of the sainted Emperor.[1094] This
marriage would seem to show that, in those distant lands, Eadward was
acknowledged as a prince, perhaps looked to as one who might some day
reign in his native island. And the fact that the son of Eadward and
Agatha bore the renowned English name of Eadgar, shows that the Ætheling
himself cannot have wholly forgotten his native land. Yet, banished, as
he was, in his cradle, he could have retained hardly anything of the
feelings of an Englishman, and it is hardly possible that he could have
spoken the English tongue. Eadward must have been even less of an
Englishman than his royal namesake and uncle. Eadward the King had left
England when he was many years older than Eadward the Ætheling, and he
had lived in a land which had a much closer connexion with England.
Still Normandy was dangerous, and Hungary was not. Whatever the Ætheling
was, at least he was not a Frenchman; his connexions, though foreign,
were in every way honourable and in no way formidable. Hungary was too
distant a land to do England either good or harm, but the fame of the
youngest Christian Kingdom, and of its renowned and sainted King, was
doubtless great throughout Europe. And the connexion with the Imperial
House, the distant kindred of the Ætheling’s children with the
illustrious Cæsar, the friend and brother-in-law of King Eadward, was,
of all foreign ties, that which it most became Englishmen to strengthen.
In default therefore of any member of the royal house brought up and
dwelling in the land, it was determined to recall the banished Ætheling
with his wife and family.[1095] Besides his son Eadgar, he had two
daughters, who bore the foreign names of Margaret and Christina. We
shall hear of all [Sidenote: Eadgar.] three again. Eadgar lived to be in
an especial manner the sport of fortune; a King twice chosen, but never
crowned, the last male descendant of Cerdic dragged on a sluggish and
contented life as the friend and pensioner [Sidenote: Margaret.] of
Norman patrons. One of his sisters won a worthier fame. Margaret
obtained the honours alike of royalty and of saintship; she became one
of the brightest patterns of every virtue in her own time, and she
became the source through which the blood and the rights of the Imperial
House of Wessex have passed to the Angevin, the Scottish, and the German
sovereigns of England.[1096]

It is impossible to doubt that the resolution to invite the Ætheling was
regularly passed by the authority of the King and his Witan. No lighter
authority could have justified such a step, or could have carried any
weight with [Sidenote: The Ætheling invited to England: the invitation
equivalent to succession to the Crown.] foreign courts. Such an
invitation was equivalent to declaring the Ætheling to be successor to
the Crown, so far as English Law allowed any man to be successor before
the Crown was actually vacant. It is possible that, as in some other
cases, an election before the vacancy may have been attempted;[1097] but
it is perhaps more likely that all that was done was to guarantee to
Eadward that same strong preference which naturally belonged only to a
son of a reigning King. Such a preference, in favour of one who was the
last remaining member of the royal family, would in practice hardly
differ from an exclusive right. The resolution in short placed the
Ætheling in the same position as if his father and not his uncle had
been on the throne. His position would thus be the same as that of
Eadwig and Eadgar during the reign of Eadred.[1098] But, when we
consider what followed, it is important to remember that the preference
which undoubtedly belonged to Eadward would not belong to his son.
Eadward, though so long an exile, was an Englishman born, the son of a
crowned King and his Lady.[1099] The young Eadgar was a native of a
foreign land, and was not the son of [Sidenote: Import of the selection
of Eadward.] royal parents. This _quasi_ designation of Eadward to the
Crown involves, as I before said, two things. It implies that the King
had learned that the succession of William was a thing which he never
could bring about.[1100] It implies also that neither Harold himself nor
the English people had as yet formed any serious idea of the possible
succession of one not of royal descent. Indeed one can hardly doubt that
the resolution to send for the Ætheling, if it was not made at Harold’s
own motion, must at any rate have had his full approval. No proposal
could be more contrary to the wishes and interests of the Norman
courtiers, who must either have unsuccessfully opposed it or else have
found it their best wisdom to hold their peace. It was therefore,
seemingly at the Whitsun Gemót, resolved to send an embassy to obtain
the return of the Ætheling. And about the time that Earl Siward was
warring in Scotland, the English ambassadors set forth on their errand.

[Sidenote: Embassy to the Emperor Henry. July, 1054.]

A direct communication with the court of Hungary seems to have been an
achievement beyond the diplomatic powers of Englishmen in that age. The
immediate commission of the embassy was addressed to the Emperor Henry,
with a request that he would himself send a further [Sidenote: Ealdred
and Ælfwine ambassadors.] embassy into Hungary. At the head of the
English legation was the indefatigable Bishop Ealdred, and with him
seems to have been coupled Abbot Ælfwine of Ramsey.[1101] Both these
Prelates had already had some experience of foreign courts. Ealdred had
gone on the King’s errand to the Apostolic throne,[1102] and Ælfwine had
been one of the representatives of the English Church at the famous
Council of Rheims.[1103] The Bishop of Worcester clearly reckoned on a
long absence, and we get some details of the arrangements which he made
for the discharge of his ecclesiastical duties during his absence. The
Abbey of Winchcombe, which he had annexed to his Bishoprick the year
before, he now resigned,[1104] and the general government of the see of
Worcester he entrusted to a monk of Evesham named Æthelwig.[1105] The
church of that famous monastery, raised by the skill of its Abbot
Mannig,[1106] was now awaiting consecration. For that ceremony he
deputed his neighbour Bishop Leofwine of Lichfield.[1107] He then set
forth for the court of Augustus. The Emperor was then at Köln, on his
return from the consecration of his young son Henry as West-Frankish or
Roman King in the Great Charles’s minster at Aachen.[1108] The immediate
tie between Eadward and Henry had been broken by the death of Queen
Gunhild; the King who was now to be crowned was the child of Henry’s
second wife, the Empress Agnes of Poitiers.[1109] But the interchange of
gifts and honours between the Roman and the insular [Sidenote: Splendid
reception given to Ealdred.] Basileus was none the less cordial and
magnificent. English writers dwell with evident pleasure on the splendid
reception which the English Bishop met with both from the Emperor and
from Hermann, the Archbishop of the [Sidenote: His long stay at Köln.
1054–1055.] city where Ealdred had been presented to Henry.[1110] But
the immediate business of his embassy advanced but slowly. The time was
ill chosen for an Imperial intervention with the Hungarian court.
Andrew, the reigning King of Hungary, was about this time abetting the
rebellious Duke Conrad of Bavaria against the Emperor.[1111] We have no
details of the further course of the negotiation. Ealdred abode a whole
year at Köln, probably waiting for a favourable opportunity. His embassy
was in the end successful; for the Ætheling did in the end return to
England. But we have no further details, and Eadward did not return to
England till long after Ealdred had gone back, and till at least a year
after the death of the Emperor.

[Sidenote: Death of Osgod Clapa. 1054.]

The year of Ealdred’s mission was marked also by the sudden death of a
somewhat remarkable person, namely Osgod Clapa, whose movements by sea
had been watched with such care five years before.[1112] The Chronicler
remarks, seemingly with some little astonishment, that he died in
[Sidenote: Death of Earl Siward. 1055.] his bed.[1113] Early in the next
year death carried off a far more famous man, no other than the great
Earl of the Northumbrians.[1114] The victory of the last year, glorious
as it was, had been bought by the bitterest domestic losses, which may
not have been without their effect even on the iron spirit and frame of
the old Earl. His nephew and his elder son had fallen in the war with
Macbeth, and [Sidenote: His son WALTHEOF.] his only surviving son,
afterwards the famous Waltheof, was still a child.[1115] Siward’s first
wife Æthelflæd was dead, and he had in his old age married, and
survived, a widow named Godgifu.[1116] We might have fancied that
Waltheof was her son, but we know for certain that he was the son of the
daughter of the old Northumbrian Earls, and that he unhappily inherited
all the deadly feuds of his mother’s house.[1117] Siward died at York,
the capital of his Earldom. [Sidenote: Story of Siward’s death.] A tale,
characteristic at least, whether historically true or not, told how the
stern Danish warrior, when he felt death approaching, deemed it a
disgrace that he should die, not on the field of battle, but of disease,
“like a cow.” If he could not actually die amid the clash of arms, he
would at least die in warrior’s garb. He called for his armour, and,
harnessed as if again to march against Macbeth, the stout [Sidenote: His
foundation and burial at Galmanho.] Earl Siward breathed his last.[1118]
But this fierce spirit was not inconsistent with the piety of the time.
Saint Olaf, the martyred King of the Northmen, had by this time become a
favourite object of reverence, especially among men of Scandinavian
descent. In his honour Earl Siward had reared a church in a suburb of
his capital called Galmanho,[1119] a church which, after the Norman
Conquest, developed into that great Abbey of Saint Mary, whose ruins
form the most truly beautiful ornament of the Northern metropolis. In
his own church of Galmanho Siward the Strong, the true relic of old
Scandinavian times, was buried with all honour.

The death of Siward led to most important political consequences. The
direct authority of the House of Godwine was now, for the first time,
extended to the land beyond the Humber. This fact marks very forcibly
how fully the royal authority was now acknowledged throughout the whole
realm. The King and his Witan could now venture to appoint as the
successor of Siward an Earl who had absolutely no connexion with any of
the great families of Northumberland. Cnut, in the moment of victory,
had given the Northumbrians the Dane Eric as their Earl.[1120] But this
was the act of a conqueror, and such was the strength of the Danish
element in Northumberland that the appointment of a Dane from Denmark
probably seemed less irksome than the appointment of an Englishman from
any [Sidenote: TOSTIG appointed Earl of the Northumbrians. 1055.] other
part of the Kingdom. This last was the act, one wholly without a
parallel, on which Eadward now ventured. The vacant Earldom of
Northumberland, including also the detached shires of Northampton and
Huntingdon,[1121] was [Sidenote: Influences on behalf of Tostig.]
conferred on Tostig the son of Godwine. The novelty of the step is
perhaps marked by the elaborate description of the influences which were
brought to bear on the mind of Eadward to induce him to make the
appointment. We hear, not only of Tostig’s own merits, but of the
influence employed by his many friends, especially by his sister the
Lady Eadgyth and by his brother Earl Harold, whom Norman calumny has
represented as depriving Tostig of his hereditary rights.[1122] We may
suspect that we have here an account of influences which it was more
necessary to bring to bear on the minds of the Witan than on that of the
King.[1123] For there is no appointment of Eadward’s reign which is more
likely to have been the King’s personal act. Tostig, rather than Harold,
was Eadward’s personal [Sidenote: Eadward’s personal affection for
Tostig.] favourite. He was the Hêphaistiôn, the friend of Eadward, while
Harold was rather the Krateros, the friend of the King.[1124] He also
stood higher in the good will of their common sister the Lady Eadgyth.
Cut off in a great measure from his Norman favourites, the affections of
Eadward had settled themselves on the third son of Godwine. He would
therefore naturally desire to raise Tostig to the highest dignities in
his gift, or, if he felt hesitation in doing so, it could only be from
the wish to keep his favourite always about his own person. In fact we
shall find that Eadward could not bring himself to give up the society
of Tostig to the degree which the interests of his distant Earldom
called for. And this frequent absence of the Earl from his government
seems to have been among the causes of the misfortunes which afterwards
followed.[1125]

[Sidenote: Novelty of a West-Saxon Earl in Northumberland.]

This appointment of a West-Saxon to the great Northern Earldom was, as I
have already implied, a distinct novelty. Ever since Northumberland had
ceased to be ruled by Kings of her own, she had been ruled by Earls
chosen from among her own people. The ancient Kingdom had sometimes been
placed under one, sometimes under two, chiefs; but they had always been
native chiefs. The rule of the stranger Eric had been short, and he
seems to have allowed the line of the ancient princes to retain at least
a subordinate authority.[1126] Siward, a stranger by birth, was
connected with the ancient family by marriage.[1127] And both Eric and
Siward were Danes; Tostig came of a line which most probably sprang from
the most purely Saxon part of England. The experiment was a hazardous
one, yet it was one which was not only dictated by sound policy, but
which circumstances made almost unavoidable. The [Sidenote: Mode of
appointment to the great Earldoms.] great Earldoms, I may again repeat,
were neither strictly hereditary nor strictly elective. They were in the
gift of the King and his Witan, but there was always a strong tendency,
just as in the case of the Kingdom itself, to choose out of the family
of the deceased Earl, whenever [Sidenote: Impossibility of appointing a
native Earl on the death of Siward.] there was no obvious reason to do
otherwise. But on the death of Siward there was such an obvious reason
to do otherwise, just as there was in the case of the Kingdom when it
became vacant by the death of Eadward. The eldest son of Siward had
fallen in the Scottish war, and the one survivor of his house was still
a child.[1128] Oswulf, seemingly the only male representative of the
ancient Earls,[1129] was probably still a mere boy.[1130] There was
therefore no available candidate of the old princely line. And, when we
think of the state of the country, of the deadly feuds and jealousies
which prevailed even between the reigning Earls and other powerful
men,[1131] we shall see that the nomination of any private Northumbrian
would have been a still more hazardous experiment than the nomination of
a stranger. The Northumbrians themselves seem to have felt this, when,
ten years later, the choice of their Earl was thrown into their own
hands. They then chose, [Sidenote: Doubtful policy of the appointment of
Tostig.] not a Northumbrian, but a Mercian. But it may well be doubted
whether it was good policy to appoint a West-Saxon, and especially a
member of the House of Godwine. This was perhaps going too far in the
way of reminding the proud Danes of the North of their subjection to the
Southern King. It could not fail to suggest the idea of an intention to
monopolize all honours and all authority in a single family. And, as
events showed, the personal character of Tostig proved unfitted
successfully to grapple with the difficult task which was now thrown
upon him.

[Sidenote: Character of Tostig.]

In weighing the character of the third son of Godwine, we must be on our
guard against several distinct sources of error. We are at first tempted
to condemn without mercy one who became the antagonist of his nobler
brother, who waged open war with his country, and whose invasion of
England, by acting as a diversion in William’s favour, was one main
cause of the success of William’s expedition. We read the account of his
crimes as set forth by his Northumbrian enemies, and we think that no
punishment could be too heavy for the man who wrought them. On the other
hand, though Tostig, as an adversary of Harold, comes in for a certain
slight amount of Norman favour, there was also a temptation, which for
the most part was found irresistibly strong, to blacken both sons of the
[Sidenote: Legends of Harold and Tostig.] Traitor equally. The
opposition between Harold and Tostig during the last two years of their
joint lives has thus supplied the materials for a heap of legends of
revolting absurdity. The two brothers, who clearly acted together up to
those two last years, are described as being full of the most bitter
mutual rivalry and hatred, even from their childhood.[1132] The effect
of these two different pictures is that both admirers and depreciators
of Harold are alike led to look on the acts of Tostig in the most
unfavourable light. The crimes of his later years cannot be denied. He
died a traitor, in arms against his country, engaged in an act of
treason compared to which Harold’s ravages at Porlock, and even Ælfgar’s
alliance with Gruffydd, sink into insignificance. His Northumbrian
government too was evidently stained with great errors, seemingly with
great crimes. But it is remarkable that it is not till the last two
years of his life that we hear of anything which puts him in an
unfavourable light. And there is nothing in his few recorded earlier
actions which is at all inconsistent with the generally high character
[Sidenote: Witness of the Biographer of Eadward.] given of him by the
biographer of Eadward. That writer compares him with Harold in an
elaborate picture of the two which I have already made large use of in
describing Harold. And it is clear that, whether from his own actual
convictions or from a wish to please his patroness the Lady Eadgyth, it
is Tostig rather than Harold whose partizan he is to be reckoned, and it
is Tostig whose actions he is most anxious to put in a favourable light.
But the two are the two noblest of mortals; no land, no age, ever
brought forth two such men at the same time. He makes a comparison of
virtues between the two, but he hardly ventures to make the balance
decidedly weigh in [Sidenote: His description of Tostig.] favour of
either. In person Tostig was of smaller stature than his elder brother,
but in strength and daring he was his equal.[1133] But he seems to have
lacked all Harold’s winning and popular qualities. He is set before us
as a man of strong will, of stern and inflexible purpose, faithful to
his promise, grave, reserved, admitting few or none to share his
counsels, so that he often surprised men by the suddenness [Sidenote:
His stern and unyielding character.] of his actions.[1134] His zeal
against wrong-doers, the virtue of the ruler for which his father and
brother are so loudly extolled, amounted in him to a passion which
carried him beyond the bounds of justice and honour.[1135] The whole
picture describes him as a man of honest and upright intentions, but of
an unbending sternness which must have formed a marked contrast to the
frank and conciliatory disposition of his brother. Such a man, placed as
a ruler over a turbulent and refractory people, might, almost
unconsciously, degenerate into a cruel tyrant. [Sidenote: Disturbed
state of Northumberland.] Northumberland, we are told, was, at the time
when he undertook its government, in a state to which it is impossible
to believe that either Normandy or southern England afforded any
likeness. Siward’s strong arm had done something to bring its turbulent
inhabitants into order; yet thieves and murderers still had so
completely the upper hand that travellers had to go in parties of
[Sidenote: Tostig’s effort to restore order.] twenty and thirty, and
even then were hardly safe.[1136] Tostig set himself vigorously,
evidently too vigorously, to work to put an end to this state of things.
His severity was merciless and impartial; death and mutilation were
freely dispensed among all disturbers of public order. His efforts, we
are told, were effectual; it is said, in a proverbial form of speech,
that under his administration, any man could safely travel through the
whole land with all his goods.[1137] Even powerful Thegns were not
spared, and here comes the point in which Tostig most deeply erred.
Putting our various accounts together, we shall find that, when
offenders were too powerful to be reached by the arm of the law, Tostig
did not scruple to rid the land of them [Sidenote: Explanation of his
later crimes.] by treacherous assassination. We can well understand that
a man of Tostig’s disposition, bent on bringing his province into order
at any price, may have persuaded himself that the public good was
superior to all other considerations, and may have blinded himself to
the infamy of the means by which the public good was to be compassed.
Very similar conduct in public men of our own day has been condoned by
large bodies of men, and by some has even been warmly applauded. The
unswerving dictate of justice is that he who, in any age, sheds blood
without sentence of law, deserves the heaviest condemnation and the
heaviest punishment. Still such conduct does not necessarily imply any
original corruption of heart in the offender. Tostig richly deserved all
that afterwards fell upon him. Like most sinners, he went on from bad to
worse; but there is no reason to believe that he undertook the
government of Northumberland with any less sincere intention of doing
his duty there than Harold had when he undertook the government of
Wessex. Tostig in the end became a great criminal; but he clearly was
not a monster or a villain from the beginning of his career.

[Sidenote: His personal favour with Eadward.]

The strange thing is that a man of this disposition, whose virtues were
all of the sterner sort, should have become a personal favourite with a
feeble King like Eadward. One may perhaps explain it by the principle
which often makes men, both in love and in friendship, prefer those who
are most unlike themselves. A man like Eadward would cling to a man like
Tostig as his natural protector, and, after all, weak as Eadward was,
there were elements in his character to which the extreme severity of
Tostig would not be unacceptable or even unlike. The King who had
commanded Godwine to march against the untried citizens of Dover would
not be likely to condemn the harshness of Tostig’s rule in [Sidenote:
Tostig’s personal virtues.] Northumberland. And there were other points
in Tostig’s character which would naturally and rightly commend him to
the favour of the saintly King. Tostig, like William, practised some
virtues which Harold neglected. While Harold’s affections seem to have
dwelt wholly on an English mistress, Tostig set an example of strict
fidelity to his foreign wife.[1138] The husband of Judith would thus on
every ground be more acceptable to Eadward than the lover of Eadgyth.
Tostig too was of a bountiful disposition, and Judith, who was a devout
woman, directed a large share of his bounty to pious objects.[1139]
Through all these causes Tostig easily won the highest place in the
affection of his royal brother-in-law. With his sister the Lady he stood
only too well. There is too much reason to fear that Eadgyth did not
scruple to become something more than the accomplice of one of his worst
deeds.[1140]

Such was the man to whom, probably at about the age of thirty-two,[1141]
was entrusted the rule of the ancient realm beyond the Humber. The
general picture of his government I have already given; but for nine
years no domestic details are supplied. We shall find him, like his
brother, making the fashionable pilgrimage to Rome, and aiding his
brother in his wars with the Welsh. Notwithstanding Norman legends,
there is, at this stage of their history, not the slightest sign of any
dissension between them.

[Sidenote: Tostig becomes the sworn brother of Malcolm. 1055–1061.]

One fact however we learn quite incidentally which touches, not indeed
the internal administration of his Earldom, but the measures taken at
once for its external defence, and for the maintenance of the supremacy
of the Imperial Crown over the great Northern dependency of England. At
some time during the first six years of his government, Earl Tostig
became the sworn brother of Malcolm, the restored King of Scots.[1142]
This was a tie by which reconciled enemies often sought to bind one
another to special friendship. It was the tie by which Cnut had been
bound to Eadmund,[1143] and by which Tostig’s predecessor Ealdred had
been bound to the faithless Carl.[1144] But there is nothing to show
that the establishment of this tie between Tostig and Malcolm [Sidenote:
Probable reference of the engagement to the war with Macbeth.] had been
preceded by any hostilities between them. It is far more probable,
considering the date of Tostig’s appointment to his Earldom, that the
engagement took place early in Tostig’s government, and that it was made
with a view to the joint prosecution of hostilities against a common
enemy. When Tostig succeeded Siward, Malcolm was still struggling for
his crown against Macbeth, and we cannot doubt that Tostig continued to
support the man of King Eadward against the usurper.[1145] Then
doubtless it was that the King of Scots and the Earl of the
Northumbrians entered into this close mutual relation. But the tie of
sworn brotherhood was one which was seldom found strong enough to bind
the turbulent spirits of those times. It sat almost as lightly on the
conscience of Malcolm as it had sat on the conscience of Carl. The
engagement was observed as long as it happened to be convenient, and no
longer. While Tostig was the guardian of the English border, Malcolm’s
brotherhood with Tostig did not hinder him from violating the frontiers
of Tostig’s Earldom. When Tostig was an exile in arms against his
country, the tie was remembered, and it procured him a warm welcome at
the Scottish Court.

[Sidenote: Ælfgar banished. March 20, 1055.]

The appointment of Tostig to the Earldom must have been made in the
Gemót which was held in London in the Lent of this year.[1146] In the
same Assembly, Ælfgar, Earl of the East-Angles, was banished. The
accounts which we have of this transaction are not very intelligible.
The fullest narrative that we have, that of the Chronicler who is most
distinctly a partizan of Harold’s, tells us that he was charged with
treason towards the King and all his people, and that he publicly
confessed his guilt, though the confession escaped him unawares.[1147]
The other accounts are satisfied with saying that he was guiltless or
nearly guiltless.[1148] With such evidence as this, we are not in a
position to determine on the guilt or innocence of Ælfgar. We do not
even know what the treason was with which he was charged. But a charge
to which the accused party, even in a moment of confusion, pleaded
guilty, could hardly have been wholly frivolous on the part of the
accuser. This point is important; for, though we have no direct
statement who the accuser was, the probability is that a charge against
one who stood so high in the rival family could have been brought only
by Harold or by some one acting in his interest. At any rate, if Ælfgar
was not a traitor before his condemnation, he became one speedily after
it. In seeking a forcible restoration, he did but follow the least
justifiable act in the career of his rival. But, if Harold had set a bad
example, Ælfgar improved upon it. Harold had endeavoured to force his
way into the country at the head of mercenaries hired in a foreign land.
But he had not allied himself with the enemies of his country; he had
not carried on a war against England in the interest of an ever restless
foe of England. To this depth of infamy [Sidenote: Ælfgar hires ships in
Ireland,] Ælfgar did not scruple to sink. He went over, as Harold had
done, to Ireland, and gathered a force of eighteen ships, besides the
one in which he had made his own voyage. These ships were doubtless
manned by the Scandinavian settlers in that country.[1149] With this
fleet he sailed to some haven in Wales, probably of North Wales,
[Sidenote: and makes an alliance with Gruffydd.] where he met Gruffydd
and made an alliance with him.[1150] The Welsh Prince was now at the
height of his power. He had this very year overthrown and slain his
South-Welsh rival, Gruffydd the son of Rhydderch.[1151] He seems now to
have been master of the whole Cymrian territory, and, at the head of
such a power, he was more dangerous, and probably more hostile, to
England than ever. Nothing then could be more opportune for his purposes
than the appearance of a banished English Earl at the head of a powerful
force of Irish Danes. Ælfgar at once asked for Gruffydd’s help in a war
to be waged against King Eadward.[1152] The plan of a campaign was
speedily settled. Gruffydd summoned the whole force of the Cymry[1153]
for a great expedition against the Saxons. Ælfgar, with his Irish or
Danish following, was to meet the Welsh King at some point which is not
mentioned, and the combined host was to march on a devastating inroad
into Herefordshire. The plan was successfully carried out, and the
forces of Gruffydd and Ælfgar entered the southern part of the shire,
the district known as Archenfeld, and [Sidenote: Gruffydd and Ælfgar
ravage Herefordshire,] there harried the country. The border land which
they entered was one bound to special service against British enemies.
The Priests of the district had the duty of carrying the King’s messages
into Wales; its militia claimed the right, in any expedition against the
same enemy, to form the van in the march and the rear in the
retreat.[1154] To ravage this warlike district was no doubt a special
object with the Welsh King, one which would be carried out with special
delight. He did his work effectually. The effects of the harrying under
Gruffydd were still to be seen at the time of the Norman survey.[1155]

The work of destruction thus begun seems to have been carried on by
Gruffydd and his allies without opposition, till they came within two
miles of the city of Hereford.[1156] [Sidenote: and meet Earl Ralph near
Hereford. October 24, 1055.] There they were at last met by a large
force under Ralph, the Earl of the country, consisting partly of the
levies of the district, and partly of his own French and Norman
following. Richard the son of Scrob, it will be remembered, was among
the Normans who had been allowed to remain in England,[1157] and no
doubt the forces of Richard’s Castle swelled the army of Ralph. The
timid Earl[1158] thought himself called upon to be a military reformer.
The English, light-armed and heavy-armed alike, were [Sidenote: Ralph
requires the English to fight on horseback.] always accustomed to fight
on foot. The Housecarl, the professional soldier, with his coat of mail
and his battle-axe, and the churl who hastened to defend his field with
nothing but his javelin and his leathern jerkin, alike looked on the
horse only as a means to convey the warrior to and from the field of
battle. The introduction of cavalry into the English armies might
perhaps have been an improvement, but it was an improvement which could
not be carried into effect with a sudden levy within sight of the enemy.
But Ralph despised the English tactics, and would have his army arrayed
according to the best and newest continental models. A French prince
could not condescend to command a host who walked into action on their
own feet, according to the barbarous English fashion. The men of
Herefordshire were therefore required to meet the harassing attacks of
the nimble Welsh, and the more fearful onslaught of Ælfgar’s Danes,
while still [Sidenote: The battle is therefore lost.] mounted on their
horses. The natural consequences followed; before a spear was hurled,
the English took to flight.[1159] Nothing else could have been
reasonably looked for; however strong may have been the hearts of their
riders, horses which had not gone through the necessary training would
naturally turn tail at the unaccustomed sights and sounds of an army in
battle array.[1160] But in one account we find a statement which is far
stranger and more disgraceful. If Ralph required his men to practise an
unusual and foreign tactic, he and his immediate companions should at
least have shown them in their own persons an example of its skilful and
valiant carrying out. But we are told that Ralph, with his French and
Normans, were the first to fly, and that the English in their flight did
but follow the example of their leader.[1161] I suspect some
exaggeration here. Whatever may have been the case with the timid Earl
himself, mere cowardice was certainly not a common Norman, or even
French, failing. For a party of French knights to take to flight on the
field of battle without exchanging a single spear-thrust, is something
almost unheard of. It is far more likely that we have here a little
perversion arising from national dislike. It is far more likely that,
whatever Ralph himself may have done, the Normans in his company were
simply carried away by the inevitable, and therefore in no way
disgraceful, flight of the English. Anyhow, the battle, before it had
begun, was changed into a rout. The enemy pursued. The light-armed and
nimble Welsh were probably well able to overtake the clumsily mounted
English. Four or five hundred were killed, and many more wounded. On the
side of Ælfgar and Gruffydd we are told that not a man was lost.[1162]

[Sidenote: Ælfgar and Gruffydd sack and burn Hereford.]

The Welsh King and the English Earl entered Hereford the same day[1163]
without resistance. The chief object of their wrath seems to have been
the cathedral church of the [Sidenote: Story of Æthelberht of
East-Anglia. 792.] diocese, the minster of Saint Æthelberht. The holy
King of the East-Angles, betrothed to the daughter of the famous Offa,
had come to seek his bride at her father’s court. He was there murdered
by the intrigues of Cynethryth, the wife of the Mercian King.[1164] He
became the local saint of Hereford, and the minster of the city boasted
[Sidenote: Æthelstan, Bishop of Hereford. 1012–1056.] of his relics as
its choicest treasure. That church was now ruled by Æthelstan, an aged
Prelate, who had already sat for forty-three years.[1165] But, for the
last twelve years, blindness had caused him to retire from the active
government of his diocese, which was administered by a Welsh Bishop
named Tremerin.[1166] Æthelstan is spoken of as a man of eminent
holiness, and he had, doubtless in his more active days, rebuilt the
minster of Saint Æthelberht, and enriched it with many ornaments. The
invaders attacked the church with the fury of heathens; indeed among the
followers of Ælfgar there may still have been votaries of Thor and Odin.
Seven of the Canons attempted to defend the great door of the church,
but they were cut down without mercy.[1167] The church was burned, and
all its relics and ornaments were lost. Of the citizens many were slain,
and others were led into captivity.[1168] The whole town was sacked and
set fire to, and the Welsh account specially adds that Gruffydd
destroyed the fort or citadel.[1169] The history which follows seems to
imply that the town itself was not fortified, but merely protected by
this fortress. At its date or character we can only guess. Hereford is
not spoken of among the fortresses raised by Eadward the Elder and his
sister Æthelflæd. It is an obvious conjecture that the fortress
destroyed by Gruffydd was a Norman castle raised by Ralph. A chief who
was so anxious to make his people conform to Norman ways of fighting
would hardly linger behind his neighbour at Richard’s Castle, in at once
providing himself with a dwelling-place, and his capital with a defence,
according to the latest continental patterns. If so, we may easily form
a picture of the Hereford of those days. By the banks of the Wye rose
the minster, low and massive, but crowned by one or more of those tall
slender towers, in which the rude art of English masons strove to
reproduce the campaniles of Northern Italy. Around the church were
gathered the houses of the Bishop, the Canons, the citizens, the last at
least mainly of wood. Over all rose the square mass of the Norman
donjon, an ominous presage of the days which were soon to come. All,
church, castle, houses, fell before the wasting arms of Ælfgar and
Gruffydd. They went away rejoicing in their victory and in the rich
booty which [Sidenote: Deaths of Tremerin, 1055, and Æthelstan, February
10, 1056.] they carried. The blow seems to have broken the hearts of the
two Prelates whose flock suffered so terribly. Tremerin died before the
end of the year, and Æthelstan early in the year following.[1170]

King Eadward was now in his usual winter-quarters at Gloucester. Either
the time of the Christmas Gemót was hastened, or the King, in such an
emergency, acted on his own responsibility. The defence of the country
and the chastisement of the rebels could no longer be left in the hands
of his incapable nephew. The occasion called for the wisest head and the
strongest arm in the whole realm. [Sidenote: Harold sent against the
Welsh.] Though his own government had not been touched, the Earl of the
West-Saxons was bidden to gather a force from all England, and to attack
the Welsh in their own land. It is not unlikely that his brother was, as
in a later war with the same enemy, summoned from Northumberland to his
help.[1171] Late as was the season of the year, [Sidenote: Comparison of
his earlier and later Welsh campaigns.] Harold did not shrink from the
task.[1172] This seems to have been his first experience of Welsh
warfare, and we do not know whether he now adopted those special means
of adapting his operations to the peculiar nature of the country,
[Sidenote: 1063.] which he tried so successfully in his later and more
famous campaign. He then, as we shall see, caused his soldiers to adopt
the light arms and loose array of the Welsh, and so proved more than a
match for them at their own weapons. The story seems rather to imply
that he did not do so on this occasion, and that the later stroke of his
genius was the result of the lessons which he now learned. In neither
case did a Welsh enemy dare to meet Harold in a pitched battle, but
there is a marked difference between the two campaigns; in the earlier
one, the Welsh successfully escaped Harold’s pursuit, while, in the
later one, they were unable to do so. Harold gathered his army at
Gloucester; he passed the Welsh border, and pitched his camp beyond the
border district of Straddele.[1173] But the main point is that Gruffydd
and Ælfgar, who had marched so boldly to the conflict with Ralph,
altogether shrank from giving battle to Harold. They escaped into South
Wales. Harold, finding it vain to pursue such an enemy, desisted from
the attempt. He dismissed the greater part of his army, that is probably
the militia of the shires, merely bidding them keep themselves in
readiness to withstand the enemy in case of [Sidenote: Harold fortifies
Hereford.] any sudden inroad.[1174] With the rest of his troops, that is
probably with his own following, he proceeded to take measures for
securing the important post of Hereford against future attacks. The
castle had been levelled with the ground, the church was a ruin, the
houses of the townsmen were burned. Harold set himself to repair the
mischief, but his notions of defending a city were different from those
of the Frenchman Ralph. The first object of the English Earl was to
secure the town itself, not to provide a stronghold for its governor. It
does not appear that he rebuilt the castle, but he at once supplied the
city itself with the requisite defences. So important a border town was
no longer to be left open to the incursions of every enemy or rebel. As
a military measure, to meet a temporary emergency, he surrounded the
town with a ditch and a strong wall. This wall, in its first estate,
though strengthened by gates and bars, seems to have been itself merely
a dyke of earth and rough stones. But, before the reign of Eadward was
ended, Harold, then Earl of the shire, followed the example of Eadward
at Towcester and Æthelstan at Exeter, and surrounded the town with a
wall of masonry.[1175] The wooden houses of the citizens could soon be
rebuilt. Hereford was soon again peopled with burghers, both within and
without the wall, some of them the men of the King and others the men of
Earl Harold.[1176] The minster had been burned, but we must remember how
laxly that word is often taken. All its woodwork, all its fittings and
ornaments, were of course destroyed, the walls would be blackened and
damaged, but it was capable of at least temporary repair, as Bishop
Æthelstan was buried in it next year.[1177] Under the care of Earl
Harold, Hereford was again a city.

[Sidenote: Peace of Billingsley. 1055.]

Meanwhile Ælfgar and Gruffydd sued for peace. Messages went to and fro,
and at last a conference was held between them and Harold at Billingsley
in Shropshire, a little west of the Severn. Harold was never disposed to
press hardly on an enemy, and he may possibly have felt that he was
himself in some sort the cause of all that had happened, if he had
promoted any ill-considered charges [Sidenote: General mildness of
English political warfare.] against his rival. In fact, rude and
ferocious as those times were in many ways, the struggles of English
political life were then carried on with much greater mildness than they
were in many later generations. Blood was often lightly shed, but it was
hardly ever shed by way of judicial sentence. A victorious party never
sent the vanquished leaders either to a scaffold or to a dungeon.
Banishment was the invariable sentence, and banishment in those days
commonly supplied the means of return. Thus when Gruffydd and Ælfgar
sought for peace, it was easily granted to them; Ælfgar was even
restored to the Earldom which he had forfeited. It was probably thought
that he was less dangerous as Earl of the East-Angles, than as a
banished man who could at any time cause an invasion of the country from
Wales or Ireland. His fleet sailed to Chester, and there awaited the pay
which he had promised the crews.[1178] Whether the payment was defrayed
out of the spoils of [Sidenote: Ælfgar restored to his Earldom.
Christmas, 1055–1056.] Herefordshire we are not told. Ælfgar now came to
the King, and was formally restored to his dignity.[1179] This was done
in the Christmas Gemót, in which we may suppose that the terms of the
peace of Billingsley were formally confirmed.

[Sidenote: Invasion of England by Gruffydd and Magnus. 1056.]

Peace with Gruffydd was easily decreed in words, but it was not so
easily carried out in act. The restless Briton eagerly caught at any
opportunity of carrying his ravages beyond the Saxon border. The Welsh
Annals here fill up a gap in our own, and make the story more
intelligible. With the help of a Scandinavian chief whom it is not easy
to identify, but who is described as Magnus the son of Harold,[1180]
Gruffydd make a new incursion into Herefordshire. We may well believe
that the restoration and fortification of Hereford was felt as a thorn
in his side. This time the defence of the city and shire was not left in
the hands of any Earl, fearful or daring, but fell to one of the
[Sidenote: Death of Bishop Æthelstan. February 10, 1056.] warlike
Prelates in whom that age was so fertile. Bishop Æthelstan, as I have
already said, died early in the year at Bosbury, an episcopal lordship
lying under the western slope of the Malvern Hills.[1181] His burial in
Saint Æthelberht’s minster must have been the first great public
ceremony in the restored city. In the choice of a successor, Eadward, or
rather Harold, was actuated at least as much [Sidenote: Leofgar, Bishop
of Hereford. March 27, 1056.] by military as by ecclesiastical
considerations. The see of the venerable and pious Æthelstan was filled
by a Prelate of whom, during a very short career, we hear only in the
character of a warrior. This was Leofgar, a chaplain of the Earl’s,
whose warlike doings seem to have been commemorated in popular ballads.
He laid aside his chrism and his rood, his ghostly weapons, and took to
his spear and his sword and went forth to the war against Gruffydd the
Welsh King.[1182] But the warfare of this valiant churchman [Sidenote:
His death in battle. June 16, 1056.] was unfortunate. He had not been
three months a Bishop before he was killed, and with him his priests, as
also Ælfnoth the Sheriff[1183] and many other good men. The Chronicler
goes on to complain bitterly of the heavy grievances attending on a
Welsh war. It is clear that the way had not yet been found out how
really to quell the active sons of the mountains, when their spirits
were thoroughly aroused by an able and enterprising prince like
Gruffydd. The complaint does not dwell on losses in actual fight, which
were probably comparatively [Sidenote: Character of the war with
Gruffydd.] small. The Welsh would seldom venture on an actual battle
with the English, even when commanded by captains very inferior to
Harold. They would not run such a risk, except when they were either
supported by Scandinavian allies, or else when they were able to take
the Saxons at some disadvantage. What the Chronicler paints is the
wearing, cheerless, bootless kind of warfare which is carried on with a
restless enemy who can never be brought to a regular battle. It is not
ill success in fighting that he speaks of, but the wretchedness of
endless marching and encamping, and the loss of men and horses,
evidently by weariness rather than by the sword.[1184] The wisest heads
in the nation agreed that a stop must, at any cost, be put [Sidenote:
Ealdred holds the see of Hereford with that of Worcester.] to this state
of things. On the death of Leofgar, the see of Hereford was committed to
Bishop Ealdred, whose energy seems to have shrunk from no amount of
burthens, ecclesiastical, military, or civil.[1185] By the counsel of
this Prelate, and of the Earls Leofric and Harold, the Welsh [Sidenote:
Gruffydd reconciled to Eadward. 1056.] King was reconciled to his
English overlord.[1186] This expression may be only a decorous way of
attributing to the King personally a measure which was really the act of
the three able statesmen who are represented as intervening between him
and his dangerous vassal. But Eadward did sometimes exert a will of his
own, and when he did so, his will was often in favour of more violent
courses than seemed wise or just in the eyes of his counsellors. It is
quite possible then that Eadward was, as he well might be, strongly
incensed against Gruffydd, and that it needed all the arguments of
Leofric and Harold, and of Ealdred so renowned as a peacemaker,[1187] to
persuade the King to come to any terms with one so stained with treason
and sacrilege. And undoubtedly, at this distance of time, there does
seem somewhat of national humiliation in the notion of making peace with
Gruffydd, after so many invasions and so many breaches of faith, on any
terms but those of his complete [Sidenote: His oath of homage.]
submission. We must take the names of Harold, Leofric, and Ealdred as a
guaranty that such a course was necessary. Gruffydd did indeed so far
humble himself as to swear to be for the future a faithful under-King to
Eadward.[1188] It would also seem that the rebellious vassal was
[Sidenote: He loses his lands in Cheshire.] mulcted of a small portion
of his territories. Eadward had, at some earlier time, granted to
Gruffydd certain lands, seemingly that portion of the present shire of
Chester which lies west of the Dee. These lands were now forfeited, and
restored to the see of Lichfield and other English possessors from whom
they had been originally taken.[1189] We know not whether the grant was
an original act of Eadward, or whether it was a convenient legal
confirmation of some irregular seizure made by the Welsh King. Gruffydd
was perhaps bought off in this way after some of his former incursions,
most likely at [Sidenote: 1046.] the moment of his temporary cooperation
with Swegen.[1190] If so, the restoration of the alienated lands was now
required as a condition of peace. This homage of Gruffydd, and this
surrender of lands, remind us of the homage [Sidenote: 1277.] and
surrender made, under the like circumstances, by the last successor of
Gruffydd to a greater Edward.[1191] As for the Welsh King’s oath, it was
kept after the usual fashion, that is, till another favourable
opportunity occurred for breaking it.

[Sidenote: Cooperation of Harold, Leofric, and Ealdred.]

One other point may be noted in connexion with this last transaction.
That is the way in which Harold, Leofric, and Ealdred are described as
acting together. If this implies no further cooperation, it at least
implies that these three took the same side in a debate in the
Witenagemót. Yet Leofric was the father of Harold’s rival Ælfgar, and
the last time that the names of Harold and Ealdred were coupled was when
Ealdred was sent to [Sidenote: 1051.] follow after Harold on his journey
to Bristol. But now all these old grudges seem to have been forgotten.
In fact not one of the three men was likely to prolong a grudge
needlessly. Harold’s policy was always a policy of conciliation; if—what
we can by no means affirm—his conduct with regard to the outlawry of
Ælfgar was at all of another character, it was the last example in his
history. Ealdred was emphatically the peacemaker. He had no doubt long
ago made his own peace with Harold, and he had probably used his
influence to reconcile him with any with whom reconciliation was still
needful. Leofric had often been opposed to Godwine, and must have looked
with uncomfortable feelings on his wonderful rise. But he had never been
a bitter or violent enemy; we have always found him playing the part of
a mediator between extreme parties. There is no trace of any personal
quarrel between him and Harold. He may have thought himself wronged in
the outlawry of his son; but he could not fail to condemn Ælfgar’s later
conduct and to approve that of Harold. He must have admired Harold’s
energetic carriage in the Welsh campaign and in the restoration of
Hereford. And Leofric doubtless felt, whether Ælfgar felt or not, some
gratitude to Harold for his conciliatory behaviour at Billingsley, and
for the restoration of Ælfgar to his Earldom. All that we know of the
good old Earl of the Mercians leads us to look on him as a man who was
quite capable of sacrificing the interests and passions of himself or
his family to the general welfare of his country.

§ 3. _From Harold’s first Campaign against Gruffydd to the Deaths of
Leofric and Ralph._ 1055–1057.

[Sidenote: Hermann, Bishop of Ramsbury, seeks to obtain the Abbey of
Malmesbury. 1055.]

A few detached ecclesiastical events must be mentioned as happening in
the course of these two years of war with Gruffydd. The see of Wiltshire
or Ramsbury[1192] was, it will be remembered, now held by Hermann, one
of the Lotharingian Prelates who were favoured by Godwine and Harold as
a sort of middle term between Englishmen and Frenchmen.[1193] This
preferment was not, at least in Hermann’s eyes, a very desirable one.
The church of Ramsbury, unlike other cathedral churches, seems not to
have been furnished with any company of either monks or canons,[1194]
and the Bishop therefore found himself somewhat solitary. The revenues
also of the see were small, an evil which seems to have pressed more
heavily on a stranger than it would have done on a native. Other Bishops
of Ramsbury, Hermann said, had been natives of the country, and the
poverty of their ecclesiastical income had been eked out by the bounty
of English friends and kinsfolk. He, a stranger, had no means of support
to look to except the insufficient revenues of his Bishoprick.[1195] He
had, it appears, been long looking forward to annexing, after the manner
of the time, a second Bishoprick to his own. As Leofric had united
Crediton and Saint German’s, Hermann hoped to unite Ramsbury and
Sherborne, whenever a vacancy should occur in the latter see. Hermann,
as the mission with which he had been entrusted shows,[1196] stood high
in royal favour, and the Lady Eadgyth had long before promised to use
her influence on his behalf, whenever the wished for opportunity should
occur.[1197] But another means of increasing the episcopal wealth of
Ramsbury now presented itself. The Abbot of Malmesbury was dead. Though
the monasteries had not yet reached their full measure of exemption from
episcopal control, we may be sure that the Bishops had already begun to
look with jealousy on those heads of great monastic houses who had
gradually grown up into rival Prelates within their own dioceses.
Hermann at Ramsbury felt towards the Abbey of Malmesbury, as in after
days his countryman Savaric at Wells felt towards the Abbey of
Glastonbury.[1198] Here was a good opportunity at once for raising his
Bishoprick to a proper standard of temporal income and for getting rid
of a rival who was doubtless a thorn in his side. He would forsake
Ramsbury, with its poor income and lack of clerks, and fix his episcopal
throne in the rich and famous minster which boasted of the burying-place
of Æthelstan.[1199] He laid his scheme before the King, who approved of
it; he went away from the royal presence already in expectation Bishop
of Malmesbury. But two parties interested in the matter had not been
consulted, the monks of Malmesbury and the Earl of the West-Saxons. The
monks were certain to feel [Sidenote: Relation of Bishops and Monks.]
the utmost repugnance to any such union. They might reasonably fear that
the Lotharingian Prelate might seek to reconstruct the foundation of his
newly made cathedral church according to the canonical pattern of his
own country. The rule of Chrodegang, which, to the Canons of Wells and
Exeter,[1200] seemed to be an insufferable approach to monastic
austerity, would seem to the monks of Malmesbury to be a no less
insufferable approach to secular laxity. Or, even if the Bishop allowed
the church to retain its ancient monastic constitution, the monks would
have no desire for any such close connexion with the Bishoprick. They
doubtless, as the monks of Glastonbury did afterwards, greatly preferred
a separate Abbot of their own. The monks of Malmesbury therefore betook
themselves to the common helper of the oppressed, and laid their
grievances at the feet of Earl Harold.[1201] As the natural protector of
all men, monks and otherwise, within his Earldom, Harold pleaded their
cause before the King. Within three days after the original concession
to Hermann,[1202] before any formal step had been taken to put him in
possession of the Abbey,[1203] the grant was revoked, and the church of
Malmesbury was allowed to retain its ancient constitution.[1204]

[Sidenote: Manifest action of the Witan.]

The speed with which this business was dispatched shows that it must
have been transacted at a meeting of the Witan held at no great distance
from Malmesbury. Such a change as the transfer of a Bishop’s see from
one church to another could certainly not have been made or contemplated
without the consent of the Witan. And for the monks to hear the news, to
debate, to obtain Harold’s help, and for Harold to plead for them,
within three days, shows that the whole took place while the Witan were
actually in session. Of the places where Gemóts were usually held the
nearest to Malmesbury is Gloucester, the usual scene of the Christmas
Assembly. The monks, or enough of them to act in the name of the house,
may perhaps themselves have been present there, and may have determined
on their course without going home to Malmesbury. But the distance
between Malmesbury and Gloucester is not too great to have allowed the
business, in a moment of such emergency, to have been discussed within
the three days, both in the Gemót at Gloucester and in the chapter-house
at Malmesbury. One can hardly [Sidenote: Christmas, 1055.] doubt that
this affair took place in the Christmas Gemót in which the Peace of
Billingsley was confirmed and Ælfgar reinstated in his Earldom.

[Sidenote: Harold’s action in the matter.]

The part played by Harold in this matter should also be noticed. Harold
was no special lover of monks; the chief objects of his own more
discerning bounty were the secular clergy. But he was no enemy to the
monastic orders; he had, as we have seen in more than one case, approved
and suggested the favours shown to them by others; he had even, once at
least, appeared as a monastic benefactor himself.[1205] And, at any
rate, monks or no monks, the brethren of Malmesbury were a society of
Englishmen, who were threatened with the violation of an ancient right
through what clearly was a piece of somewhat hasty legislation. To step
in on their behalf was an act in no way unworthy of the great Earl, and
it was quite in harmony with his usual moderate and conciliatory policy.

[Sidenote: Hermann becomes a monk at Saint Omer.]

The remainder of the story is curious. Hermann, displeased at being thus
balked when he thought himself so near success, gave up, or at least
forsook, his Bishoprick, crossed the sea, and assumed the monastic habit
in the Abbey of Saint Bertin at Saint Omer.[1206] But the fire so
suddenly kindled soon burned out; Hermann chafed under the fetters of
monastic discipline, and wished to be again in the world.[1207] After
three years, his earlier scheme once more presented itself to his mind,
when the see of Sherborne became vacant by the death of Bishop Ælfwold.
He returned to England, he pleaded his cause with the King, and found
[Sidenote: Hermann returns and unites Ramsbury and Sherborne. 1058.] no
opposition from the Earl.[1208] No appointment to Ramsbury had been made
during Hermann’s absence; the administration of the diocese was
entrusted to the indefatigable Bishop Ealdred, who thus had the care of
three dioceses, Worcester, Hereford, and Ramsbury.[1209] Perhaps Hermann
was looked on as still being Bishop, and the promise of the Lady with
regard to the union of the sees of Ramsbury and Sherborne was held to be
still binding. At all events, on Hermann’s return, Ealdred gave up
Ramsbury, and Hermann became Bishop of the united Sees. He held
[Sidenote: Died 1078.] them for twenty years longer; he survived the
Conquest twelve years,[1210] and he lived to merge the old diocesan
names of Ramsbuiy and Sherborne in one drawn from an altogether new seat
of episcopal authority, the waterless hill of the elder Salisbury.[1211]

[Sidenote: Death of Earl Odda. August 31, 1056.]

The year of Bishop Leofgar’s unlucky attempt to win fame as a warrior
was marked by the death of Earl Odda, the King’s kinsman. He had been
set over the western parts of Godwine’s Earldom during the year of his
banishment,[1212] and since his return he had probably held, under the
superiority of Leofric, the Earldom of the whole or part of the old land
of the Hwiccas.[1213] His unpatriotic conduct in those times seems, even
in the eyes of our most patriotic chroniclers, to have been fully atoned
for by his personal virtues and by the favour which he showed to
monasteries. He is accordingly sent out of the world with a splendid
panegyric.[1214] Before his death he was admitted a monk by his diocesan
Ealdred,[1215] who might thus, by bringing so goodly a sheep into the
monastic fold, atone for having himself forsaken the cloister for the
cares of government and warfare. He died at Deerhurst, under the shadow
of the minster of his own building, but his own burial-place was at
Pershore,[1216] another of the many Abbeys of a land which, next to the
eastern fens, was the richest [Sidenote: Æthelric, Bishop of Durham
1042–1056, resigns his see.] district of England in monasteries of early
date. In the course of the same year, Æthelric, Bishop of Durham, the
successor of the simoniacal Eadred,[1217] resigned his see and became
again a monk at Peterborough, in which [Sidenote: [Dies Oct. 15, 1072.]]
monastery he had spent his youth.[1218] He was, through the influence of
Tostig,[1219] succeeded in his Bishoprick by his brother alike in the
flesh and in monastic profession, [Sidenote: Æthelwine succeeds.
1056–1071.] Æthelwine, another monk of the Golden Borough.[1220] Both
brothers survived the Norman Conquest, and we shall see each of them,
alike on the throne of Durham and in the cloister of Peterborough,
become victims of the watchful jealousy of the Norman Conqueror.

[Sidenote: Eadward Ætheling arrives from Hungary. 1057.]

The next year is conspicuously a year of deaths, and a year of deaths
which affected the state of England far more sensibly than the deaths of
Earl Odda and Bishop Æthelric. The first recorded event of the year is
the arrival of the Ætheling Eadward from Hungary.[1221] The mission of
Ealdred had not failed through the death of [Sidenote: [Death of the
Emperor Henry. 1056.]] the great prince to whom he was sent,[1222] and,
three years after the reception of the English Bishop at Köln, the
English Ætheling, if English we may call him, set foot on the shores
from which he had been sent into banishment as a helpless babe.[1223] He
now, at the age of forty-one, came for the first time to his native
country, and he came in a character as nearly approaching to that of
heir presumptive to the English Crown as the laws of our [Sidenote:
Prospects of his succession to the Crown.] elective monarchy allowed. He
came with his foreign wife and his children of foreign birth. And it can
hardly fail but that he was himself, in speech and habits, as foreign as
the Norman favourites of Eadward, more foreign than the men of kindred
tongue whom Godwine and Harold were glad to encourage in opposition to
them.[1224] The succession of such a prince, even less of an Englishman
than the reigning King, promised but little good to the Kingdom. Still
the succession of the Ætheling would have had one great advantage. It
was hardly possible that the claims of William could be successfully
pressed against him. A supposed promise of King Eadward in William’s
favour could hardly be maintained in the teeth of a bequest and an
election in favour of an Englishman of royal birth and mature years,
against whom William could have no personal complaint whatever.
Incomparably inferior as Eadward doubtless was to Harold in every
personal qualification, his succession could never have given William
the opportunities which were afterwards given him by the accession of
Harold. Eadward could not have been held up as an usurper, a perjurer, a
man faithless to his lord, nor, had he been the opponent, could the
superstitions of the time have been appealed to to avenge the fancied
insult offered to the relics of the Norman saints. We can thus fully
understand why an English poet, clearly writing by the light of later
experience, laments the death of the Ætheling as the cause of all the
woes which came upon this poor nation.[1225] Even at the time, when
men’s eyes were not yet so fully opened, we may be sure that England
rejoiced in his coming, and bitterly lamented his speedy removal. The
son of the hero Ironside, the last adult male of the royal line, must,
whatever were his personal qualities, have attracted to himself an
interest which was not purely sentimental.

[Sidenote: Death of the Ætheling Eadward. 1057.]

The Ætheling then came to England; but he never saw his namesake the
King. He died almost immediately afterwards in London,[1226] and was
buried with his grandfather Æthelred in Saint Paul’s minster. Why he was
shut out from the royal presence was unknown then as well as now.[1227]
[Sidenote: His exclusion from the royal presence,] The fact that his
exclusion was commented on at the time might seem to forbid, and yet
perhaps it does not wholly forbid, the simplest explanation of all, that
he was ill at the time of his landing, and that the illness which caused
his death also hindered his presentation to his uncle. If the exclusion
had a political object, to what party ought [Sidenote: not likely to be
due to Harold,] we to attribute it? A distinguished modern writer
attributes it, though not very confidently, to the partizans of
Harold.[1228] But it is not at all clear that Harold as yet aspired to
the throne; it is far more probable that it was the death of the last
adult Ætheling which first suggested to Harold and his friends the
possibility of the succession of a King not of the royal house. Because
Harold did in the end succeed Eadward, we must beware of supposing that
his succession had been looked forward to during the whole reign of
Eadward. There must have been some moment when the daring thought—for a
daring thought it was—of aspiring to a royal crown first presented
itself to the mind of Harold or of those to whom Harold hearkened. And
no moment seems so clearly marked out for that purpose by all the
circumstances of the case as the moment of the death of the Ætheling. If
Harold had wished to thwart a design of King Eadward’s in favour of his
nephew, he would hardly have waited for his landing in England to
practise his devices. He would rather have laboured to hinder Ealdred’s
mission in the first instance, or to render it abortive, in some way or
other, during the long period over which the negotiation [Sidenote: but
rather to the Norman courtiers,] was spread. If the exclusion of the
Ætheling from his uncle’s presence was really owing to the machinations
of any political party, there is another party on which the charge may
fall with far greater probability. There was another possible successor
who had far more to fear from the good will of the King towards the
Ætheling than Harold had. Whether Harold had begun to aspire to the
Crown or not, there can be little doubt that William had, and William
was still by no means without influence at the English Court. There were
still Normans about Eadward, Bishop William of London, Robert the son of
Wymarc, Hugolin the Treasurer, and others whom Godwine or Harold had,
perhaps unwisely, exempted from the general proscription. To exclude—by
some underhand means, if at all—a prince of the blood from the presence
of his uncle and sovereign, sounds much more like the act of a party of
this kind, than the act of a man whom both office and character made the
first man in the realm. The thing, if done at all, was clearly some
wretched court intrigue, the fitting work of a foreign faction. The Earl
of the West-Saxons, had his interests been concerned in the matter,
would have set about hindering [Sidenote: but, more probably than
either, the result of illness.] the Ætheling’s succession in quite
another way. But after all, it is far more likely that the fact that the
two Eadwards never met was not owing either to the partizans of Harold
or to the partizans of William, but that it was simply the natural
result of the illness of which the Ætheling presently died.

[Sidenote: Surmise of Sir F. Palgrave that Harold caused the death of
the Ætheling.]

Another, and a far worse, insinuation against the great Earl hardly
needs to be refuted. Among all the calumnies with which, for eight
hundred years, the name of Harold has been loaded, there is one whose
suggestion has been reserved for our own times. Norman enemies have
distorted every action of his life; they have misrepresented every
circumstance of his position; they have charged him with crimes which he
never committed; they have looked at all his acts through such a mist of
prejudice that the victory of Stamfordbridge is changed under their
hands into a wicked fratricide.[1229] But no writer of his own time, or
of any time before our own, has ever ventured to insinuate that Earl
Harold had a hand in the death of the Ætheling Eadward. That
uncharitable surmise was reserved for an illustrious writer of our own
time, in whom depreciation of the whole House of Godwine had become a
sort of passion.[1230] It is enough to say that, has there been the
faintest ground for such an accusation, had the idea ever entered into
the mind of any man of Harold’s own age,[1231] some Norman slanderer or
other would have been delighted to seize upon it.[1232] Nothing is more
easy than to charge any man with having secretly made away with another
man by whose death he profits, and the charge is one which, as it is
easy to bring, is sometimes very hard to disprove. For that very reason,
it is a charge on which the historian always looks with great suspicion,
even when it is known to have been brought at the time and to have been
currently believed at the time. The general infamy of Eadric is fully
established, but we need not believe in every one of the secret murders
which rumour charged him with having committed or instigated. Still less
need we believe the tales which charge the Great William with having
more than once stooped to the trade of a secret poisoner.[1233] When we
think how easy the charge is to bring, and how recklessly it has been
brought at all times, the mere fact that no such charge was ever brought
against Harold does in truth redound greatly to his honour. Calumny
itself instinctively shrank from laying such a crime to the charge of
such a man. William was, as I believe, as guiltless of any such baseness
as Harold himself. But the charge did not seem wholly inconsistent with
the crafty and tortuous policy of the Norman Duke. The West-Saxon Earl,
ambitious no doubt and impetuous, but ever frank, generous, and
conciliatory, was at once felt to be incapable of such a deed.

[Sidenote: Heaca, Bishop of Selsey, dies.]

Three other deaths followed among the great men of the land, two of
which were of no small political importance. [Sidenote: Æthelric
succeeds. 1057.] It was not of any special moment, as far as we know,
when Heaca, Bishop of Selsey or of the South-Saxons, died, and was
succeeded by Æthelric, a monk of Christ Church.[1234] It [Sidenote:
Death of Earl Leofric. August 31, 1057.] was quite another matter when
the great Earl of the Mercians, so long the honoured mediator between
opposing races and opposing interests, died in a good old age in his own
house at Bromley in Staffordshire.[1235] Of all the churches and
monasteries which had been enriched and adorned by the bounty of Leofric
and Godgifu, none was dearer to them than the great minster of Coventry,
the city with which their names are inseparably connected in one of
those silly legends which have helped to displace our early
history.[1236] There Leofric was buried in the church which he and his
wife had raised from the foundations,[1237] and had enriched with gifts
which made it wealthier and more magnificent than all the minsters of
England.[1238] Godgifu survived her husband many years; she saw her son
and grandsons rise and fall; she saw her granddaughter share first a
vassal and then an Imperial Crown, and then vanish out of sight as a
homeless widow. At last she herself died, still in the possession of
some part at least of her vast estates, a subject of the Norman
invader.[1239]

[Sidenote: Death of Earl Ralph. December 21, 1057.]

A few months after the death of Leofric came the death of the stranger
who had seemingly held a subordinate Earldom under his authority. Ralph,
Earl of the Magesætas, the French nephew of King Eadward, died near the
end of the year, and was buried in the distant minster of
Peterborough,[1240] to which he had been a benefactor.[1241] [Sidenote:
His possible pretensions to the Crown.] I have already started the
question whether the thoughts of Eadward had ever turned towards him as
a possible successor.[1242] After the death of the Ætheling, the hopes
of Ralph and his brother Walter, if they had any, might again revive.
But if so, death soon cut short any such schemes. Walter, the reigning
prince of a foreign state, would have no chance. If any such prince were
to be chosen, it would be better at once to take the renowned Duke of
the Normans than the insignificant Count of Mantes. But Ralph, whether
he was ever actually thought of or not, was clearly a possible
candidate; his death therefore, following so soon after the death of the
Ætheling, removed another obstacle from the path of Harold.

[Sidenote: Redistribution of Earldoms. Christmas, 1057–1058?]

The deaths of the two Earls involved a redistribution of the chief
governments of England, which would naturally be carried out in the
following Christmas Gemót. The Earldom of the Mercians, such parts of it
at least as had been under the immediate authority of Leofric, was
conferred [Sidenote: Ælfgar Earl of the Mercians.] on his son
Ælfgar.[1243] It shows how vast must have been the hereditary influence
of his house, when such a trust could not be refused to a man who had so
lately trampled under foot every principle of loyalty and patriotism.
But care was taken to make him as little dangerous as possible. Ælfgar
may have hoped that, on the death of Ralph, the Earldom of the Magesætas
would again be merged in Mercia, and that, excepting the shires attached
to Northumberland, he might rule over the whole realm of Offa and
Æthelflæd. But policy altogether forbade that the Herefordshire border
should be again placed in the hands of one who had so lately acted as
the [Sidenote: Marriage of Gruffydd and Ealdgyth.] ally of Gruffydd. We
know not whether the Welsh King had already entered into a still closer
relation with the English Earl by his marriage with Ælfgar’s beautiful
daughter Ealdgyth. The date of that marriage is not recorded; it may
have already taken place, or it may have happened on the next occasion,
one distant only by a few months, when we shall find the names of
Gruffydd and Ælfgar coupled together. But if the Welsh King was already
the son-in-law of the Mercian Earl, there was a still further reason for
placing some special safeguard on that border of the realm. In short,
the government of Herefordshire was so important that it could not be
safely placed in any hands but those of the foremost man in England.
There is distinct evidence to show that, within two or three years after
the death of [Sidenote: Herefordshire added to Harold’s Earldom.]
Leofric, the Earldom of Herefordshire was in the hands of Harold.[1244]
We can therefore hardly doubt that, on the resettlement which must have
followed the deaths of Leofric and Ralph, the Earldom of the Magesætas
was attached to the Earldom of the West-Saxons, and that Harold now
became the immediate ruler of the district of which he had been the
deliverer, and of the city of which he might [Sidenote: Harold the son
of Ralph.] claim to be the second founder. Earl Ralph had left a son, a
namesake, probably a godson, of the great Earl, and Harold the son of
Ralph appears in Domesday as a landowner both before and after the
Conquest. His name still survives within his father’s Earldom, where it
cleaves to an existing parish and to a castle which has wholly vanished.
But Earldoms were not hereditary, and the son of Ralph was so young
that, eight years later, he was still under wardship.[1245] On this
ground, if on no other, Harold, the great-nephew of Eadward, the
great-grandson of Æthelred, was so far from appearing as a competitor
for the Crown of his ancestors that he was not even thought of as a
possible successor for his father’s Earldom. His name is altogether
unknown to history, and but for his place in Domesday and in local
tradition, his very existence might have been forgotten. His renowned
namesake was now entrusted [Sidenote: Question as to Gloucestershire.]
with the great border government. But it is by no means clear whether
Harold held Herefordshire as a detached possession, as Northamptonshire
and Huntingdonshire were held by Siward and Tostig, or whether it was
connected with his West-Saxon Earldom by the possession of
Gloucestershire. If so, the rule of the Earl of the West-Saxons must now
have been extended over nearly all that was West-Saxon land in the days
of Ceawlin.[1246]

While the power of Harold was thus increased, the time seemed to have
come for raising the younger sons of Godwine to a share in the honours
of his house. The [Sidenote: Gyrth Earl of the East-Angles,
[1057–1058],] East-Anglian Earldom, vacated by the translation of Ælfgar
to Mercia, was now conferred on Gyrth. But the boundaries of the
government were changed. Essex was detached from East-Anglia. The new
Earl probably received only the two strictly East-Anglian shires, with
the [Sidenote: and of Oxfordshire.] addition of Cambridgeshire, to which
was afterwards added the detached shire of Oxford.[1247] The policy of
attaching [Sidenote: Policy of these detached shires.] these detached
shires to distant Earldoms is not very clear. It could not be the same
policy which afterwards led the Conqueror to scatter the fiefs of his
great vassals over distant portions of the Kingdom. There was certainly
no intention of weakening any of the Earls whose governments were thus
divided. The object was far more probably to bring the influence of the
House of Godwine to bear upon all parts of the country. Some old
connexion had attached Northamptonshire to Northumberland at an earlier
time, and the example thus given was seized on as a means for planting
the authority of the rising house in every convenient quarter.
Oxfordshire, it will be remembered, had formed part of the Earldom of
Swegen; it was now placed in the hands of Gyrth. For it was highly
important that the great frontier town of Mercia and Wessex, the seat of
so many important national meetings, should be in thoroughly trustworthy
hands. Ælfgar’s loyalty was most doubtful; it was impossible altogether
to oust him from command, but it was expedient to confine his powers of
mischief within the smallest possible compass, and to hem him in,
whenever it could be, by men who could be relied on. Unfortunately at
Chester, the most dangerous point of all, the family interest of the
House of Leofric was too strong to allow of that important shire being
put into any hands but those of Ælfgar. We shall presently see the
result.

[Sidenote: Leofwine Earl of Kent, Essex, &c.]

Leofwine also was apparently provided for at the same time.[1248] His
government, like that of Swegen at an earlier time, was carved out of
several ancient Kingdoms and Earldoms, but it lay much more compactly on
the map than the anomalous province which took in Oxford, Taunton, and
Hereford. It consisted in fact of south-eastern England—of Kent, Essex,
Hertford, Surrey, probably Buckinghamshire—that is of the shires round
the [Sidenote: London exempt.] mouth of the Thames. London, as was
natural, remained exempt from any jurisdiction but that of its Bishop
and the chief officers of the city. The whole East of England was thus
placed under the rule of the two younger sons of Godwine. But the
evidence of the writs seems to show that Harold retained a general
superintendence over their governments, whether simply as their elder
brother or in any more exalted character.

[Sidenote: The House of Godwine at its greatest point of greatness.
1058–1065.]

The House of Godwine had thus reached the greatest height of power and
dignity which a subject house could reach. Whatever was the origin of
the family, they had won for themselves a position such as no English
family ever won before or after. Four brothers, sons of a father who,
whether Earl or churl by birth, had risen to greatness by his own valour
and counsel, divided by far the greater part of England among them. The
whole Kingdom, save a few shires in the centre, was in their hands. And
three at least out of the four showed that they well deserved their
greatness. To the eldest among the four there evidently belonged a more
marked preeminence still. Two of his brothers, those most recently
appointed to Earldoms, were clearly little more than Harold’s
lieutenants. And a prospect of still higher greatness now lay open to
him [Sidenote: State of the royal line.] and his house. The royal line
was dying out. No adult male descendant of Æthelred remained; no adult
descendant of any kind remained within the Kingdom. The only survivors
of the true kingly stock were the son and daughters of the Ætheling,
children born in a foreign land. If any hopes of royalty had ever
flitted before the eyes of Ralph, such hopes could not extend to his son
the young Harold or to his brother the Count of Mantes. [Sidenote:
Harold’s prospect of the Crown.] The time was clearly coming when
Englishmen might choose for themselves a King from among their brethren,
unfettered by any traditional reverence for the blood of Ælfred, Cerdic,
and Woden. And when that day should come, on whom should the choice of
England fall save on the worthiest man of the worthiest house within the
realm? We cannot doubt that, from the year when the three deaths of
Eadward, Leofric, and Ralph seemed to sweep away all hindrances from his
path, Harold looked forward to a day when he and his might rise to a
rank yet loftier than that of Earl. It was no longer wholly beyond hope
that he might himself ascend the Imperial throne of Britain, and that
the Earldoms of England might be held by his brothers as Æthelings of
the House of Godwine. The event proves that such were the hopes of
Harold, that such, we may add, were the hopes of England. Such hopes
may, even at an earlier time, have flashed across the mind of Harold
himself or across the minds of zealous friends of his house or zealous
admirers of his exploits. But this was the first moment when such hopes
could have assumed anything like form and substance; it was the first
moment when the chances seemed distinctly to be rather for than against
their fulfilment. That Harold from this time doubtless aspired to the
Crown, that he directed all his conduct by a hope of securing the Crown,
cannot be doubted. And the unanimity with which he was raised to the
throne when the great day came seems to show that men’s minds had long
been prepared to look to him as their future sovereign. We cannot doubt
that, after the death of the Ætheling Eadward, Wessex and East-Anglia at
least were ready to transfer the English Crown from the line of Æthelred
to the line of Godwine.

[Sidenote: Questions as to Harold’s position.]

Two questions still remain. Did Harold, in thus looking forward to the
Crown, know, as he came to know at last, how formidable a rival was
making ready for him beyond the sea? And was the succession of Harold
merely a probability, a moral certainty it may be, to which men learned
to look forward as a matter of course, or were the hopes of the great
Earl confirmed by any act of the Witan or any promise of the King? Both
questions are hard to answer. Both are inseparably mixed up with the
most difficult questions in our whole history, the alleged promise made
to William by Eadward and the alleged oath made to him by Harold. I have
already expressed my belief that Eadward’s alleged promise to the Norman
Duke, which formed the main ground of William’s pretensions to the
English Crown, though exaggerated and perverted in the Norman accounts,
was not a mere Norman invention. I believe that some promise really was
made, and that the time when it was made was when William visited
Eadward during the banishment of Godwine.[1249] Of the nature and form
of that promise it is difficult to say anything. We may indeed
unhesitatingly dismiss the notion that a settlement was made in
William’s favour by a decree [Sidenote: Effects of Eadward’s promise to
William.] of the Witan. Still any promise of any kind could hardly have
been kept so complete a secret but that it must have got blazed abroad,
and have reached the ears of the Earl and his countrymen. The Norman
party, during their short moment of complete triumph, would have no
motive to keep the matter a secret. They would deem themselves to have
reached the great accomplishment of all that they had been scheming for,
when there seemed a prospect of the English Crown passing, without slash
or blow, to the brow of the Norman. The fact of the promise would
doubtless be known, and by statesmen it would be remembered. But it does
not follow that it would make any deep impression on the mass of the
nation. Men would hear of the promise in a vague sort of way, and would
at the time be divided between wonder and indignation. But the idea of
the succession of the Norman would be looked on as something which had
passed away with other Norman ideas, when the English Earls came back to
claim their own. Even after Harold’s election as King, the prospect of
the Norman invasion is spoken of in a way which seems to show that, to
the mass of Englishmen, the claim of William was even then something new
and surprising.[1250] [Sidenote: Policy of the patriotic party;] But by
a statesman like Harold, if the matter was once known, it would never be
forgotten. It would hardly be a thing to talk much of openly; but to
counteract any possible schemes of William must have been the main
object of Harold’s policy from the day when he was first called to the
head of affairs. We can understand how Eadward was led to deem his
promise null, and to send for [Sidenote: candidature first of Eadward
the Ætheling,] the Ætheling as his destined successor. This was, under
the circumstances, a great triumph of the national policy. A competitor,
accepted by the voice of the nation, was placed in William’s path, a
competitor whom William himself would hardly dare to attack. The death
of the Ætheling made matters more difficult. There was now no such
unexceptionable rival to oppose to the Norman. [Sidenote: then of
Harold.] Harold indeed, before his oath, was a far more formidable rival
to William than Harold after his oath. He had not yet given his enemy
that fatal advantage which the wily Duke knew so well how to employ. But
Harold’s succession would have all the disadvantages of a novelty. If he
could not yet be branded as a perjurer, yet he might be, in a way that
the Ætheling never could be, branded as an usurper. Either of the
Eadwards, in short, with Harold for his guide and counsellor, would be
really stronger than Harold himself as King. But the risk had now to be
run. The nation at large had most likely but vague notions as to the
danger. But Harold, Stigand, and all the leaders of the nation must have
known that any step that they took would bring on their country the
enmity of a most active and dangerous foe. Harold’s main object during
his whole administration clearly was to strengthen England at home and
abroad, to make her powerful and united when the inevitable day should
come.

[Sidenote: Question as to any formal act in Harold’s favour.]

It is a more difficult question whether Harold’s succession was at all
guaranteed, at this or at any time before Eadward’s death, by any formal
act either of the King or of the Witan. We know that Eadward did
exercise in Harold’s favour whatever influence or authority an English
King had in the nomination of his successor. That nomination appears to
have been finally and formally made on Eadward’s death-bed.[1251] But
such a death-bed nomination is in no way inconsistent with a promise to
the same effect at an earlier time. Any one indeed to whom such a
promise had been made would undoubtedly seek to have it confirmed with
all the solemnity which attaches to the last act of a dying man. And
there are several circumstances, none perhaps of any great weight
singly, but having together a sort of cumulative force, which seem to
[Sidenote: Quasi-royal position of Harold.] point to Harold from this
time as being something more than an ordinary Earl, however powerful and
popular, as being in some sort a sharer in the powers and honours of
royalty.[1252] We find his name coupled in public documents with that of
the King in a way which certainly is not usual with the name of any
subject. We find vassal princes plighting their faith to the King and to
the Earl, as if they were senior and junior colleagues in a common
office. We find Harold appearing in the eyes of foreigners under the
lofty guise of a Duke of the English. That sounding title cannot have
been really borne by him at home, but it seems to show that, even among
strangers, he was felt to hold the position of a prince rather than that
of the most exalted private noble. Lastly, in our best Latin chronicler
we find him distinctly called by a title which is nowhere else, to my
knowledge, conferred on a subject, but which is the familiar designation
of vassal princes.[1253] All these touches, coming from such different
quarters, seem naturally to suggest the view that Earl Harold was,
seemingly from the death of the Ætheling, publicly recognized as holding
a _quasi_-royal position, as being, in fact, the designated successor to
the Crown.

[Sidenote: Difficulties in the supposition of any formal vote.]

On the other hand, there are difficulties about the belief that this
position was conferred on Harold by any formal vote of the Witan. It is
plain that a perfectly free choice of the King during the actual vacancy
was a right which the English people, or their leaders, prized very
dearly. All attempts to limit the choice of the electors beforehand had
always signally failed.[1254] Since the abortive scheme of Æthelwulf,
nothing at all answering to a King of the Romans had been seen in
England.[1255] And if there were some reasons which, under present
circumstances, might make such an unusual course specially desirable,
there were other reasons which told against it with nearly equal force.
With the royal house on the verge of extinction, with such a competitor
as William carefully watching the course of events, it was most
desirable to settle the succession with as much certainty as the laws of
an elective monarchy allowed. It was most desirable that the successor
to the throne should be the man most fitted for the highest of offices,
the wisest head and the stoutest arm in the land. It was, in a word, the
wish of every clear-sighted patriot that the successor of Eadward should
be no other than Earl Harold. But, on the other hand, the choice of Earl
Harold, or of any other man not of kingly blood, was something strange
and unprecedented, something which might well shock the feelings and
prejudices of men. The choice of a new King would in fact be the choice
of a new dynasty; it would be to wipe out a sentiment as old as the days
when the first West-Saxon set foot on British ground; it would be to
transfer the Crown of Wessex, of England, of Britain, from the house of
Cerdic, of Ecgberht, and of Æthelstan to the house of Godwine the son of
Wulfnoth. Men might not as yet be so ready for so momentous a change as
they certainly were nine years [Sidenote: Possible claims of young
Eadgar.] later. And an irrevocable decision in favour of Harold might
well be looked on as a wrong done to a third possible competitor. The
royal house, though on the verge of extinction, was not yet extinct. The
Ætheling had left a son, the young Eadgar. The son was undoubtedly not
entitled to the same constitutional preference as his father. But in
some respects he was a more promising candidate than his father. Like
the renowned Bastard himself, he was little, but he would grow.[1256] If
a vacancy happened at once, his claims could hardly be pressed. But the
King might live many years, and Eadgar might succeed his great-uncle in
all the vigour of early manhood. He was not indeed, like his father, an
Englishman born, the son of an English King by an English mother. But
then he might be, as his father had not been, brought up with the
feelings of an Englishman, of a destined ruler of England. Nine years
before the death of Eadward, men might well deem that it was not
expedient, by any premature declaration in favour of the great Earl, to
cut off the chances of a succession in many ways so desirable as that of
the young Ætheling. If King Eadward lived long enough to make Eadgar’s
succession possible and expedient, that succession might, like that of
his father, form a better check to the ambition of William than the
succession of Harold.

[Sidenote: Probably no formal act, but a general understanding in favour
of Harold.]

On the whole then it is perhaps safer not to suppose any formal act of
the Witan on behalf of Harold. The circumstances of the case may be
explained by supposing that Eadward promised Harold his recommendation
in case of his own death during Eadgar’s childhood. It would be a sort
of understood thing that, in case of such an event, the Earl of the
West-Saxons would be a candidate for the Crown with every chance of
success. As Harold’s renown increased, as the chances of Eadward’s life
grew weaker, as Eadgar’s incapacity became more and more manifest, men
would look with more and more certainty to the great Earl as their
future King.[1257] Without any formal decree, he would, by common
consent, step into the position, or more than the position, of a born
Ætheling, and he would find himself insensibly sharing the powers, and
even the titles, of royalty. And we cannot doubt that the great rival
beyond sea was carefully watching every step of this process. If we
realize that Harold—the Duke of the English—was virtually, if not
formally, the designated successor to the Crown, we can still better
understand the eagerness of William to obtain by any means the Earl’s
recognition of his claims. It was not merely to bind the most powerful
man in the land to his cause; it was to obtain what was virtually an
abdication from one who was virtually the destined heir.

[Sidenote: Harold now chief ruler of England. 1057–1066.]

The famous oath of Harold is so uncertain as to its date and all its
circumstances that it might be treated without impropriety at almost any
stage of my narrative. But, as it is so uncertain, as it is recorded by
no contemporary English writer, I prefer to put off its consideration
till it is convenient to take up again the thread of Norman affairs, to
examine fully into William’s claims, and to describe his preparations to
assert those claims. Meanwhile we have to see how Harold ruled over
England, now that he was without an equal competitor within the land.
Save the shires ruled by the turbulent Ælfgar, the government of all
England was now divided between himself and his brothers; and there was
now nothing but the life of the reigning King between him and the
English Crown.

CHAPTER X.

THE REIGN OF EADWARD FROM THE DEATH OF THE ÆTHELING TO THE DEATH OF THE
KING.[1258]
1057–1066.

§ 1. _The Ecclesiastical Administration of Earl Harold._ 1058–1062.

[Sidenote: Dominant position of Harold.]

We thus see Harold at the greatest height of real power which he ever
attained while still a subject. He was Earl of the West-Saxons and
principal counsellor of the King, and he was, in all probability,
already looked on as the practical heir presumptive to the Crown. Three
other great Earldoms were in the hands of his three brothers. The
greatness of the House of Godwine seemed now to be fully established.
Save for a single moment, and that probably during Harold’s absence from
England, the authority of Harold and his family remained untouched till
quite the [Sidenote: Predominance of ecclesiastical affairs.] end of
Eadward’s reign. The first few years of this period form a time of
unusual quiet, a time in which, as is usual in times of quiet, our
attention is almost wholly [Sidenote: Harold in relation to the Church.]
occupied with ecclesiastical affairs. The great Earl now appears as
something like an ecclesiastical reformer, as a founder, a pilgrim, the
fast friend of one holy Bishop, a rightful or wrongful disputant against
another Prelate of less renown. But we have evidence that care for the
Church did not occupy the whole of the attention of Earl Harold. The
Earldom of Wessex and the Kingdom of England had still to be watched
over; and the candidate for a Crown which was likely to be disputed by
the Duke of the Normans kept a diligent eye on all that was going on in
the lands beyond the sea.

[Sidenote: Harold’s pilgrimage to Rome. 1058?]

Harold, like Cnut and like a crowd of other persons great and small,
fell in with the popular devotion of the day with regard to pilgrimages.
The Earl of the West-Saxons went to pray at the tombs of the Apostles,
and, though the date of his pilgrimage is not absolutely certain, there
are strong reasons for believing that it happened in the year following
the deaths of the Ætheling and the Earls Leofric and Ralph.[1259] But
Harold, like Cnut, did not, even while engaged in this holy work, wholly
forget his own interests or the interests of his friends and his
[Sidenote: He studies the politics of the French Princes.] country. He
had, we are told, long been watching the condition, the policy, and the
military force of the princes of France, among whom we cannot doubt that
the Duke of the Normans came in for the largest share of his attention.
He therefore took the opportunity of his pilgrimage to go through
France, and by personal examination to make himself thoroughly master of
the politics of the land.[1260] His name was well known in the country;
he was doubtless received everywhere with honour; he did not go on till
he had gained such a thorough insight into all that he needed to know
that no deception could for the future be practised upon him. This
description is vague and dark, no doubt purposely vague and dark; but it
doubtless veils a good deal. One longs to know whether Harold was at
this time personally received at the Court of Rouen, and what was the
general result of his inquiries into the policy of his great rival. And
the question at once forces itself upon the mind, Was this the time of
Harold’s famous oath or homage to William? Did anything happen on this
journey which formed the germ out of which grew the great accusation
brought against him by his rival? I reserve the full discussion of all
these questions for another occasion; but on the whole it seems more
likely that the event, whatever it was, on which the charge of perjury
against Harold was founded, took place at some time nearer to the death
of Eadward.

[Sidenote: Harold at Rome.]

When Harold had finished his political inquiries in France, he continued
his religious journey to Rome. If I am right in the date which I assign
to his pilgrimage, he found the Holy See in the possession of a Pontiff
whom the Church has since agreed to brand as an usurper. Early in
[Sidenote: Stephen the Ninth Pope. 1057–1058.] this year died Pope
Stephen the Ninth, otherwise Frederick of Lotharingia, Abbot of Monte
Casino, after a reign of [Sidenote: Benedict the Tenth Pope. 1058–1059.]
only one year.[1261] On his death, Mincius, Bishop of Velletri and
Cardinal, was placed in an irregular manner on the pontifical throne by
the influence of the Counts of Tusculum.[1262] He took the name of
Benedict the Tenth. The Cardinals seem not to have acknowledged him;
Hildebrand—the first time that great name occurs in our history—obtained
the consent of the Empress Agnes to a [Sidenote: Nicolas the Second
Pope. 1059–1061.] new and more canonical election. In the next April
Benedict was driven out, and the new Pope, Gerard of Burgundy, Bishop of
Florence, was enthroned by the name of Nicolas the Second.[1263] But,
for the space of a year, Benedict had actual possession of the Papal
throne, and was seemingly generally recognized in Rome. A Roman, of the
house of the famous Consul Crescentius, he was probably more acceptable
than a more regularly appointed Pontiff from Lotharingia or Burgundy.
Benedict was in all probability the Pope whom Earl Harold found in
[Sidenote: Benedict grants the pallium to Stigand, 1058; probably
through the influence of Harold.] possession at the time of his
pilgrimage. It is certain that Benedict sent to Archbishop Stigand the
long delayed ornament of the pallium, the cherished badge of the
archiepiscopal dignity.[1264] One can hardly avoid the surmise that
Harold pleaded for his friend, and that the concession to the English
Primate was the result of the personal presence of the first of living
Englishmen. Stigand was not personally present at Rome; the pallium was
sent to him, and most likely Earl Harold himself was its bearer. In this
act Harold no doubt thought, and naturally thought, that he was healing
a breach, and doing a great service to his Church and country. The evils
arising from the doubtful position of Stigand were manifest. That a man
should be, in the eye of the Law, Archbishop of Canterbury, and yet that
his purely spiritual ministrations should be very generally declined,
was an anomaly to which it was desirable to put a stop as soon as might
be. Harold would naturally deem that he had done all that could be
needed by procuring the solemn recognition of Stigand from the Pope whom
he found in actual possession of the Holy See. That Pope Benedict was
himself an usurper, that his ministrations were as irregular as those of
Stigand himself, that he could not confer a commission which he did not
himself possess, was a canonical subtlety which was not likely to occur
to the mind of the English Earl. He could not foresee that an
ecclesiastical revolution would so soon hurl Benedict from his throne,
and that he and all who clave to [Sidenote: Effects of Benedict’s
recognition.] him would be branded as schismatics. In fact the
recognition of Stigand by Benedict did harm instead of good. After
Benedict’s fall, it became a further charge against Stigand that he had
received the pallium from the usurper. For the moment indeed the
Archbishop seemed [Sidenote: Bishops consecrated by Stigand.] to have
regained his proper position. Two Bishopricks fell vacant in the course
of the year, Selsey by the death of Heaca, and Rochester, it is not
quite clear how.[1265] The newly appointed Bishops, Æthelric of Selsey
and Siward of Rochester, received consecration from a Primate who was
now at last held to be in canonical possession.[1266] The fact is most
significant that these were the first and last Bishops whom Stigand
consecrated during the reign of Eadward.

[Sidenote: Return of Harold.]

Harold returned to England, having by some means, the exact nature of
which is lost in the rhetoric of his panegyrist, escaped the dangers
which seem to have specially beset pilgrims on their journey
homeward.[1267] If I am right in my conjecture as to the date of his
pilgrimage, an event had taken place in his absence which showed the
weakness of the government when his strong hand was not nigh [Sidenote:
Second outlawry and return of Ælfgar. 1058.] to guide it. We are told by
a single Chronicler that this year Earl Ælfgar was again outlawed, but
that he soon recovered his Earldom by the help of Gruffydd and of a
Norwegian fleet which came unexpectedly to his help.[1268] We hear not a
word as to the causes or circumstances. [Sidenote: Difficulties as to
the story.] One is inclined to guess that the story may be merely an
accidental repetition, under a wrong year, of Ælfgar’s former outlawry
three years before.[1269] It is certainly not likely that Harold would
have tamely submitted to so outrageous a breach both of the royal
authority and of the national dignity. But to suppose that these events
happened during the time of his absence from the country is an
explanation of this difficulty quite as easy as to suppose the story to
be a mere misconception. One thing at least should be noted. A feud with
the House of Leofric, which, in the case of Harold, is a mere matter of
surmise, is, in the case of Tostig, distinctly asserted by a
contemporary writer.[1270] It is quite possible that Tostig may, in his
brother’s absence, have acted a part towards the rival house which his
brother’s conciliatory policy would not have approved of. He may also
have found himself, in his brother’s absence, unable to quell the storm
which he had raised. But all speculations of this kind must be quite
uncertain. The statement stands before us; we may put our own value on
its authority, and we may make our own explanation of the facts, but we
cannot get beyond conjecture.

The pilgrimage of Earl Harold may perhaps have suggested to the active
Bishop Ealdred a longer pilgrimage still. That diligent Prelate was at
this time busy about [Sidenote: Ecclesiastical history of Gloucester.]
many matters. Gloucester, the frontier city on the Severn, the usual
mid-winter seat of the national Councils, had just received a special
ornament from his munificence. [Sidenote: Abbey of Nuns, 681–767.] The
city had been in early times the seat of an Abbey of nuns, which came to
an end during the confusions which fell on the Mercian Kingdom towards
the end of the eighth [Sidenote: Secular College, 767?-1022.]
century.[1271] The house then became a College of secular priests,[1272]
which lasted till the days of Cnut. In the same spirit in which Cnut
himself substituted monks for [Sidenote: Benedictine Abbey, 1022–1539.]
secular canons in the Church of Saint Eadmund at Bury,[1273] Wulfstan,
Archbishop of York and Bishop of Worcester, [Sidenote: Cathedral Church,
1541–1868.] made the same change in the Church of Saint Peter at
Gloucester.[1274] The rule of Saint Benedict was now rigidly [Sidenote:
Abbot Eadric. 1022–1058.] carried out, and one Eadric became the first
Abbot. His government lasted for more than thirty-six years, but his
local reputation is not good, as he is charged with wasting [Sidenote:
Ealdred rebuilds and consecrates the church, and appoints Wulfstan
Abbot. 1058.] the property of the monastery.[1275] Meanwhile the bounty
of Ealdred rebuilt the church of Saint Peter from its foundations, and
it now stood ready for consecration. Abbot Eadric most opportunely died
at this time, so that Ealdred was able at once to furnish his new
minster with a new chief ruler. He consecrated the church, and bestowed
the abbatial benediction on Wulfstan, a monk of his own church of
Worcester, on whom, by the King’s licence, he conferred the vacant
office.[1276] It was just at this time that [Sidenote: Ealdred restores
the see of Ramsbury to Hermann and makes the pilgrimage to Jerusalem.]
Bishop Hermann came back from Saint Omer. Ealdred, charged with the care
of three dioceses, restored Ramsbury, the poorest and least
distinguished, to its former owner.[1277] Worcester was no doubt
entrusted to the care of Æthelwig;[1278] of any arrangements for the
benefit of Hereford we hear nothing. Ealdred then undertook a journey
which no English Bishop had ever before undertaken,[1279] which indeed
we have not heard of as undertaken by any eminent Englishman of that
generation, except by the repentant Swegen. Duke Robert of Normandy and
Count Fulk of Anjou had visited the tomb of Christ, but Cnut and Harold
had not gone further than the threshold of the Apostles. But Ealdred now
undertook the longer journey; he passed through Hungary,[1280] a country
which the negotiations for the return of the Ætheling had doubtless
opened to English imaginations, and at last reached the holy goal of his
pilgrimage. He went, we are told, with such worship as none ever went
before him; his devotion was edifying and his gifts were splendid. A
chalice of gold, of five marks weight, and of wondrous workmanship, was
the offering of the renowned English Prelate at the most sacred spot on
earth.[1281]

[Sidenote: Barrenness of events in the year 1059.]

The next year is one singularly barren of English events. The Chronicles
literally record nothing of greater importance than the fact that the
steeple of Peterborough minster was hallowed.[1282] The zeal and bounty
of Abbot Leofric[1283] was busily at work. And from other sources all
that is to be learned is the appointment of a new Abbot of Evesham. That
appointment however was in some [Sidenote: Resignation of Abbot Mannig
of Evesham. 1059. [His death. Jan. 5, 1066.]] respects a remarkable one.
Abbot Mannig, the architect, painter, and general proficient in the
arts, had been smitten by paralysis, and had resigned his office. He
lived however in honour for seven years longer, and died, so it was
said, on the same day and hour as King Eadward.[1284] His successor was
Æthelwig, the monk who acted for Ealdred when absent from his diocese,
and who was now Provost of the monastery of Evesham.[1285] As in the
case of Wulfstan at Gloucester, we hear nothing distinctly of any
capitular election. The retiring Abbot seems to nominate his successor.
Pleading his illness as an excuse for not coming personally, he sends
certain monks and laymen to [Sidenote: Æthelwig Abbot. April 23, 1059.]
the King, recommending Æthelwig for the Abbacy. The King approves, and,
by his order, Ealdred gives the abbatial benediction to Æthelwig at
Gloucester in the Easter Gemót holden in that city.[1286] Of the new
Prelate we shall hear again more than once.

[Sidenote: Deposition of Pope Benedict; its effect on the position of
Stigand. 1059.]

This year however was by no means an unimportant one in English history.
It was now that, as all our Chronicles so carefully note, the intruding
Benedict was deposed, and Nicolas succeeded to the Papacy. The
recognition of Stigand lasted no longer than the temporary recognition
of Benedict. When the Pontiff from whom he had received his pallium sank
to the position of an Antipope and schismatic, the English Primate sank
again to the anomalous position in which he had been before. His
ministrations were again avoided, even in the quarter which one would
have least expected to find affected by such scruples. Earl Harold
himself, when he needed the performance of a great ecclesiastical
ceremony, now shrank from having it performed by the hands of the
Primate who, in all political matters, was his friend and fellow-worker.

[Sidenote: Harold’s minster at Waltham consecrated. May 3, 1060.]

For we have now reached the date of an event which closely binds
together the ecclesiastical and the secular history of the time. It was
in the year following the expulsion of Benedict that Earl Harold brought
to perfection the minster which he had doubtless for some time been
engaged in rearing on his East-Saxon lordship of Waltham. Whether any
portion of the fabric still existing is the work of its great founder is
a matter of antiquarian controversy on which I will not here enlarge.
But whether the existing nave, or any part of it, be Harold’s work or
not, the historic interest of that memorable spot remains in either case
the same. As we go on we shall see Waltham win for itself an abiding
fame as the last resting-place of its great founder; at present we have
to look to the foundation itself as a most remarkable witness to that
[Sidenote: Nature and importance of the foundation] founder’s wisdom as
well as his bounty.[1287] The importance of the foundation of Waltham in
forming an estimate, both of Harold’s personal character and of the
ecclesiastical [Sidenote: generally misunderstood.] position of England
at the time, has been altogether slurred over through inattention to the
real character of the foundation. Every writer of English history, as
far as I know, has wholly misrepresented its nature. It is constantly
spoken of as an Abbey, and its inhabitants as monks.[1288] Waltham and
its founder thus get mixed up with the vulgar crowd of monastic
foundations, the creations in many cases of a real and enlightened
piety, but in many cases also of mere superstition or mere fashion. The
great ecclesiastical foundation of Earl Harold was something [Sidenote:
Change of foundation by Henry the Second. 1177.] widely different.
Harold did not found an Abbey; Waltham did not become a religious house
till Henry the Second, liberal of another man’s purse, destroyed
Harold’s foundation by way of doing honour to the new Martyr of
Canterbury. Harold founded a Dean and secular Canons; these King Henry
drove out, and put in an Abbot and Austin Canons in their place.[1289]
Harold’s foundation, in short, was an enlargement of the original small
foundation of Tofig the Proud.[1290] Tofig had built a church for the
reception of the miraculous crucifix which had been found at
Lutegarsbury, and had made an endowment for two priests only. The Holy
Rood of Waltham became an object of popular worship and pilgrimage, and
probably the small settlement originally founded by Tofig in the middle
of the forest was already growing into a considerable town. [Sidenote:
Æthelstan son of Tofig and his son Esegar.] The estate of Tofig at
Waltham had been lost by his son Æthelstan,[1291] and was confiscated to
the Crown. I have already suggested that Æthelstan, the son of a Danish
father, may not improbably have been one of the party which opposed the
election of Eadward, and most of whose members suffered more or less on
that account.[1292] But the royal disfavour which fell on Æthelstan did
not extend to his son Esegar, who held the office of Staller from a very
early period [Sidenote: Acquisition of Waltham by Harold.] of Eadward’s
reign till the Norman invasion.[1293] But the lordship of Waltham was
granted by the King to his brother-in-law Earl Harold,[1294] with whom
it evidently became a [Sidenote: He rebuilds the Church.] favourite
dwelling-place. The Earl now rebuilt the small church of Tofig on a
larger and more splendid scale, no doubt calling to his aid all the
resources which were supplied by the great contemporary developement of
architecture in Normandy.[1295] One who so diligently noted all that was
going on in contemporary Gaul would doubtless keep his eye on such
matters also. When the church was built, he enriched it with precious
gifts and relics of all [Sidenote: He founds the College.] sorts, some
of which he had himself brought personally from Rome on his
pilgrimage.[1296] Lastly, he increased the number of clergy attached to
the church from two to a much larger number, a Dean and twelve Canons,
besides several inferior officers.[1297] He richly endowed them with
lands, and contemplated larger endowments still.

[Sidenote: Nature of his foundation.]

This is something very different from the foundation of a monastery.
Harold finds a church on his estate the seat of a popular worship; he
rebuilds the fabric and increases the number of its ministers. The order
of his proceedings is very clearly traced out in the royal charter by
which the foundation was confirmed two years later. The founder of a
monastery first got together his monks, and gave them some temporary
habitation; the church and the other buildings then grew up gradually.
The church of a monastery exists for the sake of the monks, but in a
secular foundation the canons or other clergy may be said to exist for
the sake of the church. So at Waltham, Harold first rebuilt the church;
he then secured to it the elder endowment of Tofig; he had it
consecrated, and enriched it with relics and other gifts; he, last of
all, after the consecration, set about his plan for increasing the
number of clergy attached to it.[1298] Tofig’s two priests of course
were still there to discharge the duties of the place in the meanwhile.
And the clergy whom Harold placed in his newly founded minster were not
monks, but secular priests, each man living on his own prebend, and some
of [Sidenote: Harold’s zeal for education.] them, it would seem,
married. Education also occupied a prominent place in the magnificent
and enlightened scheme of the great Earl.[1299] The Chancellor or
Lecturer—for the word Schoolmaster conveys too humble an idea—filled a
[Sidenote: Adelard of Lüttich.] dignified place in the College, and the
office was bestowed by the founder on a distinguished man from a foreign
land. We have seen throughout that, stout English patriot as Harold was,
he was never hindered by any narrow insular prejudice from seeking merit
wherever he could find it. Harold had seen something of the world; he
had visited both France and Italy; but it was not however from any land
of altogether foreign speech that he sought for coadjutors in his great
work. As in the case of so many appointments of Bishops, so now, in
appointing an important officer in his own College, Harold, when he
looked beyond our own island, looked in the first place to the lands of
kindred Teutonic speech.[1300] As Ælfred had brought over Grimbald and
John the Old-Saxon, so now Harold brought over Adelard of Lüttich to be
the head of the educational department of his foundation, and to be his
general adviser in the whole work.[1301] Adelard had been already
employed under the Emperor Henry the Third, one of the truest and most
enlightened of ecclesiastical reformers, in bringing several of the
churches of his dominions into better discipline. He now came over to
England, became a Canon and Lecturer at Waltham, and, using his genuine
Teutonic liberty, handed on his office to his son.[1302]

[Sidenote: Harold a friend of the secular clergy.]

The truth is, as we have already seen several indications, that Harold,
so far from being an ordinary founder of a monastery, was a deliberate
and enlightened patron of the secular clergy. He is described in the
foundation charter [Sidenote: Long continuance of the struggle between
regulars and seculars.] of his College as their special and active
friend.[1303] The old struggle which had been going on from the days of
Dunstan was going on still, and it went on long after. Harold, like the
elder Eadward in his foundation at Winchester, like Æthelstan in his
foundation at Milton, preferred the seculars, the more practically
useful class, the class less removed from ordinary human and national
feelings. In his eyes even a married priest was not a monster of vice.
To make such a choice in the monastic reign of Eadward, when the King on
his throne was well nigh himself a monk, was worthy of Harold’s lofty
and independent spirit; it was another proof of his steady and
clear-sighted patriotism. In truth, of the two great foundations of this
reign, Earl Harold’s College at Waltham stands in distinct opposition,
almost in distinct rivalry, to King Eadward’s Abbey at Westminster. And
it is not unlikely that Harold’s preference for the secular clergy may
have had some share in bringing upon him the obloquy which he undergoes
at the hands of so many ecclesiastical writers. It was not only the
perjurer, the usurper, but the man whose hand was closed against the
monk and open to the married priest, who won the hatred of Norman and
monastic writers. With the coming of the Normans the monks finally
triumphed. Monasticism, in one form or another, was triumphant for some
ages. Harold’s own foundation was perverted from his original design;
his secular priests were expelled to make room for those whom the
fashion of the age looked on as holier than they. At last the tide
turned; men of piety and munificence learned that the monks had got
enough, and from the fourteenth century onwards, the bounty of founders
took the same direction which it had taken under Æthelstan and Harold.
Colleges, educational and otherwise, in the Universities and out of
them, now again arose alongside of the monastic institutions which had
now thoroughly [Sidenote: Witness of Waltham to Harold’s character.]
fallen from their first love. In short, the foundation of Waltham,
instead of being simply slurred over as a monastic foundation of the
ordinary kind, well deserves to be dwelt upon, both as marking an æra in
our ecclesiastical history, and also as bearing the most speaking
witness to the real character of its illustrious founder. The care and
thoughtfulness, as well as the munificence, displayed in every detail of
the institution, the zeal for the advancement of learning as well as for
mere ecclesiastical splendour, the liberal patronage of even foreign
merit, all unite to throw a deep interest round Earl Harold’s minster,
and they would of themselves be enough to win him a high place among the
worthies of England. No wonder then that this noble foundation became in
a peculiar manner identified with its founder; no wonder that it was to
Waltham that he went for prayer and meditation in the great crisis of
his life, that it was at Waltham that his body found its last
resting-place, that at Waltham his memory still lived, fresh and
cherished, while elsewhere calumny had fixed itself upon his glorious
name. No wonder too that the local relic became a centre of national
reverence; that the object of Harold’s devotion became the badge and
rallying-point of English national life; that the “Holy Rood”—the Holy
Rood of Waltham—became the battle-cry of England, the shout which urged
her sons to victory at Stamfordbridge, and which still rose to heaven,
as long as an English arm had life, in that last battle where England
and her King were overthrown.

[Sidenote: The church consecrated May 3, 1060,]

At what time the foundation of Waltham was begun is not recorded, but
the church was finished and consecrated in the year 1060, the ceremony
being performed on the appropriate day of the Invention of the
Cross.[1304] The minster was hallowed in the presence of King Eadward
and the Lady Eadgyth, and of most of the chief men of the land, clerical
and lay.[1305] But the chief actor in that day’s rite was neither the
Bishop of the diocese nor the [Sidenote: by Cynesige, Archbishop of
York.] Metropolitan of the province. As Wulfstan had been brought from
York to consecrate Cnut’s minster on Assandun,[1306] so this time also a
Northern Primate came to consecrate Harold’s minster at Waltham. The
position of Stigand, bettered for the moment through the pallium sent by
Benedict, had fallen with the position of the Pontiff who had recognized
him. In orthodox eyes he was again an usurper and a schismatic.[1307]
Either this feeling had extended itself to the mind of Harold himself,
or else he found it prudent to yield to the prejudices of others.
Stigand was not called upon to officiate. It is not likely that William,
the Bishop of the diocese, was excluded on account of his Norman birth,
as we find no traces of any such jealousy of him at other times. The
occasion was doubtless looked on as one of such dignity as to call for
the ministrations of a Prelate of the highest rank. The new minster of
Waltham, with its pillars fresh from the mason’s hand, and its altars
blazing with the gorgeous gifts of its founder, was hallowed in all due
form by Cynesige, Archbishop of York.

[Sidenote: The Confirmation Charter. 1062.]

The church was thus completed and consecrated; but it seemingly took
Harold two years longer fully to arrange the details of his foundation,
and to settle the exact extent of the lands which were to form its
endowment. At the end of that time the royal charter which has been
already quoted confirmed all the gifts and arrangements of the founder.

[Sidenote: Death of Archbishop Cynesige. Dec. 22, 1060.]

The Prelate who had played the most important part in the great ceremony
at Waltham did not long survive that event. Shortly before the close of
the year Archbishop Cynesige died at York, and was buried at
Peterborough.[1308] Communication between distant places must have been
easier in those times than we are at first sight inclined to think, for
it appears that the news of the event which took place at York was known
and acted upon at Gloucester only three days afterwards. We read that
his successor was appointed on Christmas-Day.[1309] Now the appointment
would regularly be made in the Witenagemót, and the Witenagemót would,
according to the custom of this reign, be holding its Christmas sitting
at Gloucester. Such speed would have been impossible if the Witan had
not been actually in session when the vacancy occurred. The absence of
Cynesige is of course explained by his mortal illness. But his successor
was on the spot, and he was no doubt on the alert to take care of
[Sidenote: Ealdred succeeds him. Dec. 25, 1060.] his own interests.
Ealdred, the Bishop of the diocese in which the Assembly was held, was
raised to the metropolitan see which had been so often held in
conjunction with that of Worcester. Indeed, Ealdred himself, who had not
scrupled to hold three Bishopricks at once, for a while followed the
vicious example of his predecessors and retained the two sees in
plurality. His successor in the see of Worcester was not appointed till
two years later. But the church of Hereford, which Ealdred had
administered for the last two years, now received a pastor of its own.
That [Sidenote: Walter, Bishop of Hereford. 1060–1079.] Bishoprick was
given to Walter, a Lotharingian by birth, and a Chaplain of the Lady
Eadgyth.[1310] Either in this year or very early in the next[1311] died
Duduc, the Saxon Bishop of Somersetshire, who had sat at Wells ever
since the days of Cnut. His see was given to another Lotharingian, Gisa,
a [Sidenote: Gisa Bishop of Wells 1060–1088.] Chaplain of the
King.[1312] These appointments, taken in connexion with Harold’s own
appointment of Adelard in his College at Waltham, must be carefully
noticed. The influence of Harold, and with it the close connexion
between England and Northern Germany, is now at its height.

From one however of the Prelates now appointed the great Earl hardly met
with the gratitude which he deserved. The story is one of the best
illustrations of the [Sidenote: Dispute between Harold and Gisa.
1061–1066.] way in which stories grow.[1313] Duduc, the late Bishop of
Wells, had received from King Cnut certain estates as his private
property, among which, strangely enough, we find reckoned the Abbey of
Gloucester. Duduc, with King Eadward’s assent, is said to have made over
these estates to his own church, besides various moveable treasures
which he bequeathed on his death-bed. But on the death of Duduc, Earl
Harold took possession of all. The new Bishop, looking on this as an
injury done to his see, rebuked the Earl both privately and openly, and
even meditated a sentence of excommunication against him. He never
however ventured on this final step, and Harold, on his election to the
Crown, promised both to restore the lands in question and to give others
as well. The fulfilment of this promise was hindered by Harold’s death,
which of course the Bishop represents [Sidenote: Gisa’s own story of the
case.] as a divine judgement. This is Gisa’s story, and we do not
possess Harold’s defence. But it is to be remarked that there is nothing
in Gisa’s version which at all touches any ancient possessions of the
see of Wells. He speaks only of some private estates which Duduc gave,
or wished to give, to his church. Gisa does not even charge Harold with
seizing anything which had belonged to the see before Duduc’s time; he
simply hinders Duduc’s gifts and bequests from taking effect. Gisa says
nothing of any appeal to the King, but simply of an appeal made by
himself to the private conscience of Harold. The natural inference is
that Harold, as Earl of the country, asserted a legal claim to the lands
and other property, that he disputed Duduc’s right to dispose of them,
and maintained that they fell to the King, or to the Earl as his
representative. As Duduc was a foreigner, dying doubtless without heirs,
it is highly probable that such would really be the law of the case. At
all events, as we have no statement from the defendant and a very
moderate one from the plaintiff, it is only fair to stop and think
whether it is not possible that there may have been something to say on
the side of the Earl as well as [Sidenote: Exaggerations of later
writers.] on that of the Bishop. In any case, the simple statement of
Gisa differs widely from the exaggerations of later writers. In their
stories we hear how Harold, instead of simply hindering a new
acquisition by the Church of Wells, plundered it of its old established
possessions. While Earl, he drives the Canons away and reduces them to
beggary. As King, he seizes all the estates of the see and drives the
Bishop into banishment. All this, I need not say, is utterly
inconsistent with Gisa’s own narrative and with our other corroborative
evidence. The story is an instructive one. By the colouring given to it
by Gisa himself, and by the exaggerations which it received in later
times, we may learn to look with a good deal of suspicion on all stories
of the kind. The principle is that the Church is in all cases to gain
and never to lose; a regular and legal opposition to ecclesiastical
claims is looked on as no less criminal than one which is altogether
fraudulent or violent.

[Sidenote: Later career of Walter and Gisa.]

Both our Lotharingian Bishops survived the Conquest; Gisa survived the
Conqueror himself. There is nothing to convict either of them of treason
to England; but Gisa at least does not seem very warm in his patriotism
for his adopted country. He is quite ready to forgive William for the
Conquest of England in consideration of the help which he gave him in
his reformation of the Church of Wells.[1314] Walter, on the other hand,
is represented, in some accounts, as taking a prominent part in
resistance to the Conqueror.[1315] The tale rests on no good authority,
but it could hardly have been told of one whose conduct was known to
have been of a directly opposite kind. On the other hand, as both Walter
and Gisa kept their sees till death, they must at least have shown a
discreet amount of submission to the new state of things. Walter came,
so we are told, to a sad and shameful end,[1316] but one in which
questions of Norman, English, and Lotharingian nationality [Sidenote:
Gisa’s changes at Wells.] were in no way concerned. Gisa lived in
honour, and died in the odour of sanctity, and he fills a prominent
place in the history of the Church of Wells. He found his church, small,
poor, served only by four or five Canons, who lived in houses in the
town, and who, we are told, doubtless by a figure of speech, had
sometimes to beg their bread.[1317] Gisa obtained various gifts from
King Eadward and the Lady Eadgyth, and afterwards from William,[1318]
and he was also enabled to buy several valuable possessions for his
church.[1319] But he is most memorable for his attempt to introduce at
Wells, as Leofric had done at Exeter,[1320] the rule [Sidenote: 1059.]
of his countryman Chrodegang. Two synods held at Rome a few years
earlier, one of them the second Lateran Council, had made various
ordinances with the object of enforcing this rule, or one of the same
character, on all cathedral and collegiate clergy. In obedience to their
orders, Gisa began to reform his Church according to the Lotharingian
pattern.[1321] The number of the Canons of Wells was increased, their
revenues were increased also, but they were obliged to forsake their
separate houses, and to use the common refectory and dormitory which
Gisa built for them.[1322] This change was still more short-lived at
Wells than it was at Exeter. Whatever Gisa did was undone by his
immediate successor.

[Sidenote: Comparison between the foundations of Harold and Gisa.]

It is to be noticed that the innovations of Leofric at Exeter and of
Gisa at Wells were conceived in quite another spirit from Harold’s
foundation at Waltham. The changes made by the Lotharingian Bishops—for
Leofric, though English by birth, was Lotharingian in feeling—were
changes in a monastic direction. Leofric and Gisa did not indeed expel
their secular Canons and substitute monks; neither did they, like
Wulfstan at Gloucester, require their Canons to take monastic vows or
subject them to the fulness of monastic discipline. A Canon of Wells or
Exeter could doubtless, unlike a monk, resign his office, and thereby
free himself from the special obligations which it involved. But, while
he retained his office, he was obliged to live in what, as compared with
the free life of the English secular priest, must have seemed a monastic
fashion. One may suspect that the rule of Chrodegang was but the small
end of the wedge, and that, if the system had taken root and flourished,
the next step would have been to impose monastic vows and full monastic
discipline upon the capitular clergy. All this was utterly alien to the
feelings of Englishmen. Our countrymen were, only too often, ready to
found monasteries and to become monks. But they required that the
process should be open and above-board. The monk should be a monk and
the secular should be a secular. The secular had no mind to be entrapped
into becoming a sort of half monk, while still nominally retaining the
secular character. Earl Harold better understood his countrymen. When he
determined on founding, not a monastery but a secular college, he
determined that it should be really secular. The Canons of Waltham
therefore lived like Englishmen, each man in his own house on his own
prebend, while the Canons of Wells and Exeter had to submit for a while
to the foreign discipline of the common refectory and the common dormer.

[Sidenote: Walter and Gisa consecrated at Rome. April 15, 1061.]

The Lotharingian Prelates seem to have been among the great
disseminators of that feeling about the uncanonical appointment of
Stigand, which, as we have seen, had perhaps touched the mind even of
Harold himself.[1323] It is therefore not wonderful that the scruple had
touched the mind of Eadward, and that it was by his authority that the
two new Bishops went to Rome to receive consecration at the hands of the
lawful Pope Nicolas.[1324] They refused to receive the rite from a
Primate whose pallium had been received from an usurper, and, as Ealdred
had as yet received no pallium at all, there was no other Metropolitan
in the land to fall back upon. The scruple however was not universal.
Another great ecclesiastical preferment fell vacant during the absence
of Walter and [Sidenote: Death of Abbot Wulfric. April 18, 1061.] Gisa.
Wulfric, Abbot of Saint Augustine’s at Canterbury, one of the Prelates
who had appeared as the representatives of England at the Synod of
Rheims,[1325] and who had been a splendid benefactor to his own
monastery,[1326] died during the Easter festival.[1327] The news was
brought to the King, seemingly while the Witan were, as usual, in
session at [Sidenote: Æthelsige receives the abbatial benediction from
Stigand. May 26, 1061.] Winchester. The royal choice fell on Æthelsige,
a monk of the New Minster. He, we are told, followed Archbishop Stigand,
and was by him hallowed as Abbot on the day of the patron of his house.
The ceremony was performed at Windsor, a royal seat of which this is one
of our earliest notices.[1328] It would perhaps have been a strong
measure for Æthelsige altogether to refuse the ministrations of one who
was doubly his diocesan, alike as a monk of New Minster and as Abbot of
Saint Augustine’s. Moreover, the benediction of an Abbot was not a
matter of the same spiritual importance as the consecration of a Bishop.
It was an edifying ceremony, but it was not a sacramental rite. Still,
when we remember that Earl Harold himself had chosen another Prelate for
his ceremony at Waltham, it shows some independence on the part of
Æthelsige thus openly to communicate with the schismatical Primate. His
conduct at all events did not lose him the royal favour. At some date
between this time and the death of Eadward, Abbot Ælfwine of Ramsey, he
who had been ambassador to the Pope and the Cæsar,[1329] resigned his
office, and Abbot Æthelsige, without resigning his office at Canterbury,
was entrusted with the administration of the great Huntingdonshire
monastery.[1330]

[Sidenote: Journey to Rome of Ealdred, Tostig, and Gyrth. 1061.]

It is not quite clear whether Gisa and Walter made their journey to Rome
in company with some still more exalted personages who went on the same
road in the course of the same year. The new Metropolitan of the North
went to Rome after his pallium,[1331] and with him the Earl of the
Northumbrians went as a pilgrim, accompanied by his wife, by his younger
brother Gyrth, Earl of the East-Angles, by several noble Thegns from
Northumberland, and by Burchard, son of Earl Ælfgar, a companion, it
would seem, of Ealdred rather than of Tostig.[1332] Harold, on his
pilgrimage, had chosen the route through Gaul, in order to ascertain the
strength of the enemy. Tostig, probably starting from the court of his
fatherin-law at Bruges, chose to make his journey wholly through those
kindred lands with which England was now so closely connected. The
Archbishop and the two Earls passed through Saxony and along the upper
course of the Rhine, so that, till they reached the Alps, the whole of
their course lay over Teutonic soil.[1333] They seem to have found Gisa
and Walter already at Rome;[1334] but the three Prelates, besides the
personal business which each had with the Pope, are said to have been
charged in common with one errand from the King. This was to obtain the
Papal confirmation for the privileges of his restored monastery
[Sidenote: Papal confirmation of the privileges of Westminster.] at
Westminster.[1335] A synod of some kind was sitting, in which the Earl
of the Northumbrians was received by Pope Nicolas with marked
honours.[1336] The illustrious visitors obtained the Pope’s confirmation
for the privileges of the rising minster of Saint Peter, and they
returned laden with letters from Nicolas to that effect.[1337] Walter
and Gisa obtained without difficulty the consecration which they
sought;[1338] but Ealdred was at first not only refused [Sidenote:
Ealdred refused the pallium, and deprived of his see.] the pallium which
he asked for, but was deprived, so far as a Pope could deprive an
English Prelate, of all his preferments.[1339] The ground for this
severity was, according to one account, the charge of simony; according
to another, it would seem to have been an objection to an uncanonical
translation or to the holding of two Bishopricks at once.[1340] At any
rate, Ealdred retired in confusion. The whole party now prepared to
return to England, but not in one body. Judith and the greater part of
the company were sent first, and they reached England without any
special adventure. But the Earl, and seemingly all the three Bishops,
stayed behind to prosecute the cause of Ealdred.[1341] At last, thinking
the matter hopeless, they [Sidenote: Tostig and the Bishops robbed on
their way home.] also set out to return home. On their way they were
attacked by robbers, seemingly the robber nobles of the country.[1342]
The brigands seem to have been specially anxious to seize the person of
the Earl of the Northumbrians. A noble youth named Gospatric[1343] said
that he was the Earl, and was carried off accordingly. But, after a
while, the robbers, admiring his courage and appearance, not only set
him free without ransom, but restored to him all that they had taken
from him.[1344] The rest returned to the presence of the Pope, with
nothing but the clothes on their backs.[1345] Tostig now seems to have
mingled threats and entreaties. One account describes the Pope as
touched with the desolate condition of the whole party, and as therefore
yielding the more readily to Tostig’s petition in favour of
Ealdred.[1346] Another version [Sidenote: The Pope yields to the threats
of Tostig, and Ealdred receives the pallium.] makes the Earl take a
higher tone. If the Pope and his authority were so little cared for in
his own neighbourhood, who could be expected to care for his
excommunications in distant countries? He was fierce enough towards
suppliants, but he seemed able to do nothing against his own rebels. Let
him at once cause the property to be restored, which had most likely
been seized with his own connivance. If Englishmen underwent such
treatment almost under the walls of Rome, the King of the English would
certainly withdraw all tribute and payment of every kind from the Roman
See. He, Earl Tostig, would take care that the King and his people
should know the truth in all its fulness.[1347] This account carries
more of the stamp of truth with it than the other more courtly version.
At any rate, whether the voice of Tostig was the voice of entreaty or
the voice of threatening, to his voice the Pope at last yielded. Ealdred
was restored to his Archbishoprick and invested with the pallium, on the
single condition of his resigning the see of Worcester.[1348] The losses
which the Earl and the Bishops had undergone at the hands of the robbers
were made good to them out of the Papal treasury,[1349] and they set
forth again on their journey homeward. They must have come back through
France, as Burchard died on the way at Rheims. He was there buried in
the churchyard of the Abbey of Saint Remigius, a house which his father
Ælfgar enriched for his sake.[1350] Ealdred, Tostig, and the rest came
back, honoured and rejoicing, to England.

[Sidenote: Ill effects of the practice of pilgrimage.]

But in this, as in so many other cases, we see the evil effects which
followed on this passion for pilgrimages, at least among Kings and Earls
and other rulers of men. It was with a true wisdom that the Witan of
England had [Sidenote: Malcolm invades Northumberland during the absence
of Tostig. 1061.] hindered the proposed pilgrimage of Eadward.[1351]
None but the great Cnut could leave his realm with impunity and could
keep distant nations in subjection by the mere terror of his name. We
have seen what evils were undoubtedly brought upon Normandy by the
pilgrimage of Robert; we have seen what lesser evils were probably
brought upon England by the pilgrimage of Harold. So now the absence of
her Earl, even on so pious a work, brought no good to Northumberland. No
doubt the times must have seemed specially secure both at home and
abroad, when two of the great Earls of England could venture to leave
the Kingdom at the same time, and when Northumberland could be deprived
of the care at once of her temporal and of her spiritual chief. Her only
dangerous neighbour was bound to Tostig by the closest of artificial
ties. But so tempting an opportunity for a raid overcame any scruples
which either gratitude or the tie of sworn brotherhood might have
suggested to the mind of Malcolm. The King of Scots entered
Northumberland; he cruelly ravaged the country, and did not even show
reverence to Saint Cuthberht by sparing his holy isle of
Lindisfarn.[1352] We have no further details. Neither do we hear whether
Tostig took any sort of vengeance for this seemingly quite unprovoked
injury. We hear nothing more of Scottish affairs during the remaining
years of the reign of Eadward.

It always marks a season of comparative quiet when our attention is
chiefly occupied by ecclesiastical affairs. During four whole years
Malcolm’s raid into Northumberland is the only political or military
event which [Sidenote: 1062.] we have to record. We now enter on the
last year of [Sidenote: Vacancy of the See of Worcester.] this time of
quiet. In the year following the pilgrimage of Tostig, Ealdred having at
last resigned the see of Worcester, a successor had to be chosen.
England was at that moment blessed or cursed with visitors of a kind
who, to say the least, did not in those days often reach her [Sidenote:
Papal Legates in England. Lent, 1062.] shores, namely Legates from the
Roman See. Pope Nicolas died soon after the visit of Ealdred and Tostig,
and was succeeded by Alexander the Second, a name afterwards to become
only too well known in English history. By commission from this Pontiff,
Ermenfrid, Bishop of Sitten, and a nameless colleague, came to England
early in the year. It is clear that their errand was in some way
connected with the appointment to the see of Worcester, besides any
other matters with which they may have been charged for the
enlightenment of the King’s private conscience or for the forwarding of
his foundation at Westminster.[1353] Possibly their personal presence
was thought necessary in order to ensure the surrender by Ealdred of a
Bishoprick to which he clave with special affection.[1354] At any rate
it was Ealdred who received the Legates, who conducted them on their
journey through a great part of England, and who at last quartered them
at Worcester, under the care of Wulfstan, the holy Prior of that
church.[1355] There they were to remain through Lent, waiting for the
Easter Gemót, in which the King and his Witan were to decide on all the
matters which had brought Ealdred doubtful between Æthelwig and
Wulfstan. [Sidenote: Ealdred doubtful between Æthelwig and Wulfstan.]
them to England.[1356] With regard to the succession to this see of
Worcester, Ealdred was for a while doubtful between two candidates. One
was Æthelwig, now Abbot of Evesham, who had so long acted as his deputy
in the administration of the Hwiccian diocese.[1357] This Prelate is
described

as a man of noble birth and of consummate prudence in all matters human,
some add in matters divine also.[1358] One paossession of a see which he
had so long administered, and wrt at least of his character was not
belied by his actions. We shall find that he lived in high favour
equally under Eadward, Harold, and William, and died in full possession
of his Abbey eleven years after the Conquest.[1359] He was not
unnaturally anxious to succeed to the full possession of a see which he
had so long administered, and with whose affairs he must have been
thoroughly conversant.[1360] Ealdred himself doubted for a while whether
the see would be more safely entrusted to the worldly wisdom of Æthelwig
or to the simple piety of Wulfstan the Prior.[1361] [Sidenote: WULFSTAN
[Prior and] Bishop of Worcester. Sept. 8, 1062–Jan. 18, 1095. Born about
1012. His life and character.] Wulfstan, the friend of Harold, was a man
now of about fifty years of age.[1362] He was the son of
Æthelstan,[1363] a Thegn of Warwickshire, and his wife Wulfgifu, and he
must have been born among the horrors of the later years of Æthelred.
Brought up, not as a monk, but as a secular student, in the Abbey of
Peterborough, he made great proficiency in the learning of the time
under a master whose name Ervenius seems to imply a foreign
origin.[1364] His parents, as they grew old, took monastic vows by
mutual consent, but Wulfstan for some while lived as a layman,
distinguished for his success in bodily exercises as well as for his
virtuous and pious demeanour. His chastity especially was preserved
unsullied under unusually severe trials.[1365] At last, when he still
could not have been above twenty-six years old,[1366] he received
ordination as a Presbyter at the [Sidenote: 1033–1038.] hands of
Brihtheah, Bishop of Worcester. This was somewhat against his own will,
as he shrank from the responsibilities of the priesthood. The friendly
Prelate vainly pressed on him a good secular living in the neighbourhood
of the city.[1367] But the determination of Wulfstan was fixed, and
Brihtheah had soon to admit him as a monk of the cathedral monastery,
where, after a while, he was promoted by Ealdred to the rank of
Prior.[1368] Here he distinguished himself by every monastic perfection;
he was eminent as a preacher, and it is still more interesting to read
of his habit of going through the country to baptize the children of the
poor, to whom—so our monastic informants tell us—the greedy secular
clergy refused the first sacrament except on payment of a fee.[1369] The
virtues of Wulfstan attracted the notice of many of the great men of the
realm. The famous Godgifu, the wife of Leofric, was his devoted
admirer.[1370] But the same virtues gained him a still nobler and more
powerful votary; he became, as we have seen, the special friend of Earl
Harold.[1371] Ealdred now hesitated between Wulfstan and Æthelwig as his
successor at Worcester. The King, we are told, was determined that the
see should be filled by a canonical election, which however of course
did not exclude the right of the Witan to confirm or to reject the
choice of the ecclesiastical electors. The Papal Legates soon discerned
the virtues of Wulfstan, and became eager on his behalf. They spent
their Lent in efforts to secure his election, especially in exhortations
to the clergy and people of Worcester, an expression which may perhaps
show that something of the ancient popular character of [Sidenote:
Wulfstan elected Bishop.] episcopal elections still lingered on.[1372]
But whoever were the electors, Wulfstan was elected, and the choice of
the local body came before the Witan of the realm for confirmation. The
Legates appeared before the Gemót; the diplomacy of the time doubtless
required that their business with the King should not be decided without
the national approval. The succession to the see of Worcester came on
among the other business of the Assembly, and the Legates themselves
took on [Sidenote: His election approved by the Witan, Easter, 1062.]
them to speak on behalf of the holy Prior.[1373] Not a voice was raised
in opposition; every speaker bore his testimony to the incomparable
merits of Wulfstan. Both Archbishops, Stigand and Ealdred, spoke in his
favour; so did Ælfgar, the Earl of the province, and Wulfstan’s personal
friend Earl Harold.[1374] The approval of the Gemót was unanimous. The
only difficulty was to be found in the unwillingness of Wulfstan himself
to take upon him the cares and responsibilities of the episcopal office.
As soon as the vote was given, messengers were sent to ride at full
speed to Worcester, and to bring the Prior in person before the
Assembly. Wulfstan obeyed the summons, but, amid general shouts of
dissent, he pleaded his unfitness for the vacant office.[1375] He
declared, even with an oath, that he had rather lose his head than
become a Bishop.[1376] His scruples were at last shaken by the Legates
and the Archbishops, who pleaded the duty of obedience to the Holy See,
and finally by the exhortations and reproofs of a holy anchorite named
Wulfsige, who had been for forty years removed from the society of
men.[1377] But the process of persuasion in the mind of Wulfstan was
evidently a long one. The formalities of his ecclesiastical confirmation
and of the final rite of consecration were not completed till the month
of September. One is half disappointed to read that he refused the
ministrations of Stigand, and sought for consecration at the hands of
Ealdred. The distinct Roman influence, embodied in the persons of Roman
Legates, doubtless taught Wulfstan that Stigand was a schismatic.
Ermenfrid and his colleague seem even to have been the bearers of a
distinct Papal [Sidenote: Wulfstan makes canonical profession to
Stigand, but is consecrated by Ealdred.] decree of suspension against
the Archbishop. Wulfstan however drew a distinction, which the facts of
the case amply bore out. Stigand, whether canonically appointed or not,
was, in law and in fact, Archbishop of Canterbury. The Bishop-elect
therefore did not scruple to make his profession of canonical obedience
to him.[1378] He did not scruple thus far to recognize the legal primacy
of an Archbishop appointed by the King and Witan of England. It was only
the sacramental rite of consecration which he sought at the hands of a
Primate whose canonical position [Sidenote: Wulfstan is consecrated by
Ealdred. Sept. 8, 1062.] was open to no cavil. For this he went to the
newly appointed Metropolitan of Northumberland, and was consecrated by
him at York. Ealdred had however to declare, perhaps before the
assembled Witan,[1379] that he claimed no authority, ecclesiastical or
temporal, over the Bishop of Worcester, either on the ground of his
having been consecrated by him or on that of his having formerly been a
monk under his obedience.[1380] Scandal however added that Ealdred
contrived to attach a large portion of the estates of the see of
Worcester to his own Archbishoprick.[1381]

[Sidenote: The King’s Charter to Waltham. Easter? 1062.]

The other ecclesiastical event of this purely ecclesiastical year has
been mentioned already. Earl Harold’s minster at Waltham had been
consecrated two years earlier. By this time he had settled the details
of his foundation and of its endowments. His gifts and regulations were
now confirmed in due form by a royal charter.[1382] As the signature of
Wulfstan is not attached to the document, we may suppose that the
charter was granted in the same Easter [Sidenote: Ælfwig, Abbot of New
Minster. 1063.] Gemót in which Wulfstan’s election was approved. And one
more ecclesiastical appointment must, at some slight sacrifice of
chronological order, be recorded in this section. In the following year
it seems that Harold procured the appointment of a near kinsman,
seemingly a brother of his renowned father, to the office of Abbot of
the New Minster at Winchester, the great house raised by Eadward the
Unconquered in memory of his father Ælfred. It seems strange that a
brother of Godwine, if he desired preferment at all, should have had to
wait for it so long. But such seems to have been the case, and the name
of the new Prelate, Abbot Ælfwig, the uncle of King Harold, will be met
with again in the very crisis of our history.[1383]

§ 2. _The Welsh War and its Consequences._ 1062–1065.

[Sidenote: Renewed ravages of Gruffydd. 1062.]

But the year of this last appointment, or rather the last days of the
year of the consecration of Wulfstan, carries us at once among scenes of
a widely different kind from ecclesiastical ceremonies at Rome, York,
Waltham, or Winchester. The peace of the land is again threatened, and
the great Earl of the West-Saxons again stands forth as the one champion
in whose hands England could trust her destinies. In the course of the
year of Wulfstan’s consecration the ravages of Gruffydd of Wales seem to
have begun again with increased fury. He entered the diocese of the new
Prelate, and seems to have carried his arms even beyond the
Severn,[1384] renewing his earlier exploit of Rhyd-y-Groes. [Sidenote:
Witenagemót of Gloucester. Christmas, 1062–1063.] The damage which he
had done to the English territory, and the insults which he had thus
offered to his lord King Eadward, formed the main subject of discussion
at the Christmas Gemót, which was held as usual at Gloucester.[1385] It
is to be noticed that we now hear [Sidenote: Death of Ælfgar of Mercia;
his son Eadwine succeeds. 1062?] nothing of Gruffydd’s old ally and
father-in-law, Earl Ælfgar. His last recorded acts are the peaceful ones
of recommending Wulfstan for the Bishoprick of Worcester and of signing
the Waltham charter. Two years later we find his son Eadwine in
possession of his Earldom. It is therefore not improbable that he died
about this time, and the appointment of Eadwine is not unlikely to have
taken place in this very Christmas Gemót. But it is certain that Ælfgar,
if living, was not deemed trustworthy enough to be commissioned to act
against his old ally; nor was his young successor, if he were dead,
deemed fit to grapple with so dangerous an enemy, one against whom it
was now determined to strike a decisive blow. The ravages of Gruffydd
had probably again fallen heavy upon Herefordshire, and Herefordshire
was now under the government of Harold. But it was doubtless not as Earl
of this or that Earldom, but as the first man of the Kingdom, as
something like an elected Ætheling, that Harold now undertook to rid
England once for all of this ever recurring [Sidenote: Harold’s march to
Rhuddlan. Christmas, 1062–1063.] plague. Notwithstanding, perhaps
because of, the time of the year, it was determined to strike a sudden
blow, in the hope of seizing or putting to death the turbulent
under-King. Harold set forth with a small force, all mounted, therefore
probably all of them Housecarls,[1386] and hastened with all possible
speed to Rhuddlan on the [Sidenote: 1283.] north-east frontier of Wales.
The spot is famous in our history as the seat of a Parliament of the
great Edward, and its military position is important, as standing at no
great distance from the sea, and commanding the vale of Clwyd, the
southern Strathclyde. There Gruffydd had a palace, the rude precursor no
doubt of the stately castle whose remains now form the chief attraction
of Rhuddlan. The Welsh King heard of the approach of the English; he had
just time to reach the shore and to escape by sea. Earl Harold was close
in pursuit, and the escape of Gruffydd was a narrow one; but he did
escape, and the main object of this sudden expedition was thwarted.
Harold’s force was not strong enough to endure a long winter campaign in
so wild a country; so he contented himself with burning the palace and
the ships which were in the haven. The same day on which this
destruction was done, he set out on his return march to
Gloucester.[1387]

[Sidenote: Harold’s great campaign of 1063.]

Harold’s attempt at a sudden blow had thus, through an unavoidable
accident, been unsuccessful. It was therefore determined to open a
campaign on a great scale, which should crush the power of Gruffydd for
ever. It was in this campaign that the world first fully learned how
great a captain England possessed in her future King. Never was a
campaign more ably planned or more vigorously [Sidenote: Its permanent
effect on men’s minds.] executed. The deep impression which it made on
men’s minds is shown by the way in which it is spoken of by writers who
lived a hundred years later, when men had long been taught to look on
Harold and his house as [Sidenote: Testimony of John of Salisbury and
Giraldus Cambrensis.] a brood of traitors and perjurers. John of
Salisbury, writing under the Angevin Henry, chooses this campaign of
Harold’s as the most speaking example of the all-important difference
between a good general and a bad one. The name of Harold could of course
not be uttered without some of the usual disparaging epithets, but he
allows that the faithless usurper was a model of every princely and
soldier-like excellence.[1388] He compares the days of Harold with his
own, and wishes that England had captains like him to drive back the
marauders who, in his own time, harried her borders with impunity.[1389]
Another writer of the same age, the famous Giraldus, attributes to this
campaign of Harold the security which England enjoyed on the side of the
Welsh during the reigns of the three Norman Kings.[1390] These two
writers, evidently speaking quite independently of each other, give us
several details of the campaign. These are fully confirmed by the
witness of Eadward’s Biographer, and all their accounts fit without
difficulty into the more general narrative given by the Chroniclers.

[Sidenote: Harold and Tostig invade Wales. May 26, 1063.]

The campaign opened in the last days of May. Its general plan was a
combined attack on the Welsh territory from both sides. Harold sailed
with a fleet from Bristol, the haven from which he had set sail on so
different an errand twelve years before; Tostig set forth with a mounted
land force from Northumberland.[1391] The brothers met, probably at some
point of central Wales, and began a systematic ravaging of the country.
The military genius of Harold was now conspicuously shown in the way in
which he adapted himself to the kind of warfare which he had to wage.
Nothing could be better suited than the ancient English tactics for a
pitched battle with an equal enemy. But here there was no hope or fear
of pitched battles, and the enemy to be dealt with was one whose warfare
was of a very different kind. The English Housecarls, with their heavy
coats of mail and huge battle-axes, were eminently unfitted to pursue a
light-armed and active foe through the hills and valleys of Wales. Ralph
the Timid had brought himself and his army to discomfiture by compelling
his Englishmen suddenly to adopt the tactics of France;[1392] the
valiant [Sidenote: Harold adopts the Welsh tactics.] Earl of the
West-Saxons proved his true generalship by teaching his army to accustom
themselves to the tactics and the fare[1393] of Welshmen. The irregular
English troops, the _fyrd_, the levies of the shires, did not differ
very widely from the Welsh mode of fighting. But it is not likely that
Harold would enter on such a campaign as this without the help of at
least a strong body of tried and regular soldiers. We must therefore
conclude that Harold actually required his Housecarls to follow the
tactics suitable to the country. They gave up the close array of the
shield-wall; they laid aside their axes and coats of mail; clothed in
leathern jerkins, they retained their swords, but they were to trust
mainly to the nimble and skilful use of the [Sidenote: Harold ravages
and subdues all Wales.] javelin for attack and of the shield for
defence.[1394] Thus attired, the English, under their great leader,
proved more than a match for the Welsh at their own weapons. Unhappily
we have no geographical details of the campaign, but we have a vivid
picture of its general nature, and we can see that it must have extended
over a large portion of the country. There were no pitched battles; but
the English, in their new array, everywhere contended with success
against the enemy. Every defensible spot of ground was stoutly contested
by the Britons; but even the most inaccessible mountain fastnesses
proved no safeguard against the energy of Harold.[1395] He won skirmish
after skirmish, and each scene of conflict was marked, we are told, by a
trophy of stone, bearing the proud legend, “Here Harold
conquered.”[1396] Such a warfare was necessarily merciless. The object
was to reduce the Welsh to complete submission, to disable them from
ever again renewing their old ravages. Harold was fighting too with an
enemy who knew not what mercy was, who gave no quarter, who, if they
ever took a prisoner, instead of putting him to ransom, cut off his
head.[1397] We are not therefore surprised to hear that every male who
resisted was put to the sword.[1398] One of our informants is even
driven to the rhetoric of the East to express the greatness of the
slaughter.[1399] Such [Sidenote: The Welsh submit.] terrible execution
soon[1400] broke the spirit of the Welsh. They submitted and gave
hostages, they bound themselves to tribute, and pronounced sentence of
deposition and outlawry upon Gruffydd.[1401] The King who had reigned
over all the Welsh kin,[1402] the warrior who had been hitherto
[Sidenote: Gruffydd murdered by his own people. Aug. 5, 1063.]
invincible, the head and shield and defender of Britons,[1403] was now
thoroughly hated by his own people. The war and its results were laid
upon him as a crime,[1404] though we cannot doubt that, in the days of
success, the Welsh people had been as eager as their King to carry spoil
and slaughter along the Saxon border. But now outlawry was not a doom
hard enough for the fallen prince; death alone was the fitting
punishment for his crimes. In the month of August in this year, Gruffydd
the son of Llywelyn, the last victorious hero of the old Cymrian stock,
the last British chief whose name was really terrible in Saxon ears, was
put to death by men of his own race, and his head was sent to the
conqueror.[1405]

[Sidenote: The Welsh kingdom granted to Bleddyn and Rhiwallon.]

In this crime Harold had no share. He had been merciless as long as
resistance lasted, but as soon as the foe submitted, he displayed the
same politic and generous lenity which he always displayed towards both
foreign and domestic enemies. The head of Gruffydd and the beak of his
ship[1406] were brought as trophies to King Eadward. His kingdom was
granted to his two brothers or kinsmen, Bleddyn and Rhiwallon,[1407] who
received the land as under-Kings of the English Emperor. They swore
oaths and gave hostages to King Eadward, and to Earl Harold, seemingly
as his destined successor.[1408] They engaged also to pay the tribute
which had been accustomed in past times, but which, we may be sure, had
been very irregularly paid in the days of Gruffydd.[1409]

[Sidenote: Legislation about Wales.]

Two pieces of legislation are said to have followed the conquest of
Wales. Harold is said to have ordained that any Welshman found in arms
on the English side of Offa’s Dyke should lose his right hand.[1410] If
this was anything more than a temporary military regulation, Harold’s
ordaining it can only mean that it was he who proposed the enactment to
the Witan. The other decree is attributed to the special indulgence of
Eadward himself. The slaughter of the male population of Wales had been
so great that there was no chance of the widows and daughters of the
slain finding husbands among their own people. Lest the whole race
should die out, the King allowed them to marry Englishmen, which we must
infer had hitherto been unlawful.[1411] Stories like these must be taken
at what they are worth. Though coming from the same source, they do not
bear about them the same stamp of truth as the military details of the
campaign.

[Sidenote: Harold marries Ealdgyth. 1064?]

If any law was now passed authorizing the marriage of Englishmen and
Welshwomen, the greatest of living Englishmen was not slow to take
advantage of it, so far as it could be considered as extending to an
Englishwoman who had become Welsh by adoption. We have now reached a
year which stands bare of events in the Chronicles. It may have been the
year of Harold’s fatal visit to Normandy; it can hardly fail to have
been the year of his marriage. There is nothing to imply that the great
Earl had ever been married before. Putting together such indications as
we have, it seems that Harold’s connexion with his East-Anglian mistress
Eadgyth Swanneshals, if it still existed, now came to an end.[1412] The
bride of Harold was in some sense the prize of his own sword and spear.
The fallen Gruffydd had once, like eastern Kings, taken the wife of a
conquered enemy to be his wife.[1413] Her successor, now in her present
widowhood, met, willingly or unwillingly, with the like fate. The fair
Ealdgyth, the daughter of Ælfgar, the sister of Eadwine, the widow of
Gruffydd, became the wife of the rival of her father, the conqueror of
her husband. Harold’s enemies are of course scandalized at a marriage
between Harold and the widow of a man of whom they choose to call him
the murderer.[1414] But it is hard to see any objection to the union,
except the possible wrong done to the forsaken Eadgyth. Of the
circumstances we know nothing. Ealdgyth may, like an earlier namesake in
a somewhat similar case,[1415] have inspired her conqueror with
[Sidenote: The marriage probably a political one.] a sudden passion. But
it is far more likely that Harold’s marriage was a sacrifice of love to
policy, and that his main object was to win to his side the interest of
the great Mercian house which had stood so long in rivalry against
himself and his father. Harold in short, with a Crown in prospect, acted
after the manner of crowned heads. Eadgyth was perhaps forsaken,
Ealdgyth was almost certainly married, in order to secure Mercian votes
in the Gemót which should finally dispose of the Kingdom. Harold
doubtless flattered himself that by this marriage he had extended his
influence over the whole Kingdom. He himself ruled in Wessex; one
brother ruled in Northumberland, another in East-Anglia, another in the
South-Eastern shires. And now the one remaining Earldom was in the hands
of the brother of his wife. But, as events turned out, Harold would have
done better to cleave to his earlier and humbler love, whose love for
him survived desertion and death. He gained little by seeking political
support in an union with the widow of a foe and the sister of a traitor.
Of Ealdgyth personally we know hardly anything;[1416] but we know what
her brothers were, and, when the day of trial came, she seems to have
sided with her brothers rather than with her husband.

Wales was thus, to all appearance, thoroughly conquered. North Wales,
the original Kingdom of Gruffydd, seems to have remained fairly quiet;
but elements of disturbance still lingered in the South. King Eadward
was growing old, but he still retained his love of hunting, and a new
field seemed to be opened for the royal sport in the wild lands which
had been lately brought into fuller [Sidenote: Harold builds a
hunting-seat at Portskewet. August 1, 1065.] subjection to the royal
authority. In the low lands of Gwent, near one of the usual places of
crossing the mouth of the Severn from England into Wales, the Earl chose
out a place called Porth-iscoed or Portskewet as well suited for his
sovereign’s diversions.[1417] One of the great Gemóts of each year was
now so regularly held at Gloucester that a place at no very great
distance from that city might seem well convenient for the purpose. But
besides this, it was an obvious policy thus to take _seizin_, as it
were, of the conquered lands, and to show to their inhabitants that the
English Emperor was to be for the future a really present master. At
Portskewet then Earl Harold began to build a house, and he had gathered
together a large number of workmen and an abundant store of provisions
and other good things. We see how thoroughly subdued the whole country
was held to be, even this corner which did not belong to the immediate
realm of the conquered Gruffydd, and which is not likely to have been
the actual seat of warfare. It shows also the half-kingly position of
Harold that he is described as acting in this way in a district not
belonging to his own Earldom, but included in the dominions of a vassal
prince. We do not read that Eadward ordered the building of the house;
it seems rather like a voluntary act of Harold’s own, rising out of his
personal consideration for his royal brother-in-law’s pleasure. Nor do
we hear anything of discontent on the part of the newly appointed
princes of the country. But there was one to whom a Saxon settlement on
the soil of Gwent was far more irksome than it [Sidenote: Caradoc son of
Gruffydd of South Wales kills the workmen. August 24, 1065.] could be to
any prince of Powys or Gwynedd. A disinherited and dispossessed
chieftain still looked on the land as his own, and probably deemed
Harold and Bleddyn to be equally intruders. This was Caradoc ap
Gruffydd, the son of that Gruffydd of South Wales who had been slain,
and his Kingdom seized, by the more famous Gruffydd whose career had so
lately come to an end.[1418] According to one account, he had been
himself outlawed by order of Harold.[1419] At any rate, the sight of the
palace of the English overlord, rising in a district which had once been
his father’s, rankled in his soul. He gathered as large a band as he
could, he came suddenly on the unfinished building, he slew nearly all
the workmen, and carried off all the good things which had been provided
for them and for the King.[1420] Such a raid was doubtless common in the
desolating border warfare which was ever going on between the English
and Welsh, but it is clear that a special political importance attached
to this act of Caradoc. One of the Chroniclers adds significantly, “We
know not who this ill counsel first devised.”[1421] These words, taken
with a fact which we shall have presently to speak of, may perhaps
suggest the idea that this lesser disturbance in South Wales was not
without connexion with the more important events in England which
presently followed it.

§ 3. _The Revolt of Northumberland._ 1065.

If Eadward or Harold made any preparations to avenge the insult offered
by Caradoc to the Imperial authority, their attention was soon called
off from that corner of the Empire to a far greater movement in the
Earldom of [Sidenote: Oppression of Tostig in Northumberland.]
Northumberland. However righteous may have been the intentions with
which Tostig set out, however needful a wholesome severity may have been
in the then state of his province, it is clear that his government had
by this time degenerated into an insupportable tyranny. This is not
uncommonly the case with men of his disposition, a disposition evidently
harsh, obstinate, and impatient of opposition. Rigid justice, untempered
by mercy, easily [Sidenote: Revolt of the Northhumbrians against him.
October 3, 1065.] changes into oppression. The whole province rose
against him. His apologist tries to represent the leaders of the
movement as wrong-doers whom the Earl’s strict justice had chastised or
offended.[1422] Such may well have been the case, but the long list of
grievances put forth by the Northumbrians, though it may easily have
been exaggerated, [Sidenote: Charges against Tostig.] cannot have been
wholly invented. He had robbed God;[1423] elsewhere Tostig bears a high
reputation for piety, and, in any case, the charge must be taken with
the same allowance as the like charges against his brother. But he had
also robbed many men of land and of life,[1424] he had raised up unjust
law,[1425] and had laid on the Earldom a tax wholly beyond its means to
bear.[1426] A list of particular [Sidenote: Murder of Gamel and Ulf.
1064.] crimes is added. Two Thegns, Gamel the son of Orm and Ulf the son
of Dolfin, had, in the course of the last year, been received in the
Earl’s chamber under pretence of peace, and had been there treacherously
slain by his order.[1427] That is to say, Tostig had repeated one of the
worst deeds of Harthacnut,[1428] and of Cnut himself before his
reformation.[1429] These men may have been criminals; Tostig may have
persuaded himself that he was simply doing an act of irregular justice
in thus destroying men who were perhaps too powerful to be reached by
the ordinary course of law. But, whatever were the crimes of Ulf and
Gamel, Tostig, by this act, degraded himself to their level. If even the
most guilty were to be cut off in such a way as this, even the most
innocent could not feel themselves safe. Another charge aimed yet higher
than the Earl himself. An accomplice of his misdeeds is spoken of, whom
we should certainly never have been expected to find charged with
[Sidenote: Murder of Gospatric. December 28, 1064.] bloodshed. A Thegn
named Gospatric had been, at the last Christmas Gemót, treacherously
murdered in the King’s court. The deed was said to have been done by
order of the Lady at the instigation of her brother.[1430] As there were
other bearers of the name, we may at least hope that this Gospatric was
not the one who had so nobly jeoparded his life to save the life of
Tostig on his return from his Roman pilgrimage.[1431] To avenge these
crimes, the chief men of both divisions of Northumberland, at the head
of the whole force of Bernicia and Deira,[1432] rose in arms.[1433]
[Sidenote: Rebel Gemót at York. October 3, 1065.] Soon after Michaelmas,
two hundred Thegns[1434] came to York, and there held what they
evidently intended to be a Gemót of the ancient Kingdom of
Northumberland. They were headed by several of the greatest men of
Northern England, by Gamel-bearn, doubtless a kinsman of the slain son
of Orm, by Dunstan the son of Æthelnoth, and Glonieorn the son of
Heardulf.[1435] The names seem to show that both English and Danish
blood was represented in the Assembly. Tostig was now absent from his
Earldom; he was engaged with the King in his constant diversion of
hunting, in some of the forests of Wiltshire or Hampshire.[1436] But the
rebels needed not his presence, and they began at once to pass decrees
in utter defiance of the royal authority. [Sidenote: Constitutional
position of Northumberland.] Earls had hitherto always been appointed
and removed by the King and his Witan, and any complaints of the
Northumbrians against Tostig ought legally to have been brought before a
Gemót of the whole realm. But nowhere was the feeling of provincial
independence so strong as in the lands north of the Humber. The
Northumbrians remembered that there had been a time when they had chosen
and deposed Kings for themselves, without any reference to a West-Saxon
overlord. The West-Saxon King was now no longer an overlord, but an
immediate sovereign; Northumberland was no longer a dependency, but an
integral part of the Kingdom; the men of Deira and Bernicia shared every
right which was enjoyed by the men of Wessex and East-Anglia. But the
old feelings still lingered on, and they were probably heightened by the
constant absence of the King and even of his lieutenant. Eadward had
never shown himself further north than Gloucester, or possibly
Shrewsbury;[1437] there is no record of any Gemót of his reign being
held at York or Lincoln. [Sidenote: Frequent absence of Tostig.] And the
frequent absences of Tostig, whom Eadward loved to have about him, are
clearly implied to have been reckoned among the grievances of his
province.[1438] While he was busied in the frivolities of Eadward’s
court, the care of [Sidenote: Copsige, deputy Earl.] Northumberland was
entrusted to a Thegn of the country, Copsige by name. He is described as
a prudent man and a benefactor to the Church of Durham. It does not
appear how far he now shared the unpopularity of his master, but it is
certain that, at a later time, he incurred equal unpopularity by his own
acts. He seems afterwards to have borne the title of Earl,[1439] and it
is possible that he may even have borne it now as Tostig’s deputy. This
systematic government by proxy was no doubt highly offensive to
Northumbrian local patriotism. It was, in a marked way, dealing with the
land as a mere dependency. The Danes of the North were indignant that
their ancient realm should be deemed unworthy of the presence, not only
of the King but of its own Earl. They had no mind to be governed by
orders sent forth from some West-Saxon town or hunting-seat. The
Northumbrians therefore, without presence or licence of King or Earl,
took upon them to hold a Gemót, doubtless an armed Gemót, of the
revolted lands.

[Sidenote: Acts of the Gemót at York. October 3, 1065.]

The Assembly thus irregularly got together did not indeed venture on
the extreme step of renouncing all allegiance to the King of the
English. But everything short of this extreme step was quickly done.
The Merciless Parliament of later days could not surpass this
Northhumbrian Gemót in violent or in blood-thirsty decrees. [Sidenote:
Vote of deposition and outlawry against Tostig. Morkere elected Earl.]
The rebels passed a vote of deposition against their Earl Tostig; they
declared him an outlaw,[1440] and elected in his place Morkere, the
younger son of Ælfgar of Mercia.[1441] Waltheof, the son of Siward,
was passed by, and they may have felt the danger of the rivalries
which were sure to arise if they chose one of the ordinary Thegns of
the country.[1442] Still the election of Morkere, and the whole
circumstances of the story, seem to show that, along with the real
grievances of Northumberland, the intrigues of the Mercian brothers
had a good deal to do with the stirring up of this revolt. The old
rivalry between the houses of Godwine and Leofric had now taken the
form of a special enmity between Tostig and the sons of Ælfgar.[1443]
The marriage of Ealdgyth with Harold doubtless protected her husband
from any open hostility on the part of her brothers, though it
certainly did not save him from their [Sidenote: Treasons of Eadwine.]
secret cabals. Eadwine, in short, was now entering on that series of
treasons which he had, within a very few years, the opportunity of
practising against four sovereigns in succession. Eadward, Harold,
Eadgar, and William all found in turn that no trust was to be put in
the allegiance or the oaths of the Earl of the Mercians. The treasons
of Eadwine were often passive rather than active; they never reached
the height of personal betrayal; otherwise the last Mercian Earl was
no unworthy representative of his predecessors [Sidenote: His policy;
the division of the Kingdom.] Ælfric and Eadric. Still the policy of
the sons of Ælfgar was at any rate more intelligible than the policy
of the arch-traitor. Their object evidently was to revive the old
division of the Kingdom, as it had been divided between Cnut and
Eadmund, or between Harold and Harthacnut. When the death of Eadward
should leave the throne vacant, they were ready to leave Wessex, and
probably East-Anglia, to any one who could get them, but Mercia and
Northumberland were to form a separate realm under the house of
Leofric. This view of their policy explains all their later actions.
They dreamed of dividing the Kingdom with Harold; they dreamed of
dividing it with Eadgar; they even dreamed, one can hardly doubt, of
dividing it with William himself. They were ready enough to accept
West-Saxon help in their own hour of need, but they would not strike a
blow on behalf of Wessex in her greatest extremity. The present
movement in Northumberland, above all the election of Morkere to the
Earldom, exactly suited their purposes. It was more than the mere
exaltation of one of the brothers; it was more than the transfer of
one of the great divisions of the Kingdom from the house of Godwine to
the house of Leofric. The whole land from the Thames to the Tweed was
now united under the rule of the two brothers. There was now a much
fairer hope of changing the northern and central Earldoms into a
separate Kingdom, as soon as a vacancy of the throne should occur.
When therefore the Northumbrians sent for Morkere, offering him their
Earldom, he gladly accepted the offer. He took into his own hands the
government of Deira, or, as it is now beginning [Sidenote: Oswulf in
Bernicia.] to be called, Yorkshire. But he entrusted the government of
the Northern province, the old Bernicia, now beginning to be
distinctively called Northumberland,[1444] to the young Oswulf, the
son of Siward’s victim Eadwulf.[1445] We have no account of the
motives of this appointment. It may have been a condition of Morkere’s
election; it may have been a popular act done of his own accord. But
in either case this appointment seems to show that the Northumbrians
bore no special love to Siward or his house, but that they rather
looked with affection on the more direct representative of their
ancient Earls. Oswulf is spoken of as a youth at this time, but as it
was now [Sidenote: 1041.] twenty-four years since the murder of his
father, he must have been a grown man. Waltheof, the son of Siward, so
[Sidenote: 1067.] eminent only two years later, could not have been
much younger. If Siward’s memory had been at all popular in
Northumberland, Waltheof, rather than Oswulf, would surely have been
chosen for this important subordinate government, even if it was not
thought proper to entrust him with the command of the whole of the
ancient Kingdom.

Thus far the Northumbrian Assembly, however irregularly called together,
had acted in something like the character of a lawful Gemót. To depose
and elect an Earl was a stretch of power beyond the constitutional
authority of a local Gemót; still the unconstitutional character of the
act consisted solely in the Gemót of a single Earldom taking upon itself
functions which lawfully belonged only to a Gemót of the whole Kingdom.
But the Thegns who were assembled at York went on to acts which showed
that, however guilty Tostig may have been, they at least had small right
to throw stones at him. Slaughter and plunder were soon shown to be
quite as much their objects as the redress of grievances or the
punishment of offenders. [Sidenote: The Northumbrians slay Amund and
Ravenswart. October 3.] On Monday, the first day of the Assembly, two of
Tostig’s Danish Housecarls, Amund and Reavenswart, who had fled from
York, were overtaken, and were put to death without the walls of the
city.[1446] How far these men deserved their doom, how far their doom
was the sentence of anything which even pretended to be a lawful
tribunal, we have no [Sidenote: General massacre of Tostig’s followers,
and plunder of his treasury. October 4.] means of knowing. But it is
hardly possible that there can have been even the shadow of lawful
authority for the acts of the next day. As many of Tostig’s personal
followers, English and Danish, as could be found, two hundred in number,
were massacred.[1447] The Earl’s treasury was next broken open, and all
its contents, weapons, gold, silver, and other precious things, were
carried off. This may have been a rough and ready way of repaying
themselves for the unjust tax of which they complained; otherwise any
notion of policy would rather have bidden them to hand over the
treasures of their enemy untouched to the chief whom they had themselves
chosen.[1448]

[Sidenote: Morkere’s march southwards.]

The real character of the revolt, as far at least as the sons of Ælfgar
were concerned, soon showed itself. Morkere did not sit down quietly to
reign in Northumberland; he does not seem to have even demanded the
consent of the King and of the national Witan to his usurpation. He at
once marched southwards. On his march he was joined by the men of the
shires of Lincoln, Nottingham, and Derby.[1449] These were districts in
which the Danish element was strong, especially in their three chief
towns, which [Sidenote: Morkere at Northampton.] were reckoned among the
famous Five Boroughs.[1450] At the head of this force he reached
Northampton. This town was probably chosen as the head-quarters of the
rebels, as being, like Northumberland itself, under the government of
Tostig. Whatever were their designs as to the Earldoms of Northampton
and Huntingdon, it was in any case important to win over their
inhabitants to the cause of the revolt. At Northampton Morkere was met
by his brother Eadwine, at the head of the men of his [Sidenote:
Presence of Welshmen in Eadwine’s army.] Earldom, together with a large
body of Welsh.[1451] Were these last simply drawn thither by the chance
of plunder? Were they followers of the last Gruffydd, faithful to the
old connexion between Ælfgar and their slain King? Or are we to see
something deeper in the matter? It may well be that the movement in
Gwent and the movement in Northumberland were both of them parts of one
scheme devised in the restless brain of the Mercian Earl. The way in
which one event followed on the other, the significant remark made by
the Chronicler on the deed of Caradoc,[1452] the suspicious appearance
of Welshmen in the train of Eadwine, all look the same way. Caradoc and
Gamel-bearn are not likely to have had any direct communication with one
another; but it is quite possible that both of them may have been little
more than puppets moved by a single hand. At all events, a great force,
Northumbrian, Mercian, and Welsh, was now gathered [Sidenote: Ravages of
the Northumbrians about Northampton.] together at Northampton. The
Northumbrians were in what they doubtless expected to be a friendly
country, but it would seem that they found the men of Northamptonshire
and Huntingdonshire less zealous in the cause than they had hoped. At
least we find that Morkere’s Northern followers dealt with the country
about Northampton as if it had been the country of an enemy. They slew
men, burned corn and houses, carried off cattle, and at last led captive
several hundred prisoners, seemingly as slaves.[1453] The blow was so
severe that it was remembered even when one would have thought that that
and all other lesser wrongs would have been forgotten in the general
overthrow of England. Northamptonshire and the shires near to it were
for many winters the worse.[1454]

[Sidenote: Harold carries messages from the King to the insurgents.]

It seems to have been at Northampton that the first attempts at
negotiation began between the King and the insurgents.[1455] Eadward and
Tostig were still in their woodland retreats, enjoying the slaughter of
unresisting animals, while half England was in confusion, and while
whole shires were being laid waste. The Earl of the West-Saxons was most
likely as keen a hunter as either of them, but he at least did not let
his sport interfere with his duty to his country. While his brother and
brother-in-law still remained in the woods, Earl Harold hastened to
Northampton with a message from the King. Eadward, who had once been so
wrathful at Godwine’s appeal to Law on behalf of the men of Dover,[1456]
had now, under Harold’s guidance, better learned the duties of a
constitutional [Sidenote: Demands of Eadward.] King. Through the mouth
of the great Earl, he called on the men of Northumberland to lay down
their arms, to cease from their ravages, and, if they had any matter
against their own Earl, to bring it forward for discussion in a lawful
Assembly. We may conceive the feeling of triumph with which Harold put
into the King’s mouth the very words which, in the mouth of Godwine, had
led to the temporary overthrow of himself and his house. But [Sidenote:
Answer of the Northumbrians.] the Northumbrians would not yield to any
proposal which implied even the possibility of Tostig’s return to power.
They were freemen born and bred, they would not bow to the pride of any
Earl;[1457] they had learned from their fathers to bear no third choice
besides freedom or death. If the King wished to retain Northumberland in
his allegiance, he must confirm the banishment of Tostig from
Northumberland and from all England, he must confirm the election of
Morkere to the Northern Earldom. If he persisted in forcing Tostig upon
them, they would deal with him as an enemy; if he yielded to their
demands, he would see what loyal subjects Northumbrians could be, when
they were gently ruled by a ruler of their own choice.[1458] Brave words
truly, if they really came from the heart of the Northumbrian people,
and were not simply put into their mouths by two ambitious Earls. More
than one message passed to and fro; messengers from the rebel camp
accompanied Harold to the royal presence;[1459] but there was no sign of
yielding on the part of the host encamped at Northampton. At last the
matter became so serious that Eadward left his hunting to apply himself
[Sidenote: Eadward holds a Gemót at Bretford.] personally to the affairs
of his Kingdom. At a royal abode called Bretford, near Salisbury, a
place whose name suggests memories of the warfare of five hundred years
before, Eadward called an Assembly together. It probably professed to be
a Witenagemót of the whole realm, but it must rather have been a meeting
of the King’s immediate counsellors, or at most, of the local Witan of
Wessex. [Sidenote: Debate in the Council; accusations against Tostig.]
This Assembly at once proceeded to discuss the state of the
nation;[1460] and the record of their debates at least shows what full
freedom of speech was allowed in our ancient national Councils. Some
speakers boldly accused Tostig of cruelty and avarice; his severities
had been caused, not by any love of justice, but by a wish to seize on
the wealth [Sidenote: Tostig charges Harold with stirring up the
revolt.] of the rich men of Northumberland.[1461] It was affirmed, on
the other hand, that the revolt against Tostig had been simply got up by
the secret machinations of Harold. No charge could be more unjust, and
we may suspect that it was brought forward by no mouth but that of
Tostig himself.[1462] Harold throughout tried in vain to reconcile the
[Sidenote: Improbability of the charge.] revolters to his brother.[1463]
Up to this time there is not the slightest sign in any trustworthy
account of any quarrel between the two brothers.[1464] Now that the
revolt had broken out, it was undoubtedly Harold’s interest to settle
matters without bloodshed, even at the expense of his brother; but he
had no interest, but quite the contrary, in stirring up the revolt in
the first instance. It was prudent, under the circumstances, to yield to
the demands of the Northumbrians, and to allow the aggrandizement of the
rival house; but Harold could have no motive for seeking, of his own
accord, to transfer Northumberland from a son of Godwine to a son of
Ælfgar. But Tostig doubtless expected his brother to support him, right
or wrong, at all hazards and against all foes, and he could not
understand any cause for Harold’s hesitating so to do except his being
art and part with his enemies. Before the King and all his Court, Tostig
so vehemently charged Harold with having kindled the Northumbrian
revolt, that Harold [Sidenote: Harold denies it on oath.] thought it
necessary to deny the charge, in the usual solemn form, upon oath.[1465]
It appears that the Earl’s own oath was thought enough, and that
compurgators were not called for. But the question how to quell the
revolt was still more urgent than the question how the revolt [Sidenote:
Eadward’s eagerness for war.] arose. The King was as vehement against
the real rebels of Northumberland as he had been, fourteen years before,
against the fancied rebels of Dover. He was as eager to avenge the
wrongs of his English favourite Tostig as he had then been to avenge the
wrongs of his foreign favourite Eustace. He would, doubtless by deputy,
chastise their insolence with the edge of the sword; it would almost
seem that the royal summons went out, calling the whole force of England
to the royal standard.[1466] But Eadward had counsellors about him who
were wiser than himself. They, Harold doubtless at their head, shrank as
soldiers from a winter campaign and as patriots from a civil war. They
pleaded that, with these two great difficulties in the way of immediate
action, it would be impossible to collect an army able to cope with the
insurgents.[1467] The Housecarls of the King and of the Earl were
doubtless ready to march at their command; but, of all courses in the
world, none could be so unpopular as to employ this force to put down a
popular insurrection. It would be a renewal of the days [Sidenote:
1041.] of Harthacnut and of the march against Worcester.[1468] The King
was so eager for battle that his advisers could not, [Sidenote: He is
prevented by Harold and others.] after all, persuade him formally to
revoke his orders for war; but they took means to prevent the expedition
from actually taking place.[1469] So to do would be no very difficult
task, when the feeling of the chiefs and of the people was doubtless
exactly the same. So great was Eadward’s wrath and excitement of mind
that he fell into the illness of which he never recovered. He complained
bitterly before God that he was hindered from chastising the
unrighteous, and called for divine vengeance seemingly alike upon the
original offenders, and on those who stood in the way of their
punishment.[1470] But the wrath of the Saint, if violent for the time,
was not always lasting,[1471] and however vigorous he may have been in
curses and prophecies, he seems to have practically allowed Harold to
act in his name, and to settle matters as he chose.[1472]

[Sidenote: Position of Harold. His public duty in the controversy.]

The course for Harold to take was obvious, whether looked at from the
point of view of his own interest or from that of the interest of his
country. The dictates of the two were exactly the same; both alike
prompted him to secure a real and great advantage at the cost of a
certain sacrifice of pride and passion. The revolt of the Northumbrians
could not be justified on any showing. They had undoubtedly suffered
great wrongs, but they had not taken the right means to redress them.
Their proper course would undoubtedly have been that which Harold
himself suggested, to bring their charges against their Earl for public
inquiry in a Witenagemót of the whole realm. The Gemót at York had
usurped functions which did not belong to it; the deposition and
outlawry of Tostig, and the election of Morkere, were utterly illegal
proceedings. The massacre and plunder at York, above all the ravages in
Northamptonshire, were still more thoroughly unjustifiable. All these
were doings which, in one man or in a few men, would have called for
exemplary punishment. But in a case like this, where the guilty parties
were the great bulk of the people of all Northumberland and of several
shires of Mercia, it was absurd to talk of punishment. The question was
not a question of punishment, but one of peace or war. Was it either
right or expedient, in the general interest of the Kingdom of England,
for Wessex and East-Anglia to make war upon Northumberland and Mercia?
The object of such a war would have been simply to force on
Northumberland an Earl whom the Northumbrian people had rejected, and
who had shown himself utterly unfit for his post. The royal authority
would undoubtedly suffer some humiliation by yielding to demands which
had been supported by armed force; still such humiliation would be a
less evil than a civil war, the issue of which would be very doubtful,
and whose results, in any case, would prove most baneful, if not
ruinous, to the country. As a brother, Harold had done all for his
brother that could be asked of him, in his proposal made in the first
conference at Northampton. It could not be his duty—I quote the
judgement of a writer of the next age not specially favourable to
Harold[1473]—to bring such untold evils on his country merely for the
chance of restoring his brother to the authority which he had so deeply
abused. Harold therefore, as a statesman and a patriot, rightly
determined to yield to the demands of the insurgents.

[Sidenote: His private interest. Complete agreement of the two.]

It is equally plain that exactly the same course was dictated to him by
his own interests as a candidate for the Crown. He had lost in every way
by the revolt. Hitherto all England, except Mercia, had been under the
government of himself and his brothers. The House of Godwine held four
out of the five great Earldoms; the House of Leofric held only one. Now
things were turned about. The House of Godwine still held three
Earldoms, while the House of Leofric held but two; but the two which
were held by the House of Leofric formed a larger, and a far more
compact and united, territory than the three which were held by the
House of Godwine. The opposition of a candidate from the rival family,
or a proposal for the division of the Kingdom, was incomparably more
likely, now that the vast region between the Thames and the Tweed was
practically under the control of a single will, and that a will which
Harold had small means of influencing. But, deeply as Harold had lost by
the Northumbrian revolution, he would have lost still more by an attempt
to bring about a counter-revolution by force. Whether such an attempt
succeeded or failed, the result would be much the same. In either case
his wife’s brothers, and the vast districts over which they ruled, would
become, not merely indifferent or unfriendly to his claims, but avowedly
and bitterly hostile. In the face of their open enmity, his succession
to the whole Kingdom would be hopeless; he might possibly become King of
the West-Saxons; he could never become King of the English. The tie of
affinity was weak, the tie of gratitude was likely to be still weaker.
Still it was the wisest course to make the best even of those weak ties.
It was wise to do his brothers-in-law a good turn, and so to take his
chance of winning their good will, rather than at once to turn them into
deadly foes. It was true that every step by which he conciliated his
brothers-in-law would make a bitterer enemy of his own brother. But his
mere hesitation and moderation were already in the eyes of Tostig an
unpardonable offence; his brother’s enmity he had won already, and he
could hardly foresee that that enmity would one day be still more
dangerous to him than any opposition that was to be dreaded from Mercia
or Northumberland.

[Sidenote: Gemót of Oxford. October 28, 1065.]

On these grounds then, public and private, Harold, armed, it would now
seem, with the full royal authority, determined to yield to the
insurgents. While their answer was under discussion in the King’s
court,[1474] they had been ravaging Northamptonshire, and they had since
advanced as far as Oxford. There, in the frontier town of Mercia and
Wessex, the town where the common affairs of the two great divisions of
the Kingdom had been so often discussed, the Earl of the West-Saxons
summoned a general Witenagemót of the whole realm.[1475] The Assembly
met on the Feast of Saint Simon and Saint Jude. After another attempt at
bringing about a reconciliation between Tostig [Sidenote: The Acts of
the York Gemót confirmed.] and the Northumbrians,[1476] Harold yielded
every point. The irregular acts of the Northumbrian Gemót were confirmed
by lawful authority. The deposition and outlawry of Tostig, the election
of Morkere to the Northern Earldom, were legalized. But the outlying
parts of the government of Siward and Tostig, the shires of Northampton
and Huntingdon, were now detached from Northumberland, [Sidenote:
Waltheof made Earl of Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire.] and
bestowed on Siward’s young son Waltheof.[1477] He thus received an ample
provision, while he was cut off from the exercise of any influence which
he might possess in Morkere’s Earldom, whether as the son of Siward or
as a descendant of the elder line of Earls. And another solemn
[Sidenote: Renewal of Cnut’s Law.] decree was passed, which shows that
this Gemót was meant to be a wiping out of old scores and the beginning
of a new epoch. Northern and Southern England were again to be solemnly
reconciled, as they had been reconciled forty-seven years before in
another Assembly held on the same spot.[1478] Then, under the presidency
of a Danish conqueror, Englishmen and Danes agreed to decree the renewal
of the Laws of Eadgar. The sway of law and justice was then held to be
impersonated in the peaceful Basileus, the hero of the triumph of
Chester. In the space of those forty-seven years, the foreign conqueror
who had presided in that earlier Gemót of Oxford had supplanted Eadgar
himself as the hero of the national affections. In the North above all,
where in life he had been perhaps less valued, the rule of the great
Dane was looked back to as the golden age, the happy time before the
tyranny of Tostig and the stern government of Siward. The South too,
which, under the rule of Godwine and Harold, had no such complaints to
make, might still look back with regret to the days of the King under
whom Wessex had been, what she never was before or after, the Imperial
state of all Northern Europe. Cnut now, as Eadgar then, was the one
Prince whose name North and South, Dane and Englishman, united in
reverencing. He was the one Prince whom all could agree in holding up to
future Kings and Earls as the faultless model of a ruler. In this case,
as in the earlier one, the reconciliation of the two parts of the realm
took the form of a decree for the restoration of an earlier and better
state of things. The Witenagemót of Oxford, with Earl Harold at its
head, decreed with all solemnity the renewal of the Laws of Cnut.[1479]

[Sidenote: Banishment of Tostig. November 1, 1065.]

One step more remained to be taken. The deposed Earl had to leave the
Kingdom. According to one account, it would seem that a violent
expulsion was still needed, in which Earl Eadwine appears as the chief
actor.[1480] But this account seems to be a misconception. It would
rather seem that, while all these messages and debates were going on,
Tostig had never quitted the King. After this last decree, Eadward saw
that he had no longer any power to protect him, and he therefore, though
with deep sorrow, required his favourite’s departure.[1481] The Earl
bade farewell to his mother and his friends, and with his wife and his
children,[1482] and some partizans who shared his exile,[1483] he set
forth for the same friendly refuge which had sheltered him [Sidenote: He
takes refuge in Flanders.] when a guiltless exile fourteen years before.
He left England on the Feast of All Saints.[1484] The means of
communication in those days must, as we have already seen more than
once,[1485] have been much speedier than we are generally inclined to
think. This whole revolution, with its gatherings, its meetings, its
marches, its messages to and fro between distant places, took up less
than one Kalendar month, from the first assemblage of the Thegns at York
to the departure of Tostig from England. The banished Earl crossed over
to Baldwines land, the land of his wife’s father. Under his protection
he passed the whole of the winter at Saint Omer.[1486]

§4. _The Last Days of Eadward._ 1065–1066.[1487]

[Sidenote: Eadward’s last sickness.]

The life of Eadward was now drawing near to its end; we are approaching
the close of the first act of our great drama. From the illness into
which Eadward was thrown by the excitement of the Northumbrian revolt,
he never thoroughly recovered.[1488] He barely lived to complete the
[Sidenote: His foundation at Westminster.] great work of his life. The
royal saint deemed himself set upon the throne, not to secure the
welfare or the independence of his Kingdom, but to build a church and
endow a monastery in honour of the Prince of the Apostles. If we were
reading the life, not of a King, but of a Bishop or Abbot, we might well
look on this as an object worthy of the devotion of a life. It was no
small work to rear that stately minster which has ever since been the
crowning-place of our Kings, and which for so many ages remained their
place of burial. It was no small work to call into being that mighty
Abbey, whose chapter-house plays so great a part in the growth of the
restored freedom of England, and which has well nigh supplanted the
Kentish mother-church itself as the ecclesiastical home of the English
nation. The church of Saint Peter at Westminster, the great work of
Eadward’s life, has proved a more than equal rival of the older
sanctuaries of Canterbury and York and Winchester and Glastonbury. But,
as the work of a King in such an age, we look on it with very different
feelings from those with which we look on the ecclesiastical works of
Ælfred or Æthelstan or Harold. In the eyes of those great rulers, a care
for ecclesiastical administration and ecclesiastical reform, the
establishment of foundations likely to spread piety and enlightenment
among their people, naturally and rightly seemed an important part of
the duty of a Prince. But in Eadward we can discern no sign of the
higher aspirations of a ruler; a monk rather than a King, he seems never
to have risen beyond a monk’s selfish anxiety for the welfare of his own
[Sidenote: Eadward’s devotion for Saint Peter.] soul. The special object
of Eadward’s reverence was the Apostle Peter,[1489] and his reverence
for that Saint did no good to the Kingdom of England. His devotion to
the Apostle led to a devotion to his supposed successor, and to that
increased frequency of intercourse with the Roman See which is a marked
characteristic of his reign. There seems no reason to doubt, though his
Biographer is silent on the subject,[1490] that, as I have told the tale
in earlier chapters, Eadward vowed a pilgrimage to Rome, that his Witan
dissuaded him from leaving his Kingdom, that Pope Leo dispensed with his
vow, and imposed on him, instead of a personal visit to the tomb of the
Apostle, the duty of founding or enlarging a monastery in his honour
within his own Kingdom. We have seen that the two missions of Ealdred
and other Prelates to Rome were probably connected with this design. The
earlier one was sent to obtain the remission of the vow, the later one
to obtain the [Sidenote: His foundation in honour of the Apostle.
1051–1065.] Papal confirmation of the privileges of the house.[1491] We
thus get a clear notion of the chronology of the foundation which
occupied Eadward during the last fourteen years of his reign. It must
again be remembered that the foundation of a monastery followed a course
exactly opposite to [Sidenote: Reverse order of proceeding at
Westminster and at Waltham.] the foundation of a secular college. In a
secular college the Canons or other clergy are ministers appointed, for
the common advantage of the Church and realm, to maintain divine worship
in a particular building. In a monastery, the monks are men who go out
of the world to save their own souls, and who need a church of their own
to pray in. In a college then the minster itself comes first; the clergy
exist only for its sake, and for the sake of those who worship in it. In
a monastery the society of monks comes first, and the minster exists
only for their sake. Harold therefore, in his great work at Waltham,
first built his church; he then settled the exact details of his
foundation, the number, the duties, the endowments, of the clergy whom
he placed in it.[1492] Eadward no doubt began to build his church as
soon as he had formed the scheme of his foundation; but the church was
not the same primary object which it was at Waltham, nor did its
building need to be pressed forward with the same special speed. At
Waltham the charter of foundation dates two years later than the
[Sidenote: Completion of the foundation, 1061.] consecration of the
minster.[1493] At Westminster the foundation itself, the establishment
and endowment of the monastic society, no doubt the building of the
refectory, [Sidenote: Consecration of the church, 1065.] dormitory, and
other buildings needed for their personal use, had all been brought to
perfection at least four years before the minster itself was ready for
consecration.[1494]

The rescript of Pope Leo required Eadward either to found a new, or to
enlarge an old, monastery in honour of [Sidenote: The Monastery of
Thorney or Westminster.] Saint Peter. He preferred the latter course.
And we are told that the visions of a holy recluse named Wulfsige,
probably the same who had finally determined Saint Wulfstan to accept
his Bishoprick, guided him to the predestined site.[1495] At a little
distance from the western gate of London lay what was then an island of
the Thames, which, from the dense bushes and thickets with which it was
covered, received the name of Thorney.[1496] There stood a [Sidenote:
Its foundation. 653–660.] monastery whose origin was carried up to the
earliest days of English Christianity. There Sigeberht, the first
Christian King of the East-Saxons, had begun a foundation in honour of
Saint Peter, to balance, as it were, the great minster of Saint Paul
within the city.[1497] Legends gathered round the spot; the Bishop
Mellitus, when about to hallow the church, was warned not to repeat the
ceremony; the church had been already hallowed by the Apostle himself in
his own honour.[1498] The church of Saint Peter, from its position with
regard to the church of the brother Apostle, obtained the name, so
familiar and so historical in the ears of every [Sidenote: Its state in
Eadward’s time.] Englishman, of the West Minster. Its reputation however
remained for several centuries altogether inferior to that of its
eastern rival. We are told that in Eadward’s time the foundation was
poor, the monks few, the buildings mean.[1499] [Sidenote: Burial of
Harold the son of Cnut. 1040.] Yet against this description we must set
the fact that Westminster was chosen as the burial-place of at least one
King, and that a King who had not died in the immediate
neighbourhood.[1500] We have also found the death of at least one Abbot
of the house thought worthy of record in the national Chronicles.[1501]
The temporary burial-place of the first Harold was now chosen by Eadward
as the place for his own sepulchre,[1502] as the place for the
redemption of his vow, as the place which should become the sacred
hearth of the English nation, the crowning-place of its future
Kings.[1503] The site, so near to the great city, and yet removed from
its immediate throng and turmoil,[1504] was chosen as the site of a
foundation in which royalty and monasticism were to dwell side by side,
where living Kings were to dwell and hold their court under the shadow
of the pile which covered the bones of the Kings who had gone before
them. Like Fécamp, which may well have been his model,[1505] like
Holyrood and the Escorial in later times, Eadward designed to place
palace and monastery in each other’s close neighbourhood, to make
Westminster the centre of all the strongest national feelings of
religion and loyalty. And he has had his reward. His scheme prospered in
his own time, and it has survived to ours. [Sidenote: Permanance of
Eadward’s minster and palace.] His minster still stands, rebuilt, partly
by a more illustrious bearer of his own name, in such a guise as to make
it the noblest of the noble churches of England. But, in its subordinate
buildings, large traces still remain of the work of its sainted founder.
Within, it has supplanted Sherborne and Glastonbury and Winchester as
the resting-place of the Kings and worthies of our land. And as the
centre of them all, displacing God’s altar from its worthiest site,
still stands the shrine of Eadward himself, his name and his dust still
abiding in somewhat of their ancient honour, while the nobler dust of
Ælfred and Eadgar and Harold is scattered to the winds. And by the
minster still stands the palace; no longer indeed the dwelling-place of
Kings, but more than ever the true home of the nation; where the Witan
of all England still meet for judgement and for legislation, as they did
in the days when Eadward wore his Crown at that last Midwinter Feast, as
they did when the first national act done beneath the roof of the newly
hallowed minster, was to place that Crown, as the gift of the English
people, on the brow of the foremost man of English blood and speech.

[Sidenote: Eadward’s church destroyed, and rebuilt in his own honour.]

The church of Westminster, as built by Eadward, has wholly given way to
the conceptions of later architects, who, in the true spirit of mediæval
times, sought to do fresh honour to the saint by making his own work
give way to theirs. With our feelings on such matters, we should look on
the pile itself as the best monument of its founder, and, if the
original West Minster had descended to our time, our first object would
be to preserve its genuine features precisely as they came from the
hands of its first builders. In the ideas of the thirteenth century the
memories of the past, the associations of a spot or of a building, were
feebly felt compared with the devotion which was felt towards the
precious possession of all, the saint himself still present in his
wonder-working relics. For them no receptacle could be too gorgeous or
too costly; reverence for the saint would of itself prompt the
destruction of his own building, if it could be replaced by one which
the taste of the age deemed more worthy of sheltering the shrine which
contained his bones. The church of Eadward was therefore destroyed by
his own worshippers in his own honour. His special devotee, one might
almost think his special imitator, Henry the Third, began that
magnificent temple which, after so many ages, still remains unfinished.
[Sidenote: Existing remains of Eadward’s buildings.] Of the domestic
buildings of the abbey as raised by Eadward large portions were spared.
The solid passages and substructures, built in the massive style of the
time, remain almost perfect, and even of the more important buildings,
as the refectory and dormitory, considerable traces still exist.[1506]
But the church itself, the central building of all, gradually gave way
to the superb structure with which we are all familiar; nothing is left
of Eadward’s minster save a few bases of pillars, and other fragments
brought to light in various excavations and alterations of the present
fabric. But we are not left without minute accounts of a structure which
made a deep impression on men’s minds, and whose erection [Sidenote: His
church the first great example of Norman architecture in England.]
formed an æra in our national architecture. Among other importations
from Normandy which we could well have spared, Eadward brought one with
him which even our insular pride might be glad to welcome. The building
art was now receiving daily improvements at the hands of the founders of
those great Norman churches which were rising in such abundance on the
other side of the sea. All those improvements Eadward carefully
introduced into his new minster. He built his church in the newest style
of the day, and it remained the great object of English imitation deep
into the twelfth century.[1507] Of the church thus built we have a
description and a pictorial representation made while the charm of
novelty was still fresh upon it.[1508] It was a Norman minster of vast
size, the increase of size in churches being one main distinction
between the new Norman style and the older English manner of building.
Its dimensions no doubt far surpassed those of any existing church in
England, as they certainly far surpassed those of the contemporary
church of Waltham. A short eastern limb, ending in an apse, contained
the high altar. Over the choir rose, in Norman fashion, the central
tower, seemingly surrounded at its angles by smaller turrets, and
crowned by a cupola of wood and lead. The transepts projected north and
south; to the west stretched the long nave, with its two ranges of
arches, resting seemingly on tall columnar piers, like those of
Jumièges, Gloucester, and Tewkesbury. Two smaller towers, for the
reception of the bells, were designed as the finish of the building to
the west.[1509] On the erection of this vast and stately fabric, and on
the other objects of his foundation, Eadward had for many years spent
the tenth part of his royal revenues.[1510] The monastic buildings had
been finished for some years; the monks with their Abbot Eadwine[1511]
were already in possession of their house and its endowments. [Sidenote:
The church finished. 1065.] The minster was meanwhile rising, and it was
Eadward’s wish to interfere as little as possible with the worship which
had still to be celebrated in the old building. The new church was
therefore begun at some distance to the east of its doomed predecessor,
which was doubtless not wholly demolished till the new one was
completed.[1512] In the foundation and endowment of the monastery the
King found helpers among his subjects, the fallen Earl of the
Northumbrians being among their number.[1513] But the building of the
church seems to have been wholly Eadward’s own personal work. At last
the work of so many years was brought to perfection. The time employed
on the building was indeed shorter than that bestowed on many other of
our great churches, which their own Prelates had to rear out of their
own resources. But here a King was pressing on the work with all his
might, a King who, when he had once completed the great object of his
life, was ready to depart in peace. After fourteen years from the
receipt of the Papal dispensation the building was finished from the
apse to the western front. By the time of the Midwinter festival of the
year one thousand and sixty-five the new minster of Saint Peter stood
ready for the great ceremony of its consecration.

[Sidenote: Legends.]

So great a work, raised under such circumstances, could hardly fail to
become surrounded by an atmosphere of legend. It was not every church
that was founded either by a King or by a canonized saint. Fewer still
among churches were founded by a King who was at once a canonized saint,
the last of an ancient dynasty, and one whose memory was embalmed in the
national recollection as the representative of the times before the evil
days of foreign domination. In his lifetime, or at most within a few
years after his death, Eadward was already deemed to be a worker of
miracles.[1514] For his dreams, visions, and prophecies he was renowned
to his last moment. One story tells us how the holy King, with his pious
friends Leofric and Godgifu, was hearing mass in the elder minster of
Saint Peter; how the King was deep in devotion; how he and the
Earl—Godgifu is no longer spoken of—saw the form of the divine Child in
the hands of the ministering priest; how Eadward bade his friend keep
his secret till after his death; how Leofric confided it only to a holy
monk at Worcester, who revealed it to no man till Leofric and Eadward
were both no more.[1515] Another tale sets the King before us in all the
Imperial pomp of the Easter festival; he goes with crown and sceptre
from the church—in this case doubtless the Old Minster of Winchester—to
the royal banquetting-hall. Heedless of the feast, absorbed in his own
meditations, the King is seen to smile. Afterwards, in his private
chamber, Earl Harold, a Bishop, and an Abbot, venture to ask him the
reason of his serene and pious mirth. His thoughts had been far away
from the royal hall of Winchester; he had seen the Seven Sleepers of
Ephesos; they had turned from the right side to the left, an omen which
presaged that some evil was coming upon the earth. The matter was deemed
worthy of a special embassy to the Imperial Court of Constantinople, but
the ambassadors took their commission, not from the King but from the
three dignified subjects who had shared his confidence. Earl Harold sent
a Thegn, the Bishop a clerk, the Abbot a monk. The three made their way
to the New Rome and told the tale to the reigning Emperor. By his orders
the tomb of the holy Sleepers at Ephesos was opened; the vision of the
English King was proved to be true; and his prophetic powers were soon
exalted by the general misfortunes of mankind, by the failure of the
royal line of England and by the conquests of the Infidel Turks at the
expense of Eastern [Sidenote: Legend of the ring.] Christendom.[1516]
One more tale will bring us back directly to the current of our
story.[1517] The King was present at the dedication of the church of
Saint John at Clavering.[1518] A beggar asks alms of his sovereign in
the name of the patron of the newly hallowed temple, the Apostle whom
Eadward reverenced next after his special patron Saint Peter. The King
has neither silver nor gold about him; he cannot find his almoner for
the press, he gives the poor man the only gift that he can give at the
moment, the costly ring on his finger. The beggar returns thanks and
vanishes. That very day,[1519] two English pilgrims are benighted in a
wilderness of the Holy Land. A band of bright youths appears, attending
an old man before whom two tapers are borne as in the service of the
Church. He asks the pilgrims from what land they come, and of what King
they are subjects. They are Englishmen, subjects of the good King
Eadward. For the love of good King Eadward he guides them to a city and
an hostelry, where they find abundant entertainment. In the morning he
reveals himself to them as John the Apostle and Evangelist; he gives
them the ring to bear to the King of the English, with the message that,
as the reward of his good and chaste life, he should within six months
be with himself in Paradise. The message is delivered; the King’s alms
and prayers and fastings are redoubled; but one thing specially occupies
his mind, the longing to see the new minster of Saint Peter hallowed
before he dies.

[Sidenote: Consecration of Eadgyth’s church at Wilton. 1065.]

The time was at last come. The great ceremony had been preceded by a
lesser one of the same kind. The Lady Eadgyth—was it as an atonement for
the blood of Gospatric?—had rebuilt the church of nuns at Wilton, the
church of her sainted namesake the daughter of Eadgar.[1520] The fabric
had hitherto been of wood,[1521] but the Lady now reared a stone
minster, pressing on the work with unusual haste, in pious rivalry with
her husband.[1522] The new building was hallowed by Hermann, the Bishop
of the diocese, just before the Northumbrian revolt.[1523] That revolt
was now over, and the land was once more quiet; the work of the King’s
life was finished; the time of the Christmas Festival [Sidenote:
Midwinter Gemót at Westminster. 1065–1066.] drew nigh. This year the
Midwinter Gemót was not gathered, as in former years, at Gloucester, but
the Witan of all England were specially called to the King’s Court at
Westminster, to be present at the hallowing of the new church of Saint
Peter.[1524] The Assembly met; the King’s strength was failing, but he
assayed to appear in the usual kingly state. On the Festival of the
Nativity and on the two following days, one of them the day of his
patron Evangelist, he wore his Crown in public.[1525] But the [Sidenote:
Consecration of Westminster. December 28, 1065.] exertion was too much
for him. The fourth day, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, had been
appointed for the great ceremony; but Eadward was no longer able to take
any personal part in the rite which he had so long looked forward to as
the crowning act of his life. The minster was hallowed with all the
rites of the Church, but the Founder’s share in the ceremony was
discharged by deputy; Eadward, King, saint, and founder, was represented
in that day’s solemnity by his wife the Lady Eadgyth.[1526] Eadward’s
work on earth was now over; his church was finished and hallowed, and it
was soon to be the scene of rites still more solemn, still more
memorable. Saint Peter’s minster had been built to be the crowning-place
and the burying-place of future Kings of the English. Its special
functions soon fell thick upon the newly hallowed temple. Before another
year had passed, the West Minster was to be the scene of one royal
burial, of two royal consecrations, and those consecrations the two most
memorable that England ever saw. But it had not to wait for months, or
even for weeks, before its special history began. The sound of the
workman’s hammer had hardly ceased, the voice of the consecrating
Prelate was hardly hushed into silence, before the church of the Apostle
was put to the lofty purposes for which it was designed. Before the
Christmas Festival was over, it beheld the funeral rites of its founder,
the coronation [Sidenote: Death of Eadward. January 5, 1066.] rites of
his successor. The days of the holy season were not yet accomplished,
the Witan of England had not yet departed to their homes, when the last
royal son of Woden was borne to his grave, and his Imperial Crown
[Sidenote: Burial of Eadward and coronation of Harold. January 6, 1066.]
was placed on the brow of one whose claim was not drawn only from the
winding-sheet of his fathers. The most eventful year of our history had
begun, but its first week had not yet fully passed away, when Eadward,
the son of Æthelred and Emma, was gathered to his fathers, and Harold,
the son of Godwine and of Gytha, was King of the English and Lord of the
Isle of Britain.[1527]

[Sidenote: Summary.]

We have thus, through the three and twenty years of Eadward’s reign,
traced what we may fairly look upon as the first stage of the Norman
Conquest. Under a King, English by birth but Norman in feelings and
habits, England has been brought under a direct Norman influence, which
seemed at one moment likely to bring with it the peaceful establishment
of Norman dominion. We have seen the Court of England swarming with
Norman favourites; we have seen the Church of England handed over to the
government of Norman Prelates; we have seen Norman adventurers enriched
with English estates, and covering the land with those frowning castles
on which our fathers looked as the special badges of wrong and slavery.
Above all, we have seen the Duke of the Normans, not only received with
special honours at the English Court, but encouraged to look upon
himself as the destined successor to the English Crown. A national
reaction, almost rising to the rank of a revolution, has broken the yoke
of the strangers, has driven the most guilty from the land, and has
placed England and her King once more under the rule of the noblest of
her own sons. Still the effect of those days of Norman influence was not
wiped out; the land had not been wholly cleared of the strangers, and,
what is of far more moment, the wary and wily chief of the strangers had
been armed with a pretext plausible enough to win him general support
wherever the laws of England were unknown. The moment of struggle was
now come; the English throne had become vacant, and the Norman Duke knew
how to represent himself as its lawful heir, and to brand the King of
the nation’s choice as an usurper. We thus enter on the second, the
decisive, stage of the great struggle. It is no longer a half concealed
strife for influence, for office, for a peaceful succession to the
Crown. It is an open warfare of nation against nation, of man against
man. England and Normandy, Harold and William, are now brought face to
face. The days of debate and compromise are past; the sword alone can
now judge between England and her enemy. The details of that memorable
conflict, the events of that wonderful year which forms the
turning-point of all English history, will form the third portion of my
tale, the culminating point of the History of the Norman Conquest.

APPENDIX.

NOTE A. p. 5.
THE ELECTION AND CORONATION OF EADWARD.

In reading the account of Eadward’s accession to the Crown, as told in
the Chronicles and by Florence, we are at once struck by the great and
unusual delay between his first election and his consecration as King.
He is chosen in London in June by a popular movement which could not
even wait for the burial of the deceased King; but he is not crowned
till the Easter of the next year. No explanation is given of the delay,
no account of the way in which the intervening months were occupied, no
statement where Eadward was at the time of Harthacnut’s death. We must
therefore look to other writers for the means of filling up this
singular gap. I need hardly again refute the wild romance of Thierry, of
which I spoke in vol. i. p. 592. I will only say that Eadward’s
Westminster Charter (Cod. Dipl. iv. 173), which, doubtful as it is, is
at least as good authority as Brompton or Knighton, makes him speak of
himself as “eo [regno] potitus sine ullo bellorum labore.” It will be
more profitable to examine the witness of those writers who wrote at all
near the time, or who were at all likely to preserve contemporary
traditions.

According to Eadward’s Biographer (p. 394), as soon as England was free
from her Danish rulers (see vol. i. p. 592), Godwine at once proposed
the election of Eadward as the natural heir (“ut Regem suum recipiant in
nativi juris sui throno”). Godwine being looked on as a common father,
everybody agreed to his proposal (“quoniam pro patre ab omnibus
habebatur, in paterno consultu libenter audiebatur”). Earls and Bishops
are sent to fetch Eadward (“mittuntur post eum”); they bring him with
them; he is joyfully received, and crowned at _Canterbury_.

William of Poitiers (p. 85 Giles), as might be supposed, knows nothing
about Godwine, or about any free election by the English people.
Eadward, according to him, was chosen under a most powerful _congè
d’élire_ and letter missive from his cousin the Duke of the Normans. The
English are disputing about the succession, when a Norman embassy comes,
threatening a Norman invasion if Eadward is not received. The nation
chooses the wiser part, and Eadward comes home, protected by a small
array of Norman knights (“Disceptantes Angli deliberatione suis
rationibus utilissima consenserunt, legationibus justa petentibus
acquiescere, quam Normannorum vim experiri. Reducem cum non maximo
præsidio militis Normannici cupidè sibi eum præstituerunt, ne manu
validiore, si Comes Normannicus adveniret, subigerentur”). The same
version is given in a shorter form in the Chronicle of Saint Wandrille
(D’Achery, ii. 286). Eadward, already chosen and crowned King, but
hitherto kept out of his Kingdom by Swend, Cnut, and others, is now
restored by Norman help (“In regnum paternum _adnitentibus Normannis_
rediit”).

Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 759 A) mixes up the accession of Eadward
with his version of the death of Ælfred (see vol. i. p. 543), which, it
will be remembered, he places after the death of Harthacnut. Ælfred had
been slain by the English, because he had brought too many Normans with
him; the English then send to Normandy, offering the Crown to Eadward,
on condition that he brings only a small body of Normans with him
(“Miserunt ergo pro Edwardo juniore in Normanniam nuntios et obsides,
mandantes ei quod paucissimos Normannorum secum adduceret, et eum in
Regem fidelissimè stabilirent”). Eadward comes over with a small company
(“cum paucis venit in Angliam”); he is chosen King by all folk (“electus
est in Regem ab omni populo”), and is consecrated at Easter by Eadsige
at Winchester.

The Winchester Annals (Luard, pp. 18–20) swell out the story into a long
romance; but some points are worthy of notice. On the death of
Harthacnut, Godwine is, by a decree of the Witan and with the consent of
the Lady Emma (“Reginæ assensu et magnatum consilio”), appointed Regent
of the Kingdom till a King can be chosen (“regni cura Comiti Godwino
committitur, donec qui dignus esset eligeretur in Regem”). Eadward is in
Normandy, where, since the death of Duke Robert, he has no friends; he
has no hope from his mother; he determines to trust himself to the mercy
of his enemy Godwine (“inter desperandum tutius credebat manifesto
supplicare inimico, quam fictum amicum sine caussâ sollicitare”). He
comes over to England, he lands at Southampton, he avoids his mother at
Winchester, but goes to Godwine in London, and throws himself at the
Earl’s feet. A long dialogue follows, the upshot of which is that
Godwine swears fidelity to Eadward and promises him the Crown. Eadward
is sent to Winchester in disguise, and is bidden to reveal himself to no
one. Godwine meanwhile summons the Witan to Winchester for the election
of a King. They meet in the Old Minster. The Lady Emma seemingly
presides; the Archbishops are at her right hand, the Earl of the
West-Saxons at her left. Eadward, veiled, sits at the feet of Godwine.
At the proper moment Godwine unveils him; “Here,” he says, “is your
King; here is Eadward, son of this Lady Emma and of Æthelred King of the
English. I choose him King, and am the first to become his man” (“Huic
ego omnium primus homagium facio”). A debate follows; some object to the
choice, but no man dares seriously to oppose Godwine. Eadward is elected
and crowned.

The Hyde writer (pp. 287, 288), like Henry of Huntingdon, connects the
accession of Eadward with the death of Ælfred, and, like William of
Poitiers, brings in Duke William as a prominent actor. After Ælfred’s
death William meditates revenge, but an English embassy comes, praying
for another son of Æthelred to be sent to them as their King (“rogant
sibi alium domin_um_”—domin_i_?—“sui transmitti filium”), and promising
him all loyal service. William will not allow his cousin to adventure
himself, unless some of the noblest of the English, and especially one
of the sons of Godwine, are given him as hostages. This is done, and
Eadward is brought over to England by a Norman fleet.

Lastly, charters exist which imply that Eadward was for a while in
Normandy after he had acquired a right to the title of King. At an
earlier time he and his brother had subscribed a charter of Duke Robert,
with the form “Signum Hetwardi. Signum Helwredi.” (Delisle, Preuves, p.
11.) But the cartulary of Saint Michael’s Mount contains two Charters in
which Eadward is called “Rex.” I do not rely so much on the Charter in
Eadward’s own name, which is printed in Cod. Dipl. iv. 251, and Delisle,
Preuves, 20. It is signed by Robert Archbishop of Rouen, who died in
1037. Now it is really inconceivable that Eadward should call himself
King before 1042, unless possibly in some moment of exultation when Duke
Robert’s fleet was setting forth to restore him. (See vol. i. p. 525.)
The matter of the charter also is strange, and the English spelling
“Eadwardus” is unusual in a document which must have been drawn up in
Normandy. I have more faith in a Charter of Duke William (Delisle,
Preuves, p. 19), which, among other signatures, has that of “Hatuardus
Rex.” This looks to me far more likely to be genuine. It is quite
conceivable that, if Eadward was asked to witness a charter of his
cousin’s, just as he was leaving Normandy in 1042, he might assume the
title, though not yet strictly entitled to it by English Law.

The accounts of all these different writers seem to be independent of
one another, unless the Hyde version is made up by compounding the story
of William of Poitiers with that which we find in Henry of Huntingdon.
The mention of the hostages is one form of a story which I shall have
elsewhere to discuss at length. All these accounts agree in placing
Eadward in Normandy at the moment of Harthacnut’s death. William of
Malmesbury (ii. 196) however supposes him to have been in England. With
this difference, his story is much the same as that of the Winchester
Annals stripped of its romantic details. It is probably the groundwork
round which that legend has grown. Eadward, not knowing whither to turn
after the death of Harthacnut, throws himself at the feet of Godwine,
and craves leave to return to Normandy. The Earl raises him, and
addresses him in a speech whose substance may well be historical, and to
which I have not hesitated to give a place in the text. Eadward promises
everything; he will be Godwine’s firm friend; he will promote his sons
and marry his daughter. The Witan meet at Gillingham; Godwine speaks on
behalf of Eadward, and becomes his man (“rationibus suis explicitis,
Regem efficit, hominio palam omnibus dato”); the election, the
coronation, the punishment of the opponents of Eadward, follow as I have
told them in the text.

Now it strikes me that, in these accounts, when carefully compared
together, we may find the means of filling up the gap, and of explaining
the delay, between the first election and the coronation. In all the
versions the time is filled up by negotiation, not by war. In most of
them the negotiation is carried on between Eadward and Godwine; in all
those which mention Godwine at all, he stands forth as the leading man
in the business, in fact as the man who makes Eadward King. We see
glimpses of two Assemblies, the former being that hasty Gemót in London
which chose Eadward before the burial of Harthacnut, and a later one at
Gillingham or elsewhere shortly before the coronation. Again, all the
accounts, except that of William of Malmesbury, conceive Eadward as
being in Normandy. The inferior writers assert it; the contemporary
Biographer clearly implies it. Putting these hints together, I have
ventured to construct the narrative in the text. Eadward is chosen in
London immediately on the death of Harthacnut; as he is absent, an
embassy, doubtless headed by Godwine, is sent to offer him the Crown.
The case is thus far almost identical with the story of the first
election of Eadward’s half-brother Harthacnut. Delay is in both cases
caused by the election of a King who is absent. Eadward does not indeed
tarry so long as Harthacnut did; but his indecision, his unwillingness
to accept the Crown, the negotiations which were needed to overcome that
unwillingness, caused delay, and gave time for an adverse party to form
itself. A second Assembly, that recorded by William of Malmesbury, was
therefore needed to overcome all objections, and to elect Eadward, now
present in person, in a more formal manner. We thus get, from one
quarter or another, a credible narrative, which fills up the gap in the
Chronicles without contradicting their statements. A few special points
must be noticed.

1. We see that most of our statements assert or imply that Eadward was
in Normandy. Now it is most certain that Eadward had been recalled to
England by Harthacnut (vol. i. p. 584), and that the English court was
now his recognized dwelling-place. But this is quite consistent with the
notion, which I have ventured to throw out in the text, that Eadward was
at this moment in Normandy on some temporary visit or pilgrimage. This
view explains all the statements. The fact that Eadward was in Normandy
at the moment—a fact which we may surely accept on the credit of the
Biographer, to say nothing of the Norman Charters quoted above—led
careless writers to forget his recall by Harthacnut, and to speak as if
he had never left Normandy since the accession of Cnut. On the other
hand, the fact of his recall led William of Malmesbury to forget or to
disbelieve that he was in Normandy at the time of Harthacnut’s death.
Then the Winchester Annalist, aware of Eadward’s absence, tried to patch
it in to William’s account, which was not an easy matter. That an
embassy should be sent to Eadward in Normandy was credible enough. It
was also credible that Eadward, if in England, might throw himself into
the arms of Godwine. But no story can be more unlikely than that which
represents Eadward, when safe in Normandy, as coming of his own accord
to England to put himself into the hands of the man whom the same
account represents as the murderer of his brother.

2. I accept the second Assembly as the only means of reconciling the
different accounts and of meeting the probabilities of the case. And I
accept Gillingham as its place, on the authority of William of
Malmesbury. It is true that one of William’s manuscripts places it in
London, while the Winchester Annalist transfers it to his own city and
his own church. The universal law of criticism comes in here. If a thing
happened either in London or at Winchester, no transcriber or copyist
would be likely to remove it to Gillingham. But nothing was more natural
than for a transcriber to alter Gillingham into London, if he thought he
could thereby bring his text into conformity with the Chronicles. The
Winchester writer would have every motive to confound the Gemót at
Gillingham with the consecration which shortly followed at Winchester.
The very strangeness of the choice of Gillingham for such an Assembly is
the best proof that it is the right place. By Gillingham, I may add,
William of Malmesbury can only have meant the West-Saxon Gillingham,
already mentioned in his history (ii. 180). The Kentish Gillingham would
connect itself more naturally with the Biographer’s statement of a
coronation at Canterbury, but the other is the more obvious place for a
Meeting which was followed by a coronation at Winchester.

3. The reader must judge for himself as to the amount of value to be
attached to the statements of William of Poitiers and the Hyde writer as
to the influence of the Duke of the Normans in the matter. It must not
be forgotten that in 1042 William was only fourteen years old, and in
the midst of the troubles of his minority. It is quite possible that
William or his advisers may, perhaps even then with some vague designs
on the English Crown, have pressed the acceptance of that Crown on
Eadward. And, in any case, the story could hardly have arisen, unless
embassies of some sort had passed between England and Normandy in the
course of the business. It so far falls in with my view of Eadward’s
position.

4. The statement of the Biographer that Eadward was crowned at
Canterbury seems, at first sight, very strange. There can be no doubt
that the final ceremony took place at Winchester. That the Biographer’s
account is rhetorical and somewhat confused is no more than his usual
fashion. But it would be strange if a contemporary made a mistake on a
point of this kind. Is it possible that the ceremony was performed
twice? Coronations were sometimes repeated in those days. If we read the
Biographer’s account narrowly, it is plain that he distinguishes between
the ceremony at Canterbury, which he evidently looks on as happening
immediately on Eadward’s landing, and the reception of the foreign
ambassadors, which takes place when the news had reached foreign courts
(“exhilaratus quod eum in paternâ sede inthronizatum dedicerat”). But
their reception must surely be placed at the final and solemn
consecration at Winchester. A twofold coronation, as well as a twofold
Gemót, will perhaps solve all difficulties.

There is one more point to be discussed. According to William of
Malmesbury, there was an opposition, seemingly a rather strong one, made
to Eadward’s election. He does not say on whose behalf the objection was
brought. But it is hardly possible that it could have been made on
behalf of any one except Swend Estrithson. The English writers indeed
make no mention of Swend in the matter, but in Adam of Bremen we find
what may pass as Swend’s own version. Adam knew the Danish King
personally (ii. 73), and he probably put on record what Swend told him.
It will be remembered that, just at the moment of Harthacnut’s death,
Swend was in Denmark, carrying on the war with Magnus (see vol. i. p.
583). Adam then goes on thus;

“Suein, victus à Magno, quum in Angliam remearet, Hardechnut mortuum
repperit. In cujus locum Angli priùs elegerunt fratrem ejus Eduardum,
quem de priori marito Imma genuit; vir sanctus et timens Deum. Isque
suspectum habens Suein, quod sceptrum sibi Anglorum reposceret, cum
tyranno pacem fecit, constituens eum proximum se mortuo regni Anglorum
hæredem, vel si filios susceperit. Tali pacto mitigatus Suein in Daniam
remeavit.” (ii. 74.)

I may here note that the word “priùs” in this passage distinctly refers
to the first election in London. And, whether we believe Swend’s story
of the bargain between himself and Eadward or not, we have here quite
enough to make an opposition on Swend’s behalf highly probable.
“Tyrannus” is of course to be taken in the sense of “pretender.”

Another passage of Adam (iii. 13) must here be mentioned;

“Simul eo tempore separabant se Angli a regno Danorum, filiis Gudwini
rebellionis auctoribus, quos amitæ Regis Danorum filios esse diximus, et
quorum sororem Eduardus Rex duxit uxorem. Hi namque, factâ
conspiratione, fratres Suein Regis, qui in Angliâ Duces erant, alterum
Bern statim obtruncant, alterum Osbern cum suis omnibus ejecerunt à
patriâ.”

This at first sight appears to be an account of the separation between
Denmark and England on the death of Harthacnut. It is not however really
so. It must be taken in connexion with a passage two chapters back (iii.
11), in which Adam gives a most strange version of the events which
followed the death of Magnus in 1048. In the true account, Swend then
asked for English help, which was refused, and a peace was concluded
between England and Harold Hardrada (see above, p. 93). But Adam makes
Swend possess both Denmark and Norway, and then prepare to invade
England (“Suein duo regna possedit, classemque parâsse dicitur, ut
Angliam suo juri subjiceret”). Eadward agrees to pay tribute, and renews
the promise of the succession (“Verum sanctissimus Rex Edwardus, quum
justitiâ regnum gubernaret, tunc quoque pacem eligens, victori obtulit
tributum, statuens eum, ut supra dictum est, post se regni hæredem”).
This must be another version of the intended expedition of Magnus (see
above, p. 73). On the strength of this tribute, Adam seems to look upon
Swend as at least overlord of England (“Quum Rex juvenis Suein tria pro
libitu suo regna tenuerit”). He seems to look on Beorn and Osbeorn as
Swend’s representatives in England, and the murder of Beorn by Swegen is
made into the groundwork of a story of “rebellio,” “conspiratio,” and
what not, about the sons of Godwine in general.

The only historical value of this very confused account is that it helps
us to the very probable fact of the banishment of Osbeorn, of whom we do
not hear in the English writers till 1069. But the story is very
curious, as it is the evident groundwork of the wonderful tale in Saxo
(p. 202). Saxo looks on Swend as the natural sovereign of England after
the death of Harthacnut. Going to Denmark to assert his rights there, he
left his interests in England in the hands of his cousins the sons of
Godwine. From Eadward himself he feared nothing, unlike Harthacnut, who
(see vol. i. p. 583, n. 4) had dreaded his ambition, and who therefore
made him his colleague in the Kingdom, lest he should attempt to gain
the whole (“Retinendæ insulæ spem non solùm in Godovini filiis, quibus
sanguine admodùm conjunctus fuerat, reponens, sed etiam ex ipsâ
consortis sui”—Eadwardi sc.—“_stoliditate desidiâque_ præsumens”). But
Harold the son of Godwine betrays Swend’s trust, makes Eadward King, and
massacres the Danes, according to the story in vol. i. p. 592.

I do not profess to harmonize every detail of the conflicting stories
about Eadward, Magnus, and Swend. But I think that there is enough
evidence to lead us to believe that Eadward’s election was opposed by a
Danish party in Swend’s interest, and that these were the persons who
were marked at the time and gradually punished afterwards. See pp. 9,
63, 72, 90.

NOTE B. p. 21.
THE LEGENDARY HISTORY OF EADWARD.

There is something very remarkable in that gradual developement of
popular reverence for King Eadward, which at last issued in his being
acknowledged as the Patron Saint of England. I have endeavoured in the
text to point out the chief causes from which this feeling arose; how
Eadward was, in different ways, the one person whom Normans and
Englishmen could unite in honouring. I will now attempt to trace out the
growth of the feeling itself, and to point out some of the ways in which
Eadward’s true character and history have been clouded over by legendary
and miraculous tales.

Every English writer, as I shall presently show, speaks of Eadward with
marked respect, with a degree of respect, in most cases, which their own
narratives of his actions hardly account for. Yet, alongside of this, we
find indications of a counter feeling, as if there were all along some
who thought of him pretty much as the modern historian is driven to
think of him. The Scandinavian writers, placed beyond the influences
which had effect upon both English and Norman writers, seem to have all
along estimated him nearly at his true value. Saxo, though writing long
after Eadward had become a recognized saint, treats him with great
irreverence, and speaks openly of his “stoliditas et desidia.” The
biographer of Olaf Tryggwesson, according to whom Eadward was a special
admirer of his own hero, gives him only the rather faint praise of being
“princeps optimus in multis” (“oc var agetur Kongr i mórgum lutum.” p.
262). In Snorro’s time he had advanced somewhat; “Hann var kalladr
Játvardr inn Gódi, hann var sva” (Ant. Celt. Scand. 189. Laing, iii.
75). But his sanctity still seems only local; Snorro says emphatically
that “Englishmen call him a saint” (“oc kalla Enskir menn hann Helgan.”
Ant. Celt. Scand. 191. Laing, iii. 77). Adam of Bremen, who, as regards
English matters, may almost pass for a Scandinavian writer, is Eadward’s
warmest admirer in that part of the world. He gives him perhaps the only
unreserved praise which he gets in Northern Europe. With Adam he is not
only “vir bonus et timens Deum” (ii. 74), but he rises to the dignity of
“sanctissimus Rex Edwardus” (iii. 11). William of Malmesbury, in his
accustomed way of letting us see both sides of a question, shows us that
in his day there were still people in England by whom the royal saint
was lightly esteemed, and he himself seems now and then to halt between
two opinions. He gives him (iii. 259) no higher surname than “Edwardus
Simplex,” and over and over again, as if of set purpose, he speaks of
his “simplicitas” as his chief characteristic. The utmost that he can
say for him is that his simplicity won for him favour and protection
both with God and man. He was (ii. 196) “vir propter morum simplicitatem
parum imperio idoneus, sed Deo devotus, ideoque ab eo directus.”
“Fovebat profecto ejus simplicitatem Deus.” (Ib.) “Quamvis vel deses vel
simplex putaretur, habebat Comites qui eum ex humili in altum conantem
erigerent.” William believes in his holiness, and even in his miraculous
powers, but he has not wholly given up the right of criticism upon his
character and actions.

The English Chroniclers, and their harmonizer Florence, record Eadward’s
actions with perfect impartiality. Nowhere in their narratives do they
display towards him any of that affection which they do display towards
Harold and other actors in the story. Nor do they ever speak of him with
bated breath, as of an acknowledged saint. But the Abingdon and
Worcester Chroniclers, and Florence also, all send him out of the world
with a panegyric. The unbending Godwinist at Peterborough alone makes no
sign. But Florence’s panegyric is of the most general kind. He is (A.
1066) “Anglorum decus, pacificus Rex Eadwardus.” And the elaborate poem
in the two Chronicles attributes to the “baleless King” only the mildest
and most monastic virtues. One can hardly keep from a smile, till we
reach the genuine tribute of admiration with which the poet winds up. He
speaks at last from the heart when he makes it Eadward’s highest praise
to have “made fast his realm” to “Harold the noble Earl.”

The Chroniclers and Florence imply nothing as to any extraordinary
powers possessed by Eadward. Of these powers we get the first glimpses
in the contemporary Biographer. Already, within eight years after his
death, Eadward was held, at least by those who sought to win favour with
his widow, to have wrought miracles, to have seen visions, to have been
the subject of the visions of others. When Eadward was taken over as a
boy to Normandy, Brihtwold, Bishop of Ramsbury, had a vision in which he
saw Saint Peter consecrating Eadward as King (Vita Eadw. 394). The
Biographer also (pp. 430, 1) records the unintelligible talk of Eadward
on his death-bed, in which he already discerns a prophecy, and he
severely rebukes Archbishop Stigand, whose practical mind set small
store by the babble of the sick man. Eadward also appears in his pages
as the first of the long line of English Kings who undertook to cure the
evil by the royal touch. By washing and touching he healed (428) a
scrofulous woman, and, what one would hardly have expected, whereas she
had hitherto been barren, the touch of Eadward changed her into a joyful
mother of children. But here William of Malmesbury again helps us. He is
a full believer in Eadward’s miraculous power, but he again (ii. 222)
lets us see that there were two opinions on the subject. Some people
affirmed that Eadward cured the evil, not by virtue of his holiness, but
by virtue of his royal descent (“Nostro tempore quidam falsam insumunt
operam, qui asseverant istius morbi curationem non ex sanctitate, sed ex
regalis prosapiæ hæreditate fluxisse”). So others at a later time, as
Peter of Blois (ep. 150, vol. ii. p. 82 Giles), held that the Kings of
England possessed the gift by virtue of their royal unction. William
argues against such views, but by so doing he proves that Eadward’s
claims to holiness and miraculous power were still a moot point in his
time.

Besides this official kind of miracle, Eadward, according to his
Biographer, wrought other wonderful works. A blind man was cured by the
water in which the King had washed (429), and several cures were wrought
at his tomb (435). One is almost tempted to suspect that these stories
are interpolations, but there is no need for the supposition. An
interpolator would surely have taken care to insert the more famous
stories of the ring and of the Seven Sleepers, of which the Biographer
tells us nothing. We must remember how men then, and for ages
afterwards, instead of being surprised at miracles, looked for them. We
must not forget that Queen Anne touched for the evil as well as King
Eadward; we must remember that alleged miracles were wrought by the
blood, not only of Thomas of London and Simon of Montfort, but also of
Charles the First.

William of Malmesbury, clearly with the Biographer before him, enlarges
greatly on Eadward’s miraculous and prophetic powers (ii. 220–227),
adding to the stories in the Life the vision of the Seven Sleepers (see
above, p. 511). But the main disseminator of legendary lore about
Eadward was Osbern or Osbert of Clare, Prior of Westminster, who had a
hand in procuring his formal canonization, and who wrote a book on his
life and miracles (Introduction to M. H. B. 16. Luard, Preface xxv.
Hardy’s Catalogue of British History, i. 637, 642). His work has never
been printed, but it is the groundwork of the well known Life by
Æthelred of Rievaux, printed in the Decem Scriptores. On this again is
founded the French Life printed by Mr. Luard, which however adds many
particulars which are not to be found in Æthelred. Both of these are
truly wonderful productions. Of the French writer I have already given a
specimen in vol. i. p. 592. Perhaps his grandest achievement is to make
Godwine kill Eadmund Ironside (p. 47. V. 775). Both he and the Abbot of
Rievaux agree in describing King Æthelred as a mighty warrior, fighting
manfully against the Danes. He is “Rex strenuissimus,” “gloriosus Rex”
(X Scriptt. 372. Cf. the Abbot’s Genealogia Regum, 362, 363), and in the
French Life (v. 131) we read—

“Li rois Aedgard avoit un fiz
K’ert de force e sens garniz,
Ædelred k’out non, bon justisers,
K’en pees peisible en guerre ert fers.”

In short, for historical purposes, the French Life is absolutely
worthless, and Æthelred himself, though often preserving little
authentic touches, must be used with the greatest caution. But he, or
rather Osbert whom he follows, evidently drew largely from the
Biographer. In some cases rhetorical expressions in the authentic Life
seem, in the hands of the professed hagiographers, to have grown into
legendary facts. Thus the Biographer tells us (393, 394) that, when Emma
was with child of Eadward, popular expectation looked forward to the
birth of a future King, and that, when the child was born, he was at
once seen to be worthy to reign (“Antiqui Regis Æthelredi regiâ conjuge
utero gravidâ, in ejus partûs sobole si masculus prodiret, omnis
conjurat patria, in eo se dominum exspectare et Regem.... Natus ergo
puer dignus præmonstratur patriæ sacramento, qui quandoque paterni
sullimaretur solio”). This, in another and more rhetorical passage
(428), swells into “Felicissimæ mentionis Rex Ædwardus ante natalis sui
diem Deo est electus, unde ad regnum non tam ab hominibus quam, ut supra
diximus, divinitùs est consecratus.” All this is quite possible in a
sense. That is to say, men may have speculated on the possibility of a
son of Emma supplanting the children of the first Ælfgifu, just as
Æthelred himself had supplanted his brother Eadward. In Æthelred of
Rievaux (X Scriptt. 372) the rhetoric of the Biographer grows into a
regular election of the unborn babe. He is, after much deliberation,
chosen by all the people (“magnus episcoporum procerumque conventus,
magnus plebisque vulgique concursus”), in preference alike to his
half-brother Eadmund Ironside and to his own brother Ælfred, who is
erroneously supposed to be the elder of the two. A Norman Chronicler
goes a step further. The historian of Saint Wandrille (Chron.
Fontanellense, ap. D’Achery, ii. 286) describes Eadward as being not
only elected but crowned in his childhood (“Eguvardus, qui prior natu
erat, tener admodum et in puerilibus adhuc annis constitutus Rex,
jubente patre et favente populo terræ unctus est et consecratus”). Here
the command of Æthelred comes first; the will of the people is something
quite secondary. In the time of the French biographer, popular election
of Kings was a thing which had altogether gone out of date, and which
was not likely to be acceptable at the Court of Henry the Third. The
story is left out accordingly.

No feature in the legendary history of Eadward fills a more prominent
position in hagiography, none has won him more admiration from
hagiographers, than the terms on which he is said to have lived with his
wife. It is certain that, at a time when it was especially needful to
provide direct heirs to the Crown, the marriage of Eadward and Eadgyth
was childless. Eadward’s monastic admirers attribute this fact to the
resolution of Eadward, shared, according to some writers, by Eadgyth
also, to devote himself to a life of perpetual virginity. When we come
to examine the evidence, we shall find that this is one of those cases
in which each later writer knows more than the writers before him. The
earliest statements which have any bearing on the subject, though
consistent with the monastic theory, do not necessarily imply it, and
there are indications which look the other way. The tale grows as it is
handed down from one panegyrist to another, in a way which naturally
awakens suspicion. And when we consider the portrait of Eadward which is
given us, his personal appearance, his personal temperament, and most of
his tastes, we shall perhaps be led to guess that the unfruitfulness of
Eadward’s marriage was owing neither to any religious impediment nor yet
to barrenness on the part of a daughter of Godwine. The story is
probably due to a very natural process. The fact of Eadgyth’s
childlessness was explained by her husband’s admirers in the way which,
to their monastic imaginations, seemed most honourable to him, and
details of course grew in the usual fashion.

Let us now look through the evidence.

Florence and the prose text of the Chronicles are silent on the subject.
The poem in the Abingdon and Worcester Chronicles says that Eadward was

“Kyningc cystum gód,
_Clæne_ and milde,
Eadward se æðela.”

But surely this is no more than might be said of any man who was chaste
before marriage and faithful to his wife afterwards. The Biographer has
several passages which may be thought to bear on the subject. He says
(428) that Eadward “consecrationis dignitatem sanctam conservans
_castimoniâ_, omnem vitam agebat Deo dicatam in verâ innocentiâ.” This
again need not mean anything more than the words of the poem. In the
account of Bishop Brihtwold’s vision (394), Saint Peter is seen to crown
Eadward and “_cœlibem_ ei vitam designare.” One might say that this is
vision and not history, but the vision would of course be devised so as
to fit in with what was held to be the history. But, strange as it may
seem, the word _cœlebs_, as used by the Biographer, does not imply
either virginity or single life. He uses it (409. See above, P. 383) to
express the conjugal fidelity of Tostig, who was undoubtedly the father
of children. Elsewhere (p. 429) Eadward is called “columbinæ puritatis
Rex,” a phrase which may mean anything, but in the passage in which it
occurs there is no special mention of chastity. Lastly, Eadward (433) on
his death-bed is made to say of Eadgyth, “Obsequuta est mihi devotè, et
lateri meo semper propiùs adstitit in loco carissimæ filiæ.” But this is
surely no more than might be said by any maundering old man of a wife
much younger than himself. In none of these passages is there any direct
assertion of any vow or of any practice of virginity on the part of
Eadward. His chastity is undoubtedly praised. But the language in which
it is praised does not necessarily imply anything more than might be
said with equal truth of any faithful husband. If the Biographer had any
idea of the religious virginity of his hero and heroine, he would surely
have expressed himself more distinctly. He would hardly have called
Eadgyth “tori ejus consocia” (418), without some sort of qualification.
If any one should say that the Biographer’s work is dedicated to Eadgyth
herself, and that he would not enlarge to her on such a subject, he is
looking at the matter with the feelings of our own age. The age of
Eadward felt quite differently on such points. The panegyrists of Queens
like Pulcheria and Æthelthryth took care that the light of those saintly
ladies should in no case be bidden under a bushel. On the whole, I am
inclined to think that the expressions of the Biographer, looked at
critically, rather tell against the monastic theory. But such ambiguous
expressions may well contain the germ of the legend.

One or two other points may be mentioned. Eadward is said (see above, p.
524) to have made an agreement with Swend Estrithson, by which the
Danish prince was to succeed to the English Crown, “vel si filios
susceperit.” Such an agreement, or even any general belief in the
existence of such an agreement, is inconsistent with such a vow on
Eadward’s part as the monastic writers pretend. William of Malmesbury
again (ii. 228), in an unguarded moment, when he is discussing the
policy of the King and not the merits of the saint, says that Eadward
sent for the Ætheling from Hungary, “quod ipse non susceperat liberos.”
And Eadward himself, if it be Eadward who speaks in the Westminster
charters, gives as his reason for not going in person to Rome, that the
royal race would be jeoparded in his person, “maxime quod nullum habebam
filium” (Cod. Dipl. iv. 174). Such language would hardly be used if the
possibility of children had been cut off by any religious vow, formally
made and generally known. Again, if Eadward had been known to be under
such a vow, it is much less clear why Godwine should be anxious for the
marriage of Eadward and Eadgyth. The sacrifice of his daughter would be
much less intelligible, if there was no chance of its being rewarded by
the succession of a grandson of Godwine to the Crown.

We will now look to the accounts which tell the other way. As might be
expected, the earlier statements are very much less full and positive
than the later. As long as Eadward, however deeply reverenced, was still
not a canonized saint, the subject was one which might be discussed, and
different opinions might be put forth about it. After the canonization,
the slightest doubt would of course have passed for blasphemy.

Thus William of Jumièges (vii. 9) asserts the fact, but somewhat
doubtfully; “Ut inter eos [Eadward and Godwine] firmus amor jugiter
maneret, Editham filiam ejus uxorem nomine tenus duxit. Nam reverà, _ut
dicunt_, ambo perpetuam virginitatem conservaverunt.” William of
Malmesbury, who, as we have seen, elsewhere forgets the story
altogether, also asserts the fact, but he is in doubt as to the motive,
and he seems certainly to know of no vow on the part of Eadgyth. He most
likely had the words of the Biographer, “tori ejus consocia,” before him
when he wrote (ii. 197); “Nuptam sibi Rex hâc arte tractabat, ut nec
toro amoveret nec virili more cognosceret; quod an familiæ illius odio,
quod prudenter dissimulabat pro tempore, an amore castitatis fecerit,
compertum non habeo. Illud celeberrimè fertur, numquam illum cujusquam
mulieris contubernio pudicitiam læsisse.” His account of Eadgyth is
singular. She was suspected of unchastity, both during Eadward’s
lifetime and after his death; but on her death-bed she cleared herself
by a solemn and voluntary oath, seemingly without calling in the help of
compurgators. Wace again, in the Roman de Rou (9883), gives the report,
but does not seem very certain or emphatic about it;

“Feme prist la fille Gwine,
Edif out nom, bele meschine,
Maiz entrels n’orent nul enfant;
E ço alouent la gent disant,
Ke charnelment od li ne jut,
Ne charnelment ne la conut:
Mais unkes hom ne l’aparçut,
Ne mal talent entrels ne fut.”

Wace, as Prevost remarks in his note, seems hardly to have known of
Eadgyth’s disgrace, if not divorce, in 1051. The Hyde writer again, who,
whoever he was and whenever he wrote, often preserved independent
traditions, and who clearly exercised a sort of judgement of his own,
knows the tale only as a report (288); “Fertur tamen Regem Edwardum
numquam cum eâdem carnis habuisse consortium, sed mundissimæ vitæ semper
dilexisse cœlibatum.”

Here we get the story in its second stage. Eadward’s reputation for
sanctity is advancing: the fact of Eadgyth’s childlessness, and the
ambiguous expressions of the contemporary writers, are now commonly
interpreted in a particular way. Still this interpretation has not yet
become an article of faith. For the fully developed legend, setting
forth the saint in all his glory, we must go to Æthelred of Rievaux and
his followers. They of course know everything, down to the minutest
details of everybody’s thoughts and prayers. The story will be found in
Æthelred (X Scriptt. 377, 378), and it is versified at great length in
the French Life (p. 55 et seqq.). As soon as Eadward is established on
the throne, his Witan, anxious about the succession, urge him to marry.
The vow seems to be assumed. On the mention of marriage, Eadward is in a
great strait; he is afraid to refuse; at the same time he is anxious not
to violate his chastity. His prayers and meditations are given at great
length, including much talk about the not exactly apposite examples of
Joseph and Susanna. At last the difficulty is escaped by his marrying
the daughter of Godwine, of whose piety as well as beauty a wonderful
description is given. There is of course not a word about the suspicions
spoken of by William of Malmesbury, any more than there is about the
murder of Gospatric. Eadgyth happily chances to be of the same peculiar
turn as Eadward himself; so they exactly suit one another. They marry;
but they agree to live, and do live, in great mutual affection, but only
as brother and sister. A new scriptural allusion happily presents
itself, and Eadgyth is promoted to the rank of a “nova Abisac.” The
unlucky expression of the Biographer about “locus carissimæ filiæ” is of
course seized up and amplified. Eadward, on his death-bed, addresses
Eadgyth as “filia mea” (X Scriptt. 402). The Biographer (433) had made
Eadward commend Eadgyth to the care of her brother Harold, “ut pro
dominâ [hlæfdige] et sorore, ut est, fideli serves et honores obsequio.”
Æthelred either misunderstood the passage, or else flew off at the word
“soror.” He tells us (402), “Reginam deinde fratri proceribusque
commendans, ejus plurimùm laudabat obsequium, et pudicitiam prædicabat,
quæ se quidem uxorem gerebat in publico, sed sororem vel filiam in
occulto.”

It will be remembered that William of Jumièges, Wace, and the Hyde
writer, mention the story only as a report; William of Malmesbury seems
to accept the fact as undoubted, and is uncertain only as to the motive.
According to Æthelred (378), the public mind in Eadward’s own time was
in the same state as the mind of William of Malmesbury a generation or
two later. No one doubted the fact; “Ne aliquis huic Regis virtuti fidem
deroget, sciat hoc tempore illius per totam Angliam sic divulgatum et
creditum, ut de facto certi plerique de intentione certarent.” People
who—like William of Malmesbury—failed to rise to the full appreciation
of Eadward’s saintship, thought it might be because Eadward was
unwilling to raise up grandsons to the traitor Godwine. Such
rationalizing doubts are indignantly dismissed; “Quidam nihil nisi
carnem et sanguinem sapientes, _simplicitati_ regiæ [a clear hit at
William] hoc imponebat, quod compulsus generi se miscuerit proditorum,
et ne proditores procrearet, operi supersederet conjugali. Sed si
consideretur amor quo se complectebantur, facilè contemnitur talis
opinio. Hoc idcirco inserendum putavi, ut sciatur neminem tunc de Regis
continentiâ dubitâsse, quum de caussâ taliter disputaverint.” So it is
that men get better informed, the further removed they are from personal
knowledge of the events.

Having reached the perfect story in Æthelred, it is needless to carry on
the examination any further. I will only add that some specially
eloquent talk on the subject will be found in the Ramsey History, cap.
cxx. (p. 461), and that in Æthelred (377) we first find the line which
has become more famous through the false Ingulf, “Sicut spina rosam
genuit Godwinus Edivam.”

NOTE C. p. 29.
EADWARD’S FONDNESS FOR FOREIGN CHURCHMEN.

I may here quote a curious story about the relations between Eadward and
Eadgyth and a foreign Abbot, which I cannot do better than give in the
original Latin. The hero of the tale was Abbot of the famous monastery
of Saint Riquier in Picardy. The church is a splendid one, but of late
date; not far off is the municipal _beffroi_, to which the inhabitants
still point with pride as the memorial of struggles waged with, and
victories gained over, their ecclesiastical lords.

“Regi Anglorum Hetguardo Gervinus semper carus et venerabilis fuit, et
ab illo, si ejus fines intrâsset, mirâ honorificentia attollebatur.
Quique Rex, si eum in aliquâ vel pro aliquâ loci nostri necessitate
angustiari comperisset, munificus valdè in succurrendo, remotâ omni
excusatione, exsistebat. Regina etiam conjux ejusdem, nomine Edith,
satis superque Gervinum pro suæ merito sanctitatis diligebat et
venerabatur, et juxta mariti exemplum admodùm liberalis, si aliqua
petiisset, libens conferebat. Quâdam vero vice accidit ut Abbati
nuperrimè terram illam ingresso osculum salutationis et pacis Regina
porrigeret, quod ille gratiâ conservandæ sinceritatis abhorrens excipere
noluit. At illa ferox, videns se Reginam spretam à monacho, nimis
molestè tulit, et quædam quæ, ut pro se orâsset, illi donare statuerat,
irata retraxit. Verûm, marito id ipsum increpante, quod Abbatem tam
religiosum pro non infracto rigore odio insequi voluisset, et aliis
honestis viris suggerentibus non esse odiendum hominem qui sic Deo se
mancipâsset, ut ne Reginæ quidem osculo se pateretur contra ordinem
mulceri, placata est Regina, et hujusmodi factum non solum in illo non
vituperavit, sed magnæ laudis attollens præconio, in sui regni Episcopis
vel Abbatibus talem manere consuetudinem deinceps conquesta est. Multis
ergo honoribus et donis eum fulciens remittebat onustum, hoc solum ab eo
reposcens ut tempore orationis inter benefactores computari mereretur.
Uxor etiam ipsius Regis donavit ei amictum valdè pretiosum, auro et
lapide pretioso mirificè decoratum, quem Abbas detulit in nostræ
ecclesiæ thesaurum.” Chron. Centulense, iv. 22. ap. D’Achery, ii. 345.

This story is referred to, but inaccurately, in Mr. Thorpe’s Lappenberg,
ii. 244. There is no mention of it in the original, p. 504.

Saint Riquier however does not appear to have held lands in England in
Eadward’s time, but this was not the last begging expedition of Gervinus
to our shores. On the gifts of Eadward and Eadgyth to Saint Denis,
Fécamp, and other monasteries, see Ellis, i. 304, 307, 324. Cod. Dipl.
iv. 229. cf. 251.

Another reference to Eadward’s lavishness in this way is found in the
Chronicle of Saint Wandrille in the same volume of D’Achery (ii. 286);
“Uxorem quoque filiam Hotuvini [sic] magni illius terræ principis, qui
fratrem suum Alureth jampridem cum multis crudeliter atque dolo
peremerat, accepit, eosque quos secum de Nortmannis duxerat utriusque
ordinis amplis honoribus extulit, auro et argento ditavit.”

NOTE D. p. 31.
ENGLISH AND NORMAN ESTIMATES OF GODWINE AND HAROLD.

There is a remarkable passage of William of Malmesbury, in which, as his
manner often is, he sets before his readers two different accounts or
opinions of the same thing. He there contrasts the Norman and English
accounts of Godwine and his sons, in words which seem, like several
other passages, to show that he had the contemporary Biographer before
him. His words (ii. 197) are;

“Hunc [Archbishop Robert] cum reliquis Angli moderni vituperant
delatorem Godwini et filiorum ejus, hunc discordiæ seminatorem, hunc
archiepiscopii emptorem; Godwinum et natos magnanimos viros, et
industrios auctores et tutores regni Edwardi; non mirum si succensuerint
quod novos homines et advenas sibi præferri viderent; numquam tamen
contra Regem, quem semel fastigaverint, asperum etiam verbum loquutos.
Contra, Normanni sic se defensitant, ut dicant et cum et filios magnâ
arrogantiâ et infidelitate in Regem et in familiares ejus egisse, æquas
sibi partes in imperio vindicantes; sæpe de ejus simplicitate solitos
nugari, sæpe insignes facetias in illum jaculari: id Normannos perpeti
nequivisse, quin illorum potentiam quantùm possent enervarent.”

In this passage William very fairly carries out his promise of letting
each side tell its own story. Which of the two pictures is borne out by
particular facts, we shall see at the proper stages of the history; it
may not be amiss to collect here a few of the more general pictures of
Godwine and Harold drawn according to the two models. In the case of
Harold, I confine myself to those passages, whether panegyrics or
invectives, which concern his general character and his administration
as Earl. Those which concern either his relations to William or his
character as King I reserve for notice at a later stage.

Of Godwine personally none of the Chronicles give any formal character,
but the Worcester Chronicler (1052) gives a picture of the power of
himself and house, setting forth their influence as strongly as any of
the Norman writers, but with an exactly opposite colouring. “Forðam þe
he [Godwine] wæs ær to þam swyðe up ahafen, swyce he weolde þæs Cynges
and ealles Englalandes, and his sunan wæron Eorlas _and þæs Cynges
dyrlingas_, and his dohtor þæm Cynge bewedden and beæwnod.” Of Harold
both the Abingdon and the Worcester Chroniclers give a panegyric in the
poem on Eadward which they insert in the year 1065. He is there, as if
in direct answer to the Norman account, warmly praised for his strict
loyalty to the King.

“And se froda swa þeah
Befæste þæt rice
Heahþungenum menn
Harolde sylfum
Æþelum Eorle;
Se in ealle tid
Hyrde holdlice
Hærran sinum,
Wordum and dædum,
Wihte ne agælde
Þæs þe þearf wæs
Þæs þeodkyninges.”

Florence gives no character of Godwine; of Harold—“strenuus Dux
Haroldus”—he always speaks with evident affection, but his formal
panegyric, and a magnificent one it is, he keeps back till Harold’s
election to the Crown.

The Biographer’s description of Godwine I have had occasion to refer to
at vol. i. 450. Of Harold he gives a most elaborate portrait, of which I
have made great use in the text. I spare the reader this writer’s
poetical panegyrics, except when they illustrate some special point: but
I will quote one or two passages which compare the father and the son in
a general sort of way. Godwine, he tells us, on his appointment as Earl
of the West-Saxons (see vol. i. p. 469),

“Adeptus tanti honoris primatum non se extulit, sed omnibus bonis se pro
posse patrem præbuit: quia quam à puero addidicerat mentis mansuetudinem
non exuit; verùm hanc, ut naturaliter sibi indita, erga subditos et
inter pares æternâ assiduitate excoluit. Undecumque emergerent injuriæ,
in hoc jus et lex imprompta recuperabatur. Unde non pro domino
habebatur, sed à cunctis patriæ filiis pro patre colebatur. Nati sunt
ergo filii et filiæ tanto patri non degeneres, sed paternâ et maternâ
probitate insignes, in quibus nutriendis studiosiùs his artibus agitur,
quibus futuro regno munimen pariter et juvamen in his paratur.” (392,
393.)

So, in p. 408, on describing the death of Godwine and the accession of
Harold to his Earldom, he says;

“Haroldus ... amicus gentis suæ et patriæ vices celebrat patris
intentiùs, et ejusdem gressibus incedit, patientiâ scilicet et
misericordiâ, et affabilitate cum benè volentibus. Porrò inquietatis,
furibus, sive prædonibus, leonino terrore et vultu minabatur gladiator
justus.”

The Waltham winters are of course Harold’s sworn panegyrists; their
testimony must therefore be taken with caution, though certainly not
with more caution than the testimony of Harold’s calumniators, the sworn
panegyrists of William. I forbear to enlarge on the “Vita Haroldi,”
where the hero of the piece figures as “vir venerabilis,” “vir Dei,” and
so forth. These epithets of course refer far more to Harold’s imaginary
penance and seclusion as a hermit than they do to his real merits as
Earl and as King. I will quote this romantic writer only for one
passage, in which he is plunged into difficulties by the calumnious
accounts of Godwine and his family, which in his time were generally
received. Godwine, according to him, began to practise deceit only as
far as was needful for his own safety in troublous times; corrupted by
this dangerous familiarity with crime, he gradually grew into actual
treason. But admiration of Harold, combined with at least partial
censure of Godwine, is not peculiar to this romancer. It is the position
of the Abingdon Chronicler.

The account of Godwine given by Harold’s biographer runs thus;

“Constat ipsius [Haroldi] genitorem vel cæterorum quosdam de illius
genere, tantum proditionis, tantum et aliorum notâ facinorum infamatos
gravitèr fuisse. His vero malis, necessitate cavendi imminentis exitii,
Godwinus se primò immiscuit, deinde ulteriùs evagatur. Tuendæ siquidem
salutis obtentu dolum tentare compulsus, dum semel cedit ad votum,
fraudibus in posterum minuendæ felicitatis intuitu licentiùs nitebatur.”
(Chroniques Anglo-Normandes, ii. 152.)

He then tells the story, which I have mentioned in vol. i. p. 467, about
the way in which Godwine obtained Gytha in marriage. He then goes on;

“Quo tamen eventu Godwinus in Dacorum plusquam satis favorem effusus,
gentis suæ quampluribus fiebat infestus; nonnullos quoque de semine
regio, quorum unus frater sancti Edwardi fuit, dolo perdidit; sicque non
modò in concives, immo et in dominos naturales [cyne-hlafordas] non
pauca deliquit” (154).

He then winds up by rebuking those who turned the crimes of Godwine to
the discredit of Harold. Harold here, not Eadgyth, is the rose sprung
from the thorn; “Sic rutilos producit, sic niveos quasi nutrit rosarum
liliorumque spina flores” (155).

This writer’s notion of Godwine favouring the Danes against the English
is found also in the Roman de Rou (9809). He is telling the story of
Ælfred (see vol. i. p. 544);

“Cuntre li vint Quens Gwine,
Ki mult esteit de pute orine;
Feme out de Danemarche née,
De Daneiz bien emparentée,
Filz out Héraut, Guert, è Tosti.
Pur li enfez ke jo vus di,
Ki de Daneiz esteient né,
E de Daneiz erent amé,
Ama Gwine li Daneiz
Mult mielx k’il ne fist li Engleiz.
Oez cum fu fete déablie,
Grant traïsun, grant félunie:
Traistre fu, traïsun fist,
Ki en la lei Judas se mist.”

To return to the Waltham writers, the witness of the writer “De
Inventione” is worth infinitely more than that of Harold’s biographer.
The affectionate tribute which he pays to Harold is clearly something
more than mere conventional panegyric on a founder. Harold was chosen
King, “quia non erat eo prudentior in terrâ, armis strenuus magis, legum
terræ sagacior, in omni genere probitatis cultior” (p. 25 Stubbs). At
his death (27) the lament is, “Cadit Rex ab hoste fero, gloria regni,
decus cleri, fortitudo militiæ, inermium clipeus, certantium firmitas,
tutamen debilium, consolatio desolatorum, indigentium reparator,
procerum gemma.”

Such were the great father and son as they seemed in the eyes of
Englishmen of their own times and in the eyes of those who in after
times cherished purely English traditions. Let us see how they appeared
to the Norman writers of their own day, and to those who follow that
Norman tradition which permanently triumphed. It would be easy to
prolong the list indefinitely, but I think it needless to refer to any
but writers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. On the whole, they
are more fierce against Godwine than against Harold. They allow Godwine
hardly any excellence beyond mere power of speech, while several of them
are quite ready to do justice to Harold’s great qualities in other
respects, even while they condemn his supposed perjury and usurpation.
The first however, and, in some respects, the most important, William of
Poitiers, the immediate follower and laureate of the Conqueror, has not
the slightest mercy for either father or son. He stops twice in the
course of his history to apostrophize, first Godwine (p. 79 Giles) and
then Harold (p. 111), in terms of virulent abuse, the declamation in the
latter case being brought in with the formula, “Paucis igitur de
affabimur, Heralde.” But these addresses contain nothing but the old
stories about the death of Ælfred and the oath to William. Elsewhere
(126) the Lexovian Archdeacon gives his general character of Harold,
describing him as “luxuriâ fœdum, truculentum homicidam, divite rapinâ
superbum, adversarium æqui et boni.” “Truculentus homicida,” as appears
from the context, means “victor at Stamfordbridge;” “luxuriâ fœdus” may
possibly mean “lover of Eadgyth Swanneshals.”

William of Jumièges writes of Godwine in the same strain as William of
Poitiers. Harold is of course usurper, perjurer, and so forth, but there
is no such set abuse of him as we find in the Gesta Guillelmi. Of
Godwine he writes (vii. 9);

“Ferox dolique commentor Godvinus eo tempore Comes in Angliâ
potentissimus erat, et magnam regni Anglorum partem fortiter tenebat,
quam ex parentum nobilitate [a contrast to the description in Wace] seu
vi vel fraudulentiâ vendicaverat. Edwardus itaque metuens tanti viri
potentiâ lædi dolove solito, Normannorum consultu, quorum fido vigebat
solatio, indignam Aluredi fratris sui perniciem ei benignitèr indulsit.”

Other writers on the same side are more generous, at any rate towards
Harold. Orderic, as usual, fluctuates between his two characters of born
Englishman and Norman monk. In his Norman monastery he had been taught
that Harold was a wicked usurper, and he speaks of him accordingly. But
natural admiration for an illustrious countryman makes him, once at
least, burst his trammels, and he ventures to say (492 B); “Erat idem
Anglus magnitudine et elegantiâ, viribusque corporis animique audaciâ,
et linguæ facundiâ, multisque facetiisque et probitatibus admirabilis.”
One can almost forgive him when he adds, “Sed quid ei tanta dona sine
fide, quæ bonorum omnium fundamentum est, contulerunt?”

In the like spirit Benoît de Sainte-More, though denouncing Harold
(Chroniques Anglo-Normandes, i. 174) as “Parjur, faus, pleins de
coveitise,” yet elsewhere (i. 193) gives him this generous tribute;

“Proz ert Heraut e vertuos,
E empernanz e corajos.
N’estoveit pas en nule terre
Sos ciel meillor chevaler querre.
Beaus estait trop e bons parlers,
Donierre e larges viandiers.”

The series of English writers under Norman influence may be said to
begin with Henry of Huntingdon. It is strange that one who has preserved
so much of old English tradition should be so absolutely without English
feeling in the great controversy of all. We have already (vol. i. p.
543) seen some specimens of his way of dealing with Godwine. As for
Harold, he tells the legend of his quarrel with Tostig, of which I shall
speak elsewhere, and goes on (M. H. B. 761 B); “Tantæ namque sævitiæ
fratres illi erant, quod quum alicujus nitidam villam conspicerent,
dominatorem de nocte interfici juberent totamque progeniem illius,
possessionemque defuncti obtinerent; et isti quidem justitiarii erant
regni.” This is somewhat expanded by Roger of Wendover—to quote an
author rather later than the limit which I had laid down. All the sons
of Godwine, Wulfnoth perhaps included, were partakers in these evil
deeds (“Tantæ namque iniquitatis omnes filii Godwini proditoris erant.”
i. 508), and Henry’s last clause is expanded into, “qui tamen, super tot
flagitia, Regis simplicitatem ita circumvenerunt, quod ipsos regni
justitiarios constituerit et rectores.” What was the exact notion of
“justitiarii” in the minds of Henry and Roger?

Eadward’s own special panegyrist, Æthelred of Rievaux, is hardly so
bitter against Harold as might have been looked for. Of course he speaks
of his accession in the usual fashion, and he tells the legend of his
enmity with Tostig. Of Godwine he gives (X Scriptt. 377) the following
picture, which is at least valuable as witnessing to the still abiding
memory of Godwine’s power of speech;

“Erat inter potentes Angliæ omnium potentissimus Comes Godwinus, vir
magnarum opum sed astutiæ singularis, Regum regnique proditor, qui,
doctus fallere et quælibet dissimulare consuetus, facilè populum ad
cujuslibet factionis inclinabat assensum.”

I will now turn to two or three writers who are neither English nor
Norman. The biographer of Olaf Tryggwesson seems to stand alone in
wishing to make a saint of Harold (“Haraldur Gudina son, er sumir kalla
helgan vera.” p. 263). This is remarkable, for, though he mentions, as
we shall hereafter see, the tale that Harold was not killed on the field
at Senlac, he seems to know nothing of his penitence and hermit life.
But other Scandinavian and German writers seem quite to take the Norman
view of things. Thus Adam of Bremen (iii. 13) says of the sons of
Godwine, “Tenuerunt Angliam in ditione suâ, Eduardo tantùm vitâ et inani
Regis nomine contento.” So also his Scholiast, “Harold ... ipsum
cognatum et dominum suum, Regem Eduardum pro nihilo habuit.” Elsewhere
(iii. 51) he calls Harold “vir maleficus.” Saxo, of whose ideas I have
already given some specimens (see vol. i. p. 592), is more violent
against Harold than any one else. Having told his wonderful tale about
the slaughter of the Danes after the death of Harthacnut, he goes on (p.
203);

“Igitur Haraldus, Danicæ oppressionis simulque domesticæ libertatis
auctor, Edvardo summam, factâ non animi ejus sed sanguinis æstimatione,
permittit, quatenus ille nominis, ipse rerum usurpatione regnaret, et
quo nobilitate pervenire non posset, potentiâ vallatus assurgeret.
Edvardus vero, solâ generis auctoritate non prudentiæ ratione munitus,
vano majestatis obtentu pravorum ingenia majorumque petulantiam
nutriebat, titulo Rex patriæ, conditione miserabilis procerum verna,
contentus quod alii fructum, ipse umbram tantùm ac speciem occupâsset.
Ità Anglorum inter se summam nomen atque potentiam diviserunt, titulique
jus ac rerum dominium veluti diversis ab invicem gradibus differebant.”
He then goes on with his wild tale, which I have had occasion to mention
already (see p. 413), about Harold killing Eadward. Elsewhere (p. 207)
he uses the words “Haraldus, cui scelera Mali cognomen adjecerant,” in
which it is not very clear whether he means our Harold or Harold
Hardrada.

Snorro gives no portrait of Harold, and his genealogy, as we shall see,
is utterly confused. But he gives a picture of Harold’s relations to
Eadward which is at least widely different from that of Saxo. He makes
him the King’s favourite and foster son (“Hann fæddiz upp í hird,
Játvardar Konungs, oc var hans fóstr son, oc unni Konungr honöm geysi
mikit, oc hafdi hann fyrir son ser; þvíat Konúngrinn átti eigi barn.”
Johnstone, 189. Laing, iii. 75).

I leave it to the reader to judge which description, either of father or
son, is better borne out by the facts of the history. I will only add
that, in this case also, calumny, as usual, preserves a certain
propriety. Godwine was a crafty, and not always scrupulous, statesman;
Harold was a hero. The calumnies levelled at each are such as would
naturally be levelled at a crafty statesman and a hero respectively.

NOTE E. p. 32.
THE ALLEGED SPOLIATIONS OF THE CHURCH BY GODWINE AND HAROLD.

The charge of sacrilege, of spoliation of churches and monasteries, is
one which Godwine and Harold share with almost every powerful man of
those times. William of Malmesbury speaks of it as a characteristic of
the reign of Eadward; only he adds that the King’s panegyrists
attributed this, along with the other evils of the time, to Godwine and
his sons. According to them, it was for these crimes of one sort or
another that Eadward banished the whole family. The whole passage (ii.
196) is curious;

“Fuerunt tamen nonnulla quæ gloriam temporum deturpârunt; _monasteria
tunc monachis viduata_; prava judicia à perversis hominibus commissa....
Sed harum rerum invidiam amatores ipsius ità extenuare conantur;
_monasteriorum destructio_, perversitas judiciorum, non ejus scientiâ,
sed per Godwini filiorumque ejus sunt commissa violentiam, qui Regis
ridebant indulgentiam; postea tamen ad eum delata, acritèr illorum
exsilio vindicata.”

This is of course Norman talk, and we know very well what to think of
the “perversitas judiciorum.” But for the charge of destruction of
monasteries there is undoubtedly a groundwork of fact, and it will be
worth while to go through the evidence on which Godwine and his sons are
charged with this and other acts of sacrilege. On this evidence I have
two general comments to make.

First, In estimating charges of this sort we must remember that we
commonly hear one side only. The works of Ealdorman Æthelweard and Count
Fulk form so small a portion of our authorities that we may say that the
whole history of these times was written exclusively by churchmen. And
those churchmen were far more commonly monks than seculars. The monks of
course tell the story their own way, and we do not often get the
layman’s answer. A legal claim against a monastery or other
ecclesiastical body runs a very fair chance of being represented as a
fraudulent or violent occupation. And Domesday is hardly an impartial
witness for a charge against Harold. If he acquired lands by as good a
title as he acquired the Crown, the Norman writers would, if they had
the least excuse, speak of their acquisition in the same way in which
they speak of his acquisition of the Crown.

Secondly, It was a very common thing for the reeves or other officers of
powerful men to deal very freely with both monastic and other lands that
came in their way. This they sometimes did without the knowledge of
their masters. Thus Heming, in the Worcester Cartulary (p. 391), reckons
three classes of “maligni homines” who unjustly deprived the Church of
Worcester of its possessions. First come the “Dani hanc patriam
invadentes;” secondly, after them (“postea”), are the “injusti præpositi
et regii exactores;” lastly, in his own day (“istis temporibus”) come
the “violenti Normanni.” Sir Henry Ellis (ii. 142) has collected a
number of instances of spoliation by underlings, of one of which, the
story about Christ Church and Harold Harefoot, I have already spoken
(see vol. i. p. 562). Some of these I shall have to mention again.

Now we shall come across distinct evidence that some of the charges
against Godwine and Harold come under one or other of these heads. And
in estimating other charges of the kind against Godwine, Harold, or
anybody else, we should always bear in mind that we are hearing one side
only, and that it is quite probable that an equally good defence might
be forthcoming. The charge of sacrilege is brought against Godwine in
the one English Chronicle which may be called in some degree hostile to
him. The Abingdon Chronicle (1052) recording his death, adds, “Ac he
dyde ealles to lytle dædbote of þære Godes are þe he hæfde of manegum
halgum stowum.” But even this must be read with the same qualification.

The general picture of destruction of monasteries mentioned by William
of Malmesbury sounds strange at a time when so many monasteries were
being founded and endowed and their churches being rebuilt. I conceive
that it rests mainly on two remarkable cases, those of the Abbeys of
Berkeley and Leominster, which seem to have got confounded together in
legendary history. I trust that I have shown elsewhere that Leominster
Abbey was dissolved after the affair of Swegen and Eadgifu in 1046 (see
above, p. 89). I conceive it to be a legendary version of this story
when Walter Map (De Nugis Curialium, p. 201, ed. Wright) tells a tale of
the destruction of Berkeley nunnery, how Godwine sets a handsome nephew
to seduce the nuns, how he then complains to the King of their
misconduct, how he procures the dissolution of the house and the grant
of its possessions to himself. It is certain that there was a real
suppression of a monastery at Berkeley, and that Godwine profited by it
in some way or other. As in Domesday we find Leominster in the hands of
the Lady Eadgyth, with only a most incidental mention of the nuns, so we
find Berkeley (163) in the hands of the King, without any mention of
monks or nuns, or of Godwine either. But that there had been a monastery
at Berkeley appears from a variety of evidence. See Cod. Dipl. i. 276.
ii. 111. Flor. Wig. 805, 915, in the former of which years we find an
Abbess, Ceolburh by name, presiding over the house, while in the latter
it was governed by an Abbot, Æthelhun. But, as Professor Stubbs has
shown in the Archæological Journal, vol. xix. (1862), p. 248, the
existence of an Abbess does not necessarily imply the presence of nuns,
as many monasteries seem to have had either Abbots or Abbesses, as
suited family convenience. There is also mention of nuns at Berkeley at
a time later than Godwine, in a charter of Adeliza, Queen of Henry the
First (Monasticon, iv. 42, and vi. 1618), and in the Pipe Roll of 31
Hen. I. (ed. Hunter, p. 133; “investitura iii. monialium, lx._s._” For
this last reference I have to thank Professor Stubbs). By the Charter of
Adeliza the Church of Berkeley, with the “Prebends of two nuns,” was
granted to the new Abbey of Reading, by which the church was afterwards
transferred to Saint Augustine’s at Bristol (Smyth’s Lives of the
Berkeleys, p. 49). But the whole account of these later nuns of Berkeley
is very obscure, and whatever they were, they must have been a revival
of the old foundation later than the time of Godwine. For the
destruction of the monastery at Berkeley, and Godwine’s share in it, are
undoubted facts, though we are left without any explanation as to their
causes. A most remarkable entry in Domesday (164) tells us that, when
Godwine was at Berkeley, his wife Gytha refused to eat anything which
came out of that lordship, because of a pious scruple arising out of the
destruction of the Abbey. Godwine therefore bought of Azor, a man of
whom we often hear, the lordship of Woodchester (a place near Stroud,
noted for its Roman remains), for her maintenance when in
Gloucestershire (“Gueda mater Heraldi Comitis tenuit Udecestre. Godwinus
Comes emit ab Azor, et dedit suæ uxori, ut inde viveret, donec ad
Berchelai maneret. Nolebat enim de ipso manerio aliquid comedere,
propter destructionem Abbatiæ.” We have no further account, except the
evidently mythical tale told by Walter Map. It is by no means clear
whether there were or were not any nuns at Berkeley in Godwine’s time,
and probably no one would accept Walter Map’s tale as it stands. But
that tale may very likely be a romantic improvement of the story of
Swegen and Eadgifu, transferred from Leominster to Berkeley. Both
Leominster and Berkeley were monasteries suppressed in the reign of
Eadward. Godwine or his family were concerned in, or profited by, the
suppression of both. Both were restored, in one shape or another, in
later ways; both became connected with the Abbey of Reading. To
substitute one name for the other was one of the most obvious of
confusions. The details of the story of course grew, like the details of
other stories. Berkeley Abbey, at all events, was suppressed, and
Godwine had a power of disposing of its revenues. Here then we have one
clear case in which Godwine was concerned in the destruction of a
monastery. We do not know whether he had any justification to offer for
his conduct, but we know that it was not approved by his own wife.

It appears also that Godwine was charged by the Norman Archbishop Robert
with converting some lands belonging to the see of Canterbury to his own
use. Here however we for once get the Godwinist version. The lands of
the Earl and the Archbishop joined, and there was a dispute about
boundaries. We cannot, at this distance of time, say in whose favour a
jury would have decided; but it is plain that Robert claimed lands of
which Godwine was in actual possession, and that Godwine’s friends
looked upon the Archbishop and not the Earl as the intruder. This is a
very important case, from our having the tale told from the side of the
layman. It is a case which by itself would be enough to make us always
weigh the possibility that there may have been another side to many
other cases in which we get only the churchman’s statement. It is
impossible for us now to tell on whose side the legal right lay in the
dispute between Godwine and Robert; but there is every appearance that
it was simply a question for a legal tribunal, one in which each side
may well have urged its claims in good faith. The story, as told by the
Biographer of Eadward (p. 400), runs as follows;

“Accedebat autem ad exercendos odiorum motus pro Episcopo in caussam
justam quod terræ quædam Ducis contiguæ erant quibusdam terris quæ ad
Christi attinebant Ecclesiam [that is, Christ Church, Canterbury].
Crebræ quoque erant inter eos controversiæ, quod eum dicebat terras
archiepiscopatûs sui invasisse, et in injuriâ suâ usibus suis eas
tenere. Ferebat autem idem industrius Dux incautiùs furentem Episcopum
pacificè.... Coquebat tamen vehementiùs quosdam suorum illa Ducis
injuria, et nisi ejus obstiterit prohibitio, gravi Episcopum persæpe
multâssent contumeliâ.”

In this last clause we seem to see the over-zealous officers, of whom we
hear in other stories, and whom Godwine so characteristically keeps in
order.

These are, as far as I know, the only particular cases in which it is
possible to test the value of the general remark made by the Abingdon
Chronicler as to Godwine’s occupations of Church property. In the case
of Berkeley we can say absolutely nothing either way, except so far as
Gytha’s scruple may be held to tell against her husband. In the Kentish
case Godwine may well have had a perfectly good defence. The charges
against Harold are more numerous. They rest mainly on certain entries in
Domesday, which have been carefully collected by Sir Henry Ellis (i.
313). Harold is there said to have taken, or to have held unjustly,
various pieces of ecclesiastical property, and in most cases it is
carefully noted that William caused them to be restored by some legal
process. Thus, in Sussex (21 _b_) we find a virgate of land at Apedroc
which Harold “habuit et abstulit à Sancto Johanne.” This seems not to
have been restored; it had become a chief dwelling-place of William’s
half-brother Earl Robert (“ubi Comes habet aulam suam”), and Robert was
to be as much preferred to Saint John, as Saint John was to be preferred
to Harold. In Wiltshire (69), at Allington, were four hides “quas
injustè abstraxit Heraldus ab ecclesiâ Ambresberie testimonio tainorum
sciræ.” Three lordships in Dorset (75 _b_, 78 _b_) are said to have been
taken by Harold (“abstulerat Heraldus Comes”) from Shaftesbury Abbey,
and to have been restored by William on the evidence of a charter of
Eadward (“Willelmus Rex eam fecit resaisiri, quia in ipsâ ecclesiâ
inventus est brevis cum sigillo Regis Eadwardi præcipiens ut ecclesiæ
restituerentur”). So in Cornwall (121) an estate is in like manner
restored to Saint Petroc’s. One in Hertfordshire (132) helps us to a
date; “Heraldus Comes abstulit inde, ut tota syra testatur, et apposuit
in Hiz manerio suo, tribus annis ante mortem Regis Eadwardi (1063).”
Another entry, in nearly the same words, but without a date, follows in
fol. 133. There are two others in which we see the agency of the reeves
or other officers. In Dorset (80) we find that “Elnod tenuit T. R. E.
per Comitem Heraldum, qui eam abstulit cuidam clerico.” So in Kent (2),
“Alnod cild per violentiam Heraldi abstulit Sancto Martino Merclesham et
Hauochesten, _pro quibus dedit Canonicis iniquam commutationem_.” This
last entry is important. The act, though called “violentia,” was really
an exchange, and the spirit of these entries in Domesday is so clear
that we can hardly venture to say that it may not have been a fair and
legal exchange.

There is also a whole string of entries in Herefordshire (181 _b_, 182),
where it is said, “Hoc manerium tenuit Heraldus Comes injustè. Rex
Willelmus reddidit Walterio Episcopo.” These must be taken in connexion
with two writs addressed by Eadward to Harold in Herefordshire. One
(Cod. Dipl. iv. 218) is addressed to him jointly with Bishop Ealdred,
and therefore belongs to the time (1058–1060) when Ealdred administered
the see after the death of Leofgar (see above, p. 398). This writ
confirms to the Priests of Saint Æthelberht’s minster all their ancient
rights, it speaks of them as suffering poverty “for God’s love and
mine,” and calls on all men to help them. The other (iv. 194), addressed
to Harold together with Osbern (see above, p. 346), announces the
appointment of Walter to the Bishoprick (in 1060), and requires the
restoration of all property alienated from the see. The earlier
description of the poverty of the Canons can hardly fail to refer to
losses sustained through the ravages of Ælfgar and Gruffydd in 1055 (see
above, pp. 388, 391).

There is also a will of Leofric, Bishop of Exeter (Cod. Dipl. iv. 274),
in which that Prelate leaves to his Church the land which Harold had
lawlessly taken at Topsham (“ðæt land æt Toppeshamme, ðe áh ðe Harold
hit mid unlage útnam”). The Bishop died in 1072, but the land had not
then been recovered. Topsham appears in the Exon Domesday (p. 87) as a
possession of the Crown formerly held by Harold, without any mention of
the rights of the Church of Exeter.

The reader must judge how far any of the qualifications with which I set
out can be made to bear on any of these cases. What if the land at
Topsham, afterwards the port of Exeter, was needed for the defence of
the coast? The Bishop would very likely look on its appropriation for
such a purpose, even if it were paid for, as a thing done “mid unlage.”

There remains the great story of the alleged quarrel between Harold and
Gisa, Bishop of Wells. Of this we know the details, we can trace the
growth of misrepresentation, and it may perhaps serve as a key to some
of the other stories. Even here we have no statement on Harold’s side,
but the original charge against him, as contrasted with its later
shapes, pretty well explains itself. The story however is a somewhat
long one, and it may moreover fairly count as a part of the general
history. I shall therefore keep back its consideration till its proper
chronological place in the narrative, when I shall make it the subject
of a distinct note. I will now add a few instances which illustrate the
general subject by showing that Godwine and Harold by no means stand
alone in bearing accusations of this sort. In the case of nearly every
powerful man, including the most munificent benefactors to
ecclesiastical bodies, we find the same story of the detention of Church
property in some shape or other, or of transactions in which it is easy
to see the possible groundwork of such a charge.

I mentioned in a former Chapter (i. 289) that the very model of monastic
benefactors, Æthelwine the Friend of God, laid claim to, and made good
his claim to, certain lands possessed by the Abbey of Ely. As the Ely
historian (Hist. El. i. 5) himself tells the story, it is plain that the
claim made by the Ealdorman was certainly legal and probably just. Yet
the monastic writer clearly thinks that he ought to have given way even
to an unjust claim on the part of the Church, and he uses just the same
language which Domesday applies to Harold; “postpositâ Sanctæ Ecclesiæ
reverentiâ, eamdem terram invadentes sibi vindicârunt.” Soon after (c.
8) we come to a story of the same kind about Æthelwine’s son Ælfwold.
Godwine of Lindesey, one of the heroes of Assandun, is spoken of as a
pertinacious enemy of the Church of Evesham (see vol. i. p. 568). The
story about Harold Harefoot I have mentioned more than once. The passage
which I quoted from William of Malmesbury at the beginning of this note
also shows that Saint Eadward himself was by some people personally
blamed for the destruction of monasteries in his reign. And it is, at
any rate, clear that the estates of the dissolved houses of Leominster
and Berkeley had become royal property—more legally _folkland_—just as
they would have done in the time of Henry the Eighth. Eadgyth, the rose
sprung from the thorn, enjoyed the revenues of Leominster, seemingly
without any of the scruples which her mother felt in the case of
Berkeley. We find her also (see above, p. 46) engaged in some other
transactions about ecclesiastical property, which look at least as
doubtful as anything attributed to her father and brother. Nay, one
writer goes so far as to charge her sainted husband himself with
complicity in her doings of this kind. Twice does the Peterborough
historian (Hugo Candidus, Sparke, p. 42) say of possessions held or
claimed by that monastery, “Rex et Regina Edgita illam villam vi auferre
conati sunt.” So one of the charges brought against Tostig, the
benefactor of the Church of Durham (see p. 383), was that he had “robbed
God” (see p. 481). Siward also, the founder of Galmanho, and his son
Waltheof, who, as a monastic hero, ranks by the side of Æthelwine, both
stand charged with detaining lands belonging to the Abbey of
Peterborough (see above, p. 374). Eadwine, the brother of Leofric,
possessed lands claimed by the Church of Worcester, and the local writer
Heming (p. 278) evidently looked on his death at Rhyd-y-Groes as the
punishment; “Sed ipse diu hâc rapinâ gavisus non est. Nam ipse non multo
post a Grifino Rege Brittonum ignominiosâ morte peremptus est.” Nay,
Leofric and Godgifu themselves, the models of all perfection, do not
seem to have been quite clear on this score. Her reverence for Saint
Wulfstan led Godgifu to suggest to her husband the restoration of
certain lordships in his possession which had belonged to the Church of
Worcester (“Terras quas antea Dani cæterique Dei adversarii vi
abstulerant, et ab ipsâ Wigornensi ecclesiâ penitùs alienaverant.”
Heming in Ang. Sacr. i. 541). Her son Ælfgar followed her example. There
is also in Domesday (283 _b_) a most curious entry about certain lands
at Alveston in Warwickshire. They are inserted among the estates of the
Church of Worcester; but it is said of the sons of the former tenant
Bricstuinus (Brihtstán?); “Hoc testantur filii ejus Lewinus [Leofwine],
Edmar [Eadmer] et alii quatuor, sed nesciunt de quo, an de Ecclesiâ an
de Comite Leuric [Leofric], cui serviebat, hanc terram tenuit. Dicunt
tamen quod ipsi tenuerunt eam de L. Comite, et quò volebant cum terrâ
poterant se vertere.” Here we may discern a case of free commendation,
whether to the Church or to the Earl, but here are also ample materials
for a charge against Leofric of detaining the lands of the Church of
Worcester. Lastly, I may mention cases in which Prelates like Bishop
Ælfweard (p. 69) and Archbishop Ealdred (p. 467) stand charged with
wrongfully transferring property from one church to another. These last
cases, if they can be made out, seem to an impartial eye just as bad as
the occupation of Church lands by laymen. The breach of law is equal,
and when a Prelate, as Ealdred is said to have done, robbed the church
which he was leaving in favour of the church of which he was taking
possession, the personal greediness is equal. In fact, in all these
cases, the real crime lies in the breach of law which is implied in the
violent or fraudulent occupation of anything, whether the party wronged
be clerk or layman, individual or corporation. We must be on our guard
alike against the exaggerated notions about the crime of sacrilege put
forth by ecclesiastical writers, and also against the opposite
prejudices of some moderns, who sometimes talk as if the robbing of a
monastery were actually a praiseworthy deed.

On the whole, considering all the instances, we shall perhaps see reason
to think that all charges of this kind, charges in which we can very
seldom hear both sides, must be taken with great doubt and
qualification. On the other hand it is plain that the tenure of Church
property, perhaps of all property, was in those rough days very
uncertain. Men, we may well believe, often gave with one hand and took
with the other. No one did this more systematically than the Great
William himself. I will end this long note with the comments of his
namesake of Malmesbury on William’s doings in this respect, comments
which seem to have been equally applicable to many others among the
great men of his age;

“Ita ejus tempore ultro citroque cœnobialis grex excrevit, monasteria
surgebant, religione vetera, ædificiis recentia. Sed hìc animadverto
mussitationem dicentium, melius fuisse ut antiqua in suo statu
conservarentur, quam, illis semimutilatis, de rapinâ nova
construerentur” (iii. 278).

NOTE F. p. 36.
THE CHILDREN OF GODWINE.

The question of Godwine’s marriage or marriages I examined in my first
volume (p. 467), and I there came to the conclusion that there is no
ground for attributing to him more than one wife, namely Gytha, the
daughter of Thurgils Sprakaleg and sister of Ulf. There is no doubt that
Gytha was the mother of all those sons and daughters of Godwine who play
such a memorable part in our history.

The fullest lists of Godwine’s sons are those given by William of
Malmesbury (ii. 200) and Orderic (502 B). William’s list runs thus,
Harold, Swegen, Tostig, Wulfnoth, Gyrth, Leofwine. That of Orderic is,
Swegen, Tostig, Harold, Gyrth, Ælfgar, Leofwine, Wulfnoth. Saxo (196)
speaks of Harold, Beorn, and Tostig as sons of Godwine; that is, he
mistook Beorn the nephew of Gytha for her son. Snorro (Laing, iii. 75.
Ant. Celt. Scand. 189) has a far more amazing genealogy. He seems to
assume that Godwine must have been the father of every famous Englishman
of his time, and he reckons up his sons thus—Tostig the eldest,
_Maurokari_ (Morkere), _Waltheof_, Swegen, and Harold. He pointedly adds
that Harold was the youngest. It must be on the same principle that
Bromton (943) seems to make Godwine the father of Gruffydd of Wales. At
least his list runs thus, Swegen, Wulfnoth, Leofwine, Harold, Tostig,
and _Griffin_. So Walter of Hemingburgh (i. 4) gives Godwine a son
Griffus, which may be a confusion between Gruffydd and Gyrth. Knighton
(2334) gives the sons as Swegen, Harold, Tostig, Wulfnoth, Gyrth, and
Leof_ric_. But elsewhere, as Bromton had given Godwine a Gruffydd,
Knighton in the same spirit helps him to a Llywelyn. At least he talks
(2238) of the “malitia et superbia Haraldi et _Lewlini_ filiorum
Godwini.”

The Biographer mentions four sons, Harold, Tostig, Gyrth, and Leof_ric_.
This last mistake is odd, as from the combined authority of the
Chronicles, Florence, Domesday, and the Tapestry, there can be no doubt
that the true name is Leof_wine_. But the two names are much alike, and
both were current in the great Mercian house, whence they probably came
into the house of Godwine. If Earl Leofric was the godfather of
Godwine’s son, and gave him, not his own name, but that of his father
Leofwine, the confusion would be easily accounted for.

Of these sons, there is no doubt about six, namely Swegen, Harold,
Tostig, Gyrth, Leofwine, Wulfnoth, who all figure in the history at
different points. The only question is whether we ought, on the sole
authority of Orderic, to add a seventh son named Ælfgar. According to
him, Ælfgar lived and died a monk at Rheims, and Wulfnoth did the like
at Salisbury. This is undoubtedly false as regards Wulfnoth; and the
tale of a son of Godwine, otherwise unknown, spending his whole life in
a French monastery has a somewhat apocryphal sound. At any rate we may
dismiss Ælfgar, as a person of whose actions, if he ever existed, we
have no knowledge, while of the other six brethren we know a good deal.

Of the daughters of Godwine, there is no need to prove the existence of
Eadgyth the Lady. Another daughter, Gunhild, rests on the sure evidence
of the Exon Domesday (pp. 96, 99, “Gunnilla filia Comitis Godwini”). She
also has a history. A third daughter, Ælfgifu, is more doubtful. Kelham
(Domesday, 153) and Sir Henry Ellis (i. 309) speak of “Ælveva soror
Heraldi” as occurring in Domesday, but they give no reference, and I
have not as yet been able to find her name in the great record. But it
seems likely that Godwine had a third daughter, and it is not unlikely
that her name was Ælfgifu. It is part of the story of Harold’s oath
(Sim. Dun. 1066 and elsewhere) that he promised to marry his sister to
one of William’s nobles. Obviously this cannot apply to Eadgyth, nor yet
to Gunhild, who was devoted to a religious life. I shall, in my next
volume, discuss the question whether this sister may not be the puzzling
Ælfgyva of the Tapestry.

Of the order of the sons there is no doubt. Swegen (“filius primogenitus
Swanus,” Fl. Wig. 1051) was the eldest. Harold came next. That Harold
was older than Tostig is plain from the Biographer (“major natu
Haroldus,” 409), and indeed from the whole history. So even Saxo (207)
speaks of “minores Godovini filii [which at least includes Tostig]
majorem perosi.” Orderic’s notion (492 D) that Harold was younger that
Tostig is simply a bit of the Norman legend, devised to represent Harold
as depriving his elder brother, sometimes of the Earldom, sometimes of
the Kingdom. Snorro’s idea that Harold was the youngest of all is wilder
still. The order of the several brothers is marked very plainly in the
dates of their promotion to Earldoms; this is Swegen, Harold, Tostig,
Gyrth, Leofwine. Wulfnoth, who never held an Earldom, was doubtless the
youngest.

The order in which the brothers sign charters is worth notice. Setting
aside one impossible charter (Cod. Dipl. iv. 80–84), Swegen always signs
before Harold, Harold always before Tostig, Tostig always before Gyrth
and Leofwine. But Harold, Gyrth, and Leofwine do not observe so strict
an order among themselves. May we not infer from the recorded
disposition and actions of Swegen and Tostig that a certain attention to
ceremony was needed in their cases, while the other three brothers, who
lived and died firm friends, could afford to dispense with it?

The order of the daughters among themselves must have been Eadgyth,
Gunhild, Ælfgifu, if there was an Ælfgifu. For a daughter of Godwine and
Gytha to have been talked of as an intended wife for any one in 1066,
she must have been the very youngest of the family.

The order of the sisters with regard to their brothers is more difficult
to fix. It is hopeless to try to fix the place of Gunhild. But, as
Ælfgifu must have been the youngest, there is some reason to believe
that Eadgyth was the eldest of the family. The Biographer (p. 397)
compares four children of Godwine, seemingly Eadgyth, Harold, Tostig,
and Gyrth—he never mentions Swegen—to the four rivers of Paradise;

“Felix prole piâ Dux, stirpe beatus avitâ,
His quatuor natis dans Anglia pignora pacis.
Prodit gemma prior, variæ probitatis amatrix,
In medio Regni, tanto Duce filia patre
Ædgit digna suo, Regi condigna marito.”

This looks as if Eadgyth was the eldest of all. Godwine and Gytha were
married in 1019 (see vol. i. p. 467). Harold therefore, the second son,
could not, even if Eadgyth was younger than himself, have been born
before 1021, perhaps not till 1022 or later. He therefore could not have
been above twenty-four when he became Earl, nor above forty-five at his
death—he may of course have been younger. But none of Godwine’s sons who
held Earldoms could have been so young as William of Malmesbury fancied
Gyrth to be in 1066, when he calls him (iii. 239) “plus puero adultus et
magnæ ultra ætatem virtutis et scientiæ.” He had then been Earl of the
East-Angles for nine years.

NOTE G. p. 36.
THE GREAT EARLDOMS DURING THE REIGN OF EADWARD.

It is not always easy to trace the succession of the men who ruled the
different Earldoms of England during the reign of Eadward. In several
cases the Chronicles give us notices of the death, deposition, or
translation of one Earl and of the appointment of his successor. But
these entries taken alone would not enable us to put together a perfect
series of the Earls. For instance, Eadwine (1065), Gyrth (1066),
Leofwine (1066), Waltheof (1066), are all spoken of as Earls without any
account of their appointment, and, in the last three cases, without any
hint as to the districts over which they ruled. To make out anything
like a perfect list, we must go to various incidental notices in the
royal writs and elsewhere. By their help we shall be able to recover,
not indeed an absolutely complete account, but one much fuller than
appears on the face of the history, and one which reveals to us a great
number of anomalies which we should not have expected. The way in which
several Earls held isolated shires detached from the main body of their
Earldoms, and the way in which shires were transferred from the
jurisdiction of one Earl to that of another, are both of them very
remarkable.

For a complete view of these changes, and indeed of the general
succession of the Earls, we must go back to the fourfold division of
England by Cnut in 1017 (see vol. i. p. 448). Cnut then kept Wessex in
his own hands, and appointed Eadric over Mercia, Thurkill over
East-Anglia, Eric over Northumberland. In 1020 (see vol. i. p. 469),
Wessex also became an Earldom under Godwine. Now in these four great
governments we can trace the succession of Earls without difficulty,
with the single exception of East-Anglia. We have no account of that
Earldom from the banishment of Thurkill in 1021 (see vol. i. p. 473) to
the appointment of Harold, seemingly in 1045 (see above, p. 37). As for
Northumberland, I have already traced out the succession of its Earls
(see vol. i. p. 585 et seqq.). There is no doubt that, at the accession
of Eadward, Siward was in possession of both parts of the old Northern
realm, and that he remained in possession of them till his death. The
succession in Wessex is plainer still; Godwine was appointed in 1020,
Harold succeeded him in 1053; there is no room for any question, except
as to the disposal of the Earldom during the year of Godwine’s
banishment. And the mere succession in Mercia is equally plain. Leofwine
succeeded Eadric in 1017; Leofric succeeded Leofwine some time between
1024 and 1032 (see vol. i. p. 461); Ælfgar succeeded Leofric in 1057;
Eadwine, there can be no reasonable doubt, succeeded Ælfgar on his
death, at some time between 1062 and 1065. Our difficulties are of other
kinds. There is, first, the great uncertainty as to the meaning of the
name Mercia. There is the fact that various shires, especially in
Mercia, are found in the hands of other Earls than those to whom the
fourfold division would seem to have committed them. There is the fact
that we find mention of Earls holding Earldoms other than the four great
ones, and seemingly formed by dismemberments of the four. Lastly, we
find, especially under Cnut, the names of several Earls whom it is not
easy to supply with Earldoms.

This last difficulty need not greatly trouble us. It does not follow
that every Danish chief who signs a charter of Cnut with the title of
Earl was actually established in an English Earldom. On the other hand,
some one must have ruled in East-Anglia between 1021 and 1045, and it is
a fair guess, though nothing more, that the successive husbands of
Gunhild, Hakon and Harold (see vol. i. p. 475 et seqq.), who are spoken
of as if they had some permanent connexion with England, were Earls of
the East-Angles during some parts of that interval. The main difficulty
springs from what seem to have been the constantly fluctuating
arrangements of the Mercian shires. The old chaotic state of central
England seems to revive. First, it is not always clear what we are to
understand by the name Mercia. The name at this stage sometimes
includes, sometimes excludes, those parts of old Mercia which were ceded
by Ælfred to Guthrum. Secondly, we find various shires, Mercian in one
or the other sense, which are not under the government of the person
spoken of as the Earl of the Mercians.

Now when, as in the fourfold division made by Cnut, Wessex,
Northumberland, East-Anglia, and Mercia are spoken of as an exhaustive
division of England, there can be no doubt that Mercia is taken in the
widest sense, meaning the whole land from Bristol on the Avon to Barton
on the Humber. With this great government Eadric was invested. But it is
equally plain (see vol. i. p. 580) that, at a somewhat later time,
either Mercia in this sense was dismembered in favour of independent
Earls, or else subordinate Earls were appointed under a superior Earl of
the Mercians. I will now put together the evidence which we find on
these heads.

The first hint which we come across of a dismemberment of this kind is
in 1041, when we find Thuri or Thored, “Comes Mediterraneorum” and Rani
or Hranig, “Comes Magesetensium,” distinguished from Leofric, “Comes
Merciorum.” Of Thored we also know that his Earldom took in
Huntingdonshire. See vol. i. p. 580, where a writ of Harthacnut
addressed to him is quoted. And one may suspect that we ought to
substitute the same name for “Toli comes” who in a Huntingdon writ of
Eadward (Cod. Dipl. iv. 243) is addressed along with Bishop Eadnoth,
fixing the date of the writ to the years 1042–1050. (This Toli can
hardly be Tolig who is elsewhere addressed in Suffolk, seemingly as
Sheriff under the Earldom of Gyrth. Cod. Dipl. iv. 222, 223.) Of Ranig
we know that he held the rank of Earl as early as 1023 (see vol. i. p.
580). We may therefore be inclined to suspect that Mercia was
dismembered on the death of Eadric, and that, besides the Mercian
Earldom held by Leofwine and Leofric, two fresh Earldoms, whether
subordinate or independent, were formed within the limits of the old
Mercian Kingdom. On the whole I am inclined to think that a certain
superiority was always retained by Leofric, as chief Earl of the
Mercians. He always fills a special place, alongside of Godwine and
Siward, and we shall come across evidence to show that some of the
dismembered shires did, in the end, revert to him or to his house.

As to this Earldom of the “Mediterranei” or Middle-Angles, held by
Thored, we have no distinct account of its extent. But it is a probable
guess that it took in the whole eastern part of Mercia, the part in
which the Danish element was strongest. I am inclined to think that in
this Earldom Thored was succeeded by Beorn. Our indications are
certainly slight, but they look that way. We hear nothing distinctly of
Thored in Eadward’s time, while it is plain (see p. 36) that Beorn held
some Earldom from about the year 1045 till his murder. We know also that
his Earldom took in Hertfordshire (Cod. Dipl. iv. 19c). I infer then
that Beorn was Earl of the Middle-Angles, of Eastern or Danish Mercia. I
also infer that in that Earldom he had no one successor. No Earl is
spoken of in the later days of Eadward who can show any claim to such a
description, and several of the shires contained within the country
which I conceive to have been held by Thored and Beorn seem to have
remained in a sort of fluctuating state, ready to be attached to any of
the great governments, as might be convenient.

Thus _Huntingdonshire_ was within the Earldom of Thored. But in 1051
(Flor. Wig. in anno) we find it, together with _Cambridgeshire_, a shire
still so closely connected with it as to have a common Sheriff, detached
altogether from Mercia, and forming part of the East-Anglian Earldom of
Harold. “Men” of Harold’s in Huntingdonshire accordingly occur in
Domesday (p. 208). But Huntingdonshire was afterwards separated from
East-Anglia, perhaps on Harold’s translation to Wessex in 1053. It then
became, strange to say, an outlying portion of the Earldom of
Northumberland. It does not however appear that Cambridgeshire followed
it in this last migration. That Huntingdonshire was held by Siward is
shown by a writ (Cod. Dipl. iv. 239) coming between 1053 and 1055. It is
certain that it was afterwards held by Waltheof. Domesday also (208)
implies the succession of Siward, Tostig, and Waltheof, by speaking of
“men” and rights belonging first to Tostig and afterwards to Waltheof.
It might be worth considering whether some confused tradition of these
transfers of the shire formed an element in the legend of Tostig, Earl
of Huntingdon, slain by Siward. See vol. i. pp. 461, 587.

_Northamptonshire_, like Huntingdonshire, was separated from Mercia and
attached to Northumberland. This is distinctly shown by a royal writ
addressed to Tostig as its Earl (Cod. Dipl. iv. 240). The only other
Northamptonshire writ that I know (iv. 216) is addressed to Bishop
Wulfwig without any Earl’s name. But, as to Northamptonshire, another
question might arise. The singular description of the daughter of the
Northumbrian Earl Ælfhelm as Ælfgifu of Northampton (see vol. i. p. 453)
may possibly point to an earlier connexion between the two districts.
This last is a mere guess, but the connexion between Northumberland and
Northamptonshire during part of the reign of Eadward is quite certain.
But Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire were afterwards again detached
from Northumberland, and held as a separate Earldom by Waltheof. On this
point the evidence seems quite plain; the only question is as to the
exact date. Waltheof held some Earldom at the end of the year 1066, when
he is spoken of as an Earl with Eadwine and Morkere (Chron. Wig. 1066).
Under William, besides his great Northumbrian government, he was
certainly Earl of Northamptonshire (Ord. Vit. 522 C) and of
Huntingdonshire (Will. Gem. viii. 37). We may therefore infer that these
fragments of his father’s government formed the Earldom which he had
held under Harold. The false Ingulf (Gale, i. 66) makes him receive both
these shires on his father’s death in 1057, Tostig receiving
Northumberland. The Chronicle of John of Peterborough, which, though not
contemporary, has some authority as being a local record, distinctly
makes Waltheof succeed to Northamptonshire on his father’s death in
1055; “Siwardus Dux Northanhumbrorum obiit; ... cujus filius Waldevus,
postea martyr sanctus, factus est Comes Northhamptoniæ; comitatus autem
Northanhumbrorum datus est Tostio fratri Haroldi” (Giles, p. 50). But
this is shown to be incorrect by the charter just quoted, which shows
that Tostig was Earl in Northamptonshire. And the course taken by the
Northumbrian rebels in 1065 (see p. 489) seems to point to a still
abiding connexion between that shire and Northumberland. We can
therefore hardly doubt that both Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire
were obtained by Waltheof as a result of the Northumbrian revolt in
1065.

About _Nottinghamshire_ I do not feel quite certain. It appears from
Domesday (280) that Tostig had certain rights in the town of Nottingham;
but he is not distinctly spoken of as Earl of the shire. But the
connexion between this shire and the Northumbrian Primate makes a
connexion with the Northumbrian Earl far from unlikely.

_Hertfordshire_ formed part of the Earldom of Beorn. We have no further
account of it till after the redistribution in 1057 (see above, pp. 418,
419), when it appears in the hands of Leofwine. Two writs (Cod. Dipl.
iv. 217, 218) are addressed to him as Earl, conjointly with Wulfwig,
Bishop of Dorchester—the Prelate of the Middle-Angles—whose episcopacy
ranges from 1053 to 1067. In Domesday also (132) eighteen burghers in
the town of Hertford are described as being “homines Heraldi Comitis et
Lewini Comitis,” perhaps a sign of the superiority exercised by Harold
over the Earldoms of Gyrth and Leofwine. Men of Leofwine occur also in
the town of Buckingham (143) and in other parts of that shire (144,
145), suggesting that _Buckinghamshire_ also made part of his Earldom.
Of _Bedfordshire_ we seem to have no distinct account. Waltheof
(Domesday, 210 _b_) held lands there, but it need not have been in his
Earldom.

_Oxfordshire_ appears in 1015 (Flor. Wig. in anno) as part of the
Earldom of Swegen. (See above, p. 36.) After 1057 it appears as an
outlying appendage of the East-Anglian Earldom of Gyrth. Two writs for
Oxfordshire are addressed to him conjointly with Bishop Wulfwig (Cod.
Dipl. iv. 215, 217). The former is the well known grant of Islip to the
church of Westminster.

Of the other East-Mercian shires we have no account. But I am inclined
to believe that they must have reverted to Leofric, perhaps on the death
of Beorn. I am led to this belief by the almost certain fact that
_Lincolnshire_ did. All history and tradition connects Leofric and his
house with that shire; one of the great objects of his bounty, the
minster of Stow, is within its borders, and it is plain that, in 1066
(Flor. Wig. in anno), Lindsey formed part of the Earldom of his grandson
Eadwine.

The shiftings of the East-Mercian shires are thus frequent and
perplexing, but those of West-Mercia are equally so. That the
north-western shires remained constantly under Leofric and his house
there can be no reasonable doubt. Our one writ in those parts (Cod.
Dipl. iv. 201) is addressed to Eadwine in _Staffordshire_, and the
entries of property held in that shire and in _Cheshire_ by him and his
father are endless. The same may be said of _Shropshire_, but as soon as
we get south of that limit, we are at once in the region of
fluctuations. We have seen that Ranig was Earl of the Magesætas or of
_Herefordshire_ in 1041. It is impossible to say whether his government
extended beyond that limit. One can hardly doubt that Ranig was
succeeded by Swegen, whose Mercian possessions (Flor. Wig. 1051)
consisted of the shires of Hereford, Gloucester, and Oxford. It is
therefore not unlikely that Ranig’s government was of the same extent,
but we cannot be certain. But it is quite certain that Herefordshire was
detached from the government of Leofric and his successors during the
whole reign of Eadward. It is not clear what became of the shire during
Swegen’s first banishment. Something belonging to Swegen, either his
Earldom or his private estate, was (see pp. 89, 101) divided during his
absence between Harold and Beorn. It is therefore quite possible that
one or other of them may have governed Herefordshire from 1046 to 1050.
But it is equally possible that the shire was, during that interval,
held by Ralph of Mantes, Ralph the Timid, the son of Walter and Godgifu,
Indeed this last view becomes the more likely of the two, when we
remember the firm root which the Normans had taken in Herefordshire
before 1051 (see p. 138), which looks very much as if they had been
specially favoured in these parts. That Ralph succeeded Swegen on his
final banishment in 1051 I have no doubt at all. Sir Francis Palgrave
(English Commonwealth, ii. ccxc.) calls this fact in question on the
grounds that, at the time when William of Malmesbury (ii. 199) calls him
“Comes Herefordensis,” Herefordshire was under the government of Swegen,
and that, when Florence (1055) speaks of his doings in the Herefordshire
campaign, he does not formally describe him as Earl of the shire. But
surely, when a certain shire is invaded, and a certain Earl goes forth
to defend it, the presumption, in the absence of some distinct evidence
the other way, is that the Earl who so acts is the Earl in charge of the
shire. The passage of William of Malmesbury is simply one of his usual
confusions of chronology. Speaking of Eustace of Boulogne and his visit
to England in 1051, he mentions his marriage with Godgifu, and goes on
thus, “quæ ex altero viro, Waltero Medantino, filium tulerat Radulfum,
qui _eo tempore_ erat Comes Herefordensis, ignavus et timidus, qui
Walensibus pugnâ cesserit, comitatumque suum, et urbem cum episcopo,
ignibus eorum consumendum reliquerit; cujus rei infamiam maturè veniens
Haroldus virtutibus suis abstersit. Eustachius ergo ... Regem adiit.”
Undoubtedly, according to strict grammatical construction, “eo tempore”
ought to mean in 1051, but William so jumbles together the events of
1051 and of 1055 that it is hardly safe to argue from this expression
that he meant distinctly to assert that Ralph was Earl of Herefordshire
in 1051. He may just as well have meant that he was so when he waged his
unfortunate campaign with the Welsh, and certainly no one who got up his
facts from William of Malmesbury only would ever find out that that
campaign happened four years after the visit of Eustace.

Ralph then, I hold, was certainly Earl of Herefordshire in 1055, and the
natural inference is that he succeeded Swegen in 1051, and that, as
Swegen never came back, he was allowed to retain his Earldom in 1052.
That Ralph was succeeded by Harold in 1057 there can be no doubt. But
Harold’s Herefordshire Earldom is so important as a piece of national
policy, and it is connected with so many points in Harold’s character,
that I have spoken of it somewhat largely in the text. See pp. 395, 417,
and, for writs addressed to Harold in Herefordshire, see p. 547.

But we have also the fact that Ralph certainly held the rank of Earl
in the year 1051, while Swegen was still acting as Earl of the
Magesætas (see p. 141). We have also his signatures as Earl as early
as 1050 (see p. 111). Sir Francis Palgrave is therefore very possibly
right in quartering him in _Worcestershire_. That shire, he is
inclined to think, was in Cnut’s time held by Hakon the doughty Earl,
the first husband of Gunhild. This view he rests on a writ of Cnut’s
(Cod. Dipl. iv. 56) addressed to him as Earl in Worcestershire. The
writ is clearly spurious, but it is perhaps one of those cases in
which a spurious document proves something. Would a forger insert a
name so little known as that of Hakon in a spurious writ, unless he
had seen it in a genuine writ? Again, it is rather remarkable that in
two Worcestershire documents (see a deed of Bishop Ealdred, Cod. Dipl.
iv. 137, evidently passed in a Worcestershire Scirgemót, and another,
iv. 262) there is mention of Danish Thegns (“ealla ða yldestan þegnas
on Wigeraceastrescíre, Denisce and Englisce”) as a distinct class in
Worcestershire. This is what we should hardly have looked for so far
west, and it may possibly be taken in connexion with the complaints
about Danish spoilers of the Church of Worcester, which we have seen
in pp. 544, 560. This prevalence of Danes in the shire looks of itself
like the effect of the administration of a Danish Earl, and we find
also what seems to be a distinct mention of a Hakon as holding a
prominent position in the shire. In a document of Bishop Æthelstan of
Hereford in Cod. Dipl. iv. 234 we find, joined together in a
transaction of the time of Cnut, “Leofwine Ealdorman and Hacc ... and
Leofric, and eal seo scír.” In Mr. Thorpe’s Diplomatarium, p. 376, the
name is supplied in full, “Hacun,” which one might almost have
ventured to do without manuscript authority. Hakon is thus placed
between Ealdorman Leofwine and his son and successor Leofric. This
looks very much as if Hakon were a subordinate Earl of Worcestershire
under Leofwine as superior Earl of the Mercians. If so, he may, or may
not, have been removed from Worcestershire to the greater government
of the East-Angles. But, if we admit Hakon, we still have no means of
bridging over the interval between his death in 1030 and Ralph’s
appearance in 1041. Ralph, I suspect, when he received Herefordshire,
gave up Worcestershire to Odda. Of this Earl I must say a little more,
and he forms a natural means of transition from Mercia to Wessex.

The West-Saxon Earldom, during the administration of Godwine and Harold,
seems, except during the year of banishment, to have suffered no
dismemberment beyond the surrender of certain shires to be held by the
sons or brothers of its two Earls, doubtless under the superiority of
the head of the family. Thus Swegen, during his father’s lifetime, held,
besides his three Mercian shires, the government of _Somersetshire_ and
_Berkshire_ (Flor. Wig. 1051). On the fall of Godwine, Wessex was for a
moment dismembered (see p. 160). As we hear of no Earl of the
West-Saxons being appointed, the eastern shires, Berkshire included,
probably reverted to the Crown. But Somersetshire was joined with the
other western shires to form a new government under the King’s kinsman
Odda (“Odo et Radulfus Comites et Regis cognati,” says William of
Malmesbury, ii. 199). He had already some connexion with that part of
England, as he signs (Cod. Dipl. vi. 196) a charter of Bishop Ælfwold of
Sherborne relating to matters in Dorsetshire and Devonshire, which, from
the mention of Bishop Lyfing, must be older than 1046. He was now set as
Earl over the whole of the ancient _Wealhcyn_, or as the Peterborough
Chronicler (1048) puts it, “ofer Defenascire and ofer Sumersæton and
ofer Dorseton and ofer Wealas.” The Welsh are of course the Welsh of
Cornwall. (There is something singular in the territorial form being
applied to Devonshire and the tribe form to the Sumorsætas, but the same
distinction is made by the Worcester Chronicler in the next year.) Dr.
Lappenberg (510) suspects this Odda to have been a Frenchman. I see no
reason for this surmise. An “Odo Comes” is certainly mentioned in the
list of Normans established in England in Eadward’s time given in
Duchèsne, p. 1023, a list clearly made up of bits from Florence and
elsewhere. But he is said to have been “ante Edwardi tempora in exsilium
ejectus.” Henry of Huntingdon too (M. H. B. 761 E) speaks of an “Odo
Consul” as banished along with Archbishop Robert. But these are no great
authorities. A banishment of Odda seems quite out of the question, and
there is not a word in the Chronicles to imply that he was a foreigner.
Foreigners are commonly spoken of as such, and a foreign descent is
certainly not implied in Odda’s kindred with the King. He may have
sprung from some of the more distant branches of the royal family, or he
may have been connected with the King through his grandmother Ælfthryth.
His name, in its various forms, Odda, Oda, Odo, Oddo, Otto, Eudes, and
the like, is one of the few names which are common to England, Germany,
and France. But, in the shape of Odda, it is thoroughly English, and it
appears in English local nomenclature in such names as Oddington. Odda
had also a brother and sister, who bore the distinctively English names
of Ælfric (Cod. Dipl. iv. 137, 262. Chron. Wig. 1053) and Eadgyth
(“Eddied soror Odonis Comitis,” in Domesday 186). He himself also, after
his monastic profession, bore the no less truly English name of
Æthelwine (Flor. Wig. 1056. A signature of “Odda monachus” in Cod. Dipl.
iv. 132 cannot be his, by the date). His signatures as Earl are rare;
there is one in Cod. Dipl. iv. 139. But both Odda and Ælfric often sign
charters as “minister” and “nobilis,” sometimes, as in one of 1048 (Cod.
Dipl, iv. 116, so also vi. 196), in company with one Dodda, whom one
suspects to be a kinsman. Odda of course resigned his West-Saxon
government on the return of Godwine, and both Somersetshire and
Berkshire henceforth remained in the immediate possession of the Earl of
the West-Saxons. (See writs to Harold in Somersetshire, Cod. Dipl. iv.
195 et seqq., in Berkshire, iv. 200, in Dorsetshire, iv. 200.) But Odda
continues to be spoken of as Earl (Chronn. Ab. and Wig. 1056); and his
connexion with the Hwiccian land and its monasteries points to
Worcestershire, or possibly Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, as the
district under his charge. Three of the documents just quoted as bearing
his signatures are the deeds of Bishop Ealdred concerning lands in
Worcestershire of which I have already spoken (Cod. Dipl. iv. 137, 138,
262, see above, p. 562), The signatures to be noted are “Leofric Eorl
and Odda Eorl and Ælfric his broðor,” “Leofricus Dux, Ælfgarus Dux, Odda
Dux,” “Leofric Eorl and Odda and Ælfric his broðor.” There is also a
signature of Azor or Atsor, a well known Hwiccian Thegn (see above, p.
545). The special mention of Danish Thegns in Worcestershire I have
already spoken of (p. 561). It is therefore most probable that Odda held
the Earldom of the Hwiccas from the return of Godwine till the time when
he forsook the world. It must then have reverted to the House of
Leofric, as in Domesday (172) we find the city of Worcester making
payments to Eadwine as Earl.

In the East of England the ancient boundaries both of Wessex and of
East-Anglia were freely tampered with when the younger sons of Godwine
had to be provided with Earldoms. There can be no doubt that the Earldom
of East-Anglia was conferred on Gyrth, when Ælfgar was translated to
Mercia in 1057. The only question is whether he had not received some
smaller government at an earlier time. Gyrth appears as “Eorl” in the
Chronicles and as “Comes” in Domesday (Suffolk, 283 et al). In one
Suffolk entry (290) it is distinctly said that “Comes Guert tertiam
partem habebat.” That his Earldom took in Oxfordshire as an outlying
possession we have already seen; his possession of the two strictly
East-Anglian shires is shown by a variety of writs. In Cod. Dipl. iv.
208 he is addressed for Norfolk and Suffolk, in iv. 222 for Suffolk
only, in iv. 223 and 225 for East-Anglia generally, in iv. 221 for
Suffolk only, conjointly with Harold. In all these writs he is joined
with Æthelmær, Bishop of the East-Angles from 1047 to 1070. The date of
his appointment seems certain, as no earlier date is possible, and there
is no reason to suspect one at all later. But the words in which the
Biographer of Eadward describes Gyrth’s elevation are not very clear.
After speaking of the appointments of Harold and Tostig, he adds (Vita
Eadw. p. 410), “Juniorem quoque Gyrth, quem supra diximus, immunem non
passus est idem Rex à suis honoribus, sed comitatum ei dedit in ipso
vertice Orientalis Angliæ, et hunc ipsum amplificandum promisit, ubi
maturior annos adolescentiæ exuerit.” This may mean that Gyrth was first
invested with the government of some part of East-Anglia, perhaps under
the superiority of Ælfgar, and was encouraged to look forward to the
possession of the whole. Or it may mean that, when invested with the
government of all East-Anglia, he was encouraged to look forward to
something beyond its bounds, a promise of which the addition of
Oxfordshire may have been the fulfilment. This last view is incidentally
confirmed in a singular manner by the way in which the town of Oxford is
spoken of in Domesday (154). The duties payable to the Earl are
described as paid to Ælfgar. Here of course, as in several other cases,
the record describes a state of things existing “in the time of King
Eadward,” but not “on the day when King Eadward was quick and dead.” A
mention of Eadwine would have excluded Gyrth; a mention of Ælfgar does
not exclude him. But it shows that Oxfordshire was at one time held by
Ælfgar; it shows therefore that Gyrth did not receive Oxfordshire at the
same time as Norfolk and Suffolk. The shire may have been taken from
Ælfgar at his second outlawry, or it may have been conferred on Gyrth
after Ælfgar’s death. But at all events, Gyrth became Earl of the
East-Angles in 1057, only with a narrower jurisdiction than had been
attached to that title when it was held by Harold, probably narrower
than when it was held by Ælfgar. Harold had, together with the two
strictly East-Anglian shires, held Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, and
Essex, probably including Middlesex. None of these, except perhaps
Cambridgeshire, fell to the lot of Gyrth. He seemingly took the remote
Oxfordshire in their stead. Of Huntingdonshire I have already spoken.
The shires of _Essex_ and _Middlesex_, together with that of _Hertford_,
and probably _Buckinghamshire_ (see above, p. 560), fell to the lot of
Leofwine. Of _Bedfordshire_ I cannot speak with any certainty.

We have no record of Leofwine’s appointment as Earl, but one can hardly
doubt that his investment with the large and important government which
the writs set him before us as holding took place at the general
distribution in 1057. But, as in the case of Gyrth, a question arises
whether he had held a smaller government at an earlier time. There is a
writ in Cod. Dipl. (iv. 191) addressed to Leofwine in Kent conjointly
with Archbishop Eadsige, who died in 1050, and with Godwine, Bishop of
Rochester, who died in 1046. If this document be genuine, it reveals the
very curious fact that the young son of Godwine, while still hardly
beyond boyhood, held, under his father’s immediate eye, the government
of the shire which had been his father’s first possession. If this be
so, it may decide us as to the interpretation of the doubtful passage of
the Biographer about Gyrth, and we shall have to look for some similar
earlier endowment for Tostig. But, on the other hand, the Chroniclers,
in recording the events of the years 1049–1052, while they carefully
give the title of Earl to Godwine, Swegen, Harold, and Beorn, never give
it to Tostig, Gyrth, or Leofwine. “Harold Eorl and Tostig his broðor,”
says the Peterborough Chronicler (1046). Leofwine’s early promotion is
therefore very doubtful; but of the extent of his later government there
is no doubt. It took in the shires of Essex, Middlesex, Hertford,
Surrey, Kent, and probably Buckinghamshire. Writs are addressed to him
for Surrey, jointly with Stigand (Cod. Dipl. iv. 205), for Essex (as he
is coupled with Bishop William, iv. 213), for Middlesex jointly with
William (iv. 214), for Hertfordshire, as we have seen, jointly with
Wulfwig. “Men” of Earl Leofwine in Middlesex are also mentioned in
Domesday, 130 _b_. But the general superiority of Harold, whether as
elder brother or as elected Ætheling, seems shown by a writ addressed to
him in Middlesex, jointly with Bishop William (iv. 211). It can hardly
belong to the time between September 1052 and Easter 1053, between which
dates it is just possible, and no more, that there may have been some
moment at which Harold was Earl of the East-Angles and William also was
in possession of the see of London (see pp 345, 358). The Earldom of
Leofwine thus answered pretty well to what Londoners sometimes speak of
as the Home Counties. But the great city itself was not subject to the
jurisdiction of any Earl. The King’s writs for London are addressed to
the Bishop, the Portreeve or Portreeves, the Burgh-thegns, and sometimes
the whole people (“ealle ðe burhware”). See Cod. Dipl. iv. 212, 213,
214.

I have thus tried, as well as I could, to trace out these singular
fluctuations in the boundaries of the great Earldoms. To make matters
clear, I have endeavoured to represent them by a comparative map of
England at two stages of the reign of Eadward. The idea of such an
attempt was suggested by the map given by Sir Francis Palgrave in his
History of the Anglo-Saxons, p. 327. Some points of course are
conjectural, and I have not been able to express the various
fluctuations which happened at dates between the two years which I have
chosen for illustration. But I trust that the two maps between them
fairly represent the state of things in the earlier and in the later
days of Eadward.

NOTE H. p. 62.
THE LEGEND OF EMMA.

As the name of Godgifu is most familiar to the world in general through
the legend of her riding naked through Coventry (besides the references
in p. 48, see R. Wendover, i. 496), so the name of Emma is best known
through the legend of her walking unhurt over the hot ploughshares. The
tale appears to have grown out of the real history of her disgrace at
this time, mixed up with other particulars from various quarters. And
when a prince stands in such singular relations both to his mother and
to his wife as those in which Eadward stood to Emma and Eadgyth, it is
not wonderful that, in the process of legend-making, the two injured
Ladies got confounded.

[Illustration: THE EARLDOMS IN 1045.]

[Illustration: THE EARLDOMS at the end of 1065.]

The tale may be seen in Bromton, X Scriptt. 941. He seems to place the
event in 1050, when Robert was already Archbishop of Canterbury. He
calls it indeed the fourth year of Eadward, but he places it immediately
before the events of 1051. The Norman Primate persuades the King that
Emma—forty-eight years after her first marriage, fifteen years after the
death of her second husband—had been guilty of too close an intimacy
(“nimia familiaritas”) with Ælfwine, Bishop of Winchester. The choice of
an episcopal lover was unlucky, as Ælfwine had already been dead three
years (see p. 94); a more ingenious romancer would have named Stigand.
The Bishop is imprisoned; the Lady is spoiled of her goods and sent to
Wherwell, a manifest confusion with Eadgyth’s banishment thither in
1051. From her prison, where she was not very strictly kept (“laxiùs
custodita”), Emma writes to those Bishops in whom she trusted, saying
that she is far more shocked at the scandal against Ælfwine than at that
against herself. She is even ready to submit to the ordeal of burning
iron in order to prove the Bishop’s innocence. The other Bishops advise
the King to allow the trial, but the Norman Archbishop uses very strong
language indeed. Emma is “fera illa, non fœmina;” her daring went so far
that “amasium suum lubricum Christum Domini nominavit,” and so forth.
She may make compurgation for the Bishop (“vult purgare pontificem”),
but who will make compurgation for herself? She is still charged with
complicity in the death of Ælfred, and with having made ready a poisoned
bowl for Eadward himself. Yet, if she will make a double purgation, if
she will walk over four burning shares for herself and five for the
Bishop, her innocence shall be allowed. By dint of prayer to Saint
Swithhun, the ordeal is gone through successfully. The penitent King
implores pardon, and receives stripes (“disciplinas recepit”) both from
his mother and from the Bishop; he restores their confiscated goods; and
Robert, if not actually banished, finds it convenient to leave England.
In honour of the deliverance, of the Lady and the Bishop, each gives
nine manors, one for each ploughshare, to the Church of Winchester.

The account in the Winchester Annals (p. 21 et seqq. Luard) is
substantially the same, and it sometimes agrees in words with that in
Bromton. Unless Bromton has simply abridged the Winchester story, both
are borrowed from the same source. But the Winchester annalist is very
much fuller, and, after his manner, he puts long speeches into the
mouths of his actors, that made by the Norman Archbishop displaying a
remarkable acquaintance with the less decent parts of the satires of
Juvenal. The most important difference is the introduction of Godwine.
The event is placed in 1043. Archbishop Robert—he is already
Archbishop—persuades the King to banish Godwine and his sons, to send
his mother to Wherwell, and to forbid Ælfwine to come out of the city of
Winchester. The tale then follows much as before, only, together with
the restoration of Emma and flight of Robert, Godwine and his sons are
restored at the petition of Emma. Also, it was after these doings that
Eadward seems to have first taken to working miracles (“Rex Edwardus
magnis post hæc cœpit coruscare miraculis etiam in vitâ suâ”).

I suspect that this is the older version. This is the Winchester
writer’s only mention of the banishment and return of Godwine. Bromton,
or whoever is represented by that name, knew that Godwine’s banishment
happened at quite another time and from quite other causes; he knew also
that Robert was not Archbishop in 1043. He therefore left out all about
Godwine, and moved the tale to the year 1050, when Robert was
Archbishop. But he failed to mark that he thus brought in a
chronological error as to the death of Ælfwine. On this last point the
local Winchester writer is of course accurate.

I cannot help adding good Bishop Godwin’s inimitable account of the
charges brought by Robert against Emma. “He began therefore to beate
into the king’s head (that was a milde and soft natured gentleman) how
hard a hand his mother had held upon him when he lived in Normandy; how
likely it was that his brother came to his death by the practise of her
and Earle Godwyn; and lastly that she used the company of Alwyn Bishop
of Winchester, somewhat more familiarly then an honest woman needed.”

I may add that M. de Bonnechose (“ut erat miræ simplicitatis et
innocentiæ,” as the Winchester writer says of Eadward) believes
everything. All about Godgifu, all about Emma, the “cruelle épreuve” and
the “tragique scène,” will be found in his Quatre Conquêtes, ii. 81–88.
In short, his history gives us, as Sir Roger de Coverley says, “fine
reading in the casualties of this reign.” Mr. St. John exercises a sound
judgement, and Thierry seems to hold his peace.

NOTE I. p. 110.
THE WELSH CAMPAIGN OF 1049.

The whole account of this campaign is full of difficulties. It is
mentioned by the Worcester Chronicler only, whose narrative is somewhat
expanded by Florence. There are also some entries in the Welsh
Chronicles which seem to refer to the same event, but the readings of
the manuscripts are so different that it is hard to tell their exact
meaning. The Worcester writer mentions the coming of thirty-six ships
from Ireland to the Usk; there, with Gruffydd’s help, they do much harm;
then Bishop Ealdred gathers a force against them, but he is defeated,
and many of his men slain, by a sudden attack in the early morning.
Florence is more detailed. First, he explains that the Gruffydd spoken
of is Gruffydd of South Wales, Gruffydd the son of Rhydderch (“adjutorio
Griffini Regis Australium Brytonum”). This is very likely; the last time
we had to do with Welsh affairs, the Northern Gruffydd was leagued with
England against his Southern namesake (see p. 87). But a difficulty
immediately follows. The pirates, with Gruffydd’s good will, begin
plundering by sea, seemingly on the coast of Gwent. The words are “circa
loca illa”—this immediately follows the mention of the Welsh Axe or
Usk—“prædam agentes.” This may mean the Somersetshire coast just
opposite, but it would more naturally mean the coast by the mouth of the
Usk. But Gruffydd ap Rhydderch would hardly consent to the harrying of
his own dominions; so we are led to suspect that Gwent must have passed
into the hands of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, perhaps as a result of the
campaign waged by him in concert with Swegen. Or is it possible that
Gwent had already, for a time at least, passed into English hands? We
should certainly infer as much from the language of the Chronicler, who
seems to make Ealdred gather his force to defend the country at the
mouth of the Usk. But it is more likely that this is only a confused way
of telling the story, for Florence tells us very clearly that the
invaders crossed the Wye and harried some district, which must therefore
have been part of Gloucestershire. “Dein, conjunctis viribus, Rex
[Griffinus] et ipsi [Hibernienses piratæ] flumen quod Weage nominatur
transeuntes _Dymedham_ incenderunt, et omnes quos ibi reperiebant
peremerunt.” But what is Dymedham? One would expect to find it the name
of a town in Gloucestershire, but I know of no such place. It almost
looks as if Florence had got hold of some Welsh account, and had been
led astray by some such word as _Dyfed_ or _Deheubarth_. Anyhow one may
accept the fact that they crossed the Wye, and so entered the Hwiccian
diocese. It is then that Ealdred brings his force against them. In the
Chronicle that force is simply called “folc,” without further
description; it is Florence who tells us that it consisted of small
bodies from Gloucestershire and Herefordshire (“pauci de provincialibus
Glawornensibus et Herefordensibus”), together with that body of Welshmen
to whose treachery he attributes the defeat of the English.

The mention of these Welshmen in the English army raises some further
questions. Were they mere mercenaries hired for the occasion, subjects
possibly of the Northern Gruffydd, or were they men of Welsh blood and
speech living under the immediate sovereignty of the King of the
English? It can hardly be doubted that much Welsh blood must have
lingered among the inhabitants of Herefordshire and Western
Gloucestershire, just as it lingered among the inhabitants of
Somersetshire and Devonshire. A small part of modern Gloucestershire,
and a larger part of modern Herefordshire, consists of the districts
added to those shires at the dissolution of the Welsh Marches. This part
of Herefordshire was, till quite recent ecclesiastical changes, included
in the Diocese of Saint David’s. But it would seem that, as late as the
seventeenth century, Welsh must have been spoken in Herefordshire beyond
these limits, as the Act of Uniformity joins the Bishop of Hereford with
the Welsh Bishops in the duty of providing a Welsh translation of the
Prayer-Book. We can therefore well believe that, in the days of Eadward,
considerable remains both of Welsh blood and of the Welsh language must
have remained in large districts of the Magesætas and even of the
Hwiccas. Still the picture given us in Domesday of the Herefordshire
borderers (see above, p. 388), though in no way decisive of their
ethnology, sets them before us as a race eminently loyal to the English
Crown. It is therefore more likely that these traitorous Welshmen were
mere hirelings, and an expression of Florence seems to look the same
way. He calls them “Walenses quos secum habuerant [provinciales
Glawornenses et Herefordenses], _eisque fidelitatem promiserant_.” This
certainly looks as if they were not immediate English subjects, but
strangers who would serve only on receiving some sort of pledge of good
faith from their English comrades. Such at least is the only meaning
which I can get out of the text, and there seems to be no question as to
the reading. Otherwise I should be strongly tempted to read, “quique eis
fidelitatem promiserant,” so as to make the “fidelitas” a pledge given
by the Welshmen. In any case the “fidelitas” seems to be given or
received by the army as a body, not by the Bishop or any other
commander. We seem here to have a military Scirgemót, just as we
elsewhere have military Gemóts of the whole Kingdom.

One can hardly doubt that this fleet from Ireland is the same as that of
which the Welsh Chroniclers speak under the year 1050. But they say
nothing of the alliance between Gruffydd and the pirates, and they seem
rather to speak of the fleet as one which came to attack Wales. The
variations in the manuscripts are remarkable. The text of the Brut y
Tywysogion calls it a fleet which “failed coming from Ireland to South
Wales” (“ballaỽd llyges o Iwerdon yn dyfot y Deheubarth.” I quote the
original, though ignorant of the Welsh language, as Welsh scholars may
be able to judge of the translation). But another reading is “a fleet
from Ireland endangered South Wales” (“y periglawd llynghes o Iwerdon
Dehavbarth”). The text of the Annales Cambriæ has “Classis Hiberniæ in
dextrali parte periit,” but another manuscript reads “Classis Hiberniæ
in dextrali parte Cambriæ prædavit.” It is quite possible that the Danes
may have begun with plundering, and may have afterwards been won over by
Gruffydd to join him against the English.

The most perplexing thing, after all, about this campaign, is its
ending, or rather its lack of an ending. What happened after the escape
of Ealdred?

NOTE K. p. 124.
DANEGELD AND HEREGELD.

It can hardly be doubted that the original meaning of the word
_Denagyld_ must have been money paid to the Danes to buy them off, a
practice of which I need not multiply instances during the reign of
Æthelred. But it so happens that the word itself does not occur till
much later times. As far as I know, the single appearance of the word in
Domesday (336 _b_) is the earliest instance. It occurs also in the
so-called Laws of Eadward, c. 11 (Schmid, 496), in the Laws of Henry the
First, first in the Charter of London (Schmid, 434) and afterwards in c.
15 (Schmid, 446). There are also well known passages in Bromton (942,
957) and the Dialogus de Scaccario, (ap. Madox, Exchequer, p. 27). In
all these passages, (except perhaps in that of Bromton, who calls it
“tallagium datum Danis,”) the Danegeld is described as a tax levied, not
to buy off Danes, but to hire mercenaries, whether Danes or others, to
resist them. Thus in the “Laws of Eadward” the description given is as
follows;

“Denegeldi redditio propter piratas primitùs statuta est. Patriam enim
infestantes, vastationi ejus pro posse suo insistebant; sed ad eorum
insolentiam reprimendam statutum est Denegeldum annuatim reddendum;
i. e. duodecim denarios de unâque hidâ totius patriæ, ad conducendos
eos, qui piratarum irruptioni resistendo obviarent.”

The description in the Laws of Henry (Schmid, 446) is more remarkable,
as it distinctly connects the Danegeld with the famous force established
by Cnut. “Denagildum, quod aliquando _þingemannis_ dabatur.”

But it is plain, from the passage with which we are concerned in the
text, and from the other passage in the Peterborough Chronicle (1040)
describing the payment to Harthacnut’s fleet in 1041, that the formal
name for a tax levied for the payment of soldiers or sailors was
_Heregyld_, _Heregeold_, _Heregeld_. I conceive that _Denagyld_ was a
popular name of dislike, which was originally applied to the payments
made to buy off the Danes, and which was thence transferred to these
other payments made to Danish and other mercenary troops, from the time
of Thurkill onwards. This would account for the name not occurring in
any early Chronicle or document.

It is commonly assumed, with great probability but without direct proof,
that the Danegeld of Domesday is the same as the “mycel gyld” recorded
in the Peterborough Chronicle to have been laid on by William in the
winter Gemót of 1083–1084. This is looked on as the revival of the tax
now taken off by Eadward. Yet it would be strange if no taxes at all for
the support of warlike forces of any kind were levied between 1051 and
1083. The Housecarls certainly continued; we hear of them by name,
besides Florence’s mention of “stipendiarii et mercenarii” in 1066. Are
we to infer that the Housecarls were henceforth maintained out of the
ordinary royal revenues, or, what seems more likely, that the tax now
remitted related wholly to the fleet?

While on the subject of Danegeld, I may mention that the Liber de Hydâ
contains a document purporting to be the Will of King Eadred, which, if
genuine, shows that the possibility of a payment to the Danes was
contemplated even in his time. The document is given in Old-English,
with a later English and a Latin translation; but it is curious enough
that, in the two latter versions, the passage is left out. In the
Old-English text it stands thus (p. 153);

“Þænne an he his sayla to anliesnesse, and his deodscipe to þearfe,
sixtyne hund punda, to þan ðæt hi mege magan hu[n]gor, and _hæþenne here
him fram_ aceapian gif hie beþurfen.”

The language seems to be corrupt, but the meaning can hardly be doubted.

See also on Danegeld, Pegge’s Short Account of Danegeld (London 1756)
and Ellis, i. 350, 351.

NOTE L. p. 131.
THE BANISHMENT OF GODWINE.

Of the events which led to the banishment of Godwine and his sons we
have three original narratives. The Worcester and Peterborough
Chronicles give accounts which at first sight seem to be widely
different, and the Life of Eadward contains another account which seems
to be still more widely different from either of the others. The
narrative in Florence is mainly founded on that in the Worcester
Chronicle, while William of Malmesbury, as in many other cases, plainly
had the Peterborough Chronicle before him. These Latin writers serve in
some cases to explain and illustrate their English originals, while in
other places they have curiously mistaken their meaning. When, fifteen
years back, I wrote my papers on the Life and Death of Godwine in the
Archæological Journal (vol. xii. p. 48), I thought that there was a wide
difference between the accounts of the two Chroniclers, and that a
choice had to be made between them. I now think that there is little or
no discrepancy as to the facts. The main difference is that in the
Worcester narrative there are many omissions, which are supplied by the
Peterborough writer. There is also, as usual, a marked difference in
tone. The Peterborough writer is here, as ever, a devoted partizan of
Godwine, and he carefully brings into prominence every circumstance
which can tell in his favour. The Worcester writer, without showing the
least feeling against the Earl, is not so strongly committed to his
side. The curious result is that the Normannizing William of Malmesbury,
following the Peterborough version, gives a more strongly Godwinist
account than our English Florence. Also, since my former papers were
written, the contemporary Life of Eadward has come to light. The
Biographer’s account is very singular. As usual, his rhetorical way of
dealing with everything, and the necessity under which he felt himself
of justifying both Eadward and Godwine, hamper him a good deal in his
story. He also gives an account of the origin of the dispute, which is
quite different from that mentioned in the Chronicles, and which yet is
in no way inconsistent with it. He agrees with the Chroniclers in the
main facts as to places and persons, and he adds, especially towards the
end, some of those minute touches which increase one’s confidence in the
writer, as they seem to come from personal knowledge. The chief
difference between him and the Chroniclers is the difference inevitably
involved in their several positions. The Chroniclers were monks, writing
in their monasteries for the edification of their brethren. They might
err through ignorance, they might exaggerate through party spirit; but
they had no temptation to win anybody’s favour by wilful omissions or
perversions. The Biographer, with far better means of knowing the exact
truth, laboured under all the difficulties of a courtier. He had to
please one who was at once the daughter of Godwine, the widow of
Eadward, the sister of Harold, and the favoured subject of William.

The two Chroniclers agree in making the outrages of Eustace at Dover the
main cause of the dispute. The Peterborough writer adds, as a collateral
cause, the misconduct of the Frenchmen in Herefordshire. There is here
no inconsistency, but simply an omission on the part of the Worcester
writer. And, after all, the Worcester writer, though he does not
directly tell the Herefordshire story, yet incidentally shows his
knowledge of it, both in his present narrative (see p. 142, note 5,
where I have mentioned the singular mistake of Florence) and in his
entry of the next year (see p. 311). The Biographer says nothing about
either Eustace or Herefordshire; he speaks only of a revival of the old
calumnies by Archbishop Robert. Of this last cause the Chroniclers say
nothing. But there is no real inconsistency between these accounts.
Nothing is more likely than that Robert would seize such an opportunity
again to poison the King’s mind against Godwine. But these private
dealings in the royal closet would be much more likely to be known, and
to seem of great importance, to a courtier and royal chaplain than to
men who were watching the course of public affairs from a distance. And
we must not forget that, when the Biographer wrote, Robert was dead and
had no one to speak for him, while Eustace and Osbern of Herefordshire
were high in William’s, therefore probably in Eadgyth’s, favour. It
might therefore be inconvenient to enlarge too fully on their misdeeds.
The Biographer in short reports the intrigues of the court, while the
Chroniclers record the history of the nation. I accept his account, not
as an alternative, but as a supplement, to the account in the
Chronicles, and I have accordingly worked in his details into my own
narrative. As to the broad facts of the story, the meeting at
Gloucester, the presence of the great Earls, and the adjournment to
London, all our witnesses agree.

One great apparent discrepancy between the two Chroniclers at the very
outset of the story, is, I am now convinced, merely apparent. As we read
the tale in Florence (1051), the violent conduct of Eustace took place
immediately upon his landing at Dover (“Eustatius ... paucis Doruverniam
applicuit navibus; in quâ milites ejus ... unum è civibus peremerunt,"
&c.). Now it is impossible to reject the clear and detailed story of the
Peterborough writer, according to which the affair took place, not on
Eustace’s landing, but on his return from the court at Gloucester. It
now seems to me that there is here simply an omission on the part of the
Worcester writer, and that Florence was misled by his expression, “on
þam ylcan geare com Eustatius up æt Doferan,” &c. Taken alone, this
would certainly give one the idea which it seems to have given Florence,
but, with the fuller light of the Peterborough narrative, we may fairly
take it the other way. If this explanation be not accepted, there can be
no doubt that the Peterborough story is the one to be followed. But it
must be remembered that, if any one chooses to accept Florence’s story,
the case of Godwine and his clients is thereby made still stronger. As
Florence tells the tale, the men of Dover were not simply resisting an
act of violence done within the Kingdom; they were resisting what would
seem to them to be an actual foreign invasion.

In the narrative of the events in Gloucestershire each of the Chronicles
fills up gaps in the other. The Worcester writer leaves out Eadward’s
command, and Godwine’s refusal, to subject Dover to military
chastisement. On this point the Peterborough writer is naturally
emphatic, and this part of the story seems to have awakened a deep
sympathy in his copyist William of Malmesbury. Worcester also leaves out
the King’s summons to the Witan, so that Godwine seems to levy his
forces at once, as soon as he hears of the behaviour of Eustace. A quite
different colour is thus given to the story, but it is merely by
omission, not by contradiction. On the other hand Peterborough leaves
out, what we cannot doubt to be authentic, Godwine’s demand for the
surrender of Eustace and the other Frenchmen, and his threat of war in
case of refusal. In fact the Worcester writer seems to dwell as much as
he can on the warlike, and the Peterborough writer on the peaceful, side
of the story. But the particular facts on which each insists are in no
way contradictory, and I accept both. The Biographer confirms the
Peterborough statement of a summons to the Witan, only he leaves out all
the warlike part, and tells us of Godwine’s offer to renew his
compurgation. This last fact is not mentioned by either Chronicler, but
it does not contradict either of them. The mediation on both sides is
mentioned in both Chronicles; the personal intervention of Leofric comes
from Florence, but it is eminently in character. I was puzzled fourteen
years back at finding what appeared in one account as an Assembly of the
Witan, described in the other as a gathering of armies. I did not then
realize so well as I do now that in those days an army and a Witenagemót
were very nearly the same thing.

In the account of the adjourned Gemót in London, or perhaps rather under
its walls, there are a good many difficulties, but no distinct
contradictions. The Peterborough narrative is still the fuller of the
two, and that which seemingly pays more regard to the strict order of
events. The Biographer tells the story from his own special point of
view, and helps us to several valuable personal notices of Stigand,
Robert, and Godwine himself. His great object is to represent Godwine,
no doubt with a good deal of exaggeration, as a model of submissive
loyalty towards Eadward. It is too much when he tells us (p. 402), how
the Earl “legationes mittens petiit ne præjudicium innocentiæ suæ
inferretur à Rege, agebatque se in omnibus modis paratum ad
satisfaciendum Regi, et cum jure et ultra jus, ad nutum voluntatis suæ.”
On one small point we find a good instance of the way in which one
authority fills up gaps in another. The Worcester Chronicle tells us
that, when the Gemót was summoned to London, Godwine went to Southwark.
Why to Southwark? It is easy to answer that it was a convenient spot, as
being at once in his own Earldom and yet close to the place appointed
for holding the Gemót (on Southwark and its relation to Godwine as Earl,
see Domesday, 32). But the Biographer helps us to a still closer
connexion between Godwine and Southwark (p. 402); “Dux quoque insons et
fidens de propriâ conscientiâ semper immuni à tanto scelere, è diverso
adveniens cum suis, assederat extra civitatis ejusdem flumen Temesin,
_loco mansionis propriæ_.” So it is from the Peterborough and Worcester
Chronicles put together that we see that Eadward summoned forces of two
kinds, both _fyrd_ and _here_ (see p. 147), to his help at the London
Gemót. The Worcester Chronicler says, “And man bead þa folce þider ut
ofer ealne þisne norð ende, on Siwardes eorldome and on Leofrices and
_eac elles gehwær_.” Here is the _fyrd_ of the Northern Earldoms and
something else. The last words, not being very clear, are slurred over
in the version of Florence; “Rex vero de totâ Merciâ et Northhymbriâ
copiosiorem exercitum congregavit et secum Lundoniam duxit.” But
Peterborough tells us more; “And het se cyning bannan út _here, ægðer ge
be suðan Temese_ ge be norðan _eall þa æfre betst wæs_.” The _fyrd_ of
the North came, and the King’s _comitatus_, the “best men,” were also
summoned, in virtue of their personal obligations, even within Godwine’s
Earldom. But the _fyrd_ of Wessex was, at first at least, on the side of
its own Earl; for the Worcester writer says that Godwine came to
Southwark “and micel mænegeo mid heom of Westsæxum.” He also directly
after calls the King’s force _here_; Godwine and his force come to meet
the King “and þone here þe him mid wæs.”

The main difficulty in this part of the story arises from an expression
of each Chronicler about the surrender to the King of certain Thegns who
were in the hands of Godwine or Harold. The first stage of the
discussion in the Worcester Chronicle stands thus, “And man borh fæste
þam kyninge ealle þa þegnas þe wæron Haroldes Eorles his [Godwine’s]
suna.” In the Peterborough account, Godwine first demands hostages and a
safe-conduct; then follows, “Ða gyrnde se cyng ealra þæra þegna þe þa
eorlas ær hæfdon, and hi letan hi ealle him to hande.” Then the King
again summons Godwine to come with twelve companions only, and Godwine
again demands hostages and a safe-conduct. One would think that the
transactions spoken of in two Chronicles must be the same; but, if so,
the Worcester writer must have placed the demand for these Thegns out of
its proper order, as he makes it come before the renewed outlawry of
Swegen, which it clearly followed. And who were these Thegns? I once
thought, with Mr. Kemble (Saxons in England, ii. 231), that they were
the hostages who had been given to Godwine at the Gloucester Gemót. This
would give an excellent meaning. Godwine has already received hostages,
as leader of one of the two great parties who are recognized as equally
in the King’s favour. He now demands further hostages for his own
personal safety. The King, instead of granting them, demands the
restoration of the former hostages. But, had this been the meaning, they
could hardly fail to have been spoken of by the regular name _gislas_.
Who then were the Thegns spoken of? I can hardly fancy that Godwine and
Harold surrendered all their own personal Thegns, the members of their
own _comitatus_. This seems to have been the notion of William of
Malmesbury, though his account is very confused. The Earls are bidden
“ut duodecim solùm homines adducerent; servitium militum, quos per
Angliam habebant, Regi contraderent.” (So Lappenberg, p. 509 of the
German original, Thorpe, ii. 249.) But surely such a surrender is
improbable in itself, and it is hardly consistent with the licence to
bring twelve companions, which implies that, after the surrender, they
had still some _comitatus_ left. I am therefore driven to suppose that
some of the King’s Thegns within the Earldoms of Godwine and Harold had,
notwithstanding the King’s summons, followed the Earls, that these
Thegns were now called on to join the King, and that the Earls put no
hindrance in their way.

It is curious, after reading William of Malmesbury’s account of all
these matters, grounded on the patriotic Peterborough Chronicle, to turn
to the passage quoted in a former note (p. 543) where he speaks of
Godwine and his sons as banished on account of their sacrilege and other
wickedness.

NOTE M. p. 174.
THE SURNAMES OF WILLIAM.

It has been pointed out by more writers than one that a certain amount
of confusion is involved in the familiar description of the great
King-Duke as William the Conqueror. He is not often called “Conquæstor”
by writers of or near his own time. Moreover, “Conquæstor” hardly means
“Conqueror” in the common use of that word, but rather “Acquirer,” or
“Purchaser,” in the wider legal sense of the word “purchase.” A former
colleague of mine in the Oxford Schools always made a point of
describing him as “William the Purchaser.” But the title of William the
Conqueror, even as commonly understood, is so familiar, so true, and so
convenient, that I have not the least wish to interfere with its use.

As far as I can see, he was known to his contemporaries as William the
Bastard, and was, after his death, distinguished from his successor by
the name of William the Great. The title of Bastard indeed stuck so
close to him that some writers, who could hardly have known what it
meant, seem almost to have taken it for his real name. Even Adam of
Bremen, who certainly knew its meaning, uses it almost as a proper name.
He introduces William (iii. 51) as “Willehelmus, cui pro obliquo
sanguine cognomen est Bastardus,” and goes on to speak of “Bastardus
victor,” and (c. 53) to say how “inter Suein et Bastardum perpetua
contentio de Angliâ fuit.” So Marianus Scotus, a. 1089 (Pertz, v. 559),
talks of “Willihelmus, qui et Bastart;” Lambert of Saint Omer (Pertz, v.
65) says, “Terra Anglorum expugnata est a Willelmo _Notho Bastart_;” and
most curiously of all, Lambert of Herzfeld, a. 1074 (Pertz, v. 216),
calls him “Willehelmus, cognomento _Bostar_, Rex Anglorum.” In our own
Worcester Chronicle, a. 1066, he appears as “Wyllelm Bastard,” and in
Olaf Tryggwasson’s Saga (p. 263), as “Vilialmur Bastardur Rudu Jarl.” So
in Orderic (663 C), “Guillelmus Nothus.” So in the Annales Formoselenses
(Pertz, v. 36), “Willelmus Bastardus invasit regnum Anglorum.” One
writer (Chron. Gaufredi Vosiensis, Labbe, iii. 284) for “Bastard” uses
the equivalent word “Mamzer”—“Normannorum Ducis filius Mamzer
Guillelmus.”

It has been often said that William himself used the description in
formal documents. This assertion rests on very slight authority. There
is a charter in Gale’s Registrum Honoris de Richmond, p. 225 (a
reference for which I have to thank Professor Stubbs), beginning “Ego
Willielmus, cognomento Bastardus, Rex Angliæ.” But it seems to me to be
palpably spurious, and those who accept it allow it to be unique.

The other title may be seen growing from the vaguer form of “the great
William” to the more distinct “William the Great.” We read in a charter
of William Rufus (Rymer, i. 5), “Ego Willelmus, Dei gratiâ, Rex
Anglorum, filius _magni Regis Willelmi_.” So Eadmer (lib. iii. 57.
Selden), “quando _ille magnus Willielmus_ hanc terram primò devicit:” so
William of Jumièges (vii. 16; cf. his description of Robert, vii. 1; see
vol. i. p. 529), “Willelmus _Dux magnus_:” so the Ely History (ii. 41),
“deditio Wilhelmi _Regis magni_.” But we find more distinctly in Orderic
(706 C), “Henricus _Guillelmi Magni_ Regis Anglorum filius,” and still
more distinctly in William of Malmesbury (Prol. in lib. iv.), “Willelmus
filius _Willelmi Magni_,” and in Æthelred of Rievaux (X Scriptt. 393),
“Vixit autem ad _Willielmi Magni_ tempora.”

The earliest instance, as far as I know, of “Conquæstor” is in Orderic
(603 A), who joins it with “Magnus”—“Guillelmus Magnus, id est
Conquæstor, Rex Anglorum.” One of the foreign writers quoted above
(Chron. Gaufredi Vosiensis, Labbe, iii. 293) comes still nearer to the
modern idea. William Rufus is “Guillelmus filius _magni Triumphatoris
Guillelmi_;” and elsewhere (284) he speaks of “Triumphator ille
Guillelmus Mamzer.”

NOTE N. p. 177.
THE BIRTH OF WILLIAM.

Several questions arise out of the narratives, historical and legendary,
of the birth of the great William. No one doubts that he was the natural
son of Duke Robert, or that he was born at Falaise; but there are
several points open to doubt,—

1st, As to the origin of his mother;
2nd, As to the exact date of his birth;
3rd, As to the exact place of his birth;
4th, As to the number of his mother’s other children.

I will discuss these questions in order.

I. I have mentioned in the text, as a curious illustration of English
feeling, the story which made William’s mother a descendant of the royal
house of England. It will be found at length, with some curious details,
in the Winchester Annals of Thomas Rudborne, Anglia Sacra, i. 247.
Rudborne professes to get the story from a book called “Chronica Danorum
in Angliâ regnantium.” As a piece of chronology and genealogy, the tale
is strange enough. The tanner is called Richard, which looks rather as
if he were a Frenchman, and he bears the surname of “Saburpyr,” the
meaning of which is far from clear. His wife is distinctly said to be a
daughter of Eadmund and Ealdgyth. Now Eadmund married Ealdgyth in 1015
(see vol. i. p. 412), and he died before the end of 1016. There is
therefore hardly room for the birth of a daughter besides the apparently
twin (see vol. i. p. 455) Æthelings, Eadmund and Eadward. Such a
daughter must have eloped with the tanner at about the same time of life
as Hermês when he stole the cows, and, as the mother of the mother of
William, who was born at the latest in 1028, she must have been a
grandmother at the age of twelve. William must also, besides being a
distant cousin of Eadward, have been also a distant nephew, a fact
nowhere else alluded to. In this tale William’s mother is called
_Helen_, perhaps through some similarity of letters with _Herleva_.

The trade of Herleva’s father seems to be agreed on at all hands. He was
a burgess of Falaise and a tanner. So the Chronicle of Saint Maxentius
(Labbe, ii. 202); “Robertus Willelmum genuit ex eâ quæ fuit filia
pelletarii burgensis.” In the narrative of William of Jumièges, the
bastardy of the Conqueror and the calling of his maternal grandfather
dawn upon the reader by degrees. He first, when describing Robert’s
nomination of William as his successor, simply calls him “Willelmum
filium suum, quem unicum apud Falesiam genuerat” (vi. 12). When he
speaks of the indignation of the Norman nobles at William’s accession,
he is driven to mention his bastardy; “Willelmus enim, ex concubinâ
Roberti Ducis, nomine Herlevâ, _Fulberti cubicularii Ducis filiâ_,
natus, nobilibus _indigenis_, et maximè ex Richardorum prosapiâ natis,
despectui erat utpote nothus” (vii. 3). The later dignity of the
grandfather is here put forward as a sort of forlorn hope; but when it
is necessary to explain the point of the insults offered to William at
Alençon, the unsavoury trade of Fulbert at last unavoidably peeps out;
“Parentes matris ejus pelliciarii exstiterant” (vii. 18).

It is possible that the word “indigenis” in the second of the extracts
just made may be taken to confirm the story according to which Fulbert
was not only of a low occupation, but of foreign birth. Besides the
English legend, which may possibly contain this small grain of truth,
there is a tale in the Chronicle of Alberic “Trium Fontium” (a. 1035,
Leibnitz, Accessiones, ii. 66), which is told with great glee by Sir
Francis Palgrave (iii. 144). According to this version, Herbert, as he
is called, was not a native of Falaise, but came with his wife Doda or
Duixa from some place, either Chaumont or Huy (Hoium), in the Bishoprick
of Lüttich. This tale however does not represent the tanner’s daughter
as the original object of the fancy of Robert. The Count sees the
daughter of his provost or bailiff (præpositus) at Falaise dancing, and
asks for her; but the lover is made the subject of a trick, and the
daughter of the tanner takes the place of the daughter of the bailiff.
Here is food for the Comparative Mythologists, as this tale is the same
as the tale of Richard and Gunnor, and as one of the legends of our own
Eadgar. See vol. i. p. 279.

II. The date of William’s birth has been discussed by M. Deville in the
_Memoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie_, 1837, vol. xi. p.
179, and, after him, by M. Florent Richomme, in a pamphlet published at
Falaise under the title of _La Naissance de Guillaume-le-Conquérant à
Falaise_. There is no doubt that William was born in 1027 or 1028; M.
Deville endeavours to fix the exact date to June or July, 1027. William
was seemingly between seven and eight when Robert set out on his
pilgrimage. “Habebat tunc,” says William of Malmesbury (iii. 229),
“filium septennem.” So Wace (14360);

“N’aveit encor que sol set anz,
Petit esteit, n’ert mie granz,
Quant li Dus Robert se croisa
Et en Jerusalem alla.”

The date of Robert’s departure seems to be fixed to January, 1035, by a
charter quoted by M. Deville from the Departmental Archives at Rouen. It
is granted by Robert on the Ides of January, “quo et Hierusalem
petiturus ibi licentiam eundi à Deo et sanctis ejus petii.” But it is
argued that William was full eight years old when the news of his
father’s death reached Normandy, and when he was accordingly invested
with the Duchy. William of Jumièges (vii. 44) calls him “fere
sexagenarius, anno ducatûs in Normanniâ LII,” at his death in September,
1087. This puts his birth in 1027, and his accession in 1035. Orderic
(459 D) says that, at his accession, “tunc octo annorum erat,” and again
(656 C) William is made to call himself at that time, “tenellus puer,
utpote octo annorum.” It is therefore inferred that William attained the
full age of eight years at some time after his father’s departure, but
before his death, or at least before his death was known in Normandy.
For this purpose six months or thereabouts is allowed, and it is thus
ruled that William was eight years old in June or July, 1035, and was
therefore born in June or July, 1027.

I am not fully convinced by these arguments. The expression of William
of Jumièges, “ferè sexagenarius,” would seem to imply that William was
not fully sixty in September, 1087, and, if he succeeded in July, 1035,
he would then be in the fifty-third and not in the fifty-second year of
his reign. Orderic indeed (459 D) says that he reigned fifty-three
years, but, succeeding in 1035 and dying in 1087, he certainly did not
reign fifty-three years full. And Orderic’s chronology is very confused
on the matter; in the passage (656 C) where William calls himself eight
years old at his accession, he calls himself sixty-four years old at his
death (“mala quæ feci per LX quatuor annos”). This would put his birth
in 1023, quite contradicting Orderic’s other statement. Moreover the
Chronicle of Saint Michael’s Mount (Labbe, i. 348) calls him “septennis”
at the time of his accession. It seems to me therefore that it is not
safe to attempt to fix the date of William’s birth so minutely as M.
Deville does, but that it certainly happened in 1027 or 1028, and more
probably in 1027.

M. Deville connects the birth of William with that siege of Falaise
which made Robert submit to his brother Richard (see vol. i. p. 517).
This, and the death of Richard, he places in August, 1027. But William
of Jumièges (vi. 2) distinctly says that Richard died in 1028, after a
reign of two years (see vol. i. p. 517). Orderic (459 D), by making
Richard reign a year and a half, might agree with M. Deville. Most of
the Chronicles however make Richard die in 1026, the year of his
accession. See the Chronicles of Fécamp (Labbe, i. 326), of Rouen (i.
366; cf. Duchèsne, 1017 B), of Saint Michael’s Mount (i. 348). The
authority of William of Jumièges is no doubt much the highest, but his
chronology is inconsistent with M. Deville’s view.

M. Deville has however done good service in bringing prominently forward
the fact, which is commonly forgotten, that Robert, at the time of his
first amour with Herleva, was not yet Duke of the Normans, but only
Count of the Hiesmois, in which character Falaise was his capital. He
has also well pointed out his extreme youth. Robert was the second son
of Richard and Judith. The marriage contract of Judith, dated in 1008,
is given in Martène and Durand’s Thesaurus Novus, i. 123. Robert could
therefore hardly have been born before 1010; he could have been only
eighteen at the most at the time of the birth of William, and only
twenty-five at the time of his pilgrimage and death. His brother
Richard, the father of the monk Nicholas, must have been equally
precocious. Edward the Third too was only eighteen years older than the
Black Prince; but at any rate he was married.

III. That William was born at Falaise all accounts agree; but there is
not the faintest authority for placing his birth in the present donjon.
M. Deville says that the tradition is a very modern one. A room is shown
as that where William “fut engendré et nâquit,” and a sufficiently
absurd inscription commemorates the supposed fact. But we have seen (see
above, p. 176) that the existing keep is, in all probability, of a later
date than William’s birth; and, if it did exist in Robert’s time, and if
William were born in the castle at all, it is far more likely that
Herleva would be lodged at such a time in some other part of the
building, and not in the keep. The keep was not the common
dwelling-place of the lord of a castle, but only his occasional place of
defence. See Mr. G. T. Clark, Old London, pp. 14, 39, 43.

But there is another statement which, if it be trustworthy, as it seems
to be, puts it beyond all doubt that William was not born in the castle
at all, but elsewhere in the town of Falaise. The local historian of
Falaise, M. Langevin (Recherches Historiques sur Falaise, 1814. p. 134),
says, on the authority of “les anciens manuscrits extraits du chartier”
of Trinity Church, Falaise, that William was born in 1027, in that
parish, in a house belonging to him—that is, seemingly to his mother or
her father—in the old market-place, and that he was baptized in Trinity
Church. See Richomme, p. 12, who follows Langevin. One would like to
have the exact extracts from the manuscripts, and to know something of
their date; but in any case they are better authority than a romantic
modern story, which seems not even to be a genuine tradition.

IV. Most writers state, or rather assume, that William was the only
child of Robert and Herleva. The lioness was bound to bring forth only a
single cub. But Mr. Stapleton, who pried into every corner in Norman
matters, has, in a paper in the Archæologia (xxvi. 349 et seqq.),
brought some strong arguments to show that William had a sister by the
whole blood, Adelaide or Adeliza, wife of Enguerrand, Count of Ponthieu.
This Adelaide was the mother of two daughters, one bearing her own name,
who married Odo of Champagne, the other Judith, the too famous wife of
our Earl Waltheof. The elder Countess Adelaide has been commonly taken
to be only a half-sister of William, a daughter of Herleva by her
husband Herlwin. She appears to have been so considered by the
continuator of William of Jumièges (viii. 37), who calls the mother of
Judith “soror uterina Willelmi Regis Anglorum senioris,” words which he
would hardly use of a daughter of Robert. Still Mr. Stapleton’s case is
very strong. It rests mainly on a charter, which Mr. Stapleton prints,
granted to the College (afterwards Monastery) of Saint Martin of Auche
(Alcis) near Aumale. Adelaide is there distinctly called the wife of
Enguerrand and sister of William, and her daughters, Adelaide and
Judith, are spoken of. After the death of her husband, she enriched the
church of Saint Martin, and, while still young (“quum esset adhuc in
juvenili ætate”), she had it hallowed by Archbishop Maurilius. Now Count
Enguerrand died in 1053, and Maurilius was Archbishop of Rouen from 1055
to 1069. Mr. Stapleton thinks that these dates better suit a daughter of
Robert and Herleva, who must have been born between 1028 and 1035, than
a daughter of Herlwin and Herleva, who could not have been born before
1036. There are also two statements which, though erroneous as they
stand, point to the parentage argued for by Mr. Stapleton as their
groundwork. Thus Orderic (522 C) makes Odo of Champagne marry a sister
of William and daughter of Duke Robert. The two Adelaides, mother and
daughter, are here confounded, but the fact that Duke Robert had a
daughter is preserved. So Robert de Monte, under the year 1026 (Pertz,
vi. 478), preserves the name of Aeliz or Adelaide, daughter of Duke
Robert, though he makes her the child of another mistress and not of
Herleva. This is doubtless an attempt to reconcile the existence of
Adelaide with the belief that William was an only child.

The Norman writers, it must be remembered, know nothing, or choose to
say nothing, of the marriage of Robert with Cnut’s sister Estrith. See
vol. i. p. 521. They look upon Herleva as Robert’s only consort, lawful
or unlawful. So William of Malmesbury, iii. 229; “Unicè dilexit et
aliquamdiù justæ uxoris loco habuit.” But no writer asserts any actual
marriage, except the Tours Chronicler in Bouquet, x. 284. He marries
Herleva to Robert soon after William’s birth (“Dux Robertus, nato dicto
Guillelmo, in isto eodem anno matrem pueri, quam defloraverat, duxit in
uxorem”). He also transfers the story of Herleva from Falaise to Rouen.
Possibly also some notion of a marriage may have floated across the
brain of our own Knighton, when he said (2339) that William was called
“Bastardus,” “quod ante celebrationem matrimonii natus est.”

The story of the Tours Chronicler cannot be true, as such a marriage
would have legitimated William, and he then could not have been known as
William the Bastard. But Herleva might seem from William of Malmesbury’s
words to have been looked on as something more than an ordinary
concubine. It is strange that he should be the only writer who makes
Herleva marry Herlwin during Robert’s lifetime. His words (iii. 277)
are, “Matrem, quantùm vixit, insigni indulgentiâ dignatus est, quæ,
_ante patris obitum_, cuidam Herlewino de Comitisvillâ, mediocrium opum
viro, nupserat.” But William of Jumièges (vii. 3) distinctly puts the
marriage after Robert’s death; “Postquam Hierosolymitanus Dux obiit,
Herluinus quidam probus miles Herlevam uxorem duxit, ex quâ duos filios,
Odonem et Robertum, qui postmodùm præclaræ sublimitatis fuerunt,
procreavit.” According to Orderic (660 B), Herleva was the second wife
of Herlwin, whose son Ralph by a former marriage was also promoted by
William. The honours shown by William to his mother seem to have struck
writers at a distance. Besides William of Malmesbury just quoted, the
Tours Chronicle in the French Duchèsne (iii. 361) says, “Matrem dum
vixit honorificè habuit,” and the Limousin writer William Godell
(Bouquet, xi. 235) says, “Guillelmus Rex matrem suam, quamvis esset
inferiori genere orta, multùm honoravit.” He goes on to mention the
promotion of her sons.

Of the sons of Herleva, Odo and Robert, I need not speak here; but I may
mention that she had also a daughter by Herlwin, named Muriel, who has
naturally been confounded with William’s other sister Adelaide. Wace
says (Roman de Rou, 11145),

“Ki à fame avait Muriel,
Seror li Dus de par sa mere
E Herluin aveit à pere.”

See Taylor’s note, p. 102.

One would have thought that the story of Robert and Herleva was one
which could never have been forgotten. Yet later writers did not scruple
to provide the Conqueror with new and strange mothers. Thomas Wikes,
_the_ royalist chronicler of the thirteenth century (Gale, ii. 22),
gives William the following wonderful pedigree. He was “natus ex
nobilissimâ muliere Matilde, quæ fuit filia strenuissimi militis
Richardi dicti _Sanz-peur_, filii Willielmus [_sic_, at least in the
printed text] _Lungespeye_, filii Rolandi, qui fuit primus Dux
Normannorum.” And in an unpublished manuscript of the famous Sir John
Fortescue of the fifteenth century (for a knowledge of which I have to
thank the Right Hon. Chichester Fortescue), William is said to be
Eadward’s “consanguineus germanus ex Gunhildâ amitâ suâ, sorore patris
sui.” The confusion is delightful, but it preserves the fact that the
kindred between William and Eadward had something to do with an aunt of
one or other of them.

NOTE O. p. 254.
THE BATTLE OF VAL-ÈS-DUNES.

Since my account of the battle was written, I have received a small work
by the Abbé Le Cointe, _Curé_ of Cintheaux, called “Conspiration des
Barons Normands contre Guillaume-le-Bâtard, Duc de Normandie, et
Bataille du Val-des-dunes, 1047” (Caen, 1868). M. Le Cointe has examined
the ground very carefully, both before and since my visit of last year,
and the result of his researches is a most minute topographical account,
full, accurate, and rich in local interest. I am glad to say that I do
not find anything which calls upon me to alter my own shorter
description. Since I was there, the foundations of the Chapel of Saint
Lawrence have been brought to light, and many skeletons have been found
there and in other parts of the field.

With regard to more strictly historical matters, M. Le Cointe, following
in the main the same authorities as I do, gives essentially the same
account. But he also makes use of a manuscript Chronicle of Normandy,
which however seems not to be earlier than the fifteenth century, and
whose mistakes he often stops to point out. Late writings of this kind
are of course valuable only when there is reason to believe either that
their authors had access to earlier written authorities now lost, or
else that they embody trustworthy local traditions. The Chronicle in
question contains two statements which, if true, are highly important,
and the truth of which it would be most desirable to test. One is that
the rebels were strengthened by a party of Angevins and Cenomannians,
commanded by Enguerrand, nephew of Count Geoffrey Martel (Le Cointe, pp.
19, 35). The other is that the men of Caen—faithful among the
faithless—took the side of the Duke (p. 18). It is quite possible that
the influence of the local chieftains would be smaller in so
considerable a city than it was at Coutances and Bayeux.

I would call particular attention to M. Le Cointe’s excellent remarks on
the position of the rebel forces, in p. 25.

NOTE P. p. 274.
THE COUNTS OF ANJOU AND OF CHARTRES.

With Geoffrey Grisegonelle, and still more with Fulk Nerra, we begin to
get on firmer historical ground than we can find in the days of the
earlier Counts. Fulk occupies an important place in the history of
Rudolf Glaber, having two whole chapters (ii. 3, 4) pretty well to
himself. And the exploits of Geoffrey derive more or less of
corroborative testimony from several independent sources. The panegyrist
of the family (Gest. Cons. 246) tells us that Geoffrey took an active
part in resisting Otto’s invasion of France in 978 (see vol. i. p. 265).
We learn from a distinct and contemporary authority that Geoffrey had
before that taken a part in that wild raid against Aachen (see vol. i.
p. 264) by which Lothar had provoked the German inroad. “Lotarius ...
Lotharingiam calumniatus est. Cujus expeditionibus Gosfridus Comes
Andegavorum, pater _Fulconis ultimi_, interfuit, _nostræque ætatis multi
viri_” (Chron. S. Maxentii, Labbe, ii. 203). The words “Fulconis ultimi”
could hardly have been used during the life of Fulk Nerra; it looks
therefore as if the Chronicler wrote, in extreme old age, after Fulk’s
death in 1040. These entries about Geoffrey’s attendance on Lothar fit
in curiously with a Breton account (Chron. Brioc., Morice, p. 32), how
Geoffrey seized on Guerech, the Breton Bishop and Count, on his return
from the King’s Court, and forced him—setting a precedent for two more
famous acts of his grandson—to surrender Nantes.

Rudolf Glaber is very full on the war between Geoffrey and Conan, and
the battle of Conquereux (Concretus in Rudolf, Conquerentium in the
Angevin, Concruz in the Breton, Chronicles) in the County of Nantes. The
Bretons mention two battles on the same spot, one in 982, the other in
992 (v Kal Julii), when Conan was killed (Chron. Bret. ap. Morice, i. et
seqq.); the Angevin writer (Labbe, i. 275) speaks of the latter only. In
the battle recorded by Rudolf, Conan seems not to be killed, but only
“truncatus dexterâ” (ii. 3). Conan, according to Rudolf, had taken the
title of King, like several of his predecessors. This assumption may not
have been unconnected with the great revolution of 987. Rudolf’s account
of the Bretons (ii. 3) is amusing. Their land, “finitimum ac perinde
vilissimum, Cornu Galliæ nuncupatur.” This vile country “habitatur
diutiùs à gente Brittonum, quorum solæ divitiæ primitùs fuere _libertas
fisci publici_ et lactis copia, qui omni prorsùs urbanitate vacui,
suntque illis mores inculti ac levis ira et stulta garrulitas.” Rudolf
indeed is just now so full on Angevin matters that the local panegyrist
is often content to copy him.

As for the Counts of Chartres, I was in vol. i. pp. 508, 509, misled by
a passage of William of Jumièges (v. 10) into confounding the first and
the second Odo. Odo the First died in 995, and was succeeded by his son
Theobald, who was followed in 1004 by Odo the Second. It was this second
Odo who waged the war about Tillières. In D’Achery, iii. 386, there is a
charter of Richard the Good, restoring to the Church of Chartres lands
which had been alienated from it, doubtless in the war of Tillières.

Rudolf Glaber (iii. 2) calls the younger Odo, “secundus Odo, filius
scilicet prioris Odonis, qui quantò potentior, tantò fraudulentior
ceteris.” He goes on to say, “Fuit etiam juge litigium et bella
frequentia inter ipsum Odonem et Fulconem Andegavorum Comitem, quoniam
uterque tumidus superbiâ, idcirco et pacis refuga.” The Angevin
Chronicles, on the other hand, charge King Robert with leaving Fulk to
fight their common battles all by himself. This first war, especially
the battle of Pontlevois, will be found narrated in most of the
Chronicles of the time. See Gest. Cons. 253. Chronn. Andeg. (Labbe, i.
275, 286, 287) 1016, 1025, 1026, 1027. Chron. S. Maxent. (Labbe, ii.
206) 1016, 1026. Chron. S. Florentii, ap. Morice, 122. The most striking
piece of detail, the intervention of Aldebert of Perigeux in 990, comes
from Ademar (iii. 34, ap. Pertz, iv. 131); “Urbem quoque Turonis
obsidione affectam in deditionem accepit et Fulchoni Comiti Andegavensi
donavit. Sed ille ingenio doloso civium amisit post paullulum, et iterum
Odo Campanensis eam recuperavit.” Odo is prematurely called
“Campanensis,” as he did not become Count of Champagne till 1019.

Odo’s last war (see p. 277) is described, among French writers, by
Rudolf Glaber, iii. 9; in Gest. Cons. 254; and Chron. S. Petri
Senonensis (D’Achery, ii. 475), where the date is given as 1046. It is
described also by all the German writers, whom the matter more
immediately concerned. See the authorities collected by Struvius, Hist.
Germ. i. 342, to which may be added the very brief notices of Lambert
under the years 1033 and 1037. The Kingdom of Burgundy, which came to an
end in 1032 by the death of King Rudolf (see vol. i. p. 479), was
claimed by Odo as well as by the Emperor Conrad, both being sisters’
sons to Rudolf. Odo obtained some advantages in Burgundy, and he is said
to have received an offer of the Crown of Italy. He then contemplated a
restoration of the Lotharingian Kingdom and a coronation at Aachen. In
Germany he was clearly looked upon as the representative of French
aggression. While one manuscript of Hermann calls him “Princeps Gallicæ
Campaniæ,” another calls him “_Princeps Carlingorum_” (see Pertz, v.
121, and the old edition of Pistorius, p. 137). On this very remarkable
expression, see vol. i. p. 172.

But still more remarkable is the sort of echo of these distant events
which reached Ireland. In the Annals of Ulster, a. 1038 (O’Conor, Rer.
Hib. Scriptt. iv. 324), we read of “Prœlium inter Cuana _Regem ferorum
Saxonum_ et Othonem Regem Francorum, in quo cæsi sunt millia plurima.”
So in Tigernach, under the same year (O’Conor, i. 287), “Prœlium inter
Cuanum Regem Saxonum et Otam Regem Francorum, in quo occisi sunt mille
cum Otâ.” “Cuana” reminds us of “Cona” in our own Chronicles (1056),
where however Henry is meant. It is also to be noticed that Conrad the
Frank is called King of the Saxons. Not only is the Imperial dignity
forgotten, but the memory of the great Saxon dynasty seems to extend
itself over all succeeding Kings and Emperors. Then Odo, a French Count,
striving after the Kingdom of Burgundy, or in truth after any Kingdom
that he could get, is magnified into a King of the French. Lastly,
“feri” seems to be a standing epithet for all Saxons, whether
continental or insular. The Ulster Annals (O’Conor, iv. 326) in the very
next year record the death of “Haraldus Rex Saxonum ferorum,” that is,
Harold the son of Cnut.

NOTE Q. p. 276.
THE IMPRISONMENT OF WILLIAM OF AQUITAINE.

This imprisonment of William of Aquitaine is described at greater or
less length by a whole crowd of writers. See the Gesta Consulum (257,
258), where the war is very fully narrated; the Angevin Chronicles under
1033; Chron. S. Mich. ap. Labbe, i. 350. Will. Pict. 86. Will. Malms.
iii. 231. Chron. S. Maxent. 1032, 1035. According to the Gesta the war
began out of the quarrel about Saintonge, and it is probably with
reference to that County that both William of Poitiers and William of
Malmesbury speak of the Duke of Aquitaine as the “lord” (dominus) of
Geoffrey. The Chronicle of Saint Maxentius also speaks of the battle
“juxta monasterium Sancti Jovini ad Montem Cærium” (Labbe, ii. 207). It
is of course dwelt on at much greater length in the Gesta.

The cession of Bourdeaux, asserted by William of Malmesbury, seems
hardly credible. The author of the Gesta, generally not indisposed to
underrate the successes of the Angevin house, speaks only of the cession
of the disputed territory of Saintonge. William of Poitiers (86) says
only “argenti et auri pondus gravissimum, atque _prædia ditissima_
extorsit.” And the Chronicles of Saint Maxentius (a. 1036) speak of no
territorial cession at all, but only of a ransom; “Isembertus Episcopus
Pictavis fecit synodum, ubi _magnam pacem_ [doubtless the Truce of God]
firmavit. Qui, cum Eustachiâ uxore Guillelmi Comitis, aliquantulùm
exspoliavit monasteria auro et argento, unde redimerent eum.” He then
mentions the deaths of William and Eustachia. It was perhaps the
flourish of William of Poitiers (86) about Poitiers, Bourdeaux, and
other cities obeying Geoffrey (“Andegavi, Turoni, Pictones, Burdegala,
multæ regiones, civitates plurimæ”) which suggested a formal cession of
Bourdeaux to the mind of William of Malmesbury.

There can be no doubt that Eustachia was the real wife of William the
Fat, the prisoner of Geoffrey, and that Agnes, whom Geoffrey married,
was only his father’s widow. William of Poitiers says distinctly that,
after the death of William, Geoffrey “novercam præcipuè nobilitatis [she
was daughter of Otto-William, Count of Burgundy] toro suo sociavit” (p.
86). He is followed by William of Malmesbury (iii. 231), who says,
“Martellus, ne quid deesset impudentiæ, novercam defuncti matrimonio
sibi copulavit.” So the Chronicle of Saint Maxentius, which places the
death of William in 1036, places the marriage in 1037. This last
Chronicle is the only one which gives us an intelligible reason for
Geoffrey’s conduct in contracting this marriage. Agnes could not have
been very young, fifteen or sixteen years after her first marriage in
1018 (Art de vérifier les Dates, ii. 354. The date, according to the
Chronicle of Saint Maxentius, is 1023, but then the second marriage is
put later also); but Geoffrey had a political motive. “Willermo Comite
mortuo, Pictavenses in magno angore et anxietate positi de morte
principis sui, sicut oves sine pastore relicti, Odonem Comitem, germanum
ejus ex patre supradicto, ex Gasconiâ convocaverunt. Per hæc tempora
Gaufredus Martellus duxerat uxorem supradictam Agnetem, caussâ
Pictavensium, ut haberet sibi subditos adhuc duobus filiis suis,
scilicet Petro et Gaufredo parvulis” (Labbe, ii. 207). The two boys were
in the end (1044) established by Geoffrey as Counts of Poitiers and
Gascony respectively.

Some of the Angevin and Norman Chroniclers seem to have confounded the
two Williams, William the Great, the husband of Agnes, and William the
Fat, her stepson, who was imprisoned by Geoffrey. They therefore make a
strange hash of the story, making Geoffrey marry the wife of the prince
whom he imprisoned, and that even during her husband’s lifetime. The
Angevin Chronicler in Labbe, i. 276, puts the marriage of Agnes a year
before the imprisonment of William (1032 and 1033). “Gaufridus
Martellus,” he says, “Agnetem duxit _incesto conjugio_.” It is not clear
whether there was any kindred between Geoffrey and Agnes, or whether the
Chronicler called the marriage “incestum” because he fancied that Agnes
had a husband alive. The Chronicle of Saint Michael’s Mount (Labbe, i.
350) is still more express. The marriage is recorded under 1032, and
under 1033 we read that Geoffrey took prisoner William “cujus uxorem
Agnetem ante duxerat.” There can be no doubt that both the chronology
and the facts are altogether confused, and we are thus led to look with
some little suspicion on the other events which the Angevin Chronicler
connects both with the imprisonment and with the marriage. Under 1032,
after recording the marriage, he adds, “Inde bellum illud exsecrabile
quod contra patrem suum per annos ferè septem subsequentes impiè
gessit.” On the imprisonment in 1033 he adds, “Quare orta est discordia
inter patrem et matrem.” What could these things have to do with one
another?

NOTE R. p. 319.
THE RAVAGES ATTRIBUTED TO HAROLD AND GODWINE.

The only writer who puts on anything like a tone of censure with regard
either to Harold’s conduct at Porlock or to Godwine’s plundering along
the south coast, is William of Malmesbury, and he does not draw the
proper distinction between the doings of father and son. His words (ii.
199) are, “Exsulum quisque, de loco suo egressi, Britanicum mare
circumvagari, littora piraticis latrociniis infestare, _de cognati
populi opibus prædas eximias conjectare_.”

There is however a marked difference of tone in the way in which the
story of Harold’s landing at Porlock is told by the different
Chroniclers. The Abingdon writer, as I have often noticed, may be looked
on as to some extent hostile to Godwine, and the Worcester writer,
though on the whole favourable to the Earl, yet constantly follows the
Abingdon narrative. The Peterborough version, I need hardly say, is
quite independent, and is always strongly for Godwine. According to
Abingdon and Worcester (1052), Harold landed and plundered, and then the
people of the country came together to withstand him. He landed, they
say, and “þær mycel gehergode, and þæt landfolc him ongean gaderodan.”
But the Peterborough writer makes the local force to have been already
brought together, and speaks of no ravaging till after Harold had found
the country hostile. Harold came to Porlock—“and wes þær mycel folc
gegaderod ongean. Ac he ne wandode na him metes to tylienne; eode úp,
and ofsloh þær mycelne ende þes folces.” That is to say, the partizan of
Godwine tells the tale in the way least unfavourable to Harold, while
the hostile or indifferent writer tells it in the way most unfavourable.
But the pains taken in both directions show that both writers agreed in
thinking that the harrying and slaying, unless done in strict
self-defence, was discreditable.

The Biographer of Eadward seems to have thought differently. He greatly
exaggerates the ravaging, and tells the tale (405) in a tone of distinct
triumph; “Ab ipsis Occidentalium Britonum sive Anglorum finibus usque
quò Dux consederat, ferro, igne, et abductâ prædâ omne regnum sunt
devastati.” It has been ingeniously suggested to me from this passage
that the Biographer was a foreigner. His way of looking at this
particular matter certainly stands out in distinct contrast to that of
all the native writers. The supposition that he was a foreigner would
account for many of the characteristics of his work. It would quite
explain his evidently minute personal knowledge of many things, combined
with his frequent inaccuracy about others. It would account for his
invariable tendency to dwell on all personal details about the King, the
Lady, and the Earls, and rather to slur over the political affairs of
the Kingdom. But, if he was a foreigner, the spirit in which he writes
forbids the notion that he was a Frenchman. Probably he was a member of
the other importation from Lotharingia.

But it is very singular that, in the account of the plundering of
Godwine in Wight and Portland, it is the Peterborough writer who puts
matters in the strongest light; “And eodon þær úp, and hergodon swa
lange þær þæt þæt folc geald heom swa mycel swa hi heom on legden; and
gewendon heom þa westweard, oð þet hi comon to Portlande, and eodon þær
úp, _and dydon to hearme swa hwet swa hi dón mihton_.” Abingdon, on the
other hand, mentions the plundering only incidentally, when saying that
it ceased after the meeting of Godwine and Harold; “And hi na mycelne
hearm ne dydon syððan hig togædere comon, buton þæt heo metsunge namon.”
And the juxtaposition of the words which follow is remarkable; “Ac
speonnon heom eall þæt landfolc to be ðam sǽ riman, and eac up on
lande.” The people joined Godwine, notwithstanding his plunderings.

The mention of the plundering in Sheppey (see p. 323) comes also from
the Peterborough Chronicle only. These differences show that the several
writers, though one often wrote in a different spirit from another, all
wrote honestly, and that they did not wilfully either invent or conceal
things for party purposes.

In the name of common fairness, as wishing to give to our common hero
his due praise and no more, I must protest against the way in which the
Porlock story is slurred over by Thierry and Mr. St. John. This part of
Harold’s conduct cannot be defended, and it ought not to be concealed.
It is enough that he wiped out the stain by his refusal on a later day
to ravage one inch of the Kingdom which had been given him to guard.

NOTE S. p. 319.
THE NARRATIVES OF THE RETURN OF GODWINE.

Of the return of Godwine, as of his banishment, we have three original
narratives, those of the Abingdon and Worcester Chroniclers, which may
be reckoned as one, that of the Peterborough Chronicler, and that of
Eadward’s Biographer. Each again show’s its respective character; each
has its characteristic tone; each brings some particular facts into
greater notice than the others; but there are no really important
contradictions among them. The Peterborough writer retains his old
character as the stoutest of all adherents of Godwine. The Abingdon
Chronicler may be looked on as in some sort an enemy; it is at the end
of this year that he breaks out into that complaint about Godwine’s
appropriation of ecclesiastical property of which I have spoken
elsewhere (see above, pp. 32, 351, 546). But he is not an uncandid
enemy; some of the points which tell most strongly in Godwine’s favour
come out with great force in his narrative; it is from him that we get
the fullest picture of the zeal with which Godwine was received by the
maritime shires. He also, as we have seen (see Note R.), though he makes
the most of Harold’s ravages, makes the least of those of Godwine. This
last feature is not what one would have expected. His dislike to Godwine
follows him to his death, but in his late narrative it certainly is not
extended to Harold. On the whole we may say that, as a monk, he has a
certain personal feeling against Godwine, but that, as an Englishman, he
is true to Godwine’s cause.

The Biographer takes his usual line. He is a courtier, comparatively
careless of the march of public events, but full of personal incidents
which are not to be found elsewhere. His narrative is nowhere richer
than in those little indirect and unconscious touches which are often
worth more than direct statements. I need hardly say that he is the most
careless as to chronology of all three. The Peterborough writer, on the
other hand, is the most attentive. I therefore make him my main guide
throughout the story, but I draw touches and incidents from both the
other sources without hesitation.

Thus, at the very beginning, the Abingdon writer makes the great
accession which the men of Kent and Sussex made to Godwine’s force (p.
322) happen immediately on his first coming from Flanders, before he was
pursued by the King’s ships. This is hardly possible, and we accordingly
find from the Peterborough narrative that it really happened later,
after the storm and the return to Flanders, incidents which the Abingdon
writer leaves out. But it is from the Abingdon writer that we get that
most emphatic expression of the popular attachment to Godwine, how the
men of Kent, Surrey (a shire which I should have mentioned more
distinctly in p. 322), and the other south-eastern districts, pledged
themselves to “live and die” with the Earl. William of Malmesbury, as he
so often does, follows Peterborough, though he is not without touches of
his own.

Somewhat later in the story (p. 324), we find a good illustration of the
peculiar value of the Biographer. The Abingdon and Worcester Chronicles
clearly imply that Eadward knew nothing of the second attempt of Godwine
till the Earl had reached Sandwich; “Þa Eadwerd cyng þæt geaxode,” &c.
The question in the text as to the whereabouts of the King naturally
occurs. Florence (1052) made a very obvious inference from his
authorities, when he wrote, “Regi Eadwardo, _tunc temporis Lundoniæ
demoranti_, illorum adventus nunciatur.” But these words are simply an
inference; they do not translate any statement in the Chronicles, and we
find from the Biographer, the best authority for the King’s personal
movements, that it is a wrong inference; “Audito itaque Rex ejus
[Godwini] violento et absque ejus nutu in regnum suum ingressu, quamquam
fidem referentibus non accommodaret, tamen cum militari copiâ quâ
poterat, _Lundoniam venit_” (Vita Eadw. 405). He therefore was elsewhere
when he heard the news. The writer goes on to say, “_Utque acri erat
animo et promptissimæ strenuitatis_, ingressum civitatis, quà tendebat,
prohibere tentabat.” The words in Italics must apply to Eadward, and the
Biographer would hardly venture upon satire. Æthelred himself, as we
have seen, had his fits of energy, and Eadward also had his fits, if not
of energy, at least of passion.

When we get to the negotiations on the evening of Monday, it is to the
Peterborough Chronicler only that we owe our knowledge of the personal
agency of Stigand (p. 329). A year before, the Biographer was the only
writer who spoke of him. This is just the way in which, in a story of
this kind, our several accounts fill up gaps in each other, and
strengthen each other’s authority. The conduct attributed to Stigand at
one time by one account exactly agrees with the conduct attributed to
him at another time by another and quite independent account. The
Abingdon Chronicle simply says, “Geræddon þa þæt man sende wise men
betweonan, and setton grið on ægðre healfe.” So Florence, “Sapientiores
_quique_ [Roger of Wendover, or his copyist, or his editor, turns this
into “sapientes _quinque_,” i. 491] ex utrâque parte, inter Regem et
Ducem pacem redintegrantes, exercitum ab armis discedere jusserunt.” The
Canterbury writer follows Peterborough in mentioning Stigand, but adds,
rather unluckily, “þe was þes cinges rædgifa and his handprest.”

The adjournment till the morning of Tuesday appears from the words of
Florence, “Mane autem facto, concilium Rex habuit.” These words answer
to nothing in the actual narrative of any of the Chroniclers; but they
are implied in what the Abingdon writer says afterwards; “Ðæt wæs on
þone Monandæg æfter Sc̃a Marian mæsse þæt Godwine mid his scipum to
Suðgeweorce becom, and þæs on merigen, on þone Tiwesdæg hi gewurdon
sehte, swa hit her beforan stent.” We thus see that, in the flow of
narration, especially in the rhetorical language of the Biographer, the
events of two days have been run into one. This is especially shown in
one expression of the Biographer. He makes one of the reasons which made
Eadward finally yield at the Gemót to be because he saw that Godwine’s
military force was the stronger (“Ducem, quem utique videbat, sibi
satis, si uti vellet, superiorem armis”); this consideration would
rather belong to the former day. It is clear that the “mycel Gemót,” as
the Peterborough Chronicler triumphantly calls it, was held on Tuesday
morning. Its details must be gathered from all sources. Bits of the
official decrees peep out both in Abingdon and Peterborough, but it is
the Peterborough writer, the stoutest Englishman that ever took pen in
hand, who loves emphatically to dwell on the democratic character of
this great gathering. It is from his expression “wiðutan Lundene,”
combined with the description which the Biographer gives of Godwine and
Eadward afterwards going together to the Palace (see p. 337), that we
learn that the assembly was held in the open air. The Biographer cares
little for the political character of the meeting, but there is no part
of his whole narrative in which he is richer in those little personal
touches which give him his chief value. His account is most graphic and
animated, and the reader will easily see that I have largely drawn upon
him.

The flight of Robert, Ulf, and the other Normans (see p. 300) certainly
happened before the meeting of the Gemót, therefore doubtless on Monday
evening. From the account in the Abingdon Chronicle and in Florence it
might seem that it was on Tuesday, after sentence had been pronounced
against them in the Gemót. But, in the more careful order of the
Peterborough writer, it becomes plain that it happened immediately after
the mission of Stigand, that is, on Monday; “Ða geaxode Rotberd
arcebiscop and þa Frencisce menn þæt [the agreement made by Stigand]
genamon heora hors and gewendon.” Then, after the details of their ride,
comes the account of the Gemót. So William of Malmesbury, ii. 199.
Before the Gemót, “Ille [Robert], non exspectatâ violentiâ, sponte
profugerat, quum sermo pacis componeretur.” And this is confirmed by one
of the incidental references in the Biographer. He does not directly
describe the flight of Robert and his companions, but he speaks of the
King at the Gemót as “destitutus imprimis fugâ Archipræsulis et suorum
multorum, verentium adspectum Ducis, qui scilicet auctores fuerant
illius concitati turbinis.”

The personal reconciliation between the King and Godwine, distinct from,
and following after, the public votes of the Gemót (see p. 337), rests
on the direct authority of the Biographer only. The Chroniclers
naturally think mainly of the proceedings in the Assembly, and merge the
private reconciliation in the public one. The chaplain of the Lady, as
naturally, looks at things in an opposite way. It is possible however
that, in one passage of his story, the Peterborough writer had the
private reconciliation in his mind. Once, and once only, is his way of
speaking less popular than that of his Abingdon brother. Where Abingdon
says, “And _man sealde_ Godwine clæne his eorldom swa full and swa forð
swa he fyrmest ahte,” Peterborough has “and _se cyng forgeaf_ þam eorle
and his bearnum his fulne freondscype and fulne eorldom,” &c. This
sounds very much as if the Peterborough writer was combining in his mind
the public restoration by the Gemót and the personal reconciliation with
the King. But in any case we cannot mistake the minute and local
description given by the Biographer; “Rex itaque coactus tum
misericordiâ et satisfactione Ducis ... devictus quoque precibus
supplicantium, _redditis armis suis_, cum Duce in palatium processit,
_ibique_, paullatim defervente animi motu sedatus, sapientium consilio
usus, _Duci osculum præbuit_,” &c. (p. 406).

One or two points maybe here noticed. In the text (p. 337) I have said
that the King and the Earl went “unarmed to the Palace.” But “redditis
armis suis” would rather mean that Eadward returned to Godwine the arms
which Godwine had laid at his feet (p. 334). The restoration of the
official axe was not unlikely to be the outward sign of the restoration
of the office itself. Again, it may be asked whether “sapientium
consilio usus” means merely “following the advice of wise men,” or
whether it is a technical expression, “in accordance with the decree of
the Witan.” In a simpler writer I should be inclined to take it in the
latter sense; but the Biographer, if he had chosen to talk directly
about the Witan at all, would probably have used some more rhetorical
phrase. Besides we have already, in the course of the story, read in the
Chronicles of “wise men,” where the reference is clearly not to official
but to personal wisdom.

There is certainly something very striking in the way in which our
account of this great event has to be put together from several
independent accounts, and in the amount of precision, even in very
minute points, which we are able to reach by carefully comparing one
with another. It is hardly necessary to collect together the shapes
which the story takes in later writers, but I cannot pass by the way in
which the Winchester annalist (p. 25) weaves the return of Godwine into
the legend of Emma, which he places in 1043 (see above, p. 570). Eadward
recalls Godwine at the prayer of his mother; “Precibus matris suæ
revocavit Godwinum Comitem et filios ejus ab exsilio, et conceptum in
eos rancorem remisit ad plenum, et singulis honores suos reddidit.”
Selden also (Titles of Honour, pp. 525, 526) seems to have confounded
this reconciliation between Eadward and Godwine with that imaginary
reconciliation soon after Eadward’s election of which Bromton is so
full. See vol. i. p. 574.

The story adopted by some writers, ancient and modern, about Godwine
giving his son Wulfnoth and his grandson Hakon as hostages to the King,
by whom they were immediately handed over to the keeping of Duke
William, I mention here only lest I should seem to have forgotten it. It
is part of the story of Harold’s oath, which I shall discuss at large in
my next volume.

NOTE T. p. 338.
THE PILGRIMAGE OF SWEGEN.

I cannot help noticing the strange perversion of the story of Swegen
which has been adopted by a writer generally so accurate as Dr. Lingard.
“But to Sweyn,” he tells us (i. 341), “Eadward was inexorable. He had
been guilty of a most inhuman and perfidious murder; and seeing himself
abandoned by his family, he submitted to the discipline of the
ecclesiastical canons.” This seems to come from Roger of Wendover (i.
491); “Rex ... pristinum honorem restituit Godwino et filiis ejus
omnibus, præter Suanum, qui Beornum peremerat Regis [sic] consobrinum,
unde, _pœnitentiam agens_, de Flandriâ nudis pedibus Hierosolymam
petens, in reditu suo per viam defunctus est.” This would most naturally
mean that Swegen set out on his pilgrimage after the restoration of his
family, and it might also seem to imply that the pilgrimage was an
imposed penance. But there is no doubt that Swegen had already set out
for Jerusalem before his father left Flanders, and the expressions of
the best writers seem to show that the penance was altogether
self-imposed. On the former point the words of the Abingdon Chronicle
(1052) are decisive; “Swegen _for æror_ to Hierusalem of Bricge.” So
Florence (1052), who also gives a hint on the other point; “Ille enim
_ductus pœnitentiâ_, eo quod, ut prælibavimus, consobrinum suum Beorn
occiderat, de Flandriâ nudis pedibus Jerusalem _jam adierat_.” William
of Malmesbury (ii. 200; see above, p. 102) does not mention the time,
but says that he went “_pro conscientiâ_ Brunonis cognati interempti.”
About the chronology then there is no doubt, and there is no reason to
suppose that the pilgrimage was other than a self-imposed one. Swegen,
in short, if a great criminal, was also a great penitent, and it is
rather hard to deprive him of that character in order to exalt Saint
Eadward and the ecclesiastical canons. Eadward had no opportunity of
being inexorable; Swegen’s family had no opportunity of abandoning him;
he probably did not need the discipline of the ecclesiastical canons;
his own conscience had already pronounced sentence upon him. It was
probably Florence’s expression “pœnitentiâ ductus” which suggested
Roger’s “pœnitentiam agens,” and from the latter Dr. Lingard clearly got
his idea of the ecclesiastical canons.

Thierry (i. 201) seems, contrary to the best accounts, but in conformity
with a possible interpretation of Roger, to bring Swegen to the Gemót,
and to make him banish himself there; “Tous les membres de cette famille
populaire rentrèrent dans leurs honneurs, à l’exception d’un seul, de
Sweyn, qui y renonça volontairement.” Out of this view Lord Lytton
(Harold, i. 196 et seqq.) has made a fine scene.

The Abingdon Chronicle makes Swegen die at Constantinople;
Florence places his death in Lykia. He adds that he died of the
cold—“invalitudine ex nimio frigore contractâ.” Florence, writing
with the Abingdon Chronicle before him, could have no motive to
change the well known Constantinople into the less known Lykia,
unless he had good information that Lykia really was the place.
But the Chronicler might very easily put Constantinople, a
thoroughly familiar name, instead of Lykia, of which he had
perhaps never heard. William of Malmesbury (ii. 200) has quite
another story; “A Saracenis circumventus et ad mortem cæsus est.”

A close parallel to the pilgrimage of Swegen is found in that of Lagman
(on the name see vol. i. p. 510) King of Man, 1075–1093 (Munch, p. 4);
“Rebellavit autem contra eum Haraldus frater ejus multo tempore. Sed
tandem captus a Lagmanno, genitalibus et oculis privatus est. Post hæc
Lagmannus, pœnitens quod fratris sui oculos eruisset, sponte regnum suum
dimisit, et signo crucis dominicæ insignitus, iter Jerosolimitanum
arripuit, quo et mortuus est.”

NOTE U. p. 342.
THE ECCLESIASTICAL POSITION OF STIGAND.

Stigand, as might have been expected, is as favourite an object of
Norman abuse as Godwine himself. And abuse of Stigand is one degree more
reasonable than abuse of Godwine. For, though Stigand’s conduct seems to
have in no way infringed the laws of England, and though it might easily
have been justified by abundance of English precedents, there can be no
doubt that it offended against the strict laws of the Church as
understood by continental canonists. Of the mingled state of English
feeling with regard to him I have spoken in several passages of the text
(see above, pp. 343, 432, 446); I will here bring together some of the
chief authorities on the subject.

The offences of Stigand, as seen in the eye of the Canon Law, are thus
stated by Florence, when recording his degradation in 1070;

“Stigandus Doruberniæ archiepiscopus degradatur tribus ex caussis,
scilicet, quia episcopatum Wintoniæ cum archiepiscopatu injustè
possidebat; et quia, vivente archiepiscopo Roberto, non solum
archiepiscopatum sumpsit, sed etiam ejus pallium, quod Cantwariæ
remansit, dum vi injustè ab Angliâ pulsus est, in missarum celebratione
aliquamdiu usus est; et post à Benedicto, quem sancta Romana ecclesia
excommunicavit, eo quod pecuniis sedem apostolicam invasit, pallium
accepit.”

On Stigand’s plurality of Bishopricks, an offence in which he was far
from standing alone, William of Malmesbury, as might be expected, gets
more rhetorical, and yet, after all, he seems to see that, as things
went, there was nothing so very monstrous in it. He mentions the matter
in the Gesta Regum, ii. 199;

“Invasit continuò, illo [Roberto] vivente, Stigandus, qui erat episcopus
Wintoniæ, archiepiscopatum Cantuariensem; infamis ambitûs pontifex, et
honorum ultra debitum appetitor, qui, spe throni excelsioris,
episcopatum Saxonum Australium deserens, Wintoniam insederit, illam
quoque cum archiepiscopatu tenuerit.”

But in the Gesta Pontificum (116 _b_), after a good deal of abuse, he
gets somewhat mollified;

“Nonne illud belluinæ rapacitatis dices, quod Wintoniæ episcopatum et
Cantuariæ archiepiscopatum, præterea multas abbatias [see Hist. Eliens.
ii. 41] solus ipse possidebat, quæ singula satis superque sufficerent
alicui probo viro? Sed ego conjicio illum non judicio sed errore
peccâsse, quod homo illiteratus (sicuti plerique et penè omnes tunc
temporis Angliæ Episcopi) nesciret quantùm delinqueret, rem
ecclesiasticorum negotiorum sicut publicorum actitari existimans.”

The feeling on the subject among strict churchmen comes out very
forcibly in the words of the Abingdon Chronicler in 1053, when he
records the foreign consecration of Wulfwig and Leofwine; “On ðisson
geare næs ná arcebisceop on ðissan lande, butan Stigand bisceop heold
þæt bisceoprice on Cantwarabyrig on Christes cyrcean, and Kynsige on
Eoforwic; and Leofwine and Wulfwi foran ofer sæ and leton hig hadian hær
to bisceopum.” I suppose all that is meant about Cynesige is that he had
not yet received the pallium, as I do not know of any objection having
been made to his appointment. The Waltham writer (De Inventione, c. 16)
has an expression which in a contemporary writer would be still more
forcible. He tells us that Harold had his minster consecrated by
Cynesige, “quia tunc vacabat sedes Cantuariæ.” But, a hundred years
later, the words may simply imply an imperfect understanding of the
facts.

I have mentioned in their proper places the various Bishops who declined
consecration at the hands of Stigand, and sought it elsewhere (see pp.
343, 453). The most important instance is that of Saint Wulfstan (see p.
466), on account of the distinct, though at first sight apparently
contradictory, evidence which we have on the subject. I think that the
distinct statement of Florence (1062) cannot be got over. It runs thus;

“Consecratus est igitur Episcopus à venerando Aldredo Eboracensium
Archiepiscopo, eò quòd Stigando Doruberniæ Archiepiscopo officium
episcopale tunc à Domino Apostolico interdictum erat, quia, Rodberto
Archiepiscopo vivente, archiepiscopatum suscipere præsumpsit; canonicâ
tamen professione præfato Dorubernensi Archiepiscopo Stigando, non suo
ordinatori Aldredo, factâ.”

This seems to show that, in Florence’s belief, the Legates brought with
them a distinct and fresh decree against Stigand (“officium ... _tunc_
interdictum est.” Cf. Vita Wlstani, Ang. Sacr. ii. 251; “Quod
Cantuariensi Stigando Romanus Papa interdixisset officio”); that
Wulfstan, in obedience to the Papal orders, refused consecration at the
hands of Stigand, but that he nevertheless made canonical profession to
him as the _de facto_ Archbishop. Now this account is not a mere _obitèr
dictum_ of Florence; it is one of those statements of his which have a
controversial force. It is evidently meant as an answer to some other
statement; it is akin to his memorable description of Harold’s election
and coronation, in which every word disposes of some Norman calumny. It
expresses, in short, the deliberate conviction of a man of local
knowledge and sound judgement. On the other hand, the words of the later
profession of Wulfstan to Lanfranc (a document which is not printed, but
for a copy of which I have to thank Professor Stubbs) seem to deny that
he had ever made any earlier profession at all. His words are;

“Quo tempore ego Wulstanus ad Wigorniensem Wicciorum urbem sum ordinatus
episcopus, sanctam Dorobernensem ecclesiam, cui omnes antecessores meos
constat fuisse subjectos, Stigandus jampridem invaserat, metropolitanum
ejusdem sedis vi et dolo expulerat, usumque pallii quod ei abstulit
contemptâ apostolicæ sedis auctoritate temerare præsumpserat. Unde à
Romanis Pontificibus, Leone, Victore, Stephano, Nicolao, Alexandro,
vocatus, excommunicatus, damnatus est. Ipse tamen, ut cœpit, in sui
cordis obstinatione permansit. Per idem tempus jussa eorum Pontificum in
Anglicam terram delata sunt prohibentium nequis ei episcopalem
reverentiam exhiberet, aut ad eum ordinandus accederet. Quo tempore
Anglorum præsules, alii Romam, nonnulli Franciam sacrandi petebant;
quidam vero, ad vicinos coepiscopos accedebant. Ego autem Alredum
Eboracensis ecclesiæ antistitem adii; professionem tamen de canonicâ
obedientiâ usque ad præsente diem facere distuli.”

I suspect that Wulfstan meant to say that he had made no profession to
_Ealdred_, and that Lanfranc, or some cunning foreign clerk, wrapped the
matter up in the folds of a subtilty which the English Bishop most
likely did not above half understand. A document which ventures to say
that Stigand—and not the English people—drove Robert into exile could
hardly be the genuine composition of the chosen friend of Harold. The
simplicity of the saint was doubtless imposed upon, and his hand was set
to a paper which gave a false view of the case. Florence seemingly
thought it his duty to put a counter-statement on record.

NOTE W. p. 351.
THE DEATH OF EARL GODWINE.

The Biographer gives no details of the death of Godwine. He merely says
(408) that he died in the year after his return (“reconciliatis ergo
Duce et ejus filiis cum Rege, et omni patriâ in pacis tranquillitate
conquiescente, secundo post hæc anno, obiit idem Dux felicis memoriæ”).
He then mentions the grief of the nation, the Earl’s solemn burial in
the Old Minster (“tumulatur condigno honore in monasterio, quod
nuncupant, veteri Wintoniæ”), and the offerings made for the repose of
his soul.

All the Chronicles mention the Earl’s death. The Winchester Chronicle,
in one of its rare entries at this time, says simply, “1053. Her Godwine
Eorl forðferde.” The late Canterbury Chronicle adds the exact date;
“1053. Her was Godwine Eorl dead on xvii. Kal. Mai.” Peterborough adds
the place of burial; “1053. Her on þisum geare forðferde Godwine Eorl on
xvii. Kal. Mai, and he is bebyrged on Winceastre on ealda mynstre.” But
it is from the Worcester, and still more from the Abingdon Chronicler,
that we learn the details which I have followed in the text, and on a
perversion of which the Norman romance is evidently founded. The
Worcester writer’s account (1053) is put out of place, after events
which happened later in the year. He tells us that the Earl was taken
ill while he sat with the King at Winchester “him geyfelode þær he mid
þam cynge sæt on Wincestre”). The Abingdon Chronicler is much fuller. He
mentions the death of Godwine twice. First, in 1052, he gives us the
very important fact that the Earl began to sicken soon after his return
(see above, p. 348), and it is here that he makes his complaint of
Godwine’s spoliations of holy places (see above, p. 545). Under 1053 he
gives the story of his death. The King is at Winchester at Easter, and
Godwine, Harold, and Tostig (“Godwine Eorl, and Harold Eorl his sunu,
and Tostig.” See p. 567 on the way of describing the two brothers) are
with him. He then goes on,

“Ða on oðran Easter dæge sæt he mid þam Cynincge æt gereorde; þa færinga
sah he niðer wið þæs fotsetles spræce benumen, and ealre his mihte; and
hine man ða brǽd into ðæs Kinges bure, and ðohtan þæt hit ofergán
sceolde; ac hit næs na swa, ac þurhwunode swa unspecende and mihteleas
forð oð þone Ðunresdæg, and ða his lif alét, and he lið þær binnan
ealdan mynstre.”

Florence (1053) translates this account, with the addition of one or two
touches;

“Eodem anno, dum secunda paschalis festivitatis celebraretur feria
Wintoniæ, Godwino Comiti, _more solito_ Regi ad mensam assidenti,
suprema evenit calamitas, _gravi etenim morbo ex improviso percussus_,
mutus in ipsâ sede declinavit. Quod _filii ejus, Comes Haroldus, Tosti,
et Gyrth videntes_, illum in Regis cameram portabant, sperantes eum post
modicum de infirmitate convalescere; sed ille expers virium, quintâ post
hæc feriâ, _miserabili cruciatu_ vitâ decessit, et in veteri monasterio
sepultus est.”

I am not sure that we do not here, in our own Florence, find the first
touches of romance, or rather the first influence of the romantic tales
which were doubtless already afloat in his time. He leaves out the
mention of Godwine’s previous illness, he enlarges on the suddenness of
the stroke, and he adds the “miserabilis cruciatus,” of which we hear
nothing in the Chronicles, and which seems to come from the death of
Harthacnut (see vol. i. p. 591).

We are now fairly landed in the region of romance. The sudden death of
Godwine at the royal table probably suggested the thought of that form
of ordeal in which the guilt or innocence of the accused person was
tested by his power of swallowing a morsel, blessed or cursed for the
purpose. It is possible that the tale of Ælfred the conspirator against
Æthelstan was not forgotten. Ælfred, according to the story (Will.
Malms. ii. 137), was in the like manner struck before the altar after
his false oath before Pope John, and died on the third day. The legend
of Godwine appears in shapes in which both these sources can be
recognized. According to William of Malmesbury (ii. 197), Eadward and
Godwine were sitting at table discoursing about the King’s late brother
Ælfred (“orto sermone de Elfredo regis fratre”); Godwine says that he
believes that the King still suspects him of having had a hand in his
death (“Tu, Rex, ad omnem memoriam germani, rugato me vultu video quod
aspicias”); but he prays God that the morsel which he has in his hand
may choke him (“non patiatur Deus, ut istam offam transglutiam”) if he
had ever done anything tending to Ælfred’s danger or to the King’s
damage (“ad ejus periculum, vel tuum incommodum”). Of course the morsel
does choke him, and he dies then and there; he is dragged from under the
table by his son Harold, who is in attendance on the King (“qui Regi
adstabat”), and is buried in the cathedral of Winchester (“in episcopatu
Wintoniæ”). The moral of course is not wanting—“Deum monstrâsse quam
sancto animo Godwinus servierit;” but it is only fair to William to say
that his infinitive mood shows that he is telling the tale only as part
of the Norman version of Godwine’s history (see above, p. 536).

The Hyde writer (p. 289) tells the story in a shape which is still more
distinctly borrowed from the story of Ælfred. The scene is changed to
London. Godwine sees that the King’s mind is still kept back from a
thorough reconciliation by the remembrance of the death of his brother
(“animadvertens animum Regis Edwardi pro injustâ fratris sui
interfectione erga se non esse sincerum”). He therefore constantly tries
to regain his favour by frequent assertions of his innocence. He and the
King are present in a church at the time of mass; Godwine, of his own
free will (“nullo cogente sed ipso Rege cum Principibus vehementer
admirante”), steps forward to the altar, takes the chalice in his hand,
and pledges himself by a solemn oath (“cunctis audientibus inaudito se
juramento constrinxit”) that he had had no share in the death of Ælfred.
The King and the Earl then go to dinner, and the rest of the story is
told in nearly the same way as by William of Malmesbury, only in a
rather more impressive style. The morsel sticks in Godwine’s throat
(“buccellam ori impositam, urgente eum divino judicio, nec glutere
potuit, nec revertere, sed in amentiam versus terribiliter cœpit
exspirare”). Harold, who, as in the other version, is in attendance on
the King (“qui servitoris officio Regi adstabat”), carries him out while
still breathing (“jam extremum spiritum trahentem, foras asportavit”).

In Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 760 B) the chief difference from the
version of William of Malmesbury is that the death of Ælfred is not
mentioned. The scene is removed to Windsor (“apud Windleshores, ubi
plurimùm manere solebat”); the conversation at dinner between the King
and the Earl turns upon Godwine’s supposed treasons against the King
himself, a subject quite as strange as the death of Ælfred; Godwine
(“gener suus et proditor, recumbens juxta eum”) seemingly volunteers the
remark that he has been often falsely accused of plotting against the
King, but that he trusts that, if there be a true and just God in
heaven, he will make the piece of bread choke him, if he ever did so
plot. The true and just God, we are told, heard the voice of the
traitor, who, as the chronicler charitably adds, “eodem pane
strangulatus mortem prægustavit æternam.”

But there was something very lame in both these shapes of the story. Why
should Eadward and Godwine choose as the subject of their discourse the
topics which of all others one would have thought that both of them
would have wished to avoid? Why should either Eadward or Godwine, in the
familiar intercourse of the dinner-table, fall talking either about the
murder of Ælfred or about any other treasonable doings of the Earl?
William and Henry give us no clue. The Hyde writer solves the
difficulty, but in rather a desperate way. In the next stage of the
legend the explanation is much more ingeniously supplied. Some teller of
the story lighted on an ancient legend which William of Malmesbury had
recorded in its proper place (ii. 139), but which he had not thought of
transferring to this. There was an old scandal against King Æthelstan,
to the effect that he exposed his brother Eadwine at sea, on a false
charge of conspiracy brought by his cup-bearer. Seven years after, the
cup-bearer, handing wine to the King, slips with one foot, recovers
himself with the other, and adds the witty remark, “So brother helps
brother.” But King Æthelstan is thereby minded how this same man had
made him deprive himself of the help of _his_ brother, and he takes care
that, however strong he may be on his feet, he shall presently be
shorter by the head, which had no brother to help it. This story (of
which I have spoken in an article in the Fortnightly Review, May 1,
1866) is worked into the legend of Godwine by Æthelred of Rievaux (X
Scriptt. 395), in the French Life of Eadward (3253 et seqq. p. 117), in
Roger of Wendover (i. 492), the Winchester Annals (p. 25), Thomas
Rudborne’s Winchester History (Ang. Sacr. i. 239), Bromton (X Scriptt.
944), and Knighton (X Scriptt. 2333). In all these accounts we read,
with no difference of any importance, how, as Eadward and Godwine are at
table, the cup-bearer slips and recovers himself, how Godwine says, “So
brother helps brother,” how Eadward answers, “So might my brother Ælfred
have helped me, but for the treason of Godwine.” The Earl’s
protestations of innocence, and the fearful test which he offers, have
now a certain propriety, and the rest of the story follows much as in
William of Malmesbury. The ball however has grown somewhat in its
rollings, and some characteristically strong language is put into the
mouth of the Saint. “Drag out the dog” (“extrahite canem,” or “canem
istum”) is the King’s terse command, as it appears in Æthelred and
Bromton. In the French Life this is, by a slight improvement, developed
into “this stinking dog” (“treiez hors ceu chen punois”); while in most
of the versions Eadward goes on to order his father-in-law to be buried
in the highway, as unworthy of Christian burial (“extrahite canem hunc
et proditorum et illum in quadrivio sepelite, indignus est ut
Christianam habeat sepulturam”). The burial in the Old Minster was, we
are assured by Roger of Wendover, done wholly without the King’s
knowledge (“Rege id penitus ignorante”). One or two other smaller points
may be noticed. Bromton and Knighton, like Henry of Huntingdon, transfer
the story to Windsor, and the Winchester Annals more strangely transfer
it to Odiham. Roger of Wendover and Thomas Rudborne make the King bless
the morsel, before Godwine takes it; and the latter mentions another
version, according to which it was blessed by Saint Wulfstan. The
presence of the Prior of Worcester at the royal banquet is not accounted
for. The Winchester Annals, with an obvious scriptural allusion, tell us
that with the morsel Satan entered into Godwine (“introivit in illum
Sathanas”). Lastly, Bromton turns the cup-bearer whose foot slips into
no less a person than the Earl of the East-Angles. One wonders that the
legend of the quarrel between Harold and Tostig was not dragged in here
also.

After all this, it is with some relief that one turns to honest Wace
(10595), who at least had the manliness to confess that there were
things which he did not know;

“Gwine poiz remist issi,
Li Reiz en paiz le cunsenti.
Jo ne sai cumbien i dura,
Maiz jo sai bien k’il s’estrangla
D’un morsel ke li Roiz chigna
Al’ aünie ù il mainga.”

Such is the rise and progress of this famous legend. I venture to think
that a better instance of the gradual growth of invention is hardly to
be found in the whole range of mythology.

NOTE X. p. 362.
THE WAR WITH MACBETH.

Several points of dispute are opened by Siward’s expedition against
Macbeth. In the popular story Macbeth is killed, and Malcolm is put in
full possession of the Kingdom of Scotland, as the immediate result of
the battle fought by Siward. On the other hand, authentic history makes
Malcolm wage a much longer struggle, as I have mentioned in the text.
The point which is left obscure is what share the English allies of
Malcolm took in the war after the defeat of Macbeth by Siward.

On the other hand, a question has been raised by Mr. E. W. Robertson,
whether the expedition of Siward had anything at all to do with the
restoration of Malcolm. I cannot look on this question as much more than
a cavil; still it may be as well to state the objection and the answer
to it, as coming first in chronological order, before examining the
other points.

1. The objection brought by Mr. Robertson (Scotland under her Early
Kings, i. 122, 123) against the commonly received view as to the objects
of Siward’s expedition seems to rest on no ground except that, as he
says, “neither the contemporary Irish annalist, nor the two MSS. of the
Chronicle which describe the expedition of Siward, allude to any cause
for it, or note any result beyond the immense booty acquired.” “They
never,” he adds, “mention the name of Malcolm or of the Confessor.”
Elsewhere (ii. 400) Mr. Robertson calls it an “expedition which appears
to have been directed against Macbeth on account of the protection he
has afforded to the Norman favourites of the Confessor.” Now this last
explanation is a mere conjecture of Mr. Robertson’s own. There is not a
scrap of evidence in support of it, while on the other side we have the
distinct statement of Florence. Florence tells us directly that one
object at least of Siward’s expedition was the restoration of Malcolm
(“Malcolmum, Regis Cumbrorum filium, ut Rex jusserat, Regem
constituit”). He is followed, in nearly the same words, by the Manx
Chronicler (1035, Munch, p. 3). Mr. Robertson’s conjecture seems to me
to be not only unsupported, but utterly improbable. There is nothing to
show that Macbeth had given any further offence by receiving the Norman
exiles. They had been allowed to go peaceably into Scotland (see above,
p. 346), and some of them had actually been recalled to England. That,
being in Scotland, they fought on the Scottish side, does not prove that
the war was in any way waged against them. To fight on behalf of the
side on which they found themselves for the moment was only the natural
conduct of Normans anywhere. And, besides all this, the whole story of
these Norman exiles rests on the authority of Florence. It is from him
alone that we learn that they took any part in the battle, or indeed
that there were any Norman exiles in Scotland at all. If the authority
of Florence is good to prove these points, it is surely equally good to
prove the objects of the expedition. And it is not merely the authority
of Florence; it is Florence confirmed by Simeon of Durham, our best
authority for all Northern matters (see X Scriptt. 187). That the
Chronicles are silent on some points, that the Peterborough Chronicle is
silent altogether, will amaze no one who remembers how capriciously
Scottish and Northumbrian affairs are entered or not entered in our
national annals. The Abingdon and Worcester Chroniclers were struck with
the general greatness of Siward’s exploit, but the cause of Malcolm had
no interest for them. The Peterborough Chronicler, the sworn partizan of
the house of Godwine, did not trouble himself to take any notice of an
event which neither enhanced the glory of Harold nor touched the
interests of his own abbey. But the fact that Simeon held Florence’s
narrative to be worth copying without addition or alteration at once
stamps its authenticity. Simeon’s approval at once sets aside all
negative arguments, all talk about the “misrepresentations of
Anglo-Norman writers,” whoever may be meant by that name.

Mr. Burton (i. 373) seems to have no doubt about the matter.

2. The nature of Siward’s troops is well marked in the language of the
different accounts. The _here_ and the _fyrd_ are clearly distinguished.
The Worcester Chronicle (1054) says, “Her ferde Siward Eorl mid miclum
_here_ on Scotland, ægðer ge mid _sciphere_ and mid _landfyrde_.” This
Florence translates, “Strenuus Dux Northhymbrorum Siwardus, jussu Regis,
cum _equestri exercitu_ et classe validâ Scottiam adiit.” Then, in
describing the slaughter of the English, Abingdon says, “Eac feol mycel
on his [Siwardes] healfe _ægðer ge Densce ge Englisce_.” So Florence,
“Multi _Anglorum et Danorum_ ceciderunt.” The Worcester Chronicle says,
“And of _his_ [Siwardes] _huscarla_ and of þæs cynges wurdon þær
ofslægene.” I take the _here_, the _housecarls_, and the _equestris
exercitus_, all to be the same thing, and I take the “Danish and
English” of one account to answer to the “Housecarls of the Earl and of
the King” in the other. The Housecarls were doubtless an “equestris
exercitus” in the sense of which I spoke in vol. i. p. 566. They did not
fight on horseback, but they, or many of them, rode to battle (see also
vol. i. p. 298), while the levies of the shires, no doubt, for the most
part walked. The King’s Housecarls, we see, were wholly or mainly
Englishmen, chiefly no doubt West-Saxons; those of the Earl would
doubtless be Danes in the sense of being inhabitants of the _Denalagu_,
some perhaps in the sense of being actually adventurers from Denmark.
The Housecarls now clearly take the place of the old _comitatus_; the
stress of the battle now falls mainly on them, just as of old it fell on
the noble youths who fought around Brihtnoth (see vol. i. pp. 91, 298,
490). So, on the Scottish side, we read in the Worcester Chronicle that
Siward “feaht wið Scottas ... and ofsloh _eall þæt þer betst wæs_ on þam
lande.” The special mention of the Normans comes from Florence; “Multis
millibus Scottorum, et _Nortmannis omnibus_, quorum suprà fecimus
mentionem, occisis.” The Ulster Annals (Johnston, 69; O’Conor, Rer. Hib.
Scriptt. iv. 334) speak of this battle as “prœlium inter viros Albaniæ
et Saxones.” They undertake to give us the numbers of the slain, three
thousand on the Scottish side, and fifteen hundred “Saxons.”

3. That Siward lost a son in the battle is asserted by the Abingdon
Chronicler and by Florence; but they do not give his name. The Worcester
writer is more express. Among the slain were “his sunu Osbarn and his
sweoster sunu Sihward.” The story of Siward asking about his son’s
wounds is told, and well told, by Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 760 A)
and Bromton (X Scriptt. 946). But Henry carries back the story to the
year 1052, and both he and Bromton conceive Osbeorn _Bulax_, as Bromton
calls him, to have died in an earlier expedition in which his father had
no share. Siward, hearing a satisfactory report of the manner of his
son’s death, goes in person and avenges him (“Siwardus igitur in Scotiam
proficiscens, Regem bello vicit, regnum totum destruxit, destructum sibi
subjugavit”). If there is any meaning in this wild exaggeration, the
subjection of Scotland to Siward must mean the establishment of Siward’s
kinsman Malcolm as King. But it is hard to make the story of Osbeorn’s
death and Siward’s inquiries fit in with the fact that Osbeorn died in a
battle in which Siward himself was present. According to the analogies
of Maldon and Senlac, the Earl, his son, and his nephew would stand near
together in the fight, and there would be no need of messengers to
announce the manner of Osbeorn’s death.

Bromton has also preserved another tradition about the death of Osbeorn,
which is palpably mythical as it stands, but which seems, in common with
several other hints, to point to a strong feeling of disaffection
towards Siward as rife in Northumberland. Siward goes into Scotland,
leaving Osbeorn as his representative in his Earldom. After his victory
he hears that the Northumbrians have revolted and killed his son. He
then, in his wrath, performs an exploit like that of Roland in the
Pyrenees (“Siwardus inde iratus in scopulo adhuc patente cum securi
percussit”); he gives Scotland to Donald (inaccurately for Malcolm), and
returns to Northumberland to take a stern vengeance on his enemies
(“patriam rediit et inimicos suos in ore gladii percussit”).

4. As to the result of the battle, there can be no doubt. Macbeth was
defeated, but not killed. But the false account followed by Shakespere
(who also confounds Osbeorn with his cousin the younger Siward) is as
old as William of Malmesbury. He speaks (ii. 196) of “Siwardus
Northimbrensium [Comes], qui jussu ejus [Edwardi] cum Scotorum Rege
Macbethâ congressus, _vitâ_ regnoque spoliavit, ibidemque Malcolmum,
filium Regis Cumbrorum, Regem instituit.” It is singular that William
should have fallen into an error which not only contradicts the earlier
authorities, but which has been avoided by many writers much later and
more careless than himself. The agreement on this head is complete. The
escape of Macbeth is implied in the words of the Worcester Chronicle
(“Siward ... feaht wið Scottas and _aflymde_ þone kyng Macbeoðen”) and
of Florence (“illum _fugavit_”); and it is still plainer in the Abingdon
version (“Siward ... mycel wæl of Scottum gesloh, and hig aflymde, and
_se cing ætbærst_”) and in the Biographer (“Rex Scottorum nomine
barbarus ... à Siwardo Duce usque ad internecionem penè suorum devictus
et _in obscœnam fugam est versus_.” p. 416). The story in Henry of
Huntingdon and Bromton, as we have seen, speaks only of a victory over
Macbeth, not of his death. Fordun (v. 7) is equally clear. He quotes and
rejects William of Malmesbury’s account, and tells us that Macbeth
“partibus subitò relictis australibus boreales petiit, ubi terrarum
angustis anfractibus et silvarum abditis tutiùs sperabat se tueri.” He
adds that the Scots, unwilling to fight against Malcolm, fled at the
first sound of the trumpet, quite a different picture from the hard
fought fight spoken of by the English and Irish writers.

5. The distinct statement of Florence that Siward made Malcolm King
(“Regem constituit”) does not seem to me to be at all contradicted by
the facts that the war lingered on several years, and that Malcolm was
not solemnly crowned at Scone till after the death of the competitor who
succeeded Macbeth. The result of the battle doubtless was that Malcolm
was acknowledged King of Scots by the English King, by at least his own
English subjects in Lothian, and probably by the southern parts of
Scotland proper (“partes australes” in Fordun just above). But the war
still went on in the North. It is worth notice that Florence is
satisfied with the practical expression of Eadward’s supremacy—“ut Rex
jusserat, Regem constituit.” But Roger of Wendover (i. 493), in whose
time the homage of Scotland was becoming a matter of debate, is more
special and more feudal in his language. He improves the statement of
Florence into “Rex regnum Scotiæ dedit Malcolmo, Cumbrorum Regis filio,
de se tenendum.”

6. The remaining events of the war I have described in the text. Our
accounts are very meagre, but there can, I think, be little doubt that
Malcolm continued to be powerfully supported by English help under
Tostig, the successor of Siward. That such was the case is distinctly
affirmed by Eadward’s Biographer (416), though, as usual, he wraps his
story in such a cloud of words that we cannot make out much as to time,
place, or circumstance. Macbeth, the King whose barbarous name he cannot
write or remember, was first (“primùm”) defeated by Siward, then by
Tostig. “Secundò, ducatum agente Duce Tostino, quum eum Scotti
intentatum haberet, et ob hoc in minori pretio habitum, latrocinio
potiùs quam bello sæpiùs lacesserent; incertum genus hominum, silvisque
potiùs quam campo, fugæ quoque magis fidens quam audaciæ virili in
prælio, tam prudenti astutiâ quam virtute bellicâ et hostili
expeditione, cum salute suorum prædictus Dux attrivit, ut cum Rege eorum
delegerint ei Regique Ædwardo magis servire quam rebellare, id quoque
per datos obsides ratum facere.” He then formally declines to go further
into the matter. The meaning of the passage is by no means clear. Indeed
I do not feel certain whether the Biographer has not confounded Macbeth
and Malcolm. It is hard to conceive any time when Macbeth can have given
hostages; Malcolm may have done so on his first appointment, or it is
possible, though we have no other account of it, that Malcolm’s raid in
1061 (see p. 459) may have been avenged by a Scottish expedition on the
part of Tostig. The Biographer’s authority on these matters, which he
seems purposely to slight, is far from being so great as it is when he
is dealing with those affairs of the Court which went on under his own
eye. Still his account shows that a Scottish war of some sort or other,
whether against Macbeth or against Malcolm, went on under Tostig as well
as under Siward.

The sworn brotherhood again between Tostig and Malcolm (see p. 384) can
hardly have any other reference than to a joint war against Macbeth.
There is also a statement in Fordun (v. 8), which, though utterly
confused as it stands, may probably help us to an important fact. Fordun
clearly conceived Siward as continuing to wage war in Scotland after the
battle of 1054, for he describes him as being summoned back by Eadward
to help in the war against Gruffydd, after the destruction of Hereford
in 1055 (“Hoc statim Siwardus, postquam à suo Rege per certum audierat
nuncium, confestim jussus domi rediit, nequaquam ulteriùs Malcolmo ferre
præsidium rediturus”). Now Siward died in 1055, before the war in
Herefordshire began; but, if we read Tostig for Siward, a summons to the
Welsh war is in every way probable.

Fordun, though he preserves the fact of Macbeth’s escape from the battle
of 1054, confounds that battle with the battle of Lumfanan in 1058, and
places them together in 1056, on December 5th (v. 7). Nevertheless he
makes (v. 8) the battle to have happened at the same time as Gruffydd’s
destruction of Hereford in 1055. But Siward’s battle is fixed by the
English Chronicles to 1054, and the battle in which Macbeth died is
equally fixed by the Irish Chronicles to 1058. So the Ulster Annals;
“Macbeath filius Finnliachi, supremus Rex Albaniæ, occisus est à
Malcolmo filio Donnchadi in prœlio.” (See also Robertson, i. 123;
Burton, i. 373.) The successor of Macbeth is called by Fordun (v. 8)
“suus [Machabei] consobrinus, nomine Lulach, cognomine Fatuus.”
Tigernach calls him “Lulacus Rex Albaniæ,” and fixes his death, which
was “per dolum,” to 1058. The Ulster Annals call him “Mac Gil Comgen”
(see Robertson, i. 120). Mr. Burton (i. 374) calls him a son of Gruach.
The coronation of Malcolm comes from Fordun (v. 9). Cf. O’Conor’s note
on the Ulster Annals, Rer. Hib. Scriptt. iv. 338.

NOTE Y. p. 370.
THE MISSION OF EALDRED AND THE RETURN OF THE ÆTHELING EADWARD.

The sources of our information with regard to Bishop Ealdred’s mission
to the Imperial Court curiously illustrate the occasionally deficient
nature of our authorities, and the way in which one writer fills up gaps
in another. The mission of Ealdred in 1054 and the return of the
Ætheling in 1057 are both of them distinctly recorded in our national
Chronicles. They are indeed much more than recorded; each event finds at
least one Chronicler to dwell upon it with special interest. But from
the Chronicles alone we should never find out that there was any
connexion between the two events. The coming of the Ætheling is recorded
by the Peterborough writer, and it attracts the special attention of his
Worcester brother, who bursts into song on the occasion. But there is
not a word in either to connect his coming with the German mission of
Ealdred. About that mission the Peterborough writer is silent, just as
he is silent about the Scottish war of Siward. Abingdon (1054) records
Ealdred’s journey, but says only, “On þam ylcan geare ferde Ealdred
biscop suð ofer sǽ into Sexlande, and wearð þær mid mycelre arwarðnesse
underfangen.” From this account we might guess, but we could do no more
than guess, that Ealdred went in some public character. The Worcester
writer is naturally fuller on the doings of his own Bishop; still what
chiefly occupies his attention is the “mickle worship” with which
Ealdred was received by the Emperor, the long time that he was away, and
the arrangements which he made for the discharge of his duties during
his absence (see p. 372). He does indeed tell us that Ealdred went on
the King’s errand; but he does not tell us what the King’s errand was,
any more than he did in recording Ealdred’s earlier mission to Rome in
1049. His words are; “Ðæs ilcan geres for Aldred biscop to Colne ofer
sæ, _þæs kynges ærende_, and wearð þær underfangen mid mycclan
weorðscipe fram þam Casere, and þær he wunode wel neh an gér; and him
geaf ægðer þeneste, ge se biscop on Colone and se Casere.” So William of
Malmesbury (Vit. S. Wlst. Ang. Sacr. ii. 249) looks on the objects of
the embassy as best summed up in the Herodotean formula εἰδὼς οὐ λέγω.
Ealdred goes to the Emperor, “quædam negotia, quorum cognitionem caussa
non flagitat, compositurus.” But he has much to tell us about Ealdred’s
reception by the Emperor (“quum in Imperatoriæ Augustæ dignationis
oculis invenisset gratiam, aliquot ibi dierum continuatione laborum
suorum accepit pausam”), and still more about the presents which he
received. As the biographer of Wulfstan, he could not fail to tell us
about two service-books in which Wulfstan was deeply interested (see p.
462), and which Ealdred now received as a present from the Emperor. In
his history he does speak of an embassy to bring about the return of the
Ætheling, but he altogether misconceives the circumstances (see p. 371),
he makes no mention of Ealdred, and he fancies that the embassy went
direct to Hungary (“Rex Edwardus ... misit ad Regem Hunorum.” ii. 228).
It is from Florence, and from Florence only, that we get a complete and
accurate filling up of all our gaps. He tells us, under 1054, “Aldredus
Wigorniensis Episcopus ... magnis cum xeniis Regis fungitur legatione ad
Imperatorem, à quo simul et ab Herimanno Coloniensi archipræsule magno
susceptus honore, ibidem per integrum annum mansit, et Regis ex parte
Imperatori suggessit ut, legatis Ungariam missis, inde fratruelem suum
Eadwardum, Regis videlicet Eadmundi Ferrei Lateris filium, reduceret,
Angliamque venire faceret.” We now know what the King’s errand was on
which Ealdred was sent, and, knowing that it was to bring back the
Ætheling, we might guess for ourselves why the Ætheling was to be
brought back. But Florence afterwards expressly tells us this also,
under the year 1057; “Decreverat enim Rex illum post se regni hæredem
constituere.”

That Ealdred had Abbot Ælfwine for his companion in this embassy (see p.
372), I infer from a remarkable entry in Domesday (208) which can have
no other meaning. Land in Huntingdonshire is said to have been granted
by Eadward “Sancto Benedicto de Ramesy, propter unum servitium quod
Abbas Alwinus fecit ei in Saxoniâ.” I can conceive no other service in
Saxony which Ælfwine could have rendered to the King, save this share in
Ealdred’s mission to “Sexland.” Ælfwine’s former mission to Rheims is
not to the purpose, as no geography can put Rheims in Saxony. Nor do I
understand the remark of Sir Henry Ellis (i. 306), that we have here “an
allusion to the Confessor’s residence abroad before he came to the
throne.” What dealings had Eadward with Saxony in those days? The only
difficulty is that the local historian of Ramsey, who is very full on
the doings of Ælfwine, and who speaks of his going to Rheims, says
nothing of his embassy to Köln. But the silence of this writer has
equally to be explained on any other view of the “servitium in Saxoniâ.”

One would like to know a little more than we do about the residence of
the Æthelings in Hungary, and the position which they held there. We do
not know what became of their mother Ealdgyth, whether they were
accompanied by any English attendants, or whether they kept up any kind
of intercourse with England. Eadmund must have died young; at least this
seems to be implied by William of Malmesbury (ii. 180), who says that
the children reached Hungary “ubi, dum benignè aliquo tempore habiti
sunt, major diem obiit.” (“Processu temporis ibidem vitam finivit,” says
Florence, 1017.) But William’s ideas must have been a little confused,
as he makes the Æthelings themselves go to Hungary (“Hunorum Regem
petierunt”), as if they were capable of personal action, whereas it is
plain that they were still mere babes.

William of Malmesbury also makes Eadward marry a sister of the Queen of
the Hungarians. That is, I suppose, the meaning of his words, “Minor
Agatham Reginæ sororem in matrimonium accepit.” I have not found, in
such German and Hungarian writers as I have been able to refer to, any
mention of Eadward’s marriage, or indeed of his sojourn in Hungary at
all. But there is no doubt that the wife of Saint Stephen, who was
reigning in Hungary when the Æthelings came there, and who died in 1038,
was Gisla, called by the Hungarians Keisla, a sister of the Emperor
Henry the Second. See Ekkehard, ap. Pertz, vi. 192. Sigebert, Chron.
1010 (ap. Pertz, vi. 354); Annalista Saxo, 1002, 1038 (Pertz, vi. 650,
682). Thwrocz, Chron. Hung. ii. 30 (Scriptt. Rer. Hung. 96). Her sister
would therefore be a sister of the sainted Emperor himself, whose
Imperial reign lasted from 1014 to 1024. A sister of Henry and Gisla
could hardly fail to be many years older than Eadward, and we might have
expected to find some record of the marriage, whereas we do not even
find any sister of the Emperor Henry available for the purpose. There
can be no doubt that Agatha was not a sister, but a more distant
kinswoman of the Emperor, most probably a niece. The poem in the
Worcester Chronicle (1057) says more vaguely, “He begeat þæs Caseres
_mága_ to wife ... seo wæs Agathes gehaten:” and so again in the later
entry in 1067, “Hire [Margaret’s] modor cynn gæð to Heinrice Casere, þe
hæfde anwald ofer Rome.” Florence (1017) says more distinctly,
“Eadwardus Agatham, _filiam germani Imperatoris_ Heinrici in matrimonium
accepit.” Mr. Thorpe, in his note on the passage in Florence, following
Suhm, makes her the daughter of the Emperor’s brother Bruno, who was
Bishop of Augsburg from 1007 to 1029 (Ann. Aug. ap. Pertz, iii. 124,
125). The local Annals speak of him as “beatæ memoriæ;” but he seems to
have been a turbulent Prelate, and a great thorn in the side of his
Imperial brother. See Ekkehard, u. s. Arnold de Sancto Emmerammo, ii. 57
(ap. Pertz, iv. 571), Adalbold, Vit. Henr. II. c. 24 (ap. Pertz, iv.
689), Adalbert, Vit. Henr. II. 20 (ap. Pertz, iv. 805, 811). If this
genealogy be correct, later English royalty is connected with the
Old-Saxon stock in an unlooked for way.

Orderic has a more amazing version than all. He makes (701 D) the
Ætheling marry the daughter of Solomon, and receive the Kingdom of
Hungary as her dower. He distinctly calls Eadward King of the Huns; “Hæc
[Margarita] nimirùm filia fuit Eduardi Regis Hunorum, qui fuit filius
Edmundi cognomento Irnesidæ, fratris Eduardi Regis Anglorum, et exsul
conjugem accepit cum regno filiam Salomonis Regis Hunorum.”

The delay in the arrival of the Ætheling (see pp. 373, 409) was very
probably caused by the wars between the Empire and the Hungarian Kings
who succeeded Stephen. Before the war with Andrew mentioned in the text,
Henry the Third had an earlier Hungarian war, waged against the usurper
Ouban on behalf of Peter the predecessor of Andrew, by whom Peter was
blinded. See Lambert, 1041–1046. On the relations between Henry, Andrew,
and Conrad of Bavaria, see Hermann Contr. 1053 (ap. Pertz, v. 133),
whose account, as usual, it is not easy to reconcile with the Hungarian
traditions preserved by Thwrocz. But there must be something wrong when
Lappenberg (517) says, “Wahrscheinlich verzögerte die zwischen dem
Kaiser und dem König Andreas von Ungarn damals ausgebrochene Fehde,
sowie der Tod des Letztern, und bald darauf der des Kaisers, die
Ausführung dieses Planes.” The Emperor died in 1056; but Andrew, who
began to reign in 1047, did not die till 1060 or 1061, when he fell in
battle against his brother Bela, three or four years after the return
and death of Eadward in 1057. See Thwrocz, Rer. Hung. Scriptt. 108–112.
Lambert, 1061.

NOTE Z. p. 379.
THE SUPPOSED ENMITY BETWEEN HAROLD AND TOSTIG.

There is absolutely nothing in any trustworthy writer to lead us to
believe that there was any sort of quarrel between Harold and his
brother Tostig before the Northumbrian revolt in 1065. We have seen (p.
376) that Tostig’s appointment to his Earldom had, to say the least,
Harold’s active concurrence, and we shall find the two brothers acting
as zealous fellow-workers in the great Welsh war. Even at the time of
the revolt, we shall find Harold doing all that he could to reconcile
Tostig with his enemies. But the fact that the result of that revolt
made Tostig an enemy of his brother seems to have taken possession of
the minds of legendary writers, and a myth has grown up on this subject
akin to the myths which have attached themselves to so many other parts
of the history of Godwine and his house.

The earliest form of the legend seems to be that which it takes in
Æthelred (X Scriptt. 394). The King and Godwine are sitting at
dinner—everything seems to happen when the King and Godwine are sitting
at dinner—the two boys (“pueri adhuc”) Harold and Tostig are playing
before them, when suddenly the game becomes rather too rough (“amariùs
quam expetebat ludi suavitas”), and the play is changed into a fight.
Harold then, the stronger of the two, seizes his brother by the hair,
throws him on the ground, and is well nigh throttling him, when Tostig
is luckily carried off. The King turns to his father-in-law, and asks
him whether he sees nothing more in all this than the sports or quarrels
of two naughty boys. The unenlightened mind of the Earl can see nothing
more. But the Saint takes the occasion to prophesy, and he foretells the
war which would happen between the two brothers, and how the death of
the one would be avenged by the death of the other.

This story is at all events well put together, and it makes a very fair
piece of hagiology. It is however some objection to it that neither
Harold nor Tostig could have been a mere boy at any time after Eadward’s
accession. It might be too much to think that the author of the French
Life saw this difficulty, but at any rate he changes the “pueri adhuc”
of Æthelred into “juvenceus pruz e hardiz” (3140). Otherwise he tells
the story in exactly the same way, only enlarging with a little more of
Homeric precision on the details of the violence done by Harold to his
brother. But the story, like other stories, soon grew, and there is
another version of it, much fuller and much more impossible, which first
appears in Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 761 A), and afterwards in Roger
of Wendover (i. 507) and Bromton (948). The tale is now transferred to
the year 1064, when Harold and Tostig were the two greatest men in the
Kingdom, when Harold was probably the understood successor to the Crown,
when he was at any rate in all the glory of his victories over Gruffydd.
The two brothers are described as being at enmity, because, though
Tostig was the elder brother, Harold was the greater personal favourite
of the King “invidiæ namque et odii fomitem ministraverat, quod, quum
Tosti ipse primogenitus esset, arctiùs a rege frater suus diligeretur”).
I need hardly say how utterly the real position of the two brothers is
here reversed. The King is dining at Windsor, where Harold acts as
cup-bearer. Tostig, seeing the favour enjoyed by his brother, cannot
keep himself back from pulling his hair (“non potuit cohibere manus a
cæsarie fratris”). In Henry’s account Harold seems to bear the insult
quite patiently, but in the version of Roger of Wendover he not
unnaturally lifts Tostig up in his arms and throws him violently on the
floor (“in pavimentum truculenter projecit”). On this the King’s Thegns
(“milites”) rush together from all quarters, and put an end to the
strife between the renowned warriors (“bellatores inclitos ab invicem
diviserunt”). The King now foretells the destruction of the two
brothers, but in this version he of course foretells it as something
which is to happen speedily (“Rex perniciem eorum jam appropinquare
prædixit, et iram Dei jam non differendam”). It is here that both Henry
and Roger, and Bromton also, bring in that general complaint of the
wickedness of the sons of Godwine which I have quoted elsewhere (see p.
541). Tostig now hastens to Hereford, where Harold was preparing a great
feast for the King; he there kills all his brother’s servants, cuts them
in pieces, mixes their blood and flesh with the wine, ale, and mead
which was made ready for the feast, and sends a message to the King that
he need not bring any salted meat with him, as he will find plenty of
flesh ready at Hereford. On this Eadward orders Tostig into banishment.

The one faint glimmering of truth in all this seems to be that the
authors of the legend were clearly aware that in 1064 the Earldom of
Herefordshire was in the hands of Harold. R. Higden (Polychronicon, lib.
vi. Gale, ii. 281) tells the story in nearly the same words as the
earlier form, but he places it in 1056. Knighton (2333) seemingly does
the same, though he copies the words of his story from the version which
makes the disputants only naughty boys. M. de Bonnechose (ii. 116, 118)
seems to believe the whole story, and he makes it a subject of grave
political reflexions. Mr. Woodward (History of Wales, p. 214) thinks
that the cannibal doings of Tostig arise from some confusion with the
doings of Caradoc at Portskewet (see above, p. 480). This is possible,
but the details of the story belong to the province of Comparative
Mythology. They appear again in the well known Scottish legend of the
Douglas Larder.

It has sometimes struck me that a good deal of this talk is due to
an exaggerated misunderstanding of one or two passages in the
Biographer, where his classical vein has led him into rather wild
flights. The war between brother and brother—the war, of course, of
Stamfordbridge—reminds him of all the ancient tales of wars and
quarrels between brothers. He twice (pp. 414, 424) breaks out into
verse upon the subject, and, in both cases, the Theban legend, the
war of Eteoklês and Polyneikês, not unnaturally presents itself. But
he also (v. 834) talks about Cain and Abel, and, by a still more
unlucky allusion, about Atreus and Thyestês. Having once got hold of
these names, he goes on to tell their whole story. He personifies
discord between brothers, and thus apostrophizes the evil genius;

“Priscis nota satis tua sic contagia _ludis_.
Invidus hic prolis fraternæ fœda Thyestes
Prandia dat fratri depasto corpore nati.”

Here, it strikes me, is quite raw material enough for a legend-maker.
The word “ludis” may have suggested the “pueri ludentes” in Æthelred,
and I have very little doubt that the mention of Thyestês (who, by the
by, is made to change parts with Atreus) suggested the cannibal
preparations of Tostig at Hereford.

In several of these stories we see the pervading mistake of thinking
that Tostig was the elder brother. In some of them we also see the
notion, which turns up in several other quarters, that Harold was the
King’s personal favourite and attendant, his “dapifer,” “pincerna,”
“major domûs,” or something of the kind. It is possible that Harold in
his youth, during the first year or two of Eadward’s reign, may have
held some function of the kind, which may account for the tradition.
(Cf. p. 78, note 3.) But the notion that Tostig was the elder brother
(see above, p. 554) has led to far graver misrepresentations. The enmity
of Tostig towards Harold, which really arose out of the revolt of
Northumberland, gets mixed up with perverted accounts of Harold’s
election to the Kingdom. Orderic (492 D) seems to have fancied that
Tostig was not only the eldest son of Godwine, but that Tostig, and not
Harold, succeeded his father in the West-Saxon Earldom, and that by
hereditary right (“patris consulatus, quem Tosticus, quia major natu
erat, longo tempore sub Eduardo rege jam tenuerat”). On Harold’s
election as King, Tostig begins to reprove his brother for his
usurpation and oppressions (“advertens Heraldi fratris sui prævalere
facinus et regnum Angliæ variis gravari oppressionibus ægrè tulit”);
Harold accordingly deprives him of his Earldom and banishes him. The
strangest thing of all is that William of Malmesbury, who, in the proper
place (ii. 200), gives a very fair account of the Northumbrian revolt,
and one highly favourable to Harold, should afterwards (iii. 252)
represent Harold as banishing Tostig after his accession. After
Eadward’s death, he says “perstitit in incœpto Haroldus ut fratrem
exlegaret.” Snorro (Johnstone, 192, 193. Laing, iii. 77, 78) makes
Tostig the elder brother, the head Earl of the Kingdom, and the
commander of the King’s armies. Harold, the youngest brother, is
Eadward’s personal favourite, he is always about him, and—having
seemingly supplanted Hugolin the Frenchman—has the care of all his
treasures. Here again the real position of the two brothers is amusingly
transposed. On Harold’s election as King, Tostig, who had himself
aspired to the Crown, is much displeased, and has sharp words with his
brother. Harold of course refuses to surrender the Crown, and, fearing
the ability and popularity of Tostig, he deprives him of his command of
the army and of his precedence over other Earls. Tostig, unwilling to be
the subject of his brother, leaves the country of his own free will and
goes to Flanders. Saxo (207) is one degree less wild, in so far as he
realizes that Harold was the elder brother. In his version, after
Harold’s election, his younger brothers generally (“minores Godovini
filii majorem perosi”)—Gyrth and Leofwine no doubt as well as
Tostig—envious of their brother’s election and unwilling to submit to
his authority, leave the country and seek for help abroad.

It is needless to point out how, in all these versions, the chronology
is altered, as well as the whole circumstances of the story, in order to
represent Harold as the oppressor of his brother. But it should be
remarked that these calumnies are of a wholly different kind from the
calumnies which speak of an early quarrel, and that the two in effect
exclude one another. In the versions of Orderic, Saxo, and Snorro, the
enmity between the brothers does not begin till after Harold’s election
to the Kingdom.

It may be some refreshment to wind up with the amusing version of Peter
Langtoft, who, by the way, seems to have thought that Godwine was still
alive in 1065. He at least has no spite against Harold; he even (p. 64
Hearne) tells the story of the murder of Gospatric, the blame of which
he ventures to lay on the Lady Eadgyth (“My boke ... sais þe quene Egyn,
þe blame suld scho bere”); he then goes on;

“Tostus of Cumbirland retted Godwyn þer tille.
Tostus of Cumbirland he was chefe Justise,
Ageyn þe erle Godwyn he gert sette assise.
Gospatrike’s dede on Godwyn wild he venge,
Harald souht Tostus, to leue þat ilk challenge.
He praied him for luf, in pes lat him be stille,
And kisse and be gode frende in luf and in a wille.
Tostus wild not leue, bot held on his manace,
And Harald tened withalle, of lond he did him chace.”

NOTE AA. p. 391.
ÆTHELSTAN, BISHOP OF HEREFORD.

Professor Stubbs places the consecration of Æthelstan in 1012. This
seems to be the right year, because in that year we find his first
signature (“Æðelstanus episcopus,” Cod. Dipl. vi. 165), as well as the
last signature (Cod. Dipl. iii. 357) of his predecessor Athulf—he seems
always to use this contracted form. At first sight this date seems
inconsistent with a document in Cod. Dipl. iv. 234, one to which I have
already referred for another purpose (p. 563), in which “Eþelstan
Bisceop” is said to have bought lands in Worcestershire of
Leofric—perhaps the famous Earl while still a private man in his
father’s lifetime—the purchase of which was witnessed by the two
Archbishops Ælfheah and Wulfstan. Now Ælfheah, taken captive in
September 1011 (see vol. i. p. 385), can neither have consecrated
Æthelstan in 1012 nor yet have witnessed a purchase made by him in that
year. The transaction spoken of in the document must belong to an
earlier time. But the document itself was not written till long after.
Many years after the purchase (“æfter þysan manegum gearum”)—at some
time between the accession of Cnut and the death of Ealdorman
Leofwine—Wulfstan and his son Wulfric tried to disturb Æthelstan in its
possession, but a compromise was come to in the Scirgemót of
Worcestershire, in which Leofwine, Hakon (see p. 563), and Leofric were
present.

The explanation doubtless is that, in a deed drawn up so long after,
Æthelstan is spoken of by a title which belonged to him then, but which
did not belong to him at the time of the purchase. As for his
consecration in 1012, there seems to be no evidence as to the
consecrator, but it could not have been Ælfheah.

NOTE BB. p. 416.
THE FAMILY OF LEOFRIC.

I know of no authority for any children of Leofric and Godgifu except
Earl Ælfgar. It is hardly needful to refute the notion, entertained even
by Sir Henry Ellis (ii. 146), that Hereward was a son of the Mercian
Earl. On this score even the false Ingulf is guiltless. The mistake
arose solely from a late and blundering genealogical roll, printed in
the Chroniques Anglo-Normandes, ii. xii. The same roll gives Leofric a
third nameless son, who was a child “tertium parvulum cujus nomen non
habetur”) at the coming in of William, and was beheaded for the sake of
his inheritance. Leofric died an old man in 1057; a son of his could
hardly be “parvulus” in 1066. This family seems to have been picked out
(see above, vol. i. p. 457) as the special sport of pedigree-makers.

Mr. C. H. Pearson (i. 367) attributes the mistake about Hereward to Sir
Francis Palgrave, who is quite guiltless of it. See his History, iii.
467.

Ælfgar’s wife bore the name of Ælfgifu. She appears in Domesday in a
form which clearly shows that she survived the Conquest, that she
retained her lands, or parts of them, but that she was dead at the time
of the Survey. In Leicestershire (231 _b_) there is a special heading,
“Terra Alvevæ Comitissæ,” and in Suffolk (ii. 286 _b_) one of “Terra
Matris Morchari Comitis.” But the word used is not “tenet” but “tenuit.”
Cf. also Nottinghamshire, 280 _b_. I know not on what authority
pedigree-makers affirm her to have been a Frenchwoman, sister of William
Malet. If so, she must, like the Lady Emma, have changed her name at her
marriage. Possibly it was a standing rule that all wives from beyond sea
should take the name of Ælfgifu, as if they had come from Elfland.

Of the children of Ælfgar and Ælfgifu, their two famous or infamous
sons, Eadwine and Morkere, need no mention here. The existence of a
third son, Burchard (see pp. 455, 459), depends on the amount of trust
which we may give to a charter preserved in the local history of Rheims,
quoted by Sir Henry Ellis (i. 325); “Notum sit Algarum quemdam, Anglorum
Comitem, consentiente Edwardo Anglorum Rege, Sancto Remigio villam de
Lapeleiâ dedisse pro animâ filii sui Burchardi, cujus corpus in
polyandrio ecclesiæ quiescit.” Lapley in Northamptonshire and other
property belonged at the time of the Survey, not to “the Church of
Rheims,” as Sir Henry Ellis says, but to “Saint Remigius of Rheims”
(Domesday, 222 _b_), that is, to the Abbey. The English estate, we are
told, grew into a Priory. (I do not know Lapley Priory in
Northamptonshire, but there was a Priory of that name in Staffordshire,
much more in Ælfgar’s own country, whose church survives.) Now the name
Burchard (Burhhard?), though borne by several men T. R. E., can hardly
be called a common English name. This name, and the apparent devotion of
Ælfgar and his son to the Abbey of Rheims, are by no means enough to
prove the foreign origin of Ælfgifu, but they certainly fall in with the
tradition.

About the personality of Ealdgyth, daughter of Ælfgar, and wife
successively of Gruffydd and Harold, there is no doubt. Florence
mentions her incidentally under 1066, as the widow of Harold, and the
sister of Eadwine and Morkere. She appears also in Domesday (238 _b_),
where it is said of lands in Warwickshire belonging to Coventry Abbey,
“Hanc terram tenuit Aldgid uxor Grifin.” At the time of the Survey it
had passed from her to Osbern of Herefordshire, who had sold it to the
Abbot. William of Jumièges also says (vii. 31) that Harold “Grithfridi
quoque Regis Wallorum, postquam hostilis eum gladius peremit, pulcram
conjugem Aldith, præclari Comitis Algari filiam, sibi uxorem junxit.” So
Orderic, 492 D; “Ipse [Heraldus] Edgivam sororem eorum [Edwini et
Morcari] uxorem habebat, quæ priùs Gritfridi fortissimi Regis Guallorum
conjunx fuerat.” He goes on to say that she had borne two children to
Gruffydd, “Blidenum regni successorem”—a confusion with Gruffydd’s
_brother_ or kinsman Blethgent—and a daughter named Nest. Benoît de Ste.
More has a very curious account of Ealdgyth (Chron. Ang. Norm. i. 178);

“Après que Heraut se fu fait Reis,
Se combati od les Galeis.
N’en truis ne l’achaison ne l’ire;
Mais Reis Griffins, qui d’eus ert sire,
Remist eu champ. Heraut l’occist,
Sa femme Aldit saisi e prist,
Qui fille ert del bon conte Algar.
Celi pesa c’unc à sa char
Jut n’adesa ne nuit ne jor,
Kar dame esteit de grant valor.
De grant ire ert sis cors espris
Dunc si estert sis sire occis.
En teu manière et en teu guise
R’aveit Heraut femme conquise.”

I need not point out the mistakes here, especially the glaring one of
putting Harold’s Welsh war after his election to the Kingdom. But the
supposed attachment of Ealdgyth to Gruffydd rather than to Harold may be
a genuine tradition, as it falls in with other indications.

Two questions here arise about Ealdgyth. Was she the “Eddeva pulcra” of
Domesday? and, Was she the only daughter of Ælfgar? Sir Henry Ellis (ii.
79) argues at length that she is “Eddeva pulcra,” in opposition to Mr.
Sharon Turner, who identifies that Eddeva with Eadgyth Swanneshals.
There is no very distinct evidence, but I rather incline to the latter
belief, which I shall have to speak of again. As for the other question,
Orderic (511 B) distinctly calls Ealdgyth the only daughter of Ælfgar.
But his account is very confused; he not only leaves out Burchard, but
he confounds Ælfgar with his father Leofric, and makes Godgifu Ælfgar’s
wife instead of his mother. His words are, “Devoti Deo dignique
relligionis laude parentes elegantem et multâ laude dignam ediderunt
sobolem, Eduinum, Morcarum, et _unam filiam nomine Aldit_, quæ primò
nupsit Guitfrido Regi Guallorum, post cujus mortem sociata est Heraldo
Regi Anglorum.” But the genealogy of Leofric’s family which I have
already spoken of (vol. i. p. 456. See also Ellis, i. 490) gives Ælfgar
a daughter Lucy, who, though unknown to Domesday, inherited the lands of
the family (“obtinuit Lucia soror eorum terras paternas”), and who was
married, first, in the Conqueror’s time, to Ivo Taillebois, then, in the
time of Henry the First, to Roger Fitzgerald, lastly, in the time of
Stephen, to Ranulf, Earl of Chester. She had a son by each of the last
two husbands. The chronology is as amazing as the whole chronology of
this pedigree. A woman whose father died before 1065 is made to bear a
son at some time between 1135 and 1154. There was undoubtedly a Lucy,
who did marry in succession Roger Fitzgerald and Earl Randolf (Ord. Vit.
871 B), and who was the mother of the Earl’s son William Randolf (an
early case of a double name), and who was alive in 1141 (ib. 921 B); but
I know of nothing to connect her either with Ivo Taillebois or with the
house of Leofric. Lucy, as the name of an Englishwoman in the eleventh
century, is as impossible as Rowena or Ulrica, unless indeed the French
origin of her mother is again called in. The false Ingulf is, I need not
say, great on the subject of Ivo and Lucy, and the legend is still
swallowed by novelists and local antiquaries. But it is truly amazing to
find Sir Francis Palgrave, who was the first to scotch the Crowland
snake, in the same company (iii. 472).

Godgifu herself, the grandmother of so many of our characters, is shown
to have survived the Conquest, but to have died before the Survey, by
the same evidence which proves the like in the case of her
daughter-in-law Ælfgifu. Her lands in Leicestershire (231 _b_) and
Warwickshire (239 _b_) are entered in exactly the same form as those of
the wife of Ælfgar. See also Nottinghamshire (280 _b_), where she
appears in company, among others, with Ælfgifu and with “Goda
Comitissa,” that is, her own namesake the sister of Eadward, and mother
of Ralph of Hereford. But I cannot but think that some of the entries in
Staffordshire (248 _b_, 249) refer to some other Godgifu. In the entries
of which I have spoken, including one immediately following (249 _b_),
she is called reverentially “Godeva Comitissa;” here we simply read
“Godeva tenuit et libera fuit;” “Hanc tenuit Godeva etiam post adventum
Regis W. in Angliam, sed _recedere non potuit cum terrâ_.” Surely this
cannot be the widow, mother, and grandmother of successive Earls of the
Mercians.

I may notice that Godgifu, Ælfgifu, and other wives of Earls, are in
Domesday, as in Norman writings generally, freely called “Comitissa.”
But I have not found any English equivalent for that title. “Lady” is
reserved for the King’s wife; an Earl’s wife seems to be simply called
the Earl’s wife and nothing else.

NOTE CC. p. 417.
HAROLD THE SON OF RALPH.

Harold the son of Ralph occurs in Domesday, 129 _b_, 169, 177, 244. His
lands lay in the shires of Gloucester, Worcester, Warwick, and
Middlesex, not, oddly enough, where we should have most naturally looked
for them, in Herefordshire. In the list of Normans in Duchèsne, p. 1023,
he is called Lord of Sudeley. There can however be no doubt that Ewias
Harold is called after him. There is nothing to connect that place with
Harold the son of Godwine. At the Survey (Domesday, 186) the castle of
Ewias was held of the King by Ælfred of Marlborough. It seems to have
been granted to him by William Fitz-Osbern, who had restored
(“refirmaverat”) it. Its later history, and that of the descendants of
Harold, I leave to local inquirers, but it is worth asking whether he
was the father of the person described in the Gesta Stephani (931 B) as
“Robertus, filius Heraldi, vir stemmatis ingenuissimi.” As Robert was a
fighter against the Welsh, it seems not unlikely.

I assume that Harold the son of Ralph must have been a different person
from Harold the Staller, who is mentioned in Domesday for Lincolnshire
(337; cf. 340 _b_ and 350 _b_). Ralph had possessions in that part of
England (337), but, if Harold had been Ralph’s son, the connexion could
hardly fail to have been mentioned there, as it is elsewhere. A mere lad
also would hardly have been invested with a Stallership. There are
several other Harolds distinct alike from Harold the King, Harold the
Staller, and Harold the son of Ralph. Such is “Harold ... homo Eluui
hiles, qui poterat ire quo volebat,” in the Domesday for Gloucestershire
(170). Cf. 288 for a Harold at Warwick who kept his property under
William. There are other small entries in the same name.

That Harold must have been very young when his father died is shown by
the entry attached to his Middlesex property (129 _b_), which shows
that, in 1066, he was under the wardship of the Lady Eadgyth; “Hoc
manerium tenuit Heraldus filius Radulfi Comitis, quem custodiebat Regina
Eddid cum manerio eâ die quâ Rex Edwardus fuit vivus et mortuus.” What
follows might seem to imply that the Lady did not prove a very faithful
guardian; at any rate young Harold lost the lordship; “Postea Willelmus
camerarius tenuit de Reginâ in feudo pro tribus libris per annum de
firmâ, et post mortem Reginæ [1074] eodem modo tenuit de Rege.”

We may perhaps infer that Harold’s mother Gytha was dead. She appears
(“Gethe uxor Radulfi Comitis,” “Gueth Comitissa,” 148) as a landowner in
Buckinghamshire in Eadward’s time, but she had nothing at the time of
the Survey. The names Gytha and Harold probably point to a connexion by
affinity, spiritual or otherwise, with the House of Godwine. Or is it
conceivable that this Gytha is the same as Gytha, daughter of Osgod
Clapa, and, no doubt long before this time, widow of Tofig the Proud
(see vol. i. p. 591)? In any case, the names show that Ralph, with all
his contempt for English tactics, had so far identified himself with
England as to take a wife of English or Danish birth.

NOTE DD. p. 424.
THE QUASI-ROYAL POSITION OF EARL HAROLD.

The indications referred to in the text are all slight when taken
separately; still I cannot help thinking that their cumulative force is
considerable.

1. There is a charter of Ealdred in Cod. Dipl. iv. 172, in which, after
the signatures, among which are those of the King and Earl Harold, we
find the formula, “Cum licentiâ Eadwardi Regis et Haroldi Ducis.” In
earlier charters, as those of Bishop Oswald, it is common to find the
consent of the King and of the Ealdorman expressed in the body of the
deed; but this is a different case, as the charter relates to matters in
Worcestershire, which was not in Harold’s Earldom. Another charter of
1065 (Cod. Dipl. iv. 162), which Mr. Kemble marks as doubtful, gives
Harold the title of “Dei gratiâ Dux.” The King is also “Dei gratiâ,” and
the Lady is “Dei pietate;” but no such titles are given to any one else.

I ought to mention that this charter, though not marked as doubtful by
Mr. Kemble, has something wrong about it which needs explanation. It is
signed by Ealdred as Archbishop, which he became in 1060, and by Walter
as Bishop, which he became in 1061; but it is also signed by Earl
Leofric, who died in 1057. There is however no need to believe that the
charter is spurious. Transcribers often added a description to a simple
signature, so that a charter, as we have it, often has its witnesses
described, not by the titles which they bore at the time, but by higher
titles which they bore afterwards. But, even if both documents are
spurious, I still think that they prove something. A forger, unless he
lived very near the time, would have no temptation to invent anything in
favour of Harold. He must have imitated some genuine formula.

2. Nothing can be stronger than the way in which Florence couples
together the King and the Earl in describing the homage of the Welsh
Princes in 1064 or 1065; “Rex ... cui et Haroldo Comiti fidelitatem illi
juraverunt, et _ad imperium illorum_ mari terrâque se fore paratos.”
This reminds one of Hugh Capet and his son Robert (see vol. i. p. 269),
or of any other case of joint sovereignty. This language of so discreet
a writer as Florence is different from the Biographer’s rhetorical
coupling of Eadward and Tostig quoted in p. 618.

3. The description of Harold as “Dux Anglorum” in the Bayeux Tapestry is
well known. See vol. i. pp. 179, 289. We have indeed elsewhere come
across “Algarus quidam, Comes Anglorum” (see p. 629), but the “quidam”
makes a great difference.

4. Far stronger however than all is the title given to Harold by
Florence when describing his election to the Crown. He is then
“_Subregulus_ Haroldus, Godwini _Ducis_ filius.” The “Subregulus” is
surely meant to be something more than the “Dux.” In fact “Subregulus,”
“Undercyning,” is a title which is most familiarly given to vassal
Princes, as to those who attended Eadgar at Chester (Flor. Wig. 973),
and to Gruffydd himself (Chron. Ab. 1056). But I know of no instance of
such a title being ever given to any mere subject except Harold, unless
a parallel is sought in the strange East-Anglian titles quoted in vol.
i. p. 289. But I cannot think that the description of “Half-King” was
meant as a serious title.

NOTE EE. p. 430.
HAROLD’S FOREIGN TRAVELS AND PILGRIMAGE.

The pilgrimage of Harold to Rome, and, still more, his investigations
into the political state of Gaul, are among the additions to our
knowledge which we owe to the Biographer of Eadward. The latter most
remarkable piece of information is wholly new; with regard to the
pilgrimage, the Biographer only confirms a statement which we might
otherwise have set down as doubtful.

The words of the writer of the De Inventione may be taken as implying,
though not directly asserting, extensive foreign travels on the part of
Harold. When speaking of the relics given by the Earl to his church at
Waltham, he calls him (c. 14), “In diversis terrarum partibus non segnis
conquisitor”—namely of relics and such like treasures. The romantic
biographer of Harold, speaking of the same relics, distinctly asserts
(p. 182) that some of them were obtained by the Earl on a pilgrimage to
Rome; “Adierat quidem antea, nondum videlicet Anglorum consequutus
regnum, limina Christi Apostolorum,” &c. This is the sort of point on
which even so romantic a writer as Harold’s biographer was likely to
preserve a bit of trustworthy tradition; still one would hardly have
ventured to assert the fact on his sole authority. The Life of Eadward
has now put the fact of the pilgrimage beyond doubt, and it has also
shown that Harold’s journeys in other parts of the world were not wholly
owing to a desire of collecting relics. This is a good illustration of
the way in which truth sometimes lurks in very suspicious quarters.

The fact of the pilgrimage then is certain; at its date we can only
guess. All the Chronicles, oddly enough, are silent about the pilgrimage
of Harold, though that of Tostig is carefully recorded. But there are
several indications which may lead us to a probable conjecture. If the
Biographer of Eadward pays the least regard to chronology, Harold’s
journey took place after Gyrth’s appointment to his Earldom, which we
have seen reason to fix in 1057, and before Tostig’s pilgrimage, which
the Worcester Chronicle fixes to 1061. If we may at all trust Harold’s
biographer, which, for the nonce, it seems that we may, the journey took
place before the consecration at Waltham in 1060. We have thus two years
to choose from, 1058 and 1059, and two considerations will, I think,
lead us to fix on the former of the two. That was the year in which
Ælfgar (see p. 434) was outlawed for the second time, and almost
immediately returned to his Earldom by force. Such violent doings seem
to point to a time when the powers of government were relaxed, as they
doubtless would be, by the absence of Harold. Again, the grant of the
pallium to Stigand, who, it should be remembered, did not go for it in
person, seems to point to a time when some unusually strong influence,
such as the personal presence of the great Earl, could be brought to
bear on the Papal mind. There is then no direct proof, but there is, I
think, a strong probability, that this remarkable journey on the part of
Harold took place in the year 1058.

The question of the oath I shall examine in the next volume. I will here
only quote in full, without professing to understand every word of it,
the passage from the Biographer (p. 410) which describes Harold’s
political studies in Gaul; “At ille superior [Haroldus] mores, consilia,
et vires Gallicorum principum, non tam per suos quam per se, scrutatus,
astutiâ et callido animi ingenio et diuturniori cum procrastinatione
intentissimè notaverat, _ut in eis habitaturus esset, si eis opus
haberet in alicujus negotii administratione_. Adeò quoque consilio suo
exhaustos pernoverat, ut nullâ ab eis relatione falli posset. Attentiùs
ergo consideratâ Francorum consuetudine, quum ipse quoque apud eos non
obscuri esset nominis et famæ, Romam ad confessionem Apostolorum
processit.” I conceive that the general sense is what I said in the
text, but the passage is most obscure, no doubt purposely obscure. To
have set forth Harold’s negotiations in France in a clear light would
not have suited either the position or the plan of the Biographer.
Writing under William, to Eadgyth, he never mentions William’s name, or
even alludes to him in any intelligible way. The words which I have put
in Italics are the hardest to understand of all. Do they imply that
Harold formed, or contemplated, alliances with any French Princes, say
with the Count of Anjou or with the King himself, in case mutual support
against William should ever be needed?

NOTE FF. p. 449.
THE QUARREL BETWEEN EARL HAROLD AND BISHOP GISA.

The original account of the matters in dispute between Harold and Gisa
will be found, in Gisa’s own words, in the Historiola de Primordiis
Episcopatûs Somersetensis, printed in Hunter’s Ecclesiastical Documents,
p. 15. Gisa’s narrative grows into a far more violent account in the
local history of Wells, by a Canon of that Church in the fifteeenth
century, printed in Anglia Sacra, i. 559. Lastly, we get the story with
further improvements in Godwin’s Lives of the Bishops and other later
works. The whole matter is well discussed, and gone into most
thoroughly, by Mr. J. R. Green in the Transactions of the Somersetshire
Archæological and Natural History Society, 1863–4, p. 148, a paper which
has suggested several points in the present note.

That the King who made the original grant to Duduc was Cnut is plain
from the words of Gisa, who speaks of them as Duduc’s private property
obtained before he became Bishop (“possessiones quas hæreditario jure a
rege ante episcopatum promeruerat”). Duduc became Bishop in 1033. It is
difficult to understand how the Abbey of Gloucester could have formed
part of the grant, or how this statement is to be reconciled with the
local history of Gloucester referred to in p. 435. Gisa goes on to say
that, when Harold took the other property, Gloucester was granted to
Stigand (“præfatum monasterium injustâ ambitione a Rege sibi dari petiit
[Stigandus] et impetratum ad horam obtinuit.” On Abbeys held by Stigand
see Hist. Eliens. ii. 41, Gale 514). Gloucester therefore has no further
connexion with the story, which turns wholly on the possessions in
Somersetshire. These were the two lordships of Banwell and Congresbury.
There were also relics, church-plate, and books. These moveable goods,
we may perhaps guess, found their way to Waltham.

The grant of Duduc to the Church of Wells is described in these words;
“[possessiones] roboratas cyrographis Regiæ auctoritatis ac donationis
Deo Sanctoque Andreæ tempore Edwardi piissimi Regi obtulit”). Gisa then
records what seems to be an oral bequest of the moveable property made
by Duduc on his death-bed (“jam imminente die vocationis suæ adhibuit”).
Duduc dies and is buried, and the story goes on;—“Haroldus verò, tunc
temporis Dux Occidentalium Saxonum, non solùm terras invadere, verùm
etiam episcopalem sedem omnibus his spoliare non timuit.” There is
nothing in Gisa’s narrative to imply that Harold seized any part of the
ancient possessions of the See, but only the new gifts of Duduc. Gisa
then goes on to mention the poor estate in which he found his Church,
the small number of the Canons, and their wide departure from the
strictness of Lotharingian discipline. To help him in his schemes of
reform, he begged certain lands of the King and the Lady, namely
Wedmore, the scene of the famous peace between Ælfred and Guthrum (see
vol. i. p. 48), and the lordships of Mark and Mudgeley in the same
neighbourhood. Much about these gifts, and about other possessions and
acquisitions of Gisa, will be found in the charters in Cod. Dipl. iv.
163, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 257, charters addressed to Harold, and in
which the restoration of anything taken from the See is commanded. (See
Mr. Green, p. 154.) But there is no mention of either Banwell or
Congresbury, except in the manifestly spurious document in iv. 163, on
which see especially Mr. Green’s note, p. 153. Gisa then goes on to say
that he excommunicated one Alsie (Ælfsige?) who detained from the See
the lordship of Winesham (see Domesday, 89 _b_), even after it was
adjudged to the See by the Scirgemót (“judicium provincialium”). He then
mentions his intention, never earned into effect, of excommunicating
Harold himself (“Haroldum etiam Ducem, qui Ecclesiam mihi comissam
spoliaverat, nunc secretò nunc palam correctum, pari sententiâ cogitabam
ferire”). Then Harold, after his election to the Crown, promises to
restore the disputed lordships and to grant others as well (“non solùm
ea quæ tulerat se redditurum verum etiam ampliora spopondit daturum”).
With this statement must be compared Harold’s writ in favour of Gisa in
Cod. Dipl. iv. 305, where all the Bishop’s rights and possessions are
confirmed to him in the strongest language, but without the mention of
any particular places. Gisa then tells us how, after William’s
accession, he made his complaint to the new King and obtained the
restoration of Winesham. He goes on to mention his acquisition of Combe
(p. 18) and other places, but he says nothing about Congresbury and
Banwell, the lordships originally in dispute. But we learn their
disposal from Domesday. Both are entered there as being held by Harold
T. R. E. At the time of the Survey, Congresbury (Domesday, 87) was held
by the King, except some portions which had been alienated to different
persons, Gisa himself, possibly in his personal character, being among
them. Banwell (89 _b_) was held by the Bishop. It is plain then that the
whole controversy with Harold, as far as real property was concerned,
related to these two lordships. There is nothing about any other
property of the See, nothing to imply that the poverty of the Canons of
which Gisa so feelingly complains was in any way caused by the Earl’s
occupation of Banwell and Congresbury. The story is plainly one of
disputed right to those two lordships and to the moveable goods of
Duduc.

Gisa of course tells his own story in his own way. But he tells it
without any special reviling of Harold. Mr. Green goes very minutely
into the credibility of his story, but I do not think that he convicts
the Bishop of any gross misrepresentation. We must take Gisa’s statement
as we find it; we must judge as we can of his honesty and of his means
of information. There is no direct confirmation and no direct
contradiction of his tale. Duduc’s deed of gift does not exist; in none
of the many charters of Eadward relating to Gisa’s affairs is there any
mention of any quarrel between him and Harold; in fact there is no
mention of the disputed lordships at all. There is no record of any
appeal made by Gisa to the King, nor does he himself distinctly state
that he made any. On the other hand, Gisa’s story draws some slight
confirmation from the fact that Banwell does seem to have been granted
to the See by William. Harold’s own charter in Cod. Dipl. iv. 305 may be
taken in two ways. Its tone, as Mr. Green says, is quite friendly. It
may be a mere guaranty of Gisa against Ælfsige or any other possible
enemies. But I think it is more likely that Harold, at a time when it
was his interest to conciliate everybody, tried to conciliate Gisa by a
grant of the disputed lands, that his intention was hindered by his
death, and afterwards partially carried out by William. But anyhow
Gisa’s own story does not imply any fraud or violence on the part of
Harold. It is simply a story of a disputed claim to certain lands and
goods. The tale takes a very different shape in later writers.

Thus, in the story given by the Canon of Wells (Ang. Sacr. i. 559) we
find quite another state of things. First of all, the poor estate of the
Church of Wells, and the small number of its Canons, are attributed to
the spoliations of Harold, an idea which Gisa’s story does not even
suggest; “Hic [Giso] invenit tantùm decem [later writers seem to have
read “quinque”—either of the numbers complained of as being small might
startle modern legislators and modern residentiaries] canonicos in
Ecclesiâ Wellensi, tam bonis mobilibus et ornamentis ecclesiasticis quam
possessionibus ad ecclesiam suam spectantibus per Haroldum Comitem
Cantiæ et Westsexiæ spoliatos et publicæ mendicitati subjectos”). He
then records the gifts of Eadward and Eadgyth, as also Harold’s
accession to the Crown, which is told in true Norman fashion. The first
act of the new King is to confiscate all the possessions of Gisa and the
Church of Wells (“Is statim omnes possessiones dicti Gisonis et
Canonicorum Wellensis Ecclesiæ perpetim confiscavit”). His death and the
Conquest of England are of course the punishment. William then restores
all that Harold took, “exceptis Congresburye, Banewell et Kilmington et
plurimis aliis.”

Even in this account we have wandered a good way from Gisa’s own tale.
There is something amusing in the exception to William’s
restoration—Congresbury and Banwell, the only places in dispute, and
Kilmington and other places of which Gisa tells us nothing. William is
made to restore precisely those lands of which the See had always kept
undisputed possession. But there are greater things in store. In the
sixteenth century it was found out that Gisa’s autobiography and
Harold’s writ were both of them mistaken, and that Harold not only
robbed the church of Wells, but drove its Bishop into banishment. Here
is the story as told by Bishop Godwin, Catalogue of Bishops, p. 291.
Gisa is consecrated at Rome—then

“At his returne, he found the estate of his Church very miserable;
Harald the Queene’s brother that afterwards became for a while king of
England, being yet a private man,

(Quid Domini facient, audent qui talia servi?)

upon what occasion I know not, had spoyled the Church of all ornaments,
chased away the Canons, and invading all the possessions of the same,
had converted them to his owne use: so that the Canons remaining which
fled not for feare of this tyrant (they were onely five) they (I say)
were faine to beg their bread. The Bishop complaining unto the King of
this outragious havocke, found cold comfort at his hands: For, whether
it were for feare of Harald’s power or his wives displeasure, he caused
no restitution at all to be made. Onely the Queene was content to give
of her owne, Mark and Modesly unto the Church. After the death of King
Edward, Gisa was faine to fly the land, till such time as Harald the
sacrilegious usurper being vanquished and slaine, William the Conqueror
was a meane to restore, not only him to his place and countrey, but his
Church also to all that the other had violently taken from it, except
some small parcels that (I know not by what meanes) had been conveighed
unto the Monastery of Glocester.”

Here we have simple romance; a later writer has attempted something like
philosophy. The local historian of Somersetshire, Collinson (iii. 378),
boldly connects the story of Gisa with the banishment of Godwine and the
descent of Harold at Porlock. At the same time, though Harold’s conduct
is pronounced to be “outrageous,” it is made out to be simply taking
possession of his own goods. But the worthy antiquary shall set forth
his special revelation in his own words;

“On his entry into his diocese, he found the estates of the church in a
sad condition; for Harold earl of Wessex, having with his father, Godwin
earl of Kent, been banished the kingdom, and deprived of all his estates
in this county by King Edward, _who bestowed them on the church of
Wells_, had in a piratical manner made a descent in these parts, raised
contributions among his former tenants, spoiled the church of all its
ornaments, driven away the canons, invaded their possessions, and
converted them to his own use. Bishop Giso in vain expostulated with the
King on this outrageous usage; but received from the Queen, who was
Harold’s sister, the manors of Mark and Mudgley, as a trifling
compensation for the injuries which his bishoprick had sustained.
Shortly after [after 1060] _Harold was restored to King Edward’s favour,
and made his captain-General_; upon which he in his turn _procured the
banishment of Giso_, and when he came to the crown, resumed most of
those estates of which he had been deprived. _Bishop Giso continued in
banishment till the death of Harold_, and the advancement of the
Conqueror to the throne, who in the second year of his reign restored
all Harold’s estates to the church of Wells, except some small parcels
which had been conveyed to the monastery of Gloucester; in lieu of which
he gave the manor and advowson of Yatton, and the manor of Winsham.”

One is inclined to ask with Henry the Second (Gir. Camb. Exp. Hib. i.
40. p. 290 ed. Dimock), “Quære a rustico illo utrùm hoc somniaverit?”
But these things have their use. Every instance of the growth of a
legend affords practice in the art of distinguishing legend from
history. And, in this special case, the difference between the popular
version and the real contemporary statement may lead us to weigh
somewhat carefully all charges of outrageous sacrilege, whether it is
Harold, William, or any one else against whom they are brought. The lay
lion constantly wants a painter, and I know not that he ever finds one,
save when we have the quarrel between Godwine and Robert (see above, p.
547) described by the friendly Biographer.

On this story of Gisa’s I may make two further incidental remarks.
Combe, one of the lordships added by Gisa to his see, was bought by him
of Azor—“a quodam meo parochiano A_r_sere”—which no doubt should be
A_t_sere—“dicto.” Its former possession by Azor is witnessed also by
Domesday 89. We have seen (p. 510) that there was at least two bearers
of this singular name, a name equally singular whether its owner were an
Englishman or a foreigner. Others, or the same, occur in Lincolnshire
(337), distinguished as “Azer f. Sualevæ,” and “Azer f. Burg.,” and in
Buckinghamshire (147 _b_) as “Azor filius Toti.” One among these Azors
certainly left three sons, who bore the foreign names of Goscelin,
William, and Henry (Domesday 53 and 216 _b_). The last of these names,
unknown in England, was equally so in Normandy, till William bestowed it
on his youngest son. An “Adzurus” signs the Waltham Charter (Cod. Dipl.
iv. 159) with the title of “Regis dapifer.” But the curious thing is the
number of times in which we find the name of Azor connected with the
buying and selling of land, both under Eadward and under William. Here
Gisa buys Combe of Azor; we have already (p. 546) seen Godwine buy
Woodchester of Azor. On the other hand we read in Domesday (35 _b_) of
Azor buying lands in Surrey, “quam unus liber homo tenuit sub Rege E.,
sed pro quâdam necessitate suâ vendidit Azori T. R. Willelmi.” We have
already seen two Azors benefactors to Westminster, and in Domesday (34)
we find one of them a benefactor to the Abbey of Chertsey; “Ipsa Abbatia
tenet Henlei. Azor tenuit donec obiit, et dedit Ecclesiæ pro animâ suâ,
tempore Regis W., _ut dicunt monachi_, et inde habent brevem Regis.” In
the words in Italics we see the germs of a possible controversy.

This Azor, or these Azors, though of no direct importance in history,
awaken a certain interest through their incidental connexion with
greater men, and it would be quite worth the while of local inquirers in
the counties where their lands lay to search out any further details
about them.

The other point is this. I suggested in the text (p. 450) that the
estates of a foreigner dying without heirs would probably go to the
King. This, if not an universal, was certainly a local custom. Among the
customs of the town of Oxford (Domesday 154 _b_) we read, “Si quis
extraneus in Oxeneford manere deligens et domum habens sine parentibus
ibi vitam finierit, Rex habebat quidquid reliquerit.” “Extraneus” may
possibly mean simply a “foreigner” in the sense of a non-burgess, but,
if he were a non-Englishman, the case would be stronger still.

NOTE GG. p. 467.
ÆLFWIG ABBOT OF NEW MINSTER.

There is certainly something startling in the notion of a brother of
Godwine and uncle of Harold, if he wished for ecclesiastical preferment
at all, having to wait for it till the year 1063. But the evidence,
though piecemeal, looks, at first sight, like it. That an Abbot of New
Minster died at Senlac, and that his house therefore lay for a while
under William’s heavy displeasure, are facts which have long been known,
and which I shall have to speak of in their proper places. But one of
the authorities for the statement, the Manuscript called “Destructio
Monasterii de Hidâ,” printed in the Monasticon of 1682, i. 210, and in
the New Monasticon, ii. 437, makes this Abbot an uncle of Harold; “Rex
Haroldus habuit avunculum nomine _Godwynum_, Abbatem de Hydâ.” The
writer then goes on to speak of the Abbot joining his nephew’s muster at
the battle. It would not do to press the word “avunculus” in its
classical sense, and to make the Abbot a brother of Gytha. The purely
English name Godwine was most unlikely to be borne by a son of Thorgils
Sprakaleg. “Avunculus” must be taken in the sense of “patruus,” and the
difficulty of Godwine having a brother bearing his own name is taken
away when, from another local manuscript, referred to, though not fully
printed in the Monasticon, ii. 428, we find that the Abbot’s real name
was not Godwine, but Ælfwig. I have to thank Mr. Edwards, the Editor of
the Liber de Hydâ, for the following extract from the manuscript Annales
de Hydâ. The list of Abbots of New Minster, during the time with which I
am concerned, stands thus;

“1021. Alnothus.

1035. Alwyus.

1057. Alfnotus.

1063. Alwyus, frater Godwyni Comitis.

1066. Alwyus occiditur, et vacavit hæc ecclesia ii. annis.” Cf. Edwards,
Liber de Hydâ, p. xxxvii.

Here we plainly have Ælfwig, brother of Earl Godwine, appointed Abbot in
1063. The writer of the “Destructio” probably meant to write something
like “avunculum, nomine Alwynum, fratrem Comitis Godwyni,” and the two
similar endings got jumbled together. There is another case in which the
name Godwine has been written instead of another name in Domesday (146),
where a Thegn is described as “homo _God_uini cilt Abbatis
Westmonasteriensis,” meaning of course Abbot _Ead_wine (see p. 509). But
here another question arises. The alternation of the names Ælfnoth and
Ælfwig in the list of Abbots suggests the conjecture that we have here a
case of a man—or rather two men—resigning his office and taking it
again. We have seen other examples in the case of Archbishop Eadsige
(pp. 68, 113) and of Bishop Hermann (pp. 405, 406). If so, Ælfwig was
first appointed in 1035, a much more likely time for the first promotion
of a brother of Godwine than 1063. But, on the other hand, the fact that
only the second entry of the name “Alwyus” has the addition “frater
Godwyni Comitis,” may be taken as distinguishing the Ælfwig of 1063 from
the Ælfwig of 1035. Taken alone it certainly looks that way, but it is
hardly conclusive. This point I do not undertake to decide; but I think
we have quite evidence enough for the existence of an Ælfwig, Abbot of
New Minster, uncle of King Harold and dying by his side.

If the “Annales” did not distinctly call him “frater Godwyni Comitis,” I
should have been tempted to identify this Abbot Ælf_wig_, uncle of
Harold, with the Ælf_ric_, kinsman of Godwine, who was elected to the
see of Canterbury in 1050 (see p. 119). The word “avunculus” is
sometimes used rather laxly, and it might perhaps mean what is sometimes
called a “Welsh uncle,” that is the first cousin of a parent. Moreover
the Biographer now and then stumbles in his English names, as when he
calls Leof_wine_, Leof_ric_. But the description of Ælfwig as Godwine’s
brother seems to exclude this. And if the two Ælfwigs are the same, it
is impossible, as, in 1050, Ælfwig would be Abbot of New Minster, when
Ælfric was a monk of Christ Church. Still one would like, if one could,
to find a career for a man of whom all that we know is that he once came
so near to eminence as the Ælfric of 1050.

NOTE HH. p. 482.
THE REVOLT OF NORTHUMBERLAND.

With regard to the events which led to the banishment of Tostig, we have
to make the same sort of comparison of authorities which we made in
describing the banishment and the return of Godwine. Our fullest
accounts are found in the Worcester Chronicle, in Florence, and in the
Life of Eadward. Some further details are supplied by the Abingdon and
Peterborough Chronicles and by William of Malmesbury. As usual, the
Chroniclers look on the matter from the point of view of the nation, the
Biographer looks on it from the point of view of the Court. Each
therefore, as in other cases, fills up gaps in the other. We must also
remember that the Biographer lies under the necessity of making out as
fair a case as he can for Eadward, Harold, and Tostig all at once. But,
writing as he did to Eadgyth, his chief object was to say all that could
be said on behalf of Tostig. It is in the Life then that we must look
for the fullest account of the doings and feelings of Eadward and
Tostig, while the Chroniclers give us the fullest account of the doings
of the Northumbrian people. Florence seems to have given special
attention to the early part of the story, and he has, as in some other
cases, preserved the names of individual actors who are not mentioned
elsewhere. William of Malmesbury, as he has often done before, helps us
to reports of speeches, either traditionally remembered or which he
himself thought were in character. Even in this latter aspect, these
speeches are worthy of attention, as they never take those rhetorical
and other impossible shapes which are often taken by the harangues in
Orderic and elsewhere.

The first point where the different narratives show their peculiar
characters in such a shape as to amount to a contradiction, is found
with regard to the whereabouts of Tostig at the time of the revolt. The
Worcester and Peterborough Chronicles do not say where he was; William
of Malmesbury (ii. 200), probably writing with the Peterborough
Chronicle before him, fancied that Tostig was at York, or at least
somewhere in Northumberland, and he seemingly mistook the force of the
word “utlagodon,” as he expands it into “solitarium repertum ex regione
fugârunt, pro contuitu ducatûs occidendum non arbitrati.” But the
Abingdon Chronicler, writing within the bounds of Wessex, mentions the
name of a place which was more likely to be known to him than to his
Mercian brethren; “Tostig wæs þa æt Brytfordan mid þam kinge.” The
Biographer, still more accurately, quarters them (422) in some of the
forests of the neighbourhood, whence they afterwards go to Bretford to
hold the Gemót.

With regard to the doings of the rebel Gemót of York, Florence
distinguishes the acts of the two days more accurately than any of the
Chroniclers. He alone distinguishes the executions, unjust or otherwise,
of Amund and Reavenswart on the Monday, from the mere massacre of
Tuesday. The Chroniclers run the events of both days together. In the
words of Peterborough and Worcester, the Northumbrians “utlagodon heora
eorl Tostig and ofslogon his hiredmenn [“huskarlas” in Abingdon] ealle
þa hi mihton to cuman, ægðer ge Englisce ge Dænisce.” Florence, after
describing the death of the two officers, goes on, “die sequenti plus
quam cc. viros ex curialibus [hiredmenn] illius in boreali parte Humbræ
fluminis [“Humbra” must mean the Ouse] peremerunt.” Then follows the
plundering of the treasury, which is much the same in all accounts. But
the Biographer naturally waxes more indignant and rhetorical in his
description of the massacre. Men, he tells us (421), took the
opportunity to slay their private enemies “nullus ergo modus fit in
occasione; rapitur hic et ille ad necem etiam pro familiari odio
cujusque”). That the movement extended beyond Northumberland is not
implied either by the Abingdon Chronicler or by Florence, whose story at
this point becomes rather meagre, but it comes out in the Worcester and
Peterborough Chroniclers, as also in the Biographer, though in two very
different shapes. From the two Chroniclers we learn the adhesion of the
shires of Nottingham, Derby, and Lincoln to the rebel cause, but it is
only the Biographer who asserts a massacre anywhere but at York. “Fit
cædes,” he says, “multorum in _Eboracâ, vel Lincolniâ civitate_, in
plateis, in aquis, in silvis, et in viis.” Every one who had been at
anytime in Tostig’s service (“quicumque poterat notari quod de ejus
aliquando fuerit curiâ”) was everywhere put to death without mercy. This
all may be or may not be, but though we can quite understand that the
men of the Danish shires of Mercia might sympathize with their
Northumbrian brethren, one can hardly fancy that many of Tostig’s
Housecarls would be found at Lincoln.

But the most important difference between our several accounts is to be
found in the different statements as to the place where the negotiations
took place between the King and the rebels. The Chroniclers of course
give the fullest accounts of the doings of the insurgents, while the
Biographer enlarges most fully on the counsels of the King. To judge
from him only (422), we should think that all the negotiations took
place at Oxford (“Axonevorde oppidum”), while from the Worcester and
Peterborough Chroniclers, it would seem that all took place at
Northampton. But the Abingdon Chronicler, followed by Florence,
distinguishes between two assemblies, one at each place (“and þa wel
raðe þaræfter wæs mycel gemot æt Norðhamtune, and swa æt Oxenaforda”).
The Biographer sets forth the various messages which were sent by the
King, and he naturally thinks chiefly of the place where the matter was
finally settled, namely at Oxford. The minds of the two Mercian
Chroniclers were no less naturally fixed on Northampton and the ravages
which happened in its neighbourhood. Nothing is more likely than that,
while messages were passing to and fro, the Northumbrian host should
advance, and take up their head-quarters at Oxford instead of at
Northampton. I therefore accept the Abingdon account, and hold that the
final Gemót on the feast of Saint Simon and Saint Jude was held at
Oxford.

The repeated messages which passed between the King and the rebels seem
implied in the words of the Abingdon Chronicler, who recognizes the
gathering at Northampton as well as that at Oxford as a “mycel gemót.”
The Biographer is still more express; “Rex Eadwardus, vir Deo dignus,
putans indomitum vulgus solitâ sedare sapientiâ, pia per legatos illis
mittit mandamina, ut scilicet quiescerent ab inceptâ dementiâ et jus
legemque reciperent de omni quam in eum demonstrare possent injuriâ”
(see pp. 491, 136). Then comes the answer of the rebels, then come
further messages from the King (“Quum benignissimus rex item et tertiò
missis legationibus eos ab insanâ intentione diverso conciliorum conatu
amovere tentaret, nec perficeret”); the King then goes from the woods to
Bretford (“a silvestribus locis ubi more suo caussâ assiduæ venationis
morabatur, secessit ad Brethevorde regium vicum oppidoque regio Wiltuni
proximum”), and there holds the council at which the royal answer to the
rebels is finally determined on. The Biographer does not mention Harold
personally, but all the Chroniclers and Florence describe him as being
at the head of the embassy. The answer of the rebels is given “Haroldo
West-Saxonum Duci et aliis quos Rex Tostii rogatu pro pace redintegrandâ
ad eos miserat.” William of Malmesbury alone makes Harold go with an
army “ut propulsaret injuriam.” This is probably a confusion with
Eadward’s later anxiety to send a military force against the rebels.
Harold would doubtless take some Housecarls with him for safety’s sake;
but what he headed was clearly an embassy and not a military expedition.

In the answer sent by the insurgents to the King, I have followed
William of Malmesbury, as the sentiments which he puts into their mouths
so exactly suit the circumstances of the case. When he begins
“Northanhimbri, _licet non inferiores numero essent_, tamen quieti
consulentes,” he is to some extent led away by his notion of Harold
having come with an army, but the matter of the answer is thoroughly in
character; “Factum apud eum excusant; se homines liberè natos, liberè
educatos, nullius Ducis ferociam pati posse, a majoribus didicisse aut
libertatem aut mortem.” The Biographer evidently colours in the opposite
direction; at the same time the conditional threat of war made by the
rebels sounds authentic; “Deo itaque Regique suo rebelles, spretâ
pietatis legatione, remandant Regi, aut eumdem Ducem suum citiùs à se et
à toto Angliæ Regno amitteret, aut eos in commune hostes hostis ipse
haberet.” The Worcester and Peterborough Chronicles give the matter of
the message in the simplest and most neutral form; but it is from them
that we learn that the answer was carried by messengers from the rebel
camp who came to the King’s Court in company with Harold; “Hi lægdon
ærende on hine [Harold] to þam cynge Eadwarde, and eac ærendracan mid
him sendon, and bædon þat hi moston habban Morkere heom to Eorle.” The
description of the Council in which this answer was discussed comes
wholly from the Biographer, and, as it is just the sort of point on
which he is always well informed, I have simply followed his narrative
in my text. The Chroniclers give the result only; “and se cynge þæs
geuðe, and sende eft Harold heom to Hamtune.” The efforts of Harold to
reconcile all parties come out strongly in the Abingdon Chronicle;
“Harold Eorl wolde heora seht wyrcan, gif he mihte; ac he na mihte.”
Florence gives him several companions in this attempt; “Dum Haroldus et
alii quamplures Comitem Tostium cum iis pacificare vellent, omnes
unanimi consensu contradixerunt.” Harold’s conduct in finally yielding
to the demands of the rebels is pointedly approved by William of
Malmesbury; “Hæc Haroldus audiens, qui magis quietem patriæ quam fratris
commodum attenderet, revocavit exercitum.” Here we again have William’s
former mistake about Harold’s coming with an army. The description of
Eadward’s state of mind, his anxiety to make war, his complaints and the
cause of his final illness, all come from the Biographer only; but
William of Malmesbury in another part of his work (iii. 252) gives a
remarkable picture nearly to the same effect, which I have quoted in p.
495, note 4.

That the outlawry of Tostig and his accomplices was the act of a formal
Gemót comes out most strongly in the Abingdon Chronicle, where, as in
some former cases, the words of the formal decree seem to peep out; “And
eall his Eorldom hyne anrædlice forsóc and geutlagode and ealle þa mid
hym þe unlage rærdon, forþam þe he rypte God ærost, and ealle þa
bestrypte þe he ofer mihte, æt life and æt hande. And hig namon heom þa
Morkere to Eorle.” The same formal character of the meeting is implied
in the renewal of Cnut’s Law on which I have enlarged in the text. In
the rhetoric of the Biographer all this is lost.

With regard to the actual departure of Tostig from England, Florence
alone seems to depart from his usual guide at Abingdon, and to assert an
expulsion by force. I have already, in p. 500, quoted the passages which
bear upon the matter.

One word more as to the answer of the Northumbrians. M. Emile de
Bonnechose (ii. 118), following what edition of William of Malmesbury I
know not, for “nullius _Ducis_ ferociam,” reads “nullius _Daci_,” and on
that reading thus comments; “La dénomination de danois [_Dacus_], donnée
ici à Tosti, fils de Godwin et de Githa, _sœur_ du roi de Danemark, est
digne d’attention. Cette citation du moine de Malmesbury, suffirait pour
ébranler le système selon lequel Godwin et sa famille auraient été
toujours considérés comme les représentants d’un parti national,
également hostile aux Danois et aux Normands.” It is a strong measure to
reverse the whole history of a period simply because M. de Bonnechose
has somehow read “Daci” instead of “Ducis,” but the real expression of
William of Malmesbury is a very remarkable one. The protestation of the
Northumbrians, “se nullius Ducis ferociam pati posse,” sounds very like
a wish for a King of the Northumbrians instead of an Earl.

The expression in the text (p. 497) “between the Thames and the Tweed”
must be corrected by the minuter inquiries into the extent of the
Earldoms in p. 566 and elsewhere. It is most likely that, after the
death of Ælfgar, the Mercian Earldom nowhere reached so far south as the
Thames.

-----

Footnote 1:

Among our authorities for this period the English Chronicles of course
still retain their preeminent place, and the differences, especially
the marked differences in political feeling, between the various
versions become of constantly increasing importance. Florence also,
always valuable, now increases in value. His narrative is still
grounded on that of the Chronicles, but he gradually ceases to be a
mere copyist. It is always of moment to see which of the several
versions he follows; and, as he draws nearer his own time, he
gradually acquires the character of a distinct authority. He can
however hardly be looked on as such during the period embraced in this
Chapter. The contemporary Biographer of Eadward now becomes of the
greatest value in his own special department. For all matters which
are strictly personal to the King, the Lady, and the whole family of
Godwine, his authority is primary. He is however very distinctly not
an historian, but a biographer, sometimes a laureate. In his narrative
there are many omissions and some inaccuracies; his value lies mainly
in his vivid personal portraits of the great men of the time, with all
of whom he seems to have been personally acquainted. It must be borne
in mind that his book, dedicated to the Lady Eadgyth, is to a great
extent a panegyric on her family. Still it is highly important to have
this description of them from the English side to set against the
dominant Norman calumnies. It is to the Chronicles as harmonized by
Florence that we must go for our main facts; the Biographer gives us
their personal aspect, their personal colouring, and many personal
details. Just as the Encomiast of Eadgyth becomes of so much value, we
lose the Encomiast of Emma, who ends his narrative with the accession
of Harthacnut. The purely Norman writers now gain in importance. But,
as regards purely English affairs, their importance is of this
peculiar kind, that, after reading the English account of any fact, it
is needful to turn and see what is the Norman perversion of it. At the
head of the class stands William of Poitiers, Archdeacon of Lisieux,
the chaplain and biographer of William the Conqueror. His work,
unluckily imperfect, is our primary authority for all that concerns
his hero; but allowance must be made throughout for his constant
flattery of his own master and his frantic hatred towards Godwine and
Harold. The later Norman writers, William of Jumièges and his
continuator, and the poetical chroniclers, Robert Wace and Benoît de
Sainte-More, are of use as witnessing to Norman tradition, but they do
not yet assume that special value which belongs to William of Jumièges
and Wace at a somewhat later time. The subsidiary English writers, and
the occasional notices to be found in the works of foreign historians,
retain the same secondary value as before. Indeed, as Scandinavian
affairs are of great importance during several years of this period,
the Sagas of Magnus and Harold Hardrada may be looked upon as of
something more than secondary value. Among the secondary English
writers, Henry of Huntingdon diminishes in importance, as he gets more
out of the reach of those ancient ballads and traditions which it is
his great merit to have preserved. On the other hand, the value of
William of Malmesbury increases, as he draws nearer to his own time.
He often sets before us two versions of a story, and makes an attempt
at a critical comparison of them. But his prejudices are distinctly
Norman, and his utter lack of arrangement, his habit of dragging in
the most irrelevant tales at the most important points of his
narrative, makes him one of the most perplexing of writers to consult.

Footnote 2:

See vol. i. p. 589.

Footnote 3:

On the different statements, see Appendix A.

Footnote 4:

Chronn. and Flor. Wig. 1043.

Footnote 5:

Vol. i. p. 560.

Footnote 6:

See vol. i. p. 396.

Footnote 7:

Vol. i. p. 592.

Footnote 8:

As at the election of Eadmund Ironside, vol. i. p. 419. So, after the
fall of Harold the son of Godwine, the citizens of London were
foremost in choosing the young Eadgar King. Fl. Wig. 1066. The
expression of “all folk,” and the extreme haste at a time when the
Witan seem not to have been sitting, point to an election of this
kind, forestalling the next ordinary Gemót.

Footnote 9:

Vol. i. p. 404.

Footnote 10:

Vol. i. p. 568.

Footnote 11:

Lyfing’s share in the business comes from Florence; “Eadwardus,
annitentibus maxime Comite Godwino et Wigornensi Præsule Livingo,
Lundoniæ levatur in Regem.”

Footnote 12:

This contrast is not directly stated, but it seems implied in the
reference to the age and experience of Eadward.

Footnote 13:

Will. Malms. ii. 196. “Jure ei competere regnum, ævi maturo, laboribus
defæcato, scienti administrare principatum per ætatem severè, miserias
provincialium [Harthacnut’s Danegeld?] pro pristinâ egestate
temperare.”

Footnote 14:

Ib. “Quo se pronior inclinaverit, eo fortunam vergere; si auxilietur,
neminem ausurum obstrepere, et è converso.”

Footnote 15:

Vita Eadw. 394. “Quoniam pro patre ab omnibus habebatur, in paterno
consultu libenter audiebatur.” Will. Malms. ii. 197. “Quidam
auctoritatem ejus secuti.”

Footnote 16:

Will. Malms. u. s. “Quidam muneribus flexi.”

Footnote 17:

See vol. i. p. 591.

Footnote 18:

Adam Brem. ii. 74. See Appendix A.

Footnote 19:

See below under the years 1045 and 1047.

Footnote 20:

Will. Malms. ii. 197. “Et hinc censoriè notati et postmodum ab Angliâ
expulsi.”

Footnote 21:

Thierry, i. 180. St. John, ii. 132.

Footnote 22:

Henry of Huntingdon indeed (M. H. B. 759 A) hints at a suspicion of
Eadward’s Normannizing tendencies, when he makes the English embassy
stipulate that he shall bring the smallest possible number of Normans
with him (“quod paucissimos Normannorum secum adduceret”). But Henry’s
narrative just here is so very wild that it is not safe to rely on his
authority.

Footnote 23:

See vol. i. p. 117.

Footnote 24:

Chron. Petrib. 1041. “Eall folc geceas Eadward to cynge on Lundene;
healde þa hwile þe him God unne.” (Cf. Hen. Hunt. M. H. B. 759 A.
“Electus est in Regem ab omni populo.”) This prayer is the opposite to
that of Antinoos, Od. i. 386:—

μή σέ γ’ ἐν ἀμφιάλῳ Ἰθάκῃ βασιλῆα Κρονίων
ποιήσείεv, ὅ τoι γενεῇ πατρώϊόν ἐστι.

See Gladstone, Homer, iii. 51.

Footnote 25:

Chron. Ab. 1042. “Eall folc underfeng ða Eadward to cinge, swa him
gecynde wæs.” “Right of birth” does not very well express “gecynde,”
but I do not see how better to translate it. The word occurs again in
Chron. Wig. 1066, as applied to young Eadgar. It will be remembered
that the Abingdon Chronicle is the only one which charges Godwine with
a share in the death of Ælfred. See vol. i. pp. 545, 546. The
Biographer (p. 396) speaks of Eadward as reigning “ex Dei gratiâ et
hæreditario jure.” This is of course a courtier’s view. “Hæreditario
jure” must here mean a right derived from ancestors, not a right to be
handed on to descendants, as must be the meaning of the words in the
Waltham Charter, Cod. Dipl. iv. 154.

Footnote 26:

Chron. Wig. 1042. “Eall folc geceas þa Eadward, and underfengon hine
to kyninge, eallswa him wel gecynde wæs.” This expression is the exact
counterpart of that of Rudolf Glaber describing the election of Lewis
in 946. See vol. i. p. 224.

Footnote 27:

With the expressions used about the succession of Eadward compare the
still stronger expressions used by Florence about the succession of
Eadred in 946; “Proximus hæres Edredus, fratri succedens, regnum
naturale [gecynde] suscepit.” Yet Eadmund left two sons, both of whom
afterwards reigned.

Footnote 28:

Chron. Flor. Wig. See Appendix A.

Footnote 29:

Flor. Wig.

Footnote 30:

Chron. Ab. and Petrib. “Eadsige arcebisceop hine halgade, and toforan
eallum þam folce wel lærde, and to his agenre neode and ealles folces
wel manude.” So Will. Malms. ii. 197; “Ab Edsio archiepiscopo sacra
regnandi præcepta edoctus, quæ ille tunc memoriâ libenter recondidit,
et postea sanctè factis propalavit.”

Footnote 31:

At Githslep, now Islip, in Oxfordshire. Cod. Dipl. iv. 215.

Footnote 32:

Vita Eadw. 395.

Footnote 33:

Vita Eadw. 395. “Primus ipse Romanorum _Imperator_ Heinricus,” &c. But
Henry was not crowned Emperor till 1047. Hermannus Contractus in anno.

Footnote 34:

On the marriage of Henry and Gunhild, see vol. i. pp. 505, 559.

Footnote 35:

Vita Eadw. 395. “Munera imperiali liberalitate exhibenda mittit, et
quæ _tantos decebat terrarum dominos_.” Æthelred of Rievaux (X
Scriptt. 375), who seems here to copy the Biographer, says the same.

Footnote 36:

Vita Eadw. 395. “Rex quoque Francorum item Heinricus nomine.”

Footnote 37:

Ib. “Ejusdem Anglorum Regis vicinâ carnis propinquitate
consanguineus.” The Biographer throughout makes the most of his hero,
but there is a marked difference in his tone towards the German King
and towards any other prince. The expression “terrarum domini,”
reserved for the lords of the continental and the insular Empires, is
most remarkable. I am at a loss to see what kindred there was between
Eadward and Henry of Paris.

Footnote 38:

Vita Eadw. 395. “Ceteri quoque eorumdem Regum tyranni [a very singular
expression] et quique potentissimi duces et principes, legatis suis
eum adeunt, amicum et dominum sibi suisque constituunt, eique
fidelitatem et servitium suum in manus ponunt.” Is this merely the
flourish of an English Dudo (cf. the talk about Cnut, vol. i. p. 504),
or did any foreign princes really plight a formal homage to Eadward in
exchange for his gifts and favours? In the _later_ feudalism such a
relation would not be impossible.

Footnote 39:

See vol. i. p. 566. For the submission of Denmark to Magnus, see Adam
of Bremen, ii. 74, 75. Snorro, Saga of Magnus, c. 19 (Laing, ii. 377).
Adam however represents Magnus’ first occupation of Denmark as the
result of several battles with Swend, while Snorro makes Magnus be
peacefully elected in a Thing at Viborg, after which he makes Swend an
Earl and leaves him as his representative in Denmark.

Footnote 40:

Vita Eadw. 395. “Patrem eum sibi eligit, seque ut filium illi in
omnibus subjicit.” Compare the famous form of the Commendation of
Wales and Scotland to a greater Eadward, vol. i. pp. 60, 129. The
monastic biographer of Eadward gives quite another picture, by way of
preparation for his legendary account of the death of Magnus; “Sola
tamen Dacia, adhuc spirans et anhelans cædes, Anglorum interitum
minabatur, verum quis fuerit tanti conatûs finis sequentia
declarabunt.” Æthel. Riev. X Scriptt. 375.

Footnote 41:

Vita Eadw. 395. “Mittuntur singulis pro celsitudine suâ ab ipso Rege
regalia munera, quæ ut nullius quamlibet multiplex Regis vel principis
umquam æquaret munificentia, Regum pulcherrimus et nobilissimus
Anglorum Rex Ædwardus facit eisdem Francorum principibus _vel annua
vel continua_.” The money seems all to go to France, none to Germany
or Denmark.

Footnote 42:

Vita Eadw. 397.

“Multa dedere quidem, verum supereminet omnes
Larga Ducis probitas Godwini munere talis [tali?].”

The Biographer here, as often, breaks forth into hexameters.

Footnote 43:

Mr. Luard seems to think this ship a mere repetition of the ship given
to Harthacnut. Why?

Footnote 44:

Vita Eadw. 397.

“Aureus è puppi leo prominet; æquora proræ
Celsæ pennato perterret corpore draco
Aureus, et linguis flammam vomit ore trisulcis.”

Were the dragon and the lion thus coupled to express Eadward’s mixed
origin, English and Norman?

Footnote 45:

Ib.

“Nobilis appensum pretiatur purpura velum,
Quo patrum series depicta docet varias res,
Bellaque nobilium turbata per æquora Regum.”

For instances of historical tapestry see vol. i. p. 303.

Footnote 46:

See vol. i. p. 307.

Footnote 47:

On the legendary history of Eadward see Appendix B.

Footnote 48:

See vol. i. pp. 288, 365.

Footnote 49:

See vol. i. pp. 244, 462.

Footnote 50:

See Appendix B.

Footnote 51:

His monastic biographer (Æth. Riev. X Scriptt. 388) says by way of
praise, “Cuncta regni negotia Ducibus proceribusque [to Earl Harold
and the Witan] committens, totum se divinis mancipat obsequiis. Quantò
autem se corporalibus subtrahebat, tantò luminosius se spiritalibus
indidit theoriis.”

Footnote 52:

See vol. i. p. 327.

Footnote 53:

Vita Eadw. 396. “Si ratio aliquem suscitaret animi motum, leonini
videbatur terroris, iram tamen non prodebat jurgiis.” We shall
presently come across a ludicrous example of his “nobilis ira,”
venting itself in an oath. Possibly the reference may partly be to his
abstinence, like that of Saint Lewis, from the French, and generally
southern, vice of reviling God and the Saints. See Joinville, p. 120
ed. Du Cange, 1668; p. 217 ed. Michel, 1858.

Footnote 54:

I allude to his wish, frustrated by Godwine, to subject Dover to
military chastisement (Chron. Petrib. 1048. Cf. the dealings of the
Emperor Theodosius with Thessalonica and Antioch), and his wish,
frustrated by Harold, to wage war with the Northumbrians on behalf of
Tostig in 1065. Vita Eadw. 423.

Footnote 55:

See vol. i. pp. 328, 330, 383, 635.

Footnote 56:

Vita Eadw. 414. “Benignissimus Rex Ædwardus ... plurimum temporis
exigebat circa saltus et silvas in venationum jocunditate. Divinis
enim expeditus officiis, quibus libenter quotidianâ intendebat
devotione, jocundabatur plurimum coram se allatis accipitribus vel
hujus generis avibus, vel certè delectabatur applausibus multorum
motuum canibus. His et talibus interdum deducebat diem, et in his
tantummodo ex naturâ videbatur aliquam mundi captare delectationem.”
So William of Malmesbury (ii. 220), in a passage which, like several
others, makes one think that he had this Life of Eadward before him.
“Unum erat quo in sæculo animum oblectaret suum, cursus canum
velocium, quorum circa saltus latratibus solebat lætus applaudere;
volatus volucrum quorum natura est de cognatis avibus prædas agere. Ad
hæc exercitia continuis diebus, post audita manè divina officia,
intendebat.” He retained these tastes to the last. In 1065 Harold
built a house at Portskewet as a hunting-seat for the King. Chronn.
Ab. and Wig., and Flor. Wig. in anno.

Footnote 57:

For these two beautiful stories of Saint Anselm, see his Life by John
of Salisbury, Anglia Sacra, ii. 165.

Footnote 58:

It is not clear whether Eadward did not take the same delight as Queen
Elizabeth in another form of animal torture. There is something
suspicious in part of the royal dues paid by the city of Norwich,
“ursum et sex canes _ad ursum_ [a very business-like phrase].”
Domesday, ii. 117. Cf. Will. Fitz-Stephen, Giles, i. 180.

Footnote 59:

Will. Malms. ii. 196. “Dum quâdam vice venatum isset, et agrestis
quidam stabulata illa quibus in casses cervi urgentur confudisset,
ille _suâ nobili percitus irâ_, ‘Per Deum’ inquit ‘et Matrem ejus,
tantumdem tibi nocebo si potero.’” William’s whole comment is very
curious. This story has been made good use of by Lord Lytton, in his
romance of “Harold,” which, if the sentimental and supernatural parts
be struck out, forms a narrative more accurate than most so-called
histories of the time. For a somewhat similar tale see Motley, United
Netherlands, iii. 172.

Footnote 60:

Vita Eadw. 396. “Hominis persona erat decentissima, discretæ
proceritatis, capillis et barbâ canitie insignis lacteâ, facie plenâ
et cute roseâ, manibus macris et niveis, longis quoque interlucentibus
digitis, reliquo corpore toto integer et regius homo.” William of
Malmesbury (ii. 220) seems again to copy the Biographer; “Erat
_discretæ proceritatis_, barbâ et capillis cygneus, facie roseus, toto
corpore lacteus, membrorum habitudine commodâ peridoneus.” Eadward was
seemingly an _albino_.

Footnote 61:

In the Bayeux Tapestry Eadward and one or two others are represented
with long beards. William and Harold, and the mass of their respective
countrymen, are represented according to the later fashions described
in the text.

Footnote 62:

Vita Eadw. 396. “Cunctis poscentibus aut benignè daret aut benignè
negaret, ita et ut benigna negatio plurima videretur largitio.”

Footnote 63:

Ib. 415. So Will. Malms. ii. 220.

Footnote 64:

Ib. 396. “In frequentiâ verè se Regem et dominum, in privato, salvâ
quidem regiâ majestate, agebat se suis ut consocium.”

Footnote 65:

Vita Eadw. 415. “Inter ipsa divinorum mysteriorum et missarum
sacrosancta officia agninâ mansuetudine stabat, et mente tranquillâ
cunctis fidelibus spectabilis Christicola, inter quæ, nisi
interpellaretur, rarissimè cui loquebatur.” Compare the opposite
description given of Henry the Second, who always talked of public
affairs during mass (Gir. Camb. Exp. Hib. i. 46. p. 305 Dimock), and
the curious story of his holding a discourse at such a moment with
Saint Thomas of Canterbury himself, as told by Roger of Pontigny
(Giles, i. 132). It is however somewhat differently told by William
Fitz-Stephen (ib. i. 218). See Gentleman’s Magazine, April, 1860, p.
386.

The Ayenbite of Inwyt (p. 20 ed. Morris) reproves this practice as a
common fault. “And huanne þe ssoldest yhere his messe oþer his sermon
at cherche, þou iangledest and bourdedest to-vor God.”

Footnote 66:

Vita Eadw. 414. “Abbates religiosos et monachos, _potissimum autem
transmarinos_ ... quam benignè susceperit.” So Will. Malms. 220;
“Pauperibus hospitibusque, _maximè transmarinis_ et religiosis,
benignus appellando, munificus dando.” See Appendix C.

Footnote 67:

Vit. Eadw. 399. “Quum prædictus sanctæ memoriæ Ædwardus Rex
repatriaret à Franciâ, ex eâdem gente comitati sunt quamplures non
ignobiles viri, quos plurimis honoribus ditatos secum retinuit idem
Rex, utpote compos totius regni, ordinariosque constituit secretorum
consilii sui, et rectores rerum regalis palatii.” It is remarkable how
seldom, especially in the early part of Eadward’s reign, the
foreigners appear to sign charters. They were doubtless jealously
watched.

Footnote 68:

Vol. i. p. 584.

Footnote 69:

Vol. i. p. 593.

Footnote 70:

See above, p. 15.

Footnote 71:

Will. Malms. ii. 197. See Appendix D.

Footnote 72:

See above, p. 9.

Footnote 73:

See vol. i. p. 471. The French biographer of Eadward says (p. 57):—

“Godwin k’out mis entente
Cunquere tresor e rente,
Mut fu garniz e estorez
D’or e de argent dunt out asez,
Ke par plaiz e par achatz
De grant aver out fait purchaz;
Mut out cunquis par boesdie
Plus ke par chivalerie.”

Footnote 74:

See Appendix E.

Footnote 75:

A Godwine appears (W. Thorn. X Scriptt. 2224) as a benefactor of
Christ Church, Canterbury. This may be the great Earl, or it may be
the Godwine whose marriage settlement we have in Cod. Dipl. iv. 10.

Footnote 76:

This comes out nowhere more emphatically than in the comparatively
hostile Abingdon Chronicle, 1052.

Footnote 77:

Vita Eadw. 408. cf. Fl. Wig. 1066.

Footnote 78:

See the Peterborough Chronicler’s character of William, under the year
1087.

Footnote 79:

Ib. 1135.

Footnote 80:

Will. Malms. iv. 314.

Footnote 81:

Ord. Vit. 672 B.

Footnote 82:

Vit. Eadw. 408.

Footnote 83:

Fl. Wig. 1048, 1049.

Footnote 84:

“When the chronicler praises the gift of speech, he unconsciously
proves the existence of constitutional freedom.” Lytton, Harold, i.
165.

Footnote 85:

I attribute the Danish names in Godwine’s family to the influence of
Gytha rather than to any Danish tastes prevalent at the Court of Cnut,
because the Danes settled in England seem to have so often adopted
English names for their children. See vol. i. pp. 580, 591.

Footnote 86:

I should perhaps have done better had I used the English form of this
name throughout, as _Swegen_ is clearly more correct etymologically
than Svein, Sven, or Swend. It may however be convenient to
distinguish the English and Danish bearers of the name.

Footnote 87:

On the sons and daughters of Godwine, see Appendix F.

Footnote 88:

Cod. Dipl. iv. 74. This charter must be early in the year 1043,
earlier at least than the Gemót which we shall presently see was held
in November. Swegen was therefore probably appointed in the Gemót at
which Eadward was finally established as King. Another charter, of
1044 (Cod. Dipl. iv. 80), signed by Harold, Leofwine, Swegen, Tostig,
and Gyrth, all with the rank of “Dux,” is deservedly marked as
doubtful by Mr. Kemble.

Footnote 89:

See vol. i. p. 580, and Appendix G, on the Great Earldoms. His first
signature is in 1045. Cod. Dipl. iv. 97.

Footnote 90:

Fl. Wig. 1051.

Footnote 91:

Chronn. Ab. and Wig. 1065. See Appendix D.

Footnote 92:

Vita Eadw. 408. “Virtute corporis et animi in populo præstabat ut
alter Judas Machabæus.”

Footnote 93:

In the Bayeux Tapestry Harold is represented as lifting the Norman
soldiers from the quicksands with the greatest ease.

Footnote 94:

Vita Eadw. 409. “Uterque [the writer is comparing Harold and Tostig]
satis pulcro et venusto corpore et, ut conjicimus, non inæquali
robore, non disparis audaciæ. Sed major natu Haroldus procerior
staturâ, patris satis [these words are clearly corrupt] infinitis
laboribus, vigiliis et inediâ, multâ animi lenitate et promptiori
sapientiâ.”

Footnote 95:

See vol. i. p. 640.

Footnote 96:

De Inv. c. 14. “Tum ... astutiâ et legum terræ peritiâ, tum quia se
talem gerebat quod non solum Angli, verum etiam Normanni et Gallici
imprimis invidebant pulcritudini et prudentiæ, militiæ et sagacitati.”

Footnote 97:

Vita Eadw. 409. “Multum obloquia perferre, nam non facile prodere, non
facile quoque, et in civem sive compatriotum, ut reor, nusquam,
ulcisci.” Compare the character of Edward the First,

“Totus Christo traditur Rex noster Edwardus;
Velox est ad veniam, ad vindictam tardus.”

Political Songs (Camd. Soc.), p. 163.

Footnote 98:

See the poem in the Chronicles. So Snorro (Ant. Celt. Scand. 189.
Laing, iii. 75), while strangely making Harold the youngest of the
family and hardly realizing his position in the Kingdom, bears ample
testimony to the kindly relations existing between him and the King.
He is there called Eadward’s “foster son.” The Biographer (p. 433)
calls him “nutricius suus frater.”

Footnote 99:

Vita Eadw. 410; a passage which I shall have to refer to again.

Footnote 100:

I refer both to Harold’s own proceedings at Waltham and to the general
promotion of Germans under this reign. See Stubbs, De Inv. ix.

Footnote 101:

See Appendix E.

Footnote 102:

See William of Malmesbury’s Life of Wulfstan, Angl. Sacr. ii. 248,
253.

Footnote 103:

He was however a benefactor to the Abbey of Peterborough. The local
historian Hugo Candidus says (p. 44. ap. Sparke), “Comes Haroldus
dedit Cliftune et terram in Londone juxta monasterium Sancti Pauli,
juxta portum qui vocatur Etheredishythe.” Harold’s connexion with
London should be noticed. It was also at his advice that King Eadward
made a grant to Abingdon (Hist. Mon. Ab. i. 469), and that a Thegn
named Thurkill, of whom we shall hear again, commended himself to the
same church (Ib. i. 484).

Footnote 104:

Vita Eadw. 409. “Cum quovis, quem fidelem putaret, interdum
communicare consilium operis sui, et hoc interdum adeò differre, si
debet duci, ut minùs conducibile à quibusdam videretur fore suæ
commoditati.”

Footnote 105:

Ib. 410. “Uterque [Harold and Tostig] interdum quædam simulare adeò
egregiè, ut qui eos non noverit incertius nil æstimare poterit.” In
connexion with this curious passage I may quote a singular
exaggeration from an unknown author; it is found in a marginal note on
one of the manuscripts of the Winchester Annals (Luard, 27); “Haroldus
Rex, si sapientèr ageret quidquid agebat furore, nullus hominum illum
[sic] resisteret. Sed adeò erat animi inconstantis, quod nullus suorum
se credidit illi.” Yet “sapientèr” is the adverb which the Biographer
specially applies to Harold, in distinction to the “fortitèr” of
Tostig.

Footnote 106:

The charge of rashness as brought against Harold during the last scene
of his life I shall discuss elsewhere. I here add the Biographer’s
disclaimer (Vita Eadw. 409); “Porro de vitio præcipitationis sive
levitatis, quis hunc vel illum sive quemvis de Godwino patre genitum,
sive ejus disciplinâ et studio educatum arguerit?” There is a very
remarkable passage further on (p. 422), in which the Biographer says
that Harold was “ad sacramenta nimis (proh dolor) prodigus.” The
allusion clearly is to Harold’s oath to William, which the Biographer
never distinctly mentions.

Footnote 107:

I refer of course to the tale of Eadgyth Swanneshals, of which I shall
have to speak again more than once.

Footnote 108:

See vol. i. p. 577.

Footnote 109:

Chron. Ab. Cant. 1044. Petrib. 1043. I shall discuss the exact date
afterwards.

Footnote 110:

Vita Eadw. 415. She sat at his feet, unless he lifted her up to sit at
his side. This must be compared with the account of the legislation
about West-Saxon Kings’ wives after the crime of Eadburh (Asser, M. H.
B. 471 B). She had shown personal kindness to the Biographer (427);

“Scribes Reginam primo tibi subvenientem,
Et quicquid scribes, laus et honor sit ei.”

This perhaps gave occasion for the more elaborate and better known
description in the false Ingulf.

William of Malmesbury’s account of her (ii. 197) is singular; “Femina
in cujus pectore omnium liberalium artium esset gymnasium, sed parvum
in mundanis rebus ingenium; quam quum videres, si literas stuperes,
modestiam certè animi et speciem corporis desiderares.”

Footnote 111:

Hist. Rams. cxiv. (p. 457). Abbot Ælfwine, wishing to obtain certain
lands bequeathed to the monastery by one Æthelwine the Black, but
which were withheld from it by one Ælfric the son of Wihtgar,
“apposuit quoque de divitis crumenæ dispendio viginti marcas auri,
quibus gratiam Regis mercaretur, Ædthithæ [sic] quippe Reginæ
sedulitatem quinque marcarum auri pretio exegit interponi, ut pias
ejus preces regiis auribus fideliter importaret.” So again, in a
charter of 1060 in Cod. Dipl. iv. 142, Eadgyth lays claim to certain
lands claimed by the Abbey of Peterborough, but on the intercession of
her husband and her brothers Harold and Tostig (none of whom seem to
have taken anything), and on the gift of twenty marks and certain
church ornaments, she is induced to confirm the grant. That she looked
carefully after her rents in money, kine, and honey, and after the men
who stole her horse, is no blame to her (Cod. Dipl. iv. 257).

Footnote 112:

Will. Pict. 199 A, B (Duchesne).

Footnote 113:

Flor. Wig. 1065.

Footnote 114:

See Appendix B.

Footnote 115:

Vita Eadw. 431, (cf. 433).

Footnote 116:

Ibid. 403. See below.

Footnote 117:

Godgifu was the sister of Thorold the Sheriff, founder of the Priory
of Spalding. See John of Peterborough, a. 1052. p. 49. Giles. The
legend of her riding naked through Coventry is found in Bromton (949),
and Knighton (2334). They do not mention peeping Tom, who, it is some
comfort to think, must at any rate have been one of King Eadward’s
Frenchmen.

Footnote 118:

See Will. Malms. ii. 196. Cf. Æthel. Riev. 389. Chron. Evesham. 84.
This last writer extends Leofric’s authority to the borders of
Scotland. Did Cumberland reach to the Ribble in those days?

Footnote 119:

“Stow sub promontorio Lincolniæ.” Bromton, 949. See the charters of
Bishop Wulfwig, Cod. Dipl. iv. 290. The church was not built by
Leofric, but by Eadnoth the Second, Bishop of Dorchester (1034–1050);
Leofric’s benefaction took the form of ornaments. See Flor. Wig. 1057,
where he calls Stow “locus famosus qui Sanctæ Mariæ Stou Anglicè,
Latinè verò Sanctæ Mariæ Locus appellatur.” The antiquity of part of
the church is indisputable, but a more wretched village cannot be
found.

A document, professing to be a petition from Godgifu to Pope Victor,
praying for the confirmation of her gifts to Stow, is marked doubtful
by Mr. Kemble (Cod. Dipl. iv. 168), doubtless on good grounds. But I
do not understand his date, 1060–1066, as the Popedom of Victor the
Second was from 1055 to 1057. Siward, who died early in 1055, could
hardly have signed an address to Pope Victor.

Footnote 120:

See vol. i. p. 539.

Footnote 121:

See vol. i. p. 588.

Footnote 122:

See Appendix G.

Footnote 123:

Vita Eadw. 421, 422.

Footnote 124:

See Chronn. 1055.

Footnote 125:

See vol. i. p. 274.

Footnote 126:

See Appendix G.

Footnote 127:

Chron. 1051.

Footnote 128:

Chron. 1055.

Footnote 129:

Cod. Dipl. vi. 203.

Footnote 130:

For the earliest example, one of 1020, see Kemble, Archæological
Journal, xiv. 61, 62.

Footnote 131:

See vol. i. p. 102.

Footnote 132:

See vol. i. p. 499.

Footnote 133:

See vol. i. p. 564.

Footnote 134:

Orkneyinga Saga, Ant. Celt. Scand. 172 et seqq. Robertson, i. 114.
Burton, i. 369.

Footnote 135:

Fordun, iv. 44. Robertson, i. 116. Marianus Scotus (Pertz, v. 557)
says expressly, “Donnchad Rex Scotiæ in autumno occiditur a duce suo
Macbethad mac Finnloech, cui successit in regnum annis xvii.”

Footnote 136:

Fordun, u. s. “Consanguinea Siwardi Comitis.”

Footnote 137:

Robertson, i. 120 et seqq. Burton, i. 371–2.

Footnote 138:

Innes, Scotland in the Middle Ages, p. 118.

Footnote 139:

Marianus (Pertz, v. 558). “Rex Scottiæ Macbethad Romæ argentum
pauperibus seminando distribuit.” Florence (1050) leaves out the word
“pauperibus,” and changes “seminando” into “spargendo.” The change can
hardly be undesigned, and of the influence of money at Rome we shall
hear presently in the case of Bishop Ulf. Chron. Petrib. 1047. John of
Peterborough (48) combines the two readings, saying, “Machetus Rex
Scotorum Romæ argentum spargendo pauperibus distribuit.”

Footnote 140:

See Robertson, i. 122. Burton, i. 373.

Footnote 141:

See vol. i. p. 36.

Footnote 142:

See vol. i. p. 564.

Footnote 143:

Ann. Camb. 1039. Brut y Tywysogion, 1037.

Footnote 144:

Brut. 1040, 1042. Ann. Camb. 1039–1047. In one battle in 1040 Gruffydd
seems to have been taken prisoner by the Danes of Dublin. But the
whole narrative is very confused. See the entries under 1041 and 1042.

Footnote 145:

Brut, 1042. Ann. Camb. 1045?

Footnote 146:

See above, p. 40.

Footnote 147:

See above, p. 41.

Footnote 148:

See above, p. 18.

Footnote 149:

Æthel. R. 375. “Tunc elevatus est sol et luna stetit in ordine suo,
quando, Edwardo gloriâ et honore coronato, sacerdotes sapientiâ et
sanctitate fulgebant, monasteria omni relligione pollebant, clerus in
officio suo, populus stabat in gradu suo; videbatur etiam terra
fecundior, aer salubrior, sol serenior, maris unda pacatior. Quoniam
diu Rege pacifico regnante in uno vinculo pacis omnia convenirent, ut
nihil pestilentiosum esset in aere, nihil in mari tempestuosum, in
terrâ nihil infecundum, nihil inordinatum in clero, nihil in plebe
tumultuosum.” It would be endless to contrast all these details with
those found in the Chronicles and the Biographer. Even William of
Malmesbury, comparatively sober as he is, goes too far when he says
(ii. 196), “Denique eo regnante, nullus tumultus domesticus qui non
citò comprimeretur, nullum bellum forinsecùs, omnia domi forisque
quieta, omnia tranquilla.”

Footnote 150:

“Forðam heo hit heold ǽr to fæste wið hine,” say the Abingdon,
Peterborough, and Canterbury Chronicles. Worcester is more explicit;
“Forþan þe heo wæs æror þam cynge hire suna swiðe heard, _þæt heo him
læsse dyde þonne he wolde_, ær þam þe he cyng wære, and eac syððan.”
This is translated by Florence; “Vel quia priusquam Rex esset
effectus, vel post, _minus quam volebat illi dederat_, et ei valdè
dura exstiterat;” and by Roger of Wendover, “eo quod priusquam Rex
fuerat, _nihil illi contulerat quod petebat_” (i. 482). William of
Malmesbury says (ii. 196), “Mater ‘Angustos filii jamdudum riserat
annos,’ nihil umquam de suo largita.” He then gives the reason, namely
her preference for Cnut over Æthelred.

Footnote 151:

See vol. i. p. 454.

Footnote 152:

See vol. i. pp. 544, 555, 559.

Footnote 153:

See vol. i. p. 545 et seqq.

Footnote 154:

See vol. i. pp. 535, 561.

Footnote 155:

See the writ quoted at vol. i. p. 580, which cannot belong to the
_first_ reign of Harthacnut in Wessex only.

Footnote 156:

Besides land, the Abingdon Chronicle speaks of her wealth “on golde
and on seolfre and on unasecgendlicum þingum.” So that of Worcester
says of her treasures, “þa wæron unatellendlice.” So Florence;
“quicquid in auro, argento, gemmis, lapidibus, aliisve rebus pretiosum
habuerat.”

Footnote 157:

Will. Malms. ii. 196. “Congestis undecumque talentis crumenas
infecerat, pauperum oblita; quibus non patiebatur dari nummum ne
diminueret numerum. Itaque _quod injustè coacervârat_ non inhonestè
ablatum, ut egenorum proficeret compendio _et fisco sufficeret
regio_.” Though accepting this account (hæc referentibus etsi plurimum
fides haberi debeat), he goes on, as he does elsewhere (ii. 181. see
vol. i. p. 487), to speak of her bounty to monasteries, especially at
Winchester.

Footnote 158:

A meeting of the Witan is implied in the language of the Worcester
Chronicle, “Man gerædde þan cynge þæt he rád of Gleawcestre,” and in
the presence and consent of the three Earls—“ut illi [Leofricus,
Godwinus, et Siwardus] consilium ei dederant,” as Florence says.

Footnote 159:

See vol. i. p. 539.

Footnote 160:

See vol. i. p. 588.

Footnote 161:

So says the Worcester Chronicle, followed by Florence; “He rád of
Gleawcestre, and Leofric eorl and Godwine eorl and Sigwarð eorl mid
heora genge, to Wincestre;” “Festinato Rex cum comitibus Leofrico,
Godwino, et Siwardo de civitate Glawornâ Wintoniam venit.” The other
Chronicles do not imply the King’s personal presence; “se cyng let
geridan,” &c.

Footnote 162:

Chron. Wig. “On únwær on þa hlæfdian.” Flor. Wig. “Venit improvise.”

Footnote 163:

Chronn. Ab., Petrib., Cant. “Se cyng let geridan ealle þa land þe his
modor ahte him to handa.” The Worcester Chronicler says nothing of the
land.

Footnote 164:

Flor. Wig. “Verumtamen sufficienter ei ministrari necessaria præcepit
et illam ibidem quietam manere jussit.”

Footnote 165:

Emma signs a charter of her son’s during this year 1043 (Cod. Dipl.
iv. 74), which therefore belongs to an earlier Gemót than this of
November, probably to one held at Winchester at the time of the
coronation. From this time we find her signing only a few private
documents (Cod. Dipl. iv. 86, 116) and documents connected with the
Church of Winchester (iv. 90, 93). After her son’s marriage she seems
not to sign her son’s charters at all. The documents at iv. 80, 99 are
doubtful or spurious. On the Legend of Emma see Appendix H.

Footnote 166:

See above, p. 10.

Footnote 167:

Adam of Bremen, iii. 13.

Footnote 168:

Chronn. and Flor. Wig. 1044, 1045, 1046, 1047. All dates are given.

Footnote 169:

De Inv. 14. “Adelstanus ... degenerans à patris astutiâ et
sapientiâ ... multa ex his perdidit, et inter cetera Waltham.” This
may however only mean that he squandered his estate. His son Esegar
was Staller two years later. See Professor Stubbs’ note, and vol. i.
p. 591.

Footnote 170:

Chron. Wig. 1045. Flor. Wig. 1044. If Gunhild’s sons were old enough
to be dangerous, they must have been the children of Hakon who died in
1030. The names Heming and Thurkill have already appeared as those of
a pair of brothers. Vol. i. p. 376. Cf. Knytlinga Saga, ap. Johnston,
Ant. Celt. Scand. 105.

Footnote 171:

On this Harold see vol. i. p. 476. The signature to a charter of
Bishop Lyfing’s, 1042 (Cod. Dipl. iv. 69), must be his.

Footnote 172:

Adam Brem. ii. 75. “Caussa mortis ea fuit quod de regali stirpe
Danorum genitus, propior sceptro videbatur quam Magnus.”

Footnote 173:

The Chronica Sclavica, c. 13, makes Godescalc leave England after the
death of Cnut (vol. i. 649, 494), but Adam (u. s.) puts his departure
after the death of Cnut _and his sons_. If this last account be
correct, it looks very much as if Godescalc was banished. According to
Saxo (p. 204), he served for some time under Swend in his war with
Magnus. Saxo also (p. 208) marries him to Siritha (Sigrid?) a natural
daughter of Swend, but the national Chronicle distinctly makes his
wife Demmyn, Cnut’s sister or daughter, alive at the time of his
death.

These banishments probably helped, along with the displaced massacre
of Saint Brice, to form the groundwork for the legend of the general
expulsion or massacre of Danes in England. See vol. i. p. 592.

Footnote 174:

See vol. i. p. 473.

Footnote 175:

See vol. i. p. 563.

Footnote 176:

A private document in Cod. Dipl. iv. 116 is signed by “Stigand p̃.” It
is assigned to the year 1049, but this date must be wrong, as it is
signed by Ælfweard Bishop of London, who died in 1044. As it is signed
by Eadward and Emma, it must belong to the early Gemót of 1043, that
at which Stigand received his appointment as Bishop and Swegen as
Earl.

Footnote 177:

Chron. Ab. 1043. Chronn. Petrib. and Cant. 1042.

Footnote 178:

Chron. Ab. “And raðe þǽs man sette Stigant of his bisceoprice, and nam
eal þæt he ahte þam cinge to handa; forðam he wæs nehst his modor
rǽde, and heo for swá swá he hire rædde; þæs ðe men wendon.”

Footnote 179:

Chron. Petrib. 1048.

Footnote 180:

See vol. i. p. 320. Chron. Ab. 1050.

Footnote 181:

See vol. i. p. 565. Vita Eadw. p. 399.

Footnote 182:

In very much later times, in the fifteenth century, we find
Parliament, King, and Chapter all combining in the appointment of
Bishops, in a way which would rather surprise us now. The House of
Commons petitions the King to recommend a particular person to the
Chapter. Two such applications were made in favour of Archbishop
Bourchier, at different stages of his advancement. See Hook, Lives of
Archbishops, v. 276, 282. The order in Eadward’s time was different,
as the Chapter seems, sometimes at least, to have first elected and
then to have asked the confirmation of King and Witan. But the
principle is much the same. At all events, in the eleventh century,
though the papal veto was just beginning to be heard of, a papal
provision was quite unknown.

Footnote 183:

See Lingard, Anglo-Saxon Church, i. 94, where the whole matter is very
fairly stated. Investiture by the staff is implied in the famous
legend of Saint Wulfstan at the tomb of Eadward.

Footnote 184:

Chron. Petrib. 1047.

Footnote 185:

See vol. i. pp. 563, 588.

Footnote 186:

Chron. Ab. 1044. Petrib. 1043. “Forðam se arcebiscop wende þæt hit sum
oðer man _abiddan wolde, oþþe gebicgan_, þe he wyrs truwode and uðe,
gif hit ma manna wiste.”

Footnote 187:

Ib. “Be þæs cynges leafe, and ræde, and Godwines eorles. Hit wæs elles
feawum mannum cuð ær hit gedón wæs.” So William of Malmesbury, ii.
197. “Ante cum Rege tantùm et Comite communicato consilio, ne quis ad
tantum fastigium aspiraret indignus, vel prece vel pretio.”

Footnote 188:

He was consecrated to the see of Upsala, according to Professor Stubbs
(Ep. Succ. p. 20) and Dean Hook (i. 491); to Rochester, according to
the Abingdon History (i. 452). But Florence (1049) calls him
“Siwardus, Edsii Dorubernensis archiepiscopi chorepiscopus.” William
of Malmesbury (De Gest. Pont. 116) has a strange story, how Siward was
to succeed Eadsige, but treating him harshly, and not even allowing
him enough to eat, was deprived of the succession to the
Archbishoprick, and had to content himself with Rochester—“quo
leviaret verecundiam, quo detrimentum consolaretur.” Siward signs
charters with the title of Archbishop, Cod. Dipl. iv. 96, 103, 105; as
Bishop only in iv. 99; as Abbot only in a very doubtful charter, iv.
102. See also Hen. Hunt. M. H. B. 759 B. Angl. Sacr. i. 106. Bromton,
938.

Footnote 189:

Chron. Ab. 1048. Chron. Wig. 1050. Fl. Wig. 1049. See Hist. Ab. i.
461. Siward was a benefactor to his abbey, and fills a considerable
place in its history.

Footnote 190:

Chron. Ab. 1048. Petrib. 1046.

Footnote 191:

See vol. i. p. 568.

Footnote 192:

Chron. Wig. 1045. Fl. Wig. 1044. Hist. Eves. p. 85. Hist. Ram. c. 104.

Footnote 193:

Fl. Wig. u. s. “Ablatis ex maximâ parte libris et ornamentis, quæ ipse
eidem contulerat loco, et quædam, ut fertur, quæ alii contulerant.”
Cf. Hist. Rams. u. s. But the Evesham historian, who uses very strong
language against the monks of his own house, does not charge Ælfweard
with more than transferring his intended gifts from Evesham to Ramsey;
“quæ huic loco offerre cogitabat, versâ vice præfatæ ecclesiæ Ramesiæ
omnia condonabat.” Hist. Eves. p. 85.

Footnote 194:

Chron. Wig. 1045. Fl. Wig. 1044. Hist. Eves. p. 86. Mannig rebuilt the
church (Chronn. Ab. and Wig. 1054), and continued Abbot till 1066,
when he died, having been for some time disabled by palsy.

Footnote 195:

Will. Malm. Gest. Pont. 134 b. He is there spoken of simply as a monk
of Jumièges, but from the Biographer (399) and from the Nova Chronica
Normanniæ, A. 1037, it appears that he had been Abbot. (See Neustria
Pia, p. 309.) He became Abbot in 1037, and began the church in 1040.
William himself, in his History (ii. 199), speaks of his building as
“Ecclesia Sanctæ Mariæ, quam ipse præcipuo et sumptuoso opere
construxerat.” He begins to sign as Bishop in 1046. Cod. Dipl. iv.
110.

Footnote 196:

William of Malmesbury (Gest. Pont. 116) makes Robert’s influence with
Eadward the recompense of some services done to him in Normandy. He
goes on, “Is ergo et amore antiquo et recenti honore primas partes in
consiliis regalibus vendicabat, quos vellet deponeret, quos liberet,
sublimaret.”

Footnote 197:

Ann. Wint. 21, Luard. “Tanti fuit homo ille in oculis Regis ut si
diceret nigram cornicem esse candidam Rex citiùs ori illius quam
oculis suis crederet.”

Footnote 198:

Vita Eadw. 400. So William of Malmesbury (u. s.); “Ille contra
pertinaciùs insistere, donec præcipuos optimates, Godwinum dico et
filios ejus, proditionis apud Regem accusatos Angliâ expelleret.
Expulsionis aliæ quoque fuere caussæ, et alii auctores, sicut aliàs
non tacuimus. Sed ille clariùs classicum cecinit, instantiùs
accusavit.”

Footnote 199:

See vol. i. p. 573.

Footnote 200:

Bishop Godwin (Cat. of Bishops, p. 25) says truly, but without fully
understanding the force of his own words; “This man is said to have
laid the first foundation of the Normans conquest in England.”

Footnote 201:

Chron. Petrib. 1043. Fl. Wig. 1044.

Footnote 202:

See above, p. 63.

Footnote 203:

See above, p. 18.

Footnote 204:

Snorro, Saga of Magnus, 33, of Harold, 18 (Laing, ii. 391. iii. 17).
Chron. Roskild. Lang. i. 377. Saxo, 203.

Footnote 205:

Saxo, 204.

Footnote 206:

See vol. i. p. 649.

Footnote 207:

Saxo, 203. Swend. Agg. c. 5 (Lang. i. 56). So Adam Brem. ii. 75;
“Magnus autem Rex pro justitiâ et fortitudine carus fuit Danis, verùm
Sclavis terribilis, qui post mortem Chnut Daniam infestabant.”

Footnote 208:

Snorro, Magnus, 38 (Laing, ii. 397). Ant. Celt. Scand. 184.

Footnote 209:

Snorro, Ant. Celt. Scand. 185. “Var þat þá rád her allra landsmanna at
taka mik till Konungs her í Englandi.”

Footnote 210:

Does this mean that Eadward meant to meet Magnus in single combat?

Footnote 211:

Chron. Ab. 1044, 1045. Chron. Petrib. 1043.

Footnote 212:

Chron. Ab. 1045. “And þar wæs swa mycel here gegæderod swa nan man ne
geseh, sciphere nænne maran on þysan lande.”

Footnote 213:

For the life of Harold Hardrada our chief authority is his Saga in
Snorro, which will be found in the third volume of Laing’s
Translation. It fits in better than might have been expected with
authentic history. There are also notices in Adam of Bremen and the
Danish writers.

Footnote 214:

See Finlay, Byz. Emp. i. 466.

Footnote 215:

See vol. i. p. 577, and above, p. 44.

Footnote 216:

Adam Brem. iii. 16. “Erat vir potens et clarus victoriis, qui prius in
Græciâ et in Scythiæ regionibus multa contra barbaros prœlia
confecit.” For some legends, see Saxo, 205.

Footnote 217:

See Finlay, i. 487.

Footnote 218:

Ib.

Footnote 219:

It is worth noticing that the reigning Emperor Constantine Monomachos
had a hand in restoring the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It would be
singular indeed if Harold Hardrada were in any way the instrument of
his bounty. See Finlay, i. 503.

Footnote 220:

So says the Saga, but it is hard to say who is meant by this niece of
Zôê. It is possible that, if there be any truth in the story, some
niece or other kinswoman of Constantine is intended. William of
Malmesbury (iii. 260) gives another turn to the story. He was “pro
stupro illustris fœminæ leoni objectus.” Of course he kills the beast.
In Saxo (205) the crime becomes murder, and the lion is exchanged for
a dragon.

Footnote 221:

Snorro, Harold, c. 18 (Laing, iii. 17).

Footnote 222:

Chron. Wig. 1046. “On þam geare gegaderade Eadward cyng mycele
scypferde on Sandwic, þurh Magnus þreatunge on Norwegon; ac his gewinn
and Swegenes on Denmarcon geletton þæt he her ne com.” So Fl. Wig.
1045. Rog. Wend. i. 483.

Footnote 223:

Chron. Ab. 1044. Petrib. 1043. Cant. 1045. But 1043 in Peterborough
really means 1045, and the 1044 of Abingdon takes in the whole
Christmas season running into the next year. The Hyde writer (288),
amusingly enough, places the marriage after Godwine’s return in 1052.
Eadward “adveniens multâ probitate multâque animi industriâ cœpit
florere, et _Normannos quos adduxerat principes per Angliam
constituere_; contra hunc quoque Comes Godwinus, pacis inimicus,
tentans rebellare, irâ commotus, Angliâ discessit, moxque repatrians
usque in ipsam metropolim Londoniam classem suam advexit. Denique _se
non posse prævalere animadvertens_, pacem cum Edwardo statuit
componere, et ut nullius rebellionis suspicio remaneret, filiam suam
Editham nomine ei matrimonio copulavit, filiumque suum Haroldum ejus
dapiferum constituit.”

Footnote 224:

See above, p. 36.

Footnote 225:

This legend occurs in the Vita Eadwardi, p. 394. It is of course not
omitted by the professed hagiographers. See Appendix B.

Footnote 226:

See above, p. 41.

Footnote 227:

See Gisa’s narrative in Hunter’s Ecclesiastical Documents, pp. 15, 16.
Compare the promotion of Savaric to the same see by the less kindly
influence of a later Emperor. Canon. Well. ap. Angl. Sacr. i. 563.

Footnote 228:

Hist. Rams. c. 75. (p. 434). “Quum esset bonæ vitæ et prudentiæ
laudabilis, genuinâ tum animi feritate, utpote Teutonicus natione,
damnum aliquod suæ attulit laudi.” His appointment is more remarkable,
as he succeeded Wulfsige who died at Assandun (vol. i. p. 432), so
that he must have been promoted very early in Cnut’s reign, before his
connexion with Conrad began. Wythmann got into all kinds of trouble
with his monks, and at last, after a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, died a
solitary. His story in the Ramsey History is worth reading.

Footnote 229:

See vol. i. p. 178.

Footnote 230:

Chron. Ab. 1045. “Eadward cyng geaf Heramanne his preoste þæt
bisceoprice.” Chron. Wig. 1046. “Man sette Hereman on his setle,” an
expression implying the consent of the Witan. Florence says, “Regis
capellanus Herimannus, de Lotharingiâ oriundus.”

Footnote 231:

Fl. Wig. 1031. Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 145 _b_.

Footnote 232:

“Vir prudentissimus Livingus,” says Florence (1031); “Omnibus quæ
injuncta fuerant, sapientèr et mirificè ante adventum Regis
consummatis,” says William.

Footnote 233:

Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 145 _b_. Cf. Gest. Regg. iii. 300.

Footnote 234:

See vol. i. p. 563.

Footnote 235:

See above, p. 7.

Footnote 236:

Will. Malms. u. s. “Ambitiosus et protervus ecclesiasticarum legum
tyrannus, ut fertur, invictus, qui nihil pensi haberet, quominùs omni
voluntati suæ assisteret.”

Footnote 237:

Will. Malms. u. s. “A majoribus accepimus, quum ille spiritum
efflaret, tum horrisonum crepitum per totam Angliam auditum, ut ruina
et finis totius putaretur orbis.” The loss of men like Lyfing is
indeed the ruin of nations.

Footnote 238:

Will. Malms. (u. s.), who speaks of his gifts to the monastery, and of
the services still said for him, “ut hodieque xv. graduum psalmos
continuatâ per successores consuetudine pro ejus decantent quiete.”

Footnote 239:

“Lyfing se wordsnotera biscop.” He adds, “he hæfde iii. biscoprice an
on Defenascire, and on Cornwalon, and on Wigracestre.” So Florence
calls him “Hwicciorum, Domnaniæ, et Cornubiæ præsul.” In the
Peterborough Chronicle he is “biscop on Defenascire,” which the
Canterbury Chronicler, using the language of his own age, turns into
“biscop of Exceastre.”

Footnote 240:

Flor. Wig. 1046. “Regis cancellario Leofrico Brytonico mox
Cridiatunensis et Cornubiensis datus est præsulatus.”

Footnote 241:

Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 145 _b_. “Lefricus apud Lotharingos altus et
doctus.”

Footnote 242:

See vol. i. p. 320.

Footnote 243:

See vol. i. p. 353.

Footnote 244:

Will. Malms. u. s. He again speaks of Æthelstan’s walls. See vol. i.
pp. 337–340.

Footnote 245:

See vol. i. pp. 345, 346.

Footnote 246:

Such a personal installation seems to be the meaning of the
description in the foundation charter of the new see of Exeter, in
Cod. Dipl. iv. 118. The Charter is doubtful, but it may probably be
trusted for a fact of this kind. Cf. Will. Malms. iii. 300.

Footnote 247:

See the whole subject fully illustrated by Professor Stubbs in the
Preface to the _De Inventione_, p. ix. et seqq.

The rule of Chrodegang will be found at length in D’Achery’s
Spicilegium, i. 565 et seqq.

Footnote 248:

Cap. 53. “Ut Canonici cucullos monachorum non induant.”

Footnote 249:

See Stubbs, De Inventione, p. x.

Footnote 250:

Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 145 _b_. “Canonicos statuit qui, _contra
morem Anglorum_, ad formam Lotharingorum uno triclinio comederent, uno
cubiculo cubitarent. Transmissa est hujuscemodi regula ad posteros,
quamvis pro luxu temporum nonnullâ jam ex parte deciderit, habentque
clerici œconomum ab episcopo constitutum, qui eis diatim necessaria
victui, annuatim amictui commoda suggerat.”

Footnote 251:

See vol. i. p. 353.

Footnote 252:

The name of Ealdred will be constantly recurring in our history for
the next twenty-three years. His general life and character are
described by William of Malmesbury, De Gest Pont. 154, and Thomas
Stubbs, Gest. Pont. Eb. X Scriptt. 1700 et seqq.

Footnote 253:

T. Stubbs, u. s. “Iste apud Regem Edwardum tantæ erat auctoritatis, ut
cum eo mortales inimicos reconciliaret et de inimicissimis amicissimos
faceret.”

Footnote 254:

The reconciliation of Gruffydd appears from his acting immediately
afterwards in concert with Earl Swegen. That Ealdred brought about
this present reconciliation is not distinctly stated, but it quite
falls in with his general character, and with the fact that he played
a prominent part in a later reconciliation between Eadward and
Gruffydd. The success of Ealdred in reconciling both Swegen and
Gruffydd to the King is specially commented on by Thomas Stubbs, the
biographer of the Archbishops of York (X Scriptt. 1701). Now Stubbs
wrote more than three hundred years after the time; still he is not a
romancer like Bromton or Knighton, but a really honest and careful
writer, and he doubtless had access to materials which are now lost or
unprinted. He may indeed refer to the later reconciliation in 1056,
but the combination of the names of Swegen and Gruffydd might lead us
to think that he was speaking of some event at this time.

Footnote 255:

Chron. Ab. 1046. “Her on þysum geare for Swegn eorl into Wealan, and
Griffin se Norþerna cyng forð mid him, and him man gislode.” In Ann.
Camb. 1046 we read, “Seditio magna orta fuit inter Grifud filium
Lewelin et Grifud filium Riderch.” Or possibly the expedition may be
that recorded under the next year, when Gruffydd ap Llywelyn ravaged
all South Wales in revenge for the treacherous slaughter of one
hundred and forty of his nobles. In any case the two independent
accounts exactly fit in to one another.

Footnote 256:

Chron. Ab. 1046. “þa he hamwerdes wæs þa het he feccan him to þa
abbedessan on Leomynstre, and hæfde hi þa while þe him geliste, and
let hi syððan faran ham.”

Footnote 257:

Florence does not mention the affair of Swegen and Eadgifu in its
chronological order, but refers to it when he describes the return of
Swegen in 1049. “Suanus ... qui, relictâ prius Angliâ, eo quod Edgivam
Leonensis monasterii abbatissam, quam corruperat, in matrimonium,
habere non licuerit, Danemarciam adierat.” So the Worcester Chronicle,
which does not mention Eadgifu, says, under 1050, “Swegen Eorl, þe fór
ær of þisan lande to Denmarcon, and þær forworhte hine wið Denum.”
Abingdon, the only Chronicle which mentions Eadgifu, does not speak
directly of Swegen’s departure, but implies it under 1049. Mr. St.
John (ii. 148 et seqq.) works up the story into an elaborate romance,
with a glowing description of the beauty, accomplishments, and
wickedness of Eadgifu and of nuns in general. M. de Bonnechose (ii.
85) tells us, “Sweyn _cinquième_ fils de Godwin, fit violence (?) à
_Elgive_, abbesse de Leominster; banni par le roi pour ce crime,” &c.

Footnote 258:

See vol. i. p. 279.

Footnote 259:

Chronn. Petrib. 1045. Cant. 1046. “On ðam ilcan geare ferde Swegen
eorl ut to Baldewines lande to Brycge, and wunode þær ealne winter,
and wende þa to sumere út.” “Út” means, of course, to Denmark. William
of Malmesbury says (ii. 200), “Swanus, perversi ingenii et infidi in
Regem, multotiens à patre et fratre Haroldo descivit, et pirata
factus, prædis marinis virtutes majorum polluit.” Whom did William
look on as the forefathers of Swegen?

Footnote 260:

Chron. Petrib. 1046. Swegen on his return asks for their restoration.

Footnote 261:

Will. Malms. ii. 196. “Leofricus ... monasteria multa constituit ...
_Leonense_, et nonnulla alia.” So Flor. Wig. 1057. On Leominster see
Monasticon, iv. 51.

Footnote 262:

Leominster Monastery had no existence in the time of Henry the First,
when it was a “dirutum monasterium” which that King granted to his new
Abbey of Reading (Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. Scriptt. p. Bed. 144). I
infer also from Domesday (180) that the house had no corporate being
at the time of the Survey. Leominster was then held by the King; in
King Eadward’s time it had been held by Queen Eadgyth. The monastery
is only casually mentioned; it holds no land, but a rent seems to be
reserved for the “victus monialium.” These facts together seem to me
to show that the society was dissolved, a certain rent being set aside
for the surviving members, like the pensions granted at the general
Dissolution under Henry the Eighth. See Appendix E.

Footnote 263:

Chronn. Ab. 1046. Wig. 1047. “Man utlagode Osgod stallere.” Chron.
Petrib. 1044. “On þis ilcan geare wearð aflemed ut Osgot Clapa.”
Chron. Cant. 1045. “And Osgod Clapa wærð ut adriven.” The difference
of expression in the different Chronicles is remarkable. On “ut
adriven,” see vol. i. p. 561. Florence, 1046, says, “Osgodus Clapa
expellitur Angliâ.”

Footnote 264:

See above, p. 7.

Footnote 265:

The Abingdon Chronicle says “on þis ylcan geare man geútlagode Osgod
Clapan _foran to middanwintre_.”

Footnote 266:

This is implied in the narrative of Florence, 1049. “Osgodus autem ...
Danemarciam rediit.”

Footnote 267:

See vol. i. p. 466.

Footnote 268:

Snorro, Harold, 21 (Laing, iii. 19).

Footnote 269:

Ibid. 26, 28 (Laing, iii. 25, 27).

Footnote 270:

The application of Swend and the refusal by the Witan come from the
Worcester Chronicle, 1048. “And Swegen eac sende hider, bead him
fylstes ongeon Magnus Norwega cyng; þæt man sceolde sendan L. scypa
him to fultume; ac hit þuhte unræd _eallum folce_; and hit wearð þa
gelet, þurh þæt þe Magnus hæfde mycel scypecræft.” The personal share
of Godwine and Leofric in the debate comes from Florence, 1047. “Tunc
comes Godwinus consilium Regi dedit ut saltem L. naves militibus
instructas ei mitteret; sed quia Leofrico comiti _et omni populo_ id
non videbatur consilium, nullam ei mittere voluit.”

Footnote 271:

Flor. Wig. 1047.

Footnote 272:

Snorro, Harold, 30 (Laing, iii. 29).

Footnote 273:

Saxo, 204. Cf. vol. i. p. 257.

Footnote 274:

For a mythical version of the death of Magnus, mixed up with a story
of a vision of Eadward’s, see Æthel. Riev. X Scriptt. 378.

Footnote 275:

See above, p. 73.

Footnote 276:

Flor. Wig. 1048. I insert this story with a certain amount of fear and
trembling, as it reads so like a mere repetition of what happened the
year before. Still the authority of Florence is high, and it is not
unlikely that Swend, in his new circumstances, might make a second
application.

Footnote 277:

Fl. Wig. 1048. “Haroldus ... nuntios ad Regem Eadwardum misit et pacem
amicitiamque illi obtulit, et recepit.”

Footnote 278:

See below, p. 98.

Footnote 279:

Chron. Ab. 1046. Fl. Wig. 1047. Chron. Wig. 1048. It was after
Candlemas, i. e. of 1047.

Footnote 280:

Chronn. Ab. 1048. Wig. 1049. Fl. Wig. 1048.

Footnote 281:

Chron. Wig. 1049. “Þæt wilde fyr on Deorbyscire micel yfel dide.”
Florence (1048) calls it “ignis aërius, vulgo dictus silvaticus.”

Footnote 282:

Chronn. Ab. 1047. Wig. 1048. Petrib. 1045. Cant. 1046. Fl. Wig. 1047.
By some extraordinary confusion Florence places here the death of
Eadmund, Bishop of Durham, and the succession of Eadred, which
happened in 1041. See vol. i. pp. 588–9.

Footnote 283:

Chron. Ab. 1048. Chron. Petrib. 1046. These clearly refer to the same
event. I hardly understand Mr. Thorpe’s note to his Translation of the
Chronicles, p. 137. “This predatory expedition, assigned here to the
year 1046, is of a much earlier date”—one seemingly before the year
1000. This is because a Lothen and an Yrling occur in the story of
Olaf Tryggwesson. But the Chronicler could hardly be mistaken on such
a point. Lappenberg (499. Thorpe, ii. 239) seems to have no doubt on
the matter.

Footnote 284:

“Godwines Rath wurde bald als der richtige erkannt.” Lappenberg, 499.

Footnote 285:

I make up the details by joining the narratives of the two Chronicles.
Both mention Sandwich; but the Peterborough Chronicle alone speaks of
the vast booty.

Footnote 286:

Chron. Ab. 1048. “Man gehergode Sandwic and Wiht, and ofslohan þa
betsta men þe þa wæron.”

Footnote 287:

Chron. Petrib. 1046. “And wendon þa onbuton Tenet, and woldon þær þet
ilce don; ac þet landfolc hardlice wiðstodon, and forwerndon heom
ægðer ge upganges ge wæteres, and aflymdon hi þanon mid ealle.” The
refusal of water is remarkable. Probably in other cases the landfolk
had to provide provisions out of sheer fear.

Footnote 288:

Chron. Petrib. u. s.

Footnote 289:

Chron. Ab. 1048. “And Eadward cining and þa eorlas foran æfter þam út
mid heore scypun.” Eadward had been on board the fleet once before
(see p. 74), but that time he saw no service.

Footnote 290:

Chron. Petrib. 1046.

Footnote 291:

See vol. i. pp. 313, 330, 633.

Footnote 292:

Lamb. Herz. 1047.

Footnote 293:

See above, p. 17.

Footnote 294:

See the Life of Leo by the contemporary Archdeacon Wibert, in
Muratori, iii. 282.

Footnote 295:

The intervention of Hildebrand, as told by Otto of Freisingen in his
Annals, lib. vi. c. 33, seems apocryphal, as Muratori remarks in his
note, iii. 292. But the germ of the story is to be found in Wibert;
Leo entered Rome barefoot, and though he announced his appointment by
the Emperor, he demanded the assent of the clergy and people before he
entered on his office.

Footnote 296:

On this war see Hermannus Contractus, 1044–1050. Lambert, 1044–1050.
Sigebert, 1044–1049 (ap. Pertz, vi. 358–9). Ann. Leodienses (ap.
Pertz, iv. 19, 20). Otto Fris. Chron. vi. 33. Conrad Ursp. 1045–9 (p.
229, ed. 1537). Annalista Saxo (ap. Pertz, vol. vi. p. 689). Struvius,
i. 352. The destruction of the palace is mentioned in our own Abingdon
and Worcester Chronicles, 1049, 1050; “Se casere gaderode unarimedlice
fyrde ongean Baldewine of Brycge þurh þæt þæt he bræc þæne pallant æt
Neomagan, and eac fela oðra unþanca þe he him dyde.” So Florence,
1049; “Quod apud Neomagum suum palatium combussisset atque fregisset
pulcherrimum.” The year of its destruction was 1046, according to
Lambert (“Inter alias quas rei publicæ intulit clades, Neumago domum
regiam miri et incomparabilis operis incendit”), 1047 according to
Sigebert, (“Godefridus palatium Neomagi incendit et irreparabiliter
destruit”). Both writers speak of the destruction of the church of
Verdun; Lambert adds the singular penance of Godfrey, which must have
followed his submission in 1049. “Post modicum facti in tantum
pœnituit, ut publicè se verberari faceret, et capillos suos ne
tonderentur [one is reminded of the Merwings] multâ pecuniâ redimeret,
sumptus ad reædificandam ecclesiam daret, et in opere cæmentario per
seipsum plerumque vilis mancipii ministerio functus deserviret.” Abbot
Hugh in the Verdun Chronicle (Labbe, i. 190) makes the destruction at
Verdun still more extensive; “Templum Sanctæ Mariæ à Duce Godefrido et
Balduino succensum est, vasa sacra ablata, civitasque destructa, viii.
Kal. Nov.” So in another Verdun Chronicle (ib. 401); “1048 Civitas
Virdunensis a Duce Godefrido et Balduino Comite deprædatur et unà cum
Monasterio Sanctæ Mariæ incenditur.”

Footnote 297:

Florence (1049) seems pointedly to distinguish the relations in which
Swend and Eadward stood to the Emperor. “Suanus ... ut Imperator illi
_mandârat_, cum suâ classe ibi affuit, et eâ vice fidelitatem
Imperatori juravit. Misit quoque ad Regem Anglorum Eadwardum et
_rogavit_ illum ne Baldwinum permitteret effugere, si vellet ad mare
fugere.”

Footnote 298:

Flor. Wig. 1049. Chronn. Ab. and Wig. ib. “þæt he ne geþafode þæt he
him on wætere ne ætburste.”

Footnote 299:

See vol. i. pp. 229, 245.

Footnote 300:

Chronn. Ab. and Wig. “þæt se casere hæfde of Baldwine eall þæt he
wolde.” The reconciliation was at Aachen. Sigebert, 1049. Hermann,
1050. Lambert seems to confound this reconciliation with the later
synod at Mainz. William of Poitiers boldly turns the tables; the
father-in-law of Duke William could not have made submission even to
an Emperor; “Nomine siquidem Romani Imperii miles fuit, re decus et
gloria summa consiliorum in summâ necessitudine ... Est enim et
nationibus procul remotis notissimum quam frequentibus, quamque
gravibus bellis Imperatorum immanitatem fatigaverit, pace demum ad
conditiones ipsius arbitratu dictatas compositâ, quum Regum dominos
terræ ipsorum nonnullâ parte mulctaverit violenter extortâ, sua quæque
vel inexpugnatâ vel indefessâ potiùs manu tutam.” Giles, 90. Duchesne,
183 D.

Footnote 301:

See pp. 88, 90.

Footnote 302:

Chron. Ab. 1049. “He com hider mid hiwunge, cwæð þæt he wolde his man
beon.”

Footnote 303:

Chron. Petrib. 1046. “And com Swegn eorl in mid vii. scypum to
Bosenham, et griðode wið þone cyng, and behet man him þæt he moste
wurðe [beon] ælc þæra þinga þe he ǽr ahte.

Footnote 304:

Chron. Petrib. 1046. “Da wiðlæg Harold eorl his broðor and Beorn eorl
þæt he ne moste beon nan þære þinga wurðe þe se cyng him geunnen
hæfde.” So Chron. Ab. 1049. The Worcester Chronicle and Florence do
not mention this opposition of Harold and Beorn.

Footnote 305:

See vol. i. p. 370.

Footnote 306:

“Fóron fela scypa hám,” says the Worcester Chronicle; but Abingdon
puts it more distinctly; “And þa se cing lyfde eallon Myrceon ham; and
hig swa dydon.”

Footnote 307:

Abingdon and Worcester mention Godwine’s going with forty-two ships,
but Peterborough has more distinctly, “Ða ge[wende] Godwine eorl west
onbuton mid þæs cynges ii. scipum þan anan steorde Harold eorl and þan
oðran Tostig his broðor, and landesmanna sciþa xlii.”

Footnote 308:

The first certainly authentic signature of Tostig seems to be in this
year. Cod. Dipl. iv. 115. The charter, after the signatures of
Godwine, Leofric and Siward, has those of “Harold Dux,” “Beorn Dux,”
“Tosti nobilis,” “Leowine nobilis.” Leofwine must have been very
young.

Footnote 309:

Chron. Petrib. “Ða scyfte man _Harold_ eorl úp þæs cynges scipe þe
Harold eorl ǽr steorde.” Mr. Earle’s conjecture that for “Harold eorl”
we should read “Beorn eorl” is absolutely necessary to make sense of
the passage. Parallel Chronicles, 343.

Footnote 310:

Was it some feeling that a brother’s life had been at least in
jeopardy that led William of Malmesbury, or those whom he followed,
into the strange statement (ii. 200), “Pro conscientiâ Brunonis
cognati interempti, _et, ut quidam dicunt, fratris_”?

Footnote 311:

Chron. Ab. “Þa wende Beorn for þære sibbe þæt he him swican nolde.” So
Wig.

Footnote 312:

“To Dertamuðan,” Chronn. Ab. and Wig. “to Axamuðan,” Chron. Petrib.

Footnote 313:

The personal share of Harold in the burial comes from the Abingdon
Chronicle, the one least favourable to Godwine. Peterborough, so
strongly Godwinist, is silent.

Footnote 314:

Chron. Ab. “And se cing þa and eall here cwæðon Swegen for niðing.”
Cf. Chron. Petrib. 1088. “Ða se cyng ... sende ofer eall Englalande,
and bead þæt ælc man þe wære unniðing sceolde cúman to hé.” Will.
Malms. iv. 306. “Jubet ut compatriotas advocent ad obsidionem venire,
nisi si qui velint sub nomine Niðing, quod _nequam_ sonat, remanere.”
Matt. Paris. p. 15 (Wats); “Absque morâ ut ad obsidionem veniant
jubet; nisi velint sub nomine _Nithing_, quod Latinè _nequam_ sonat,
recenseri. Angli, qui nihil contumeliosius et vilius æstimant quam
hujusmodi ignominioso vocabulo notari, catervatim ad Regem
confluentes,” &c.

Footnote 315:

On military Assemblies, Macedonian, Ætolian, and even Achaian, see
Hist. Fed. Gov. i. pp. 413, 511, 549.

Footnote 316:

See vol. i. p. 404.

Footnote 317:

See vol. i. p. 86.

Footnote 318:

_Here_, which implies a standing force, very often a paid force, not
_fyrd_, the general levy of the country.

Footnote 319:

See vol. i. p. 109.

Footnote 320:

On the Housecarls, as a later and inferior form of the _Comitatus_,
see vol. i. p. 490.

Footnote 321:

“Lytel ær þan” (namely the second burial of Beorn), the men of
Hastings set forth, according to the Worcester Chronicle, the only one
which mentions their exploit.

Footnote 322:

So I understand the words of the Worcester Chronicle. The men of
Hastings go after Swegen and take “his twa scypa”—the only ships he
then had. To explain his having only two ships the writer adds, “ehta
scypa he hæfde ær he Beorn beswice; syððan hine forleton ealle buton
twam.” The only meaning of these words seems to be that which I have
given, though it involves the difficulty as to the personal escape of
Swegen. But it is clear that Florence took them differently;
“Dimiserunt illum sex naves, quarum duas paullò post cœperunt
Hastingenses ... Swanus verò ad Flandriam duabus fugiens navibus ibi
mansit.” This accounts for his escape, but I cannot see how “his twa
scypa” can mean two of the ships which had left him. The Abingdon
Chronicle also mentions the desertion of the six ships, but not the
exploit of the Hastings men.

For other examples of the vigorous action of the men of the “Cinque
Ports” in 1293 and 1297, see Walter of Hemingburgh, vol. ii. pp. 41,
158 (Hist. Soc. Ed.).

Footnote 323:

Chron. Ab. “And þar wunode mid Baldwine.” Chron. Petrib. “And Swegen
gewende þa east to Baldewines lande, and sæt þær ealne winter on
Brycge mid his fullan griðe.”

Footnote 324:

Chron. Wig. 1050. “Swein eorl bæd Beorn eorl mid facne,” “ær he Beorn
beswice.” Chron. Ab. 1049. “ær he Beorn amyrðrode.”

Footnote 325:

See vol. i. p. 588.

Footnote 326:

I think that by comparing the Abingdon Chronicle under 1050 with the
Peterborough Chronicle under 1047, it will appear that Swegen was
reinstated in this Gemót of Midlent 1050, one which I shall have to
mention again.

Footnote 327:

Flor. Wig. “Swanus ... ibi mansit, quoad Wigornensis episcopus
Aldredus illum reduceret, et cum Rege pacificaret.” This seems to
imply that Ealdred brought him over in person.

Footnote 328:

The old diocese of Worcester took in the shires of Worcester and
Gloucester and part of Warwick. Of these Gloucestershire was in
Swegen’s Earldom, the rest in Leofric’s.

Footnote 329:

The reconciliation of Swegen with Eadward is mentioned by Thomas
Stubbs (see above, p. 87) as an instance of the peacemaking powers of
Ealdred, along with that of Gruffydd.

Footnote 330:

It is clear that the details of the murder could come only from Swegen
himself, as his accomplices were killed by the Hastings men. Ealdred
would be the obvious person for Swegen to confess them to. I do not
suspect the Bishop of betraying the secrets of the confessional. A
public crime like that of Swegen was doubtless followed by a public
confession.

Footnote 331:

See above, pp. 90, 100.

Footnote 332:

Four, according to the Worcester Chronicle, two, according to
Florence. The Abingdon Chronicle does not mention this last incident,
and that of Peterborough passes by the whole story of Osgod.

Footnote 333:

Chron. Wig. “þa man ofsloh begeondan sæ.” Flor. Wig. “Quæ in
transmarinis partibus captæ sunt, occisis omnibus qui in illis erant.”

Footnote 334:

Chron. Wig. “On Wylisce Axa.” Flor. Wig. “Ostium intrantes Sabrinæ, in
loco qui dicitur _Wylesc Eaxan_ appulerunt.” The “Welsh Axe” is of
course the Usk. The rivers of the same name in Somersetshire and
Devonshire had ceased to be looked on as Welsh.

Footnote 335:

On the details of this perplexing campaign, see Appendix I.

Footnote 336:

Ralph’s signatures seem to begin in 1050. See Cod. Dipl. iv. 123, 125.
That in 121 is more doubtful. That in 113 Mr. Kemble marks as
doubtful, but refers it to 1044–1047. But it must be spurious. It
makes Eadsige Archbishop and Ælfgar Earl at the same time, as also
Tostig, who was not an Earl till long after. See Appendix G.

Footnote 337:

Chron. Wig. 1050. “And hi comon unwær on heom, on ealne ærne morgen,
and fela godra manna þær ofslagon; and þa oþre ætburston forð mid þam
biscope.”

Footnote 338:

“Þæt micele mynster æt Rémys,” says the Worcester Chronicle, which
might seem to mean the Metropolitan church; but Florence makes it
plain that the Abbey is meant; “Rogatu eximiæ religionis Abbatis
Herimari.... sancti Remigii Francorum apostoli monasterium, Remis
constitutum, maximo cum honore dedicavit.” Cf. Will. Gem. vii. 15.

Footnote 339:

Ord. Vit. 575 A.

Footnote 340:

The presence of the Emperor is asserted by the Worcester Chronicle;
“Þær wæs se Papa Leo and se Casere.” Florence does not speak of the
Emperor, but says that Leo took with him “præfectum et digniores
quosdam Romuleæ urbis.”

Footnote 341:

Chron. Petrib. 1046. “Þær wæs on Leo se Papa and se arcebiscop of
Burgundia and se arcebiscop of Bysincun and se arcebiscop of Treviris,
and se arcebiscop of Remis, and manig mann þærto ge hadode ge læwede.”

Footnote 342:

Chron. Petrib. 1046. “Eadward cyng sende þider Dudoce [the Abbots only
and not Dudoc are mentioned by the Worcester Chronicle, 1050] ... þæt
hi sceolden þam cynge cyðan hwæt þær to Christendome gecoren wære.”

Footnote 343:

Lambert, 1050 (see above, p. 99). Herm. Contr. 1050.

Footnote 344:

See above, p. 68.

Footnote 345:

Chron. Ab. 1049. “Forðferde Eadnoð se goda biscop on Oxnafordscire.”
The same words seem to have dropped out of the Worcester Chronicle.

Footnote 346:

Chron. Ab. 1049. “Eadwerd cing geaf Ulfe his preoste þæt biscoprice,
and hit yfele beteah.” Chron. Wig. 1050. “Ac he wæs syððan of adryfon,
forþan þe he ne gefremede naht biscoplices þæron, swa þæt us sceamað
hit nu mare to tellanne.” Flor. Wig. “Regis capellanus Ulfus genere
Nortmannus.”

Footnote 347:

See vol. i. p. 368.

Footnote 348:

See vol. i. p. 570.

Footnote 349:

Chron. Petrib. 1047. “Her on þisum geare wæs mycel gemót on Lundene to
midfestene, and man sette ut ix. litsmanna scipa, and fif belifan wið
æftan.” The Abingdon Chronicle, 1049, to much the same account as that
just quoted, adds the words, “and se cyng heom behet xii. monað gyld.”

Footnote 350:

Chron. Ab. 1050 (the chronology of this Chronicle is utterly
confused); “and man _geinlagode_ Swegen Eorl.”

Footnote 351:

See above, p. 108.

Footnote 352:

Chron. Ab. 1049. “On þæs cinges ærende.”

Footnote 353:

See the charter in Cod. Dipl. iv. 173, and the accounts in Æthelred of
Rievaux, 379. Estorie de S. Ædward, 65 et seqq.

Footnote 354:

Besides the many exalted persons who followed the example of Cnut,
some of whose pilgrimages are of historical importance, the prevalence
of the fashion is shown by its incidental mention in more than one
charter. Thus in Cod. Dipl. iv. 140 we find the mention of the Roman
pilgrimage of a Lincolnshire Thegn whose name of Anskill or Anscytel
witnesses to his Danish origin. (The charter may be quoted for such a
point as this, though there is clearly something wrong in the
signature of “Wulfwinus _Lincolniensis_ episcopus.”) And at p. 141 we
find “Leofgyva femina Lundonica” (a holder of property in
Lincolnshire) dying on her way to Jerusalem.

Footnote 355:

Chron. Petrib. 1047. “On þysum ilcan geare wæs se myccla sinoð on
Rome”—like our own “mycel gemót” just before.

Footnote 356:

Ib. “Hi comon þyder on Easter æfen.”

Footnote 357:

Vita Lanfr. c. 10. ap. Giles, i. 288. Will. Malms. iii. 284. Sig.
Gemb. 1051. See Milman, Latin Christianity, iii. 24.

Footnote 358:

Æthel. Riev. ap. X Scriptt. 381. If the letter there given be genuine,
the dispensation was granted by the authority of the synod as well as
of the Pope. Eadward was either to build a new or restore an old
monastery of Saint Peter; “aut novum construas aut vetustum augeas et
emendes.” Cf. the French Life, 1601 et seqq., where the Bishops are
both quartered on wrong sees, Ealdred prematurely at York, Hermann at
Winchester. The story does not occur in the contemporary Life, p. 417.

Footnote 359:

See the first letter in Dr. Giles’ collection, p. 17.

Footnote 360:

Our ancient tongue appears to advantage in the pithy narrative of this
affair given in the Peterborough Chronicle (1047); “And eft se Papa
hæfde sinoð on Uercel, and Ulf biscop com þærto; and forneah man
sceolde tobrecan his stef, gif he ne sealde þe mare gersuman; forðan
he ne cuðe don his gerihte swa wel swa he sceolde.” Florence passes by
the story; his Latin would be feeble after such vigorous English.

Footnote 361:

See above, p. 54.

Footnote 362:

Chron. Petrib. 1047. Flor. Wig. 1050.

Footnote 363:

Vita Eadw. 400. Ælfric was “secundum canonica instituta electus,” by a
“petitio et electio ecclesiastici conventûs.”

Footnote 364:

Ibid. 399. “Ex supradicti ducis Godwini stirpe.”

Footnote 365:

Ib. 399–400. “Quem tam totius ecclesiæ universales filii quam ipsius
monasterii monachi in archipræsulem sibi exposcunt dari, huncque et
affectu communi et petitione eligunt præesse regulari. Mittunt etiam
ad supradictum Godwinum, qui regio favore in eâ dominabatur parte
regni, commonent eum generis sui, precantur ut ex affectu
propinquitatis Regem adeat, et hunc, utpote in eâdem ecclesiâ nutritum
et secundum canonica instituta electum, sibi pontificem annuat.
Promittit fideliter pro viribus suis Dux inclitus, Regemque adiens
innotescit petitionem et electionem ecclesiastici conventûs.”

Footnote 366:

Chron. Ab. 1050. “þa hæfde Eadward cing witenagemot on Lunden to
Midlencten, and sette Hrodberd to arcebiscop to Cantwarebyrig, and
Sperhafoc abbud to Lunden, and geaf Roðulfe biscop his mæge þæt
abbudrice on Abbandune.”

Footnote 367:

See the Abingdon History, i. 463. He was a monk of Saint Eadmund’s,
and was charged with alienating some of the lordships of the house to
Stigand. The account of his promotion to London I do not fully
understand; “Spearhavoc autem a Rege civitati Lundonensi [civitatis
Lundonensis?] eodem prædictæ pactionis anno, in episcopatum promotus,
dum auri gemmarumque electarum pro coronâ _imperiali_ cudendâ, Regis
ejusdem assignatione receptam haberet copiam.” Was Saint Eadward’s
favour purchased by the materials of an earthly crown?

Footnote 368:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “Mid þæs cinges gewrite and insegle.” See above,
p. 67.

Footnote 369:

Rudolf’s kindred to the King is asserted more positively in the local
Chronicle just quoted than in the local History (463); “Inde Rodulfum
quemdam longævum abbatis loco ponendum Rex transmisit, qui episcopatum
apud Norweiam gentem diu moderans, et tandem ab hujusmodi fasce
privatum se agere malens, ad Regem ipsum suum, ut ferebatur, cognatum
venit; a quo et susceptus est.”

Footnote 370:

Rudolf, in any of its forms, is not an usual English name, but it
might occur, like the rare names of Carl and Lothar (Hloðhære). See
vol. i. p. 334.

Footnote 371:

Adam Brem. iii. 16. “Rex Haraldus crudelitate suâ omnes tyrannorum
excessit furores. Multæ ecclesiæ per illum virum dirutæ, multi
Christiani ab illo per supplicia sunt necati.... Itaque multis
imperans nationibus, propter avaritiam et crudelitatem suam omnibus
erat invisus.” He goes on to give a full account of Harold’s dealings
with the Archbishop of Trondhjem.

Footnote 372:

Hist. Mon. Ab. 463. “Ut vero tam Dei quam sui respectu eum monachi
reciperent honorificèque tractarent, utpote summâ canitie jam maturum,
eo discedente, licere eis dedit quem de suis vellent, potiùs
successorem eligere. Paretur Regi. Reverentiæ subjectio debitæ a
fratribus viro competenter impenditur. At ipsos regia nequaquam
fefellit in posterum promissio.” Rudolf survived only two years.

Footnote 373:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “Þæs sylfan Lentenes he for to Rome æfter his
pallium.... Ða com se arcebiscop fram Rome ane dæge ǽr Sc̃s Petrus
mæsse æfene, and gesæt his arcebiscopstol at Xp̃es cyrcean on Sc̃s
Petrus mæssedæg, _and sona þæs to þam cyng gewænde_.”

Footnote 374:

The Peterborough Chronicle (1048) is here again very graphic; “Ða com
Sparhafoc abbod to him mid þæs cynges gewrite and insegle (see above,
p. 120); to þan þet he hine hadian sceolde to biscop into Lundene. Þa
wiðcweð se arcebiscop, and cwæð þet se papa hit him forboden hæfde.”

Footnote 375:

Chron. Petrib. The pithy narrative of this writer is cut much shorter
in the Worcester Chronicler (1051), followed by Florence;
“Spearhafoc ... feng to þan biscoprice on Lundene, and hit wæs eft of
him genumen ær he gehadod wære.” Florence turns this into, “Antequam
esset consecratus, a Rege Eadwardo est ejectus.” Now the Chronicles do
not at all imply that the refusal of Robert was at all the King’s
personal act. Florence is perhaps confounding this business with the
final expulsion of Spearhafoc later in the year, which he however
places under another year.

Footnote 376:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “Ða gewende se abbod to Lundene, and sæt on þam
biscoprice, þe _se cyng him ær geunnan hæfde be his fulre leafe_.”
This is one of those little touches which show the sympathies of the
writer.

Footnote 377:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “Ealne þone sumor and þone hærfest.”

Footnote 378:

Chron. Ab. 1050. “And þæs ylcan geare he settle ealle þa litsmen of
male.”

Footnote 379:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “On þan ylcan geare aléde Eadward cyng þæt heregyld
þæt Æþelred cyng ær astealde; þæt was on þam nigon and þrittigoðan
geare þæs þe he hit ongunnon hæfde.” Flor. Wig. 1051. “Rex Eadwardus
absolvit Anglos a gravi vectigali tricesimo octavo anno ex quo pater
suus Rex Ægelredus primitus id Danicis solidariis solvi mandârat.” See
vol. i. p. 391. The _Heregyld_ is a tax for the maintenance of the
_here_ or standing army as distinguished from the _fyrd_ or militia.

Footnote 380:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “Þæt gyld gedrehte ealle Engla þeode on swa langum
fyrste swa hit bufan her awriten is; ðæt was æfre ætforan oðrum gyldum
þe man myslice geald, and men mid menigfealdlice drehte.”

Footnote 381:

See Bromton, 942. Estoire de S. Ædward, 919 et seqq. Leofric is also
Eadward’s partner in another vision. Æthel. Riev. X Scriptt. 389.
Bromton, 949.

Footnote 382:

See Appendix K.

Footnote 383:

See vol. i. p. 366.

Footnote 384:

There is a grant of lands to Godwine (uni meo fideli Duci nuncupato
nomine Godwino) as late as 1050. Cod. Dipl. iv. 123. The description
of the grantee as “Dux” of course identifies him with the Earl.

Footnote 385:

The only absolutely certain instances that I can find at this time are
the signatures of Earl Ralph in 1050. See above, p. 111. His name is
added to doubtful charters at pp. 113, 121, and another doubtful one
is signed by Robert the son of Wimarc, of whom more anon. The
signatures of ecclesiastics, Rægnbold the Chancellor and others, are
more common.

Footnote 386:

Ralph’s wife bore the name of Gytha, and their son was named Harold.
Robert the son of Wimarc had also a son named Swegen, afterwards
famous in Domesday. See Ellis, i. 433, 489. ii. 117. These names
certainly point to a certain identification with England, and suggest
the idea that the sons of Ralph and Robert were godsons of the two
sons of Godwine.

Footnote 387:

See vol. i. p. 570.

Footnote 388:

See vol. i. p. 281.

Footnote 389:

“Nescia gens belli solamina spernit equorum,” says Guy of Amiens of
the English (Giles, p. 38), but his following lines are, however
unwittingly, a noble panegyric.

Footnote 390:

Thuc. iv. 40. ἀπεκρίνατο αὐτῷ πολλοῦ ἂν ἄξιον εἶναι τὸν ἄτρακτον
(λέγων τὸν ὀϊστὸν), εἰ τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς διεγίγνωσκε.

Footnote 391:

Vita Eadw. 400. “Totius ecclesiæ filiis hanc injuriam pro nisu suo
reclamantibus.”

Footnote 392:

Vita Eadw. 401. See vol. i. pp. 543, 573.

Footnote 393:

Vita Eadw. 400. See Appendix E.

Footnote 394:

See vol. i. p. 584.

Footnote 395:

Ord. Vit. 487 D, 655 C.

Footnote 396:

A daughter of Æthelred and Emma must have been thirty-five years old
at this time, and she may have been forty-seven. Considering the
position held by her son, Godgifu is likely to have been approaching
the more advanced age of the two.

Footnote 397:

Will. Malms. ii. 199. “Collocutus cum eo, et re impetratâ quam
petierat.” This perhaps comes from Chron. Petrib. 1048; “And spæc wið
hine þæt þæt he þa wolde.”

Footnote 398:

Chronn. Wig. 1052, Petrib. 1048. See vol. i. p. 588.

Footnote 399:

I reserve an examination of the authorities for this narrative for the
Appendix. See Note L. I here refer to the Chronicles only for details.

Footnote 400:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “Ða he wæs sume mila oððe mare beheonan Dofran,
þa dyde he on his byrnan, and his geferan ealle, and foran to Dofran.”

Footnote 401:

Thirty-one, reckoning from Godwine’s appointment as Earl of the
West-Saxons in 1020. See vol. i. p. 469. If Godwine really became Earl
of Kent in 1017 or 1018 (see vol. i. p. 451) two or three years more
must be added.

Footnote 402:

Chron. Petrib. “Þa com an his manna, and wolde wician æt anes bundan
huse, his unðances, and gewundode þone husbundon, and se husbunda
ofsloh þone oðerne.” So Will. Malms. ii. 199; “Unus antecursorum ejus
ferociùs cum cive agens, et vulnere magis quam prece hospitium
exigens, illum in sui excidium invitavit.” I do not know why Mr. Hardy
says that William implies that all this happened at Canterbury. Surely
“per Doroberniam” means Dover.

Footnote 403:

Chron. Petrib. “Ða wearð Eustatius uppon his horse, and his gefeoran
uppon heora, and ferdon to þam husbundon, and ofslogon hine binnan his
agenan heorðæ.” It shows how impossible it seemed to a French noble of
that age to strike a blow except on horseback, that Eustace and his
companions mounted their horses at such a moment as this, when one
would have thought that horses were distinctly in the way.

Footnote 404:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “Forþan Eustatius hæfde gecydd þam cynge þet hit
sceolde beon mare gylt þære burhwaru þonne his. Ac hit næs na swa.” So
Will. Malms. “Inde ad curiam pedem referens, nactusque secretum, suæ
partis patronus assistens, iram Regis in Anglos exacuit.”

Footnote 405:

Herod, vii. 104. ἔπεστι γάρ σφι δεσπότης νόμος, τὸν ὑποδειμαίνουσι
πολλῷ ἔτι μᾶλλον ἢ οἱ σοὶ σέ· ποιεῦσι γῶν τὰ ἂν ἐκεῖνος ἀνώγῃ.

Footnote 406:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “And wearð se cyng swyþe gram wið þa burhware.”

Footnote 407:

See above, p. 26.

Footnote 408:

“Baldwines mage” says the Worcester Chronicler; Florence (1051) alters
this into “filia.” The Biographer of Eadward, p. 404, says “soror,”
making her Eadward’s niece, which is hard to understand. It is from
this passage that we learn that all this happened just at the very
time of Tostig’s marriage; “Acciderant hæc in ipsis nuptiis filii sui
ducis Tostini.” The title of “Dux” is premature.

Footnote 409:

Chron. Petrib. “And ofsænde se cyng Godwine eorl, and bæd hine faran
into Cent mid unfriða to Dofran.” The full force of the word “unfriða”
may be understood by its being so constantly applied to the Danish
armies and fleets. See vol. i. p. 327. So William of Malmesbury (ii.
199); “Quamvis Rex jussisset illum continuò cum exercitu in Cantiam
proficisci, in Dorobernenses graviter ulturum.”

Footnote 410:

See vol. i. p. 580.

Footnote 411:

Chron. Petrib. “And se eorl nolde na geðwærian þære infare; forþan him
wæs lað to amyrrene his agene folgað.” One might be tempted to believe
that this last word implied some special connexion between Godwine and
Dover, were it not that we directly after read, “on Swegenes eorles
folgoðe,” where it can hardly mean more than that the place was within
his jurisdiction as Earl. The very first entry in Domesday represents
Godwine as receiving a third of the royal revenues in Dover, but this
was of course simply his regular revenue as Earl. The relations of the
townsmen to the Crown are rather minutely described. They held their
privileges by providing twenty ships yearly for fifteen days; each had
a crew of twenty-one men. There is not a word to show that the demands
of Eustace and his followers were other than utterly illegal.

Footnote 412:

I get my speech from William of Malmesbury (ii. 119), whose account is
very clear and full, and thoroughly favourable to Godwine. “Intellexit
vir acrioris ingenii, unius tantùm partis auditis allegationibus, non
debere proferri sententiam. Itaque ... restitit, et quòd omnes
alienigenas apud Regis gratiam invalescere invideret, et quòd
compatriotis amicitiam præstare vellet. Præterea videbatur ejus
responsio in rectitudinem propensior, ut magnates illius castelli
blandè in curiâ Regis de seditione convenirentur; si se possent
explacitare, illæsi abirent; si nequirent, pecuniâ vel corporum suorum
dispendio, Regi cujus pacem infregerant, et Comiti quem læserant,
satisfacerent: iniquum videri ut quos tutari debeas, eos ipse
potissimum inauditos adjudices.” Here are the words which either
tradition put into the mouth of Godwine, or else which a hostile
historian deliberately conceived as most in keeping with his
character. Who would recognize in this assertor of the purest
principles of right the object of the savage invectives of William of
Poitiers?

Footnote 413:

Will. Malms. ii. 199. “Ita tunc discessum, Godwino parvi pendente
Regis furorem quasi momentaneum.” On these occasional fits of wrath on
the part of Eadward, see above, p. 23.

Footnote 414:

The revival of the story about Ælfred and the special part played by
Archbishop Robert comes from the Biographer of Eadward. I shall
discuss this point in Appendix L.

Footnote 415:

The summoning of the Witan is distinctly set forth in the Peterborough
Chronicle; “Ða sende se cyng æftre eallon his witan, and bead heom
cuman to Gleaweceastre neh þære æfter Sc̃a Maria mæssan.” The charge
against Godwine comes from the Life of Eadward, p. 401; “Ergò
perturbato Rege de talibus plus justo, convenerunt de totâ Britanniâ
[did any Scottish or Welsh princes appear?] quique potentes et duces
Glaucestræ regio palatio, ubique in eo querimoniam talium habente,
perlata est in insontem Ducem tanti criminis accusatio.”

Footnote 416:

Richard, the son of Scrob or Scrupe, and son-in-law of Robert the
Deacon (Flor. Wig. 1052), appears in Domesday, 186 _b_. His son
Osbern, of whom we shall hear again, appears repeatedly in Domesday as
a great landowner in Herefordshire and elsewhere. See 176 _b_, 180,
186 _b_, 260.

Footnote 417:

See the entries in the Chronicles, Wig. 1066, Petrib. 1087, 1137. In
all these passages the building of castles is reckoned among the chief
grievances of the reign of the Conqueror and of the anarchy of the
time of Stephen. Compare Giraldus’ description of Ireland, after the
invasions in the time of Henry the Second. (Exp. Hib. ii. 34. vol. v.
p. 865 Dimock); “Insula Hibernica, de mari usque ad mare, ex toto
subacta et _incastellata_.” Cf. ii. 38, 39.

Footnote 418:

On the different developements of fortification in England, see vol.
i. pp. 64, 338. The Norman castle makes the _fifth_ stage.

Footnote 419:

See vol. i. pp. 99–101.

Footnote 420:

I shall have to speak of this destruction of castles in Normandy when
I come to deal with the reign of William in that country. This is the
real cause why Normandy contains so few castles earlier than the
twelfth century. I can see no reason whatever to believe that the
castles of the eleventh century, either in Normandy or in England,
were commonly of wood. The temporary wooden towers which were often
used in the military art of the time, and which sometimes are called
castles, are also sometimes pointedly distinguished from the permanent
stone fortresses. Thus in the Angevin Chronicle in Labbé, i. 286, 287,
we read how in 1025 Count Odo of Chartres (see vol. i. p. 509, and in
the next chapter) besieged the castle which Fulk of Anjou had built as
an ἐπιτειχισμός against Tours (contra civitatem Turonicam firmaverat),
and “turrem _ligneam_ miræ altitudinis super domgionem ipsius castri
erexit.” The donjon itself was surely of stone. We shall find other
evidence of the same kind in the next Chapter. Stone was also fast
coming into use for domestic as well as for military and
ecclesiastical buildings. Avesgaud, Bishop of Le Mans, rebuilt in
stone both the episcopal palace and also a hospital; before him they
had been of wood—“quæ antea ligneæ fuerat, petrinas ... constituit.”
Gest. Ep. Cenom. ap. Mabillon, Vetera Analecta, iii. 300*.

Footnote 421:

The word “castel” evidently appears at this stage to denote some new
thing, quite distinct from the familiar “burh” of earlier times. So
Orderic (511 C), in speaking of the rarity of castles in England
before the Norman Conquest, speaks of the name as something specially
French; “Munitiones (_quas castella Galli nuncupant_) Anglicis
provinciis paucissimæ fuerant.” He adds, “ob hoc Angli, licet
bellicosi fuerint et audaces, ad resistendum tamen inimicis
exstiterant debiliores.”

Footnote 422:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “þa hæfdon þa _Welisce menn_ gewroht ænne castel
on Herefordscire on Swegenes eorles folgoðe, and wrohton ælc þæra
harme and bismere þæs cynges mannan þær abutan þe hi mihton.” These
Welshmen are undoubtedly Frenchmen (see Earle, p. 345. Lingard, i.
337. Lappenberg, 508); Britons did not build castles, nor were they on
such terms of friendly intercourse with King Eadward. William of
Malmesbury’s misconception of the whole passage (ii. 199) is amusing;
“ut Walenses compescerent qui, tyrannidem in Regem meditantes, oppidum
in pago Herefordensi obfirmaverant, ubi tunc Swanus, unus ex filiis
Godwini, militiæ prætendebat excubias.” This last is simply a
misunderstanding of the words “on Swegenes eorles folgoðe,” which
seems merely to mean “within Swegen’s government.”

Footnote 423:

Beverstone appears in Domesday (163) only as an appendage to the royal
lordship of Berkeley, and is not mentioned as a possession of Godwine.
Otherwise one would have expected to find one of the Earl’s many
houses chosen as the place of meeting. But perhaps the suggestion in
the text may explain matters.

On the other hand the mysterious connexion between Godwine and
Berkeley (see Appendix E) must not be forgotten.

Footnote 424:

See above, p. 104.

Footnote 425:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “Ða com Godwine eorl and Swegen eorl and Harold
eorl togædere æt Byferesstane and manig mann mid heom, to ðon þæt hi
woldon faran to heora cyne-hlaforde, and to þam witan eallon þe mid
him gegaderode wæron, þæt hi þæs cynges ræd hæfdon, and his fultum,
and ealra witena, hu hi mihton þæs cynges bismer awrecan and ealles
þeodscipes.”

Footnote 426:

Vita Eadw. 401. “Quod ubi per quosdam fideles comperit [Godwinus],
missis legatis, pacem Regis petivit, legem purgandi se de objecto
crimine frustrà prætulit.”

Footnote 427:

Chron. Petrib. “Ða wæron þa Wælisce menn ætforan mid þam cynge, and
forwregdon þa eorlas þæt hi ne moston cuman on his eagon gesihðe,
forðan hi sædon þæt hi woldon cuman þider for þes cynges swicdome.”

Footnote 428:

Vita Eadw. p. 401. “Nam adeo super hujus sceleris fide animum Rex
induxerat ut nec verbum aliquod oblatæ purgationis audire posset.”

Footnote 429:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “Ealle gearwe to wige ongean þone cyng, buton man
ageafe Eustatsius and his men heom to handsceofe, and eac þa
Frencyscan þe _on þan castelle_ wæron.” “The castle” undoubtedly means
Richard’s Castle, as it must mean in the entry of the next year in the
same Chronicle. The Frenchmen in the castle are distinguished from
Eustace and his men. So Lappenberg, 508. Florence (1051) clearly
misunderstood the passage when he translated it “insuper et Nortmannos
et Bononienses qui castellum in Doruverniæ clivo tenuerant.” It shows
the impression which Richard’s Castle had made on men’s mind that it
was known generally as “the castle,” and this reference by the
Worcester Chronicler to a part of the story which he has not himself
given at length is a strong confirmation of the truth of the
Peterborough narrative.

Footnote 430:

Rog. Wend. iii. 294. “Juraverunt super majus altare, quod, si Rex
leges et libertates jam dictas concedere diffugeret, ipsi ei guerram
tamdiu moverent et ab ejus fidelitate se subtraherent.”

Footnote 431:

Flor. Wig. 1051. “Ob id autem ad tempus Rex perterritus, et in angore
magno constitutus, quid ageret ignorabat penitus. Sed ubi exercitum
Comitum Leofrici, Siwardi, et Radulfi adventare comperit, se
nullatenus Eustatium aliosque requisitos traditurum constanter
respondit.”

Footnote 432:

See vol. i. p. 534 et seqq.

Footnote 433:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “Wurdan þa ealle swa anræde mid þam cynge, þæt hy
woldon Godwines fyrde gesecan, gif se cyng þæt wolde.”

Footnote 434:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “And wæs þam eorle Godwine and his sunan gecydd,
þæt se cyng and þa menn þe mid him wæron woldon rædon on hi. And hi
trymedon gefæstlice ongean, þæh him lað wære þæt hi ongean heora
_cyne-hlaford_ standan sceoldon.”

Footnote 435:

See the splendid panegyric of William of Malmesbury on this region in
the Gesta Pontificum (Scriptt. p. Bedam, 161). He especially speaks of
the abundance of the vineyards and the excellence of the wine, which
was not sour, as seemingly other English wine was, but as good as that
of France. No wine is now grown in the vale of Severn, but there is
excellent cider and perry.

On the prospect here spoken of see Sydney Smith’s Sketches of Moral
Philosophy, p. 218.

Footnote 436:

See above, p. 110.

Footnote 437:

For descriptions of these two remarkable monuments of primæval times,
by Dr. Thurnam and Professor C. C. Babington, see the Archæological
Journal, vol. xi. (1854), pp. 315, 328.

Footnote 438:

Childe Harold, ii. 84;

“Spirit of Freedom, when on Phyle’s brow
Thou sat’st with Thrasybulus and his train,” &c.

Footnote 439:

See vol. i. p. 539.

Footnote 440:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “Þæt mycel unræd wære þæt hy togedere comon [see
vol. i. p. 435], forþam þær wæs mæst þæt rotoste þæt was on Ænglalande
on þam twam gefylcum; and leton þæt hi urum feondum rymdon to lande,
and betwyx us sylfum to mycclum forwyrde.”

Footnote 441:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “Ða gerædden þa witan on ægðer halfe, þæt man ða
ælces yfeles geswác, and geaf se cyng godes grið and his fulne
freondscipe on ægðre healfe.”

Footnote 442:

See Appendix L.

Footnote 443:

Ib.

Footnote 444:

So I infer from the Peterborough Chronicle, 1048; “Ða cwæð man Swegen
eorl útlah, and stefnode man Godwine eorle and Harolde eorle to þon
gemote.” The Worcester Chronicle puts it a little later, along with
the demand for the hostages.

Footnote 445:

See above, p. 108.

Footnote 446:

Vita Eadw. 402. “Elaborante Stigando ... qui etiam tunc medius ibat,
procrastinata est judicii dies, dum Rex suorum uteretur consiliou.”

Footnote 447:

Vita Eadw. 402.

Footnote 448:

Such on the whole I take to be the meaning of the very difficult
expressions of the two Chroniclers, which I have discussed at length
in Appendix L.

Footnote 449:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “And his wered wanode æfre þe leng þe swiðor.”

Footnote 450:

Vita Eadw. 402. “Eo [Rodberto] agente tandem a Rege prolata est in
Ducem hæc indissolubilis caussæ quæ agebatur diffinitio; Illum
scilicet à Rege tunc primùm posse sperare pacem, ubi ei reddidit vivum
suum fratrem cum suis omnibus et quæ eis viventibus vel interfectis
ablata sunt cum integritate eorum.”

Footnote 451:

Chron. Petrib. “Ða geornde se eorl eft griðes and gisla, þæt he moste
hine betellan æt ælc þæra þinga þe him man onlede.”

Footnote 452:

William of Malmesbury (ii. 199), from whom I get the materials of
Godwine’s answer, makes them call the Assembly “conventiculum
factiosorum.”

Footnote 453:

Will. Malms. u. s. “Si veniant inermes, vitæ timeri dispendium; si
paucos stipatores habeant, gloriæ fore opprobrium.”

Footnote 454:

Kemble, ii. 231. “They very properly declined, under such
circumstances, to appear.”

Footnote 455:

Vita Eadw. p. 402. “Flente nimium episcopo Stigando, qui hujus
legationis mœrens bajulus erat, _reppulit à se mensam quæ adstabat_,
equis ascensis, viam ad Bosanham maritimam celeriùs tetendit.” This
little touch, coming from a contemporary and friendly writer,
increases our confidence in the story of the Biographer, difficult, as
it is, at first sight to reconcile with the Chronicles.

Footnote 456:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “For ða on niht awæg; and se cyng hæfde þæs on
morgen witenagemot.”

Footnote 457:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “Se cyng ... cwæd hine utlage, and _eall here_.” See
above, p. 104.

Footnote 458:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “And sceawede him mann v. nihta grið út of lande
to farenne.” See vol. i. p. 561.

Footnote 459:

To “Bosenham,” according to the Peterborough Chronicler and the
Biographer; to “Thornege,” according to the Worcester Chronicler and
Florence. As it is of course the South-Saxon Thorney near Chichester
(see Lappenberg, 509) which is meant, the two accounts no doubt merely
refer to different stages of the same journey.

Footnote 460:

Vita Eadw. 404. “Tum pro antiquæ fœderationis jure, tum pro multorum
ipsius Ducis beneficiorum vicissitudine.” One would like to know more
of this connexion between Godwine and Baldwin. It is odd, when we
think of the war of 1049, that the Biographer (p. 403) calls Baldwin
“antiquum Anglicæ gentis amicum.”

Footnote 461:

See above, p. 134.

Footnote 462:

Chron. Wig. “Mid swa miclum gærsuman swa hi mihton þær on mæst
gelogian to ælcum mannum.” Cf. Florence and the Biographer, 402. “Cum
conjuge et liberis et omnibus quæ illius erant ad manum.”

Footnote 463:

“Cum magno honore.” Vita Eadw. 404.

Footnote 464:

Chron. Petrib. “And gesohton Baldewines grið, and wunodon þær ealne
þone winter.” Vita Eadw. 404. “Hiemati sunt à Comite Baldwino in
Flandriam.”

Footnote 465:

The younger members of the family, Wulfnoth, Ælfgifu, Gunhild, and
Hakon the son of Swegen, are not mentioned. They doubtless accompanied
Godwine and are included among the “liberi” of the Biographer.

Footnote 466:

See above, p. 100.

Footnote 467:

“Harold eorl and Leofwine,” says the Worcester Chronicle; the
Biographer has “Haroldus et Leof_ricus_.” See Appendix F. The
Peterborough Chronicle mentions Harold only.

Footnote 468:

Vita Eadw. 404. “Transfretaverant in Hiberniam, ut, inde adductâ
militari copiâ, patris ulciscerentur injuriam.”

Footnote 469:

See vol. i. p. 365. Compare also the passage about Bristol with which
William of Malmesbury winds up his panegyric on Gloucestershire (Gest.
Pont, in Scriptt. p. Bed. 161). “In eâdem valle est vicus celeberrimus
Bristow nomine, in quo est navium portus ab Hiberniâ et Noregiâ et
cæteris transmarinis terris venientium receptaculum, ne scilicet
genitalibus divitiis tam fortunata regio peregrinarum opum fraudaretur
commercio.”

Footnote 470:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “Harold eorl and Leofwine foran to Brycgstowe, on
þæt scip þe Swegen eorl hæfde him silfum ær gegearcod and gemetsod.”

Footnote 471:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “And se cining sende Ealdred biscop of Lundene mid
genge, and sceoldon hine ofridan ær he to scipe come. Ac hi ne mihton
oððe hi noldon.” Compare the unwillingness of the Earls under
Harthacnut to act against Worcester, vol. i. p. 581. According to the
Biographer (403), Godwine was also pursued, through the devices of
Archbishop Robert.

Footnote 472:

Chron. Wig. u. s.

Footnote 473:

Vita Eadw. 404. “Hiemati sunt à Rege Dermodo in Hiberniam.” These
words at once explain the whole matter, and give us the true
explanation of the otherwise difficult expression in the Peterborough
Chronicle, “Harold eorl gewende west to Yrlande, and wæs þær ealne
þone winter, _on þes cynges griðe_.” Sir Francis Palgrave (Hist. Ang.
Sax. 342) takes this King to be Eadward, and says, “Harold crossed to
Ireland, and he was so far favoured as to be allowed to remain in that
country under the king’s protection. This fact should be noticed,
because it seems to show that he was not considered as being out of
the king’s dominions; or, in other words, that the opposité coast of
Ireland was part of Eadward’s realm.” This is rather slight evidence,
even with the further support of a spurious charter (see vol. i. p.
66), to prove that Ireland, or its eastern coast, was part of the
English Empire. Lappenberg (510; Mr. Thorpe’s version, ii. 250, again
does not represent the original) saw that, odd as the expression is,
an Irish King must be meant, and now the Life of Eadward puts the
matter beyond doubt. The “grið” of Diarmid answers to the “grið” of
Baldwin.

Footnote 474:

Diarmid conquered the Fine-gall or Danish district in 1052, according
to the Four Masters (ii. 860) and Dr. Todd (Wars of Gaedhil and Gaill,
291); in 1050, according to the Chronica Scotorum, 280. The incidental
evidence of the Biographer shows the earlier date to be the right one.

Footnote 475:

Will. Malms. ii. 199. “Ne scilicet omnibus suis parentibus patriam
suspirantibus sola _sterteret_ in plumâ.” This odd phrase sounds like
a real sneer of some contemporary Frenchman.

Footnote 476:

Vita Eadw. 403. See above, p. 47. Florence says “repudiavit.”

Footnote 477:

The Worcester Chronicle, Florence, and the Biographer do not mention
the seizure of the Lady’s property. The Peterborough Chronicle says,
“þa forlet se cyng þa hlæfdian, seo wæs gehalgod him to cwene, and let
niman of hire eall þæt heo ahte on lande and on golde and on seolfre.”
So William of Malmesbury; “Omnis reginæ substantia ad unum nummum
emuncta.”

Footnote 478:

Both the Chronicles are quite colourless on this head; it is simply
“man gebrohte,” “betæhte.” So William of Malmesbury. But Florence says
“cum unâ pedissequâ ad Hwereweallam eam sine honore misit.” In the
Life of Eadward (403), on the other hand, we read, “Cum regio honore
et imperiali comitatu, mœrens tamen perducitur.” The narrative,
addressed to Eadgyth herself, is here the better authority.

Footnote 479:

Wherwell, according to all our authorities, except the Biographer. He
says Wilton. As he could hardly be mistaken on such a point, and as
the evidence for Wherwell seems conclusive, we must set down Wilton as
a clerical error.

Footnote 480:

The Worcester Chronicle, Florence, and the Biographer do not mention
the kindred of the Abbess with the King; it is assumed by the
Peterborough Chronicle and by William of Malmesbury.

Footnote 481:

On the daughters of Æthelred see vol. i. pp. 358, 363, 378, 458.

Footnote 482:

See vol. i. p. 341.

Footnote 483:

Vita Eadw. 397. See Appendix F.

Footnote 484:

Vita Eadw. 403. Twenty hexameters are devoted to the comparison.

Footnote 485:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “Þæt wolde ðyncan wundorlic ælcum men þe on
Englalande wæs, gif ænig man ær þam sæde þæt hit swa gewurþan sceolde.
Forðam þe he wæs ær to þam swyce up ahafen, swyðe he weolde þæs cynges
and ealles Englalandes, and his sunan wæron eorlas and þæs cynges
dyrlingas, and his dohtor þæm cynge bewedded and beawnod.”

Footnote 486:

See vol. i. pp. 448.

Footnote 487:

See Appendix G.

Footnote 488:

See Appendix G.

Footnote 489:

See vol. i. p. 338.

Footnote 490:

Chron. Wig. 1056. “Se wæs to munece gehadod ær his ende. god man and
clæne and swiðe æðele.” Cf. Chron. Ab. and Fl. Wig. in anno. Florence
seems to translate “clæne” by “virginitatis custos.” He built the
present church of Deerhurst (see vol. i. p. 387), as an offering for
the soul of his brother Ælfric. See Earle, p. 345.

Footnote 491:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. Will. Malms. ii. 199. “Comitatus ejus [Haroldi]
attributus Elgaro, Leofrici filio, viro industrio; quem ille
suscipiens tunc rexit nobiliter, reverso restituit libenter.”

Footnote 492:

The Biographer (401, 2) mentions his coming to Gloucester along with
his father and Siward.

Footnote 493:

See above, p. 122.

Footnote 494:

Chron. Wig. 1052. Petrib. 1048. Flor. Wig. 1051.

Footnote 495:

Flor. Wig. 1052.

Footnote 496:

Chron. Wig. 1052. Flor. Wig. 1051.

Footnote 497:

In this Chapter I have had of course mainly to depend on the Norman
writers as my authorities. The Latin writers are to be found in the
great collection of Duchèsne. The first place is of course due to
William of Poitiers. His _Gesta Guillelmi_ has every advantage which
can belong to the writings of a well-informed contemporary. But the
work is disfigured by his constant spirit of violent partizanship (see
above, p. 4). He must therefore be always followed with great caution,
and in all purely English matters he is utterly untrustworthy. The
beginning of his work is lost, so that we have no account from him of
his hero’s birth and childhood. William Calculus, a monk of Jumièges,
according to Orderic (Prol. ad Lib. iii. p. 458), abridged Dudo, and
continued the History of Normandy, through the reigns of Richard the
Good, Richard the Third, Robert, and of William himself down to the
Battle of Senlac (Ord. Vit. 618 D), presenting his work to William
himself. This portion of the existing work ends at lib. vii. c. 42. He
seems afterwards to have added the account of William’s death (vii.
44), in which William of Poitiers and Guy of Amiens are spoken of. An
eighth book, together with many interpolations in the earlier books,
were added by a later hand, apparently by Robert of Torigny, Abbot of
Saint Michael’s Mount, commonly called Robert de Monte (see Pertz, vi.
475). William of Jumièges begins to be a contemporary writer in
William’s reign; with perhaps smaller opportunities of information
than William of Poitiers, he is less violently prejudiced, and his
work is of great value. His narrative forms the groundwork of the
poetical history in the Roman de Rou. Its author, Robert Wace, Canon
of Bayeux in the time of Henry the Second, seems to have been a really
honest and painstaking inquirer, and I do not look on his work as
being any the less trustworthy on account of its poetical shape. But
of course, whenever he departs from contemporary authority, and merely
sets down floating traditions nearly a hundred years after the latest
events which he records, his statements need to be very carefully
weighed. I have used M. Pluquet’s edition (Rouen, 1827) and the
English Translation of part of the work by Mr. Edgar Taylor, whose
genealogical and topographical notes are of great value. The other
rhyming chronicler, Benoît de Sainte-More, is of a far more romantic
turn than Robert Wace, and is therefore of much smaller historical
authority. Still he also preserves many curious traditions. Orderic
Vital, whose work becomes afterwards of such preeminent importance, is
just now beginning to be of use, but as yet his main value is for
information about Norman families and Norman monasteries. But his
constant repetitions and utter lack of arrangement make him still more
difficult to read or consult than William of Malmesbury himself.

Footnote 498:

Chron. Petrib. 1087. “Gif hwa gewilnigeð to gewitane hu gedon mann he
wæs, oððe hwilcne wurðscipe he hæfde, oððe hu fela lande he wære
hlaford, þonne wille we be him awritan swa swa we hine ageaton, _þe
him on locodan and oðre hwile on his hirede wunedon_.”

Footnote 499:

See the article “Lucius Cornelius Sulla” in the National Review,
January, 1862.

Footnote 500:

Chron. Petrib. 1087. “He wæs milde þam godum mannum þe God lufedon,
and ofer eall gemett stearc þam mannum þe wiðcwædon his willan.” The
former clause is rather oddly altered in the version of Robert of
Gloucester (p. 374);

“To hem þat wolde his wylle do, debonere he was and mylde,
And to hem þat hym wyþ seyde strong tyrant and wylde.”

Footnote 501:

Chron. Petrib. 1087. “Betwyx oðrum þingum nis na to forgytane þæt gode
frið þe he macode on þisan lande, swa þæt án man þe himsylf aht wære
mihte faran ofer his rice mid his bosum full goldes ungederad.” This
last is of course the same traditional formula which is used to set
forth the good government of Eadwine, Ælfred, and others. The writer
carries out the panegyric on William’s strict police at some length.
All this is of course praise of exactly the same kind as that bestowed
on Godwine and Harold. See above, pp. 34, 40, and the passages there
referred to.

Footnote 502:

I conceive that this idea owes its prevalence mainly to the false
Ingulf; still we have to account for the notion presenting itself to
the mind of the forger.

Footnote 503:

See Palgrave, iii. 522.

Footnote 504:

On the surnames of William, see Appendix M.

Footnote 505:

Rod. Glab. iv. 6. “Fuit enim usui a primo adventu ipsius gentis in
Gallias, ut superiùs pernotavimus, ex hujusmodi concubinarum
commixtione illorum Principes exstitisse.” He goes on, if not to
justify, at least to palliate, the practice, by the examples of the
patriarch Jacob and the Emperor Constantius. British patriotism would
perhaps not have endured that the mother of Constantine should be
dragged down to the level of the mother of William.

Footnote 506:

See vol. i. p. 203.

Footnote 507:

See vol. i. p. 232.

Footnote 508:

For the sieges of Falaise in 1417 and 1450, see Monstrelet, i. 263 and
iii. 30 _b_ (ed. Paris 1595). Talbot was not actually present during
the defence against the French King.

Footnote 509:

More probably, I think, of the twelfth than of the eleventh. Not that
I at all think the building of such a castle to have been impossible
in the eleventh century, but because it seems likely that Falaise was
one of the castles which were destroyed and rebuilt in the wars of
William and his successors. This point is well put by M.
Ruprich-Robert, the architect employed by the powers which at present
bear rule over Falaise and all Normandy in the “restoration”—that is,
of course, the destruction—of this venerable keep. See his “Rapport,”
1864, p. 27.

Footnote 510:

Will. Brit. Philipp. lib. viii. Duchèsne, Hist. Franc. Scriptt. v.
183;

“Vicus erat scabrâ circumdatus undique rupe,
Ipsius asperitate loci Falesa vocatus,
Normannæ in medio regionis, cujus in altâ
Turres rupe sedent et mœnia, sic ut ad illam
Jactus nemo putet aliquos contingere posse.”

Footnote 511:

Stapleton, Roll of the Norman Exchequer, i. xcvi.; ii. cix.

Footnote 512:

See Appendix N. On the Birth of William.

Footnote 513:

Herod. iii. 2.

Footnote 514:

Malcolm’s History of Persia, i. 70.

Footnote 515:

Will. Malms. iii. 229. R. Wend. i. 469. Cf. Chron. Alberici, 1035 (ap.
Leibnitz, Accessiones, ii. 66), and Appendix N.

Footnote 516:

Benoît de Ste. More, 31216 et seqq. (vol. ii. p. 555), who becomes
rapturous in his description of her beauty. He makes Robert see her on
his return from hunting. Local tradition, endowing Robert with a
singular power of discerning beauty at a distance, makes him see her
from a window of the castle.

Footnote 517:

Benoît, 31276.

Footnote 518:

Roman de Rou, 7998. Bromton, 910. Benoît, 31441 et seqq.

Footnote 519:

See Appendix N.

Footnote 520:

Will. Gem. vii. 3. “Willelmus ex concubinâ Roberti Ducis, nomine
Herlevâ, _Fulberti cubicularii Ducis_ filiâ, natus.”

Footnote 521:

Ord. Vit. 656 D.

Footnote 522:

Will. Gem. vii. 3. See Appendix N.

Footnote 523:

See Appendix N.

Footnote 524:

Roman de Rou, 8021. Will. Malms. iii. 229.

Footnote 525:

Ib. 8037. Will. Malms. iii. 229.

Footnote 526:

See Appendix N.

Footnote 527:

See vol. i. p. 479.

Footnote 528:

Will. Gem. viii. 36.

Footnote 529:

Ord. Vit. 566 B. “Conjugem nomine Herlevam _ut Comes_ habuit, ex quâ
tres filios Ricardum, Radulfum, et Guillelmum genuit, quibus
Ebroicensem comitatum et alios honores amplissimos secundum jus sæculi
distribuit.”

Footnote 530:

Ord. Vit. 566 C. This church was finished by Maurilius in 1063. Ib.
568 B. See Pommeraye, Concilia Ecclesiæ Rotomagensis, p. 73. Bessin,
Concilia, p. 49. No part of the building remains. The account of the
Archbishops of Rouen in Mabillon (Vet. Anal. ii. 438), written while
Robert’s church was standing (“Ecclesiam _præsentem_ miro opere et
magnitudine ædificare cœpit”), gives him much the same character.
“Ante obitum suum, gratiâ Dei præveniente, vitam suam correxit.
Feminam enim reliquit, et de hoc ceterisque pravis actibus suis
pœnitentiam egit, et sic bono fine, in quantum humana fragilitas
capere potest, quievit.”

Footnote 531:

See vol. i. p. 514.

Footnote 532:

See vol. i. p. 508.

Footnote 533:

Will. Gem. vii. 7.

Footnote 534:

Will. Gem. u. s. Will. Malms. iii. 232. William of Malmesbury says
“patruus ejus, sed nothus,” but William of Jumièges distinctly calls
Papia the wife of Richard; “aliam uxorem nomine Papiam duxit.” So
Chron. Fontanellense, ap. D’Achery, iii. 289; “Papia matrimonio
Richardi potita.”

Footnote 535:

See vol. i. p. 518.

Footnote 536:

See vol. i. p. 518.

Footnote 537:

See Palgrave, ii. 536.

Footnote 538:

“Willame Talevaz,” according to the Roman de Rou, 8061. “Willelmus
Talvacius,” Will. Gem. vi. 7.

Footnote 539:

Roman de Rou, 8062. “Ki tint Sez, Belesme, è Vinaz.”

Footnote 540:

Ivo, son of the elder William, a Prelate of whom Orderic draws a very
favourable picture (469 D), did not scruple to attack and burn his own
church, when it had been turned into a fortress by certain turbulent
nobles. He tried to repair it, and reconsecrated it; but the walls,
being damaged by the fire, fell down. He was then charged with
sacrilege at the Council of Rheims, and defended himself by the
necessity of the case. He was bidden by Pope Leo, as a penance, to
rebuild the church. He went as far as Apulia, and even as
Constantinople, collecting contributions and relics, and he began the
work on such a scale that, forty years later, the efforts of his three
successors had not enabled them to finish it. Will. Gem. vii. 13–15.
No part of his building now remains.

Footnote 541:

Will. Gem. viii. 35. See Palgrave, ii. 313, 536.

Footnote 542:

Will. Gem. vi. 4. See vol. i. p. 518.

Footnote 543:

Will. Gem. vi. 7. “Ipse cunctis fratribus suis in omnibus flagitiis
deterior fuit, et in ejus seminis hæredibus immoderata nequitia usque
hodie viguit.” So vii. 10. “Hic à parentum suorum perfidiâ nequaquam
sua retorsit vestigia.”

Footnote 544:

Ib. vii. 10.

Footnote 545:

Ib. Orderic (460 D) adds, “amputatis genitalibus.” These stories of
the extreme wickedness of the house of Belesme are doubtless not
without foundation, but one cannot help suspecting exaggeration,
especially when we remember that Orderic writes in the interest of the
hostile house of Geroy. This particular outrage of William Talvas can
hardly be an invention; but it must surely have had some motive which
does not appear in our authorities.

Footnote 546:

Ib. 12. The tale is that he one day went out with his followers
(clientes) to rob, and seized on the pig of a certain nun (“inter
reliqua porcum cujusdam sanctimonialis rapuit”). The holy woman
pleaded earnestly for the restoration of her favourite (“gemens eum
insecuta est, ac, ut porcellus quem nutrierat, sibi pro Deo
redderetur, obnixè deprecata est”), but all was in vain; the oppressor
killed the pig and ate him for supper. The same night he was strangled
in his bed. In those times no alternative was thought of except a
supernatural intervention, and an assassination by Arnulf’s brother
Oliver. But our historian altogether rejects this last view, as
inconsistent with the high character of Oliver, who passed many years
as a brave and honourable knight, and at last died in the odour of
sanctity as a monk of Bec.

This story contains nothing absolutely incredible; yet one is tempted
to see in it a slightly ludicrous version of Nathan’s parable,
assuming a form impossible under the elder dispensation. Arnulf too
does not seem to have had even the poor excuse of the presence of a
wayfaring man.

Footnote 547:

Roman de Rou, 8059 et seqq. Palgrave, iii. 149.

Footnote 548:

Will. Gem. vi. 12. “Robertum ergo archiepiscopum cum optimatibus sui
Ducatûs accersivit.” This looks as if Robert were the only churchman
present. See vol. i. p. 197. Wace (8081) gathers together Bishops,
Abbots, and Barons, but perhaps only in conformity with the custom of
his own time.

Footnote 549:

Roman de Rou. 8091 et seqq.

Footnote 550:

Roman de Rou, 8107 et seqq.

“Il est peti, mais il creistra,
E se Deu plaist amendera.

· · · · ·

Cil est de vostre norreture.”

Footnote 551:

Ib. 8105.

“Par li cunseil el Rei de France,
Ki l’maintiendra o sa poessance.”

Footnote 552:

Will. Gem. vi. 12. “Exponens autem eis Willelmum filium suum, quem
unicum apud Falesiam genuerat, ab eis attentissime _exigebat, ut hunc
sibi loco sui dominum eligerent_, et militiæ suæ principem
præficerent.” A good precedent for the _congé d’élire_ and letter
missive.

Footnote 553:

Will. Gem. u. s. “Juxta decretum Ducis protinùs eum promptâ vivacitate
suum collaudavere principem ac dominum, pangentes illi fidelitatem non
violandis sacramentis.” Cf. Roman de Rou, 8117 et seqq. The events
which followed make one doubt as to the genuineness of the “prompta
vivacitas.”

Footnote 554:

Roman de Rou, 8125.

“Li Dus por la chose afermer,
E por fere lunges durer,
Al Rei de France l’ad mené,
E par li puing li a livré;
Sun home le fist devenir
E de Normendie seisir.”

There is nothing however to imply that William stayed longer at Paris
than was needed for the ceremony. It is an exaggeration when we read
in the Winchester Annals (p. 19 Luard), “Willelmo filio Roberti Ducis
juvenculo morante cum Rege Francorum in Galliis.” Rudolf Glaber (iv.
6) describes the accession of William in much the same way as the
national writers; “Cui [Willelmo] antequam proficisceretur, universos
sui ducaminis principes militaribus adstrinxit sacramentis, qualiter
illum in Principem pro se, si non rediret, eligerent. Quod etiam
statim ex consensu Regis Francorum Henrici unanimiter postmodùm
firmaverunt.” Does the phrase “militaribus sacramentis” mean “on their
knightly honour,” or is it merely a pedantic reference to the Roman
military oath?

Footnote 555:

See vol. i. p. 529.

Footnote 556:

Will. Malms. iii. 230. “Clarissima olim patria, intestinis
dissensionibus exulcerata, pro latronum libito dividebatur, ut merito
posset querimoniam facere, ‘Væ terræ cujus Rex puer est.’” See
Ecclesiastes x. 16. The same text is used by R. Glaber, iv. 5, with a
more general application.

Footnote 557:

William of Jumièges (vii. 1) distinctly makes the building of these
castles one of the main signs and causes of the general disorder of
the country. “Sub ejus ineunte ætate, Normannorum plurimi aberrantes
ab ejus fidelitate, plura per loca aggeres erexerunt, et tutissimas
sibi munitiones construxerunt. Quarum dum auderent fisi munimine,
protinùs inter eos diversi motus exoriuntur, seditiones concitantur,
ac sæva patriæ incendia ubique perpetrantur,” &c. So William of
Malmesbury (iii. 230); “Mox quisque sua munire oppida, turres agere,
frumenta comportare, caussas aucupari quibus quamprimùm à puero
dissidia meditarentur.” The “agger” is the “mote” or mound on which
the Norman castles were so often built. The word came almost to be
used for the castle itself. In the Roman de Rou, 8847, a knight is
described as standing at his gate “Entre li mostier è _sa mote_,” that
is, between the church and his own castle. According to Mr. Clark, the
“agger” or “mote” was commonly an earlier earthwork made use of by the
builders of the eleventh and twelfth centuries (Old London, p. 16).
Yet the rebellious nobles are here clearly described as throwing up
“aggeres” for the express purpose of building their castles, and we
can hardly believe that the “tutissimæ munitiones” were of wood.

Footnote 558:

See above, p. 138.

Footnote 559:

Chron. Wig. 1066. “And Oda biscop and Wyllelm eorl belifen her æfter,
and worhton castelas wide geond þas þeode, and earm folc swencte, and
á syððan hit yflade swiðe.” Chron. Petrib. 1087. “Castelas he lét
wyrcean, and earme men swiðe swencean.” The famous description of the
castle-building in the year 1137 is familiar to readers even of the
commonest English histories.

Footnote 560:

See above, p. 140.

Footnote 561:

See the story quoted in p. 185.

Footnote 562:

See vol. i. p. 526.

Footnote 563:

Roman de Rou, 8131;

“A Alain qui esteit sis huem,
Par l’Archeveske de Ruem,
Livra sa terre à cumandise,
Cum à senescal è justise.”

Footnote 564:

The “Turoldus” of William of Jumièges (vii. 2), and the “Turchetillus”
of Orderic (656 C), certainly seem to be the same person.

Footnote 565:

See vol. i. p. 284.

Footnote 566:

Will. Gem. viii. 37. “Gislebertus fuerat filius Godefridi Comitis
Aucensis, naturalis videlicet filii primi Richardi Ducis Normannorum.”
See vol. i. p. 279.

Footnote 567:

See vol. i. p. 198. Gilbert is called “Comes Ocensis” by William of
Jumièges (vii. 2), and the same writer (iv. 18) also says, “Licet
Comes Gislebertus filius Godefridi Comitis ipsum comitatum parumper
tenuerit, antequam occideretur.” But see Stapleton, i. lvi.

Footnote 568:

Will. Gem. vii. 33. “Alanum patrem meum apud Winmusterium in Normanniâ
veneno peremisti.” But the Breton Chronicle in Morice (Memoires pour
servir de Preuves à l’histoire de Bretagne) says only, “1039. Obiit
Alanus Dux Britanniæ filius Gauffredi. 3 Kal. Oct.” Cf. Roman de Rou,
8139;

“Murut Alains a Normandie;
A Fescamp jut en l’Abéie.”

See Prevost’s note, i. 403.

Footnote 569:

Roman de Rou, 8136.

Footnote 570:

Orderic (567 A) says distinctly, “Alannum Comitem Britonum suique
Ducis tutorem Normanni veneno perimere.”

Footnote 571:

Will. Gem. vii. 2. Will. Malms. iii. 230. “Interfecto Gisleberto a
Radulpho patruele suo, ubique cædes, ubique ignes versabantur.”

Footnote 572:

This seems the meaning of the context of the passage from William of
Jumièges quoted just above.

Footnote 573:

Ord. Vit. 686 D.

Footnote 574:

Will. Gem. vii. 2.

Footnote 575:

Ib. “In Normanniâ summoperè inserviebant diris facinoribus.”

Footnote 576:

Ib. viii. 37.

Footnote 577:

Ib. viii. 35.

Footnote 578:

Ib. vii. 16. See above, p. 185. William gives the daughters of Roger
and Mabel a good character. Of the sons he says, “Illi ferales et
cupidi, et inopum rabidi oppressores exstiterunt. Quam callidi, vel
militares, seu perfidi fuerint, aut quantùm super vicinos paresque
suos excreverint, iterumque sub eis pro facinoribus suis decederint,
non est nostrum in hoc loco enarrare.”

Footnote 579:

Ib. “Præfata mulier erat corpore parva, multùmque loquax, ad malum
satis prompta, et sagax atque faceta, nimiùmque crudelis et audax,”
Above, vii. 10, she is “Mabilia, crudelissimæ sobolis mater.” So Ord.
Vit. 470 A; “Præfata Mabilia multùm erat potens et sæcularis, callida
et loquax, nimiumque crudelis.”

Footnote 580:

Ord. Vit. 667 B. “Rogerius Merciorum Comes.”

Footnote 581:

Will. Gem. vii. 2. See Palgrave, iii. 198. Stapleton, i. cxxvi.

Footnote 582:

Will. Gem. ib. “Deinde [after the death of Gilbert] Turoldus teneri
Ducis pædagogus perimitur à perfidis patriæ desertoribus.”

Footnote 583:

This is the way in which I read the story in William of Jumièges (vii.
2), compared with that put into Duke William’s own mouth by Orderic
(656 C). Sir Francis Palgrave seems to make Thorold and Osbern be
murdered at once (199). But William of Jumièges seems to make these
murders two distinct events. After the passage just quoted he goes on,
“Osbernus quoque ... quâdam nocte, dum in cubiculo Ducis cum ipso in
Valle Rodoili securus soporatur, repente in stratu suo à Willelmo
Rogerii de Monte-gumeri filio jugulatus.” Orderic puts the murders of
Gilbert, Thorold (or Thurcytel), and Osbern together in general terms;
“Turchetillum nutricium meum et Osbernum Herfasti filium, Normanniæ
dapiferum, Comitemque Gislebertum patrem patriæ, cum multis aliis
reipublicæ necessariis fraudulenter interfecerunt.” The murder of
Osbern can hardly fail to have been one of the occasions so
pathetically referred to in Orderic; “Noctibus multotiens cognatorum
timore meorum à Gualterio avunculo meo de camerâ principali furtim
exportatus sum, ac ad domicilia latebrasque pauperum, ne à perfidis,
qui ad mortem me quærebant, invenirer, translatus sum.”

Footnote 584:

Will. Gem. vii. 2. “Barno quippe de Glotis, præpositus Osberni,
injustam necem domini sui cupiens ulcisci, nocte quadam expeditos
pugiles congregavit, et domum, ubi Willelmus et complices sui
dormiebant, adiit, ac omnes simul, sicut meruerant, statim
trucidavit.”

Footnote 585:

See vol. i. p. 514.

Footnote 586:

Will. Gem. vii. 3. “Comperiens autem quod Willelmus puer in Ducatu
patri successerit, vehementer indignatus est, et tumidè despexit illi
servire, dicens quod nothus non deberet sibi aliisque Normannis
imperare.”

Footnote 587:

See Will. Gem. vii. 3; viii. 37. Ord. Vit. 460 C.

Footnote 588:

Garnier, Vie de S. Thomas, 1830 (p. 66 ed. Hippeau); “E cil [quens] de
Leicestre, ke mut par est senez.” So William Fitz-Stephen (i. 235
Giles); “Comes Legecestriæ Robertus, qui maturitate ætatis et morum
aliis prominebat;” and Herbert of Bosham (i. 147 Giles); “Nobilis vir
Robertus, tunc Leicestræ Comes, inter honoratos honoratior.”

Footnote 589:

Amicia, daughter of Robert, third Earl of Leicester, married Simon the
Third, Lord of Montfort. She was the mother of Simon the leader of the
Crusade against the Albigenses, and the grandmother of our own Simon
the Righteous. See Pauli, Simon von Montfort, 19, 20.

Footnote 590:

Will. Gem. vii. 4. “Rodulphum de Wacceio ex consultu majorum sibi
tutorem eligit, et principem militiæ Normannorum constituit.”

Footnote 591:

See above, p. 195.

Footnote 592:

The expressions of William of Jumièges (vii. 4) are remarkable;
“Henricum igitur Regem Francorum adeunt, et titiones ejus per
Normannicos limites hac illacque spargunt. Quos nominatim litteris
exprimerem, si inexorabilia eorum odia declinare nollem. Attamen non
alii exstiterunt, vobis in aure loquor circumstantibus, quam hi qui
fideliores se profitentur et quos nunc majoribus Dux cumulavit
honoribus.”

Footnote 593:

See vol. i. p. 247.

Footnote 594:

Vol. i. p. 272.

Footnote 595:

Vol. i. pp. 250, 269.

Footnote 596:

Vol. i. p. 519.

Footnote 597:

See above, p. 189.

Footnote 598:

See vol. i. pp. 187, 216.

Footnote 599:

Roman de Rou, 9907 et seqq. The great offence was calling the Normans
“bigoz è draschiers.” The first name has given cause to much
controversy; the second is said to mean drinkers of ale, a wholesome
witness of their Teutonic descent. But cf. Æsch. Suppl. 930;

ἀλλ’ ἄρσενάς τοι τῆσδε γῆς οἰκήτορας
εὑρήσετ’, οὐ πίνοντας ἐκ κριθῶν μέθυ.

Footnote 600:

See vol. i. p. 189. The whole feeling between France and Normandy is
best summed up in the passage from Wace referred to in p. 201,
especially the lines,

“Sovent les unt medlé al Rei,
Sovent dient: Sire, por kei
Ne tollez la terre as bigoz?
A vos ancessors e as nos
La tolirent lor ancessor,
Ki par mer vindrent robéor.”

The feeling is thus represented as mainly a popular one.

Footnote 601:

See vol. i. pp. 509–511.

Footnote 602:

Art de verifier les Dates, ii. 670.

Footnote 603:

Will. Gem. vii. 5. “Duxit se placabilem ei nullo modo fore, quamdiu
Tegulense castrum videret in pristino statu persistere.”

Footnote 604:

Will. Gem. vii. 5. “Cujus fraudes animi ob salutem pueri vitare
cupientes, in fide stantes Normanni decreverunt fieri quod egisse
postmodum pœnituit.”

Footnote 605:

On the family of Crispin or of Tillières see Stapleton, i. cxx.; ii.
xliv. There is a special treatise, “De nobili Crispinorum Genere,”
which will be found in Giles’ Lanfranc, i. 340. This Gilbert must not
be confounded with Count Gilbert of Brionne, who seems also to be
called Crispin. See Prevost, note on Roman de Rou, ii. 5.

Footnote 606:

Will. Gem. vii. 5. “Mox ut molestissimum agnovit decretum.”

Footnote 607:

Ib. “Exercitibus tam Francorum quam Normannorum contractis.”

Footnote 608:

Ib. “Gislebertus tandem, precibus Ducis victus, mœrens castrum
reddidit.”

Footnote 609:

Ib. “Quod [castrum] sub oculis omnium sub maximo dolore cordis
confestim igne concremari perspexit.” The speedy restoration of the
fortress, of which we shall hear directly, shows what is really meant
by this burning. That the castle was wholly of wood is inconceivable.
But all the wooden appendages, all the roofs, floors, and fittings of
the main building, were burned. The principal tower would thus remain
dismantled, blackened, perhaps a little damaged in its masonry, but
quite fit to be made available again in a short time.

Footnote 610:

Will. Gem. vii. 5. “Sacramenta quæ Duci juraverat ne à quoquam suo in
quatuor annis reficerentur, irrita fecit.”

Footnote 611:

Ib.

Footnote 612:

Ib. vii. 6. “Turstenus cognomento Goz, Ansfridi Dani filius, qui tunc
præses Oximensis erat.”

Footnote 613:

See vol. i. pp. 211, 216, 243, 262. Without trusting all Dudo’s
details, there can be no doubt as to the general fact of these later
settlements.

Footnote 614:

Will. Gem. vii. 6. “Zelo succensus infidelitatis, regales milites
stippendiis conduxit, quos complices ad muniendum Falesiæ castellum,
ne inde Duci serviret, sibi adscivit.” The presence of the French
soldiers is thus plain enough, and their presence seems to imply the
complicity of the French King; but there seems to be no sufficient
authority for bringing in a second devastating invasion of the County
of Hiesmes by Henry in person, as we find described in the Roman de
Rou, 8526, where I do not understand Prevost’s note.

Footnote 615:

Will. Gem. vii. 6. He founded St. Gabriel’s Priory near Bayeux, the
small remains of which are among the finest Romanesque work in
Normandy. See De Caumont, Statistique Monumental du Calvados, i. 306.

Footnote 616:

See Will. Gem. viii. 38. Ord. Vit. 488 B, 522 A, B.

Footnote 617:

Will. Malms. iii. 240. “At ille, ubi primùm per ætatem potuit, militiæ
insignia à Rege Francorum accipiens, provinciales in spem quietis
erexit.”

Footnote 618:

See above, p. 172. William of Poitiers (Giles, Scriptt. Will. Conq.
80; Duchèsne, 179 B) gives him, as might be expected, a splendid
panegyric. Among other virtues we read, “Summo studio cœpit ecclesiis
Dei patrocinari, caussas impotentium tutari, jura imponere quæ non
gravarent, judicia facere quæ nequaquam ab æquitate vel temperantiâ
deviarent. Imprimis prohibere cædes, incendia, rapinas. Rebus enim
illicitis nimia ubique, ut suprà docuimus, licentia fuit.” See also
the later panegyrics on his administration of justice, p. 88, and on
his piety in 113, to which I shall have again to refer.

Footnote 619:

See vol. i. p. 220.

Footnote 620:

Ord. Vit. 566, B, C. See above, p. 180.

Footnote 621:

Robert was succeeded at Evreux by his son Richard and his grandson
William. On the death of William his inheritance passed to his sister
Agnes, wife of Simon the Second of Montfort, ancestor of the great
Simon. See the pedigrees in Duchèsne, pp. 1084, 1092, and Pauli, 19.

Footnote 622:

Will. Gem. vii. 7. Ord. Vit. 566 D. The verses on him in the series of
Archbishops are,

“Malgerius juvenis sedem suscepit honoris,
Natali clarus, sed nullo nobilis actu.”

See, for a fearful description of his misdeeds, Will. Pict. 116 ed.
Giles. Amongst other things, he never received the pallium. The list
of Archbishops in Mabillon (Vet. An. ii. 439) says, “Non electione
meriti, sed carnali parentum [_parents_ in the French sense] amore et
adulatorum suffragio in pueritiâ sedem adeptus est pontificalem; omni
destitutus tutelâ, potiùs adquievit carni et sanguini quam divinis
mandatis.”

Footnote 623:

Will. Pict. 118 Giles. Will. Gem. vii. 3, 17. Ord. Vit. 660 B. See
Appendix N.

Footnote 624:

See vol. i. p. 230.

Footnote 625:

A son of Herlwin and Herleva could not be born before 1036; Odo
therefore, at the time of his appointment, could not have been above
twelve years old.

Footnote 626:

Will. Gem. vii. 17. Ord. Vit. 664 D.

Footnote 627:

See especially the portrait of him in Orderic, u. s. William of
Poitiers (118 Giles) ventures to say, “Odonem ab annis puerilibus
optimorum numero consona præconia optimorum inseruerunt. Fertur hic in
longinquas regiones celeberrima fama; sed ipsius liberalissimi atque
_humillimi_ multa et industria et bonitas amplius meretur.”

Footnote 628:

Ord. Vit. 646 D. Here Odo is “præsumptor episcopus, cui principatus
Albionis et Neustriæ non sufficiebat.”

Footnote 629:

Ib. 665 A. Up to this time scriptural names seem to have been hardly
more usual in Normandy than in England. The sons of Archbishop Robert
bore names of the usual Teutonic cast, but his successor Malger called
his son Michael. Ib. 566 D.

Footnote 630:

On these works of Odo see Will. Gem. vii. 17. Ord. Vit. 665 A.
Orderic’s words might seem to assert a more complete rebuilding of the
cathedral than those of William. Orderic says, “Ecclesiam sanctæ Dei
genitricis Mariæ à fundamentis cœpit, eleganter consummavit.” William
has only, “Pontificalem ecclesiam in honorem sanctæ Dei genitricis
Mariæ _novam auxit_.” Perhaps this means that he rebuilt it on a
larger scale. It was consecrated, like many other Norman Churches, in
1077. Ord. Vit. 548 D. Compare the many dedications of English
churches in 1258. See Matt. Paris, 449, 481, Wats.

Footnote 631:

Ord. Vit. 765 C.

Footnote 632:

Ord. Vit. 460 A. “Quisque potentum se derisione dignum judicabat, si
clericos aut monachos in suâ possessione ad Dei militiam rebus
necessariis non sustentabat.” So also Will. Gem. vii. 22. “Unusquisque
optimatum certabat in prædio suo ecclesias fabricare, et monachos qui
pro se Deum rogarent rebus suis locupletare.” Each adds a long list of
the foundations of the time. The expressions “clerici” and “ecclesias
fabricare” would seem to apply to parish churches also. But few parish
churches of so early a date exist in Normandy. The great mass seem to
have been built or rebuilt in the next century.

Footnote 633:

This seems recognized by William of Jumièges (vii. 22). Roger of
Montgomery founded monasteries, “indignans videri in aliquo inferior
suis comparibus.”

Footnote 634:

Ord. Vit. 547 C. “Ego de extremis Merciorum finibus decennis Angligena
huc advectus, barbarusque et ignotus advena callentibus indigenis
admixtus, inspirante Deo Normannorum gesta et eventus Normannis
promere scripto sum conatus.” So 548 A; “De Angliâ in Normanniam
tenellus exsul, ut æterno Regi militarem, destinatus sum.” See also
pp. 579–581. His father Odelerius was a priest of Orleans. Of the
importance of these passages I shall have to speak again.

Footnote 635:

See Orderic 492 B, and Appendix D.

Footnote 636:

Will. Gem. vi. 9. “A Danis igitur qui Normanniam primi obtinuere pater
ejus originem duxit.” So Milo Crispin, Vitæ Abb. Becc. (Giles,
Lanfranc, i. 261), who copies William. Both give the name Ansgotus. I
know not why pedigree-makers (see one quoted by Taylor, Wace 209, and
another in Sir A. Malet’s Wace 269) identify this Ansgod with
“Crispinus of Bec.”

Footnote 637:

See above, p. 205.

Footnote 638:

See vol. i. pp. 191, 192.

Footnote 639:

Will. Gem. vi. 9. “Mater proximam Ducum Morinorum, quos moderni
Flandros cognominant, consanguinitatem attigit.” Milo is satisfied
with the description of “Ducum Flandriæ,” without the flourish about
the Morini. Herlwin may thus have been, in the female line, a
descendant of our Ælfred.

Footnote 640:

Milo, ap. Giles, i. 262. Orderic, 460 B. Herlwin, hard pressed in the
battle, vows that, if he survives, he will serve God only—“nulli
ulteriùs nisi soli Deo militaret.”

Footnote 641:

Milo, i. 264. The Count was seeking the destruction of some neighbour;
“de cujusdam compatriotæ sui damno agens, quod in illius vergebat
perniciem.”

Footnote 642:

Ib. “Continuò abripiuntur omnia sua, nec curat, vastantur quoque
pauperes sui, unde non parvâ sollicitatur curâ.”

Footnote 643:

See the description in Orderic, 574 D et seqq. His words are
remarkable. After describing the marriage or concubinage of the clergy
and even of the Bishops, he goes on (575 A); “Hujusmodi mos inolevit
tempore neophytorum, qui cum Rollone baptizati sunt, et desolatam
regionem non litteris sed armis instructi violenter invaserunt. Deinde
presbyteri de stirpe Dacorum litteris tenuiter edocti parochias
tenebant, et arma ferentes laicalem feudum militari famulatu
defendebant.”

Footnote 644:

Milo, i. 266. “Quidam monachus monachum pugno repercussum avertit, ac
impulsum supinis dentibus demisit ad solum; adhuc enim, ut dictum est,
omnes omnium per Normanniam mores barbari erant.”

Footnote 645:

Milo, i. 266, 267.

Footnote 646:

Will. Gem. vi. 9. Ord. Vit. 549 A. Herbert was Bishop of Lisieux from
1026 to 1050. He began to rebuild the Cathedral, which was finished by
his successor Hugh. No part of their work remains.

Footnote 647:

Milo, i. 264, 265. The release of the lands seems implied in the
foundation of the monastery.

Footnote 648:

Will. Gem. u. s. Milo, i. 265.

Footnote 649:

Will. Gem. u. s. “Ipse non solum operi præsidebat, sed opus ipsum
efficiebat, terram fodiens, fossam efferens, lapides, sabulum,
calcemque humeris comportans, ac ea in parietem ipsemet componens.”
The church of Burneville then, like Cnut’s church on Assandun (see
vol. i. p. 472), was clearly a minster of stone and lime. For a like
example of humility, take Saint Hugh of Lincoln, who worked at the
building of his own cathedral church. (Metrical Life of St. Hugh, ed.
Dimock, p. 32.) Compare the penance imposed on Duke Godfrey for his
sacrilege at Verdun; see above, p. 98. In somewhat the same spirit
Edward the First worked personally in making the ditch at Berwick in
1296. Rishanger, ed. Riley, p. 375.

Footnote 650:

Will. Gem. u. s. “Ab eodem præsule sacerdos ordinatus atque Abbas
constitutus est.” Cf. Milo, i. 267. The last writer seems to make
Herlwin delay his monastic profession till the consecration of the
church, but it seems from William of Jumièges and Orderic (549 A) that
an interval of three years passed between his first profession and his
ordination and benediction as Abbot. Milo himself, though in a
confused way, recognizes an interval of three years.

Footnote 651:

Will. Gem. vi. 9. Milo, i. 265.

Footnote 652:

Milo, i. 268. “Simili se inibi propter Deum servituti nobilis mater
ejus addixit, et concessis Deo prædiis, quæ habebat, ancillæ
fungebatur officio.”

Footnote 653:

Chron. Becc. ap. Giles, i. 194. “Quia campestris et inaquosus est
locus.” On the necessity of wood and water for monks, we have the
witness of Orderic (461 A) in the case of his own house. “Locus iste,”
says William the son of Geroy, “ubi cœpistis ædificare, habitationi
monachorum aptus non est, quia ibi aqua deest et nemus longè est.
Certum est quod absque his duobus elementis monachi esse non possunt.”
The description of Bec in William of Jumièges enlarges on the
advantages of the spot. It is “omni opportunitate humano usui
commodus. Propter densitatem ac rivi recreationem, ferarum illic
multus erat accursus.”

Footnote 654:

Will. Gem. u. s. “Locus, qui à rivo illic mananti Beccus appellatur.”
So Chron. Becc. ap. Giles, i. 194; “Locus qui dicitur Beccus, et ita
vocitatus à rivulo ibi decurrente, qui adhuc hodiernis temporibus
decurrit juxta muros prati.”

Footnote 655:

It must be remembered that Herlwin’s _first_ church at Bec was on a
different site from the existing remains, which represent his _second_
building.

Footnote 656:

Milo, i. 268. “Comes Gilbertus nil usquam eo saltu pretiosius
possidebat.” The only human habitations in the valley were three
mills, in two of which Herlwin had the right of a third part. Partly
by gift, partly by purchase, he obtained possession of the whole
valley. For his own gifts at Burneville and elsewhere, see his Charter
in Neustria Pia, 437.

Footnote 657:

Will. Gem. vi. 9. Milo, i. 269. “Consecratâ, paucis exstructâ annis,
non parvâ ecclesiâ, columnis ex ligneis claustrum construxit.” The
church then was of stone.

Footnote 658:

Milo, i. 270. “Abbas peritus erat in dirimendis caussarum sæcularium
controversiis, prudens in iis quæ ad exteriora pertinent, ... legum
patriæ scientissimus.”

Footnote 659:

Will. Gem. vi. 9. Ord. Vit. 549 A.

Footnote 660:

Will. Gem. u. s. “Gentium transmarinarum summus Pontifex.” Milo, i.
275. “Gentium transmarinarum Apostolicus.” Ib. 272. “Summus antistes
et in ecclesiis transmarinis vices apostolicas gerens.” See vol. i.
pp. 146, 627.

Footnote 661:

Will. Malms. iii. 246. “Omnium gentium benignissimi advenas æquali
secum honore colunt.”

Footnote 662:

Chron. Fontanellense (Saint Wandrille), ap. D’Achery, iii. 286.

Footnote 663:

Orderic’s description of him (519 A) begins, “Hic ex nobili parentelâ
ortus, Papiæ urbis Italiæ civibus, ab annis infantiæ in scholis
liberalium artium studuit, et secularium legum peritiam ad patriæ suæ
morem intentione laicâ fervidus edidicit.” Gervase (X Scriptt. 1652),
from whom we get the names of his parents, says, “natus in urbe
Papiensi civibus egregiis et honestâ conditione; pater ipsius
Hanbaldus, mater Roza vocabatur.” William of Malmesbury (Gest. Pont.
116 _b_) says only, “non adeò abjectâ et obscurâ progenie oriundus
erat.” Milo’s description (i. 281) points to a sort of nobility of the
robe; “Parentes illius, ejusdem urbis cives, magni et honorabiles
habebantur inter suos concives. Nam, ut fertur, pater ejus de ordine
illorum qui jura et leges civitatis asservabant fuit.” Dr. Hook
(Archbishops, ii. 74) refers to his letter to Queen Margaret of
Scotland (Giles, i. 59), in which he calls himself “hominem extraneum,
vilem, ignobilem.” A sort of civic nobility seems to reconcile the
different descriptions.

Footnote 664:

I suppose that a knowledge of Greek is implied in the description
given by William of Jumièges (vi. 9); “Ortus Italiâ quidam vir erat,
quem Latinitas, in antiquum ab eo restituta scientiæ statum, tota
supremum debito cum amore et honore agnoscit, nomine Lanfrancus. Ipsa
quoque in liberalibus studiis gentium magistra Græcia discipulos
illius libenter audiebat, et admirabatur.” The odd expression of
“Latinitas” occurs also in the passage in the Saint Wandrille
Chronicle just referred to. “Potestas secundi Richardi, velut amore
diluculi, in toto Latinitatis orbe serena refulsit.” I suppose it
takes in all nations of Romance speech.

Footnote 665:

See the quotation from Orderic just above, and Dr. Hook’s (ii. 75)
discussion as to his exact position.

Footnote 666:

Ord. Vit. 519 A. “Adolescentulus orator veteranos adversantes in
actionibus caussarum frequenter præcipitavit, torrente facundiâ
appositè dicendo senes superavit. In ipsâ ætate sententias promere
statuit quas gratanter juris periti aut judices aut prætores civitatis
acceptabant.”

Footnote 667:

Milo, i. 282. “In primævâ ætate patre orbatus, quum ei in honorem et
dignitatem succedere _deberet_.” Was Hanbald’s post, whatever it was,
hereditary?

Footnote 668:

Dr. Hook (ii. 76, 80) discusses the question at length. I cannot infer
from the use of the word “exsilium” by Orderic (519 A), that Lanfranc
was driven from Pavia by any political revolution, any more than
Orderic himself, when “tenellus exsul” in Normandy. See above, p. 216.

Footnote 669:

Chron. Becc. i. 195. Hook, ii. 77.

Footnote 670:

The sojourn at Avranches comes from Milo, i. 282. The other accounts
seem to bring him to Bec at once.

Footnote 671:

The Bishoprick of Avranches is now merged in that of Coutances, and
the cathedral is destroyed; Lisieux is also merged in Bayeux, but the
cathedral remains.

Footnote 672:

Will. Gem. vi. 9. “Beccum itaque adiit, quo nullum usquam pauperius
æstimabatur vel abjectius cœnobium.” Ord. Vit. 519 B. “Cœnobiolum
Beccense loci situ et paupertate elegit.” Milo, i. 282, 283. “Locum
adire nolebat, ubi litterati qui eum honori ac reverentiæ haberent....
Rogavit sanè ut vilius et pauperius cœnobium quod in regione nossent
sibi demonstrarent.” Will. Malm. Gest. Pont. 116 _b_. “Multis diu
locis circumspectis, ex omni abbatiarum copiâ Beccum apud Normanniam
potissimùm elegit, paupertate loci et monachorum religione captus.”

Footnote 673:

The legend is found in a simpler form in Milo, i. 282, 283, and in a
fuller shape in the Chronicon Beccense, i. 195, 196, followed by Hook,
i. 81, 82. I do not see the chronological difference spoken of by the
Dean, except that the Chronicler, like most of the other writers,
leaves out the sojourn at Avranches. The two versions are worth
comparing, as illustrating the growth of a legend, which is not the
less plainly a legend because it contains nothing miraculous. The
earlier form is the more consistent with the general story, as it
represents Lanfranc as ignorant of Scripture and divine things. The
meeting between Lanfranc and Herlwin is well conceived and well told.

Footnote 674:

Milo, i. 285.

Footnote 675:

Milo, i. 286. “Lanfrancum Priorem constituit, et quidquid ditioni
monasterii subjacebat, interiùs et exteriùs ipsius curæ commisit.”

Footnote 676:

Ib. 284. “Vir sapiens sciens magis obedientiam Christo debere quam
Donato, dimisit quod bene pronunciaverat, et dixit quod non rectè
dicere jubebatur. Nam producere brevem vel longam corripere syllabam
non capitale noverat crimen; verùm jubenti ex parte Dei non parere
culpam non levem esse sciebat.”

Footnote 677:

Will. Gem. vi. 9. “Accurrunt clerici, Ducum filii [one would like to
know their names], nominatissimi scholarum Latinitatis magistri, laici
potentes, altâ nobilitate viri. Multi pro ipsius amore multas eidem
ecclesiæ terras contulere.”

Footnote 678:

Will. Gem. vi. 9. “Adunatam etenim illic fratrum multitudinem quia
domorum spaciositas jam capere non valebat, et quia situs loci
degentium incolumitati contrarius exsistebat.”

Footnote 679:

William of Jumièges (u. s.) describes the work, and says that “post
triennii completionem, solâ necdum completâ basilicâ,” Lanfranc became
Abbot of Saint Stephen’s. This last appointment did not happen till
1066 (Ord. Vit. 494 B). Did the rebuilding not begin till 1063?

Footnote 680:

I reserve the account of Lanfranc’s connexion with William till I come
to the history of the Duke’s marriage.

Footnote 681:

See above, p. 116.

Footnote 682:

See Hook, ii. 89.

Footnote 683:

Orderic (519 D) describes the work of Lanfranc against Berengar as
“dilucido venustoque stilo libellum, sacris auctoritatibus ponderosum,
et indissolubiliter constantem consequentiis rationum, veræ
intelligentiæ adstructione de Eucharistiâ copiosum, facundo sermone
luculentum, _nec prolixitate tædiosum_.” One could wish that the
excellent Orderic had, in this last respect, imitated the work which
he so much admired.

Footnote 684:

The whole early history of his house is given by Orderic at great
length, 609 et seqq. So also Will. Gem. vii. 23.

Footnote 685:

Ord. 609 C. “Degens adhuc sub laicali habitu vitam instituerat ut
nihil ab his discrepare videretur, quos imperium regulare coercebat.”
His piety however was not wholly after the type of Eadward the
Confessor, for we read (609 D), “conjugem, ut patris nomen haberet,
acceperat.”

Footnote 686:

One legend of Saint Ebrulf (611 C) is the same as the well known story
of Ælfred and his last loaf.

Footnote 687:

Ord. Vit. 623 C. “Olim dum Daci, qui adhuc pagani erant, cum Hastingo
Neustriam vastaverunt, et rursus Rollone cum suis sæviente, plures
ecclesiæ cum urbibus et oppidis desolatæ sunt; nos, suffragante Deo,
in silvestri sterilique rure latuimus, et debacchantium gladios, licèt
in timore nimio et egestate, sospites evasimus.” This must have been
forgotten when it is said in Neustria Pia, p. 90, that Saint Evroul
was ravaged by the Danes.

Footnote 688:

See vol. i. pp. 237, 238. Orderic gives his version of these events in
p. 619. He calls Hugh “Hugo Magnus _Aurelianorum_ Dux,” and Lewis
receives his surname of “Ultramarinus,” which we do not find in
contemporary writers. Most names of the kind were doubtless used in
common discourse during the lifetime of the princes designated by
them, but they did not find their way into written history till later.

Footnote 689:

Ord. Vit. 619 D, 622 D.

Footnote 690:

Ib. 621 B. “Rusticorum pecudes sive supellectilem non curaverunt; sed
_Uticensis hospitii memores_, illuc reversi sunt, et ex insperato cum
suis in cœnobium irruerunt.” Then follow the details of the plunder.

Footnote 691:

Ord Vit. 622 D.

Footnote 692:

Ib. 624 C. This holy man, like Orderic’s own father, was married.
“Uticum perrexit, ibique cum conjuge et Ilberto filio suo primus
habitavit.” (625 A.) He afterwards had a companion named Ingram. (461
A.)

Footnote 693:

Ib. 625 C, D.

Footnote 694:

He is described as “Ernaldi Grossi de Corte Sedaldi Abonii Britonis
filii filius.” (Ord. Vit. 463 A.) He goes on to say that he “ex magnâ
nobilitate Francorum et Britonum processit, mirâque probitate et
audaciâ temporibus Hugonis Magni [clearly a mistake for Hugh Capet] et
Roberti Regum Francorum nobiliter viguit.”

Footnote 695:

Ib. 463 A.

Footnote 696:

Orderic (464 A, B) tells a curious story about these lordships. When
they were granted to Geroy, they were, by what accident does not
appear, not included in the diocese of any Bishop. Geroy’s conscience
was troubled at a state of things so contrary to all ecclesiastical
rule. He accordingly inquired which of the neighbouring Bishops was
the most worthy, and, hearing much of the virtues of Roger, Bishop of
Lisieux (990–1024), he annexed his lands to that diocese. He procured
however certain privileges for the clergy of his lordships, especially
an exemption from the oppressive jurisdiction of the Archdeacons; “Ut
clerici terræ suæ non irent ad placitandum extra potestatem eorum, nec
opprimerentur injustis circumventionibus Archidiaconorum.” He might
well make this stipulation, if the Archdeacons of his time were like
those described by John of Salisbury some generations later (Ep.
clxvi. ap. Giles, i. 260).

In Mr. Stapleton’s map Escalfoy is marked in the diocese of Lisieux,
but Montreuil in that of Seez.

Footnote 697:

William of Jumièges (vii. 11.) makes him receive these lordships from
Duke Richard, “Richardi Ducis, cujus dono in Normanniâ duo municipia
obtinuit,” but it seems from Orderic (463 B) that the ducal grant was
only a confirmation of the will of Helgo; “Liberalis Dux agnitâ
virtute ejus honoravit, eique totam terram Helgonis hæreditario jure
concessit.”

Footnote 698:

Will. Gem. u. s. “Ex his filiorum et nepotum militaris turma propagata
est, quæ barbaris in Angliâ vel Apuliâ seu Trachiâ vel Syriâ nimio
terrori visa est.”

Footnote 699:

Ib. vi. 7.

Footnote 700:

Compare his dealings with Herlwin, above, pp. 217, 218.

Footnote 701:

He held lands of Count Geoffrey of Mantes, who was taken prisoner by
William Talvas, who required the destruction of the castle of
Montacute as his ransom. This castle belonged to William the son of
Geroy, who at once destroyed it to bring about the liberation of his
lord. Ord. Vit.

Footnote 702:

Ord. Vit. 464 A. “Episcopales consuetudines Monasterioli et Escalfoii
fundo habebat, nec ullus Archidiaconorum ibidem presbyteros ejusdem
honoris circumvenire audebat.”

Footnote 703:

See above, p. 185.

Footnote 704:

578 A.

Footnote 705:

According to William of Jumièges (vii. 23), he died at Gaeta on his
return from a mission of some sort (pro quibusdam rationalibus
caussis) to Apulia.

Footnote 706:

Ord. Vit. 461 A. Chron. Becc. i. 195. This is doubtless the grange
which Lanfranc found greatly troubled by rats. His biographer (i. 284,
285) cites it as a proof of his humility that he personally carried a
cat to make war upon them.

Footnote 707:

They were the sons of Robert of Grantmesnil (see above, p. 199) and
Hadwisa, daughter of Geroy (Orderic, 465 B). After Robert’s death
Hadwisa married William, son of Archbishop Robert. Their daughter
Judith, having taken the veil, afterwards married Roger, Count of
Sicily (484 B), but, as a punishment for her sacrilege, remained
childless.

Footnote 708:

See above, p. 220.

Footnote 709:

William of Jumièges (vii. 23) puts into his mouth a long historical
discourse, in which, I am sorry to say, he speaks of Charles the
Simple as “filius Ludovici cognomine Nihil-fecit.”

Footnote 710:

Ord. Vit. 461 C et seqq., 625 D. Will. Gem. vii. 23. He was the only
monk for whom the cruel Mabel had any reverence. Ord. Vit. 470 A.

Footnote 711:

See his character, Ord. Vit. 467 D; his intrigues, 474 C et seqq.; his
election, 477 A. He began a new church, but did not finish it, 480 C.
He also gave to the house (468 B) an illuminated psalter—doubtless of
English work—which the Lady Emma had given to her brother Archbishop
Robert. His son William seemingly stole it from his father, and gave
it to his wife Hadwisa, mother of Robert of Grantmesnil; “de camerâ
patris sui familiariter sustulerat, dilectæque suæ conjugi Hadwisæ
omnimodis placere volens detulerat.” On Abbot Robert see also Will.
Gem. vii. 26.

Footnote 712:

Ord. Vit. 481 B.

Footnote 713:

The whole story is given at some length in Neustria Pia, pp. 104–110.
But remark the expression of William of Jumièges (vii. 23), “multos
labores postea in procuratione servorum Dei perpessus est.” There were
probably two sides to his story, as to most others.

Footnote 714:

Was the Truce of God ever preached, or ever needed, in England? I am
not aware of any mention of it, unless the so-called Laws of Eadward,
c. 2 (Schmid, 492), at all refer to it. See below, p. 238.

Footnote 715:

See above, p. 218.

Footnote 716:

See History of Federal Government, i. 128.

Footnote 717:

The account is in R. Glaber, iv. 5. “Tunc ergo primitùs cœpere in
Aquitaniæ partibus ab Episcopis et Abbatibus, ceterisque viris sacræ
religionis devotis ex universâ plebe, coadunati conciliorum
conventus.” He goes on to give a summary of their legislation; “In
quibus potissimum erat de inviolabili pace conservandâ, ut scilicet
viri utriusque conditionis, cujuscumque antea fuissent rei obnoxii,
absque formidine procederent armis vacui. Prædo namque aut invasor
alterius facultatis, legum districtione arctatus, vel donis facultatum
seu pœnis corporis acerrimè mulctaretur. Locis nihilominùs sacris
omnium ecclesiarum honor et reverentia talis exhiberetur, ut si quis
ad ea cujuscumque culpæ obnoxius confugium faceret, illæsus evaderet,
nisi solummodò ille qui pactum prædictæ pacis violâsset, hic tamen
captus ab altare præstitutam vindictam lueret. Clericis similiter
omnibus, monachis, et sanctimonialibus, ut si quis cum eis per
regionem pergeret nullam vim ab aliquo pateretur.” He adds some more
purely religious provisions about fasting and the like.

Footnote 718:

R. Glaber, iv. 5. “Quibus universi, tanto ardore accensi ut per manus
Episcoporum baculum ad cœlum elevarent, ipsique palmis extensis ad
Deum, Pax, pax, pax, unanimiter clamarent. Ut esset videlicet signum
perpetui pacti de hoc, quod spoponderant inter se et Deum.”

Footnote 719:

R. Glaber, iv. 5. “In hâc tamen ratione ut evoluto quinquennio
confirmandæ pacis gratiâ id ipsum ab universis in orbe fieret mirum in
modum.”

Footnote 720:

Ib. “Dehinc per Arelatensem provinciam atque Lugdunensem, sicque per
universam Burgundiam usque in ultimas Franciæ partes, per universos
episcopatus indictum est qualiter certis in locis à præsulibus
magnatisque totius patriæ de reformandâ pace et sacræ fidei
institutione celebrarentur concilia.” In Martène and Durand’s
Thesaurus, i. 159, is a circular letter on the subject from Ragenbald,
Archbishop of Arles, and other Burgundian Prelates.

Footnote 721:

Rudolf, under the year 1041 (v. 1, Duchèsne, Rer. Franc. Scriptt. iv.
55 A), recurs to the subject; “Contigit verò ipso in tempore,
inspirante divinâ gratiâ, primitùs in partibus Aquitanicis, deinde
paullatim per universum Galliarum territorium firmari pactum propter
timorem Dei pariter et amorem. Taliter ut nemo mortalium, à feriæ
quartæ vespere usque ad secundam feriam incipiente luce, ausu
temerario præsumeret quippiam alicui hominum per vim auferre, neque
ultionis vindictam à quocumque inimico exigere, nec etiam à
fideijussore vadimonium sumere. Quod si ab aliquo fieri contigisset
contra hoc decretum publicum, aut de vitâ componeret aut à
Christianorum consortio expulsus patriâ pelleretur. Hoc insuper
placuit universis, veluti vulgò dicitur, ut Treuga Domini vocaretur.”
I conceive this relaxation to mark a change from the _Pax Dei_ to the
_Treuga Dei_. See Ducange in _Treuga_, and Palgrave, iii. 201.
Something must be allowed to the inherent confusion of Rudolf’s way of
expressing himself.

Footnote 722:

Hugo Flav. Chron. ap. Pertz, viii. 403.

Footnote 723:

Gest. Epp. Cam. ap. Pertz, vii. 474, 485. Gerard’s objections are
given at great length, and are well worth studying, as a setting forth
of the _Regale_ and _Pontificale_. Some of the French Bishops seemed
to have ventured on a pious fraud; “Unus eorum cœlitùs sibi delatas
dixit esse literas, quæ pacem monerent renovandam in terra.” The
chronicler of Cambray quite approves the opposition of the local
Prelate; “Alia quoque importabilia quamplurima dederunt mandata, quæ
oneri visa sunt replicare. Hâc novitate pulsatus mandati præsul
noster, infirmitatique peccantium condescendens, secundùm decreta
sanctorum patrum ad singula suum formavit eloquium.”

Footnote 724:

Hugo Flav. ap. Pertz, viii. 403. “Quam quum noluisset recipere gens
Neustriæ, viro Dei Richardo prædicante, et ut eam susciperent, quia
voluntas Domini erat, et à Deo non ab homine decretum, hoc
processerat, admonente divino judicio cœpit in eos desævire ignis qui
eos torquebat; eo anno ferè totus orbis [was the whole world plagued
for the sins of Normandy?] penuriam passus est pro raritate vini et
tritici. Sequuta est è vestigio mortalitas hominibus præmaxima ab inc.
Dom. 1042.” This passage is made up out of R. Glaber (u. s.), where
however Richard is not mentioned.

Footnote 725:

Hugo Flav. u. s.

Footnote 726:

The decree of the synod of Caen is given at length in the Concilia
Rotomagensis Provinciæ, p. 39. The Fathers are stringent against
“caballicationes et hostilitates.” The main decree runs, “In pace quæ
vulgò dicitur Trevia Dei, et quæ die Mercurii sole occidente incipit,
et die Lunæ sole nascente finit, hæc quæ dicam vobis promptissimâ
mente dehinc inantea debetis observare. Nullus homo nec femina hominem
aut feminam usquam assaliat, nec vulneret, nec occidat, nec castellum,
nec burgum, nec villam in hoc spatio quatuor dierum et quinque noctium
assaliat nec deprædetur nec capiat, nec ardeat ullo ingenio aut
violentiâ aut aliquâ fraude.” See Roman de Rou, 10485 et seqq. The
church of Sainte Paix at Caen was built to commemorate the event, but
Prevost (note to Roman de Rou, ii. 99) places its building in 1061.

Footnote 727:

Will. Pict. 113 (Giles). “Sanctissimè in Normanniâ observabatur
sacramentum pacis quam Treviam vocant, quod effrænis regionum aliarum
iniquitas frequenter temerat.”

Footnote 728:

Ord. Vit. 552 A. It was confirmed again for Christendom generally at
the Council of Clermont in 1095. Will. Malms. iii. 345.

Footnote 729:

Will. Pict. 80 (Giles). “Hujus vesaniæ signifer prosiluit Guido.”
Will. Malms. iii. 230. “Sator discordiarum erat Guido quidam.”

Footnote 730:

Will. Pict. u. s. “A puerilibus annis cum ipso familiariter nutritus.”
Will. Gem. vii. 17. “Crudelem convivam ... qui cum eo à puerilibus
annis educatus fuerat.” Will. Malms. u. s. “Convictus familiaritatem,
familiaritas amicitias, paraverat.” So Roman de Rou, 8758 et seqq.

Footnote 731:

See above, p. 194

Footnote 732:

See vol. i. p. 404.

Footnote 733:

William, in his autobiography in Orderic (657 A), is made to say,
“Ille [Guido] verò verbis et actibus mihi derogavit, me nothum
degeneremque et principatu indignum detestatus judicavit et hostiliter
diffamavit.” Roman de Rou, 8770;

“De Willeame aveit grant envie,
Ki sor li aveit seignorie,
Cumenca sei à corucier,
Et Normendie à chalengier;
Reprovout li sa batardie.”

So again, 8782;

“N’i a, dist il, plus proçain eir,
Ki Normendie deie aveir:
Pere sa mere fu Richart,
D’espuse esteit, n’ert pas bastart.”

Footnote 734:

Roman de Rou, 8786;

“E ki li voldreit fere dreit,
Normendie li apendreit,
E se meintenir le voleient
Ensemle od li le partireient.”

So Will. Pict. 80. “Sed aut principatum aut maximam portionem
Normanniæ ambiebat.”

Footnote 735:

Roman de Rou, 8896 et seqq.

Footnote 736:

See vol. i. p. 199.

Footnote 737:

See vol. i. p. 216.

Footnote 738:

Both Neals bear the title of Viscount of the Côtentin, but others also
bore it in their lifetime. See Delisle, Histoire du Château et des
Sires de Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte (Valognes, 1867), p. 23. The
collection of Charters in this work is most valuable.

Footnote 739:

See vol. i. p. 330. The three chief conspirators, Neal, Randolf, and
Hamon, are mentioned in various accounts. Will. Pict. 80. Will. Malms.
iii. 230. Roman de Rou, 8748, 8778. William of Jumièges (vii. 17)
speaks of Guy and Neal (“Nigellus Constantiensis præses”) only.

Footnote 740:

In 1040 or 1042. Delisle, p. 3.

Footnote 741:

The Abbey was founded by Neal himself in the next year, 1048,
according to Neustria Pia, 540. Cotman, Antiquities of Normandy, i. 9.
But what seems to be Neal’s foundation charter in Delisle (Preuves, p.
42; cf. 55, 59) is placed by him in 1080.

Footnote 742:

See vol. i. p. 243, for Harold Blaatand’s occupation of Cherbourg. I
cannot however believe that _Cherbourg_ is really “Cæsaris burgus.” Is
it not rather the same word as _Scarborough_?

Footnote 743:

This very curious fact comes out in a Charter of the Abbey of the Holy
Trinity at Caen, printed by Mr. Stapleton in the Archæologia, xxvi.
355. “Adeliza, Ricardi Comitis filia, Ricardi Comitis soror, contra
eumdem prædictum fratrem suum, scilicet Robertum Comitem, castrum quid
dicitur Hulme in Constantino situm cum omnibus ibidem pertinentibus
mercata est. Quod postea Guido filius suus, injustè sibi auferens,
dedit illud Nigello Vice-comiti.” See also Stapleton, Roll of
Exchequer, ii. xxix. The charter bears date in 1075, when Adeliza was
still living.

Footnote 744:

Roman de Rou, 8938.

Footnote 745:

Ib. 9182;

“Dan As Dens esteit un Normant
De fié è d’homes bien poissant,
Sire esteit de Thorignie
E de Mezi è de Croillie.”

On Creuilly church and castle, see Cotman, ii. 91. De Caumont, i. 320.

Footnote 746:

William of Malmesbury introduces him (ii. 230) as “Haimo Dentatus [Dan
As Dens], avus Roberti quo nostro tempore in Angliâ multarum
possessionum incubator exstitit.” Robert died of a wound received at
Tinchebrai, 1106 (Will. Malms. v. 398), and his daughter Mabel married
the famous Robert Earl of Gloucester (Hist. Nov. i. 3).

Footnote 747:

Benoît, 32, 742;

“Per cel Rannol de Beiesin,
E par Neel de Costentin,
E par Hamun _uns Antecriz_.”

The expression is very strange, but it is so taken by M. Le Cointe
(see Appendix O), and I see not what else it can mean.

Footnote 748:

Taylor’s Wace, 11. Castle Rising is eminently the castle of dowager
Queens, the earlier parts having been built for Adeliza, and the later
for Isabella, mother of Edward the Third.

Footnote 749:

Roman de Rou, 8796;

“Issi unt lur chastels garniz
Fossez parcéz, dreciéz paliz.”

Footnote 750:

See above, p. 197.

Footnote 751:

See Roman de Rou, 9347 et seqq. For the present story see vv.
8800–8895, and Palgrave, iii. 212.

Footnote 752:

Roman de Rou, 8803. “Par li boiz chacié et bersé.” “Berser” is
explained (Roquefort, Glossaire de la Langue Romaine) by “tirer de
l’arc.” On William’s skill with the bow, see Will. Malms. iii. 279.

Footnote 753:

See above, p. 197.

Footnote 754:

On the church of Rye, parts of which may be as old as this time, see
De Caumont, iii. 572.

Footnote 755:

Roman de Rou, 8846;

“Hubert de Rie ert à sa porte,
Entre li mostier et sa mote,
Guillame vit désaturné
E sun cheval tuit tressué.”

Hubert seems to have been an early riser and a good church-goer. The
“mote” is the mound or “agger” (see above, p. 191), whence the name is
sometimes transferred to the castle itself. Thus we find in the Gesta
Com. Andeg. (D’Achery, iii. 257), “Domum munitissimam quæ usque hodie
‘Mota Fulcoii’ a vulgo vocatur.”

Footnote 756:

Ib. 8860 et seqq. I see no reason to doubt the general truth of the
story, but there is a passage in the sequel which sounds mythical.
William’s pursuers presently ask Hubert which way the Bastard is gone,
and he puts them on a wrong scent (vv. 8874). This story is as old as
the babyhood of Hermês.

Footnote 757:

On Eudes see Ellis, Introduction to Domesday, i. 415. Orderic (489 C)
calls him “Normannici Ducis dapiferum, qui in pago Constantino
divitiis et potestate inter Normanniæ proceres eminebat.” The good
character of Eudes comes from the Colchester History of the
Monasticon, iv. 607, which I shall have to refer to again. He married
Roberia, daughter of Richard son of Count Gilbert (Ib. 608).

Footnote 758:

We learn the place of meeting from Orderic (372 A); “Unde coactus
juvenis Dux Pexeium convolavit, ibique pronus ad pedes Henrici Regis
corruit, et ab eo contra malefidos proceres et cognatos auxilium
petivit.” So Roman de Rou, 8942;

“Par pleintes ke Willame fist,
E par paroles ke il dist,
Fist li Reis asembler son ost.”

Other writers are less eager to set forth William’s humiliation.
William of Jumièges (vii. 17) says, “Necessitate coactus Henricum
Francorum Regem expetiit pro subveniendi obtentu.” The Brevis Relatio
(ap. Giles, Scriptt. 3) says simply, “Contulit se ad Regem Franciæ.”
William of Poitiers (81) slurs over William’s application to the King,
and takes no further notice of Henry’s share in the campaign, beyond
adding, after his account of the battle, “Interfuit huic prœlio
Franciæ Rex Henricus, victrici caussæ auxilians.”

Footnote 759:

The original writers of course do not greatly trouble themselves about
the seeming inconsistency of Henry’s conduct. There is perhaps a
slight touch of sarcasm in the words of William of Jumièges (vii. 17),
“_Tunc tandem Rex memor beneficii_ quod a patre ejus sibi quondam
impensum fuerat, vires Francorum simul coëgit.” So William of
Malmesbury knows no motive but pure gratitude (iii. 230); “Necessitas
Regem tutorem excivit ut desperatis partibus pupilli succurreret.
Itaque paternæ benevolentiæ recordatus, quod eum favore suo in regnum
sublimaverat, apud Walesdunas in defectores irruit.” We then find
ourselves in the thick of the battle. Orderic (372 A) seems to make it
an act of simple magnanimity on the King’s part; “At ille [Henricus],
ut erat clemens, desolato adolescenti compatiens, robur exercitûs
Francorum excivit, et in Neustriam Duci auxiliaturus perrexit.”
William, or Orderic, in the death-bed summary (657 E), leaves out the
French aid altogether; “Tunc auxiliante Deo, qui justus judex est,
inter Cadomum et Argentias hostes vici.”

Footnote 760:

Roman de Rou, 8997. “La s’asemblerent li cumunes.” For the list of the
districts which helped William see vv. 8946 et seqq.

Footnote 761:

See Appendix O.

Footnote 762:

My account of the field and battle of Val-ès-dunes is drawn from an
examination made on the spot in May, 1867. In company with Mr. J. R.
Green, I went over the whole ground, Wace in hand. No modern
description can do more than amplify Wace’s few topographical touches
(Roman de Rou, 8978 et seqq.), and his minute and spirited account of
the battle. Every detail shows in how thoroughly honest and careful a
spirit he set to work. On the topography, see De Caumont, Statistique
Monumental du Calvados, ii. 84 et seqq., and Appendix O.

Footnote 763:

I should greatly like to come across some explanation of this puzzling
name (see De Caumont, i. 53). Nothing is more likely than a Teutonic
colony anywhere in these parts, but such a colony would hardly be
called Allemannia. The name is ancient, as it occurs in William’s
foundation charter of Saint Stephen’s. See Neustria Pia, 626. The copy
there is not very accurate, as I can witness from having (for once)
examined an original manuscript.

Footnote 764:

Roman de Rou, 8986;

“Maiz encuntre soleil levant
Se funt la terre en avalant.”

Footnote 765:

Ib. 8982;

“Li plaines sunt lunges è lées,
N’i a granz monz ne granz vallées.”

Footnote 766:

Ib. 8988:

“Une riviere l’avirone,
Deverz midi è devers none.”

Footnote 767:

Roman de Rou, 8990;

“A Saint-Briçun de Valmerei
Fu la messe chanteé el Rei,
Li jor ke la bataille fu;
Grant poor i unt li cler éu.”

Footnote 768:

Ib. 9001.

Footnote 769:

Ib. 9004;

“La gent Willame fu à destre,
E Franceiz furent à senestre;
Verz ocident tornent lor vis,
Quer là sourent les anemis.”

Footnote 770:

Benoît, 33490;

“Or fait son estandart drecier,
La fu l’eigle d’or qui resplent.”

Footnote 771:

Roman de Rou, 9020;

“En sa main chescun un baston.”

Footnote 772:

Roman de Rou, 9012;

“Set vingz chevaliers out od sei
Tant dut aveir en sun cunrei,
Tuit aloent lances levées,
Et en totes guimples fermeés.”

Footnote 773:

Ib. 9042;

“Cil lor aveit ainz asseuré,
Et à Baex sor sainz juré,
Ke Guillame sempres ferreit
En kel lieu il le trovereit.”

One might wish that another oath on the saints at Bayeux could have
found as easy and convenient fulfilment.

Footnote 774:

Ib. 9050;

“Guillame est son natural sire,
Et il sis homs ne puet desdire,
Pensa ke il li fist homage
Véant sun pere et sun barnage;
N’a dreit el fié ne à l’onor,
Ki se cumbat à son seignor.”

The feudal scruple is stronger in the minds of the inferior tenants, a
point worth noticing, whether the tale be trustworthy in detail or
not. This agrees with Wace’s former statement that, even in the
revolted provinces, the popular feeling was on William’s side. The
poor gentleman might need the protection of the common sovereign no
less than the peasant.

Footnote 775:

I wish I could believe, with Thierry (i. 150) and Pluquet (Wace, ii.
32, 528), that this war-cry was an invocation of Thor, “Thor aie,” as
opposed to the “Dex aie” of the French Normans. But I fear we must see
in it nothing more profound or venerable than the lordship of Thury.
See Prevost, Wace, p. 528, and Taylor, 21. Palgrave, iii. 216.

Footnote 776:

Examples of entrapping men to destruction by the literal fulfilment of
an oath are common enough. This opposite case may be compared with
Aurelian’s way of discharging his oath when besieging Thyana; “Canem
in hoc oppido non relinquam.” The city was taken, and the Emperor slew
all the dogs. Vopiscus, Aurelian, 22, 23 (Hist. Aug. ii. 472).

Footnote 777:

Arrian, vi. 11. 9. Ἀλλὰ πρὸς Γρανίκῳ μὲν ξυνέβη μαχὴ ἱππική. iv. 8.
11. ἡ ἱππομαχία ἡ ἐπὶ Γρανίκῳ.

Footnote 778:

Roman de Rou, 9074;

“Willame va par la campaigne;
Des Normanz meine grant compaigne,
Li dui Viscuntes vait quérant,
E li perjures demandant.”

Footnote 779:

Ib. 9094;

“Cil de France crient, _Montjoie_;
Ceo lor est bel ke l’en les oie;
Willame cri, _Dex aie_;
C’est l’enseigne de Normendie.”

Footnote 780:

See Taylor, 22.

Footnote 781:

See vol. i. p. 244. Wace seems rather to delight in opposing his own
province to the French. 9108;

“El Rei de France et as Franceiz
Si vint ensemb Costentineiz.”

So 9128;

“Constentineiz è Franceiz sunt
Li uns as altres contrestunt.”

Footnote 782:

Roman de Rou, 9144;

“De ço distrent li païsant,
E dient encore en gabant:
_De Costentin iessi la lance
Ki abati le Rei de France_.”

I have found the rhyme remembered in a Norman cottage, close by the
field of Val-ès-dunes.

Footnote 783:

See vol. i. p. 425. But William’s overthrow was real, though his death
was imaginary; in the case of Eadmund all was an invention of Eadric.
But the effect on the army would be the same in all three cases.

Footnote 784:

The narrative in the Roman de Rou (9134–9207) clearly implies that
Henry was overthrown twice, first by a nameless knight of the
Côtentin, secondly by Hamon himself. At the same time there certainly
is, as Mr. Taylor (p. 25) says, a certain confusion in the way of
telling the story, and one might be tempted to believe that the one
overthrow was a mere repetition of the other. But each story seems to
receive a certain amount of corroborative evidence. The first
overthrow is supported by the Côtentin rhyme, the second by the
independent testimony of William of Malmesbury (iii. 230); “Haimo in
acie cæsus, cujus insignis violentia laudatur, quod ipsum Regem equo
dejecerit; quare a concurrentibus stipatoribus interemtus.”

Footnote 785:

Roman de Rou, 9199. “Mez sor l’escu fu mort levé.”

Footnote 786:

Will. Malms. u. s. “Pro fortitudinis miraculo Regis jussu tumulatus
est egregiè.” Wace (9200) mentions the place. He is buried “devant
l’iglise,” seemingly not _in_ the church.

Footnote 787:

Roman de Rou, 9258;

“Néel se cumbati cum pros;
Si tiex les trovast li Reis tos,
Mar i fussent Franceiz venuz,
Descunfiz fussent è veincuz.”

So again, 9280;

“Mais ço sai ke li Reis veinki.”

Footnote 788:

Ib. 9173;

“E Franceiz Normanz envaïr,
E Normanz torner è guenchir.

So 9266;

“Franceiz de tutes parz espeissent,
Normanz décheient è décreissent.”

We must remember that all the local feelings of Wace, a native of
Jersey and Canon of Bayeux, would be on the side of the rebels,
however much they might be balanced by loyalty to the memory of the
great William.

Footnote 789:

Benoît, 33, 660;

“Hardrez uns chevalier hardiz,
De Baiues nez e norriz,
Preissiez d’armes e concuz.”

Footnote 790:

The anatomical precision of Wace (9222) is quite in the style of the
Iliad;

“Willame verz li s’eslessa,
Un glaive tint, bien l’avisa;
Parmi li cors lez le menton,
Entre la gorge et le gotron,
Li fist passer le fer trenchant;
Ne li pout rien aveir garant,
Willame empoint è cil chaï,
Li cors envers, l’alme en issi.”

These are spirited lines; so is the whole description of the battle;
yet how feebly does the Romance of Gaul, even in this its earliest and
most vigorous shape, sound beside the native ring of the Ludwigslied
and the Song of Maldon.

Footnote 791:

Roman de Rou, 9249. “La bataille mult li desplait.”

I suppose this means something more than mere sorrow at ill success;
it seems to imply the loss of the “certaminis gaudia,” which he had
doubtless enjoyed in the opening charge of the battle. Through the
whole of this paragraph I do little more than translate the life-like
description of Wace.

Footnote 792:

Roman de Rou, 9254;

“Lessa la lance è puiz l’escu,
Fuiant s’en vait, _col estendu_.”

Footnote 793:

Ib. 9288. “En Béessin volent torner.”

Footnote 794:

Roman de Rou, 9295–8. The Orne plays an important part in the
destruction of the rebels in most of the accounts. Will. Pict. 81.
“Absorbuit non paucos fluvius Olna equites cum equis.” Will. Gem. vii.
17. “Rex cum Duce ... tantâ eos illicò strage delevit, ut quos gladius
non extinxit, Deo formidinem inferente, fugientes fluvius Olnæ
absorberet.” Will. Malms. iii. 230. “Multi fluminis Olnæ rapacitate
intercepti, quod, in arcto locati, equos ad transvadandos vortices
instimularent.”

Footnote 795:

Ord. Vit. 657 B. “Guidonem vulneratum et de bello fugâ elapsum.”

Footnote 796:

The only writer, I think, who introduces Guy personally in his account
of the war is William of Malmesbury (u. s.); “Cum his per totam
Normanniam grassabatur prædo improbissimus, inani spe ad comitatum
illectus.”

Footnote 797:

“E prœlio lapsus,” says William of Jumièges; “vix elapsus,” according
to William of Malmesbury; while, in William of Poitiers, it rises to
“turpissimè elapsus.”

Footnote 798:

“Cum magno equitatu,” says William of Poitiers (81).

Footnote 799:

The description given by William of Poitiers (u. s.) is remarkable;
“Brionium ... contendit. Oppidum hoc, quum loci naturâ, tum opere
inexpugnabile videbatur. Nam, præter alia firmamenta, quæ moliri
consuevit belli necessitudo, aulam habet lapideam arcis usum
pugnantibus præbentem, quam fluvius Risela nullo quidem tractu vadi
impatiens circumfluit.” This seems to show that the town had
fortifications of its own; and this again suggests the question, what
was the state of the point overhanging the town where the present
castle stands? The “aula lapidea” is a singular expression, seeming,
together with the words which follow, to imply something different
from the ordinary donjon, though capable of being put to purposes of
defence,—a crenellated house, as it might have been called in later
days. “Lapidea,” because an “aula” would doubtless be often of wood,
while “arces” were of stone.

Footnote 800:

See above, p. 206.

Footnote 801:

Will. Pict. u. s. “Castella utrimque ad ripas fluminis bipartiti
opponens.” So Will. Gem. “Stabilitis munitionibus in utrâque parte
fluminis vocabulo Risle.”

Footnote 802:

Will. Pict. 81. “Oppugnatione diurnâ territans.”

Footnote 803:

William of Poitiers merely says “postremò.” Orderic (687 B), in
describing the speedy capture of Brionne by Duke Robert in 1090, says,
“Sic Robertus Dux ab horâ nonâ Brionnam ante solis occasum obtinuit,
quam Guillelmus pater ejus, cum auxilio Henrici Francorum Regis, sibi
_vix in tribus annis_ subigere potuit, dum Guido filius Rainaldi
Burgundionis post prœlium Vallisdunensis illic præsidium sibi
statuit.” But there is nothing in any other writer to imply that Guy
held out for any such length of time, and it seems quite inconsistent
with the account of William of Jumièges. Moreover it is clear that
Henry took no part in the siege; “Quem [Guidonem] Dux, Rege Franciam
repetente, propere insequutus,” &c. (Will. Gem. vii. 17.)

Footnote 804:

Will. Pict. u. s. “Motus Dux consanguinitate, supplicitate, miseriâ
victi, non acerbiùs vindicavit. Recepto castro, in curiâ suâ commanere
eum concessit.” So Will. Gem. u. s.; “Dux, suorum consultu, miseriæ
misertus, clementer illi pepercit, et, recepto castello Brioci, cum
suis domesticis eum manere in domo suâ jussit.”

Footnote 805:

Will. Pict. u. s. “Supplicia item consociis, quæ capitalia ex æquo
irrogarentur, condonare maluit ob rationabiles caussas.” This distinct
statement cannot be shaken by the vastly inferior authority of Henry
of Huntingdon (M. H. B. p. 759 C), who says, “Quosdam exsulavit,
quosdam corpore minuit.”

Footnote 806:

See above, pp. 192–197, and compare the whole career of Eadric.

Footnote 807:

Compare the remarks of Palgrave, iii. 78.

Footnote 808:

William of Poitiers, speaking of a somewhat later stage of his life,
has the words (p. 93), “More suo illo optimo, rem optans absque cruore
confectum iri;” and he continues at length (94); “Monet equidem digna
ratio et hoc memoriæ prodere, quàm piâ continentiâ cædem semper
vitaverit, nisi bellicâ vi aut aliâ gravi necessitudine urgente.
Exsilio, carcere, _item aliâ animadversione quæ vitam non adimeret_,
ulcisci malebat: quos juxta ritum sive legum instituta cæteri
principes gladio absumunt, bello captos vel domi criminum capitalium
manifestos.” The words in Italics are clearly an euphemism for
mutilation, as we shall see by his conduct at Alençon. So the Abingdon
Chronicler (1076), speaking of his worst doings, tells us; “Sume hi
wurdon geblende, and sume wrecen of lande, and sume getawod to scande.
Þus wurdon þæs kyninges swican genyðerade.” Here is no mention of
capital punishment, save in the case of Waltheof only.

Footnote 809:

Will. Pict. 82. “Dein ad jussum ejus festinanter ac funditùs
destruxere munitiones novarum rerum studio constructas.” Will. Gem.
vii. 17. “Conspicientes itaque cuncti optimates qui deviârant à Ducis
fidelitate illum omne præsidium fugæ partìm destruxisse, partìm
interclusisse, datis obsidibus, rigida colla ei ut domino suo
subdidere. Sic castellis ubique eversis, nullus ultra ausus est contra
eum rebellem animum detegere.”

Footnote 810:

Will. Pict. u. s. “Nigellum _alio tempore_ [I do not understand this],
quoniam improbè offensabat, exsilio punitum fuisse comperio.” Wace
(9311) gives the place of his exile;

“Néel ne se pout acorder,
Ne el païz n’osa cunverser,
En Bretaigne fu lungement,
Ainz ke il fist acordement.”

Notwithstanding Wace’s “_lungement_,” he must have been restored in
the next year, when we find him consenting to certain grants to the
Abbey of Marmoutier which the Duke had made out of his estates in
Guernsey (insula quæ appellatur Grenesodium) during his banishment.
See the Charters in Delisle, Preuves, 21–25. By some evident slip of
dictation or copying, Neel is made in Palgrave, iii. 217, to defend
himself at Brionne instead of Guy. He died in 1092. Delisle, p. 24.

Footnote 811:

Will. Pict. u. s. “Guido in Burgundiam sponte rediit propter molestiam
probri. Ferre apud Normannos pigebat vilem se cunctis, odiosum esse
multis.”

Footnote 812:

Will. Pict. 82. Will. Malms. iii. 230. Mr. Thomas Roscoe, on the other
hand (History of William the Conqueror, p. 61), tells us that “at a
subsequent period he highly distinguished himself in the service of
the duke, and headed a large body of veteran troops at the famous
battle of Hastings.”

Footnote 813:

Roman de Rou, 9346;

“Se il le prist, il out raisun,
Kar il l’eust par traïsun,
Ce dist, à Valuignes murdri,
Quant un fol Golet l’en garni.”

Footnote 814:

Ib. 9362;

“A Baieues fu lors otréiée,
Quant l’iglise fu dediée,
De la terre Grimout partie
A Madame Sainte Marie,
Partie fu ki ke l’en die
Mise à chescun en l’abéie.”

See Pluquet and Taylor’s notes. The “abéie” must mean the cathedral
church, but it was a great sacrifice to the rhyme for one of its
canons to speak of it as an abbey. The grant of Plessis and other
possessions “Grimoldi perfidi” to Odo and his successors in the see of
Bayeux will be found in Gallia Christiana, xi. 64.

Footnote 815:

Will. Pict. 82. “Normanni superati semel universi colla subdidere
domino suo, atque obsides dedere plurimi.”

Footnote 816:

Ib. 113. “Ejus animadversione et legibus è Normanniâ sunt exterminati
latrones, homicidæ, malefici.... Caussam viduæ, inopis, pupilli, ipse
humiliter audiebat, misericorditer agebat, rectissimè definiebat. Ejus
æquitate reprimente iniquam cupiditatem vicini minùs valentis aut
limitem agri movere aut rem ullam usurpare, nec potens audebat
quisquam nec familiaris. Villæ, castra, urbes, jura per eum habebant
stabilia et bona.”

Footnote 817:

The dependence of Anjou on the Duchy of France is acknowledged in a
charter of Geoffrey Grisegonelle quoted in the _Art de Verifier les
Dates_, ii. 833. He calls himself “Gratiâ Dei, et Senioris Hugonis
largitione, Andegavensis Comes.”

Footnote 818:

On the Saxon occupation of Anjou, see Greg. Tur. ii. 18. Hist. Franc.
Epit. 1, 2.

Footnote 819:

On the Saxons of Seez, the _Saxones Diablintes_, see Stapleton, i.
xliii.

Footnote 820:

The history of the Counts of Anjou is given at length, but mixed up
with much legendary matter in the early parts, in the “Gesta Consulum
Andegavensium,” by an author of the time of Henry the Second, printed
in D’Achery’s Spicilegium, iii. 234. It is introduced by a most
curious fragment, namely a short Angevin history written or dictated
by Count Fulk, nephew and successor of Geoffrey Martel. A lay
historian is a phænomenon which we have not come across since the time
of our own Æthelweard, and it is not to be denied that the Count shows
much sounder sense, and a much nearer approach to historical
criticism, than the monk of Marmoutier. He had at least one advantage
in his princely rank, that he had nothing to gain by flattering his
own forefathers.

Footnote 821:

Gest. Cons. 235. “Datus est ei et dimidius comitatus Andegavis
civitatis ad defendendam regionem et urbem, sævisque prædonibus
oppositus est, et Comes ibi factus.” So in the fuller account in p.
239, which adds, “quia ultrà Meduanam in Andegavo alter Comes
habebatur.” The “sævi prædones” are explained to be Northmen and
Bretons.

Footnote 822:

The authors of the Art de Verifier les Dates (ii. 828), as also Sir F.
Palgrave (i. 502), place the enfeoffment of Ingelgar under Charles the
Bald in the year 870. But the story in the Gesta Consulum (238 et
seqq.) seems to make the reigning King to be Lewis the Stammerer.
Count Fulk himself (233) describes the benefactor of his ancestor as
“Rex Franciæ, non à genere _impii Philippi_, sed à prole Caroli
Calvi.” Fulk had excellent reasons for the epithet bestowed on Philip.
See Will. Malms. iii. 257.

Footnote 823:

Gest. Cons. 237. “Fuit vir quidam de Armoricâ Galliâ, nomine
Torquatius, genus cujus olim ab Armoricâ jussu Maximi Imperatoris à
Britonibus expulsum est. Iste à Britonibus, proprietatem vetusti ac
Romani nominis ignorantibus, corrupto vocabulo Tortulfus dictus fuit.”
We may be pretty sure that Tortulf, or something like it, of which his
son’s name Tertullus seems another and happier Latinization, was the
true name. Charles made Torquatius a forester, “illius forestæ quæ
Nidus-meruli nuncupatur.” The writer goes on to talk about Senators
and Emperors taken from the plough.

Footnote 824:

Gest. Cons. ib.

Footnote 825:

See vol. i. pp. 277, 278. The author of the Gesta Consulum becomes
eloquent on this head (p. 237); “Tempore enim Caroli Calvi complures
novi atque ignobiles, bono et honesto nobilibus potiores, clari et
magni effecti sunt. Quos enim appetentes gloriæ militaris
conspiciebat, periculis objectare et per eos fortunam temperare non
dubitabat. Erant enim illis diebus homines veteris prosapiæ
multarumque imaginum, qui acta majorum suorum, non sua, ostentabant;
qui quum ad aliquod grave officium mittebantur, aliquem è populo
monitorem sui officii sumebant, quibus quum Rex aliis imperare
jussisset, ipsi sibi alium imperatorem poscebant. Ideo ex illo globo
paucos secum Rex Carolus habebat; novis militaria dona et hæreditates
pluribus laboribus et periculis acquisitas benignè præbebat. Ex quo
genere fuit iste Tertullus, à quo Andegavorum Consulum progenies
sumpsit exordium.” See Palgrave, i. 404, 500–502; cf. ii. 11.

Footnote 826:

Gest. Cons. 239. “Alodium enim cognationis eorum erat Ambazium villa.”

Footnote 827:

Count Fulk (p. 233) says, with much good sense, “Quorum quatuor
Consulum virtutes et acta, quia nobis in tantum de longinquo sunt, ut
etiam loca ubi corpora eorum jacent nobis incognita sunt, dignè
memorare non possumus.” Ingelgar, in the legend (p. 239), slays the
accuser of a slandered lady—in this case his own godmother and
benefactress—much in the style of the ballad of Sir Aldingar or of the
story of Queen Gunhild.

Footnote 828:

Gest. Cons. 235 (so 244). “Integrum comitatum, qui priùs bipertitus
erat, recepit.” The Breton story (Chron. Briocense, ap. Morice,
Memoires pour servir de Preuves à l’Histoire de Bretagne, pp. 29, 30)
makes him—“vir maledictus et diabolicus”—marry the widow of the Breton
prince Alan, and procure the death of her son Drogo.

Footnote 829:

See the story of Fulk and King Lewis From-beyond-Sea in the Gesta, p.
245. The proverb was a favourite with our Henry the First, and was at
least approved by the Great William. See Will. Malms. v. 390.

Footnote 830:

“Grisa gonella” = “grisa tunica.” Gest. Cons. 246, 247.

Footnote 831:

See Appendix P.

Footnote 832:

Count Maurice, who, in the Gesta (249), comes between Geoffrey
Grisegonelle and Fulk Nerra, finds no place in the list given by Fulk
Rechin, and is rejected by the authors of the Art de Verifier les
Dates.

Footnote 833:

See Appendix P.

Footnote 834:

See vol. i. p. 520.

Footnote 835:

According to R. Glaber (iii. 2), he sent assassins, who murdered Hugh,
the courtier in question, before the King’s eyes. The murder is done,
according to good English precedent, at a hunting-party, which perhaps
makes the story a little suspicious. See vol. i. p. 366.

Footnote 836:

Fulk founded a monastery near Loches, in honour of the Cherubim and
Seraphim, and applied to Hugh, Archbishop of Tours, to consecrate the
church. The Primate refused, unless Fulk restored some alienated
possessions of his see. Fulk then went to Rome with well stored
moneybags, by the help of which he persuaded Pope John—which of all
the Johns contemporary with Fulk we are not told—to send a Cardinal to
consecrate it. The Bishops of Gaul were horrified at this invasion of
their rights, and divine vengeance showed itself by the church being
blown down on the night following its consecration. R. Glaber, ii. 4,
copied in the Gesta Consulum, 251. Rudolf takes this opportunity to
set forth his theory of the Papal authority, which is well worth
studying, and which breathes in its fulness the spirit of the later
Gallican liberties. The Bishop of Rome is the first of Bishops, but he
may not interfere with the diocesan jurisdiction of any of his
brethren.

Footnote 837:

On Fulk’s pilgrimage, see Fulc. Rech. p. 233. Gest. Consul. 252. Will.
Malms. iii. 235. The Chronicler of Saint Maxentius makes him die, “ut
dicitur,” on pilgrimage in 1032.

Footnote 838:

See at length Will. Malms. u. s.

Footnote 839:

See Art de Verifier les Dates, ii. 838.

Footnote 840:

Fulk, p. 233. “Propter quæ omnia bella, et propter magnanimitatem quam
ibi exercebat, merito Martellus nominatus est, quasi suos conterens
hostes.” William of Malmesbury (iii. 231) calls him “Gaufredus
cognomento Martellus, quod ipse sibi usurpaverat, quia videbatur sibi
felicitate quâdam omnes obsistentes contundere.” Another account makes
the name derived from the trade of Geoffrey’s foster-father, a
blacksmith, something like Donald of the Hammer in Scottish story.

Footnote 841:

On the whole story, see Appendix Q.

Footnote 842:

See the Chronicle in Duchèsne, Rer. Franc. Scriptt. iv. 97.

Footnote 843:

See above, p. 97.

Footnote 844:

See Appendix P.

Footnote 845:

See Appendix N.

Footnote 846:

Fulk (p. 233) describes the cession made by Theobald to Geoffrey, and
adds, “Pars autem alia Turonici pagi sibi contigerât possessione
paternâ.” We have seen that the Counts of Anjou held Amboise and
Loches.

Footnote 847:

This grant is distinctly asserted, not only by Fulk (u. s.), “Ex
voluntate Regis Henrici accepit donum Turonicæ civitatis ab ipso
Rege,” but also by R. Glaber (v. 2), followed by Gesta Cons. 256,
“Contigit ut ... Rex, ablato ab iisdem dominio Turonicæ urbis, daret
illud Gozfredo cognomento Tuditi, filio scilicet Fulconis jam dicti
Andegavorum comitis.” The Norman writers of course know nothing of all
this, and make Geoffrey an unprovoked aggressor.

Footnote 848:

R. Glaber (v. 2) describes Geoffrey’s victory and the captivity of
Theobald, and adds, “Nulli dubium est, beato Martino auxiliante, qui
illum piè invocaverat, suorum inimicorum victorem exstitisse.”

Footnote 849:

On the captivity of Theobald, see Fulk, p. 233. Gesta Cons. (largely
after R. Glaber), 256. Chronn. Andd. a. 1044, ap. Labbe, i. 276, 287.
Will. Pict. 86. Will. Gem. vii. 18. Will. Malms. iii. 231. R. Glaber
is also followed by Hugo Flav. (Labbe, i. 186. Pertz, viii. 403).

Footnote 850:

Will. Pict. 82. “Vicissitudinem post hæc ipse Regi fide studiosissimâ
reddidit, rogatus ab eo auxilium contra quosdam inimicissimos ei atque
potentissimos ad officiendum.” This writer is very confused in his
chronology of the war, placing the details about Domfront and Alençon
at a long distance from this passage which seems to record the
beginning of hostilities.

Footnote 851:

Ib. “Cernebant Francigenæ, quod invidia non cerni vellet, exercitum
deductum è Normanniâ solâ regio majorem, omnique collegio, quantum
adduxerant vel miserant Comites plurimi.”

Footnote 852:

Ib. 83. “Rex ei quam libenter proponebat consultanda, et maxima quæque
ad ejus gerebat sententiam, anteponens in perspicientiâ consulti
melioris eum omnibus.”

Footnote 853:

Ib. “Unicum id redarguebat, quod nimiùm periculis objectabat se, ac
plerumque pugnam quæritabat, decurrens palam cum denis aut
paucioribus. Normannos etiam primates obsecrabat, ne committi prœlium
vel levissimum ante municipium aliquod paterentur; metuens videlicet
occasurum virtutem ostentando, in quo regni sui præsidium firmissimum
et ornamentum splendidissimum reponebat.”

Footnote 854:

William of Poitiers’ theory of William’s rashness (83) is not very
clear; “Cæterum quæ velut immoderatam fortitudinis ostentationem
multoperè dissuadebat Rex atque castigabat, ea nos fervidæ atque
animosæ _ætati_ aut _officio_ adscribimus.”

Footnote 855:

See vol. i. p. 200.

Footnote 856:

Gesta Dom. Ambasiens. ap. D’Achery, iii. 273. “Quidam Comes pernimium
juvenis Herbertus, cognomento _Evigilans Canem_.” See Palgrave, iii.
240.

Footnote 857:

One might fancy from the words of William of Jumièges (vii. 18),
“Cœpit Normanniam rapinis vehementer demoliri, intra Danfrontis
castrum seditiosis custodibus immissis,” that Domfront was now Norman.
But it is clear from William of Poitiers (86) that it was, as a town
of Maine, in Geoffrey’s possession at the beginning of the war;
“Willelmus ... adibat cum exercitu terram Andegavensem, ut reddens
talionem primo abalienaret Gaufredo Damfrontum, post reciperit
Alentium.” So William of Malmesbury (iii. 231), “Damfruntum, quod erat
tunc comitis Andegavorum, obsidione coronavit.” So also Roman de Rou,
9382;

“Alençon ert de Normendie
E Danfronz del Maine partie.”

Footnote 858:

Will. Pict. 89. “Perhibent homines antiquioris memoriæ, castra hæc
ambo Comitis Ricardi concessu esse fundata, unum intra alterum,
proximè fines Normanniæ.”

Footnote 859:

See above, p. 186. So William of Malmesbury (iii. 231), “Pronis in
perfidiam habitatoribus.”

Footnote 860:

Will. Pict. 87. “Deferre haudquaquam volebant dominum sub quo licenter
quæstum latrociniis contraherint: quali caussâ fuerant seducti
inhabitantes Alentium.” He then goes on with one of his panegyrics on
William’s stern justice.

Footnote 861:

Ib. 86. “Inhabitatores ad se pronos reppererat.”

Footnote 862:

Ib. 87. “Ubi approximabatur Danfronto, cum equitibus divertit
quinquaginta, _acceptum quæ stippendium augerent_.” But this curious
euphemism for what one would have thought in those days hardly needed
apology is explained in the next sentence, “_Prædæ_ autem index
castellanis prodidit ipsum quidam ex Normannis majoribus, intimans quò
aut cur ierit, et quàm paucis comitatus, atque hunc esse qui mortem
fugæ præferret.”

Footnote 863:

Will. Pict. 87. “Captum suis unum manibus retinuit.”

Footnote 864:

Compare, on the chances of treason near William’s person, those
remarkable expressions of William of Jumièges (vii. 4) which have been
already quoted in p. 200.

Footnote 865:

Will. Pict. 87. “Celerem irruptionem situs oppidi denegabat omni
robori sive peritiæ; quum scopulorum asperitas pedites etiam
deturbaret, præter qui angustis itineribus duobus atque arduis
accederent.” There is here something of the Norman trust in cavalry;
there is a feeling as if a place where horsemen were of no use had
some unfairness about it.

Footnote 866:

Ib. “Castella circumponit quatuor.”

Footnote 867:

Will. Pict. 87. “Aliquando perdius et pernox equitans, vel in abditis
occultus explorat, si qui offendantur aut commeatum advectantes, aut
in legatione directi, aut pabulatoribus suis insidiantes.”

Footnote 868:

Ib. “Est regio illa silvis abundans ferarum feracissimis. _Sæpe
falconum, sæpissimè accipitrum_ volatu oblectatur.” The distinction
between the use of falcons and that of hawks—did William stoop to the
sparrow-hawk?—is worth the notice of those who are versed in the
minuter technicalities of animal torture.

Footnote 869:

Ib. “Non loci difficultas, aut sævitia hiemis,” &c.

Footnote 870:

See above, pp, 185, 196.

Footnote 871:

See above, p. 198.

Footnote 872:

Will. Pict. 88. “Præsignat qualem in prœlio equum sit habiturus, quale
scutum, qualem vestitum.” The device on the shield was therefore still
left to the fancy of the wearer. Had the Counts of Anjou already
possessed hereditary armorial bearings, the Normans could hardly have
needed to be told what kind of shield Geoffrey would carry.

Footnote 873:

Ib. “Illi contra opus non esse respondent instituto eum itinere
longiùs fatigari. Nam continuò propter quem vadit adfore. Equum
vicissim domini sui præsignant, vestitum, et arma.” Here, it may be
remarked, is no special mention of the shield; it comes under the
general head of “arma.”

It is almost profanation to compare warfare of this sort with the
patriot struggle at Maldon, yet there is in all this something
analogous to Brihtnoth’s over-chivalry in allowing the Northmen to
cross the river. See vol. i. p. 300. But Brihtnoth may after all have
had a reason for his conduct. Cf. Herod. v. 118.

Footnote 874:

The reason given by William of Poitiers (u. s.) for the Duke’s special
zeal is one of the most amazing things that I ever came across.
“Omnium acerrimus ipse Dux inurget accelerantes. Tyrannum fortasse
absumi desiderabat adolescens piissimus; quod ex omnibus præclaris
factis pulcerrimum judicavit Senatus Latinus et Atheniensis.” The
instances of Tyrannicide collected by Jean Petit (see Hist. Fed. Gov.
i. 383) are strange enough, but the idea of William gaining the
honours of a Timoleôn by slaying Geoffrey in battle beats them all.

Footnote 875:

Will. Pict. u. s. “Subitaneo tenore consternatus Gaufredus, adversâ
acie necdum conspectâ, profugio salutem suam cum agmine toto
committit.” Wace (9601) makes him make a little show of preparation
for battle, but he presently yields to the wiser advice of a knight
who counsels flight. Wace (9527–9628) puts this whole story later,
after the taking of Alençon. He adds a third to the two messengers in
William of Poitiers, namely William Fitz-Thierry (9539).

Footnote 876:

Will. Pict. 88. “Novit esse prudentium victoriæ temperare, atque non
satis potentem esse qui semet in potestate ulsciscendi continere non
possit.” William of Jumièges (vii. 18) adds another reason; “Ecce
adsunt exploratores, Alencium castrum absque suorum detrimento eum
capere posse nuntiantes.” This is his first mention of Alençon.

Footnote 877:

Roman de Rou, 9436 et seqq.

Footnote 878:

Will. Gem. u. s. “Totâ nocte equitans diluculo Alencium venit.”

Footnote 879:

William of Jumièges (u. s.) merely says, “In quodam municipio trans
flumen posito.” Wace is much fuller (9440 et seqq.);

“Alençon est sor Sartre asiz,
Iloec devize le païz;
Normanz sunt devers li chastel,
Et ultre l’ewe sunt Mansel.”

He then goes on to describe the bridge and its defences.

Footnote 880:

Will. Gem. vii. 18. “Pelles enim et renones ad injuriam Ducis
verberaverant, ipsumque pelliciarium despectivè vocitaverant, eò quod
parentes matris ejus pelliciarii exstiterant.” So Wace, 9458;

“Willeame unt asez convicié;
Plusurs feiz li unt hucié;
_La pel, la pel al parmentier_,
Pur ceo ke à Faleize fu nez,
U peletiers aveit asez;
Li unt cel mestier reprocé,
E par cuntraire è par vilté.”

Wace seems to wish to evade the Duke’s actual kindred with the
professors of the unsavoury craft.

Footnote 881:

Annales Angliæ et Scotiæ, ap. Riley, Rishanger, p. 373. The words
were,

“Kyng Edward, wanne þu havest Berwic, pike þe,
Wanne þu havest geten, dike þe.”

Cf. Peter Langtoft, ii. 272. Hearne. Compare William’s indignation at
the insults offered to him at Exeter (Will. Malms. iii. 248), though
he seems to have been in a much less savage mood there than that at
Alençon. Compare also the indignation of James the Second, at the
indignities offered to him by the fishermen (Macaulay, i. 569), and
that of William the Third at Sir John Fenwick’s impertinence to the
Queen (Ib. iv. 34).

Footnote 882:

Roman de Rou, 9466;

“Jura par la resplendor Dé,
Co ert suvent sun serement.”

Footnote 883:

This very expressive formula comes from Wace, 9468;

“S’il pot cels prendre, malement
Lur sera cel dit achaté:
Des membres serunt _esmundé_.
Ne porterunt ne pié ne puing,
Ne ne verrunt ne preus ne luing.”

Footnote 884:

Roman de Rou, 9477.

Footnote 885:

Will. Gem. vii. 18. “Illusores verò, coram omnibus infra Alencium
consistentibus, manibus privari jussit et pedibus. Nec mora, sicut
jusserat, triginta duo debilitati sunt.” So Roman de Rou, 9489 et
seqq. William of Poitiers is silent altogether both as to the
vengeance and as to the insult. Neither subject was perhaps altogether
agreeable to a professed panegyrist. But William cuts the whole story
of Alençon very short.

Footnote 886:

Roman de Rou, 9493;

“El chastel fist li piés geter
Por cels dedenz espoanter.”

Footnote 887:

Will. Gem. vii. 18. “Custodes autem castelli tam severam austeritatem
Ducis cognoscentes timuerunt, et ne similia paterentur, ilicò portas
aperuerunt, Ducique castellum reddiderunt, malentes illud reddere quàm
cum suorum periculo membrorum tam gravia tormenta tolerare.” Wace
(9500) makes the terms

“Quitement aler s’en porreient;
Salvs lur membres è salvs lur cors.”

So William of Malmesbury (iii. 231); “Alentini se dedidere, pacti
membrorum salutem.” But he had not mentioned the mutilation.

Footnote 888:

Will. Pict. 89. “Oppidum enim naturâ, opere, atque armaturâ
munitissimum adeò currente proventu in ejus manum venit ut gloriari
his verbis liceret, Veni, Vidi, Vici.”

Footnote 889:

Will. Pict. 89. “Percutit citissimè hic rumor Danfrontinos.
Diffidentes itaque alius clipeo se liberandos post fugam famosissimi
bellatoris Gaufredi Martelli,” &c.

Footnote 890:

Roman de Rou, 9624.

Footnote 891:

Ib. 9625;

“E li Dus fist sun gonfanon
Lever è porter el dangon.”

Footnote 892:

Will. Gem. vii. 18. Roman de Rou, 9631.

Footnote 893:

This Moretolium or Moretonium must be carefully distinguished from
Mauritania, Moretonia, or Mortagne-en-Perche, in the Diocese of Seez.

Footnote 894:

William of Jumièges (vii. 19) merely calls him “Willelmus cognomento
Werlencus, de stirpe Richardi Magni.” Orderic (660 B) calls him
“Guillelmum cognomento Werlengum, Moritolii Comitem, filium Malgerii
Comitis,” and Malger appears as an uncle of Duke Robert in Will. Gem.
vi. 7.

Footnote 895:

Will. Gem. u. s. “Quidam tiro de familiâ suâ nomine Robertus Bigot.”
The name Bigod or Bigot, which we have already seen (see above, p.
201) applied as a term of contempt for the Normans, has been connected
with Rolf’s “English” (see vol. i. p. 191) oath, “Ne se bigoth.”
Chron. Tur. ap. Duchèsne, iii. 360.

Footnote 896:

For the famous dialogue between Edward the First and the Earl Marshal
Roger Bigod, see Walter of Hemingburgh, ii. 121 (ed. Hamilton). Could
we suppose that either King or Earl _spoke_ English (doubtless both
_understood_ it), one might see in the King’s oath (“Per Deum, Comes,
aut ibis aut pendebis”) and the Earl’s retort (“Per idem juramentum, O
Rex, nec ibo nec pendebo”) an allusion to the punning derivation of
the name Bigod just mentioned.

Footnote 897:

See above, p. 205.

Footnote 898:

Will. Gem. vii. 19. “Per Richardum Abrincatensem cognatum suum
familiaritatem Ducis consequutus est.”

Footnote 899:

Ib. “Seditiosis tumultibus Normanniam perturbare decrevisti, et contra
me rebellans me nequiter exhæredare disposuisti, ideoque rapacitatis
tempus egeno militi promisisti. Sed nobiscum, cum dono Creatoris, ut
indigemus, maneat pax perennis.”

Footnote 900:

Will. Gem. vii. 19. “Sic tumidos sui patris parentes asperè
prostravit, humilesque matris suæ propinquos honorabiliter exaltavit.”

Footnote 901:

The whole story is highly coloured by Sir F. Palgrave, iii. 224.
William of Mortain may very likely have been guilty, but the evidence
was very weak.

Footnote 902:

Will. Gem. u. s. “Nec negare potuit, neque intentionem dicti declarare
præsumpsit.”

Footnote 903:

Ord. Vit. 534 B. “Ipse Guillelmum Guarlengum Moritolii Comitem pro uno
verbo exhæredavit et de Neustriâ penitus effugavit.” This comes in the
speech at the famous bride-ale of 1076, but the historian afterwards
says in his own person (660 B), “Guillelmum cognomento Werlengum ...
pro minimis occasionibus de Neustriâ propulsaverat.”

Footnote 904:

The grand old Teutonic name of Machthild had by this time become in
Latin Mathildis, and in French mouths and in the mouths of Englishmen
pronouncing French names, it became Mahtild, Mahault, Molde, Maud, and
so forth. The name is familiar to students of Saxon history, and to
the students, if there be any, of our own Æthelweard.

Footnote 905:

Concilia, ed. Labbe and Coss. ix. 1092. Stapleton, Arch. Journal, iii.
20. “Interdixit etiam Balduino Comiti Flandrensi ne filiam suam
Wilielmo Nortmanno nuptui daret, et illi ne eam acciperet.” On this
Council, see above, p. 112.

Footnote 906:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “Ða sone com Willelm Eorl fram geondan sǽ, mid
mycclum werode Frenciscra manna; and se cyning hine underfeng, and swa
feola his geferan swa him to onhagode, and let hine eft ongean.” See
also Roman de Rou, 10539 et seqq., where however the journey is put
much too late.

Footnote 907:

Flor. Wig. 1051. “His gestis Nortmannicus Comes Willelmus cum
multitudine Nortmannorum Angliam venit, quem Rex Eadwardus et socios
ejus honorificè suscepit, et magnis multisque donatum muneribus ad
Nortmanniam remisit.” Roman de Rou, 10548;

“Et Ewart forment l’énora;
Mult li dona chiens è oisels
El altres aveir boens è bels.
E kanke il trover poeit
Ki à haut hom cunveneit.”

Footnote 908:

According to modern laws of succession, the _heir_ of Eadward was
undoubtedly Walter of Mantes, the son of his sister Godgifu, and elder
brother of Ralph of Hereford. The Ætheling Eadward, it must always be
remembered, was not, according to our notions, the heir of the King,
but the King was the heir of the Ætheling. But, as female descent had
never been recognized, one can hardly suppose that the children of
Godgifu were looked on as Æthelings, or as at all entitled to any
preference in disposing of the Crown. I am therefore justified in
saying that Eadward had neither apparent nor presumptive heir. This is
a principle to which I shall have to refer again.

Footnote 909:

See the Abingdon and Worcester Chronicles, and Florence of Worcester,
under 1066.

Footnote 910:

Namely Wace, quoted above, p. 295. He must have got his account from
an English source.

Footnote 911:

When we come to Florence’s account of Harold’s election and
coronation, we shall see how carefully every word is weighed, with the
obvious intention of excluding some Norman misrepresentation or other.
The fables about Harold seizing the crown, about his crowning himself,
his being crowned by Stigand, and so forth, are all implicitly denied;
so is Eadward’s alleged _last_ bequest to William; but there is not a
word to exclude either an earlier promise on the part of Eadward or an
oath on the part of Harold, Both these subjects are avoided.

Footnote 912:

See vol. i. pp. 118, 291, 533.

Footnote 913:

I shall deal with these stories in my third volume.

Footnote 914:

See Appendix A.

Footnote 915:

See vol. i. pp. 209, 249.

Footnote 916:

See vol. i. p. 518.

Footnote 917:

I am indebted for the suggestion of Matilda’s descent from Ælfred as a
possible element in William’s calculations to Lord Lytton’s romance of
Harold. It is highly probable in itself, though I do not remember to
have seen it put forward by any ancient writer. Matilda was lineally
descended from Ælfthryth, daughter of Ælfred, wife of Count Baldwin
the Second, and mother, I am sorry to say, of the wicked Arnulf.

Footnote 918:

I suppose that this would have occurred to every one as the obvious
explanation of the difficulty, had not a passage of the false Ingulf
been held to settle the question another way; “De successione autem
regni spes adhuc aut mentio nulla facta inter eos fuit.” (Gale, i.
65.) Now certainly this strong negative assertion is one of those
passages which for a moment suggest the idea that the forger had some
materials before him which we have not. But so vague a possibility can
hardly be set against the whole probability of the case. It is curious
to see Lappenberg (ii. 251 Thorpe, 511 of the German) swaying to and
fro between the obvious probability and the supposed authority of
Ingulf. Before him, Prevost (Roman de Rou, ii. 100) had ventured, in
the teeth of Ingulf, to connect William’s visit with Eadward’s alleged
bequest.

Footnote 919:

See the Worcester Chronicle as quoted above, p. 294.

Footnote 920:

Chronn. Ab. Cant. 1051. Wig. Petrib. 1052. I need hardly remind any
reader that the Old Minster is Winchester Cathedral. The bones of Cnut
and Emma were among those which were so strangely exalted by Bishop
Fox in the chests which surround the presbytery. Between him, Henry of
Blois, and the Puritans, it is now impossible to distinguish the bones
of Cnut from those of William Rufus.

Footnote 921:

There is nothing specially to remark on the authorities for this
period, which are substantially the same as those for the seventh
Chapter. We have still to look, just in the same way as before, to the
Chronicles, the Biographer, and Florence, to William of Malmesbury and
the other subsidiary writers. Just as before, when Norman affairs are
at all touched on, the Norman writers should be compared with the
English. During these years we have little to do with Scandinavian
affairs, so that the Sagas are of little moment. Welsh affairs, on the
other hand, are of unusual importance, and the two Welsh Chronicles,
the Annales Cambriæ and the Brut y Tywysogion, or Chronicle of the
Princes, must be carefully compared with our own records.

Footnote 922:

At the same time, it is worth considering whether the whole of the
estates set down in Domesday as belonging to Godwine and his sons were
always their private property, and whether some parts may not have
been official estates attached to their Earldoms. Still, after any
possible deductions, their wealth was enormous.

Footnote 923:

Vita Eadw. 404. “Et quoniam suprà diximus eum ab omnibus Anglis pro
patre coli, subitò auditus discessus ejus exterruit cor populi. Ejus
absentiam sive fugam habuere perniciem suam, interitum gentis Anglicæ,
excidium insuper totius patriæ.”

Footnote 924:

Vita Eadw. 404. “Felicem se putabat qui post eum exsulari poterat.”

Footnote 925:

Ib. “Quidam post eum vadunt, quidam legationes mittunt, paratos se, si
velit reverti, eum cum violentiâ in patriâ suscipere, pro eo pugnare,
pro eo, si necesse sit, velle se pariter occumbere.”

Footnote 926:

Ib. “Et hoc accitabatur non clam vel privatim, sed in manifesto et
publicè, et non modo à quibusdam, sed penè ab omnibus indigenis
patriæ.”

Footnote 927:

Chron. Petrib. 1052. “Gerædde se cyng and his witan.” Abingdon and
Worcester do not mention the Witan.

Footnote 928:

See above, p. 99.

Footnote 929:

Chronn. Ab. Wig. Petrib. The number of the ships, “xl. snacca,” comes
from Worcester; the names of the commanders from Peterborough, “and
setton Raulf Eorl and Oddan Eorl to heafodmannum þærto.” Florence
seems to put these preparations later, after Harold’s landing at
Porlock. But surely the choice made both by Gruffydd and by Harold of
their points for attack, shows that the Earls of those districts were
already absent with the fleet.

Footnote 930:

Chron. Wig. and Flor. Wig. 1052. This incursion seems not to be
mentioned in the Welsh Chronicles. Its perpetrator is described only
as “Griffin se Wylisca cing;” “Walensium Rex Griffinus;” but the King
intended must be the Northern Gruffydd.

Footnote 931:

The Worcester Chronicle says, “þæt he com swyþe neah to Leomynstre.”
Florence speaks of the harrying, but does not mention the place.

Footnote 932:

Chron. Wig. “And men gadorodon ongean, ægðer ge landes men ge
Frencisce men of ðam castele.” So Florence, “Contra quem provinciales
illi et de castello quamplures Nortmanni ascenderunt.” “The castle” is
doubtless Richard’s Castle. Florence, who had mistaken the meaning of
the Chronicler in the entry of the former year (see above, p. 142),
now that he had got among Herefordshire matters, understood the
description. Here again the expressions witness to the deep feeling
awakened by the building of this castle.

Footnote 933:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “And man þær ofsloh swyþe feola Engliscra godra
manna, and eac of þam Frenciscum.” (The French get no honourable
epithet.) All this evaporates in Florence’s “multis ex illis occisis.”

Footnote 934:

See above, p. 56, and vol. i. p. 564.

Footnote 935:

I infer this from the way in which Harold’s expedition is spoken of as
happening almost immediately (“sona,” “parvo post hoc tempore”) after
Gruffydd’s victory, as if the two things had some connexion with each
other.

Footnote 936:

Vita Eadw. 405. “Mittit tamen adhuc pacem et misericordiam petere a
Rege domino suo [cynehlaford], ut sibi liceat cum ejus gratiâ ad se
purgandum legibus venire coram eo.” See above, p. 142, and vol. i. p.
573.

Footnote 937:

Ib. “Hoc quoque pro ejus dilectione et suo officio missis legatis
suis, Rex petit Francorum, et ipsum cum quo hiemabat idem persuadebat
Marchio Flandrensium.”

Footnote 938:

See above, p. 17. Eadward and Baldwin had a common ancestor, though
certainly a very remote one, in the great Ælfred. See above, p. 304.

Footnote 939:

Vita Eadw. 405. “Sed et illi hoc suggerebant satis frustra;
obstruxerat enim pias Regis aures pravorum malitia.”

Footnote 940:

Ib. “Mediante proximâ æstate.”

Footnote 941:

See above, p. 100.

Footnote 942:

See above, p. 152.

Footnote 943:

Leofwine is not mentioned in the Chronicles, but his name is given by
Florence, and the Biographer (405) speaks of “duo prædicti filii.”

Footnote 944:

The language of the Biographer is here remarkable. He had just before
spoken of the people of the East and South of England as “Orientales
sive Australes _Angli_.” He now calls the point where Harold landed
“Occidentalium _Britonum sive Anglorum_ fines.” So marked a change of
expression cannot be accidental; it must point to the still debateable
character of large parts of Somerset and Devon, neither purely Welsh
nor purely English. Compare the significant use of the word “Britanni”
by Thietmar, commented on in vol. i. p. 422.

Footnote 945:

I do not remember any mention in any ancient writer of this submarine
forest on the Somersetshire coast; but a forest of the same kind on
the other side of the British Channel is spoken of by Giraldus, Exp.
Hib. i. 36 (vol. V. p. 284 Dimock). In the year 1171 a violent storm
laid it bare.

Footnote 946:

The Abingdon and Worcester Chronicles (1052) have simply “neh
Sumer_sǽtan_ gemæran and Dafena_scíre_” (see the same forms in the
entries for the last year, and Appendix G); so Florence, “in confinio
Sumersetaniæ et _Dorsetaniæ_” this last word being a mistake for
_Domnaniæ_, as appears from the next sentence. The Peterborough
Chronicle gives the name of the spot, “and com þa úp æt Portlocan.”

Footnote 947:

See Appendix R.

Footnote 948:

The Worcester and Abingdon Chronicles (1052) give the numbers; “And
þær ofsloh má þonne xxx. godera þegena (“nobilibus ministris,” Flor.)
butan oðrum folce.”

Footnote 949:

Chronn. Ab. and Wig. “Ægðer ge of Sumersǽton ge of Defenescíre.”

Footnote 950:

Chron. Petrib. “And nam him on orfe _and on mannum_ and on æhtum, swa
him gewearð.” Were these captives dealt with as conscripts or
galley-slaves, or, considering whence the fleet came, were they
intended for the Irish slave-trade?

Footnote 951:

Chronn. Ab. and Wig. “And sona æfter þan for abutan Penwiðsteort.”
Chron. Petrib. “And gewende him þa eastweard to his feder.”

Footnote 952:

Vita Eadw. 405. See Appendix R.

Footnote 953:

On the narratives of Godwine’s return, see Appendix S.

Footnote 954:

Chron. Petrib. 1052. “Ða gewende Godwine eorl út fram Brycge mid his
scipum to Yseran;” so the Biographer (405), “paratâ multiplici classe
in fluvio Hysarâ.” It is clearly not Gesoriacum or Boulogne, as Mr.
Earle makes it in his Glossary.

Footnote 955:

Chron. Petrib. “And let út ane dæge ær midsumeres mæsse æfene
[“mediante æstate,” Vit. Eadw.] þæt he com to Næsse, þe is be suðan
Rumenea.”

Footnote 956:

William of Malmesbury (ii. 199) makes Eadward himself present; “Nec
segnem sensit Regem illa necessitas quin ipse in navi pernoctaret, et
latronum exitus specularetur, sedulo explens consilio quod manu
nequibat _præ senio_.” Eadward was now fifty at the most, and his
presence is hardly possible, according to the authentic narratives.
Eadward’s presence with the fleet is distinctly marked in 1049 (see
above, p. 99), but not now.

Footnote 957:

Chron. Petrib. “And wearð þæt wæder swiðe strang þæt þa eorlas ne
mihton gewitan hwet Godwine eorl gefaren hæfde.” The ignorance could
hardly fail to be mutual. So William of Malmesbury (u. s.); “Quum
cominùs ventum esset, et jam penè manus consererentur, nebula
densissima repente coorta furentum obtutus confudit, miseramque
mortalium audaciam compescuit.” William had just got one of his fits
of fine writing upon him.

Footnote 958:

Chron. Ab. “He [Godwine] heom ætbærst, and him sylfan gebearh þær þær
he þa mihte.” So Florence; “Quo in loco potuit se occultavit.” But
Peterborough says expressly, “And gewende þa Godwine eorl út agean þæt
he com eft to Brycge;” and so William of Malmesbury; “Denique Godwinus
ejusque comites eo unde venerant vento cogente reducti.” Mark the
cadence of an hexameter.

Footnote 959:

Chron. Petrib. “And sceolde man setton oðre eorlas and oðre hasæton to
þam scipum.” Mr. Thorpe translates “hasæton” by “chief officers,” Mr.
Earle by “rowers.” I commonly bow to Mr. Earle’s authority on such
matters; but the other version seems to make better sense.

Footnote 960:

See vol. i. p. 426 note.

Footnote 961:

See Appendix R.

Footnote 962:

Vita Eadw. 405.

Footnote 963:

On Hastings, as distinct from Sussex, see vol. i. p. 382.

Footnote 964:

“Eallne þæne east ende,” says the Abingdon Chronicle (cf. the words
“ofer ealne þisne norð ende” in the Worcester Chronicle, 1052 or
1051), which Florence translates by “East-Saxones.”

Footnote 965:

Chron. Ab. “Þa cwædon ealle þæt hi mid him woldon licgan and lybban.”
I transfer these emphatic words hither from the earlier place which
they have in the Abingdon and Worcester Chronicles, and in Florence.
See Appendix S.

Footnote 966:

That hostages should have been taken from such a friendly population
is a speaking comment on the inveterate custom of taking hostages on
all occasions.

Footnote 967:

Chron. Petrib., where see Mr. Earle’s note (p. 346), and Appendix R.

Footnote 968:

See vol. i. pp. 46, 427.

Footnote 969:

Vita Eadw. 405. “Pelagus operiebatur carinis, cœlum densissimis
resplendebat armis.” If this was so when they were in the open sea, it
must _à fortiori_ have been so when they were in the river.

Footnote 970:

See above, p. 150.

Footnote 971:

Chronn. Ab. and Wig. “He gefadode wiþ ða burhwaru.”

Footnote 972:

“Þæt hi woldon _mæst ealle_ þæt þæt he wolde,” say the Abingdon and
Worcester Chronicles. This answer to a message sounds to me like the
vote of an assembly of some kind, in which we may also discern the
opposition of a small minority. The Biographer (406) also witnesses to
the good disposition of the Londoners; “Sed omnis civitas Duci obviam
et auxilio processit et præsidio, acclamantque illi omnes unâ voce
prosperè in adventu suo.”

Footnote 973:

“Þa sende he up æfter maran fultume,” says the Abingdon Chronicle,
which Florence rather pathetically expands into “Nuntiis properè
missis, omnibus qui à se non defecerant mandavit ut in adjutorium sui
venire maturarent.”

Footnote 974:

The Peterborough Chronicle, which, just at this point, is less full
than Abingdon and Worcester, gives the number; “Ða hi to Lundene
comon; þa læg se cyng and þa eorlas ealle þær ongean mid L. scipum.”

Footnote 975:

The King’s ships were on the north bank of the river, “wið þæs
norðlandes” (Chron. Ab.); his land force (“se cyng hæfde eac _mycele
landfyrde_ on his healfe, to eacan his scypmannum”) was doubtless
drawn up on the same side, as the Southwark side was clearly in the
hands of Godwine. From the words in Italics, compared with the
expressions quoted just before, it would seem that some at least of
the northern levies came, perhaps under the command of their own
Earls.

Footnote 976:

The Abingdon Chronicle describes the day; “Ðæt wæs on þone Monandæg
æfter Sc̃a Marian mæsse.” Florence and Roger of Wendover (i. 491) mark
it as “dies exaltationis Sanctæ Crucis.”

Footnote 977:

Chron. Ab. “And seo landfyrd com ufenon, and trymedon hig be þam
strande.” Flor. Wig. “Venit et pedestris exercitus, ac se per oram
fluvii ordinatim disponens, spissam terribilemque fecit testudinem.”
“Pedestris exercitus” is only accidentally an accurate rendering of
“landfyrd.” Doubtless they were on foot, but the force of the word is
that the popular levies, the militia of the shires round London, came
unbidden to support Godwine. The King had only his housecarls and any
troops that may have come from the north.

Footnote 978:

Chron. Ab. “And hi hwemdon þa mid þam scypon wið þæs norðlandes,
swylce hig woldon þæs cynges scipa abutan betrymman.” Vita Eadw. 406.
“Et quoniam facultas undique superiores vires administrabat,
hortabantur quàm plures, ut etiam in ipsum Regem irruerent.” This
feeling was still stronger a little later in the day. We must remember
that, in this story, we are dealing, not with days but with hours.

Footnote 979:

Chron. Ab. “Ac hit wæs heom mæst eallon lað þæt hig sceoldon fohtan
_wið heora agenes cynnes mannum_.... Eac hig noldon þæt utlendiscum
þeodum wære þes eard þurh þæt þe swiðor gerymed þe hí heom sylfe ælc
oðerne forfore.” The words doubtless simply mean men of their own
nation. Roger of Wendover (i. 491) must have had this Chronicle before
him, and must have taken the words to mean _kinsmen_ in the later and
narrower sense; “Angli, quorum filii, nepotes, et consanguinei cum
Godwino erant, noluerunt contra eos dimicare.” Florence has the
intermediate expression “propinquos ac compatriotas.”

Footnote 980:

Chron. Petrib. “Þa sendon þa eorlas to þam cynge, and gerndon to him
þæt hi moston beon wurðe ælc þæra þinga þe heom mid unrihte ofgenumen
wæs.”

Footnote 981:

Ib. “Ða wiðlæg se cyng sume hwile, þeah swa lange, oð þet folc þe mid
þam eorle wes wearð swiðe astyred ongean þone cyng and ongean his
folc.”

Footnote 982:

See vol. i. p. 466. The Worcester and Abingdon Chronicles, a little
way before, have a singular remark that the only good troops on both
sides were English; “Forðan þar wæs lyt elles þe aht mycel myhton
buton Englisce men on ægþer healfe.” This sounds like a slur on the
military prowess alike of the King’s Frenchmen, of Harold’s Irish
Danes, and of any Flemings who may have come with Godwine.

Footnote 983:

Chron. Petrib. “Swa þæt se eorl sylf earfoðlice gestylde þæt folc.” So
the Biographer, in his more rhetorical way; “Verùm fidelis et Deo
devotus Dux _verbis et nutu_ admodum abhorruit.” William of
Malmesbury, a little later, pays a fine tribute to Godwine’s
eloquence, which is rather a favourite subject of his; “Senex ille et
linguâ potens [some read “et famâ clarus et linguâ potens”] ad
flectendos animos audientium.”

Footnote 984:

Vita Eadw. 406. “Dum,” inquit, “fidelitatis suæ in corde meo habeam
hodie testem, me scilicet malle mortem, quàm aliquid indecens et
iniquum egerim, vel agam, vel me vivo agi permittam in dominum meum
Regem [cynehlaforde].” William of Malmesbury is certainly justified in
saying of Godwine personally, if not of all Godwine’s followers,
“pacifico animo repatriantes.”

Footnote 985:

See Appendix S.

Footnote 986:

Chron. Ab. “And Godwine for upp, and Harold his sunu, and heora lið
swa mycel swa heom þa geþuhte.”

Footnote 987:

Harold certainly, perhaps Godwine also. See above, p. 154.

Footnote 988:

Chron. Petrib. “Sume west to Pentecostes castele, some norð to
Rodbertes castele.” Pentecost, as we gather from Florence, who speaks
of “Osbernus cognomento Pentecost”—what can be the meaning of so
strange a surname?—is the same as Osbern, the son of Richard of
Richard’s Castle, of whom we have already heard so much. Robert’s
castle must be some castle belonging to Robert the son of Wymarc, as
distinctly the most notable man of his name in the country after
Robert the Archbishop. Most of his lands lay in the East of England;
but he had also property in the shires of Hertford, Huntingdon, and
Cambridge, though I do not find any mention of a castle on any of his
estates there.

Footnote 989:

The Abingdon Chronicle, followed by Florence, makes William accompany
Robert and Ulf on their desperate ride; “Rodbeard bisceop and Willem
bisceop and Ulf bisceop uneaðe ætburstan mid þam Frenciscum mannum þe
heom mid wæron, and swa ofer sæ becomon.” But the Peterborough writer
speaks only of Robert and Ulf, and William’s restoration to his see, a
matter of which there is no kind of doubt, could hardly have followed
if he had any share in the murderous adventure of his brethren.

Footnote 990:

Chron. Petrib. “And Rodbert arcebisceop and Ulf bisceop gewendon út æt
æst geate, and heora geferan, and ofslogon and elles amyrdon _manige
iunge men_.” One might almost fancy London apprentices, as in after
times, zealous for the popular cause.

Footnote 991:

Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex; see above, p. 110.

Footnote 992:

Chron. Petrib. “And wearð him þær on anon unwræste scipe, and ferde
him on án ofer sæ.” See Mr. Earle’s note on “unwræste,” p. 346.

Footnote 993:

Chron. Petrib. “And forlet his pallium and Christendom ealne her on
lande, swa swa hit God wolde; þæ he ǽr begeat þone wurðscipe swa swa
hit God nolde.” English has not gained by dropping the negative verb,
which survives only in the saying “will he, nill he.”

Footnote 994:

Chron. Petrib. “Ða cwæð mann _mycel gemót_ wiðutan Lundene;” “Statutum
est magnum placitum” is the translation in the Waverley Annals, p. 186
Luard. Flor. Wig. “Mane autem facto, concilium Rex habuit.” Chron. Ab.
“And wæs þa Witenagemót.” But it is the Peterborough writer only who
dwells with evident delight on the popular character of the Assembly.

Footnote 995:

Compare the position of the Dutch Guards and other foreign troops who
accompanied William of Orange.

Footnote 996:

“Wiðutan Lundene,” says the Peterborough Chronicler. See Appendix S.

Footnote 997:

Chron. Petrib. “Þær þær Godwine Eorl úp his mal, and betealde hine þær
wið Eadward cyng his hlaford _and wið ealle landleodan_.”

Footnote 998:

We shall presently see that Godwine and Eadward were both armed; it is
not at all likely that they were singular in being so. We have already
heard enough of votes passed by the army and the like to make an armed
Gemót nothing wonderful.

Footnote 999:

I saw the armed Landesgemeinde of Appenzell-ausser-rhoden in 1864. The
Law requires each landman to bring his sword; it also forbids the
sword to be drawn. In Uri the custom of bearing arms has been given
up. Cf. Thuc. i. 5, 6.

Footnote 1000:

Vita Eadw. 406. “Destitutus inprimis fugâ Archipræsulis et suorum
multorum _verentium adspectum Ducis_.”

Footnote 1001:

Chron. Petrib. “And ealle þa eorlas and þa betstan menn þe wæron on
þison lande wæron on þam gemote.” Does this merely mean the Earls who
had been already spoken of, Godwine and Harold on the one side, Ralph
and Odda on the other? Or does it imply the presence of Leofric,
Ælfgar, and Siward? Their presence is perfectly possible; but, if they
had had any share either in this Gemót or in the earlier military
proceedings, it is odd that they are not spoken of.

Footnote 1002:

Il. Σ. 198;

ἀλλ’ αὕτως ἐπὶ τάφρον ἰὼν, Τρώεσσι φάνηθι,
αἴ κε σ’ ὑποδδείσαντες ἀπόσχωνται πολέμοιο.

“Verentes adspectum Ducis,” says the Biographer just above.

Footnote 1003:

Vita Eadw. 406. “Viso Rege protinùs abjectis armis ejus advolvitur
pedibus.” I conceive the weapon borne to have been the axe, as a sort
of official weapon. It appears in the Bayeux Tapestry in the hands of
the attendants upon Eadward; so also in the scene where the Crown is
offered to Harold, both Harold himself and one of those who make the
offer to him bear axes.

Footnote 1004:

Ib. “Orans suppliciter ut in Christi nomine, cujus signiferam regni
coronam gestabat in capite, annueret ut sibi liceret purgare se de
objecto crimine, et purgato pacem concederet gratiæ suæ.” This
surviving fragment of Godwine’s eloquence shows how well he could
adapt himself to every class of hearers. But what was the Crown like?
The allusion seems to point to something like the Imperial Crown with
a cross on the top, but the crowns in the Tapestry are quite
different.

Footnote 1005:

Chron. Petrib. “Þet he wæs unscyldig þæs þe him geled wæs, and on
Harold his sunu and ealle his bearn.” This is the “purgatio” of the
Biographer. So Will. Malms. ii. 199. “Probè se de omnibus quæ
objectabantur expurgavit.” Compurgators seem not to have been called
for.

Footnote 1006:

Will. Malms. u. s. “Tantum brevi valuit ut sibi liberisque suis
honores integros restitueret.”

Footnote 1007:

“Ealle landleodan.” We have lost this, and so many other expressive
words. “Landleute” is the old official name of the people of the
democratic cantons of Switzerland; but _Land_ is there used in its
ordinary opposition to _Stadt_.

Footnote 1008:

I refer to the oath of the people of Appenzell-ausser-rhoden in their
Landesgemeinde. The newly elected Landammann first himself swears to
obey the laws; he then administers the oath to the vast multitude
before him. The effect of their answer is something overwhelming in
its grandeur.

Footnote 1009:

Chron. Petrib. “And _cweð mann_ útlaga Rotberd arcebisceop fullice,
and ealle þa Frencisce menn, forðan þe hi macodon mæst þet unseht
betweonan Godwine Eorle and þam Cynge.” So William of Malmesbury;
“Prolatâ sententiâ in Robertum archiepiscopum ejusque complices quòd
statum regni conturbarent, animum regium in provinciales agitantes.”

Footnote 1010:

Chron. Ab. “And geutlageden þa ealle Frencisce men, þe ǽr unlage
rærdon, and undom demdon, and únræd ræddon into ðissum earde.” Modern
English utterly fails to express the power of the negative words,
which modern High German only partially preserves. So Florence; “Omnes
Nortmannos qui leges iniquas adinvenerant [a poor substitute for
“unlage rærdon”] et injusta judicia judicaverant, multaque Regi
_in_silia [an attempt at transferring the Teutonic negative to the
Latin] adversus Anglos [a touch from Peterborough] dederant,
exlegaverunt.”

Footnote 1011:

Chron. Ab. and Fl. Wig. I shall have to speak of this exception again.

Footnote 1012:

Ib. “And eallum folce góde lage beheton.”

Footnote 1013:

See Appendix S.

Footnote 1014:

Chron. Petrib. 1052. “And se Cyng geaf þære Hlæfdian eall þæt heo ær
ahte.” Chron. Ab. “And Godwine Eorl and Harold and seo Cwen [This
title is unusual, but not unique] sæton on heora áre.” She had just
before come in incidentally in the list of Godwine’s family; “his
sunum ... and his wife and his dehter.” Flor. Wig. “Filiam quoque
Ducis, Eadgitham Reginam, digniter Rex recepit et pristinæ dignitati
restituit.” The Biographer (406) of course waxes eloquent; “Modico
exinde interfluente tempore mittitur æquè regio, ut par erat, apparatu
ad monasterium Wiltunense [on this confusion see p. 156] et [I omit
metaphors about the sun, &c.] reducitur Regina, ejusdem Ducis filia,
ad _thalamum_ Regis.” This last expression should be noticed, and
compared with the account in R. Wendover.

Footnote 1015:

On the pilgrimage of Swegen, see Appendix T.

Footnote 1016:

“On þone Tiwesdæg hí gewurdon sehte, swa hit her beforan stent,” says
the Abingdon Chronicle.

Footnote 1017:

See the passage of William of Malmesbury quoted above, p. 161.

Footnote 1018:

See above, p. 160.

Footnote 1019:

See Appendix G.

Footnote 1020:

See above, p. 66.

Footnote 1021:

The Peterborough Chronicle seems to record his appointment in the same
breath with the other acts of September 15th. Immediately after the
outlawry of Richard and the French follow the words, “And Stigand
Bisceop feng to þam arcebisceoprice on Cantwarabyrig.” The Chronicler
then turns to other matters.

Footnote 1022:

Will. Malms. Gest. Reg. ii. 199. “Romam profectus et de caussâ suâ
sedem apostolicam appellans.” In Gest. Pont. 116, he adds that he
returned “cum epistolis innocentiæ et restitutionis suæ
allegatricibus.”

Footnote 1023:

Hen. Hunt. M. H. B. 761 D. Of William’s three causes for his invasion
two are, “Primò, quia Alfredum cognatum suum Godwinus _et filii sui_
dehonestaverant et peremerant; secundò, quia Robertum episcopum et
Odonem consulem [see Appendix G.] et omnes Francos Godwinus et filii
sui arte suâ ab Angliâ exsulaverant.” The third count is of course the
perjury of Harold. So, in nearly the same words, Bromton, X Scriptt.
958.

Footnote 1024:

On the ecclesiastical position of Stigand see Appendix U.

Footnote 1025:

We shall find many examples as we go on, and the general fact is
asserted in the Profession of Saint Wulfstan to Lanfranc. See Appendix
U.

Footnote 1026:

Chron. Ab. 1053. See Appendix U.

Footnote 1027:

Unless indeed some such feeling lurks in the words of the Abingdon
Chronicler, 1053; “Se Wulfwi feng to ðam biscoprice þe Ulf hæfde be
him libbendum and of adræfdum.”

Footnote 1028:

Chron. Ab. 1053. See Appendix U.

Footnote 1029:

See above, p. 331.

Footnote 1030:

Thierry (i. 202) makes Godwine resist the retention of any Normans,
especially of Bishop William and of the Lotharingian Hermann, Bishop
of Ramsbury! For his authority he quotes “Godwinus Comes obstiterat
(Ranulphus Higden, p. 281).” To say nothing of going to R. Higden on
such a point, any one who makes the reference will find that the words
have nothing to do with the matter. They refer to a supposed
opposition on the part of Godwine to the union of the sees of Ramsbury
and Sherborne, of which more anon.

Footnote 1031:

Flor. Wig. in anno. “Willelmus, propter suam bonitatem, parvo post
tempore revocatus, in suum episcopatum recipitur.”

Footnote 1032:

See above, p. 122.

Footnote 1033:

Flor. Wig.

Footnote 1034:

Flor. Wig. 1052. “Osbernus verò, cognomento Pentecost, et socius ejus
Hugo sua reddiderunt castella, et Comitis Leofrici licentiâ, per suum
comitatum Scottiam adeuntes a Rege Scottorum Macbeothâ suscepti sunt.”

Footnote 1035:

In the writ of 1060 (Cod. Dipl. iv. 194), announcing the nomination of
Walter to the see of Hereford, the King greets “Haroldum Comitem et
Osebarnum et omnes meos ministros in Herefordensi comitatu
amicabiliter.” See Ellis, i. 460. He was apparently Sheriff; he is not
indeed directly called so, but the position in the writ in which his
name occurs is one which generally belongs to the Sheriff. The
appearance of a French Sheriff in this particular shire may be
accounted for by the presence of a French Earl. It is more remarkable
if Robert the son of Wymarc was Sheriff of Essex, as might be inferred
from the similar position of his name in a writ in Cod. Dipl. iv. 214.

Footnote 1036:

Flor. Wig. 1052. “Robertum diaconem et generum ejus Ricardum filium
Scrob.”

Footnote 1037:

Several Ælfreds occur in Domesday, as the great landowners, Ælfred of
Marlborough and Ælfred of Spain, but it is not easy to identify their
possessions with any holder of the name in Eadward’s time. The names
Ælfred and Eadward, and the female name Eadgyth, seem to have been the
only English names adopted by the Normans. The two former would
naturally be given to godsons or dependants of the two Æthelings while
in Normandy, and Eadgyth would gain currency as the name of the wife
of the sainted King.

Footnote 1038:

The possessions of Ralph the Staller were very large. He signs an
English document of Abbot Ælfwig of Bath in Cod. Dipl. iv. 172, as
“Roulf steallere.”

Footnote 1039:

He signs as “Huhgelin minister.” Cod. Dipl. iv. 173. Cf. Domesday,
Hunt. 208, where his title is “Camerarius.” Æth. Riev. X Scriptt. 376.

Footnote 1040:

Vita Eadw. 406. “Unde post tam grande malum absque sanguine sedatum
Ducis sapientiâ, sollennis celebratur lætitia tam à palatinis quam ab
omni patriâ.”

Footnote 1041:

On this point the Biographer becomes enthusiastic, and bursts forth,
after his manner, into no less than forty hexameters. Godwine
suffering under false accusations had been likened to Joseph and
Susanna; now that he spares and honours a King whom he has in his
power, he is likened to David doing the like towards Saul. Altogether
the comparison is not a very lucky one for either Godwine or Eadward.

Footnote 1042:

Chron. Ab. 1052. “Godwine þa gesiclode hraðe þæs þe he upcom.”

Footnote 1043:

Chron. Wig. 1053. “And man rædde þæt man sloh Rís þæs Wyliscean cynges
broþer, forðy he hearmas dyde.” Florence more fully; “Griffini Regis
Australium Wallensium frater, Res nomine, propter frequentes prædas
quas egit in loco qui Bulendun dicitur, jussu Regis Eadwardi,
occiditur.” There are Bullingdons both in Oxfordshire and in
Hampshire, but Welsh ravages could hardly reach to either of them.

Footnote 1044:

Chron. Wig. “And man brohte his heafod to Glewcestre [“Glawornam ad
Regem” Fl. Wig.] on Twelftan ǽfen.” William of Malmesbury (ii. 196)
makes Harold the agent, which is quite possible, but he mixes the
matter up in a strange way with the fate of Gruffydd of North Wales,
ten years later. “Haroldum West-Saxonum [Comitem], filium Godwini, qui
duos fratres Reges Walensium Ris et Grifinum sollertiâ suâ in mortem
egerit.” William, perhaps pardonably, confounds the two Gruffydds.

Footnote 1045:

Chron. Petrib. 1052. “And on þis ilcan tyme forlet Arnwi abbot of Burh
abbotrice be his halre life, and geaf hit Leofric munec be þes cynges
leafe and be þære munece.” The local writer, Hugo Candidus, seems
(Sparke, 41) to place Leofric’s appointment in 1057. So John of
Peterborough, a. 1057, who calls him “egregius pater Leofricus.” Hugo
is loud in his praises; among his other merits he was so high in the
favour of the King and the Lady that he held five abbeys at once,
Burton, Coventry, Crowland, and Thorney, besides Peterborough.

Footnote 1046:

See above, p. 67.

Footnote 1047:

Hugo Candidus, ap. Sparke, 42.

Footnote 1048:

Chron. Petrib. 1052. “And se abbot Leofric gildede þa þæt mynstre swa
þæt man hit cleopede þa gildene Burh; þa wæx hit swiðe on land and on
gold and on seolfer.” Cf. 1066.

Footnote 1049:

Chron. Petrib. 1066.

Footnote 1050:

See Appendix W.

Footnote 1051:

See Chron. Ab. 1052, and Appendix E. and W.

Footnote 1052:

Liber de Hydâ, 289. “Porro uxor ejus [she is “Geta, genus, ut aiunt,
ex _insulâ Norwegiâ_ ducens”], magnæ sanctitatis multæque religionis
tramitem incedens, omni die duas ad minus missas _studiosè_ [see
above, p. 28] audiebat, omnique fere sabbato per duo aut amplius
miliaria nudis pedibus vicina ambiebat monasteria, largis muneribus
cumulans altaria, largisque donis pauperes recreans.” Of her gifts for
her husband’s soul we read in the Winchester Annals, p. 26; “Githa,
uxor Godwini, fœmina multas habens facultates, pro animâ ejus multis
ecclesiis in eleemosynâ multa contulit, et Wintoniæ ecclesiæ dedit duo
maneria, scilicet, Bleodonam et Crawecumbam et ornamenta diversi
generis.” Of these lordships, Bleadon and Crowcombe in Somersetshire,
Bleadon still remained to the Church at the time of the survey
(Domesday, 87 _b_), but Crowcombe had been alienated to Count Robert
of Mortain (91 _b_). Another gift for her husband’s soul made by Gytha
to the church of Saint Olaf at Exeter is found in Cod. Dipl. iv. 264.
This charter, signed by her sons Tostig and Gyrth as Earls, must be of
a later date (1057–1065), and shows that her pious anxiety still
continued. Of Gytha’s religious scruples a specimen will be found in
Appendix E. She is said (Tanner, Notitia Monastica, Devon, xxv. New
Monasticon, vi. 435) to have founded a College at Hartland in Devon. A
secular establishment founded by Harold’s mother should be noted.

Footnote 1053:

Chron. Ab. 1053. “And he lið þær binnan ealdan mynstre.” Vita Eadw.
408. “Tumulatur ergo condigno honore in monasterio quod nuncupant
veteri Wintoniæ, additis in eâdem ecclesiâ multis ornamentorum
muneribus et terrarum reditibus pro redemptione ipsius animæ.”

Footnote 1054:

Vita Eadw. 408. “Exsequiis suis in luctum decidit populus, hunc
patrem, hunc nutricium suum regnique, memorabant suspiriis et assiduis
fletibus.”

Footnote 1055:

Vita Eadw. 408. “Dux felicis memoriæ.”

Footnote 1056:

See vol. i. p. 470.

Footnote 1057:

See vol. i. p. 432: cf. 456.

Footnote 1058:

Chron. Petrib. 1053. “And feng Harold Eorl his sunu to ðam eorldome
and to eallum þam þe his fæder ahte.” So the others in other words.

Footnote 1059:

See above, pp. 37, 43.

Footnote 1060:

See above, p. 101.

Footnote 1061:

Vita Eadw. 408. “Subrogatur autem regio favore in ejus [Godwini]
ducatu filius ejus major natu et sapientiâ Haroldus, unde in
consolationem respirat universus Anglorum exercitus.” Then follows the
panegyric quoted in Appendix D.

Footnote 1062:

See Appendix G.

Footnote 1063:

Chronn. Ab. Wig. Petrib. Cant. in anno.

Footnote 1064:

We have one panegyric on Ælfgar in Orderic (511 A), but it is a
panegyric by misadventure. Orderic clearly confounded Ælfgar with his
father. William of Malmesbury however (see above, p. 161) speaks well
of his government of East-Anglia during Harold’s banishment.

Footnote 1065:

See above, p. 347.

Footnote 1066:

That the number of Frenchmen who remained in England was considerable
is shown, as Lappenberg says (p. 514. ii. 255 Thorpe), by a passage in
the so-called Laws of William (Thorpe, i. 491. Schmid, 354), by which
it appears that many of them had become naturalized English subjects;
“Omnis Francigena, qui tempore Eadwardi propinqui nostri fuit in
Angliâ particeps consuetudinum Anglorum, quod ipsi dicunt _an hlote et
an scote_, persolvat secundum legem Anglorum.”

Footnote 1067:

See above, p. 346.

Footnote 1068:

I quote, as one example of many, the signatures to the foundation
charter of Harold’s own church at Waltham (Cod. Dipl. iv. 158). The
seemingly Norman names, besides Bishop William, are “Rodbertus Regis
consanguineus, Radulphus Regis aulicus [the two Stallers], Bundinus
Regis palatinus (?), Hesbernus Regis consanguineus, Regenbaldus Regis
cancellarius, Petrus Regis capellanus, Baldewinus Regis capellanus.”
But the deed is also signed by many English _courtiers_, as well as
Earls, Prelates, and Thegns.

Footnote 1069:

I do not ground this belief on the well-known saying of the false
Ingulf (Gale, i. 62), how in Eadward’s days “Gallicum idioma omnes
magnates in suis curiis tamquam magnum gentilitium [linguam
gentilitiam?] loqui [cœperunt].” Harold’s foreign travels, and his
sojourn at the Norman court, seem to imply a knowledge of French, and
I can well believe that at home King Eadward looked more favourably on
a counsellor who could frame his lips to the beloved speech.

Footnote 1070:

This seems implied in the famous poetical panegyric on Eadward and
Harold in the Chronicles for 1065.

Footnote 1071:

Chron. Wig. 1053. “And þæs ylcan geres, foran to alra halgena mæssan,
forðferde Wulsyg bisceop æt Licetfelda, and Godwine abbod on
Wincelcumbe, and Ægelward abbod on Glestingabyrig, ealle binnan anum
monþe.”

Footnote 1072:

Chron. Ab. and Flor. Wig.

Footnote 1073:

Leofric, it will be remembered, was the son of an Ealdorman Leofwine.
See vol. i. p. 456.

Footnote 1074:

See above, p. 344.

Footnote 1075:

On Abbot Æthelnoth see William of Malmesbury, Glastonbury History, ap.
Gale, ii. 324. Æthelweard spoiled the lands, Æthelnoth the ornaments,
of the house. “Ex illo res Glastoniæ retro relabi et in pejus fluere.”
He has much to tell about the miracles wrought by King Eadgar about
this time—Eadgar, it must be remembered, passed at Glastonbury, in
defiance of all legends, for a saint—specially in healing a mad
German, “furiosus Teutonicus genus.” Was he one of the suite of the
Ætheling?

Footnote 1076:

I infer that Ealdred’s holding of Winchcombe was something more than a
mere temporary holding till a successor could be found. The Worcester
Chronicle (1053) speaks of it in the same form of words as the
appointments of Leofwine and Æthelnoth; “And Leofwine feng to þam
bisceoprice æt Licedfelde, and Aldret bisceop feng to þam abbodrice on
Wincelcumbe,” &c. Florence however says, after mentioning the
appointments of Leofwine and Æthelnoth, “Aldredus vero Wigorniensis
episcopus abbatiam Wincelcumbensem tamdiu in manu suâ tenuit, donec
Godricum, Regis capellani Godmanni filium abbatem constitueret.”

Footnote 1077:

Fl. Wig. 1054.

Footnote 1078:

Chron. Ab. 1053. “Eac Wylsce menn geslogan mycelne dæl Englisces
folces ðæra weardmanna wið Wæstbyrig.”

Footnote 1079:

See above, p. 53.

Footnote 1080:

See vol. i. p. 588.

Footnote 1081:

See vol. i. p. 499.

Footnote 1082:

See above, p. 55.

Footnote 1083:

See above, p. 54.

Footnote 1084:

“Jussu Regis,” says Florence, 1054.

Footnote 1085:

On the war with Macbeth, see Appendix X.

Footnote 1086:

See Munch, Chron. Regum Manniæ, 46 et seqq. Burton, History of
Scotland, i. 374.

Footnote 1087:

Annals of Ulster, 1054. See Appendix X.

Footnote 1088:

Chron. Wig. 1054. “And lædde þonan micele herehuþe, swilce nan man ær
ne begeat.”

Footnote 1089:

See vol. i. p. 586.

Footnote 1090:

Now that the Housecarls are an established institution, wars are
carried on with much greater speed than they were in Æthelred’s time.
If the expedition was voted at the end of June, Siward could easily
have met Macbeth in the field before the end of July.

Footnote 1091:

Tac. Mor. Germ. c. 20. “Sororum filiis idem apud avunculum, qui apud
patrem honor. Quidam sanctiorem arctioremque hunc nexum sanguinis
arbitrantur, et in accipiendis obsidibus magis exigunt.”

Footnote 1092:

See above, p. 364, for Siward nephew of Siward, and vol. i. p. 300 for
Wulfmær nephew of Brihtnoth.

Footnote 1093:

See vol. i. p. 455.

Footnote 1094:

See Appendix Y.

Footnote 1095:

See Appendix Y.

Footnote 1096:

It is only through Margaret that our Kings from Henry the Second
onward were descended from Eadward the Elder, Eadmund, or Eadgar. But
it must not be forgotten that every descendant of Matilda of Flanders
was a descendant of Ælfred.

Footnote 1097:

See vol. i. pp. 118, 533.

Footnote 1098:

See vol. i. pp. 65, 117, 118.

Footnote 1099:

See vol. i. pp. 117, 291.

Footnote 1100:

I rely far more on the probability of the case than on the account
given by William of Malmesbury under the influence of those Norman
prejudices against which he sometimes struggles, but to which he
sometimes yields. He tells us (ii. 228), “Rex Edwardus, pronus in
senium [fifty, or a year or two older], quod ipse non susceperat
liberos, _et Godwini videret invalescere filios_, misit ad Regem
Hunorum ut filium fratris Edmundi, Edwardum, cum omni familiâ suâ
mitteret; futurum ut aut ille aut filii sui succedant regno
hæreditario Angliæ; orbitatem suam cognatorum suffragio sustentari
debere.” He then goes on to describe the Ætheling (“vir neque promptus
manu neque probus ingenio”), his family, his return, and his death. He
then adds, “Rex itaque, defuncto cognato, quia spes prioris erat
soluta suffragii, Willelmo Comiti Normanniæ successionem Angliæ
dedit.” I believe exactly the reverse to be the truth.

Footnote 1101:

See Appendix Y.

Footnote 1102:

See above, p. 115.

Footnote 1103:

See above, p. 113.

Footnote 1104:

See above, p. 362.

Footnote 1105:

So I understand the passage in the Evesham History, p. 87, about
Æthelwig’s appointment to the Abbey of Evesham in 1059. He is there
spoken of as one “qui multo antea tempore episcopatum Wigornensis
ecclesiæ sub Aldredo archiepiscopo laudabiliter rexerat.” See Mr.
Macray’s note. That Ealdred is called Archbishop need be no
difficulty. It is the old question about the days of Abiathar the
Priest.

Footnote 1106:

On Mannig, see above, p. 70. The Evesham History, p. 86, describes him
as skilful in all arts, and as practising them for the adornment of
the churches of Canterbury and Coventry as well as of his own Evesham.

Footnote 1107:

Chron. Wig. 1054. “And he lofode Leofwine bisceop to halgianne þæt
mynster æt Eofeshamme, on vi. Id. Oct.”

Footnote 1108:

Young Henry was crowned at the age of five at Aachen, July 17th, 1054,
by Hermann, Archbishop of Köln. Lambert in anno.

Footnote 1109:

Agnes, daughter of William the Great, Duke of Aquitaine, married King
Henry in 1043 (Lambert and Chron. And. ap. Labbe, i. 276) or 1045
(Hugo Flav. ap. Labbe, i. 187) or 1049 (Chron. S. Maxent. in anno).
Her father being dead, she is described as “filia Agnetis,” the Agnes
so famous in the history of Geoffrey Martel (see above, p. 276). Abbot
Hugh, in recording the marriage, cannot refrain from the strange
comment, “Quum enim esset [Heinricus] aliàs bonus, et omnes ejus
sitirent dominium, carnis tamen incontinentiam frænare non potuit.”
Was Henry the Third bound to imitate Henry the Second?

Footnote 1110:

See Appendix Y.

Footnote 1111:

Ib.

Footnote 1112:

See above, p. 100. We have no account of the time or circumstances of
his return from banishment.

Footnote 1113:

Chron. Ab. 1054. “Swa swa he on his reste læg.” Chron. Wig. “on his
bedde.”

Footnote 1114:

All the Chronicles and Florence, in anno.

Footnote 1115:

Hen. Hunt, M. H. B. 760 C. “Adhuc parvulus.” So Bromton, 946. But he
could hardly be “in cunis jacens” (R. Higden, lib. vi. Gale, ii. 281),
when we consider his importance twelve years later.

Footnote 1116:

We know her through a document in Cod. Dipl. iv. 265. “Godgiva vidua”
gives lands to Peterborough “pro redemptione animæ suæ per consensum
Regis Eaduuardi.” She then married Siward; “Postea accepit eam
Siuuardus Comes in conjugio; post tempus non multum mortua est.” The
singular story about these lands will be best told when discussing the
character of Waltheof.

Footnote 1117:

See vol. i. p. 587. Sim. Dun. X Scriptt. 81. “Nepos Aldredi Comitis
Comes Waltheof, erat enim filius filiæ illius.” Simeon (ib. 82) seems
to imply that Waltheof held Bernicia under his father (“filio suo
Waltheofo comitatum Northymbrorum dedit”); but he clearly was not in
possession in 1065. See Simeon’s own account, X Scriptt. 204. On the
question whether he received Northamptonshire on his father’s death or
ten years later, see Appendix G.

Footnote 1118:

Hen. Hunt. M. H. B. 760 C. Bromton, 946. Ann. Wint. 26.

Footnote 1119:

Chronn. Ab. and Wig. 1055. “And he ligeð æt Galmanhó, on þam mynstre
þe he sylf let timbrian and halgian on Godes and Olafes naman [Gode to
lofe and eallum his halgum”]. Bromton, 946, using the language of
later times, says, “Sepultus est in monasterio sanctæ Mariæ apud
Eboracum in claustro.” There is still a parish church of Saint Olaf in
that part of the city.

Footnote 1120:

See vol. i. pp. 416, 449.

Footnote 1121:

See Appendix G.

Footnote 1122:

Vita Eadw. 408. “Agentibusque amicis potissimùm autem et pro merito
hoc ejus fratre Haroldo Duce et ejus sorore Reginâ, et non resistente
Rege ob innumera ipsius fideliter acta servitia, ducatum ejus suscepit
Tostinus, vir scilicet fortis et magnâ præditus animi sagacitate et
sollertiâ.”

Footnote 1123:

The Biographer, essentially a courtier, always likes to attribute as
much as possible to the personal action of the King, and to keep that
of the Witan, as far as may be, in the back ground.

Footnote 1124:

Plutarch. Apophth. Alex. 29. Τιμᾷν μὲν ἐδόκει Κρατερὸν μάλιστα πάντων,
φιλεῖν δὲ Ἡφαιστίωνα· Κρατερὸς μὲν γὰρ, ἔφη, φιλοβασιλεύς ἐστιν,
Ἡφαιστίων δὲ φιλαλέξανδρος. Eadward’s affection for Tostig is also
marked by William of Malmesbury, iii. 252; “Quia Tostinum
diligeret, ... ut dilecto auxiliari non posset.”

Footnote 1125:

This seems implied in the Biographer’s description of the state of
things when the Northumbrian revolt broke out in 1065 (421); “Erat ...
Tostinus in curiâ Regis, diutiùsque commoratus est cum eo, ejus
detentus amore et jussis in disponendis regalis palatii negotiis.”

Footnote 1126:

See vol. i. p. 416.

Footnote 1127:

See vol. i. p. 587.

Footnote 1128:

See above, p. 374.

Footnote 1129:

See vol. i. p. 588.

Footnote 1130:

He is called “adolescens” by Simeon of Durham (X Scriptt. 204) ten
years later. His father had now been dead fourteen years; Oswulf was
therefore probably a mere babe at the time of his death.

Footnote 1131:

See vol. i. p. 585.

Footnote 1132:

See Appendix Z.

Footnote 1133:

See above, p. 38.

Footnote 1134:

Vita Eadw. 409.

Footnote 1135:

Vita Eadw. 409. “At Dux Tostinus et ipse gravi quidem et sapienti
continentiâ, sed _acrior paullisper in persequendâ malitiâ_, virili
præditus et indissolubili mentis constantiâ.” In a writer who is
striving hard to make out a case for Tostig, the words in Italics mean
a great deal. We shall see, as we go on, reason to justify infinitely
stronger expressions; but the point is that Tostig was not a mere
wanton oppressor, but a ruler who carried a severe justice to such a
degree as to become injustice. This is the impression conveyed by the
no doubt flattering, but still very carefully drawn, portrait given by
the Biographer.

Footnote 1136:

Vita Eadw. 421. “Licet antecessor ejus Dux Siwardus ex feritate
judicii valdè timeretur, tamen tanta gentis illius crudelitas et Dei
incultus habebatur ut vix triginta vel viginti in uno comitatu possent
ire, quin aut interficerentur aut deprædarentur ab insidiantium
latronum multitudine.”

Footnote 1137:

Ib. 422. “Quos pacis deificæ filius et amator eximius Dux adeò illo
adtenuaverat tempore, patriam scilicet purgando talium _cruciatu_ vel
nece, et nulli quantumlibet nobili parcendo qui in hoc deprehensus
esset crimine, ut quivis solus etiam cum quâvis possessione ad votum
possent commeare, absque alicujus hostilitatis formidine.” This last
is the proverbial saying which is applied to the strict police of
William (Chron. Petrib. 1087); “Swa þæt án man þe himsylf aht wære
mihte faran ofer his rice mid his bosum full goldes ungederad.” It is
essentially the same as the story told of the vigilant administration
of the Bretwalda Eadwine; Bæda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 16.

Footnote 1138:

Vita Eadw. 409. “Propter eamdem regiæ stirpis uxorem suam omnium
abdicans voluptatem, _cœlebs_ moderatiùs corporis et oris sui
prudenter regere consuetudinem.” On this singular use of the word
_cœlebs_, see Appendix B.

Footnote 1139:

Vita Eadw. 409. “Quum largiretur, liberali effundebat munificentiâ, et
frequentiùs hoc hortatu religiosæ conjugis suæ in Christi fiebat
honore quam pro aliquo hominum labili favore.” Tostig and Judith had
much reverence for Saint Cuthberht, and were bountiful in their gifts
to his church at Durham. But Judith chafed under the discipline which
forbade women to pay their personal devotions at his shrine. She
accordingly, before venturing herself, sent a handmaid to try her
luck. The poor girl was sadly buffeted by the indignant saint, on
which Tostig and his wife offered a splendid crucifix with the usual
accompanying figures. Sim. Dun. Hist. Eccl. Dun. iii. 11.

Footnote 1140:

See above, p. 46. We shall come to the details in the next Chapter.

Footnote 1141:

I have no means of reckoning save the vague one which I have had to
follow throughout. As Godwine and Gytha were married in 1019, their
third or fourth child would probably be born about 1023 or 1024.

Footnote 1142:

Simeon of Durham (Gest. Regg. in anno) speaks of Malcolm being
Tostig’s “conjuratus frater” in 1061. The engagement must therefore
have been entered into before that year and after 1055. Tostig would
not become Malcolm’s sworn brother till he found himself his
neighbour.

Footnote 1143:

See vol. i. p. 436.

Footnote 1144:

See vol. i. p. 585.

Footnote 1145:

See Appendix X.

Footnote 1146:

Chron. Petrib. 1055. “Þa bead man ealre witena gemót vii. nihton ǽr
midlenctene.” Flor. Wig. “Habito Lundoniæ consilio.”

Footnote 1147:

Ib. “Utlagode mann Ælfgar eorl, forðon him man wearp ón þæt he was þes
cynges swica and ealra landleoda. And he þæs geanwyrde wæs ætforan
eallum þam mannum þe þær gegaderode wæron, þeah him þæt word ofscute
his unnþances.” So Chron. Cant.

Footnote 1148:

“Butan ælcan gylte,” Chron. Ab. “Forneh butan gylte,” Chron. Wig.
“Sine culpâ,” Florence. Just as in the case of the ballad charging
Godwine with the murder of Ælfred (vol. i. p. 546), these differences
look very much as if the Worcester writer had seen the Abingdon text,
and had altered a passage which might be construed into a
representation of Harold as a false accuser. One can hardly conceive
any other motive for the change. And care on such a point seems to
show that Harold had some hand in the accusation, whether true or
false. It is singular however that Henry of Huntingdon, who is
generally most bitter against Harold, should be the writer who
expresses the most distinct conviction of the guilt of Ælfgar (M. H.
B. 760 D); “Eodem anno Algarus consul _Cestriæ_ [a confusion of his
present and later offices] exsulatus est, quia de proditione Regis in
consilio convictus fuerat.” On the other hand, a later writer, John of
Peterborough (1055), commits himself to the banishment being done both
“sine caussâ” and “per Haroldi consilium.”

Footnote 1149:

Chron. Ab. 1055. “He gewende ða to Irlande, and begeat him ðær lið;
þæt wæs xviii. scipa butan his agenan.” So “xviii. piraticis navibus
acquisitis” in Florence. The part of Ireland whence they came is not
mentioned, but Diarmid, the protector of Harold, was still reigning at
Dublin, and he would doubtless be equally ready to protect Ælfgar. I
can find no mention of the matter in the Irish Chronicles.

Footnote 1150:

The language of the three Chronicles and of Florence is singularly
varied, but they all assert the same fact.

Footnote 1151:

Ann. Camb. 1055. “Grifinus filius Lewelin, Grifud filium Riderch
occidit et Herefordiam vastavit.” So Brut y Tywysogion, 1054.

Footnote 1152:

Fl. Wig. “Petivit [Algarus] ut contra Regem Eadwardum sibi esset in
auxilium.”

Footnote 1153:

Fl. Wig. “De toto regno suo copiosum exercitum congregans.” The Welsh
Chronicler says that “Gruffydd raised an army against the Saxons,” but
he takes care to say nothing of his English, Irish, or Danish allies.

Footnote 1154:

Domesday, 179. “In Arcenefelde habet Rex tres ecclesias; presbyteri
harum ecclesiarum ferunt legationes Regis in Wales.... Quum exercitus
in hostem pergit, ipsi per consuetudinem faciunt _Avantwarde_ et in
reversione _Redrewarde_. Hæ consuetudines erant Walensium T. R. E. in
Arcenefelde.” These customs are described at length, and they give a
curious picture of a border district, largely inhabited by Welshmen
living under English allegiance and bound to service against their
independent brethren.

Footnote 1155:

Domesday, 181. “Rex Grifin et Blein vastaverunt hanc terram T. R. E.
et ideo nescitur qualis eo tempore fuerit.” Blein is doubtless
Blethgent the brother of Gruffydd, to whom his kingdom was given by
Harold in 1063.

Footnote 1156:

Fl. Wig. 1055. “Duobus miliariis a civitate Herefordâ.”

Footnote 1157:

See above, p. 346.

Footnote 1158:

It is now that Florence introduces him as “timidus Dux Radulfus, Regis
Eadwardi sororis filius.”

Footnote 1159:

Chron. Ab. 1055. “Ac ǽr þær wære ænig spere gescoten, ær fleah ðæt
Englisce folc, forðan þe hig wæran on horsan.” Florence is more
explicit; “Radulfus ... Anglos contra morem in equis pugnare jussit.”

Footnote 1160:

See Macaulay’s remarks on Monmouth’s raw cavalry at Sedgemoor. Hist.
Eng. i. 588, 604.

Footnote 1161:

Fl. Wig. 1055. “Comes cum suis Francis et Nortmannis fugam primitùs
capessit. Quod videntes Angli ducem suum fugiendo sequuntur.” But the
Chronicles do not necessarily imply this.

Footnote 1162:

Chron. Ab. “And man sloh ðær mycel wæl, abutan feower hund manna oððe
fife, and hig nænne agean.” The Annales Cambriæ (1055) have simply,
“Grifinus ... Herfordiam vastavit,” without mention of the battle. The
Brut (1054) much fuller. It makes no mention of Ælfgar and his
contingent, but it speaks of Reinolf or Randwlf as the commander of
the English. It says nothing of the special reason for the flight of
the English, which it says happened “after a severely hard battle.”

Footnote 1163:

The battle, according to the Abingdon Chronicle and Florence, the
“harrying” according to the Worcester Chronicle, was on the 24th of
October, ix. Kal. Nov.

Footnote 1164:

So all the Chronicles under 792.

Footnote 1165:

See Appendix AA.

Footnote 1166:

Chronn. Ab. and Wig. and Fl. Wig. 1055.

Footnote 1167:

Flor. Wig. 1055. “Septem canonicis qui valvas principalis basilicæ
defenderant occisis.” Chron. Wig., without mentioning the number,
“Forbærude [Ælfgar] þæt mære mynster þe Æthelstan bisceop getimbrode,
and ofsloh þa preostas innan þan mynstre.”

Footnote 1168:

“_Nonnullis_ è civibus necatis, _multis_que captivatis,” says
Florence, but the Worcester Chronicle, after mentioning the slaughter
of the clergy, adds, “and manege þærto eacan;” while Abingdon says,
“and þæt folc slogan, and sume onweg læddan.”

Footnote 1169:

The Brut y Tywysogion plainly distinguishes the “gaer,” or castle,
which was demolished, from the town, which was burned. The castle was
doubtless of stone, while the houses of the town would be chiefly of
wood.

Footnote 1170:

Chronn. Ab. and Wig. and Fl. Wig. 1055, 1056.

Footnote 1171:

See Appendix Y.

Footnote 1172:

Florence, at this point, seems quite to boil over with admiration for
Harold. “Quod ubi Regi innotuit, de totâ mox Angliâ exercitum
congregari jussit, cui Glawornæ congregato strenuum Ducem Haroldum
præfecit, qui, devotè jussis obtemperans, Griffinum et Algarum impigrè
insequitur, ac fines Walanorum audacter ingressus, ultra Straddele
castrametatus est; sed illi, quia virum fortem et bellicosum ipsum
sciebant, cum eo committere bellum non audentes, in Suth-Waliam
fugerunt.”

Footnote 1173:

See Flor. Wig. u. s. “Straddele” or “Stratelei” (see Domesday, 187) is
a border district reckoned along with Herefordshire in Domesday. Roger
of Wendover (i. 494), in a fine fit of exaggeration, carries Harold as
far as Snowdon; “Castra usque ad Snaudunam perduxit.” Mr. Woodward
(History of Wales, 210) makes Straddele to be Ystrad-clwyd, the
southern Strathclyde of Denbighshire, but the witness of Florence and
Domesday seems decisive.

Footnote 1174:

Fl. Wig. 1055. “Majorem exercitûs partem ibi dimisit, mandans eis ut
suis adversariis, si res exposceret, viriliter resisterent.”

Footnote 1175:

I infer this from a comparison of the Chronicles, Florence, and
Domesday. The Abingdon Chronicle says, “And Harald Eorl let dician ða
dic abutan þæt port þa hwile.” Florence says more distinctly,
“Herefordam rediens, vallo lato et alto illam cinxit, portis et seris
munivit.” These accounts, as well as the probability of the case,
point to a mere “vallum.” But in Domesday, 179, we read of there being
a “murus” at Hereford in the time of King Eadward, which seems to
imply a stone wall. Nothing is more likely than that Harold should
throw up a hasty mound now, and afterwards make a more elaborate
fortification, when, as I shall presently show, Hereford came under
his immediate government. On the walls of Exeter and Towcester see
vol. i. pp. 338, 346.

Footnote 1176:

One hundred and three burghers held of the King, twenty-seven of Earl
Harold, whose customs were the same as those of the King’s men. The
customs are detailed at great length. The burghers were liable to
military service against the Welsh, and paid a fine of forty shillings
to the King in case of disobedience to the Sheriff’s summons for that
purpose. Some served with horses. The Reeve paid twelve pounds to the
King and six to Earl Harold, that is the Earl’s third penny. The King
had a mint, and also the Bishop. The whole details are exceedingly
curious, and I shall probably have to refer to them again.

Footnote 1177:

Chronn. Ab. and Wig. Flor. Wig. 1056. “Cujus corpus Herefordam
delatum, in ecclesiâ quam ipse a fundamentis construxerat, est
tumulatum.” Yet he had the year before said, “monasterio quod ...
Æthelstanus construxerat ... combusto.”

Footnote 1178:

Chron. Ab. 1055. “And þæt sciplið gewende to Legeceastre, and þær
abiden heora males þe Ælfgar heom behét.” So Florence.

Footnote 1179:

The Worcester Chronicle, which, as well as (still more strangely) that
of Peterborough, wholly leaves out Harold’s exploits, seems to record
Ælfgar’s restoration with some degree of sarcasm; “And þa þa hi hæfdon
mæst to yfele gedón, man gerædde þone ræd, þæt man Ælfgar Eorl
geinnlagode, and ageaf him his eorldom, and eall þæt him ofgenumen
wæs.”

Footnote 1180:

The Annales Cambriæ has “Magnus filius Haraldi vastavit regionem
Anglorum, auxiliante Grifino Rege Britonum.” The Brut gives him the
strange description, “Magnus uab Heralt, _brenhin Germania_” which I
do not understand. Was he Ælfgar’s Irish ally, defrauded of his pay?
The entry the year before, about waiting at Chester, looks like it.

Footnote 1181:

Fl. Wig. 1056. “In episcopali villâ quæ vocatur Bosanbyrig decessit.”
A fine thirteenth century church and some remains of the episcopal
manor still exist.

Footnote 1182:

The Abingdon and Worcester Chronicles here get poetical; Peterborough
is, just here, strangely meagre; “And man sette Leofgar to biscupe; se
wæs Haroldes Eorles mæsse-preost; se werede his kenepas on his
preosthade, oððæt he wæs biscop. Se forlet his crisman and his hrode,
his gastlican wæpna, and feng to his spere and to his sweorde æfter
his biscuphade, and swa fór to fyrde ongean Griffin þone Wyliscan
Cing.” Yet a fighting Bishop was not so wonderful a thing in those
times. See vol. i. p. 432. William of Malmesbury, Gest. Pont. 163,
makes some confusion, when he says, “Leovegar. Hunc tempore Regis
Edwardi Grifin Rex Walensium urbe crematâ expulit sede et vitâ.” And
Roger of Wendover makes some further confusion or other when he writes
(i. 495), “Ethelstanus Herefordensis præsul obiit, et Levegarus, Ducis
Haroldi capellanus, successit; hunc præsulem, in omni religione
perfectum, Griffinus Rex Walensium, Herefordensi civitate crematâ,
peremit.”

Footnote 1183:

Was Ælfnoth succeeded by Osbern? See p. 346.

Footnote 1184:

Chron. Ab. 1056. “Eaforðlic is to atellanne seo gedrecednes, and seo
fare eall, and seo fyrdung, and þæt geswinc and manna fyll and eac
horsa, þe eall Englahere dreah.”

Footnote 1185:

See above, pp. 153, 362, 372. The Chronicles distinctly say, “Ealdred
bisceop feng to þam bisceoprice þe Leofgar hæfde.” Florence rather
softens this into, “Aldredo Wigornensi præsuli, donec antistes
constitueretur, commissus est episcopatus Herefordensis.” He kept it
for four years, holding also the see of Ramsbury during part of the
time.

Footnote 1186:

Fl. Wig. “Idem episcopus et Comites Leofricus et Haroldus cum Rege
Eadwardo Walanorum Regem Griffinum pacificaverunt.”

Footnote 1187:

See above, p. 86.

Footnote 1188:

Chron. Ab. 1056. “Swa þæt Griffin swor aðas þæt he weolde beon
Eadwarde Kinge hold Underkingc and unswicigende.”

Footnote 1189:

Domesday, 263. “Rex Eadwardus dedit Regi Grifino totam terram quæ
jacebat trans aquam quæ De vocatur. Sed postquam ipse Grifin
forisfecit ei, abstulit ab eo hanc terram, et reddidit episcopo de
Cestre [the see had been moved thither before the Survey. See Will.
Malms. Gest. Pont. 164 _b_] et omnibus suis hominibus qui antea ipsam
tenebant.” A “forisfactio” on the part of Gruffydd can hardly refer to
his loss of his whole kingdom in 1063, and this moment of
reconciliation and homage is obviously the most natural time for a
partial surrender. We have here also another example of church lands
being dealt with for political purposes in a way which would naturally
give rise to those charges of sacrilege against Harold and others of
which I have spoken elsewhere. See Appendix E.

Footnote 1190:

See above, p. 87.

Footnote 1191:

See the whole account in W. Rishanger, 90, ed. Riley.

Footnote 1192:

The see was at Ramsbury, but the Bishop is often called “Episcopus
Wiltoniensium,” that is “of the men of _Wiltunscír_.” In Mercia and
Northumberland the Bishopricks (much like the shires, see vol. i. p.
51) seem commonly to be spoken of by the names of the episcopal towns;
in Wessex and East-Anglia it is as usual, or more so, to use the name
of the tribe or district. See below, p. 406.

Footnote 1193:

See above, pp. 79–81, and 358.

Footnote 1194:

Will. Malm. Gest. Pont. ap. Scriptt. p. Bed. 142. “Ejus animi
magnitudini, vel potius cupiditati, quum non sufficeret rerum
angustia, quoniam apud Ramesberiam nec clericorum conventus, nec quo
sustentaretur erat.”

Footnote 1195:

Ib. “Antecessores suos indigenas fuisse; se alienigenam nullo parentum
compendio vitam quo sustentet habere.”

Footnote 1196:

See above, p. 115.

Footnote 1197:

Will. Malms. u. s. “Episcopum Schireburnensem ... cujus episcopatum
suo uniendum antiquis Edgithæ Reginæ promissis operiebatur.”

Footnote 1198:

On the history of Savaric and his designs on Glastonbury, see the
History of Adam of Domersham in Anglia Sacra, i. 578, and Mr. J. R.
Green and Professor Stubbs in the Somersetshire Archæological
Proceedings for 1863, pp. 39–42.

Footnote 1199:

Fl. Wig. 1055. “Offensus quia ei sedem episcopalem transferre de villâ
quæ Reamnesbyrig dicitur ad abbatiam Malmesbyriensem Rex nollet
concedere.” There is nothing in this short notice inconsistent with
the fuller account given by William of Malmesbury.

Footnote 1200:

I have spoken above (p. 84) of the changes made by Leofric at Exeter,
and I shall have to speak in my next Chapter of the like changes made
by Gisa at Wells.

Footnote 1201:

Will. Malms. Scriptt. p. Bed. 142. “Excellentis prudentiæ monachi,
audito quid in curiâ actum, quid justitiæ surreptum esset, ad Comitem
Godwinum _ejusque filium_ summâ celeritate contendunt.” William is
here mistaken in mentioning Godwine, who of course was dead. The story
cannot be removed to a time before Godwine’s death, as it is fixed to
1055 by the witness of Florence.

Footnote 1202:

Ib. “Id Rex pro simplicitate, cui pronior quam prudentiæ semper erat,
legitimè concedendum ratus, tertio abhinc die dissoluit.”

Footnote 1203:

Ib. “Antequam Hermannus in re vel saisitione inviscaretur.”

Footnote 1204:

Ib. “Illi [Godwine and Harold, or, more truly, Harold only], rei
indignâ novitate permoti, Regem adeunt, et à sententiâ deducunt;
facile id fuit viris summis amplissimâ auctoritate præditis, quibus et
caussæ rectitudo, et Regis facilitas suffragaretur. Ita Hermannus,
necdum planè initiatus, expulsus est.”

Footnote 1205:

See above, p. 42.

Footnote 1206:

Fl. Wig. 1055. “Episcopatum dimisit, marique transfretato, apud
Sanctum Bertinum monachicum habitum suscepit, ibique in ipso
monasterio tribus annis mansit.” Saint Omer, it must be remembered,
was at this time Flemish, and Flanders, and lands south of Flanders,
were still largely Teutonic.

Footnote 1207:

William of Malmesbury (Scriptt. p. Bed. 142) makes himself merry over
the grievances of a Bishop who had turned monk in a momentary fit of
pique; “Sed ut ferè fit talibus, repentino illo impetu relligionis
frigescente, indies in Angliam reditum meditabatur. Figebat [Pigebat?]
hominem assuetum obsequiis, innutritum deliciis, carere delinimentis
quæ ab ineunte fuerat expertus ætate.”

Footnote 1208:

William, strangely confounding his dates, fancies that Godwine died
during Hermann’s absence at Saint Omer, and that Hermann was more
likely to gain his point after Godwine’s death. He is followed by R.
Higden, XV Scriptt. ii. 281, the passage so oddly perverted by
Thierry. See above, p. 345.

Footnote 1209:

See Flor. Wig. 1058.

Footnote 1210:

William of Malmesbury continues to jeer at him to the last; “Accepit
ergo Hermannus Schireburnensem episcopatum integrum cum tribus pagis,
Edwardo Rege dante, vivacitateque suâ datoris annos transcendens ad
Willielmi tempora duravit.” The three “pagi” are the three shires of
which the united diocese was formed, Berkshire, Wiltshire, and
Dorsetshire. So the Abingdon Chronicler recording his death in 1078;
“Se wæs Biscop on Bearrucscire and on Wiltunscire and on Dorsætan.”
Cf. note on p. 401.

Footnote 1211:

See vol. i. p. 349. Will. Malms. u. s.

Footnote 1212:

See above, p. 160.

Footnote 1213:

See Appendix G.

Footnote 1214:

Flor. Wig. 1056. “Ecclesiarum amator, pauperum recreator, viduarum et
pupillorum defensor, oppressorum subventor, virginitatis custos, comes
Agelwinus, id est Odda.” Cf. above, p. 161.

Footnote 1215:

Ib. “Ab Aldredo Wigornensi episcopo, ante suum obitum, monachizatus.”
So Chronn. Ab. and Wig. 1056. “He wæs to munece gehadod ær his ende.”

Footnote 1216:

Flor. Wig. u. s. “Apud Deorhyrste decessit, sed in monasterio
Persorensi honorificè sepultus quiescit.” So Chronn. Ab. and Wig. “His
lic lið on Perscoran.” His brother Ælfric, for whose soul Deerhurst
church was built (see above, p. 161), who died in 1053 (Fl. Wig. in
anno), also died at Deerhurst and was buried at Pershore.

Footnote 1217:

See vol. i. p. 588. According to the Worcester Chronicle under the
years 1041 and 1073, and the Peterborough Chronicle under 1072,
Æthelric was consecrated to York, and was unjustly deprived of the
metropolitan see (hit wæs mid unrihte him ofgenumon), on which he took
Durham. Hugo Candidus, the Peterborough writer (ap. Sparke, 46),
attributes his loss of the see of York to the natural dislike of the
seculars to a monk; “facientibus quibusdam ex canonicis vel ex
clericis, quia penè naturale est eis semper invidere monachis, quia
monachus erat, noluerunt pati eum archiepiscopum esse.” But what
vacancy was there at York in 1041 or 1042? Hugh is loud in his praise,
but Simeon of Durham (Hist. Dun. Eccl. iii. 9, X Scriptt. 34) has much
to say against him, charging him with robbing his church. In the third
year of his episcopate he was driven out, but was restored by Earl
Siward, on the receipt of a bribe (munere oblato). Digging at
Chester-le-street to build a stone church on the site of the old
wooden one, he found a treasure, which he spent in building churches
and repairing roads near Peterborough.

Footnote 1218:

Flor. Wig. and Chronn. Wig. 1072. Petrib. 1073. Sim. Dun. u. s.

Footnote 1219:

Sim. Dun. u. s.

Footnote 1220:

These two brother monks and Bishops remind one of the opening of the
Ormulum;

“Nu, broþerr Wallterr, broþerr min
Affterr þe flæshess kinde;
And broþerr min i Crisstenndom
Þurrh fulluhht and þurrh trowwþe;
And broþerr min i Godess hus
Ȝet o þe þride wise.”

Æthelwine, according to Simeon, had administered the Bishoprick of
Durham under his brother.

Footnote 1221:

Chronn. Wig. and Petrib. 1059. The former breaks out into song, and
gives us good authority for the surname of Ironside;

“Se wæs Eadwerdes
Broðor sunu kynges
Eadmund cing·
Irensíd wæs geclypod
For his snellscipe.”

Florence says, “Ut ei mandârat suus patruus Rex Eadwardus, de
Ungariâ ... Angliam venit. Decreverat enim Rex illum post se regni
hæredem constituere.”

Footnote 1222:

The death of the Emperor Henry the third is recorded in the Abingdon
Chronicle under 1056, under the name of _Cona_, that is, of course,
Conrad. The mistake in the name is odd, but there is no need to have
recourse to Mr. Thorpe’s strange conjecture, A. S. Chronicles, ii. p.
159. The Peterborough Chronicle has a Latin entry with the true name
“Henricus.”

Footnote 1223:

See vol. i. pp. 445, 455.

Footnote 1224:

The Tongues most familiar to Eadward would naturally be Magyar and
_High_-Dutch.

Footnote 1225:

Chron. Ab. 1057;

“Wála þæt wæs hreowlic sið
And hearmlic
Eallre þissere þeode,
Þæt he swa raðe
His lif geendade,
Þæs þe he to Englalande cóm;
For ungesælhðe
Þissere earman þeode.”

Footnote 1226:

Chron. Petrib. 1057. “Her ... com Ædward æðeling, Eadmundes sunu
cynges, hider to lande, and sona þæs gefor.” So Florence; “Ex quo
venit parvo post tempore vitâ decessit Lundoniæ.”

Footnote 1227:

The song in the Abingdon Chronicle says;

“Ne wiston we
For hwylcan intingan
Þæt gedón wearð,
Þæt he ne moste
His mæges Eadwardes
Cynges geseón.”

Footnote 1228:

Lappenberg, p. 517 (ii. 259 Thorpe); “Doch ehe er noch seinen
königlichen Oheim erblickte, von dessen Augen eine ihm ungünstige
Partei, vermuthlich Earl Harolds, des nachherigen Königs, Freunde, ihn
fern zu halten wusste, starb er plötzlich zu London.” He goes on
however distinctly to absolve Harold from all share in his death.

Footnote 1229:

See Will. Gem. vii. 36. Ord. Vit. 500 C. Still more strongly, Guy of
Amiens (129 et seqq.) and Liber de Hydâ, p. 293.

Footnote 1230:

Palgrave, Hist. Ang. Sax. 352. “He was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral;
and sad and ruthful [rueful?] were the forebodings of the English,
when they saw him borne to his grave.—Harold gained exceedingly by
this event. Did the Atheling die a natural death?—The lamentations of
the chroniclers seem to imply more than meets the ear.” Mr. C. H.
Pearson (Hist. of Eng. in the Early and Middle Ages, i. 244) does not
scruple to repeat the insinuation.

Footnote 1231:

Unless indeed some tradition of the sort had found its way into the
confused mind of Saxo (p. 203), when he made Harold murder King
Eadward? He _may_ have been thinking of Eadward the Ætheling, or he
may have been writing purely at random.

Footnote 1232:

This is well put by Lappenberg in the passage quoted above, p. 411.

Footnote 1233:

William was charged with poisoning Conan of Britanny (Will. Gem. vii.
33), and also Walter of Mantes (Eadward’s nephew), and his wife Biota
(Ord. Vit. 534 B). I shall have to speak of these matters in their
proper place.

Footnote 1234:

Chron. Wig. 1057. Petrib. and Cant. 1058. Fl. Wig. 1057.

Footnote 1235:

Fl. Wig. 1057. “Laudabilis _Comes_ Leofricus, _Dusci_ Leofwini filius
[_Earl_ Leofric, son of _Ealdorman_ Leofwine, see vol. i. pp. 456,
461], in propriâ villâ quæ dicitur Bromleage, in bonâ decessit
senectute ii. Kal. Sept.” He had been Earl at least twenty-five years,
perhaps thirty-three.

Footnote 1236:

Besides Bromton and Knighton quoted above (p. 48), Godgifu’s ride
through Coventry appears in Roger of Wendover, i. 497.

Footnote 1237:

Florence (u. s.) distinctly says that Leofric and Godgifu built the
church; “de suo patrimonio à fundamentis construxerunt.” But Orderic
(511 A) says, “Elfgarus Comes Coventrense cœnobium construxit,” and
goes on to speak of Godgifu’s gifts of ornaments; he is clearly
confounding father and son.

Footnote 1238:

Fl. Wig. 1057. “Adeo ditaverunt ut in Angliâ tanta copia auri,
argenti, gemmarum, lapidumque pretiosorum in nullo inveniretur
monasterio, quanta tunc temporis habebatur in illo.” The charter about
Coventry in Cod. Dipl. iv. 253 can hardly be genuine as it stands.
Pope Alexander was not reigning in 1043.

Footnote 1239:

See Appendix BB.

Footnote 1240:

Chron. Wig. and Flor. Wig. in anno.

Footnote 1241:

Hugo Candidus, p. 44.

Footnote 1242:

See above, p. 367.

Footnote 1243:

See Appendix BB.

Footnote 1244:

See Appendix G.

Footnote 1245:

See Appendix CC.

Footnote 1246:

See vol. i. pp. 33, 34. Harold however did not command the whole
Severn valley, as Worcestershire was now held by Ælfgar. See Appendix
G.

Footnote 1247:

See Appendix G.

Footnote 1248:

See Appendix G.

Footnote 1249:

See above, p. 296 et seqq.

Footnote 1250:

This seems implied in the way in which William’s preparations are
spoken of by the Chroniclers and Florence under 1066.

Footnote 1251:

Flor. Wig. 1066. “Quem Rex _ante suam decessionem_ regni successorem
elegerat.” I shall discuss this point at length in the third volume.

Footnote 1252:

See Appendix DD.

Footnote 1253:

He is “subregulus” in Florence, 1066.

Footnote 1254:

See vol. i. p. 533.

Footnote 1255:

Compare on the other hand the joint Kingship of Hugh and Robert in
France (see vol. i. p. 269). So in England in after times we find
Henry the son of Henry the Second crowned in his father’s lifetime. In
the Empire the cases are endless. See above, p. 373, for that of the
reigning King Henry the Fourth.

Footnote 1256:

See above, p. 188.

Footnote 1257:

De Inv. c. 14. “Quem [Haroldum] indigenæ præ cæteris postulabant et
ardenter sitiebant post sanctum Regem Edwardum, ipsius morum et vitæ
hæredem. Quod quidem divinâ miseratione processu temporis videre
meruerunt qui tunc præsentes fuerunt.” When the Waltham writer wrote,
“Eadwardus Simplex” had become a canonized saint.

Footnote 1258:

The authorities for this chapter are essentially the same as those for
the last. With regard to the Chronicles, it may be noticed that the
Abingdon Chronicle, which must be looked on as in some degree hostile
to Godwine, is in no sort hostile to Harold. The Peterborough
Chronicler, who seems rather to keep himself for great occasions, is
rather meagre during this period. As Welsh matters are still
prominent, the Welsh Chronicles have still to be consulted, and,
towards the end of the period, the Northern Sagas again become of some
little importance. But the characteristic of the period is the
prominence of ecclesiastical affairs, which brings several local and
legendary writers into a position of some consequence. Thus, for the
history of Westminster, the tales of Æthelred of Rievaux and his
followers have to be compared with the authentic narratives of
contemporary chroniclers, and, as Harold’s great foundation comes
within these years, we now begin to make use of the local Waltham
writers. The main facts and fictions belonging to the local Waltham
history are found in the two tracts, _De Inventione Sanctæ Crucis_ and
_Vita Haroldi_, which were first published by M. Francisque Michel in
his _Chroniques Anglo-Normandes_ (Rouen, 1840). From these I
endeavoured in 1857 to put together the early history of Waltham, and
of Harold in relation to Waltham, in a paper in the Transactions of
the Essex Archæological Society, vol. ii. p. 34. But M. Michel’s
editions are by no means accurate, and of the _De Inventione_ he left
out many chapters altogether. I was therefore led into some errors of
detail. Since that time, a perfect edition of the _De Inventione_ has
been published, with a Preface, by Professor Stubbs (Oxford, 1861).
The _Vita Haroldi_ was written after 1205. In its essence, as regards
the main facts of English history, it is a mere romance, but, like
other local romances, it has its value for points of local
description, and even for purely local facts. The _De Inventione_ is a
work of higher character. It was written by an anonymous Canon of
Waltham, who was born in 1119, who entered the College in 1124, who
was made a Canon before 1144, and who wrote after 1177, when he lost
his prebend at the change in the foundation of Waltham under Henry the
Second. This tract contains a good deal of legend, but no romance. The
author writes in evident good faith, and with a manifest desire to be
fair and accurate. He repeats the legends of his house as he heard
them from his childhood; he was inclined, like the rest of his
contemporaries, to see, and even to expect, miracles where we see only
natural causes. But, making the necessary deductions on these scores,
he is distinctly more trustworthy than the average of local
historians. On his general character as an historian, and especially
on the miraculous element in his narrative, see the remarks in
Professor Stubbs’ Preface, p. xxvii.

As we have to deal with Westminster and Waltham, we have also to deal
in a less degree with Wells and Worcester, two churches which figure
prominently in the ecclesiastical history of these years. For Wells we
have Gisa’s own narrative of his controversy with Harold, in the
“Ecclesiastical Documents” published by the Camden Society. For
Worcester we have the Life of its great Bishop Saint Wulfstan, by
William of Malmesbury, in the second volume of Anglia Sacra, and the
shorter Life by the contemporary Heming. This last is given in
Old-English in Hearne’s edition of Heming’s Worcester Cartulary (a
book which ought to be reprinted), p. 403, and in Latin in the first
volume of Anglia Sacra.

Footnote 1259:

See Appendix EE.

Footnote 1260:

Ib.

Footnote 1261:

All our Chronicles save Abingdon, which is just now silent for a few
years, mention the death of Stephen and the accession of Benedict.
None of them imply any doubt as to Benedict’s legitimacy, but they use
three different words to express his appointment. He is “to Papan
geset” in Worcester, “gehalgod to Papan” in Peterborough, “gebletsod
þarto” in Canterbury—in the last entry of that chronicle.

Footnote 1262:

See the Cardinal of Aragon’s Life of Nicolas, Muratori, iii. 301. He
does not allow Benedict a place in his list. Yet the next Pope who
assumed the name, in 1303, was called Benedict the Eleventh. Muratori,
iii. 672. On these Popes, see Milman, Latin Christianity, iii. 47.

Footnote 1263:

Our Chronicles (Worcester and Peterborough) record the fact in nearly
the same words under the year 1059; “Her on þisum geare wæs Nicolaus
to Papan gecoren; se wæs biscop æt Florentie þære burh; and wæs
Benedictus ut adrifen, se wæs ær Papa.” These last words may seem to
imply a certain cleaving to Benedict. It is a pity that the strict and
orthodox Abingdon writer (see above, p. 343) is silent, as he might
have employed some other formula.

Footnote 1264:

Chronn. Wig. Petrib. Cant. 1058. See above, pp. 343, 344. Benedict was
“corruptus pecuniâ,” according to John of Peterborough, 1058.

Footnote 1265:

The long-lived Godwine, or the latter of the two Godwines, vanishes in
1046. We hear nothing, as far as I know, of the disposition of the see
in the meanwhile. The Godwine who (Chronn. Wig. Petrib.) died in 1061
seems to be a different person, a Suffragan Bishop of Saint Martin’s
near Canterbury.

Footnote 1266:

The Chronicles significantly connect the consecration of Æthelric and
Siward with the receipt of the pallium by Stigand. The Peterborough
writer (1058) seems specially to mark it; “Her on þisum geare
forðferde Stephanus Papa, and wæs Benedictus gehalgod to Papan. Se
ylca sænde Stigande Arcebiscope pallium hider to lande. And on þisum
geare forðferde Heaca biscop on Suðseaxan, and Stigand Arcebiscop
hadode Ægelric monuc æt Christes cyrcean to biscop to Suðseaxum, and
Siward abbot to biscop to Hrofeceastre.”

Footnote 1267:

Of these dangers we shall hear more distinctly in the case of the
pilgrimage of Tostig in 1061. The Biographer now (410) tells us that
Harold, “potenti munificentiâ veneratus sanctorum limina, per medios
insidiantes cautus derisor more suo Dei gratiâ pervenit ad propria.”
These words _might_ have a deeper meaning; the visit to Normandy and
the oath _might_ be on his return; but the chances are the other way.

Footnote 1268:

Chron. Wig. 1058. “Her man ytte ut Ælfgar Eorl, ac he cóm sona inn
ongean mid strece þurh Gryffines fultum; and her com scyphere of
Norwegan. Hit is langsum to attellane eall hu hit gefaren wæs.” So
Florence; “Algarus Merciorum Comes a Rege Eadwardo secundò exlegatus
est; sed Regis Walanorum Griffini juvamine et Norreganicæ classis
adminiculo, quæ ad illum venerat ex improviso, citò per vim suum
comitatum recuperavit.” Is this the fleet mysteriously referred to by
Tigernach (O’Conor, i. 301) under the same year? “Classis cum filio
Regis Danorum [he probably means Norwegians] cum alienigenis Insularum
Orcnensium et Ebudensium et Dubliniensium, ut subigeret sibi regnum
Saxonum. Sed Deus contrarius fuit ei in re istâ.”

Footnote 1269:

This would apply to the entry in the Chronicle; but, if so, Florence,
who marks the repetition of the word by the word “secundò,” was misled
by it.

Footnote 1270:

When Morkere heads the Northumbrian revolt in 1065, the Biographer (p.
421) says of the sons of Ælfgar, “inter eos regiæ stirpis pueros et
eumdem Ducem Tostinum ex veteri simultate odio [odia?] erant.” The
“regia stirps” can refer only to some possible descent of the House of
Leofric from ancient Mercian Kings. (Cf. vol. i. p. 456.) There is no
sign of any connexion between them and the West-Saxon royal family.

Footnote 1271:

Hist. Mon. S. Petri Glouc. (ed. Hart), i. 1. et seqq. Cf. vol. i. p.
39.

Footnote 1272:

Ib. i. 7. “Sub potestate sæculari, usque ad tempus Wolstani episcopi
Wygorniensis ... mirificè tradebatur.”

Footnote 1273:

See vol. i. p. 485.

Footnote 1274:

Hist. Mon. Glouc. i. 8. “Anno Domini millesimo vicesimo secundo
Wolstanus Episcopus Wygorniensis, qui postea factus est Archiepiscopus
Eboracensis, concedente Rege Cnuto, Duce Danorum, qui Ecclesiam
Sanctam exaltavit, et libertates suas antiquas renovavit et promovit,
ut dicit Petrus Pictavensis, hic Wolstanus clericos qui ecclesiam
Sancti Petri antea rexerant et custodierant, sub protectione Dei et
Apostolorum Petri et Pauli et regulâ beati Benedicti in eâdem ecclesiâ
regulariter collocavit.” In this case the canons seem not to have been
driven out, but to have taken the monastic vows on themselves. This
was partly the case at Bury. See vol. i. p. 486.

Footnote 1275:

Hist. Glouc. i. 8. “Multa bona dissipavit.” Two lordships had to be
sold to make good the losses caused by him.

Footnote 1276:

Chron. Wig. 1058. “On þam ilcan gere Ealdred bisceop halgode þæt
mynster on Gleawcestre þe he sylf geforðode, Gode to lofe and Sc̃e
Petre.” Florence mentions that the church was built by Ealdred “a
fundamentis,” and adds, “postea Regis licentiâ, Wlstanum Wigornensem
monachum à se ordinatum, Abbatem constituit ibidem.” The local history
(p. 9), which calls him Wilstanus, gives the same account. The
prominence here given to the Bishop of the Diocese is remarkable; we
hear nothing of any election by the monks, but only of an Abbot chosen
by the Bishop and confirmed by the King. One might fancy that
Wulfstan, as founder, had retained some special rights of patronage
over the monastery of Gloucester.

Footnote 1277:

Fl. Wig. 1058. See above, p. 406.

Footnote 1278:

See above, p. 372.

Footnote 1279:

After the consecration at Gloucester, says the Worcester Chronicler
(1058), “swa ferde to Hierusalem, mid swilcan weorðscipe swa nan oðer
ne dyde ætforan him;” “quod nullus,” adds Florence, “archiepiscoporum
vel episcoporum Angliæ eatenus dinoscitur fecisse.”

Footnote 1280:

“Per Ungariam,” says Florence.

Footnote 1281:

Chron. Wig. “And hine sylfne þær Gode betæhte, and wurðlic lac eac
geoffrode to ures Drihtenes byrgene, þæt was an gylden calic, on fíf
marcon swiðe wundorlices geworces.” The chronicler, just as at the
time of the mission to Köln, clearly rejoices in the splendour and
bounty of his own Bishop.

Footnote 1282:

Oddly enough, it is the Worcester and not the Peterborough Chronicler
who records this purely local fact; “on þisan gere wæs se stypel
gehalgad æt Burh on xvi. kal. Novemb.”

Footnote 1283:

See above, p. 350.

Footnote 1284:

Chron. Mon. Evesham, p. 88. “Transiit quoque vir ille Mannius eâdem
nocte et horâ quâ Rex gloriosus Æduuardus, festivitate scilicet sanctæ
Epiphaniæ Domini.” But Eadward died on the eve of the Epiphany not on
the Epiphany itself.

Footnote 1285:

Ib. 87. “Nunc sub eo jure præpositi totius abbatiæ hujus curam
agebat.”

Footnote 1286:

There is here a chronological difficulty. The Evesham Chronicle fixes
the date to April 23, 1059. Mannig died on the same day as Eadward,
that is January 5, 1066; seven years, so the historian says, after his
resignation. This makes the year of Æthelwig’s appointment 1059. For
day and place we are told (88), “Rex ... fecit eum apud Glocestre, ubi
tunc curiam suam tenebat, coram multis principibus hujus patriæ ab
Aldredo Archiepiscopo honorabiliter in paschali sollemnitate die
festivitatis sancti Georgii martyris consecrari.” Now it is hardly
likely that Ealdred, who had left for Jerusalem seemingly not very
early in the year before, could have been again in England so soon as
Saint George’s Day, 1059. Also it was not the Easter but the Christmas
festival which was commonly held at Gloucester. That Ealdred is called
Archbishop before his time is a common slip. Perhaps (see Mr. Macray’s
note on p. 87) the reckoning of seven years is wrong, and the date was
really 1058, before Ealdred left England; or the wrong season may be
given (though this seems hardly likely, and the usual places of the
Gemóts were sometimes departed from); or the ceremony may have been
really performed by some other Bishop, and Ealdred’s name may have
been carelessly inserted because he was known to be Bishop of the
Diocese at the time.

Footnote 1287:

See above, p. 42.

Footnote 1288:

When I say that this mistake is found in Sharon Turner (Hist. of
England, i. 79, 81, 84), in Sir Francis Palgrave (Hist. of Anglo-Sax.
378, 388), and in Lappenberg (p. 556 of the original, ii. 302 of Mr.
Thorpe’s translation), it is not wonderful that it is found also in
Thierry (lib. iii.) as well as in Dr. Vaughan (Revolutions in English
History, i. 298), in M. Emile de Bonnechose (ii. 283), and in Mr. St.
John (ii. 275). Yet, without looking to the local historians, or to
the writers who record the change of foundation under Henry the
Second, they need only have turned to William of Malmesbury, iii. 247;
“Ecclesiam ... _canonicis_ impleverat.”

Footnote 1289:

See R. Hoveden. Scriptt. p. Bed. 320. Rad. de Dic. X Scriptt. c. 598.
R. Wend. ii. 387. Gervase (X Scriptt. 1434). Cf. Vita Haroldi (Chron.
A. N. ii. 164).

Footnote 1290:

See vol. i. p. 590.

Footnote 1291:

De Inv. c. 14. There is something strange in the statement of the
Waltham writer that Æthelstan did not succeed to all his father’s
estates, but only to those attached to the stallership.

Footnote 1292:

See above, p. 63.

Footnote 1293:

De Inv. c. 14. “Adelstanus, pater Esegari qui stalre inventus est in
Angliæ conquisitione à Normannis.” He was staller as early as 1044, as
appears from a writ in Cod. Dipl. iv. 221, where he is addressed along
with Bishop Ælfwold, who died in that year. He signs many charters,
among others the Waltham charter of 1062 (Cod. Dipl. iv. 159), with
the title of “regiæ procurator aulæ,” equivalent, according to
Professor Stubbs, to “dapifer.” See his note to De Inv. c. 14.

Footnote 1294:

De Inv. c. 14. So in the Waltham Charter (iv. 155), “Cuidam meorum
Comitum, onomate Haroldo, quamdam terram quæ antiquitùs ab incolis
illius loci nuncupatur Waltham, hæreditario jure concessi.”

Footnote 1295:

The building of the church is affirmed in the Charter (iv. 155); “In
præscripto loco monasterium ad laudem Domini nostri Jesu Christi et
sanctæ Crucis construxit ... fundatum ... monasterium ... dedicari
fecit.” So De Inv. 16; “Venusto enim admodum opere a fundamentis
constructam [ecclesiam].” The romantic Biographer (p. 161) is much
fuller in his description. On the application of the word
“monasterium” to a secular church, see vol. i. p. 472.

Footnote 1296:

See Appendix EE.

Footnote 1297:

The nature of the foundation, the offices of its several members, and
the discipline to be observed, are set forth at large in the 15th
chapter of the De Inventione, and are fully commented on by Professor
Stubbs in his Preface, pp. xiii. xiv.

Footnote 1298:

The charter first mentions the building of the church, then adds,
“_Primum_ concedens ei terram quæ vocatur Norðlande, unde ecclesiam
villæ antiquitùs dotatam invenit;” then comes the consecration, then
the ornaments and the relics; then “Quid plura? suæ denique
conditionis non immemor, ibidem quorumdam catervulam fratrum secundum
auctoritatem sanctorum patrum canonicæ regulæ [_canonical_, as opposed
to monastic] subjectam constituit.” Cod. Dipl. iv. 155.

Footnote 1299:

The legendary Biographer very well describes the object of the
foundation (pp. 160–161); “At vir magnificus, locum et loci cultum
omnimodis cupiens cum suis cultoribus sublimare, novam ibi basilicam
fabricare, ministrorum augere numerum, redditusque eorum proponit
ampliare; utque celebriorem famâ, illustriorem clericorum frequentiâ,
cœlestibus nobilitatam muneribus, locum terrigenis exhibet, scholas
ibidem instituere ... dispositione satagebat prudenti.”

Footnote 1300:

See above, p. 41.

Footnote 1301:

On Adelard see De Inv. c. 15, and Stubbs, Preface, p. ix. In c. 25 the
author calls Adelard, “institutor et ordinator præsentis ecclesiæ.”
The Biographer (pp. 155–9) has a legend, which makes him a physician,
sent over by the Emperor to cure Harold of a paralysis, which baffled
the skill of English doctors. It baffled the skill of Adelard also,
but, being a devout man, he recommends the Holy Rood of Waltham as the
best resource, and by its virtue Harold is cured. Harold then founds
the College, and puts Adelard at the head of the school. All this is
made to follow Harold’s great Welsh campaign of 1063. The writer may
have confounded it with the campaign of 1055. Harold, as we shall see,
did suffer from the gout.

Footnote 1302:

De Inv. 25. His son Peter was Master when the author was a boy. He was
a “fons uberrimus disciplinis doctrinam scaturiens.”

Footnote 1303:

Cod. Dipl. iv. 155. “Ut non solùm Dei cultor efficiatur, verùm etiam
canonicæ regulæ strenuus institutor fieri credatur.”

Footnote 1304:

In 1857 I showed that the year must have been either 1059 or 1060.
Professor Stubbs has now incontestably fixed it to the latter year.

Footnote 1305:

Professor Stubbs shows that the list of persons present at the
consecration, as given in the De Inventione, c. 16, is taken from the
list of signatures to the Charter. The author evidently thought that
it was drawn up and signed at Waltham at the time. But he has thus
fallen into some mistakes, as he introduces Walter and Gisa as
Bishops, which they were in 1062, and therefore sign the charter as
such, but which they were not in 1060. He also calls Gisa Bishop of
Chichester instead of Wells.

Footnote 1306:

See vol. i. p. 471.

Footnote 1307:

The Waltham writer (De Inv. c. 16) goes so far as to say that Cynesige
officiated “quia tunc vacabat sedes Cantuariæ.” See Appendix U.

Footnote 1308:

Chronn. Wig. and Petrib. 1060. Flor. Wig. 1060. Hugo Candidus (Sparke,
45). This last writer is loud in Cynesige’s praise, and records his
gifts to Peterborough, which the Lady Eadgyth took away.

Footnote 1309:

Fl. Wig. 1060. “Wigornensis episcopus Aldredus ad archiepiscopatum in
Nativitate Domini eligitur.” It may perhaps be thought that such speed
is impossible, and that “eligitur” must be taken of a capitular
election at York on Christmas-Day, which would be confirmed by the
King and his Witan at some later Gemót. We have certainly heard of
capitular elections thus confirmed or rejected, in one case at Durham
(vol. i. p. 565) and in one case at Canterbury (see above, p. 119);
but the grant of the Bishoprick of Hereford to Walter is so clearly
connected with the promotion of Ealdred to York that we must suppose
the two to have taken place in the same Assembly. I do not know why
“eligere” may not be said of the Witan as well as of the Chapter; or,
if any one pleases, it is quite possible that enough members of the
Church of York may have been present in the Gemót to go through a
canonical election at Gloucester, which the King and his Witan would
at once confirm.

Footnote 1310:

Flor. Wig. 1060. “Herefordensis præsulatus ... capellano Edgithæ
Reginæ Waltero Lotharingo est datus.” His writ of appointment is given
in Cod. Dipl. iv. 194.

Footnote 1311:

In 1060, according to the Worcester Chronicle and Florence; in 1061
according to the Peterborough Chronicle.

Footnote 1312:

Flor. Wig. 1060. His writ is given in Cod. Dipl. iv. 195. The local
historian of Wells (Ang. Sac. i. 559), with the notions of the
fifteenth century, makes Gisa receive his appointment, as well as his
consecration, from the Pope; “Hic quum in quâdam ambassiatâ cum aliis
à dicto Rege ad Apostolicam Sedem missus fuisset pro quibusdam
negotiis conscientiam dicti Regis moventibus, Apostolicus sibi
contulit sedem Wellensem.” Gisa was born (see his own account,
Ecclesiastical Documents, p. 16) at Saint Trudo, a town of the
district of Hasbain in the Bishoprick of Lüttich. Florence says of
Duduc and Gisa that they were “ambo de Lotharingiâ oriundi,” but Duduc
was certainly a Saxon.

Footnote 1313:

On the dispute between Harold and Gisa, see Appendix FF.

Footnote 1314:

See his language in pp. 18, 19 of his narrative.

Footnote 1315:

Matth. Paris. Vitt. xxiii. Abb. ii. 47.

Footnote 1316:

Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. Scriptt. p. Bed. 163.

Footnote 1317:

Hist. Ep. Som. 16–19. “Tunc ecclesiam sedis meæ perspiciens esse
mediocrem, clericos quoque quatuor vel quinque absque claustro et
refectorio esse ibidem ... Quos publicè vivere et inhonestè mendicare
necessariorum inopia antea coegerat.”

Footnote 1318:

See Appendix FF.

Footnote 1319:

Among other things, he bought Combe from “Arsere” (p. 18), who on
reference to Domesday (89) appears as Azor, seemingly the same Thegn
of whom Earl Godwine bought Woodchester in Gloucestershire. See
Appendix E. Azor signs many charters, and in the Waltham document
(Cod. Dipl. iv. 159) he appears as “Regis dapifer.”

Footnote 1320:

See above, p. 84.

Footnote 1321:

On these synods, held April 13th and May 1st, 1059, see Stubbs,
Mosheim, ii. 47.

Footnote 1322:

We have seen that he found his Canons “absque claustro et refectorio,”
things with which they could perfectly well dispense. Then he goes on
(p. 19), “Quos publice vivere ... canonicali, ditatos, instruxi
obedientiâ. Claustrum verò et refectorium et dormitorium illis
præparavi, et omnia quæ ad hæc necessaria et competentia fore cognovi,
_ad modum patriæ meæ_ laudabiliter advocavi.” On the Provostship of
Wells, part of this institution, see Professor Stubbs in Gentleman’s
Magazine, November 1864, p. 624.

Footnote 1323:

See above, p. 446.

Footnote 1324:

Fl. Wig. 1061. Vita Eadw. 411. Æthelred Riev. X Scriptt. 387. The
reason for these Bishops going to Rome for consecration is most
clearly expressed in an incidental entry in Florence under the year
1070; “Ambo Romæ à Nicolao Papâ ordinati sunt, quando Aldredus
Eboracensium archiepiscopus pallium suscepit: vitabant enim a
Stigando, qui tunc archiepiscopatui Doruberniæ præsidebat, ordinari,
quia illum noverant non canonicè pallium suscepisse.” See Appendix U.
The King’s orders seem implied in the words of Gisa himself (Hist. Ep.
Som. 16); “Ego quem Rex Edwardus, licet vitæ meritis indignum, Romæ
direxit et à Nicolao Papâ ordinatum ... honorificè recepit.”

Footnote 1325:

See above, p. 113.

Footnote 1326:

W. Thorn. X Scriptt. 1785.

Footnote 1327:

Chron. Petrib. 1061. “And on þam sylfan geare forðferde Wulfric abbod
æt Sc̃e Augustine innon þære Easter wucan on xiv. Kal. Mai.” It is
remarkable how many eminent persons—Earl Godwine, Archbishop Cynesige,
and King Eadward himself are the most remarkable—died while the Witan
were actually sitting, to the great convenience of those who had to
elect their successors.

Footnote 1328:

The story continues, “Ða com þam cynge word þæt se abbot Wulfric
forðgefaren wæs, þa geceas he [no mention of capitular election]
Æðelsige munuc þærto.” On Windsor see Cod. Dipl. iv. 178, 209, 227.

Footnote 1329:

See above, pp. 113, 372.

Footnote 1330:

Hist. Rams. c. 119. We shall hear of Æthelsige again.

Footnote 1331:

Chron. Wig. 1061. “Her for Ealdred biscop to Rome æfter his pallium.”

Footnote 1332:

The Worcester Chronicle merely says, “And se Eorl Tostig and his wif
eac foron to Rome.” The Biographer (410, 411) adds Gyrth, Gospatric,
and others, as their companions. On Burchard, son of Ælfgar, see
Appendix BB.

Footnote 1333:

Vita Eadw. 410. “Transfretavit, et per Saxoniam et superiores Rheni
fines Romam tetendit.”

Footnote 1334:

Ib. 411. “Venerant quoque ex præcepto Regis ... Gyso et Walterius.”

Footnote 1335:

Æthel. Riev. 386. Est. de Seint Ædward, 2324 et seqq. But the fact
rests on better authority. The Biographer (411) speaks of Ealdred as
going to Rome—“ut ibi scilicet et regiæ legationis caussam peroraret,
et usum pallii obtineret.” So Gisa himself (Hist. Ep. Som. 16) says
that he came back “privilegium apostolicæ auctoritatis mecum
deferens.”

Footnote 1336:

Vita Eadw. 410. “Romæ ab Apostolico Nicolao, honore quo decebat
susceptus, à latere ejus in ipsâ Romanâ synodo ab eo coactus sedit
secundus.” So Gisa (u. s.) says “post peractam ibi synodum.” William
of Malmesbury (Gest. Pont. 154) calls it “synodus quam contra
simoniacos coegerat [Nicolaus].” He also mentions the honours shown to
Tostig. But this synod cannot have been, as Æthelred (387) makes it,
the Second Lateran Council. That assembly, according to the Chronicle
of Bernold of Constanz (Pertz, v. 427), was held in 1060, but the real
date was April 13, 1059. See its Acts in Pertz, Legg. ii. Ap. 177.
Milman, iii. 49. And cf. above, p. 452.

Footnote 1337:

See what profess to be the letters in Cod. Dipl. iv. 183.

Footnote 1338:

Gisa himself (u. s.) fixes the day to April 15th.

Footnote 1339:

Vita Eadw. 411. “Apostolicis et pontificalibus decretis examinantibus
et omni synodo censente, à petitione suâ repulsus, non solùm usum
pallii non obtinuit, verùm ab episcopatûs gradu dejectus in hâc
confusione recedere habuit.”

Footnote 1340:

Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 154. “Gisonem et Walterum voti compotes
reddidit, qui essent non usquequaque contemnendæ scientiæ et nullius
notati ignominiâ simoniæ. Aldredum suâpte responsione culpabilem
utrobique repertum omni honore severus exspoliavit.” But, in his Life
of Wulfstan (Ang. Sac. ii. 250), he says, “Nam nec ille Wigornensi
præsulatui renunciare, nec Papa nisi cederet Eboracensi eum pallio
insignire volebat.” The Biographer (411) is not very clear, but he
seems rather to make the translation the objection; “Perscrutatus ergo
qualiter ad sacros accessisset ordines, eo gratuitu confitente
inventus est à primo ordinationis suæ Episcopo [episcopatu?] ad alium
[aliud MS.] commigrâsse contra canones.”

Footnote 1341:

Vita Eadw. 412. “Quum caussâ Aldredi Episcopi Dux in Româ
prehendinaret diutiùs, uxorem suam et omnem regiæ dignitatis suæ
comitatum præmiserat cum suis majoris numeri hominibus, et hi
processerant prosperè.”

Footnote 1342:

The Biographer, who first (411) calls them “latrones,” afterwards
(412) promotes them into “militares.”

Footnote 1343:

“Adolescens Gaius Patricius nomine” (411). The same strange perversion
of the name is made by Orderic (512 C). This may be the Gospatric
mentioned there as taking a part in the resistance to William in
Northumberland. It is to be hoped for Tostig’s sake that it was.

Footnote 1344:

“Suis propriis rebus donatus,” says the Biographer, 412.

Footnote 1345:

Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 154. “Ita differenti effectu quum
regrederentur [he conceives Gisa and Walter to have been of the
party], una pariter ærumna omnes involvit; nam prædonibus irruentibus,
præter simplices vestes exspoliatis omnibus, ad nummum valens
corporibus tamen illæsis Romam refugere.”

Footnote 1346:

Vita Eadw. 412. “Confusè ergo et miserabiliter reversis Romana pietas
indoluit, veritusque Dominus Papa maximè clarissimi Ducis petitionem,”
&c.

Footnote 1347:

Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 154. “Futurum ut hæc Rex Anglorum audiens
tributum Sancti Petri meritò Nicolao subtraheret, se non defuturum
rerum veritati exaggerendæ. Hoc minarum fulmine Romani territi Papam
flexerunt.” This follows a good hearty English denunciation, of which
I have given the substance in the text. To the same effect in the Life
of Wulfstan, ii. 250.

Footnote 1348:

Such is William of Malmesbury’s account. The Biographer, in his
rhetoric, leaves out the condition.

Footnote 1349:

Vita Eadw. 412. “Ducem consolatus est caritativâ allocutione, allatis
insuper magis xeniis ex beati Petri largitate.”

Footnote 1350:

See Appendix BB.

Footnote 1351:

See above, p. 116.

Footnote 1352:

Sim. Dun. Gest. Regg. 1061. “Interim Rex Scottorum Malcolmus sui
conjuncti fratris, scilicet Comitis Tostii, comitatum ferociter
depopulatus est, violatâ pace sancti Cuthberti in Lindisfarnensi
insulâ.”

Footnote 1353:

Vita Wlst. 250. Ealdred is to resign Worcester, and a good successor
is to be chosen; “Hujus igitur conditionis arbitros, et quædam alia
ecclesiastica negotia in Angliâ expedituros, Cardinales adductos
Archiepiscopus Regi exhibuit.” Florence (1062) calls them “legatos
sedis apostolicæ ... Armenfredum scilicet, Sedunensem Episcopum, et
alium, qui a Domino Papâ Alexandro pro responsis ecclesiasticis ad
Regem Anglorum Eadwardum missi ... Wigorniæ ... degebant.” I quote the
fuller Life by William of Malmesbury as “Vita Wlstani,” and the
shorter one by Heming by name.

Footnote 1354:

Vita Wlst. 250. “Adeò illum amor Wigorniæ devinxerat.”

Footnote 1355:

Florence mentions their sojourn at Worcester, and their admiration of
Wulfstan; the Life makes them actually his guests.

Footnote 1356:

Fl. Wig. “Exspectantes responsum suæ legationis usque ad curiam
regalem proximi Paschæ.” So the Life, but less clearly.

Footnote 1357:

See above, pp. 372, 436.

Footnote 1358:

Vita Wlst. 251. “Maximæ quantùm ad sæculum prudentiæ, quantùm ad
religionem non minimæ.” But the Evesham historian (p. 87) calls him
“honestis moribus valde probatum, tam generis nobilitate quàm divinâ
lege ac sæculari prudentiâ plurimum valentem.”

Footnote 1359:

Hist. Evesh. pp. 88, 89.

Footnote 1360:

Vit. Wlst. 251. “Quamvis Æthelwius sollicitè anniteretur partibus.”

Footnote 1361:

Ib. “Aldredus, pro pacto quod fecerat Apostolico, nonnullo tempore
fluctaverat animo; utrum ad episcopatum eligeret Ethelwii perspicacem
industriam in sæculo, an Wlstani simplicem religionem in Deo. Erant
enim illi viri Wigornensis diœcesis diverso respectu præstantissimi.”

Footnote 1362:

Flor. Wig. 1062. “Anno ætatis suæ plus quinquagesimo.”

Footnote 1363:

Æthelstan in the Life, Eatstan according to Florence.

Footnote 1364:

Vita Wlst. 244. Ervenius was a skilful illuminator, and wrote a
Sacramentary for King Cnut and a Psalter for the Lady Emma. Cnut (249)
gave both the books to the Emperor Conrad; his son Henry the Third
gave them to Ealdred, who brought them back from Köln and gave them to
Wulfstan. Emma had another Psalter whose adventures in Normandy we
have already come across. See above, p. 233.

Footnote 1365:

The story is given at length in the Life, p. 245.

Footnote 1366:

Brihtheah was Bishop from 1033 to 1038 (Chron. Wig. 1033. Ab. 1038).
This fixes the date of Wulfstan’s ordination and profession. Brihtheah
was one of the embassy which took Gunhild to Germany (Heming, Cart.
267). He had a brother Æthelwig, who enlarged the presbytery of Saint
Peter’s Church in Worcester (Ib. 342).

Footnote 1367:

Vita Wlst. 246. “Obtulit ei plusquam semel Antistes ecclesiam
suburbanam, cujus opulenti reditus ad quotidianam stipem satis
superque sufficerent.”

Footnote 1368:

Ib. 247. “Præpositus, ut tunc, Prior, ut nunc dicitur, monachorum
constitutus.” “Prior et pater congregationis,” says Florence, adding
“ab Aldredo episcopo ponitur.” It will be remembered that, in a
cathedral monastery, the Bishop was Abbot, so the Prior was the
immediate head of the society.

Footnote 1369:

Ib. 248. “Jam enim venalitas ex infernalibus umbris emerserat, ut nec
illud gratis presbyteri præberent infantibus sacramentum, si non
infarcirent parentes marsupium.” Adam of Bremen (iv. 30) brings the
same charge against the Norwegian and Danish clergy; but he allows it
to be their only fault, and attributes it to the unwillingness of the
“barbarians” to pay tithe.

Footnote 1370:

Heming, Vita Wlst. Angl. Sacr. i. 541. “Venerabilis interea Comitissa
Godgiva, famâ bonitatis ejus auditâ, totis illum cœpit diligere
visceribus, et diversis hujus sæculi subvenire necessitatibus.” See
Appendix E.

Footnote 1371:

Will. Malms. Vit. Wlst. 248. See above, p. 41.

Footnote 1372:

Fl. Wig. 1062. “Fit unanimis consensus tam cleri quam etiam totius
plebis in ejus electione, Rege videlicet annuente ut quem sibi vellent
præsulem eligerent.” He goes on to mention the coming of the Legates
and their visit to Worcester, and adds; “Hi videntes, dum ibi
morabantur, ejus laudabilem conversationem, in ejus electione non
tantùm consentiebant, immo etiam tam clerum quam plebem maximè ad hoc
instigabant, suâque auctoritate ejus electionem firmabant.” This
seems, especially considering the passage about the King, certainly to
imply a preliminary election by the clergy and people of Worcester,
which the Witan had to confirm or reject. It is hardly possible that
by “clerus et plebs” he can mean the Gemót itself. He speaks of the
Legates waiting for the Gemót, but it is from the Life that we get the
details of the debate.

Footnote 1373:

Vita Wlst. 251. “Ad Curiam reversi, dum Wigornensis Episcopi
ventilaretur electio, nomen ejus tulerunt in medium.” It must have
been a wholesome thing for Roman Cardinals to come face to face with
an Assembly in whose proceedings order and freedom had already learned
to kiss one another.

Footnote 1374:

Ib. “Adstipulabantur votis Cardinalium Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis et
Eboracensis, ille favore, iste testimonio [I suppose this means that
Ealdred spoke from his own knowledge, and Stigand from the report of
others], ambo judicio. Accedebant laudibus etiam Comites Haraldus et
Elgarus, par insigne fortitudinis, non ita religionis.”

Footnote 1375:

Ib. “Sanctus ergo ad Curiam exhibitus jubetur suscipere donum
Episcopatûs [the King’s writ?]. Contra ille niti, et se honori tanto
imparem cunctis reclamantibus clamitare.”

Footnote 1376:

Fl. Wig. 1262. “Illo obstinatissimè renuente, seque indignum
acclamante et cum sacramento etiam affirmante se multò libentiùs
decollationi quàm tam altæ ordinationi succumbere velle.”

Footnote 1377:

“Frustra Cardinales cum Archiepiscopis trivissent operam, nisi
refugienti prætendissent Papæ obedientiam.” So says the Life, p. 251,
and the argument is one which would doubtless be used, though one may
doubt whether Stigand was specially eloquent on behalf of the Papal
claims. But the matter was clearly not settled at once in the Easter
Gemót. Florence witnesses to the final persuasion wrought by the
“inclusus” Wulfsige, who, after his long solitude, was not likely to
be among the assembled Witan. (We shall hear of Wulfsige again.) The
dates also prove the delay. Florence tells us that the canonical
confirmation was on August 29th, the consecration on September 8th.

Footnote 1378:

See Appendix U.

Footnote 1379:

Fl. Wig. 1062. “Coram Rege et regni optimatibus.” Or, as Florence,
when he speaks of the Witan, is rather fond of using popular language,
this may mean some smaller Council.

Footnote 1380:

Ib. “Se nullum jus ecclesiasticæ seu sæcularis subjectionis super eum
deinceps velle clamare, nec propter quod ab eo consecratus est, nec
quia ante consecrationem ejus monachus factus est.”

Footnote 1381:

Vita Wlst. 251. “Rex ergo Edwardus Wlstanum Wigornensi episcopatu ex
solido investivit; licet illum Aldredus potentiâ quâ vigebat multis et
penè omnibus ... prædiis vellicaverit.” The Gloucester historian (i.
9) charges him with having dealt in the same way with that Monastery
on his appointing the other Wulfstan to be its Abbot.

Footnote 1382:

This is the charter in Cod. Dipl. iv. 154, already so often quoted.
The signatures are very numerous. Stigand, though excluded from the
consecration of the minster, signs the charter; so does the Norman
Bishop William, also Bishop Gisa, various French courtiers, Esegar the
Staller, and Earl Ælfgar. Harold’s own signature takes a very
practical shape; “Ego Haroldus Dux _operando consolido_.”

Footnote 1383:

See Appendix GG.

Footnote 1384:

This seems implied in the verses of the Biographer, p. 425;

“Quis canit occiduos modulator in orbe Britannos,
Gentem Caucasiis rupibus ingenitam,
Indomitam fortemque nimis regnante Griphino,
Nec jam contentam finibus occiduis?
Ultra sed sceleris cursum tulit arma Syvernæ,
Vimque ejus regnum pertulit Angligenûm.”

Footnote 1385:

This is implied in the Worcester Chronicle, 1063. “On þissum geare for
Harold Eorl æfter Middanwintre of Gleaweceastre to Rudelan.” Florence
is fuller. Harold goes “jussu Regis Eadwardi,” and the reason assigned
is “ut Regem Walanorum Griffinum, propter frequentes depopulationes
quas in Anglorum finibus agebat, ac verecundias quas domino suo Regi
Eadwardo sæpe faciebat, occideret.” A bill of attainder was seemingly
passed against Gruffydd, just like that which, at another Gloucester
Gemót, nine years before, had been passed against Rhys, the brother of
the other Gruffydd. See above, p. 349.

Footnote 1386:

Fl. Wig. 1063. “Equitatu non multo secum assumpto.” The Housecarls
were clearly the only troops fitted for a sudden enterprise of this
kind. Riding to the field, but fighting on foot, they were _dragoons_
in the earlier sense of the word.

Footnote 1387:

Flor. Wig. “Eodemque die rediit.”

Footnote 1388:

Joan. Sarisb. Polyc. vi. 6 (iv. 16—18 Giles). His general argument is,
“Videsne quantùm electio ducis et exercitium juventutis militiæ
conferant?” He introduces Harold thus; “Anglorum recens narrat
historia, quod, quum Britones, irruptione factâ, Angliam
depopularentur, à piissimo Rege Edwardo ad eos expugnandos missus est
Dux Haraldus, vir quidem in armis strenuus [his common epithet with
Florence], et laudabilium operum fulgens insignibus, et qui tam suam
quam suorum posset apud posteros gloriam dilatare, nisi meritorum
titulos, nequitiam patris imitans, perfidè præsumpto regno,
decoloraret.”

Footnote 1389:

He enlarges at some length on the inadequate preparations made in his
time to resist the invaders; “Nivicollini Britones irruunt, et jam
protendunt terminos suos, et egressi de cavernis suis latebrisque
silvarum, plana occupant, nobilium procerum, videntibus ipsis,
impugnant, expugnant, et diruunt, aut sibi retinent, munitiones.”
After some rhetorical complaints of the luxury of his own age, he goes
on, “Depopulantur illi fines nostros; dum juventus nostra instruitur,
et dum nobis miles armatur, hostis evadit.” Presently comes the
account of Harold.

Footnote 1390:

De Illaud. Walliæ, ii. 7, ap. Ang. Sacr. ii. 451. He describes
Harold’s campaign, and adds, “Ob has igitur tam cruentas tamque
recentes Anglorum de hâc gente victorias primi tres Normannorum Reges
in tantâ subjectione tamque pacificam suis diebus Walliam tenuere.”

Footnote 1391:

Fl. Wig. 1063. “Frater suus Comes Tostinus, ut Rex mandârat, cum
equestri occurrit exercitu.” The Worcester Chronicle says, “Tostig fór
mid landferde ongean.” “Landferd” is here opposed to Harold’s fleet.
Tostig had probably troops of both kinds in his army, but the
“equestris exercitus” implies that some were Housecarls.

Footnote 1392:

See above, p. 389.

Footnote 1393:

Giraldus (Angl. Sacr. ii. 452), in his very curious remarks on the
right way to carry on a Welsh war, enlarges on the necessity of being
prepared for poor fare. The Marchers are “Gens ... cibo potuque non
delicata, tam Cerere quam Baccho caussis urgentibus abstinere parata.”
It was now no doubt that Harold showed that power of enduring
“infinitos labores, vigilias, et inediam,” of which the Biographer had
spoken, p. 409. See above, p. 38.

Footnote 1394:

The Biographer makes a distinct allusion to the change of tactics, p.
425;

“Quum volucres Angli sub Haroldo præside juncti
Tostini cuneis agminibusque citis.”

Were this writer less rhetorical, one might think that _cunei_ meant
specially the Housecarls, as distinguished from the “agmina cita” of
the light-armed. Cf. Giraldus (ii. 451); “Haroldus ultimus, qui pedes
ipse, cumque pedestri turmâ et levibus armis victuque patriæ conformi
[see on the Welsh fare just above], tam validè totam Kambriam et
circuivit et transpenetravit.” But the fullest account is given by
John of Salisbury (iv. 18); “Quum ergo gentis cognosceret levitatem,
quasi pari certamine militiam eligens expeditam, cum eis censuit
congrediendum, levem exercens armaturam, perornatus incedens fasciis
pectus et præduro tectus corio, missilibus eorum levia objectans
ancilia, et in eos contorquens nunc spicula, nunc mucronem exercens,
sic fugientium vestigiis inhærebat, ut premeretur ‘pede pes et cuspide
cuspis,’ et umbo umbone repelleretur.”

Footnote 1395:

Vita Eadw. 426;

“Gnarus inaccessis scrobibus se credere miles,
Tutius hostiles involet unde acies,
Saltibus et scopulis fretus regione malignâ,
Sic vexat longâ lite Duces geminos.”

So John of Salisbury (iv. 18); “Nivium itaque collem ingressus,
vastavit omnia.”

Footnote 1396:

Giraldus (ii. 451). “In cujus victoriæ signum perpetuamque memoriam
lapides in Walliâ more antiquo in titulum erectos locis, in quibus
victor exstiterat, literas hujuscemodi insculptas habentes plurimos
invenies; Hic fuit victor Haroldus.” I am not aware that any of these
monuments now remain. The stones at Trelech in Monmouthshire,
sometimes thought to be a memorial of one of Harold’s victories, must
be far older, and Monmouthshire is not likely to have been the scene
of war.

Footnote 1397:

Ib. (ii. 453). “Ibi capiuntur milites, hic decapitantur; ibi
redimuntur, hic perimuntur.”

Footnote 1398:

Joan. Sarisb. iv. 18. “Usque ad miserationem parvulorum omnem masculum
qui inveniri potuit interficiens, in ore gladii pacavit provinciam.”
So Harold’s biographer, though confounding the chronology (see above,
p. 442), says (Vita Haroldi, 155) truly enough, “Viribus autem
corporis quantum præstiterit, quam acer et strenuus [mark the standing
epithet] animis armisque innotuerit, subacta, immo ad internecionem
per Haroldum penè deleta, Wallia est experta.”

Footnote 1399:

Giraldus (ii. 451). “Ut in eâdem fere mingentem ad parietem non
reliquerit.”

Footnote 1400:

John of Salisbury extends the campaign over two years, and Florence
places the death of Gruffydd in 1064. But both the Worcester and the
Peterborough Chronicles distinctly place the whole story between May
and August 1063.

Footnote 1401:

Fl. Wig. 1063. “Regem suum Griffinum exlegantes abjecerunt.”

Footnote 1402:

Chron. Wig. 1063. “Se wæs kyning ofer eall Wealcyn.”

Footnote 1403:

I quote literally the Brut y Tywysogion. Its wrong date, 1061, is
corrected in the Annales Cambriæ into 1063. “Griffinus filius Lewelini
Rex Britonum nobilissimus dolo suorum occisus est.”

Footnote 1404:

Chron. Wig. He is slain “fram his agenum mannum, þurh þæt gewin þe he
won wiþ Harold Eorl.”

Footnote 1405:

The Peterborough Chronicler is almost startling in his terse brevity;
“And þæt folc heom gislodon and to bugon, and foron syððan to, and
ofslogon heora cyng Griffin and brohton Harolde his heafod.” By John
of Salisbury’s time it was forgotten that Gruffydd was killed by his
own people; with him Harold “Reges cepit et capita eorum Regi qui eum
miserat præsentavit” (iv. 18). The death of Gruffydd had however been
decreed in the Christmas Gemót. See above, p. 468.

Footnote 1406:

Chron. Wig. “And Harold hit [Gruffydd’s head] þam kynge brohte, and
his scipes heafod and þa bone þermid.” I do not know what the “bone”
means. The Biographer (426) says nothing about the death of Gruffydd,
but is eloquent about the spoil, especially the

“Proram cum puppi, pondus grave scilicet auri,
Artificum studio fusile multiplici.”

Footnote 1407:

The Worcester Chronicle (1063) says expressly that the two princes
were Gruffydd’s brothers; “And se kyng Eadward betæhte þæt land his
twam gebroþran Bleþgente and Rigwatlan.” In the two Welsh Chronicles
no notice is taken of this investiture of Gruffydd’s successors, but
in 1068 we find Bleddyn and Rhiwallon reigning; they are however
called sons of Cynfyn, and are described as waging war with the sons
of Gruffydd. Of Bleddyn we have heard before in the invasion of
Herefordshire. See above, p. 388.

Footnote 1408:

See Appendix DD. The Peterborough Chronicle leaves out all mention of
Eadward; “And he [Harold] sette oþerne cyng þærto.”

Footnote 1409:

Chron. Wig. “And hig [Bleddyn and Rhiwallon] aþas sworon and gislas
saldan þæm Cynge _and þæm Eorle_, þæt heo him on allum þingum
unswicende beon woldon, and eighwar him gearwe, on wætere and on
lande, and swylc of þam lande gelæstan swylc man dyde toforan ær oþrum
kynge.”

Footnote 1410:

Joan. Sarisb. iv. 18. “Legem statuit ut quicumque Britonum exinde
citra terminum, quem eis præscripsit, fossam scilicet Offæ, cum telo
inveniretur, ei ab officialibus regni manus dextra præcideretur.”

Footnote 1411:

Ib. “Adeoque virtute Ducis tunc Britones confecti sunt ut fere gens
tota deficere videretur, et ex indulgentiâ jam dicti Regis mulieres
eorum nupserunt Anglis.”

Footnote 1412:

I shall speak more largely of her in my third volume.

Footnote 1413:

Brut y Tywysogion, 1039. “Gruffydd overcame Howel and captured his
wife, and took her to be his own wife.”

Footnote 1414:

It is certainly hard measure when Sir Francis Palgrave (Hist. Ang.
Sax. p. 372) speaks of Harold’s wife as “her whose husband he had
murdered.” Did Alexander murder Darius?

Footnote 1415:

See vol. i. p. 411.

Footnote 1416:

Excepting Dr. R. Vaughan (Revolutions in English History, i. 300),
who, from some undescribed sources not open to other writers, has
found out that “the marriage could hardly have been a happy one.
Ea[l]dgyth was a woman of great ambition, and unscrupulous in her use
of means to gratify her passions.”

Footnote 1417:

Chron. Ab. 1065. “Harold Eorl ... þone Kingc Eadward þar to habbene
for huntnoþes þingon.” So Flor. Wig. “Ut Dominus suus Rex Eadwardus
illic aliquamdiu venationis caussâ degere possit.”

Footnote 1418:

See above, p. 387. Florence expressly distinguishes him as “filius
Regis Suth-Walanorum Griffini, quem ante paucos annos Griffinus Rex
North-Walanorum occiderat, ejusque regnum invaserat.”

Footnote 1419:

R. Wend. i. 507. “Craddoc, Griffini filius, quem anno præterito
exsulaverat Haroldus.” This may however be some confusion with the
outlawry of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn.

Footnote 1420:

Chronn. Ab. and Wig. 1065. “Þa for Cradoc Griffines sunu to, mid
eallum þam þe he begytan mihte, and þæt folc mæst eall ofsloh þe þar
timbrode, and þæt gód genam þe þar gegaderod wæs.”

Footnote 1421:

Chron. Wig. “Ne wiston we hwa þone unræd ærest gerædde.”

Footnote 1422:

Vita Eadw. 421. “Interea quorumdam nobilium factione quos ob nequitias
suas gravi presserat dominatûs sui jugo, conjurant in invicem in ejus
præjudicio.”

Footnote 1423:

Chron. Ab. 1065. “Forþam þa he rypte God ærost.”

Footnote 1424:

Ib. “And ealle þa bestrypte þe he ofer mihte, æt life and æt lande.”

Footnote 1425:

Ib. “Ealle þa mid hym þe unlage rærdon.” On the untranslatable phrase
of _unlaw_, see above, p. 336.

Footnote 1426:

Fl. Wig. 1065. “Pro immensitate tributi quod de totâ Northhymbriâ
injustè acceperat.”

Footnote 1427:

Flor. Wig. 1065. “Pro exsecrandâ nece ... Gamelis filii Orm ac Ulfi
filii Dolfini quos anno præcedenti Eboraci in camerâ suâ, sub pacis
fœdere, per insidias, Comes Tostius occidere præcepit.” Dolfin and Orm
both appear in Domesday, seemingly as holders under William of small
parts of great estates held under Eadward. See 278 _b_, 330 _b_, 331
_b_. Orm married Æthelthryth, a daughter of Earl Ealdred (Sim. Dun. X
Scriptt. 82) and sister-in-law of Earl Siward (see vol. i. p. 587),
but Gamel was not her son.

Footnote 1428:

See vol. i. p. 588.

Footnote 1429:

See vol. i. p. 416.

Footnote 1430:

Fl. Wig. “Pro exsecrandâ nece ... Gospatrici, quem Regina Edgitha,
germani sui Tostii caussâ, in curiâ Regis, quartâ nocte Dominicæ
nativitatis, per insidias occidi jussit.” The deed here attributed to
Eadgyth reminds one of the old crimes of Eadric at Oxford and
Shrewsbury. See vol. i. pp. 356, 411.

Footnote 1431:

See above, p. 457.

Footnote 1432:

Chron. Wig. 1065. “And sona æfter þisan gegaderedon þa þegenas hi
ealle on Eoforwicscire and on Norðhymbralande togædere.” Here we have
perhaps the earliest use of the name Yorkshire, and of the name
Northumberland in its modern sense. See vol. i. p. 585. The Abingdon
Chronicle has only “on Eoforwicscire,” and Peterborough says “foron
Norðhymbra togædere.”

Footnote 1433:

I have, as usual, made a comparison of the narratives in an Appendix
(Note HH), referring here only to details.

Footnote 1434:

Flor. Wig. 1065. “Cum cc. militibus.”

Footnote 1435:

The names come from Florence. All three appear in Domesday as great
landowners, Gamel especially, in King Eadward’s time. In 1086 Gamel
still holds _in capite_ a small part of his vast estates in Yorkshire
(331), while his small Staffordshire holding seems to be increased
(250 _b_). Dunstan has sunk to be a tenant of Ilbert of Lacy (317
_b_), while Glonieorn, called in Domesday Glunier (298 et al.), has,
either by death or by confiscation, vanished altogether.

Footnote 1436:

See Appendix HH.

Footnote 1437:

The regulations made for the King’s reception at Shrewsbury (Domesday,
252) show that his presence there was not unlikely, and there was at
least one Gemót held there in the time of Æthelred. See vol. i. p.
356. One of the legends of Harold and Tostig (see Appendix Z) implies
the King’s probable presence at Hereford; but we do not distinctly
hear of him further north than Gloucester.

Footnote 1438:

See above, p. 377.

Footnote 1439:

Sim. Dun. Hist. Eccl. Dun. iii. 14 (X Scriptt. 37). “Quidam vocabulo
Copsi, qui sub Tosti totius comitatûs curam gerebat.” Gest. Regg.
Angl. a. 1072 (X Scriptt. 204). “Rex Willelmus comitatum Osulfi
commisit Copsio, qui erat partis Tostii Comitis viro consiliario et
prudenti.” In Domesday also (298 _b_ et al.) he figures as Copsi, but
his estates do not seem to have been very large. His gifts to the
Church of Durham are mentioned by Simeon (X Scriptt. 37). The Norman
writers, as William of Poitiers (148 ed. Giles), turn his name into
Coxo, out of which Thierry, by way of being specially Teutonic, has
made _Kox_. (Cf. “Alwinus _Coc_ Bedellus” in Domesday 190, a prudent
man who held at the Survey what he had held T. R. E.) They also call
him “Comes,” though Simeon (X Scriptt. 37) seems, even under William,
to give him no higher title than “Procurator” = Gerefa?

Footnote 1440:

Chronn. Wig. Petrib. 1065. The Abingdon Chronicler omits this decree,
which marks the gathering as intended to assume the character of a
lawful Gemót.

Footnote 1441:

Chronn. Wig. Petrib. “And sendon æfter Morkere Ælfgares sunu Eorles,
and gecuron hine heom to Eorle.” To the same effect afterwards Chron.
Ab. “Hig namon heom þa Morkere to Eorle.” Vita Eadw. 421. “Utque
efferæ temeritatis haberent auctoritatem, caput sibi et dominum
faciunt Ducis Alfgari filium juniorem, ejusque fratrem natu majorem,
ad hanc societatem dementiæ suæ invitant.”

Footnote 1442:

See above, p. 378.

Footnote 1443:

See above, p. 434.

Footnote 1444:

See above, p. 482.

Footnote 1445:

Sim. Dun. Gest. Regg. 1072 (X Scriptt. 204). “Morkarus vero, quoniam
aliàs gravibus negotiis impeditus fuerat, comitatum ultra Tynam
tradidit Osulfo adolescenti, filio præfati Comitis Eadulfi.” We shall
hear of him again.

Footnote 1446:

The names come from Florence, who (see Appendix HH) describes them as
“illius [Tostii] Danicos huscarlas, Amundum et Reavensvartum.”
“Danicus” is an ambiguous word, and does not show whether they were
simply adventurers from Denmark or sons of followers of Cnut. The name
would hardly be applied to descendants of the elder Danish settlers.
At any rate, one of these men was a considerable landowner, and both,
from their special mention, must have been men of some importance,
probably officers in command of the force. Reavenswart is doubtless
the man who, under several spellings, occurs as a landowner T. R. E.
in Yorkshire, Shropshire, and Cheshire (Domesday, 257, 266, 268 _b_,
301 _b_). The Amund of Suffolk, 433, 433 _b_, and 441 _b_, is a
different person, but may not “Anand huscarl R. E.” in Hertfordshire,
140 _b_, be a corrupt form of our Amund?

Footnote 1447:

See Appendix HH.

Footnote 1448:

Chronn. Wig. Petrib. 1065. “And naman ealle his wæpna on Eoforwic and
gold and seolfer and ealle his sceattas, þe hig mihton ahwær þær
geacsian.” Fl. Wig. “Ærarium quoque ipsius fregerunt, et omnibus quæ
illius fuerant ablatis, recesserunt.” Will. Malms. (ii. 200). “Homines
ejus, et Anglos et Danos, obtruncârunt, equos et arma, et
supellectilem omnem corradentes.”

Footnote 1449:

See Appendix HH.

Footnote 1450:

See vol. i. pp. 51, 64, 411.

Footnote 1451:

Chronn. Wig. Petrib. “And eac fela Bryttas comon mid him.”

Footnote 1452:

See above, p. 479.

Footnote 1453:

Chron. Wig. “And þa Ryðrenan dydan mycelne hearm abutan Hamtune, ...
ægþær þæt hi ofslogon menn, and bærndon hús and corn, and namon eall
þæt orf þe hig mihton to cuman, þæt wæs feola þusend, and fela hund
manna hi naman, and læddan norð mid heom.” I do not know that the word
“Ryðrenan” occurs elsewhere; but the hope that it might mean Welshmen
is dispelled by the word “norð,” and still more clearly by the words
of the Peterborough Chronicler, who, for “þa Ryðrenan” reads “þa
norðerne menn.” The evil doers were clearly the original Northumbrian
revolters.

Footnote 1454:

Chronn. Wig. Petrib. 1065. “Swa þæt seo scir and þa oðra scira þæ ðær
neah sindon wurdan fela wintra ðe wyrsan.”

Footnote 1455:

On the negotiations, see Appendix HH.

Footnote 1456:

See above, p. 136.

Footnote 1457:

Will. Malms. ii. 200. “Se nullius Ducis ferociam pati posse.” See
Appendix HH.

Footnote 1458:

Ib. “Proinde, si subditos velit, Markerium filium Elgari eis
præficiat, re experturum quam dulciter sciant obedire, si dulciter
tractati fuerint.”

Footnote 1459:

Chronn. Wig. Petrib. “And eac ærendracan mid him sendon.”

Footnote 1460:

Vita Eadw. 422. “Accitis undique regni primatibus, habebat ibi
consilium quid super tali negotio esset opus.”

Footnote 1461:

Vita Eadw. 422. “Culpabant nonnulli eumdem gloriosum Ducem nimiæ
feritatis, et magis amore justitiæ inquietos punisse arguebatur
cupiditati invadendæ eorum facultatis.” I suppose I have caught the
meaning of this stiff bit of Latin.

Footnote 1462:

Ib. “Dicebatur quoque [mark the difference of the formula], si dignum
esset credere, fratris sui Haroldi invidioso, quod absit, suasu, hanc
dementiam contra Ducem suum aggressos esse.” The Biographer expresses
his own disbelief; “Sed ego huic detestabili nequitiæ a tanto principe
in fratrem suum non audeo nec vellem fidem adhibere.” The Biographer,
the special apologist of Tostig, is here driven to his last shift.

Footnote 1463:

Chron. Ab. and Florence. See Appendix HH.

Footnote 1464:

See Appendix Z.

Footnote 1465:

Vita Eadw. 422. “Ipse tamen Dux Tostinus, coram Rege ejusque
frequentibus palatinis publicè testatus, hoc illi imposuit, sed ille
citiùs ad sacramenta nimis (proh dolor) prodigus [on this most
remarkable allusion, see above, p. 43], hoc objectum sacramentis
purgavit.”

Footnote 1466:

Ib. 423. “Multotiens ergo à Rege per legatos consulti quum non
adquiescerent sed potiùs inceptâ dementiâ ampliùs furerent, ferro
disponit eorum contumacem proterviam compescere, commotis regali
edicto universis totius reliquiis Angliæ.”

Footnote 1467:

Ib. “Sed quia ex asperiori hieme jam tunc aëris incumbebat
inæqualitas, tum non facile erat ad contrariam expeditionem
sufficientes educere exercituum copias, et quia in eâdem gente
horrebat quasi bellum civile, instabant quidam ferventem Regis animum
sedare, et ne expeditio procederet, suadere.”

Footnote 1468:

See vol. i. pp. 578, 579.

Footnote 1469:

This seems implied in the words of the Biographer (423); “Obluctatique
diutiùs Regem proficisci volentem non tam avertunt, quam eo invito
perperàm deficiunt.”

Footnote 1470:

Vita Eadw. 423. “Contestatusque Deum cum gravi mœrore ipsi conquestus
est quod suorum debito destitueretur obauditu ad comprimendam
iniquorum superbiam. Denique super eos imprecatus est vindictam.”

Footnote 1471:

See above, pp. 23, 137.

Footnote 1472:

Chronn. Wig. and Petrib. “And se cyng þæs geuðe, and sende eft Harold
heom to Hamtune” [it should be Oxford, see Appendix HH]. William of
Malmesbury (iii. 252) does not ill describe the state of things;
“Fiebant ista, ut a consciis accepimus, infenso Rege, quia Tostinum
diligeret; sed morbo invalidus, senio gravis, penè jam despectui
omnibus habere cœperat ut dilecto auxiliari non posset.” When William
wrote, Eadward, however much reverenced, was not yet formally
canonized.

Footnote 1473:

Will. Malms. ii. 200. “Haroldus ... qui magis quietem patriæ quam
fratris commodum attenderet.”

Footnote 1474:

That the ravages took place during this interval, appears from the
words of the Peterborough and Worcester Chronicles, that it was “þa
hwile þe he [Harold] for heora ærende.”

Footnote 1475:

Both this and the Northampton Assembly are called “Mycel Gemót.” See
Appendix HH.

Footnote 1476:

This is, I think, implied in the words of the Abingdon writer and of
Florence (see Appendix HH). Harold tries to reconcile them “ibi”—at
Northampton—“et post apud Oxnefordam.”

Footnote 1477:

See above, p. 375, and Appendix G.

Footnote 1478:

See vol. i. p. 462.

Footnote 1479:

Chron. Wig. and Petrib. “And he [Harold] niwade þær Cnutes lage.”

Footnote 1480:

Fl. Wig. “Cum adjutorio Comitis Eadwini de Angliâ Tostium expulerunt.”

Footnote 1481:

Vita Eadw. 423. “At Deo dilectus Rex, quum Ducem suum tutare non
posset, gratiâ suâ multipliciter donatum, mœrens nimium quod in hanc
impotentiam deciderit, à se dimisit.” The Chronicles, by simply saying
“fór ofer sæ,” or something to that effect, distinctly favour the
Biographer’s account.

Footnote 1482:

The Chronicles mention the departure of Tostig and his wife; the
Biographer says, “cum conjuge et lactentibus liberis.” Yet they had
been married fourteen years.

Footnote 1483:

With him went, say the Worcester and Peterborough Chronicles, “ealle
þa þe woldon þæt he wolde.” So the Biographer (u. s.), “plurimâque
nobilium suorum manu.”

Footnote 1484:

Fl. Wig.

Footnote 1485:

See above, pp. 404, 465.

Footnote 1486:

Chronn. Ab. Wig. Petrib. and Flor. Wig. The Abingdon Chronicle and
Florence alone mention Saint Omer.

Footnote 1487:

Since this section was written, Dean Stanley has published his
Memorials of Westminster Abbey, in the early part of which he goes
over nearly the same ground. But I find a good deal of difference
between my ideas of historical evidence and those of the Dean.

Footnote 1488:

Flor. Wig. “Post hæc Rex Eadwardus paullatim ægrotare cœpit.” Vita
Eadw. 423. “Quo dolore decidens in morbum, ab eâ die usque in diem
mortis suæ ægrum trahebat animum.” Will. Malms. iii. 252. “Quare ex
animi ægritudine majorem valetudinem corporis contrahens, non multo
post decessit.” The hagiographers do not feel called on to enlarge on
the real cause of the death of their hero—baffled wrath against his
own people.

Footnote 1489:

Vita Eadw. 417. “Ob amorem principalis Apostoli, quem affectu colebat
unico et speciali.”

Footnote 1490:

The Biographer assigns no motive for the foundation of Westminster
beyond this special reverence for Saint Peter, and the other usual
motives for the foundation of monasteries. But his statement does not
exclude the account given by the legendary writers about the vow, the
dispensation, and the embassies to Rome. This I accept in the main, of
course without binding myself to any legendary details, because it
fits in so exactly with the statements of the Chroniclers and other
authentic writers, who mention the two embassies without describing
their object.

Footnote 1491:

See above, p. 115.

Footnote 1492:

See above, p. 442.

Footnote 1493:

See above, pp 447, 467.

Footnote 1494:

It is somewhat dangerous to use the two doubtful charters which will
be found in Cod. Dipl. iv. 173, 181. If I could fully trust them, I
should find it easy to add many details. But I venture to refer to
them only when their statements seem either to have great probability
in themselves or to be confirmed by some other evidence. The two
embassies to Rome seem to imply that, in 1050, nothing had been begun,
but that in 1061 the foundation was complete. The words of the second
charter (p. 181) imply this. Eadward says “Quum ergo renovâssem eam,”
&c. of the time when he sent the second embassy, four years before the
completion and dedication of the church.

Footnote 1495:

Cod. Dipl. iv. 175. “Revelavit beatus Petrus cuidam probabilis vitæ
monacho incluso nomine Wlfsino voluntatem suam esse ut restruerem
locum, qui dicitur Westmonasterium.” On Wulfsige, see above, p. 466.

Footnote 1496:

Wace (10653) enlarges on the name, and his phonetic spelling
illustrates his natural difficulty in pronouncing the letter þ.

“En un islet esteit assise,
_Zonée_ out nom, joste Tamise;
_Zonée_ por ço l’apelon,
Ke d’espine i out foison,
E ke l’ewe en alout environ.
_Ee_ en engleiz isle apelon,
_Ee_ est isle, _zon_ est espine,
Seit rainz, seit arbre, seit racine;
_Zonée_ ço est en engleiz
Isle d’espine en françeiz.”

Prevost’s note is worth reading.

Footnote 1497:

So says Æthelred, X Scriptt. 385.

Footnote 1498:

Æthelred, 385, and more briefly in the charter, iv. 181.

Footnote 1499:

Vita Eadw. 417. “Parvo quidem opere et numero, paucioribus ibi
congregatis monachis sub Abbate in servitio Christi.”

Footnote 1500:

See vol. i. p. 567.

Footnote 1501:

See above, p. 113.

Footnote 1502:

Vita Eadw. u. s. “Eligit ibi habere sibi locum sepulcri.”

Footnote 1503:

So at least says Pope Nicolas’ letter in Æthelred, 389. Cod. Dipl. iv.
184. “Ut ampliùs imperpetuum regiæ constitutionis et consecrationis
locus sit, atque repositorium regalium insignium.” Here, whether the
text be genuine or not, the immediate application of the church to the
use spoken of proves the truth of the statement.

Footnote 1504:

Vita Eadw. 417. “Intendit Deo devotus Rex locum illum, tam vicinum
famosæ et opulentæ urbi, tum satis apricum ex circumjacentibus
fecundis terris et viridantibus prædiis.” He goes on to speak of the
commerce of London.

Footnote 1505:

See vol. i. p. 280. Eadward was a benefactor to Fécamp (ðán hálgan
mynstre æt Feskamp), giving it land at Steyning in Sussex (Cod. Dipl.
iv. 229), where there grew up an alien Priory. A magnificent fragment
of the church remains, of late twelfth century work.

Footnote 1506:

On the remains of Eadward’s work in Westminster Abbey, see the work by
Mr. G. G. Scott and others, Gleanings from Westminster Abbey.

Footnote 1507:

This is asserted in the famous passage of William of Malmesbury (ii.
228), “Ecclesia ... quam ipse illo compositionis genere primus in
Angliâ ædificaverat quod nunc penè cuncti sumptuosis æmulantur
expensis.” On the architectural question I trust to say something in
the last volume of this work.

Footnote 1508:

See the description in the Biographer, and representation in the
Bayeux Tapestry, which shows beyond doubt that the building
consecrated in 1065 was a perfect church, and not a mere fragment.

Footnote 1509:

So says the French Life (2295), which, on such a subject, may be
trusted;

“En miliu dresce une tur,
E deus en frunt del Occident
E bons seinz e granz i pent.”

But, as the Tapestry does not show these towers, they were probably
carried up at a later time, as often happened.

Footnote 1510:

Vita Eadw. 417. “Præcepit deinde ex decimis omnium redituum suorum
initiari opus nobilis ædificii.” So Cod. Dipl. iv. 176. “Decimari
præcepi omnem substantiam meam, tam in auro et argento, quàm in
pecudibus et omni genere possessionum.”

Footnote 1511:

Cod. Dipl. iv. 179. So the writs in iv. 190, 228. I presume that he
succeeded Wulfnoth in 1049.

Footnote 1512:

The Charter in Cod. Dipl. 176 says, “Destruens veterem, novam à
fundamentis basilicam construxi.” The Biographer explains the gradual
process (418); “Hæc autem multiplicitas tam vasti operis tanto spatio
ab oriente ordita est veteris templi, ne scilicet interim inibi
commorantes fratres vacarent a servitio Christi, ut etiam aliqua pars
spatiosè subiret interjaciendi vestibuli.” The Biographer, always hard
to understand, is specially so in his architectural description.

Footnote 1513:

The charter in Cod. Dipl. iv. 177 mentions Leofcild, Æthelric,
Wulfwig, Guthmund, Ælfric, Atsere (or Azor) the Black (Swerte),
Ingulf, Atsere, Tostig, Ælfwine, Wulfstan, Siward, and Leofsige of
London. The gifts of several of them are mentioned in various writs:
Leofcild in iv. 214; Ælfwine, iv. 217; Atsere Swerte, iv. 220; the
other Atsere, iv. 191 (which of these was the Azor of Gloucestershire
and Somersetshire?); and Leofsige, “Dudde sunu,” iv. 218. There is
also Ulf the Portreeve in iv. 221. The writs about the King’s own
gifts are very numerous.

Footnote 1514:

See the Life, pp. 428 et seqq., and Appendix B.

Footnote 1515:

Æthelred, 389. Was this holy man the _inclusus_ Wulfsige?

Footnote 1516:

Æthelred, 396. “Ipso ad regnum cœleste translato, cuncta terrarum
regna commota sunt. Syria paganis subjecta, destructa monasteria,
dirutæ à fundamentis ecclesiæ, plena funeribus omnia, morte principum
Græcorum, Romanorum, Francorum, Anglorum, et regna cætera perturbata.”
As regards the “Princeps Romanorum,” the hagiographer is wide of his
mark, for Henry the Fourth survived the Confessor forty years.

Footnote 1517:

See the story in the De Inventione, p. 22. Æthelred, 397. The Waltham
writer lets us incidentally into the fact that London, York,
Winchester, and Lincoln were then counted the four chief cities of
England. In the great dispute over the quarters of Dafydd in 1283
(Ann. Waverley, 400 ed. Luard), the order was ruled to be London,
Winchester, York, Bristol (others say Chester), with Northampton as
the fifth.

Footnote 1518:

Æthelred, writing in Yorkshire, mentions vaguely a church of Saint
John; the East-Saxon writer fixes it at Clavering. See Professor
Stubbs’ note, p. 24.

Footnote 1519:

“Postea” says Æthelred, but “eodem die,” according to Roger of Howden,
Scriptt. p. Bed. 256.

Footnote 1520:

Vita Eadw. 418. “Ejus æquivoca sancta Ædgith, de cujus progenie idem
Rex Ædwardus descenderat.” The Biographer could hardly have thought
that Eadward was a lineal descendant of this virgin saint, his own
aunt. But in his rhetoric “progenies,” or any other word, may mean
anything.

On the power of Saint Eadgyth to rebuke blasphemers, see vol. i. p.
484.

Footnote 1521:

Vita Eadw. u. s. “Lignea tamen adhuc illic ecclesia stabat.”

Footnote 1522:

Ib. “Regio opere lapideum monasterium inchoat, ferventiùsque instans
operarios maturat. Contendunt hinc Rex, illinc Reginâ, contentione Deo
gratâ, in invicem quoque non injocundâ.”

Footnote 1523:

Ib. 421. “Actâ ergo hujus ecclesiæ consecratione ... anno Domini
millesimo sexagesimo quinto ad justitium totius patriæ, hæc regni
subsequuta est perturbatio.”

Footnote 1524:

Fl. Wig. 1065. “In nativitate Domini curiam suam, ut potuit, Lundoniæ
tenuit.” Æthel. 398. “Appropinquabat dies ... in quo Anglorum tota
nobilitas ad Regis curiam debuit convenire, et Regi more suo sceptris
simul et coronâ decorando adsistere.” So directly after (399),
“Convenientibus in unum episcopis cunctisque regni proceribus, sacra
dedicationis sollennitas inchoatur.”

Footnote 1525:

Æthel. 398, 399. Will. Malms. ii. 228. “In Natale Domini apud
Lundoniam coronatus est.”

Footnote 1526:

The consecration “on Cyldamæsse dæg” is asserted by all three
Chronicles, by Florence, and by William of Malmesbury. “Lét halgian”
is the phrase of Abingdon and Worcester; so Florence, “cum magnâ
gloriâ dedicari fecit,” and William of Malmesbury, “dedicari
præcepit.” The action of Eadgyth comes from Æthelred, 399; “Rex,
quantùm valetudo permittebat, favebat officio, sed Regina, omnia
disponens, omnia procurans, sollicita de omnibus, intenta omnibus,
utriusque vicem implevit.”

Footnote 1527:

I reserve the details of Eadward’s death for my next Chapter. It is so
essentially connected with the accession of Harold that the two events
can hardly be separated in narration, and the different accounts of
the death-bed scene at once lead us to the discussion of the question
as to Eadward’s dying recommendation with regard to his successor.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last
chapter.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
● Enclosed blackletter font in =equals=.
● The caret (^) serves as a superscript indicator, applicable to
individual characters (like 2^d) and even entire phrases (like
1^{st}).