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

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

We have thus far gone through the course of those events which acted as the more distant causes of the Norman Conquest; with the accession of Eadward we 4|The struggle between Normans and Englishmen begins with the accession of Eadward.| stand on the threshold of the Conquest itself. The actual subjugation of England by force of arms is still twenty-four years distant; but the struggle between Norman and Englishman for dominion in England has already begun. That such would be the result of Eadward’s accession was certainly not looked for by those who raised him to the throne. Never was any prince called to assume a crown by a more distinct expression of the national will. “All folk chose Eadward to King.” The |Import of Eadward’s election; resolve of the English people to have none but an English King.| choice expressed the full purpose of the English nation to endure no King but one who was their bone and their flesh. No attachment to the memory of the great Cnut could survive the utter misgovernment of his sons. The thought of another Danish King was now hateful. Yet the royal house of Denmark contained at least one prince who was in every way worthy to reign. Could the 5|Other possible candidates; Swend Estrithson;| national feeling have endured another Danish ruler, Swend Estrithson might have governed England as prudently and as prosperously as he afterwards governed Denmark. But the great qualities of Swend had as yet hardly shown themselves. He could have been known at this time only as a young adventurer, who had signally failed in the only great exploit which he had attempted.^[2] And, above all things, the feeling of the moment called for an Englishman, for an Ætheling of the blood of Cerdic. One |Eadward the son of Eadmund.| such Ætheling only was at hand. One son of Eadmund Ironside was now grown up to manhood, but he had been from his infancy an exile in a distant land. Most likely no one thought of him as a possible candidate for the Crown; it may well be that his very existence was |Position of Eadward.| generally forgotten. In the eyes of Englishmen there was now only one representative of the ancient royal house. Eadward, the son of Æthelred and Emma, the brother of the murdered and half-canonized Ælfred, had long been familiar to English imaginations, and, since the accession of his half-brother Harthacnut, the English Court had been his usual dwelling-place. Eadward, and Eadward alone, stood forth as the heir of English royalty, the representative of English nationality. In his behalf the popular voice spoke out at once and unmistakeably. “Before the King buried were, all folk chose Eadward to King at London.”

§ 1. The Election and Coronation of Eadward. 1042–1043.

Popular election of Eadward. June, 1042.

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

He returns to England.

Eadward now seems to have returned to England, probably in company with Godwine and the other am|Witenagemót 9of Gillingham. 1042–3.| *bassadors. The Witan presently met at Gillingham in Wiltshire; and it would seem that the acceptance of Eadward’s claims was now somewhat less unanimous than it had been during the first burst of enthusiasm which followed the death of Harthacnut. Godwine brought forward Eadward as a candidate, he urged his claims with all his powers of speech, and himself set the example of |Opposition to Eadward’s election;| becoming his man on the spot. Still an opposition arose in the Assembly, which it needed all the eloquence of Godwine and Lyfing to overcome. They had even, as it would seem, to stoop to a judicious employment of the less noble arts of statesmanship. The majority indeed were won over by the authority of the man whom all England looked on as a father.^[15] But the votes of some had to be gained by presents, or, in plain words, by bribes.^[16] Others, it would seem, stood out against Eadward’s |apparently in the interest of Swend.| election to the last. This opposition, we cannot doubt, came from a Danish party which supported the claims of Swend Estrithson. That prince, on return from his first unsuccessful war with Magnus, had found his cousin Harthacnut dead, and Eadward already King as far as his first election could make him so.^[17] But the delay of the coronation, the uncertainty of Eadward’s acceptance of the Crown, might well make the hopes of |Alleged negotiations between Eadward and Swend.| Swend and his partisans revive. We can hardly believe the tale, though it rests apparently on the assertion of Swend himself, that he demanded the Crown, and that Eadward made peace with him, making the usual compromise that Swend should succeed him on his death, even though he should leave sons.^[18] Such an agreement would of course be of no force without the consent of 10the Witan. That consent may have been given in the Assembly at Gillingham; but such an arrangement seems hardly credible. The English nation no doubt fully intended that the Crown should remain in the House of Cerdic, and Godwine probably already hoped that in the next generation the blood of Cerdic would be united with the blood of Wulfnoth. But it is certain that Swend was in some way or other reconciled to Eadward and Godwine, for we shall presently find Swend acting as the friend of England, and Godwine acting as the special champion of the interests of Swend.^[19] The son of Ulf was, it will be remembered, the nephew of Gytha, and this family connexion no doubt pleaded for him as far as was consistent with Godwine’s higher and nearer objects. One of Swend’s brothers, Beorn, remained in England, where he was soon raised to a great Earldom, and seems to have been counted in all respects as a member of the house of Godwine. But the friends of Swend in general were set down for future punishment.^[20] In the end confiscation or banishment fell on the most eminent of them. Among them was Osbeorn, another brother of the Danish King, whom we shall hear of in later times as betraying the claims of his brother, and therewith the hopes of England, into the hand of the Norman Conqueror.

Eadward the only possible choice.

Eadward was thus raised to the throne mainly through the exertions of the two patriotic leaders, Godwine and Lyfing. It is vain to argue whether Godwine did wisely in pressing his election. There was in truth no other choice. The only other possible candidates were Swend, and Magnus of Norway, of whose claims we shall hear again presently. But English feeling called for an English King, and there was no English King but Eadward 11to be had. That Godwine could have procured his own election to the Crown, that the thought of such an election could have occurred to himself or to any one else, is an utterly wild surmise.^[21] If Godwine met with some opposition when pressing the claims of Eadward, that opposition would have increased tenfold had he ventured to dream of the Crown for himself. The nomination of the West-Saxon Earl would have been withstood to the death, not only by a handful of Danes, but by Leofric and Siward, probably, in Siward’s case at least, at the head of the whole force of their Earldoms. The time was not yet come for the election of a King not of the royal house. There was no manifest objection to the election of Eadward, and, though Godwine was undoubtedly the most powerful man in England, he had not reached that marked and undisputed preeminence which was enjoyed by his son twenty-four years later. No English candidate but Eadward was possible. And men had not yet learned, Godwine himself probably had not fully learned, how little worthy Eadward was to be called an English candidate.^[22] And when in after years they learned the unhappy truth, still there does not seem to have been at any time the least thought of displacing Eadward in favour of either of his Scandinavian competitors, or even of calling in Swend to succeed him. In raising Eadward to the throne, Godwine acted simply as the mouthpiece of the English people. The opposition, as far as we can see, came wholly from the Danes of what we may call the second importation, those who had come 12into England with Cnut and Harthacnut. There is nothing to show that the old-settled Danish population of Northumberland acted apart from the rest of the country.

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

Eadward then was King. He reigned, as every English King before him had reigned, by that union of popular election and royal descent which formed the essence of all ancient Teutonic kingship.^[23] But it would seem that, even in those days, the two elements in his title, the two principles to whose union he and all other Kings owed their kingly rank, spoke with different degrees of force to different minds. Already, in the eleventh century, we may say that there were Whigs and Tories in England. At any rate there were men in whose eyes the choice of the people was the primary and legitimate source of kingship. There were also men who were inclined to rest the King’s claim to his Crown mainly on his descent from those who had been Kings before him. The difference is plainly shown in the different versions of the Chronicles. One contemporary winter, a devoted partisan of Godwine, grounds the King’s right solely on the popular choice—“All folk chose Eadward to King.” That the entry was made at the time is plain from the prayer which follows, “May he hold it while God grants it to him.”^[24] Another version, the only one in any degree hostile to the great Earl, seems purposely to avoid the use of any word recognizing a distinct right of choice in the people. “All folk received Eadward to King, as was his right by birth.”^[25] 13A third writer, distinctly, though less strongly, Godwinist, seems pointedly to combine both statements; “All folk chose Eadward, and received him to King, as was his right by birth.”^[26] There can be no doubt that this last is the truest setting forth both of the law and of the facts of the case. The people chose Eadward, and without the choice of |Union of elective and hereditary right.| the people he would have had no right to reign. But they chose him because he was the one available descendant of the old kingly stock, because he was the one man at hand who enjoyed that preference by right of birth, which required that, in all ordinary cases, the choice of the electors should be confined to the descendants of former Kings. It might therefore be said with perfect truth that Eadward was chosen because the Kingdom was his by right |Eadward not next in succession according to modern notions.| of birth. But it must not be forgotten, what is absolutely necessary for the true understanding of the case, that this right by birth does not imply that Eadward would have been, according to modern ideas, the next in succession to the Crown. Eadward’s right by birth would have been no right by birth at all in the eyes of a modern lawyer. The younger son of Æthelred could, according to our present ideas, have no right to succeed while any representative of his elder brother survived. The heir, in our sense of the word, was not the Eadward who was close at hand in England or Normandy, but the Eadward 14who was far away in exile in Hungary or Russia. Modern writers constantly speak of this last Eadward and of his son Eadgar as the lawful heirs of the Confessor. On the contrary, according to modern notions, the Confessor was their lawful heir, and, according to modern notions, the Confessor must be pronounced to have usurped a throne |The right of the elder branch not thought of.| which of right belonged to his nephew. In his own time such subtleties were unknown. Any son of Æthelred, any descendant of the old stock, satisfied the sentiment of royal birth, which was all that was needed.^[27] To search over the world for the son of an elder brother, while the younger brother was close at hand, was an idea which would never have entered the mind of any Englishman of the eleventh century.

Eadward crowned at Winchester, April 3, 1043.

The coronation ceremony probably followed soon after the meeting at Gillingham. It was performed on Easter Day at Winchester,^[28] the usual place for an Easter Gemót, by Archbishop Eadsige, assisted by Ælfric of York and most of the other Prelates of England.^[29] We are expressly |Exhortation of Eadsige; condition of the Kingdom.| told that the Metropolitan gave much good exhortation both to the newly made King and to his people.^[30] The peculiar circumstances of the time might well suggest such a special admonition. There was a King, well nigh the last of his race, a King chosen by the distinct expression of the will of the people, as the representative of 15English nationality in opposition to foreign rule. But the King so chosen as the embodiment of English feeling was himself an Englishman in little more than in the accident of being born on English ground^[31] as the son of a father who was a disgrace to the English name. There was a Kingdom to be guarded against foreign claimants, and there were the wounds inflicted by two unfortunate, though happily short, reigns to be healed at home. The duties which were laid upon the shoulders |Relations between Eadward and Godwine.| of the new King were neither few nor easy. He had indeed at hand the mightiest and wisest of guardians to help him in his task. But we can well understand that the feelings of Eadward towards the man to whom he owed his Crown were feelings of awe rather than of love. There could be little real sympathy between the stout Englishman and the nursling of the Norman court, between the chieftain great alike in battle and in council and the timid devotee who shrank from the toils and responsibilities of an earthly Kingdom. And we can well believe that, notwithstanding Godwine’s solemn acquittal, there still lingered in the mind of Eadward some prejudice against the man who had once been charged with his |Relations of the three great Earls.| brother’s death. And again, though it was to Godwine and his West-Saxons that Eadward mainly owed his Crown, yet Godwine and his West-Saxons did not make up the whole of England. Their counsels and interests had to be reconciled with the possibly opposing counsels and interests of the other Earldoms and of their rulers. Eadward could not afford to despise the strong arm of the mighty Dane who ruled his countrymen north of the Humber. He could not afford to despise the possible prejudices of the great Earl of central England, who, descendant of ancient Ealdormen, perhaps of ancient Kings, 16may well have looked with some degree of ill-will on the upstarts North and South of him. Eadward, called to the throne by the unanimous voice of the whole nation, was bound to be King of the English and not merely King of the West-Saxons. He was bound yet more strongly to be King of the English in a still higher sense, to cast off the trammels of his Norman education, and to reign as became the heir of Ælfred and Æthelstan. We have now to see how far the good exhortations of Eadsige were effectual; how far the King chosen to the Crown which was his right by birth discharged the duties which were laid upon him alike by his birth and by his election.

Foreign Ambassadors at Eadward’s coronation.

It was perhaps ominous of the character of Eadward’s future reign that his coronation was attended by an apparently unusual assemblage of the Ambassadors of foreign princes.^[32] It was natural that Eadward should be better known, and that his election should awaken a greater interest, in other lands than could usually be the case with an English King. He was connected by birth or marriage with several continental sovereigns, and his long residence in Normandy must have brought him more nearly within |Eadward’s foreign connexions.| the circle of ordinary continental princeship than could commonly be the case with the Lord of the island Empire, the Cæsar as it were of another world. The revolutions of England also, and the great career of Cnut, had evidently fixed the attention of Europe on English affairs to an unusual degree. Add to this that, when a King was chosen and crowned immediately on the death of his predecessor, the presence of congratulatory embassies from other princes was hardly possible. But the delay in Eadward’s consecration allowed that great Easter-feast at Winchester to be adorned with the presence of the representatives of all the chief sovereigns of Western 17Christendom. Some there were whom England was, then as ever, bound to welcome as friends and brethren, and some whose presence, however friendly was the guise of the moment, might to an eye which could scan the future |Ambassadors from King Henry.| have seemed a foreboding of the evil to come. First came the ambassadors of the prince who at once held the highest place on earth and adorned it with the noblest display of every kingly virtue. King Henry of Germany, soon to appear before the world as the illustrious Emperor,^[33] the great reformer of a corrupted Church, sent an embassy to congratulate his brother-in-law^[34] on the happy change in his fortunes, to exchange promises of peace and friendship, and to present gifts such as Imperial splendour and liberality might deem worthy of the one prince whom |from the King of the French;| a future Emperor could look on as his peer.^[35] The King of the French too, a prince bearing the same name as the mighty Frank,^[36] but far indeed from being a partaker in his glory, sent his representatives to congratulate one whom he too claimed as a kinsman,^[37] and to exchange pledges of mutual good-will between the two realms. |from other German and French princes;| And, along with the representatives of Imperial and royal majesty, came the humbler envoys of the chief Dukes and princes of their two kingdoms, charged with the like 18professions of friendship—our flattering historian would fain have us believe, of homage.^[38] Among these we can hardly doubt that a mission from the Court of Rouen held a distinguished place. It may be that, even then, the keen eye of the youthful Norman was beginning to look with more than a neighbour’s interest upon the land to which he had in some sort given her newly-chosen King. We |from Magnus of Denmark.| are even told that an embassy of a still humbler kind was received from a potentate who soon after appeared on the stage in a widely different character. Magnus of Norway had received the submission of Denmark on the death of Harthacnut, by virtue of the treaty by which each of those princes was to succeed to the other’s dominions.^[39] He now, we are told, sent an embassy to Eadward, chose him as his father,^[40] promised to him the obedience of a son, and strengthened the promise with oaths and hostages. Now in the language used with regard both to Magnus and to the German and French princes, there is doubtless much of the exaggeration of a panegyrist, anxious to raise his 19hero’s reputation to the highest point. But it is possible that Magnus might just now take some pains to conciliate Eadward, in order to hinder English help from being continued to his competitor Swend. In the reception of the Imperial and the Danish envoys there is nothing which has any special meaning; but it is specially characteristic of this reign that the congratulations of the French princes |Eadward’s gifts to the French princes.| were acknowledged by gifts from the King personally, and that some of them were continued in the form of annual pensions.^[41] These were undoubtedly, even if the Norman Duke himself was among the pensioners, the gifts of a superior to inferiors; the point is that the connexion between England and the different French states, Normandy above them all, was constantly increasing in amount, and receiving new shapes at every turn.

Gifts of the English nobles.

Besides the gifts of foreign princes, the new King also received many splendid presents from his own nobles. First among them all shone forth the magnificent offering |Godwine presents a ship to the King.| of the Earl of the West-Saxons.^[42] Godwine had given a ship to Harthacnut as the price of his acquittal on his memorable trial;^[43] he now made the like offering to Eadward as a token of the friendship which was to reign between the newly-chosen King and his greatest subject. Two hundred rowers impelled the floating castle. A golden lion adorned the stern; at the prow the national ensign, 20the West-Saxon Dragon, shone also in gold, spreading his wings, the poet tells us, over the awe-struck waves.^[44] A rich piece of tapestry, wrought on a purple ground with the naval exploits of former English Kings,^[45] the sea-fights, no doubt, of Ælfred, the peaceful triumphs of Eadgar, |[992.]| perhaps that noblest fight of all when the fleets of Denmark gave way before the sea-faring men of the merchant-city,^[46] formed an appropriate adornment of the offering of the English Earl to the first—men did not then deem that he was to be the last—prince of the newly-restored English dynasty.

§ 2. Condition of England during the early years of Eadward.

Character of Eadward.

Before we go on to the events of the reign of Eadward, it will be well to endeavour to gain a distinct idea of the King himself and of the men who were to be the chief actors in English affairs during his reign. In estimating the character of Eadward, we must never forget that we |His position as a Saint.| are dealing with a canonized saint. In such cases it is more needful than ever to look closely to a man’s recorded acts, and to his character as described by those who wrote before his formal canonization. Otherwise we shall be in danger of mistaking hagiology for history. 21When a man is once canonized, his acts and character immediately pass out of the reach of ordinary criticism. Religious edification, and not historical truth, becomes the aim of all who speak or write of one who has been formally enrolled as an object of religious reverence.^[47] We must also be on our guard even in dealing with authors who wrote before his formal canonization, but after that popular canonization which was so often the first step towards it. It was of course the general reverence in which a man was held, the general belief in his holiness and miraculous powers, which formed the grounds of the demand for his formal canonization. But, while we must be specially on our guard in weighing the character of particular acts and the value of particular panegyrics, we must remember that the popular esteem which thus led to canonization proves a great deal as to |Nature of his claims to sanctity.| a man’s general character. It proves still more when, as in the case of Eadward, there was no one special act, no one marked deed of Christian heroism or Christian endurance, which formed the holy man’s claim to popular reverence. Eadward was not like one of those who died for their faith or for their country, and who, on the strength of such death, were at once revered as martyrs, without much inquiry into their actions and characters in other respects. He was not even like one of those, his sainted uncle and namesake for instance,^[48] who gained the honours of martyrdom on still easier terms, by simply dying an unjust death, even though no religious or political principle was at stake. The popular reverence in which Eadward was held could rest on no ground except the genuine popular estimate of his general character. There were indeed strong political reasons which attached men to his memory. He was the one prominent man of 22|Eadward’s memory acceptable both to Englishmen and to Normans on political grounds.| the days immediately before the Conquest whom Normans and Englishmen could agree to reverence. The English naturally cherished the memory of the last prince of the ancient stock. They dwelt on his real or supposed virtues as a bright contrast to the crimes and vices of his Norman successors. Under the yoke of foreign masters they looked back to the peace and happiness of the days of their native King. The King who reigned on the English throne without a spark of English feeling became the popular embodiment of English nationality, and men called for the Laws of King Eadward as in earlier times they had called for the Laws of Cnut or of Eadgar.^[49] On the other hand, it suited the policy of the Normans to show all respect to the kinsman of their own Duke, the King by whose pretended bequest their Duke claimed the English Crown, and whose lawful successor he professed himself to be. In English eyes Eadward stood out in contrast to the invader William; in Norman eyes he stood out in contrast to the usurper Harold. A King whom two hostile races thus agreed in respecting could not fail to obtain both popular and formal canonization on somewhat easy |Popular reverence for him grounded also on personal qualities.| terms. Still he could hardly have obtained either the one or the other only on grounds like these. He must have displayed some personal qualities which really won him popular affection during life and maintained him in popular reverence after death. It is worth while to study a little more at length the character of a man who obtained in his own age a degree of respect which in our eyes seems justified neither by several of his particular actions nor by the general tenour of his government.

That Eadward was in any sense a great man, that he displayed any of the higher qualities of a ruler of those days, no one probably will assert. He was doubtless in 23some respects a better man than Cnut, than Harold, or than William; as a King of the eleventh century no one will venture to compare him with those three mighty ones. His wars were waged by deputy, and his civil government |Eadward’s personal character.| was carried on largely by deputy also. Of his many personal virtues, his earnest piety, his good intentions in every way, his sincere desire for the welfare of his people, there can be no doubt. Vice of every kind, injustice, wanton cruelty, were hateful to him. But in all kingly qualities he was utterly lacking. In fact, so far as a really good man can reproduce the character of a thoroughly bad one, Eadward reproduced the character of his father Æthelred. Writers who lived before his canonization, or who did not come within the magic halo of his sanctity, do not scruple to charge him, as his father is |Points of likeness to his father.| charged, with utter sloth and incapacity.^[50] Like his father, he was quite incapable of any steady attention to the duties of royalty;^[51] but, like his father, he had occasional fits of energy, which, like those of his father, often came at the wrong time.^[52] His contemporary panegyrist allows that he gave way to occasional fits of wrath, but he pleads that his anger never hurried him into unbecoming language.^[53] It hurried him however, more than once, into very unbecoming intentions. We shall find 24that, on two memorable occasions, it needed the intervention of his better genius, in the form first of Godwine and then of Harold, to keep back the saintly King from massacre and civil war.^[54] Here we see the exact parallels to Æthelred’s mad expeditions against Normandy, Cumberland, and Saint David’s.^[55] But Eadward was not only free from the personal vices and cruelties of his father; there can be no doubt that, except when carried away by ebullitions of this kind, he sincerely endeavoured, according to the measure of his ability, to establish a good administration of justice throughout his dominions. But the duties of secular government, although doubtless discharged conscientiously and to the best of his ability, were with Eadward always something which went against the |His virtues wholly monastic.| grain. His natural place was, not on the throne of England, but at the head of a Norman Abbey. Nothing, one would think, could have hindered him from entering on the religious life in the days of his exile, unless it were a vague kind of feeling that other duties were thrown upon him by his birth. For all his virtues were those of a monk; all the real man came out in his zeal for collecting relics, in his visions, in his religious exercises, in his gifts to churches and monasteries, in his desire to mark his reign, as its chief result, by the foundation of his great Abbey of Saint Peter at Westminster. In a prince of the manly piety of Ælfred things of this sort form only a part, a pleasing and harmonious part, of the general character. In Eadward they formed the whole man. His time was oddly divided between his prayers and the pastime which seems least suited to the character of 25|His love of hunting.| a saint. The devotion to the pleasures of the chase was so universal among the princes and nobles of that age that it is needless to speak of it as a feature in any man’s character, unless when some special circumstance forces it into special notice. We remark it in the two Williams, because it was their love of hunting which led them into their worst acts of oppression; we remark it in Eadward, because it seems so utterly incongruous with the other features of his character.^[56] There were men even in those times who could feel pity for animal suffering and who |Contrast with the humanity of Anselm.| found no pleasure in the wanton infliction of pain. Tenderness for animals is no unusual feature in either the real or the legendary portraits of holy men. Anselm, the true saint, like Ceadda in earlier times, saved the life of the hunted beast which sought his protection, and made the incident the text of a religious exhortation to his companions. He saw a worthy object for prayer in the sufferings of a bird tortured by a thoughtless child, and his gentle heart found matter for pious rejoicing in the escape of the feathered captive.^[57] Humanity like this met with very little response in the breast of the saintly monarch. The piercing cry, the look of mute agony, of the frightened, 26wearied, tortured beast awakened no more pity in the heart of the saintly King than in that of the rudest Danish Thegn who shared his savage pastime. The sufferings of the hart panting for the water-brooks, the pangs of the timid hare falling helpless into the jaws of her pursuers, the struggles of the helpless bird grasped in the talons of the resistless hawk, afforded as keen a delight to the prince who had never seen steel flash in earnest, as ever they did to men whom a life of constant warfare in a rude age had taught to look lightly on the sufferings and death even of their own kind.^[58] Once, we are told, a churl, resisting, it well may be, some trespass of the King and his foreign courtiers on an Englishman’s freehold, put some hindrance in the way of the royal sport. An unsaintly oath and an unkingly threat at once rose to the lips of Eadward; “By God and his Mother, I will hurt you some day if I can.”^[59] Had Anselm, in the might of his true holiness, thus crossed the path of his brother saint, he too, as the defender of the oppressed, might have become the object of a like outburst of impotent wrath. A delight in amusements of this kind is hardly a fair subject of blame in men of any age to whom the rights of the lower animals have perhaps never been presented as matter for serious thought. But in a man laying claim to special holiness, to special meekness and gentleness 27of character, we naturally look for a higher standard, a standard which a contemporary example shows not to have been unattainable even in that age.

Personal appearance and habits of Eadward.

In person Eadward is described as being handsome, of moderate height, his face full and rosy, his hair and beard white as snow.^[60] His beard he wore long, according to what seems to have been the older fashion both of England and of Normandy.^[61] Among his younger contemporaries this fashion went out of use in both countries, and the Normans shaved the whole face, while the English left the hair on the upper lip only. He was remarkable for the length and whiteness of his hands. When not excited by passion, he was gentle and affable to all men; he was liberal both to the poor and to his friends; but he had also the special art of giving a graceful refusal, so that the rejection of a suit by him was almost as pleasing as its acceptance by another.^[62] In public he preserved his kingly dignity intact; but he took little pleasure in the pomp of royalty or in wearing the gorgeous robes which were wrought for him by the industry and affection of his Lady.^[63] In private company, though he never forgot his rank, he could unbend, and treat his familiar friends as an equal.^[64] He avoided however one bad habit of his 28age, that of choosing the time of divine service as the time for private conversation. It is mentioned as a special mark of his devotion that he scarcely ever spoke during mass, except when he was interrupted by others.^[65] The |His favourites at different periods of his reign.| mention of his friends and familiar companions leads us directly to his best and worst aspects as an English King. Like his father, he was constantly under the dominion of favourites. It was to the evil choice of his favourites during the early part of his reign that most of the misfortunes of his time were owing, and that a still more direct path was opened for the ambition of his Norman kinsman. In the latter part of his reign either happy accident, or returning good sense, or perhaps the sheer necessity of the case, led him to a better choice. Without a guide he could not reign, but the good fortune of his later years gave him the wisest and noblest of all guides. The most honourable feature in the whole life of Eadward is that the last thirteen years of his reign were virtually the reign of Harold.

Eadward’s fondness for foreigners.

But in the days before that great national reaction, in the period embraced in the present Chapter, it is the peculiar character of the favourites to whose influence Eadward was given up which sets its special mark on the time. The reign of Eadward in many respects forestalls 29the reign of Henry the Third. The part played by Earl Godwine in many respects forestalls the part played |His connexion with Normandy.| by Earl Simon of Montfort. Eadward was by birth an Englishman; but he was the son of a Norman mother; he had been carried to Normandy in his childhood; he had there spent the days of his youth and early manhood; England might be the land of his duty, but Normandy was ever the land of his affection. With the habits, the feelings, the language, of the people over whom he was called to rule he had absolutely no sympathy. His heart was French. His delight was to surround himself with companions who came from the beloved land and who spoke the beloved tongue, to enrich them with English estates, to invest them with the highest offices of the English Kingdom. Policy might make him the political ally of his Imperial brother-in-law, but a personal sentiment made him the personal friend of his Norman cousin. The needs of his royal position made him accept Godwine as his counsellor and the daughter of Godwine as his |Promotion of Normans to high office.| wife. But his real affections were lavished on the Norman priests^[66] and gentlemen who flocked to his Court as to the land of promise. These strangers were placed in important offices about the royal person,^[67] and before long they were set to rule as Earls and Bishops over the already half-conquered soil of England. Even when he came over as a private man in the days of Harthacnut, Eadward 30had brought with him his French nephew,^[68] and Ralph the Timid Earl was but the precursor of the gang of foreigners who were soon to be quartered upon the country, as these were again only the first instalment of the larger gang who were to win for themselves a more lasting |The Norman Conquest begins under Eadward.| settlement four and twenty years later. In all this the seeds of the Conquest were sowing, or rather, as I once before put it,^[69] it is now that the Conquest actually begins. The reign of Eadward is a period of struggle between natives and foreigners for dominion in England. The foreigners gradually win the upper hand, and for a time they are actually dominant. Then a national reaction overthrows their influence, and the noblest of living Englishmen becomes the virtual ruler. But this happy change did not take place till the strangers had become accustomed to look on English estates and honours as their right, a right which they soon learned to think they might one day assert by force of arms. The foreign favourites of Eadward were in truth the advanced guard of William. The conquests of England by Swend and Cnut, the wonderful exploits of his own countrymen in the South of Europe, no doubt helped to suggest to the Norman Duke that it was not impossible to win England for himself with his sword. But it must have been the feeling, on the part both of himself and of his subjects, that England was a land already half won over to Norman rule, which made the succession to the English Crown the cherished aim of the life of the mighty ruler who was now growing up to manhood and to greatness on the other side of the sea.

Relations between Eadward and Godwine.

The elevation of Eadward to the throne of course involved the establishment in still greater honour and 31authority of the man to whom his elevation was mainly owing, the great Earl of the West-Saxons. I have already thrown out some hints as to what the real relations between |Norman calumnies against Godwine and his sons.| Eadward and Godwine probably were.^[70] There is not a shadow of evidence for the calumnies of the Norman writers which represent Godwine and his sons as holding the King in a sort of bondage, as abusing his simplicity and confidence, sometimes as behaving to him with great personal insolence, sometimes, they even venture to add, practising all kinds of injustice and oppression throughout the Kingdom. The English writers tell a widely different tale. The contrast between the two accounts is well set forth by a writer whose sympathies lie wholly on the Norman side, but who makes at least an effort to deal fairly between the two. In the English version Godwine and his sons appear as high-minded and faithful counsellors of the King, who stood forward as the leaders of the national feeling against his foreign favourites, but who were never guilty of any undutiful word or deed towards the prince whom they had themselves raised to power.^[71] Eadward probably both feared and suspected Godwine. But there is nothing to show that, up to the final outbreak between Godwine and the foreigners, the great Earl had ever deviated from even formal loyalty to his sovereign. There is distinct evidence that more than one of his sons had gained Eadward’s warmest personal affection. From |Character of Godwine.| all that we can see, Godwine was not a man likely to win the same sort of personal affection from Eadward, perhaps not even from the nation at large, which was afterwards won by Harold. That Godwine was the representative of all English feeling, that he was the leader of every national movement, that he was the object of the deepest admiration on the part of the men at least of his own Earldom, 32is proved by the clearest of evidence. But it is equally clear that Godwine was essentially a wary statesman, and in no sense a chivalrous hero. We have seen that, mighty as was the power of his eloquence, he did not trust to his eloquence only.^[72] He knew how to practise the baser as well as the nobler arts of statesmanship. He knew how to win over political adversaries by bribes, threats, and promises, and how to find means of chastisement for those who remained to the last immoveable by the voice of the charmer. When we think of the vast extent of his possessions,^[73] most or all of which must have been acquired by royal grant, it is almost impossible to acquit him of |His relation to ecclesiastical bodies.| a grasping disposition. It is also laid to his charge that, in the acquisition of wealth, he did not always regard the rights of ecclesiastical bodies.^[74] This last charge, it must be remembered, is one which he shares with almost every powerful man of his time, even with those who, if they took with one hand, gave lavishly with the other. And accusations of this sort must always be taken with certain deductions. Monastic and other ecclesiastical writers were apt to make little or no distinction between acts of real sacrilege, committed by fraud or violence, and the most legal transactions by which the Church happened to be |Godwine’s lack of bounty to the Church.| a loser. Still it should be noticed that Godwine stands perhaps alone among the great men of his own age in having no ecclesiastical foundation connected with his 33name. As far as I am aware, he is nowhere enrolled among the founders or benefactors of any church, religious or secular.^[75] Such a peculiarity is most remarkable. How far it may have arisen from enlightenment beyond his age, how far it was the result of mere illiberality or want of religious feeling, it is utterly impossible to say. But it is clear that Godwine is, in this respect, distinguished in a marked way from his son, whose liberality, guided as it was by a wise discretion, was conspicuous among his other great qualities. Again, it is hardly impossible to acquit Godwine of being, like most fathers who have the |Godwine’s over care for his own household.| opportunity, too anxious for the advancement of his own family. He promoted his sons, both worthy and unworthy, to the greatest offices in the Kingdom, at an age when they could have had but little personal claim to such high distinctions. In so doing, he seems to have overstepped the bounds of policy as well as those of fairness and good feeling. Such an accumulation of power in one family could not but raise envy, and higher feelings than envy, in the breasts of rivals, some of whom may have had as good or better claims to promotion. That Godwine sacrificed his daughter to a political object is a charge common to him with princes and statesmen in all ages. Few men in any time or place would have thrown away the opportunity of having a King for a son-in-law, and, as Godwine doubtless hoped, of becoming, at least in the female line, the ancestor of a line of princes.

Godwine’s government of his Earldom.

The faults of the great Earl then are manifest. But his virtues are equally manifest. In the eyes of contemporary Englishmen such faults as I have mentioned must have seemed little more than a few specks on a burnished mirror. His good government of his Earldom 34is witnessed, not only by the rhetoric of his panegyrist, which however may at least be set against the rhetoric of his accusers, but by the plain facts of the welcome which greeted him on his return from banishment, and the zeal |His strict administration of justice.| in his behalf displayed by all classes.^[76] As a ruler, Godwine is especially praised for what in those days was looked on as the first virtue of a ruler, merciless severity towards all disturbers of the public peace. In our settled times we hardly understand how rigour, often barbarous rigour, against thieves and murderers, should have been looked on as the first merit of a governor, one which was always enough to cover a multitude of sins. Public feeling went along with the prince or magistrate who thus preserved the peace of his dominions, however great might be his own offences in other ways, and however cruel in our eyes might be the means by which he compassed this first end of government. To have discharged this great duty stands foremost in the panegyrics of Godwine and of Harold.^[77] It was accepted at the hands of the Norman Conqueror as almost an equivalent for the horrors of the Conquest.^[78] It won for his son Henry a splendid burst of admiration at the hands of a native writer who certainly was not blind to the oppression of which that prince himself was guilty.^[79] A certain amount of tyranny was willingly endured at the hands of a man who so effectually rid the world of smaller tyrants. And, in opposition to the praise thus bestowed on Godwine, Harold, William, and Henry, we find the neglect of this paramount duty standing foremost in the dark indictments against the ruffian Rufus^[80] and the heedless Robert.^[81] Godwine is set forth to us, in set phrases, 35it may be, but in phrases which do not the less express the conviction of the country, as a ruler mild and affable to the good, but stern and merciless to the evil |Godwine never reached the same power as Harold afterwards.| and unruly.^[82] But with all his vigour, all his eloquence, it is clear that Godwine never reached to the same complete dominion over King and Kingdom which, in later years, fell to the lot of his nobler son. He always remained an object of jealousy, not only to the French favourites of Eadward, but to the Earls of the other parts of England. We shall find that his eloquent tongue could not always command a majority in the Meeting of the Wise.^[83] |Importance of eloquence.| But the importance attributed to his oratory, the fluctuations of success and defeat which he underwent in the great deliberative Assembly, show clearly how advanced our constitution already was in an age when free debate was so well understood, and when free speech was so powerful.^[84] In this respect the Norman Conquest undoubtedly threw things back. We shall have to pass over several centuries before we come to another chief whose influence clearly rested to so great a degree on his power of swaying great assemblies of men, on the personal affection or personal awe with which he had learned to inspire the Legislature of his country.

Godwine’s family.

The marriage of Godwine with his Danish wife Gytha had given him a numerous and flourishing offspring. Six sons and three daughters surrounded the table of the Earl of the West-Saxons. In the names which several of them bore we may discern the influence of their Danish mother.^[85] 36The sons of Godwin were Swegen,^[86] Harold, Tostig, Gyrth, Leofwine, and Wulfnoth. His daughters were Eadgyth, Gunhild, and perhaps a third, Ælfgifu.^[87] As twenty-three years had now passed since Godwine’s marriage, we may assume that all of them were already born, though some of the younger ones may still have been children. The elder sons had reached manhood, and we shall find two at least of them filling the rank of Earl during the period |Swegen Earl, 1043.| with which we are now dealing. Swegen, the eldest son, seems to have been invested with an Earldom from the very beginning of Eadward’s reign, as he signs a charter with that rank in the King’s second year.^[88] Gytha’s |Beorn Earl, 1045?| nephew, Beorn, also remained in England, while his brother Osbeorn was banished, and while his other brother Swend was putting forth his claims to the Crown of Denmark. He had doubtless attached himself firmly to the interests of his uncle. He was also, probably at a somewhat later time, raised to an Earldom, apparently the Earldom of the Middle-Angles, lately held by Thored.^[89] The Earldom held by Swegen was geographically most anomalous. It took in the Mercian shires of Hereford, Gloucester, and Oxford, and the West-Saxon shires of Berkshire and Somerset.^[90]

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

37But, along with the comparatively obscure names of Swegen and Beorn, a greater actor now steps upon the field. We have now reached the first appearance of the illustrious man round whom the main interest of this history will henceforth centre. The second son of Godwine lived to be the last of our native Kings, the hero and the martyr of our native freedom. We have indeed as yet to deal with him only in a subordinate capacity, and in some sort in a less honourable character. The few recorded actions of Harold, Earl of the East-Angles, could hardly have enabled men to look forward to the glorious career of Harold, Earl of the West-Saxons, and of Harold, King of the English. To his first great government, a trying elevation indeed for one in the full vigour of youth and passion, he was apparently raised about three years after the election of Eadward, when he himself could not have passed his twenty-fourth year. While still young, he experienced somewhat of the fluctuations of human affairs, and he seems to have learned wisdom by experience. Still there must have been in him from the beginning the germs of those great qualities which shone forth so conspicuously in his later career. |His character.| It is not hard to paint his portraiture, alike from his recorded actions, and from the elaborate descriptions of |Contemporary testimonies.| him which we possess from contemporary hands. The praises of the great Earl sound forth in the latest specimen of the native minstrelsy of Teutonic England. And they sound forth with a truer ring than the half conventional praises of the saintly monarch, whose greatest glory, after all, was that he had called Harold to the |Evidence of the Biographer.| government of his realm.^[91] The biographer of Eadward, the panegyrist of Godwine, is indeed the common laureate of Godwine’s whole family; but it is not in the special interest of Harold that he writes. He sets forth the 38merits of Harold with no sparing hand; he approves of him as a ruler and he admires him as a man; but his own personal affection plainly clings more closely to the rival brother Tostig. His description of Harold is therefore the more trustworthy, and it fully agrees with the evidence of his recorded actions. Harold then, the second son of Godwine, is set before us as a man uniting every gift of mind and body which could attract to him the admiration and affection of the age in which he lived.^[92] Tall in stature, beautiful in countenance, of a bodily strength whose memory still lives in the rude pictorial art of his time,^[93] he was foremost alike in the active courage and in the passive endurance of the warrior. |His military genius.| In hunger and watchfulness, in the wearing labours of a campaign no less than in the passing excitement of the day of battle, he stood forth as the leader and the model of the English people.^[94] Alike ready and vigorous in action, he knew when to strike and how to strike; he knew how to measure himself against enemies of every kind, and to adapt his tactics to every position in which the accidents of warfare might place him. He knew how to chase the light-armed Briton from fastness to fastness, how to charge, axe in hand, on the bristling lines of his Norwegian namesake, and how to bear up, hour after hour, against the repeated onslaughts of the Norman horsemen and the more terrible thundershower of the Norman arrows. It is plain that in him, no less than in his more successful, and therefore more 39famous, rival, we have to admire, not only the mere animal courage of the soldier, but that true skill of the leader of armies which would have placed both Harold and William high among the captains of any age.

Harold’s civil virtues.

But the son of Godwine, the heir of his greatness, was not merely a soldier, not merely a general. If he inherited from his father those military qualities which first drew on Godwine the notice alike of the English Ætheling^[95] and of the Danish King, he inherited also that eloquence of speech, that wisdom in council, that knowledge of the laws of the land,^[96] which made him the true leader and father of the English people. Great as Harold was in war, his character as a civil ruler is still more remarkable, still more worthy of admiration. One or two actions of his earlier life show indeed that the spirit of those days |His singular forbearance.| of violence had laid its hand even on him. But, from the time when he appears in his full maturity as the acknowledged chief of the English nation, the most prominent feature in his character is his singular gentleness and mercy. Never, either in warfare or in civil strife, do we find Harold bearing hardly upon an enemy. From the time of his advancement to the practical government of the Kingdom, there is not a single harsh or cruel action with which he can be charged. His policy was ever a policy of conciliation. His panegyrist indeed confines his readiness to forgive, his unwillingness to avenge, to his dealings with his own countrymen only.^[97] But the same 40magnanimous spirit is shown in cases where his conduct was less capable of being guided by mere policy than in his dealings with Mercian rivals and with Northumbrian revolters. We see the same generous temper in his treatment of the conquered Princes of Wales and of the defeated invaders of Stamfordbridge. As a ruler, he is described as walking in the steps of his father, as the terror of evildoers |His championship of England against strangers.| and the rewarder of those who did well. Devoted, heart and soul, to the service of his country, he was no less loyal in personal attention and service to her wayward and half-foreign King.^[98] Throughout his career he was the champion of the independence of England against the dominion of strangers. To keep the court of England free from the shoals of foreigners who came to fatten on English estates and honours, and to meet the same enemies in open arms upon the heights of Senlac, were only two different ways of discharging the great duty to which his whole energies were devoted. And yet no man was ever more free from narrow insular prejudices, from any unworthy |His foreign travels.| jealousy of foreigners as such. His own mind was enlarged and enriched by foreign travel, by the study of the politics and institutions of other nations on their own soil. He not only made the pilgrimage to Rome, a practice which the example of Cnut seems to have made fashionable among English nobles and prelates, but he went on a journey through various parts of Gaul, carefully examining into the condition of the country and the policy of its rulers, among whom we may be sure that the renowned Duke of Rouen was not forgotten.^[99] And Harold 41was ever ready to welcome and to reward real merit in men of foreign birth. He did not scruple to confer high offices on strangers, and to call men of worth from foreign lands to help him in his most cherished undertakings. |Harold’s patronage of Germans as opposed to Frenchmen.| But, while the bounty of Eadward was squandered on Normans and Frenchmen, men utterly alien in language and feeling, it was the policy of Harold to strengthen the connexion of England with the continental nations nearest to us in blood and speech.^[100] All the foreigners promoted by Harold, or in the days of his influence, were natives of those kindred Teutonic lands whose sons might still almost be looked upon as fellow-countrymen.

His personal character.

Such was Harold as a leader of Englishmen in war and in peace. As for his personal character, we can discern that in the received piety of the age he surpassed his |His alleged spoliation of monasteries.| father. The charge of invasion of the rights of ecclesiastical bodies is brought against him no less than against Godwine; but the instance which has brought most discredit upon his name can be easily shown to be a mere tissue of misconceptions and exaggerations.^[101] But it is far |His friendship with Saint Wulfstan.| more certain that Harold was the intimate friend of the best and holiest man of his time. Wulfstan, the sainted Bishop of Worcester, was the object of his deepest affection and reverence; he would at any time go far out of his way for the benefit of his exhortations and prayers; and the Saint repaid his devotion by loyal and vigorous |His foundation of the College at Waltham. [1060–2.]| service in the day of need.^[102] Of his liberality his great foundation at Waltham is an everlasting monument, and it is a monument not more of his liberality than of his wisdom. To the monastic orders Harold seems not to 42have been specially liberal;^[103] his bounty took another and a better chosen direction. The foundation of a great secular College, in days when all the world seemed mad after monks, when King Eadward and Earl Leofric vied with each other in lavish gifts to religious houses at home and abroad, was in itself an act displaying no small vigour and independence of mind. The details too of the foundation were such as showed that the creation of Waltham was not the act of a moment of superstitious dread or of reckless bounty, but the deliberate deed of a man who felt the responsibilities of lofty rank and boundless wealth, and who earnestly sought the welfare of his Church and nation |His personal demeanour frank and open.| in all things. As to his personal demeanour, he was frank and open in his general bearing, to a degree which was sometimes thought to be prejudicial to his interests.^[104] Yet he could on occasion dissemble and conceal his purpose, a gift which seems sometimes to have been misconstrued,^[105] and which apparently led him to the one great error of his life. He appears not to have been wholly free from 43|Charges of rashness.| the common fault of noble and generous dispositions. The charge of occasional rashness was brought against him by others, and it is denied by his panegyrist in terms which seem to imply that the charge was not wholly groundless.^[106] And we must add that, in his private life, he did not, at least in his early days, imitate either the monastic asceticism of the King or the stern domestic purity of his rival |His connexion with Eadgyth Swanneshals.| the Conqueror. The most pathetic incident connected with his name, tells us of a love of his early days, the days apparently of his East-Anglian government, unrecognized by the laws of the Church, but perhaps not wholly condemned by the standard of his own age, which shows, perhaps above every other tale in English history or legend, how much the love of woman can do and suffer.^[107]

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

Such was the man who, seemingly in the fourth year of Eadward, in the twenty-third or twenty-fourth of his own age, was invested with the rule of one of the great divisions of England; who, seven years later, became the virtual ruler of the Kingdom; who, at last, twenty-one years from his first elevation, received, alone among English Kings, the Crown of England as the free gift of her people, and, alone among English Kings, died, axe in hand, on her own soil, in the defence of England against foreign invaders. One prince alone in the later history of Europe rivals the peculiar glory which attaches to the name of Harold. For him we must seek in a distant 44age and in a distant land, but in a land connected with our own by a strangely abiding tie. English warriors, soldiers of Harold, chafing under the yoke of the Norman Conqueror, sought service at the court of the Eastern Cæsar, and there retained for ages their national tongue, their national weapon,^[108] and the proud inheritance of their |Comparison of Harold with Constantine Palaiologos.| stainless loyalty. The memory of England and of Harold becomes thus strangely interwoven with the memory of the one prince of later times who died in a still nobler cause than that of the freedom of England. The King who died upon the hill of Senlac finds his only worthy peer in the Emperor who died before the Gate of Saint Rômanos. The champion of England against the Southern invader must own a nobler martyr still in the champion of the faith and liberty of Christendom against the misbelieving horde who have ever since defiled the fairest and most historic regions of the world. The blood of Harold and his faithful followers has indeed proved the most fertile seed of English freedom, and the warning signs of the times seem to tell us that the day is fast coming when the blood of Constantine shall no longer send up its cry for vengeance unheeded from the earth.

Character of Swegen.

The second son of Godwine was no doubt raised to greatness in the first instance mainly because he was a son of Godwine; but his great qualities gradually showed that the rank to which he was raised by his father’s favour was one which he was fully entitled to retain by his own merits. The earlier elevation of the great Earl’s eldest born was less fortunate. Swegen lived to show that he had a soul of real nobleness within him; but his crimes were great, he was cut off just as he was beginning to amend his ways, and he has left a dark and sad memory behind him. A youth, evidently of no 45common powers, but wayward, violent, and incapable of self-control, he was hurried first into a flagrant violation of the sentiment of the age, and next into a still fouler breach of the eternal laws of right. His end may well arouse our pity, but his life, as a whole, is a dark blot on the otherwise chequered escutcheon of the house of Godwine. It was clearly felt to be so; the panegyrist of the family never once brings himself to utter the |Of the Lady Eadgyth. 1045.| name of Swegen. Only one other child of Godwine calls for personal notice at this stage of our history. Eadgyth, his eldest daughter, became, nearly two years after Eadward’s coronation,^[109] the willing or unwilling bride of the saintly monarch. She is described as being no less highly gifted among women than her brothers were among men; as lovely in person and adorned with every female accomplishment, as endowed with a learning and refinement unusual in her age, as in point of piety and liberality a fitting help-meet for Eadward himself.^[110] But there are some strange inconsistencies in the facts which are recorded of her. Her zeal and piety did not hinder her from receiving rewards, perhaps, in plain words, from taking bribes. Undoubtedly this is a subject on which the feelings of past times differed widely from those 46of our own; but we are a little staggered when we find the saintly King and his pious Lady receiving money from religious houses to support claims which, if just, should have been supported for nothing, and, if unjust, should not have been supported at all.^[111] But Eadgyth has been charged with far heavier offences than this. She |Suspicions of her loyalty to England.| seems to have become in some degree infected with her husband’s love of foreigners, perhaps even in some sort to have withdrawn her sympathies from the national cause. She has won the doubtful honour of having her name extolled by Norman flatterers as one whose heart was |Her alleged share in the murder of Gospatric.| rather Norman than English.^[112] And all her reputation for gentleness and piety has not kept her from being branded in the pages of one of our best chroniclers as an accomplice in a base and treacherous murder.^[113] Her character thus |Her relation to her husband.| becomes in some sort an ænigma, and her relation to her husband is not the least ænigmatical part of her position. One of Eadward’s claims to be looked on as a saint was the general belief, at least of the next generation, that the husband of the beautiful Eadgyth lived with her only |Eadward’s alleged chastity.| as a brother with a sister.^[114] If this story be true, a more enlightened standard of morality can see no virtue, but rather a crime, in his conduct. We can see nothing to 47admire in a King who, in such a crisis of his country, himself well nigh the last of his race, and without any available member of the royal family to succeed him, shrank, from whatever motive, from the obvious duty of raising up |Evidence of the earliest writers.| direct heirs to his Crown. But it seems probable that this report is merely part of the legend of the saint and not part of the history of the King. His contemporary panegyrists undoubtedly praise Eadward’s chastity. But it is not necessary to construe their words as meaning more than might be asserted of Ælfred, of William, of Saint Lewis, or of Edward the First. The conjugal faith of all those great monarchs remained, as far as we know, unbroken; but not one of them thought it any part of his duty to observe continence towards his own wife. Still, from whatever cause, the marriage of Eadward and Eadgyth was undoubtedly childless; and the relations of the royal pair to each other in other respects are hardly more intelligible. Eadgyth is described as the partaker of all her husband’s good works, and as nursing him with the most affectionate care during his last illness.^[115] Yet, at the moment of his reign when he could most freely exercise a will of his own, if he did not absolutely of his own accord banish her from his court, he consented, seemingly without any reluctance, to her removal from him by the enemies of her family and her country.^[116] The anxiety of Eadward’s Norman favourites to separate Eadgyth from her husband is, after all, the most honourable record of her to be found among the singularly contradictory descriptions of her character and actions.

Greatness of Godwine and his house.

We thus find, within a few years after the accession of Eadward, the whole of the ancient Kingdoms of Wessex, Sussex, Kent, Essex, East-Anglia, and part of Mercia, under the government of Godwine, his two elder sons, and his 48nephew. His daughter meanwhile shared the throne of England with a King whom he had himself placed upon it. Such greatness could hardly be lasting. It rested wholly on Godwine’s own personal character and influence, for the fame of Harold was yet to be won. The |The other Earldoms;| part of Mercia which was not otherwise occupied remained, |Mercia under Leofric;| as before, in the hands of Leofric the son of Leofwine. This Earl and his famous wife Godgifu, the Lady Godiva of legend,^[117] were chiefly celebrated for their boundless liberality to ecclesiastical foundations.^[118] Worcester, Leominster, Evesham, Chester, Wenlock, Stow in Lindesey, and, above all, Coventry, were special objects of their bounty. They seem not to have been satisfied with mere grants of lands and privileges, but to have taken a special interest in the buildings and ornaments of the houses which they favoured. The minster of Coventry, rebuilt and raised to cathedral rank after their time, has utterly vanished from the earth, and recent changes have abolished even the titular position of the city as a see of a Bishop. But at Stow, the ancient Sidnacester, a place even then of infinitely less consideration than Coventry, portions of the church enriched by Leofric still remain.^[119] Leofric, 49his son Ælfgar, his grandsons and his granddaughter, play an important part in the history of this period down to the complete establishment of the Norman power in |Relations between Leofric and Godwine.| England. It is clear that Leofric must have been more personally annoyed by the rise of Godwine and his house than any other of the great men of England. A race whom he could not fail to look down upon as upstarts hemmed him in on every side except towards the North. Later in the reign of Eadward, we shall find the rivalries and the reconciliations of the two houses of Godwine and Leofric forming a considerable portion of the history. But, while Leofric himself lived, he continued to play the part which we have already seen him playing,^[120] that part of a mediator between two extreme parties, which was dictated to him by the geographical position of his Earldom.

Northumberland under Siward.

North of the Humber, the great Dane, Siward the Strong, still ruled over the Earldom which he had won by the murder of his wife’s uncle.^[121] The manners of the Northumbrians were so savage, murders and hereditary deadly feuds were so rife among them, that it is quite possible that the slaughter of Eadwulf may, by a party at least, have been looked on as a praiseworthy act of vigour. Perhaps however, as we go on, we may discern signs that Siward and his house were not specially popular in Northumberland, and that men looked back with regret to the more regular line of their native Earls. At any rate, Siward remained for the rest of his days in undisturbed possession of both the Northumbrian governments, and along with these he seems to have held the Earldoms of Northampton 50and Huntingdon within the proper limits of Mercia.^[122] He ruled, we are told, with great firmness and severity, labouring hard to bring his troublesome province into something like order.^[123] Nor was he lacking in that bounty to the Church, which might seem specially needful as an atonement for the crime by which he rose to power.^[124]

England not tending to separation but to union.

The mention of these great Earls suggests several considerations as to the constitutional and administrative systems of the time. It is quite a mistake to think, as often has been thought, that the position of these powerful viceroys at all proves that England was at this time tending to separation. It was in truth tending to closer union, and the position of the great Earls is really one of the |Comparison with Frankish history.| signs of that tendency. A mistaken parallel has sometimes been drawn between the condition of England under Eadward and the condition of France under the later Karlings. The transfer of the English sceptre to the house of Godwine is of course likened to the transfer of the French sceptre to the house of Hugh of Paris. But, if we are to look for a parallel in the history of Gaul, we shall find one, by no means exact but certainly the closer of the two, in the state of things under the later Merwings, and in the transfer of the Frankish sceptre to the Carolingian dynasty. The position of Godwine and Harold is, of the two, more akin to the position of Charles Martel and Pippin than it is to that of Hugh the Great and Hugh Capet. |Nature of the Earldom as affected by the Danish Conquest.| The Earls of Eadward’s reign were, as I have already explained,^[125] not territorial princes, gradually withdrawing themselves from the authority of their nominal overlord, but great magistrates, wielding indeed a power well nigh royal within their several governments, but wielding it only by delegation from the common sovereign. The Danish 51Conquest, and the fearful slaughter of the ancient nobility in the wars of Swend and Cnut, had done much to break up the force of ancient local associations and the influence of the ancient local families. Many of these families, the East-Anglian Earls for instance, doubtless became extinct. From the accession of Cnut we find a new state of things. The rule of the old half-kingly families, holding an almost hereditary sway over whole kingdoms, and apparently with subordinate Ealdormen in each shire, gradually dies out. Cnut divided the Kingdom as he pleased, appointing Danes or Englishmen, and Englishmen of old or of new families, as he thought good. England was now divided among a few Earls, who were distinctly representatives of the King. In Northumberland and Mercia the claims of ancient princely families were to some extent regarded; in Wessex and East-Anglia not at all. The rank of Earl is now held by a very few persons, connected either with the royal family or with the men whose personal influence was great at the time.^[126] The Earls of Eadward’s reign are always either his own kinsmen or else |Position of Northumberland.| kinsmen of Godwine or Leofric. Siward alone keeps his Earldom for life; but, while he lives, his influence hardly extends beyond his own province, and, after his death, Northumberland falls under the same law as the rest of the Kingdom. No doubt Northumberland still retained more of the character of a distinct state than any other part of England; still the forces of Northumberland march at the command of the King,^[127] and the Northumbrian Earldom is at the disposal of the King and his Witan.^[128] We do not however find the same signs of the constant immediate exercise of the royal power in Northumberland which we find in Wessex, Mercia, and East-Anglia. We have throughout this reign a series of writs 52|Evidence of the King’s writs.| addressed to the Bishops and Earls of those districts, which show that an Earl of one of those great Earldoms commonly acted as the local Earl of each shire in his province, with no subordinate Earl or Ealdorman under him. While such writs are exceedingly common in Wessex and East-Anglia, one such writ only exists addressed to a Northumbrian Earl, and that is in the days of Tostig.^[129] In Siward’s days possibly the King’s writ hardly ran in Northumberland. Those addressed to the Earls of the house of Leofric are also rare. It is clear that the King’s power was more fully established under the Earls of Godwine’s family than elsewhere. No doubt the royal authority was formally the same in every part of the Kingdom, but the memories and traces of ancient independence in Northumberland and Northern Mercia made its practical exercise more difficult in those districts.

Further evidence of the writs as to a change in the condition of the Folkland.

The class of writs of which I have just spoken throw some light on constitutional questions in another way. They come in under Cnut,^[130] and they become very common under Eadward, being found alongside of documents of the more ancient form. They are announcements which the King makes to the Bishop, Earl, Sheriff, Thegns, and others of some one shire, or sometimes to the Bishops, Earls, and Thegns of the whole Kingdom, which do not, like documents of the ancient form, bear the signatures of any Witan. They are the manifest prototypes of the royal writs of later times. They are, like the other documents, mostly grants of one kind or another; only they seem to proceed from the King’s personal authority, without any confirmation from a national Gemót. Now it is hardly possible that the mass of grants of this sort which are preserved can all of them have been grants out of the King’s private estate. And, if 53they are grants of folkland to be turned into bookland on whatever tenure, allodial or feudal, a very important question arises. If the King could make such grants by his own authority, a change must have taken place in the ideas entertained as to folkland. In short, the change which was completed after the Conquest^[131] must have already been in progress. The Folkland must have been beginning to be looked on as Terra Regis. In short, strictly feudal ideas were gradually coming in on this as on other matters. And doubtless, in this respect, as in others, the Danish Conquest did much to prepare the way for the |General powers of the Witan not lessened.| Norman. But, if the Witenagemót insensibly lost its authority in a matter in which we may well believe that its voice had long been nearly formal, it retained its general powers undiminished. It still, as of old, elected Kings, outlawed Earls, discussed and determined the foreign relations of the Kingdom. The fame of Eadward as a lawgiver is mythical; but the fame of government carried on in strict conformity to the laws and constitution of the country, is one which fairly belongs to him, or rather to the illustrious men by whom his power was practically wielded.

Scotland under Macbeth.

I have now to end this sketch by a brief view of the condition of the subordinate Kingdoms and of the relations of England to foreign countries. Scotland was now ruled by the famous Macbeth. He had, as Maarmor or under-King of Moray, done homage to Cnut^[132] along with his |Reign and death of Duncan. 1040.| superior Malcolm. Duncan, the youthful grandson of Malcolm, unsuccessful, as we have seen, in his invasion of England,^[133] was equally so in his warfare with the Northmen of Orkney.^[134] Soon after this last failure, he was murdered by his own subjects, Macbeth being at least the 54prime mover in the deed.^[135] The murdered prince had married a kinswoman of the Earl of the Northumbrians,^[136] by whom he left two infant sons, Malcolm, afterwards famous as Malcolm Canmore, and Donald Bane. But the |Reign of Macbeth. 1040–1058.| Crown was assumed by Macbeth, on some claim, it would seem, of hereditary right, either in himself or in his wife Gruach.^[137] Macbeth, and still more Gruach, have been so immortalized in legend that it is not easy to recall them to their true historical personality. But, from what little can be recovered about them, they certainly seem not to have been so black as they are painted. The crime of Macbeth against Duncan is undoubted; but it was, to say the least, no baser than the crime of Siward against Eadwulf; and Macbeth, like Siward, ruled well and vigorously the dominion which he had won by crime. All genuine Scottish tradition points to the reign of Macbeth as a period of unusual peace and prosperity in that disturbed |Macbeth distributes money at Rome. 1050.| land.^[138] Macbeth and Gruach were also bountiful to churches in their own land, and Macbeth’s munificence to certain unknown persons at Rome was thought worthy of record by chroniclers beyond the bounds of Scotland.^[139] One hardly knows whether this was merely by way of alms, like the gifts of Cnut, and it seems uncertain whether Macbeth, like Cnut and Harold, personally made the 55Roman pilgrimage.^[140] The words however in which the gifts of Macbeth are spoken of might almost imply that his bounty had a political object. It is possible that, even at this early time, the Scottish King may have thought it desirable to get the Roman Court on his side, and he may have found, like later princes and prelates, that a liberal distribution of money was the best way of winning the favour of the Apostolic See. The high character of the reigning Pontiff, Leo the Ninth, puts him personally above all suspicion of unlawful gain; but then, as afterwards, subordinates were probably less scrupulous. The few notices which we find of Scottish affairs during the early years of Eadward might suggest that Macbeth felt his position precarious with regard to his English overlord. He had done homage to Cnut, but there is no record of his having renewed it to Eadward. There is however no sign of open enmity for many years.

Gruffydd of North Wales. 1039–1063.

In Wales a remarkable power was growing up, which will often call for notice throughout the whole of the reign of Eadward. The year before the death of Harold, Gruffydd the son of Llywelyn became King of Gwynedd or North Wales, a description which now begins to be used in its modern sense. He ruled with great vigour and ability. He gradually extended his dominion over the whole of Wales, not scrupling to avail himself of Saxon help against enemies of his own race. On the other hand, he more than once, sometimes alone, sometimes in concert with English traitors, proved himself a really formidable enemy to England. He was the last prince under whom any portion of the Welsh nation played a really important part in the history of Britain. He was, for Wales in the narrower sense, pretty well what Cadwalla had been, ages before, for Strathclyde.^[141] In the |633.| 56very first year of his reign, he made an inroad into Mercia, |His victory at Rhyd-y-Groes. 1039.| which has been already spoken of.^[142] He penetrated as far as Rhyd-y-Groes, near Upton-on-Severn, a spot still retaining its British name,^[143] and there he fought the battle in which Eadwine, the brother of Earl Leofric, was killed. |His wars in South Wales.| At the time of Eadward’s accession he was busily engaged in various conflicts with the princes of South Wales, who did not scruple to call in the help of the heathen Danes of Ireland against him.^[144] In the year of |1042.| Eadward’s election, he had just won a great victory over a combined host of this kind at Aberteifi or Cardigan.^[145]

Eadward’s friendly relations with foreign powers.

The relations of King Eadward to foreign powers were, for the most part, friendly. With Normandy and other French states they were, as we have seen and shall see, only too friendly. But this was a time of growing intercourse, not with France only, but with Continental nations generally. Pilgrimages to Rome, and other foreign journeys and embassies, were becoming far more usual than before among eminent Englishmen, both clergy and laity. Earl Harold’s travels, undertaken in order to study the condition and resources of foreign countries on |Connexion with Germany.| the spot, form a memorable example.^[146] The connexion between England and Germany was now very close; the great Emperor Henry the Third sedulously sought the friendship of his English brother-in-law; and there is, as we have seen, little doubt that the German connexion was cultivated by the patriotic party as a counterpoise to the French tendencies of the King.^[147] The promotion of German churchmen began early in Eadward’s reign, when it could hardly have taken place except with the sanction of Godwine. The only danger that seemed to threaten 57|Relations with the North; claims of Magnus.| lay in the North. Magnus of Norway conceived himself to have acquired, by virtue of his agreement with Harthacnut, a claim on the Crown of England;^[148] but his wars with Swend hindered him from putting it forward for some years to come.

The reign of Eadward comparatively peaceful.

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

58

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

Character of the years 1043–1051.

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

Relations between Eadward and his mother.

The first act of the new King was one which was perhaps neither unjust nor impolitic, but which, at first sight, seems strangely incongruous with his character for sanctity and gentleness. With all his fondness for 59Normans, there was one person of Norman birth for whom he felt little love, and to whom indeed he seems to have owed but little gratitude. This was no other than his own mother. It is not very easy to understand the exact relations between Emma and her son. We are told that she had been very hard upon him, and that she had done less for him than he would—contributed too little, it would seem, from her accumulated hoards—both before he became King and since.^[150] Now it is not clear what opportunities Emma had had of being hard upon her son since the days of his childhood. During the greater part of their joint lives, Eadward had been an exile in Normandy, while Emma had shared the throne of England as the wife of Cnut. Her fault must rather have been neglect to do anything for his interests, refusal, it may be, to give anything of her wealth for the relief of his comparative poverty, rather than any actual hardships which she could have inflicted on him. She had, as we have seen, altogether thrown in her lot with her second husband, and had seemingly wished her first marriage to be wholly forgotten.^[151] But there seems not to be the slightest ground for the scandal which represented her as having acted in any way a hostile part to her sons after the death of Cnut.^[152] All the more probable versions of the death of Ælfred represent her as distinctly favourable to his enterprise.^[153] 60She had herself suffered spoliation and exile in the days of Harold;^[154] she had returned with Harthacnut, and, in his days, she seems almost to have been looked on as a sharer in the royal authority.^[155] That authority she had at least not used to keep back her favourite son from the recall of his banished half-brother. It is not wonderful if, under these circumstances, there was little love between mother and son. Still there does not, up to the death of Harthacnut, seem to have been any unpardonable offence |Probable offence of Emma.| committed on the part of Emma. But the charge that she had done less for Eadward than he would, since he came to the Crown, seems to have a more definite meaning. It doubtless means that she had refused to contribute of her treasures to the lawful needs of the State. It may also mean that she had been, to say the least, not specially zealous in supporting Eadward’s claims to the Crown. She is described as dwelling at Winchester in the possession, not only of great landed possessions, the morning-gifts of her two marriages, but of immense hoarded wealth of every kind.^[156] Harthacnut had doubtless restored, and probably increased, all that had been taken from her by Harold. Of her mode of employing her wealth we find different accounts; putting the two statements together, we may perhaps infer that she was bountiful to churches and monasteries, but niggardly to the poor.^[157] 61But neither this bounty nor this niggardliness was a legal crime, and it is clear that some more definite offence must have lurked behind. Her treasures, or part of them, may have been gained by illegal grants from Harthacnut; it is almost certain, from the language of our authorities, that they had been illegally refused to the public service. But what happened seems to imply some still deeper offence. |Witenagemót of Gloucester. November, 1043.| The conduct of Emma became the subject of debate in a meeting of the Witan; her punishment was the result of a decree of that body, and all that was done to her was done with the active approval of the three great Earls, Godwine, Leofric, and Siward.^[158] In the month of November after Eadward’s coronation, a Gemót—perhaps a forestalling of the usual Midwinter Gemót—was held at Gloucester. That town seems now to take the place which was held by Oxford a little earlier^[159] as the scene of courts and councils.^[160] It became during this reign, what it remained during the reign of the Conqueror, the place where the King wore his Crown at the Christmas festival, as he wore it at Winchester at Easter. It was convenient for such purposes as lying near at once to the borders of two of the great Earldoms. It lay also near to the borders of the dangerous Welsh, whose motions, under princes like the two Gruffydds, it was doubtless often expedient to watch with the whole wisdom and the whole force of the realm. The result of the deliberations of the Wise Men was that the King in person, accompanied by the 62|Eadward and the Earls despoil Emma of her treasures. November 16, 1043.| three great Earls,^[161] rode from Gloucester to Winchester, came unawares^[162] upon the Lady, occupied her lands,^[163] and seized all that she had in gold, silver, jewels, and precious stones. They left her, however, we are told, enough for her maintenance, and bade her live quietly at Winchester.^[164] She now sinks into utter insignificance for the remainder of her days.^[165]