Chapter VI · THE DANISH KINGS IN ENGLAND.[818] 1017–1042. (continued 2)

Amount of truth to be found in these stories.

462Stories of this kind can hardly be admitted into history without a certain amount of dread lest the historian may prove to have opened his text for the reception of a mere piece of romance. They are stories which we cannot venture unhesitatingly to accept, but which we are not at all in a position unhesitatingly to deny. They are stories of which it is safest to say that the details are sure to be mythical, but that there is likely to be some groundwork of truth at the bottom. It is impossible to read this tale of the alliance of Richard the Good with Olaf and Lacman, without a lurking feeling that it may be the tale of Richard the Fearless and Harold Blaatand moved from its old place and fitted with a new set of names. If we get thus far, it is hardly possible to avoid going a step further, and asking whether the mythical element is not strong in the tale of Harold Blaatand himself. And it is hardly less difficult to read the story of the two heathen Kings, of whom one is converted, while the other seemingly goes away stiffnecked in his old errors, without asking whether the tale is not merely a repetition of the history of the dealings of Æthelred with Swegen and Olaf Tryggvesson twenty years before.^[1015] Still we are hardly justified in altogether rejecting stories which we cannot disprove, and which rest on authority, certainly not first-rate, but still such as we are generally content to accept for statements which have no inherent |Their witness to the abiding connexion between Normandy and the North.| unlikelihood about them. And after all, in this particular case, the mere existence of the stories proves something of more importance than the particular facts which they profess to relate. Whether the tales either of Harold or of Olaf be historically true or not, the fact that such tales could obtain belief, and could find a place in recognized Norman history, shows that a strong feeling of connexion between Normandy and the Scandinavian 463mother-land must have lived on, even after all outward traces of Scandinavian descent had passed away.

Foreign expeditions and conquests of the Normans.

Another feature in Norman history, which has its beginning in the reign of Richard the Good, is still more closely connected with our immediate subject. It was in the days of this prince that the Normans of the Norman duchy began to play an independent part beyond their own borders, and to enter on that series of foreign expeditions and foreign conquests of which the Norman Conquest of England was the last and greatest example.^[1016] The earlier Dukes had founded the duchy; they had enlarged its borders; they had defended it against aggression from without, and had developed its resources within. The alliance between Richard the Good and King Robert had caused the Norman arms to be felt and dreaded throughout the length and breadth of Gaul. But now the limits both of the Norman duchy and of the French kingdom became too narrow for the energies both of the sovereigns of Normandy and of their subjects. The part played by the Normans in Europe had hitherto been partly defensive and partly secondary. They had withstood French, English, and German invasions, and they had aided their lords, ducal and royal, at Paris in a variety of military adventures. But now that no invader was to be feared, now that the Norman state held a fully established position in France and in Europe, the old Scandinavian spirit of distant enterprise and distant conquest awoke again. The Christian and French-speaking Norman was now as ready to jeopard his life and fortune in distant lands as ever his heathen and Scandinavian forefathers had been. The days of the actual crusades had not yet come, but already, while warfare of all kinds had charms, 464warfare against misbelievers was beginning to be clothed with a special charm in the eyes of the Christian chivalry of Normandy. As yet no distant conquest had been undertaken by any Norman Duke. Yet even under Richard the Good we find the power of Normandy employed beyond the bounds of the French kingdom, and in a cause which was not that of any immediate interest |Burgundian War. 1024.| of the Norman duchy. Besides the campaign in which Duke Richard vindicated the claim of his over-lord over the ducal Burgundy, he carried his arms beyond the frontier of the Western Kingdom into that further Burgundy which still kept its own line of Kings, and which was soon to return to its allegiance to Cæsar. Reginald, Count of the Burgundian Palatinate, had married Richard’s daughter Adeliza. Towards the end of Richard’s reign, this prince fell into the hands of his turbulent neighbour, Hugh, Count of Challon^[1017] and Bishop of Auxerre. Hugh was a vassal of France, while Reginald’s dominions were held in fief of the last Burgundian King, the feeble Rudolf, himself little better than a vassal of the Emperor. But neither King nor Cæsar stepped forward to chastise the wrong-doer or to set free the captive. It was a Norman army, under the young Richard, son of the Duke, which presently taught the Count-prelate that a son-in-law of the Duke of the Normans could not be wronged with impunity.^[1018]

But far greater and more enduring exploits than these were wrought during the reign of Richard, not by the public force of the Norman duchy, but by the restless energy of private Norman adventurers. An attempt to establish a Norman settlement in Spain came to nought; but in this period were laid the foundations of that great 465Norman settlement in Southern Italy which had such an |Exploits of Roger of Toesny in Spain. 1018.| important effect on the future history of Europe. Roger of Toesny was the first to carry the Norman arms into the Spanish peninsula. Spain had long before attracted the attention of a Norman sovereign; it was to Spain, as a heathen land, to which Richard the Fearless had persuaded the unbelieving portion of his Scandinavian allies to depart.^[1019] It was in Spain, as the battle-ground of Christian and Saracen, that Roger now sought at once to wage warfare against the misbeliever and to carve out a dominion for himself. Roger was of the noblest blood of Normandy, boasting a descent from Malahulc, uncle of Rolf,^[1020] and he may well have looked down upon the upstart gentlemen whose nobility had no higher source than the tardy bridal of their kinswoman Gunnor.^[1021] Roger fought manfully against the infidels, and marvellous tales are told of his daring, his hard-won victories, his deeds of cannibal ferocity.^[1022] He married the daughter of the widowed Countess of Barcelona, a princess whose dominions were practically Spanish, though her formal allegiance was due to the Parisian King. This marriage was doubtless designed as the beginning of a Norman principality in Spain; but the scheme failed to take any lasting root.

Norman Conquest of Apulia and Sicily. 1016–1090.

The exploits of the Normans in Italy, which began in the reign of Richard, form a theme of the highest interest, but one on which it is dangerous to enter, lest I should be drawn too far away both from my central subject and from 466those which directly bear upon it. On English, and even on Norman, affairs the influence of these great events was |The Conquest of England perhaps partly suggested by it.| merely indirect. One can hardly doubt that the wonderful successes of their countrymen in the South of Europe did much to suggest to the minds of those Normans who stayed at home that a still greater conquest nearer home was not wholly hopeless. The unsuccessful attempt of Duke Robert, which we shall presently have to mention, and the successful attempt of his greater son, may well have been partly suggested by the exploits of the sons of Tancred in Apulia. When private adventurers thus grew into sovereigns, what might not be done by the sovereign of Normandy himself, wielding the whole force of the land which gave birth to men like them? For it must be remembered that the Norman conquest of Apulia was no national enterprise, no conquest made in regular warfare waged by the Duke of the Normans against any other potentate. Private Norman adventurers, pilgrims returning from the Holy Land, Norman subjects under the displeasure of their own Duke,^[1023] gentlemen of small estate whom the paternal acres could no longer maintain, gradually deprived the Roman Empire of the East^[1024] of the remnant of its Western possessions, and won back the greatest of Mediterranean islands from the dominion of Mahomet to that of Christ. The sons of Tancred of Hauteville began as wikings who had changed their element; they gradually grew into Counts, Dukes, Kings, and Emperors. And, when the first horrors of conquest were over, no conquerors, not even Cnut himself, ever 467deserved better of the conquered. The noble island of Sicily, so long the battle-field of Europe and Africa, the land which Greece, Rome, Byzantium, had so long striven to guard or to recover from the incursions of the Carthaginian and the Arab, became, under her Norman Kings, the one example of really equal and tolerant government which the world could then show. Under the Norman sceptre the two most civilized races of the world,^[1025] the Greek and the Saracen, could live together in peace, and could enrich their common country with the results of skill |Conquest of Sicily by Henry the Sixth. 1194–5.| and industry such as no Northern realm could rival. For once we are driven to blush for our common Teutonic blood, when we see how this favoured portion of the world, the one spot where contending creeds and races could display their best qualities under the sway of a common and impartial ruler, was enslaved and devastated and trodden under foot by the selfish ambition of a Teutonic invader.

The relations of Richard with England, his war with Æthelred,^[1026] his dealings with Swegen,^[1027] his reception of his fugitive brother-in-law and his children,^[1028] have been already |Unbroken peace between Richard and Cnut.| spoken of. With Cnut he seems to have maintained perfect peace. His nephews, the sons of Æthelred and Emma, found shelter at his court, but only shelter. Of any attempt on their behalf, of any interference in the internal affairs of England, the wary Duke seems never to have thought. We must hasten on to the reign of another Norman prince, whose relations to our island were widely different.

Death of Richard. 1026.

Richard died after a reign of thirty years. Before his death he assembled the chief men of his duchy, and by their advice he settled the duchy itself on his eldest son 468Richard, and the county of Hiesmes on his second son |Reign of Richard the Third.| Robert as his brother’s vassal.^[1029] Disputes arose between the brothers; Robert was besieged in his castle of Falaise, and when peace was made by the submission of Robert, the Duke did not long survive his success. After a reign of two years he died by poison,^[1030] as was generally believed, |Robert succeeds. 1028.| and was succeeded by his brother.^[1031] Robert, known as the Magnificent,^[1032] is most familiar to us in English history as the father of the Conqueror. But he has no small claims on our notice on his own account. What the son carried 469out, the father had already attempted. Robert was in will, though not in deed, the first Norman conqueror of England.^[1033] In the early part of his reign he had to struggle against several revolts in his own dominions. |He suppresses revolts at home.| We are not directly told what were the grounds of opposition to his government; but we are at least not surprised to hear of revolts against a prince who had attained to his sovereignty under circumstances so suspicious. But Robert overthrew all his domestic enemies,^[1034] and he is at least not charged with any special cruelty in the reestablishment |He reduces Britanny to submission.| of his authority. With Britanny he did not remain on the same friendly terms as his father. His cousin Alan refused his homage, but he was brought to submission.^[1035] In this warfare Neal of Saint-Saviour, who had so valiantly beaten off the English in their invasion of the Côtentin, appears side by side with a warrior whose name of Ælfred raises the strongest presumption of his English birth. The banishments of the earlier days of Cnut will easily account for so rare an event as that of an Englishman taking service under a foreign prince.^[1036] But it was as the protector of unfortunate princes that Robert seems to have been most anxious to appear before the |He restores Baldwin of Flanders.| world. Baldwin of Flanders, driven from his dominions by his rebellious son, was restored by the power of the Norman Duke.^[1037] A still more exalted suppliant presently 470implored his help. His liege lord, Henry, King of the French, was driven to claim the support of the mightiest of his vassals against foes who were of his own household. |King Robert and his sons.| King Robert had at first designed the royal succession for his eldest son Hugh, whom, according to a custom common in France, though unusual in England, he caused |Hugh is crowned and dies before him.| to be crowned in his lifetime.^[1038] Hugh, a prince whose merits, we are told, were such that a party in Italy looked to him as a candidate for the Imperial crown,^[1039] was, after some disputes with his father, reconciled to him, and died before him. Robert then chose as his successor his second son Henry, who was already invested with the |Henry crowned in his father’s lifetime.| duchy of Burgundy. Henry was accordingly accepted and crowned at Rheims.^[1040] But the arrangement displeased Queen Constance, who was bent on the promotion of her |Death of King Robert.| third son Richard. On King Robert’s death, Constance and Richard expelled Henry, who took refuge with his |Henry expelled, and restored| Norman vassal, and was restored by his help, Richard being allowed to receive his brother’s duchy of Burgundy.^[1041] 471|by Duke Robert. 1031.| The policy of Hugh the Great had indeed won for his house a mighty protector in the descendant of the pirates.

The English Æthelings in Normandy.

But there were other banished princes who had a nearer claim upon Duke Robert than his Flemish neighbour, a nearer personal claim than even his lord at Paris. The English Æthelings, his cousins Eadward and Ælfred, were still at his court, banished from the land of their fathers, while the Danish invader filled the throne of their fathers. Their mother had wholly forgotten them; their uncle had made no effort on their behalf; Robert, their cousin, was the first kinsman who deemed it any part of his business to assert their right to a crown which seemed to |Contradictory evidence as to the relations between Cnut and Robert.| have hopelessly passed away from their house. That Robert did make an attempt to restore them, that the relations between him and Cnut were unfriendly on other grounds, there seems no reason to doubt. But when we ask for dates and details, we are at once plunged into every kind of confusion and contradiction. The English writers are silent; from the German writers we learn next to nothing; the Scandinavian history of this age is still at least half mythical; the Norman writers never held truth to be of any moment when the relations of Normandy and England were concerned. That Robert provoked Cnut by threats or attempts to restore the Æthelings, and also by ill-treating and repudiating Cnut’s sister, seem to be facts which we may accept in the bare outline, whatever we say as to their minuter details. That Cnut retaliated by an invasion of Normandy, or that the threat of such an invasion had an effect on the conduct of the sovereigns of Normandy, are positions which are strongly asserted by various authorities. But their stories are accompanied 472by circumstances which directly contradict the witness of authorities which are far more trustworthy. In fact, the moment we get beyond the range of the sober contemporary Chronicles of our own land, we find ourselves in a region in which the mythical and romantic elements outweigh the historical, and moreover, in whatever comes from Norman sources, we have to be on our guard against interested invention as well as against honest error.

Marriages of Estrith with Ulf and Robert.

We have seen that Estrith, a sister of Cnut, was married to the Danish Earl Ulf, the brother-in-law of Godwine, to whom she bore the famous Swegen Estrithson, afterwards King of the Danes, one of the most renowned princes in Danish history. We are told by a crowd of authorities that, besides her marriage with Ulf, Estrith was married to the Duke of the Normans, that she was ill-treated by him in various ways, and was finally sent back with ignominy to her brother. Most of the writers who tell this story place this marriage before her marriage with Ulf, and make the Danish Earl take the divorced |Supposed wars between Cnut and Robert.| wife of the Norman Duke. With this story several writers connect another story of an invasion, or threatened invasion, of Normandy undertaken by Cnut in order to redress his sister’s wrongs. The most popular Danish writer even makes Cnut die, in contradiction to all authentic history, while besieging Rouen. We read also how the Norman Duke fled to Jerusalem or elsewhere for fear of the anger of the lord of six Northern kingdoms. Details of this kind are plainly mythical; but they point to some real quarrel, to some war, threatened if not actually waged, between Cnut and Robert. And chronology, as well as the tone of the legends, shows that the whole of these events must be placed quite late in Cnut’s reign. |Robert probably married Estrith.| The natural inference is that the marriage between Robert and Estrith took place, not before Estrith’s marriage with Ulf, but after Ulf’s death. The widow was richly 473|after Ulf’s death. c. 1026.| endowed; her brother had atoned for the slaughter of her husband by territorial grants which might well have moved the greed of the Norman. A superior attraction nearer his own castle may easily account for Robert’s neglect of his Scandinavian bride, a bride no doubt many years older than the young Count of Hièsmes. Within three years after Estrith’s widowhood, Robert became the father of him who was preeminently the Bastard.^[1042]

Robert’s intervention on behalf of the Æthelings. 1028–1035.

It seems impossible to doubt that Robert’s intervention on behalf of his English cousins was connected with these events. The reign of Robert coincides with the last seven years of the reign of Cnut, so that any intervention of Robert in English affairs must have been in Cnut’s later days. Each prince would doubtless seize every opportunity of annoying the other; the tale clearly sets Robert before us as the aggressor; but as to the order of events we are left to guess. It would be perfectly natural, in a man of Robert’s character, if the repudiation of Estrith was accompanied, or presently followed, by the assertion of the claims of the Æthelings to her brother’s crown. The date then of the first contemplated Norman invasion of England can be fixed only within a few years; but the story, as we read it in the Norman accounts, seems credible enough in its general outline.^[1043] The Duke sends an embassy to Cnut, demanding, it would seem, the cession of the whole kingdom of England to the rightful heir. That Cnut refused to surrender his crown is nothing wonderful, though the Norman writer seems shocked that the exhortation of the Norman ambassadors did not at once bring conviction to |Robert’s unsuccessful attempt| the mind of the usurper.^[1044] The Duke then, in great wrath, determines to assert the claims of his kinsmen by force of 474|to invade England.| arms. An assembly of the Normans is held, a forerunner of the more famous assembly at Lillebonne, in which the invasion of England is determined on. A fleet is made ready with all haste, and Duke Robert and the Ætheling Eadward embark at Fécamp. But the wind was contrary; instead of being carried safely to Pevensey, the fleet was carried round the Côtentin and found itself on the coast of Jersey.^[1045] All attempts were vain; the historian piously adds that they were frustrated by a special Providence, because God had determined that his servant Eadward should make his way to the English crown without the shedding of blood.^[1046] The Duke accordingly gave up his enterprise on behalf of his cousin of England, and employed his fleet in a further harrying of the dominions of his cousin of Britanny.^[1047] At last Robert, Archbishop of Rouen, the common uncle of Robert and Alan,^[1048] reconciled the two princes, and the fleet seems now to have sailed to Rouen.^[1049] Thus far we have a story, somewhat heightened in its details, but which may be taken as evidence that Robert, who had restored the fugitive sovereigns of France and Flanders, really thought of carrying 475on his calling of King-maker beyond the sea. Robert, a thorough knight-errant, doubtless designed the restoration of his cousin in perfect good faith, and with no more intention of any gain to himself than he had shown in the |Probable results of the success of such an invasion.| restorations of Baldwin and Henry. But if a Norman army had once landed in England, it would not have been so easy to bring it home again as it was to bring home an army which had simply marched into France or Flanders. Cnut, with no Tostig, no Harold Hardrada, to divert him from the main danger, and with the force of his other kingdoms ready to back him, would most likely have speedily crushed the invader. But had it been otherwise, one can hardly fancy that the results of the English expedition would have been of as little moment as the results of the French and the Flemish expedition. In France and Flanders Robert had simply turned the scale between two princes of the same house. But if a Norman army had set one of the sons of Æthelred on the English throne, the result would have been something more than a mere personal change of sovereign. Had Eadward held his crown by virtue of a victory won by Norman troops over Cnut’s Danes and Englishmen, the practical aspect of such a revolution could have hardly differed at all from the revolution which did take place under William. The prince thus established in his kingdom would have been, according to formal pedigrees, the cyne-hlaford, the descendant of Ælfred, Cerdic, and Woden. But half-Norman by birth, wholly Norman in feeling, raised to his throne by Norman swords, Eadward would have reigned still more thoroughly as a Frenchman than he did reign when, a few years later, he came to the crown in a more peaceable way. The storm, or whatever it was, which kept back Duke Robert from his invasion of England, put off the chances of a Norman Conquest for nearly forty years.

Cnut said to have offered the succession of Wessex to the Æthelings.

476The Norman writers wind up their story with an assertion which is much less credible than their account of the expedition itself. Robert, on his return from his Breton expedition, was met in the very nick of time^[1050] by ambassadors from Cnut offering half of the kingdom of England to the sons of Æthelred. The lord of Northern Europe was sick, and felt himself near his end; he therefore wished for peace during the remnant of his days.^[1051] Of course this is not to be understood as an offer of an immediate surrender of any part of his dominions. What is meant is that Cnut offered to secure peace with Normandy by acknowledging Eadward as his successor in the kingdom of Wessex. The Norman and the Danish accounts may be set one against another. Any number of embassies may have passed between the two princes; any amount of mutual threatenings may have been exchanged; but Cnut’s fear of Robert and Robert’s fear of Cnut may |Improbability of the story.| be set aside as equally mythical. The Norman story is utterly improbable. Nothing could be more unlikely than a disposition made by Cnut in favour of either of his stepsons. He could have no personal motive for alienating any portion of his dominions from his own children. In almost any other case the influence of his wife would supply a natural and sufficient motive for such an arrangement. But all that we hear of Emma leads us to believe that her whole heart was set on Harthacnut and Gunhild, and that she was not at all likely to use her influence on behalf of her sons by Æthelred. And had Cnut made any 477such disposition in favour of Eadward or Ælfred, it could hardly have failed to leave some trace in English history. But among all the disputes which followed on the death of Cnut, we hear not a word of the claims of the Æthelings, we hear nothing of any single voice raised in their favour.^[1052] Still that tale may have been the distortion of something which really happened. We must not forget that Harthacnut was Robert’s cousin no less than Eadward. It may be that some announcement or confirmation of Cnut’s intentions in his favour, as opposed to the succession of Harold or Swegen, may have been made by Cnut to the Norman Duke. Such an announcement might easily have been mistaken by Norman writers, ill informed about English affairs, for a disposition in favour of another son of Emma.

Deaths of Cnut and Robert.

Whatever the relations between Cnut and Robert may have been, the two princes died in the same year.^[1053] When Cnut made his pilgrimage to Rome, religious motives were doubtless the leading cause of his journey. But the politic King knew how to make use of the errand which was to profit his soul in order to advance at once his own power and credit and the interests of the many nations over which he ruled. A fit of purer religious enthusiasm, a fierce impulse of penitence for past sins, carried Robert of Normandy on the more distant pilgrimage to Jerusalem.^[1054] On his return he died at the 478|Robert dies at Nikaia. July 2, 1035.| Bithynian Nikaia; some say by the same fate by which he was suspected of having made away with his own brother.^[1055] In his lifetime he had begun to rear the noble abbey of Cerisy, where, after many changes and mutilations, some parts still remain to witness to the severe grandeur of the taste of Robert and his age.^[1056] But the bones of its founder were not destined to rest among its massive pillars or beneath the bold arches which span the width of its stately nave. The relics which he had collected in the East were borne by his chamberlain Toustain to the sanctuary which he had founded,^[1057] but the great Duke of the Normans^[1058] himself found his last home in the lands beyond the Hellespont, beneath the spreading cupolas of a Byzantine basilica at Nikaia.^[1059] The Norman thus died a stranger and a pilgrim in a land of another tongue |Cnut dies at Shaftesbury. November 12, 1035.| and another worship. The Dane too ended his days in a land which was not his by birth; but it was in a land in which, if he had entered it as a destroyer, he had truly reigned as a father. Cnut, Emperor of six kingdoms, 479but in a special manner King of the old West-Saxon realm, died within the West-Saxon border, at a spot hallowed by memories of Ælfred, beneath the shadow of his minster at Shaftesbury.^[1060] As an English King by adoption, if not by birth, he found a grave among the English Kings who had gone before him, in the Old Minster of his West-Saxon capital. The two rivals, if rivals they were, passed from the Western world almost at the same moment; the death of Cnut happened about the time when the death of Robert must have become known in England and in Normandy. The dominions of both rulers passed away to their spurious or doubtful offspring. The son of Herleva succeeded in Normandy; the supposed son of “the other Ælfgifu” succeeded in |Contrast between their successors.| England. But if there be a wide difference between the fame of the two fathers, it is far more than overbalanced by the difference between the fame of their sons. A reign of a few obscure years of crime and confusion forms the sole memory of the Bastard of Northampton, while the world has ever since rung, and while it lasts it can hardly ever fail to ring, with the mighty name of the Bastard of Falaise.

§ 3. The Reign of Harold the Son of Cnut. 1035–1040.

Extent of Cnut’s Empire.

The good fortune of Cnut had raised him up an Empire in Northern Europe to which there was no parallel before or after him. Setting aside descriptions of his power which are manifestly gross exaggerations, he united the kingdom of England and its dependencies with the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway. As to his intentions 480with regard to the disposition of these vast dominions after his death our information is unfortunately most |Comparison between the partition of the Empire of Cnut and that of Charles.| meagre. It seems clear that, like Charles the Great, he designed a partition among his children; it is not clear whether, like Charles, he designed to keep up any kind of connexion among his various kingdoms, by the investiture of one among his sons with any Imperial superiority over the others.^[1061] Like Charles, he had established his sons as kings during his lifetime in his subordinate |England the centre of Cnut’s Empire.| kingdoms. I say subordinate kingdoms, because nothing can be plainer than that, in Cnut’s eyes, Denmark and Norway were little more than dependencies of England. |The Scandinavian States ruled by Under-kings.| England was the seat of his own dominion, while the Scandinavian kingdoms were entrusted to viceroys or Under-kings. Swegen, with his mother Ælfgifu, had reigned in Norway; Denmark, it would seem, had been placed at one time under Harold and at another under Harthacnut. In both countries we see signs of disaffection towards Cnut’s government, while we see none such in England. The rule of Swegen and his mother is said to have been highly oppressive in Norway. In Denmark we even hear of an attempt, headed by Earl Ulf and said to be favoured by Queen Emma, to displace Cnut in favour of Harthacnut. The reason assigned is the preference shown |Impossibility of retaining the connexion between England and Scandinavia.| by Cnut to England and Englishmen. If then Cnut had any idea of permanently annexing his Scandinavian possessions to his English Empire, any idea, in short, of reducing Denmark and Norway to the condition of Wales and Scotland, such schemes had very little chance of any lasting success. Wales and Scotland were part of the same island with England, yet to keep them in any lasting subjection was always hard; to keep countries so remote as |Ephemeral nature of such| Denmark and Norway was hopelessly impossible. Empires like those of Alexander, Charles, and Cnut are in their own 481|Empires in general.| nature ephemeral. The process of their formation may, as in the cases of Alexander and Charles, leave results behind it which affect the whole later history of the world; but the Empires themselves are ephemeral. As united dominions, swayed by a single will, they last only as long as there is an Alexander or a Charles at their head; they fall to pieces as soon as the sceptre of the great conqueror passes into weaker hands. So it was with the Anglo-Scandinavian Empire of the great Cnut. With our scanty knowledge, we cannot positively either assert or deny that he dreamed of preserving any kind of union |Cnut’s designs not carried out.| among his vast and widely severed dominions. If he did entertain such thoughts, his designs were scattered to the winds immediately upon his own death. When he died, Swegen was in possession of Norway, and Harthacnut in possession of Denmark. It appears that England also was designed for the son of Emma, Cnut’s specially royal offspring, the one son who was the child of a crowned King and his Lady. What provision, if any, was made for Harold by his father’s last dispositions does not appear. But things turned out far otherwise than Cnut had |Swegen expelled from Norway. 1036.| intended. Swegen was almost immediately driven out of Norway, and Magnus, the son of Saint Olaf, was received as King. In Denmark Harthacnut kept possession, though the aspect of Magnus was threatening. In England, as usual, all attempts to influence the free choice of the Witan before the vacancy came to nothing. If Cnut tried to do more than exercise that vague power of recommending a successor which the law vested in him, his bequest went for as little as the older bequest of Æthelwulf had gone.^[1062]

State of England on the death of Cnut.

The events which immediately followed the death of Cnut are told with much contradiction and confusion; but, by closely attending to the most trustworthy authorities, 482it is not very hard to make out the general order |The West-Saxons for Harthacnut.| of events.^[1063] It appears that the will of the late King in favour of Harthacnut was upheld by the West-Saxons with Godwine their Earl at their head. That the English were divided, some being for Harthacnut and some for one of the sons of Æthelred, is a statement which seems hardly to rest on sufficient authority.^[1064] On the other hand, Harold, the supposed son of Cnut and of Ælfgifu of Northampton, also appeared as a candidate. |Northumberland, Mercia, and London for Harold.| He seems to have been supported by Earl Leofric of Mercia, by the great body of the thegns north of the Thames, and by the “lithsmen,” the sea-faring folk, of London. It would even seem that he ventured on a daring act, whether we call it an act of sovereignty or |Harold spoils Emma.| of violence, before the election was held. He sent to Winchester and despoiled the Lady Ælfgifu-Emma of the treasures which had been left her by Cnut.^[1065] Personally, as the event proved, both candidates were equally worthless; but each had strong political motives on his side, and it is clear that men’s passions were deeply stirred by the struggle. As far as we can see, Harold was the candidate of the North, Harthacnut of the South; Harold was the candidate of the Danes, Harthacnut of |Apparent motives of the two parties.| the English. At first sight this division of parties seems exactly opposite to what might have been expected. 483Harthacnut, the son of a Danish father and a Norman mother, had not a drop of English blood in his veins. Harold, if he was what he professed to be, the son of Cnut by the other Ælfgifu, was English at least by the mother’s side; if he was what scandal asserted him to be, the son of a shoemaker by some nameless mother, he was doubtless English on both sides. The election of Harthacnut involved the continuation of the connexion with Denmark; the election of Harold would again make England an independent and isolated kingdom. Yet English feeling lay with Harthacnut, Danish feeling lay |Attachment of the West-Saxons to Harthacnut as the legatee of Cnut.| with Harold. The explanation is probably to be found in the personal position of Cnut towards his West-Saxon subjects. He had lived more habitually among them than among the people of any other part of his dominions; the greatest of living Englishmen had been his minister and representative; he had in every way made Wessex his home, and Wessex had flourished under his government as it had never flourished before. It was no wonder then if the wishes of Cnut with regard to the succession or to anything else were looked on by the West-Saxon people as a sacred law. Harthacnut too, if not the descendant of their ancient rulers, was at least a kingly bairn, the son of a crowned King and his Lady. Who was Harold the bastard, whose parents no one knew for certain, that he should rule over them? If Harthacnut was at this moment in Denmark, his earliest days had been spent in England, while we have seen reason to believe that the earliest days of Harold had been spent in |Aspect of the connexion with Denmark.| Denmark. The continued connexion with Denmark which was implied in the choice of Harthacnut might even appear to patriotic Englishmen as an argument in favour of the Danish King.^[1066] In the later days of Cnut the 484connexion with Denmark had taken a form which must have been distinctly gratifying to English, and above all to West-Saxon, national feeling. The lord of all Northern Europe had worn his Imperial crown in the old West-Saxon capital; he had thence sent forth his earls and his sons to govern his dependent realms of Denmark and Norway. As it had been in the days of Cnut, so men deemed that it would be in the days of Harthacnut. Denmark, like Mercia or Northumberland, would be only another earldom whence homage, and perhaps tribute, would be paid to the Imperial court and the Imperial treasure-house at Winchester. The sons of Æthelred were strangers; no man in England had seen them since their childhood; their claims had been made the pretext for a threatened foreign invasion; no sentiment attaching to their remoter ancestry could at all counterbalance the sentiment which attached to the undoubted, the royal, the chosen, son of the King who had given England eighteen years of peace, prosperity, and foreign dominion. West-Saxon feeling therefore took the shape of loyalty to the undoubted son of the late King, of obedience to his declared wishes as to the succession. Earl Godwine and all the men of his earldom were for Harthacnut.

Motives in favour of Harold among the Danes and Northern English.

On the other hand, it is not hard to see how Harold might appeal to a very intelligible line of feeling in the minds of the Danish and half-Danish inhabitants of Northern England. His bastardy would in their eyes be no objection. Whether we look on his mother as a mere concubine or as bound to Cnut by an irregular or uncanonical marriage, her children would, according to Danish notions, be as fit to reign as the children of the Norman Lady. Indeed a powerful vein of Northumbrian sentiment might not unnaturally attach to the grandson of the murdered Earl Ælfhelm. Harold’s election might 485seem to be the overthrow of the West-Saxon dominion over Danes and Angles; a day might seem to be coming in which Winchester would have to bow to York. And if the son of Ælfgifu thus had a local connexion with Northumberland, he had also a local connexion with Mercia. Whether by birth, by residence, or by maternal descent, the daughter of Ælfhelm was in some way Ælfgifu of Northampton, and her son might call on Mercian local feeling to support the claims of a countryman. Again, if Harold, after having been designed for the crown of Denmark and brought up in Denmark as a future Danish King, had been deprived by his father’s later arrangements of any share in either England or Denmark, Danish and Northumbrian feelings would centre round him still more strongly. He would become the embodiment of any jealousies which had been called forth by Cnut’s open preference of England to Denmark, by his preference of the Saxon part of England to the Anglian and Danish lands. It was better to have a King who should reign over England without Denmark, better to have a King who should reign over Northumberland and Mercia without Wessex, than for a West-Saxon King, of whatever ancestry, to hold both Northumberland and Denmark as dependencies. The old provincial feelings, often concealed but never completely stifled, ever ready to break out on any strong provocation, now broke out in their fulness. The Danish provinces sided with Harold. And with them we find a new element, the “lithsmen,” the nautic multitude |Danish settlement in London.| of London. The great city still kept her voice in the election of Kings, but that voice would almost seem to have been handed over to a new class among her population. We hear now, not of the citizens, but of the sea-faring men.^[1067] Every invasion, every foreign settlement of any kind within the kingdom, has in every age added 486a new element to the population of London. As a Norman colony settled in London later in the century, so a Danish colony settled there now. Some accounts tell us, doubtless with great exaggeration, that London had now almost become a Danish city.^[1068] But it is certain that the Danish element in the city was numerous and powerful, and that its voice strongly helped to swell the cry in favour of Harold. Northumberland, Mercia, and London thus demanded that the son of Ælfgifu of Northampton should, if possible, be King over all England; in the worst case they would have him, like Eadgar and like Cnut, for King over all Northumberland and Mercia.

There was perhaps no country except England in which such a question could have been settled in that age otherwise than at the cost of a civil war. But the firmly rooted principles of English law, the habit of constant meeting and discussion, had already produced some germs of the feeling to which the great English historian of Greece has |The controversy peacefully decided in the Witenagemót.| given the name of “constitutional morality.”^[1069] The controversy was a sharp one; but it was decided, not on the field of battle, but in the debates of the Witenagemót. The usual midwinter meeting may, or may not, have been |Gemót of Oxford. Christmas, 1035?| forestalled by a few weeks; certain it is that, soon after the death of Cnut, the Witan of all England met in full Gemót at Oxford. That town was, no doubt, on this as on other occasions, recommended for the purpose by its position on the frontiers of the two great divisions of the kingdom. The national council proceeded to debate |Godwine maintains the claims of Harthacnut.| the claims of the two candidates. The great Earl of the West-Saxons, supported by the whole force of his earldom, strove to play the same part which Dunstan had played in 487the last recorded debate of the kind in a full and free Assembly of the Wise.^[1070] His eloquent tongue set forth the claims of Harthacnut, the candidate recommended alike by undoubted kingly birth and by the wishes of the glorious sovereign whom they had lost. But this time the charmer charmed in vain. All that Godwine could gain for the son of the Lady was a portion of his father’s |The division of the kingdom proposed by Leofric,| kingdom. The proposal of a division seems to have come from Leofric, now Earl over all Mercia,^[1071] who on all occasions appears as a mediator between the extreme parties of the North and the South. To this course he was prompted alike by his personal temper and by the geographical position of his earldom. Godwine and his party withstood for a while even this proposal; but the majority |and voted by the assembly.| was against them; the assembly decreed the division of England between the two candidates.^[1072] Once more, but now for the last time in English history, the land had two |Harthacnut reigns in Wessex; Harold reigns north of Thames,| acknowledged Kings. Harold reigned to the north of the Thames and Harthacnut to the south. We are not distinctly told whether the two Kings were to be perfectly independent of each other, or whether, as in the case of Cnut and Eadmund, any Imperial supremacy was reserved |seemingly as superior lord.| to either of the half-brothers.^[1073] But several indications seem to show that such a supremacy was reserved to Harold, and this supposition may perhaps help to explain some of the difficulties in the narrative which follows. Nor are we told of any stipulations as to the succession. It would follow, almost as a matter of course, that, if either of the brothers died childless, the survivor would be elected to |Rumoured refusal of Archbishop Æthelnoth to crown Harold.| his share of the kingdom. According to one account, Archbishop Æthelnoth, the friend of Cnut, still refused to consecrate Harold as King. He placed the crown and sceptre on the altar; Harold might seize them if he dared; 488but while a son of Emma lived, he, Æthelnoth, would crown no King but a son of Emma, and every Bishop of his province was equally forbidden to perform the rite. If this tale be true, it was an assertion of independence on the part of the ecclesiastical power for which we might in vain seek a parallel in the English history of those times. Æthelnoth, as a member of the Gemót, might give his vote for whichever candidate he thought good; but when the election was once made, he had clearly no right as Archbishop to refuse to consecrate the King chosen by the majority. But the tale is most likely a fiction. There seems to be little doubt that Harold was regularly crowned at Oxford by Æthelnoth, either now or after his later election to the whole kingdom.^[1074] But, if the tale be true, and if it belongs to this time, it plainly implies the Imperial supremacy of Harold. With a mere King of the Mercians and Northumbrians, whether an Under-king or an altogether independent sovereign, the Archbishop of Canterbury, a West-Saxon subject, could have nothing to do.

Harthacnut remains in Denmark.

The kingdom was thus divided. The King-elect of the West-Saxons was in no hurry—the affairs of his Northern kingdom did not allow him to be in a hurry—to take personal possession of the fragment of a realm which was |Regency of Emma and Godwine in Wessex. 1035–1037.| all that Godwine had been able to keep for him. Emma appears to have been invested with a kind of regency in her son’s name, while Godwine still held his office as Earl, and with it the administration of the West-Saxon kingdom. It is specially mentioned that Harthacnut’s housecarls remained with Emma.^[1075] The housecarls of Harthacnut had doubtless been the housecarls of Cnut; their loyalty was personal to their master, and it would naturally pass to his widow and her son. But that their presence was allowed in the West-Saxon kingdom and capital under the administration of Godwine clearly shows 489that they had not been employed during the late reign as instruments of oppression, and that they were not looked on with any general hatred by the people at large.

It was in the course of the next year that an event happened of which advantage has ever since been taken by hostile tongues and pens to stain the character of the great Earl of the West-Saxons with a charge of the blackest treachery. But even in the period on which we are now entering, a period in which we have at every step to weigh the conflicting statements of national and political partizanship, there is no event as to which the various versions of the tale are more utterly at variance with each other. The story is told with every conceivable variety of time, place, and person, and even our earliest and best authorities contain statements which cannot be reconciled |Attempt in favour of the Æthelings. 1036.| with one another. Thus much seems certain; first, that, about this time, one or both of the sons of Æthelred and Emma made an attempt to recover their father’s kingdom; secondly, that Ælfred, the younger of the two Æthelings, fell into the power of Harold and was cruelly put to death; thirdly, that Godwine was suspected of being an accomplice. |Conflicting versions of the story.| But beyond this, there is hardly a detail of the story which can be asserted with any confidence.^[1076] The first point, that the attempt, whatever was its nature, took place soon after the death of Cnut and the first election of Harold, is placed beyond all doubt by the complete agreement of the best authorities. But very respectable secondary authorities have altogether misplaced the date, and they have thus given occasion for a lower class of compilers to load the story with endless mythical and |Norman Version.| calumnious details. According to the Norman account, both the Æthelings had a share in the attempt. As soon 490as the death of Cnut was known in Normandy, Eadward |Invasion of England by Eadward.| set sail with forty ships and landed at Southampton. But the English, whether for love or for fear^[1077] of their Danish King Harold, met them as enemies. Eadward fought a battle and defeated the English with great slaughter. But, reflecting how great was the strength of England and how small was the force which he had brought with him, he presently sailed away, taking with him great plunder. Soon after Eadward’s return, Ælfred set sail from Wissant^[1078] and landed at Dover. As he went onwards into the country, Godwine met him, received him friendly, and seemingly did homage to him.^[1079] The Earl and the Ætheling supped together, and talked over their plans. But in the night Godwine seized Ælfred, tied his hands behind his back, and thus sent him and some of his companions to London to King Harold. Others he put in prison, others he embowelled.^[1080] Among those who were sent to London, Harold caused Ælfred’s chief companions to be beheaded, and the Ætheling himself to be blinded. In that state he was sent to Ely, naked and with his legs tied under his horse’s belly. He had not been long at 491Ely when he died, as the weapon with which his eyes had been cut out had wounded the brain.^[1081]

In this version his coming is hostile.

In this Norman version the coming of Ælfred is simply part of a Norman invasion. Eadward had come with a force large enough to fight a battle; Ælfred’s force, we |Version in two of the Chronicles.| are told, was still larger.^[1082] The oldest English version, which it must not be forgotten takes the form of a ballad, knows nothing of any warlike expedition, and speaks of |Ælfred’s companions slain [by Godwine].| Ælfred only. According to this account, Ælfred came to England, whence or under what circumstances we are not told, and wished to go to his mother at Winchester. In this purpose he was hindered by men who were powerful at the time, and who unjustly favoured Harold. In one version these men are nameless; in another Godwine is named as their chief.^[1083] Then the Ætheling and his companions are seized; some are killed outright, some are put in bonds, some sold as slaves, others blinded or put to various tortures and horrible deaths.^[1084] No worse deed had ever been done since the Danes came into the land.^[1085] All this was done, according to one version, by Godwine, according to the other, by Harold. The Ætheling still lived; so he was taken to Ely in a ship, blinded while still on board, given thus blinded to the monks, with 492whom he lived till he died soon after, and then was buried honourably in the minster.^[1086]

There is yet quite another version, that of the special panegyrist of Emma, according to whom, it must be remembered, Eadward and Ælfred are not sons of Æthelred, but younger sons of Cnut and Emma, sent over to Normandy |Harold forges a letter from Emma to the Æthelings.| for education.^[1087] Harold, anxious to destroy his half-brothers, forges a letter to them in the name of their mother. She tells them that she is Lady, only in name; Harold has usurped the kingdom and is daily strengthening himself; he is winning over the chief men by gifts, threats, and prayers. Yet the feeling of the nation is still in their favour rather than in that of Harold. Let one of her sons come over to her quickly and secretly; she can then consult with him what is to be done.^[1088] The Æthelings fell into the snare; Ælfred, the younger of the brothers, went with a few comrades into Flanders; there he stayed a short time with the Marquess Baldwin, and increased his company by some adventurers from Boulogne.^[1089] He then set sail, and came near to some point of the English coast which is not further described. But, as the inhabitants came down to the shore with evidently hostile intentions, he changed his course to another point equally undetermined. There he landed, and tried to go to his mother; on the way he was met by Godwine, who swore oaths to 493him and became his man.^[1090] By the Earl’s advice he turned |Ælfred received by Godwine,| aside from London,^[1091] and lodged at Guildford. There Godwine quartered Ælfred’s comrades in different houses in the town, leaving a few only to attend on the Ætheling himself. He feasted Ælfred and his companions, and withdrew to his own house, evidently in or near Guildford, promising to return in the morning to do his due service |but seized by the agents of Harold.| to his lord.^[1092] But in the night the emissaries of Harold suddenly appeared in the town, seized the comrades of Ælfred, and sold, slew, or tortured them according to the usual story. The Ætheling was taken to Ely; there he was first mocked by the soldiers, then loaded with heavy fetters, brought before some kind of tribunal, and, by its sentence, blinded and finally put to death.^[1093] The monks of Ely took his body and buried it, and miracles were of course wrought at his tomb.

Estimate of the evidence.

These are the main versions of the tale, the details of which, as well as some other accounts, I shall discuss elsewhere. Now when we come to compare them with one another, what is the judgement to which we ought to come? That Ælfred landed, that he and his comrades were cruelly put to death, there can be no doubt; but had Godwine any share in the deed? Before we examine the evidence, we must first try and understand what the real 494state of the case was. The unhappy fate of Ælfred caused him, according to the universal English instinct, to be looked on as a martyr; his tale became a piece of hagiology, to which, as to other pieces of hagiology, ordinary ways of thinking were not to be applied. This way of looking at the matter began very early; but, in order really to get to the bottom of the question, we must try and understand how things must have looked at the moment of Ælfred’s landing.

Statement of the case.

First of all, whatever was the crime either of Godwine or of Harold, we must remember that, in any case, it was not the kind of crime which the exaggerated language of some of our narratives would lead us to think. Godwine might be a traitor in the sense of one who betrays any fellow-creature to his ruin; on the worst showing, he was not a traitor in the sense of one who betrays or rebels against his lawful sovereign. Ælfred was not, as the legends of his martyrdom might seem to imply, a lawful King driven from his throne. Harold was not an usurper, keeping the lawful heir out of his lawful possession. Godwine was not a rebel, conspiring to betray a prince to whom his allegiance was lawfully due. According to any version of the story, Ælfred appeared in England as the enemy of a settled government, established by a regular vote of the legislature. As such it was the part and duty of the King, of the Earl, and of the whole people, to resist him. He was a pretender to the crown entering the kingdom at the head of a foreign force, whether great or small. There has never been any time or place in which such a pretender would not have been at once arrested; there have been few times and places in which such a pretender would not have been speedily put to death. Against the arrest of Ælfred not a word can be said in any age; his execution was perhaps more deeply offensive to the public feeling of the eleventh 495century, a time when the shedding of blood by the sentence of law was singularly rare,^[1094] than it would have been to the public feeling of the fifteenth or the sixteenth century. The real question is whether either the arrest or the execution was accompanied with any circumstances of |Ælfred’s position analogous to that of the Stewart Pretenders.| treachery or needless cruelty. The sons of Æthelred were very much in the position of the elder and younger Pretenders in the reigns of George the First and Second. In both cases the power which had a right to dispose of the crown had disposed of it, and had not disposed of it in their favour. Now no man could have blamed any officer, civil or military, in the service of King George, for arresting either James or Charles Edward Stewart. In so doing he would simply have been doing his duty to his King and country. If either Pretender had been arrested, his execution would doubtless have been a very harsh measure; but it would have been a perfectly legal measure; he was attainted, and he might have been as regularly executed as Monmouth was. Nay, the letter of the law, as the law stood till the reign of George the Third, as it was actually enforced as late as the reign of Charles the Second, would have condemned the pretended Prince of Wales to indignities and torments quite as cruel as any that Harold Harefoot inflicted on the Ætheling and his companions.^[1095] To have put James or Charles Stewart to death in the horrible form which the law decreed for the traitor would doubtless have called forth as fierce a storm of righteous indignation as was called forth by the death of the Ætheling Ælfred. Still the act would have been legal; it might have inflicted undying shame on the King and his counsellors who ordered it, but it would have been no 496ground of blame whatever against the gaoler, the sheriff, or the executioner. So it was with the case of Ælfred. According to one account, first Eadward and then Ælfred entered the land at the head of a foreign army; they tried, in short, to repeat the exploit of Cnut, to forestall the exploit of William. In banished men, eager for a restoration to their country on any terms, such conduct may admit of many excuses. Still, on the face of it, they put themselves in the position of open enemies of their country. If Eadward really landed at the head of a Norman army, if he really fought a battle against an English force at Southampton, those who withstood him were as plainly doing their simple duty as the men who fought at Maldon or on Senlac. Even if we reject this version, if we believe that Ælfred entered the country, not with an army but with a mere escort of strangers, still he was coming, seemingly without any invitation from any party in the country, to disturb a settlement which the legislature of the kingdom had established, and which he was not likely to upset except by force of arms. Men who run such desperate risks must take the consequences. |The real question as to Godwine; Was he guilty of treachery or needless cruelty?| If Godwine, as a military commander, fought against Eadward, if, as a civil magistrate, he arrested Ælfred, he simply did his duty and nothing else. The only question would be, as I before put it, Was there any treachery or needless cruelty in the matter? Now cruelty is perhaps of all charges that which most needs to be looked at with reference to the habits and feelings of the age. What one age looks on as mildness another age looks on as barbarity. But it is clear that the cruelties which were wrought by Harold on his captives deeply revolted the public opinion of the time in which he lived. As for deliberate treachery, that is a crime in all ages alike. If then we set aside accusations which rest on mere misconception of the case, the question remains whether the evidence is enough 497to convict Godwine either of personal treachery towards the Ætheling or of any share in the savage cruelties of Harold.

Inconsistency of the ordinary story with the fact of the division of the Kingdom.

Now in reading any version of the story one great difficulty at once presents itself. Godwine is always described as acting a part which, in his real position at the time, he cannot have acted. Not one of the versions of the tale takes any notice of the division of the kingdom. They all seem to look on Harold as sole King and to look on Godwine as his minister, or at least as his subject. Yet we know that, at this time, Godwine was neither Harold’s minister nor Harold’s subject. Harthacnut was still the acknowledged King, at all events King-elect, of the West-Saxons; Emma was still sitting at Winchester as regent in his name; Godwine, who had secured for them this remnant of dominion, was the chief minister and general of the Lady and her son. If Godwine acted in any way in the interest of Harold, it could only have been because Harold was, as I suggested above, the superior lord of his own sovereign—because the invasion, or attempt of whatever kind, made by the Æthelings threatened not only the rights of the King of the West-Saxons, but also the rights of the Emperor of Britain. This is certainly possible, but it is rather straining a point; nothing of the sort is at all implied in the language of any of the writers who tell the tale. They all, even the best informed, seem to know nothing of the kingship of Harthacnut and the regency of Emma. This seeming ignorance of writers, some of them contemporary, on such a point shows in the most remarkable way how soon and how completely the first ephemeral reign of Harthacnut was forgotten. But their forgetfulness certainly goes a good way to lessen the trustworthiness of their own tale. In fact the story as it stands cannot be made to agree with the known facts of the history. Godwine cannot have played the part attributed 498to him by his enemies while the arrangement decreed by the Witenagemót of Oxford was still in force. But the historical character of that arrangement is undoubted. That the kingdom really was divided, that Godwine really was at this time not the minister of Harold but the minister of Harthacnut, are facts which cannot be gain-sayed. The details of the story of Ælfred cannot have happened in the manner and at the time in which they are said to have happened. It was perhaps a feeling of this inconsistency which led several later writers to shift the story to a later time, to the time immediately following the death, not of Cnut, but of either Harold or Harthacnut. But the part played by Harold is the most essential part of the story; the tale cannot be fitted in to a later time except by a complete change of its circumstances. |The direct evidence against Godwine fails.| Altogether I think it must be allowed that the direct evidence brought to implicate Godwine in any guilty share in the business altogether breaks down.

Early suspicions against Godwine.

On the other hand, we have to explain the fact that Godwine was suspected, that the suspicion arose early and prevailed extensively, and that it was not confined to Godwine’s foreign enemies and slanderers. Godwine indeed was not the only person who was suspected. One tale or legend accused Emma herself; another laid the guilt to the charge of Lyfing, Bishop of Devonshire, a prelate who often appears as a powerful supporter of Godwine’s policy; in another version, if Godwine was the instigator, the English people in general seem to have been his accomplices.^[1096] Still Godwine was specially suspected, and suspected while the memory of the event was still fresh. His own special apologist and panegyrist seems to imply that the charge against him was a mere invention of the Norman Archbishop Robert.^[1097] This however was not the case; Godwine was formally accused and formally acquitted 499|[1040.]| of the crime soon after the accession of Harthacnut, four years after the event. He was acquitted, as we shall presently see,^[1098] by the solemn judgement of the highest court in the realm, and he is fully entitled to the benefit of that acquittal. Still the mere fact of his accusation has to be explained. The charge, brought at such a time and in such a shape, could not have been a mere Norman slander. Godwine’s accuser, in fact, was an Englishman of the highest rank. Nor would a mere Norman slander ever have been embodied in popular songs, or have found |Some ground for the suspicion must be supposed.| a place in any version of the English Chronicles. Such a suspicion—strong, early, native—proves something. Godwine, guilty or innocent, must have done some act which, to say the least, was capable of an unlucky misconstruction. By putting together one or two hints in the different accounts, we may perhaps come to a probable conjecture as to what his share in the matter really was. There is one version, and only one, which, while consistent with Godwine’s innocence, explains the early and prevalent suspicion as to his guilt. Let us look how things stood. |Probable state of the case.| It seems that the feeling which broke out openly in the next year was already beginning to show itself; men were beginning, even in Wessex, to be weary of the absent Harthacnut. Well they might; to wait so long for an absent King, who, still uncrowned, unsworn, unanointed, could not be looked on as full King, was something of which no man had seen the like. It was not wonderful if popular feeling was, as we are told, veering round, whether wrongfully or not, in favour of Harold.^[1099] At such a moment, a son of Æthelred, either knowing the state of the kingdom or eager to try his chance in any case, lands in England. We of course dismiss the story which speaks 500of actual invasion and warfare, which is probably a mere repetition of the attempted invasion by Duke Robert. |Godwine probably met Ælfred.| But the Ætheling was in England; if Godwine really wished to preserve the settlement which gave Wessex to a son of Emma, it might well occur to him to ask whether the game could not be better played with the present son of Æthelred than with the absent son of Cnut. He may have sought an interview with the Ætheling; he may even have pledged himself to his cause. But if a son of Æthelred was at large in England, the throne of Harold would be endangered as well as the throne of Harthacnut. Harold and his emissaries would be on the alert. The prince who had, perhaps before his election, seized on Emma’s treasures at Winchester, would not, in such a case, be very scrupulous about respecting the frontiers of his brother’s kingdom. Perhaps, if he were superior lord, he might have a real right to interfere in a matter which |Ælfred probably seized by Harold without Godwine’s connivance.| clearly touched the interests of the whole Empire. At any rate, if the Ætheling and his companions were known to be lodged in a West-Saxon town not very far from the borders of the Northern kingdom, it is perfectly conceivable that they might be seized by the agents of Harold, against the will or without the knowledge of Godwine. When the Ætheling was once seized and carried off, Godwine might well think that the game was up, that the star of Harold was fairly in the ascendant, and that neither interest nor duty called on him to plunge Wessex into a war with Northumberland and Mercia either to deliver Ælfred or to revenge his wrongs. Such conduct would not be that of a sentimental and impulsive hero; it would be that of a wary and hard-headed statesman. Such conduct would involve no real treachery; but it might easily give rise to the suspicion of treachery. If Godwine received the Ætheling, if Harold’s agents afterwards seized him, it would be an easy inference that Godwine 501betrayed him to Harold. As soon as the tale had once got afloat, mythical details would, as ever, gather round it. When Godwine was once believed to have betrayed Ælfred, it would be an obvious improvement on the story to make him a personal agent in the barbarities to which his supposed treason had given occasion. It is clear that the ordinary narrative, as it stands, cannot be received; but in some such explanation as this we may discern the probable kernel of truth on which the fabulous details gradually fastened themselves.^[1100]

Probable innocence of Godwine.

On the whole then I incline to the belief that the great Earl, every other recorded deed of whose life is the deed of an English patriot, who on every other occasion appears as conciliatory and law-abiding, who is always as strongly opposed to everything like wrong or violence as the rude age in which he lived would let him be, did not, on this one occasion, act in a manner so contrary to his whole character as to resort to fraud or needless violence to compass the destruction of a man of English birth and kingly descent. The innocence of Godwine seems to me to be most likely in itself, most consistent with the circumstances of the time, and not inconsistent with such parts of our evidence as seem most trustworthy. But in any case, even if, while casting aside palpable fables and contradictions, we take the evidence, so far as it is credible, at the worst, even then it seems to me that the great Earl is at least entitled to a verdict of Not Proven, if not of Not Guilty.

Disappointment of the hopes

The next year after the unlucky attempt of Ælfred^[1101] was marked by the breaking down of the short-lived arrangement 502|of the West-Saxons.| which had been made between the two sons of Cnut. The West-Saxons had seemingly supported Harthacnut as the representative of that policy of his father which had raised Wessex, not only to the headship of England and of all Britain, but to the practical headship of all Northern Europe. No hope on the part of any people was ever more grievously disappointed. No contrast could be greater than the contrast between Wessex in the days of Cnut and |Degrading position of Wessex.| Wessex in these two years of Harthacnut. Wessex was no longer the chosen dominion, Winchester was no longer the chosen capital, of an Emperor of the North, whose name was dreaded on the Baltic and reverenced on the Tiber. The old Imperial kingdom had sunk to be, what it had never been before, a dependent province ruled by representatives of an absent sovereign. A King of the Danes, who did not think England worthy of his presence, held the West-Saxon kingdom, seemingly as a vassal of the King of the Mercians and Northumbrians, and entrusted it to the government of his Norman mother. It would doubtless be no excuse in English eyes that Denmark was now threatened by Magnus of Norway,^[1102] and that Harthacnut’s first duty was to provide for its defence. To the West-Saxon people it would simply seem that they had chosen a King whom no entreaties on the part of his English subjects could persuade to come and take personal possession of his English kingdom. Being absent, he must have remained uncrowned, and his lack of the consecrating rite would alone, in the ideas of those times, be enough to make his government altogether uncertain and provisional. Even the influence of Godwine could not prolong—most likely it was not exerted to prolong—a state of things so essentially offensive to all patriotic feeling. It was felt that to accept the rule of Harold would be a far less evil than to keep a nominal independence which was 503practically a degrading bondage. Popular feeling therefore set strongly in favour of union with Mercia and Northumberland, even under the doubtful son of Ælfgifu of |Harthacnut deposed in Wessex, and Harold chosen King over all England. 1037.| Northampton. “Man chose Harold over all to King, and forsook Harthacnut, for that he was too long in Denmark.”^[1103] That is, I conceive, the Witan of Wessex, in discharge of their undoubted constitutional right,^[1104] deposed their King Harthacnut, and elected the King of the Mercians and Northumbrians as their immediate sovereign, the election being, as it would seem, confirmed by a vote of the Witan of all England. Harold was thus called by the universal voice of the nation to be King over the whole realm. The southern kingdom, just as at the final election of his father,^[1105] was again joined to the northern. England again became one kingdom under one King, an union which since that day has never been broken.

The reign of the new King of the English was short and troubled. His first act was the banishment of the Lady |Banishment of Emma. 1037.| Emma, who was sent out of the land at the beginning of winter.^[1106] She did not return to Normandy, as that country 504was now in all the confusion attendant on the minority of its new sovereign, the future Conqueror. She betook herself to the court of Baldwin of Flanders, which we shall henceforth find serving as the general place of refuge for English exiles. She was received with all honour by Baldwin and his Countess Adela.^[1107] Two of the near kinswomen of Baldwin will play a prominent part in our future history; one of them indeed, his daughter Matilda, the wife of the great William, was destined, within thirty years, to fill the place from which Emma herself had been driven.

Character of Harold.

Of the administration of Harold himself we hear hardly anything. The tale which affirms that he reigned without the usual consecrating rite charges him also with entire neglect of Christian worship, and of choosing the hour of mass for his hunting or other amusements.^[1108] Other accounts however imply that he was not wanting in the conventional piety of the age.^[1109] He at least, like 505other Kings, kept chaplains in his personal service, so that he can hardly have been the avowed heathen or infidel which he appears in the hostile picture. Ecclesiastical affairs however do not seem to have been in a flourishing |Ecclesiastical appointments.| state under his government. We read, as to be sure we read in the reigns of Kings of greater claims to sanctity, of bishoprics being held in plurality and |Death of Archbishop Æthelnoth. 1038.| being sold for money. Good Archbishop Æthelnoth died |Eadsige succeeds.| in the second year of Harold’s sole reign, and was succeeded by Eadsige, who appears at once in the threefold character of a royal chaplain, a monk, and a suffragan Bishop in Kent.^[1110] We also find another royal chaplain, |Promotion of Stigand and Lyfing.| Stigand, the priest of Assandun, appointed to a bishopric, deposed, seemingly before consecration, because another competitor was ready with a larger sum, and finally reinstated, whether by dint of the same prevailing arguments we are not told.^[1111] Lyfing, Bishop of Devonshire, also received the see of Worcester in plurality.^[1112] These appointments are worthy of notice, as throwing some light on the otherwise utterly obscure politics of this reign. 506Stigand, the old chaplain of Cnut, was the firm friend and |Reconciliation between Harold and the party of Godwine.| counsellor of his widow.^[1113] Lyfing was the right hand man of Earl Godwine. That these men shared in the promotions of which Harold had an unusual number to distribute, that Lyfing especially became the King’s personal friend,^[1114] seems to show that a perfect reconciliation was now brought about between Harold and the party which had opposed his original election. We may infer that Emma was sacrificed to the King’s personal dislike, a dislike which, it seems to be implied, was shared by the mass of the people.^[1115] But there seems to have been no disposition on Harold’s part to bear hard in any other way on his former antagonists. A certain amount either of generosity or of policy must have found a place in his character.

It is probably a sign of degeneracy and weakness on the part of Harold’s government that the vassal kingdoms no longer remained in the same state of submission to which they had been brought during at least the later days of Cnut. North Wales was now gathering strength |Inroad of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn; battle of Rhyd-y-Groes and death of Eadwine. 1039.| under the famous Gruffydd son of Llywelyn. His first exploit was an inroad in which he reached as far as the Severn, and fought a battle at Rhyd-y-Groes, near Upton-on-Severn, a place which, perhaps owing to this event, still retains its British name. In that fight several eminent Englishmen were killed, and among them Eadwine, a brother of Earl Leofric.^[1116] In the next year, the last year of 507|Duncan’s siege of Durham and his defeat. 1040.| the reign of Harold,^[1117] Duncan, King of Scots, on what occasion we are not told, repeated the exploit of his grandfather, and with much the same success.^[1118] He crossed the frontier and besieged Durham. The strength and prosperity of the city, though probably thrown back by the defeat of Carham,^[1119] had vastly increased since its first |Bishop Eadmund of Durham. 1020–1042.| creation by Ealdhun. Ealdhun’s successor Eadmund, called to the see, as the story went, by a miraculous voice,^[1120] had finished the work of his predecessor. The minster of Durham had been brought to perfection,^[1121] and the city of Durham had gained strength and population enough to withstand an attack by its own efforts. In the invasion of Malcolm the infant settlement had been delivered by the intervention of Earl Uhtred; the invasion of Duncan was driven back by the valour of the citizens themselves. The Scots were put to flight; of the chief men of the army the greater part were killed in the battle; the remainder owed their escape to their horses. The 508soldiers of meaner degree, who had suffered less in the actual combat, were slaughtered without mercy in the pursuit.^[1122] Northumbriam barbarism showed itself now as on the former occasion. The bloody trophies of victory were collected in the market-place of Durham, and a garland of Scottish heads again adorned the battlements of the rescued city.^[1123]

Harthacnut prepares to assert his claims. 1039.

The reign and life of Harold were now drawing to an end. Harthacnut was not at all disposed to acquiesce in the arrangements which had wholly shut him out from England. His Northern possessions were now safe. A treaty had been concluded with Magnus, according to which, as in some other instances of which we have heard, each King, in case of the other dying childless, was to succeed to his kingdom.^[1124] Harthacnut therefore was now able to turn his thoughts in the direction of England, and a message from his mother in Flanders is said to have further worked upon his mind.^[1125] He began to make great preparations for an invasion of England,^[1126] but for the present he merely sailed to Flanders with ten ships,^[1127] 509and there passed the winter with his mother. The time however was not spent in idleness. His preparations were busily carried on, and in the course of the next year he found himself at the head of a considerable fleet.^[1128] No invasion however was needed, as an event which was probably not unexpected^[1129] opened the way for his accession |Death of Harold. March 17, 1040.| without difficulty or bloodshed. King Harold, who had been for some time lying sick at Oxford, died in that town in the month of March.^[1130] He was buried at Westminster, a spot which is now mentioned in our Chronicles for the first time.^[1131] Its mention however seems to show that the smaller monastery which preceded the great foundation of Eadward enjoyed a greater amount of reputation than we might otherwise have been led to think. Harold, who could not have been above two or three and twenty years old, left no recorded posterity. We hear nothing of wives, mistresses, or children of any kind.

§ 4. The Reign of Harthacnut. 1040–2.

Harthacnut unanimously chosen

Immediately on the burial of Harold, probably at the Easter festival, the Witan of all England, English and Danish, unanimously chose Harthacnut to the kingdom.^[1132] 510|King. Easter? 1040.| The only undoubted, and now the only surviving, son of Cnut united all claims. No attempt seems to have been made on behalf of Eadward the surviving son of Æthelred, and the events of the last reign were not likely to have prejudiced men in his favour. The universal belief of the moment was that the choice of Harthacnut was the right and wise course.^[1133] An embassy, of which Ælfweard, Bishop of London and Abbot of Evesham, was a leading member,^[1134] was sent to Bruges, to invite the newly-chosen 511|Harthacnut lands. June 17.| King to take possession of his crown. He and his mother accordingly set sail for England in the course of June; he landed at Sandwich, and was presently crowned at Canterbury by Archbishop Eadsige.^[1135]

His character.

The expectations which had been formed of Harthacnut were grievously disappointed. One worthless youth had made way for another equally worthless. Writers in the Norman interest, and members of foundations to which he was lavish, try to clothe him with various virtues.^[1136] But the utmost that can be claimed for him is an easy species of munificence which showed itself on the one hand in bounty to monasteries and to the poor,^[1137] and on the other in providing four meals daily for his courtiers.^[1138] But all his recorded public acts set him before us as a rapacious, brutal, and bloodthirsty tyrant. His short reign is merely a repetition of the first and worst days of his father, while he could not, like his father, invoke even the tyrant’s plea of necessity in palliation of his evil deeds. Harthacnut had been unanimously chosen King; he had been received with universal joy; there was no sedition within the country, and no foreign enemy threatened it. But his 512conduct was that of a conqueror in a hostile land. His first act was to wring a heavy contribution from his new subjects for an object which in no way concerned them. We now learn incidentally that the standing navy of England, both under Cnut and under Harold, had consisted of sixteen ships, and eight marks were paid, seemingly yearly, either to each rower singly or to some group of rowers.^[1139] |Harthacnut’s first Danegeld.| Harthacnut had come over with sixty ships, manned by Danish soldiers, and his first act was to demand eight marks for each man of their crews, a piece of extortion which at once destroyed his newly gained popularity.^[1140] He then began to revenge himself on his enemies alive |Harold’s body disinterred.| and dead. His first act in this way was an act of senseless brutality towards the dead body of his half-brother the late King. The dead Harold, the Chronicles tell us, was dragged up and shot into a fen. Other writers tell the story with more detail.^[1141] Some of the officers of his household, Stir his Mayor of the Palace,^[1142] Eadric his dispenser, Thrond his executioner, all, we are told, men of great dignity, were sent to Westminster to dig up the body, and in their company we are surprised to find Earl Godwine and Ælfric Archbishop of York. Westminster was neither in Godwine’s earldom nor in Ælfric’s diocese, so that both 513these chiefs of Church and State seem out of place on such an occasion. We are however told that Ælfric was something more than an instrument in the matter; it was specially at his advice that Harthacnut was guilty of this cowardly piece of spite, one which, like the brutalities of Harold himself towards the comrades of Ælfred, did not |and buried again.| go without imitators in more polished times. The body of Harold was treated on the restoration of Harthacnut much as the body of Oliver Cromwell was treated on the restoration of Charles the Second. The late King was dug up, beheaded, and thrown, according to this account, into the Thames. The body was afterwards brought up by a fisherman, and received a second burial. The large Danish population of London had a burial-place of their own without the walls of the city, the memory of which is still retained in the name of the church of Saint Clement Danes. There Harold’s body was again buried, secretly, we may suppose, though the act is spoken of as a tribute of honour paid by the Danes of London to the King whose accession to the throne had been so largely their own doing.

No act could have been more offensive to the Danes settled in England than these insults offered to the body |Harthacnut’s second Danegeld. 1040–1.| of their own chosen prince. Harthacnut’s next act was to enrage all his subjects, English and Danish, by laying on them another enormous Danegeld of about twenty-two thousand pounds, with another sum of more than eleven thousand pounds for thirty-two ships, probably a fresh contingent which had just come from Denmark.^[1143] He was 514now, before he had been a year on the throne, thoroughly |Godwine and Lyfing accused of the death of Ælfred. 1040.| hated.^[1144] As if on purpose to increase his unpopularity, he next attacked the two leaders of the national party, Earl Godwine and Bishop Lyfing. Archbishop Ælfric, who appears almost in the character of a spiritual Eadric, is said to have accused them to the King of being concerned in the death of his brother Ælfred. Some other persons unnamed joined with him in bringing the charge.^[1145] Of the two defendants the Bishop was the easier victim. Lyfing lost his bishopric of Worcester, which was given to his accuser to hold in plurality,^[1146] as it was held by several Archbishops of York before and after. Lyfing however recovered Worcester in the course of the next year, as the |Trial and acquittal of Godwine.| price, we are told, of money paid to the King.^[1147] Whether the deposition of Lyfing was effected with any legal forms we are not told; but the Earl of the West-Saxons certainly underwent a regular trial before the Witan. The proceedings form a curious illustration of the jurisprudence of the age. The functions of witness, judge, and juror were not yet accurately distinguished, and compurgation,^[1148] whenever 515compurgation could be had, was looked on as the surest proof of innocence. Godwine asserted his own innocence on oath, and his solemn plea of Not Guilty was confirmed by the oaths of most of the Earls and chief thegns^[1149] of England. We must not judge of the value of such an acquittal by the ideas of our own time. In a modern trial, some of Godwine’s compurgators would have had to act as his judges; some would have been examined as witnesses to the facts; others might, at least in the case of a less illustrious defendant, have appeared as witnesses to character. In the rude state of the law in those times, these distinctions were not thought of. But it does not follow that substantial justice was not done. Godwine’s acquittal was as solemn as any acquittal could be. All the chief men of England swore to their belief in his innocence. The only difference between such an acquittal and a modern acquittal on a trial before the House of Lords is that, in the ancient mode of procedure, the voices of those who of their own knowledge affirmed Godwine to be innocent, and the voices of those who accepted his innocence |Value of the acquittal.| on their witness, were all reckoned together. Godwine then was acquitted, after the most solemn trial which the jurisprudence of his own time could provide. He is in fairness entitled to the full benefit of that acquittal. The judgement of a competent tribunal is always worth something, though its worth may be overbalanced by facts or probabilities the other way. There are those who hold, in defiance of all fact and all reason, that Sir Thomas More and Anne Boleyn must have been guilty, because English courts of justice pronounced them to be guilty. I am surely asking much less if I ask that Godwine may be held to be innocent, because an English court of justice, whose verdict is outweighed by no facts or 516probabilities the other way, solemnly pronounced him to be innocent.^[1150]

Godwine purchases the favour of Harthacnut by a magnificent ship.

One circumstance which in our days would at once throw suspicion upon the verdict proves nothing at all according to the ideas of those days. Ages after the time of Harthacnut, in times which by comparison seem as yesterday, English judges did not scruple to receive presents from their suitors, and English sovereigns did not scruple to receive presents from their subjects. It is always possible that such presents may be bribes in a guilty sense; it is always equally possible that they may not. It therefore proves nothing either way when we read that the Earl of the West-Saxons, solemnly acquitted by his peers, had still to buy his full restoration to the friendship of his highest judge at the cost of a magnificent gift. We have already seen how dear a possession a ship was in Danish eyes;^[1151] we have seen how acceptable a gift it might be in English eyes.^[1152] We have seen too what an astonishing amount of adornment the warriors of the North lavished upon these cherished instruments, almost companions, of their warfare.^[1153] Though we hear nothing of any warlike exploits of Harthacnut,^[1154] he had enough of the wiking in him for a well-equipped ship to be the most acceptable of all gifts.^[1155] Godwine therefore gave Harthacnut a ship with a beak of gold, manned with eighty chosen warriors armed with all the magnificence of the full panoply of 517|Arms of the soldiers.| the time. Each man had on each arm a golden bracelet of sixteen ounces weight; each was clad in a triple coat of mail; each bore on his head a helmet partly gilded; each was armed with all the weapons which could be needed in warfare of any kind.^[1156] Each bore on his left arm a shield with gilded boss and studs; his right hand bore the javelin, the English ategar, for the distant skirmishing at the beginning of a battle. But each too was ready for the closest and most deadly fight. Each was girded with a sword with a gilded handle, and from each man’s left shoulder hung, also adorned with |The Danish axe.| gold and silver, the most fearful weapon of all, the Danish battle-axe.^[1157] This is our first mention^[1158] of the weapon |1066.| which Englishmen were, twenty-six years later, to wield with such deadly prowess upon the height of Senlac, and |1203–4.| which, after the lapse of a hundred and forty years, the descendants of English exiles were still found wielding in defence of the throne of Constantine and Justinian.^[1159]

The Danegeld levied by the housecarls. 1041.

Meanwhile all England was astir at the imposition of the Danegeld. Men had deemed that such imposts had passed away for ever in that Witenagemót of Oxford where Cnut the Danish conqueror changed into Cnut the English King. No enemy was in the land; Denmark, 518the old foe, was a sister kingdom; Normandy, the new foe, was hindered by her domestic troubles from threatening any of her neighbours; the overthrow of Duncan before Durham had taught Scotland to respect the frontiers of the Imperial state.^[1160] But here was a tax such as had been heard of only in the darkest and saddest hours of the reign of Æthelred. Taxes of this kind always came in slowly,^[1161] and this particular tax came in with special slowness. Military force was needed to extort payment; the housecarls, who do not seem to have been sent on such errands in the days of Cnut, were now turned into tax-gatherers, and were sent into every shire in England to collect the King’s tribute.^[1162] That soldiers entrusted with such a duty behaved with insolence and violence we might take for granted in any age. In their conduct we may probably find the historical groundwork for those wonderful tales of Danish oppression in which later and rhetorical writers indulge.^[1163] No doubt this collection of the Danegeld was accompanied by much oppression; but there is no evidence that it was oppression inflicted by Danes as Danes on Englishmen as Englishmen. As far as we can see, the state of things under Harthacnut must have been something like the state of England under John and Henry the Third. The natives, of whatever race, and the settlers who were fairly naturalized in the country, were all alike taxed for the sake of the mere strangers who had come in the King’s train.^[1164] We cannot suppose that 519a Danish citizen of London, or a Danish thegn who had received a grant of lands from Cnut, was let off his share of the tribute on proof of his Danish birth. The discontent which was doubtless common to the whole kingdom at |The housecarls killed at Worcester. May 4, 1041.| last broke out in one particular quarter. The citizens of Worcester and the men of Worcestershire generally rose in revolt and attacked the housecarls. Two of their number, Feader and Thurstan, fled, like the Danes at Oxford,^[1165] to a tower of the minster.^[1166] The people followed them to their hiding-place, and slew them. The murder deserved legal punishment, but Harthacnut preferred a form of chastisement for which unluckily he could find precedents in the reigns of better princes than himself.^[1167] He is said to have been further stirred up to vengeance by one who ought to have been the first to counsel mercy. Archbishop Ælfric had, as we have seen, received the bishopric of Worcester on the deposition of Lyfing;^[1168] it would seem that the citizens refused to receive him.^[1169] They were doubtless attached to their own patriotic pastor, and they may well have been unwilling to be again made an appendage to the Northumbrian metropolis. In revenge for this injury, Ælfric, we are told, counselled the terrible punishment which Harthacnut now decreed for his flock. The offending city and shire were to feel the full extremity of military vengeance; the town was 520to be burned, the country harried, and the inhabitants, |The Earls sent against Worcester.| as far as might be, killed. For this purpose Harthacnut sent nearly all his housecarls—unhappily we are not told their numbers—under the command of all the chief men of England. The three great Earls, Godwine of Wessex, Leofric of Mercia, Siward of Northumberland,^[1170] and their subordinate Earls, among whom Thored of the Middle-Angles or Eastern part of Mercia,^[1171] and Ranig of the Magesætas or Herefordshire^[1172], are specially mentioned, were all sent against the one city of Worcester. Ten |[1051.]| years later, when Eadward the Confessor required the like chastisement to be inflicted on the town of Dover, Godwine utterly refused to have any hand in such a business, and distinctly asserted the right of every Englishman to a legal trial. But in that case the alleged crime had been done in Godwine’s own earldom, and no doubt Godwine’s power was much less under Harthacnut than it became under Eadward, most likely much less than it had been under Cnut. As things now stood, it was hardly possible to disobey, unless the Earls had been prepared for |The housecarls.| the extreme measure of deposing the King. England in fact in this age felt for the first time both the good and the bad consequences of the existence of a standing army. We shall hereafter see what the housecarls could do for England under a patriotic King; we now see what they could do against Englishmen at the bidding of a rapacious 521tyrant. It was not at the head of the forces of their several governments that the Earls were bidden to attack the offending city. Those forces would have taken some time to bring together, and, when they were brought together, they would doubtless have sympathized with their intended victims. The King had now at his command a body of Janissaries, who could march at a moment’s notice, a force bound to him by a personal tie, and ready to carry out his personal will in all things. It was no doubt deemed a great stroke of policy to implicate in the deed all the chief men of the land, English and Danish, by putting them at the head of the King’s personal force. But it seems plain that the Earls showed little zeal in the bloody errand on which they were sent. Placed as they were, they could hardly avoid doing much mischief to property, but they were evidently determined to shed as little blood as might be. |Worcester burned and the shire ravaged.| Their approach was well known^[1173]—most likely they took care that it should be well known—to those against whom they were coming. The inhabitants of the shire took shelter in various places, while the men of the city itself entrenched^[1174] themselves in an island of the Severn, whose name of Beverege reminds us of one of the losses which our national fauna has undergone.^[1175] They held out for four days; on the fifth peace was made, and they were allowed to go where they would. But the city was burned, and the army marched away with great plunder.^[1176] The 522vengeance of Harthacnut and Ælfric was thus partly satisfied, and the Archbishop, having thus witnessed the harrying of the diocese upon which he had been forced, seems to have been not unwilling to give back the see to its earlier possessor. As Ælfric still held it at the time of the burning of the city,^[1177] it seems to follow that Lyfing’s reappointment |Patriotic Bishops of Worcester.| happened soon after this conclusion of peace. And it is a natural conjecture that the restoration of the popular prelate and the exclusion of the Northumbrian Metropolitan was one of the articles agreed on between the Earls and the citizens. Worcester has been happy in its Bishops in more than one great crisis of our history. Side by side with Godwine we find Lyfing; side by side with Harold we find Wulfstan; and in later times, when the part of Godwine is played again by Simon of Montfort, we find Walter of Cantelupe walking in the steps of Lyfing, and |[1265.]| saying mass and hearing the confession of the martyred Earl on the morning of the fight of Evesham.^[1178]