Chapter IX · THE REIGN OF EADWARD FROM THE RETURN OF GODWINE TO THE DEATH OF EADWARD THE ÆTHELING.[921] 1052–1057. (continued 2)

Legends of Siward.

Siward was a hero whose history has had a mythical element about it from the beginning;^[1089] it would have been wonderful indeed if this, the last and greatest exploit of so renowned a warrior, had not supplied the materials for song and legend. The tale is told how Siward, hearing of the death of his son, asked whether his wounds were in front or behind. Being told that all were in front, the old warrior rejoiced; he wished no other end for either his son or himself. The story is eminently characteristic; but, as it is told us, it is difficult to find a place for it in the authentic narrative of the campaign. But fiction has taken liberties with the facts of Siward’s Scottish campaign in far more important points. As we have seen, the English victory was complete, but Macbeth himself |Malcolm King of Scots. 1054.| escaped. Malcolm was, as King Eadward had commanded, proclaimed King of Scots, and a King of Scots who was put into possession of his Crown by an invading English force most undoubtedly held that Crown as the sworn |The war continued by Macbeth.| man of the English Basileus. It took however four years before Malcolm obtained full possession of his Kingdom. Macbeth and his followers maintained their cause in the North, being, it would seem, still supported by help from

366Thorfinn. Malcolm, on the other hand, was still supported by help from England, and we shall find that he deemed it expedient to enter into a very close relation with Siward’s successor in the Northumbrian Earldom. At last |Macbeth finally defeated and slain. 1058.| Macbeth was finally defeated and slain at Lumfanan in Aberdeenshire. An attempt was made to perpetuate the Moray dynasty in the person of Lulach, a kinsman, or perhaps a stepson, of Macbeth, a son of his wife Gruach |Ephemeral reign of Lulach, and final establishment of Malcolm. 1058.| by a former marriage. But this prince, who bears the surname of the Fool, could not long resist the power of Malcolm; in a few months’ time he was hunted down and slain. The rival dynasty was now crushed; all Scotland came into the hands of Malcolm, who was solemnly crowned at Scone. The power of Thorfinn was broken no less than the power of Macbeth, and Malcolm apparently recovered the full possession of Cumberland, possibly on the death of Thorfinn, when Malcolm married his widow Ingebiorg, a marriage of whose results we shall hear again.

Erroneous belief that Macbeth was killed in Siward’s campaign.

These Scottish affairs had but little interest for our English writers, who were satisfied with recording the brilliant victory of Siward and the rich booty which he won, without going on to dwell on events which were almost purely Scottish. As their narrative ends with the defeat of Macbeth and Malcolm’s first proclamation as King, it naturally passed out of mind that that proclamation did not at once give him full possession of all Scotland. The two defeats of Macbeth were confounded together, and it was believed that the usurper met his death in the battle which he fought against Siward. The error began very early, and it obtained prevalence enough to become enshrined in the poetry which, far more than any historical record, has made the name of Macbeth immortal.

In the course of this year, seemingly at a Gemót held 367at Midsummer, possibly that in which the expedition |State of the succession. 1054.| against Macbeth was decreed,^[1090] a most important step was taken with regard to the succession to the Crown. It was a step which proved altogether fruitless, but it is most important as showing what men’s feelings and wishes were at the time. It proves incontestably that now, two years after the return of Godwine, the idea of the succession of William had quite passed away, and that the idea of the succession of Harold had not yet occurred to men’s minds. The state of the royal house was such as to cause the deepest anxiety. The English people, though they cared little for any strict law of succession, still reverenced the blood of their ancient princes, and had ever been wont, save under the irresistible pressure of foreign conquest, to choose their Kings only from among the descendants of former Kings. But now the line of their former Kings seemed to be altogether dying out. Eadward was without children or hopes of children. There was no man in the land sprung from the male line of Æthelred and Eadgar. It is quite possible that there may have been men descended from earlier Kings; but, if so, they could only have been distant kinsmen, whose royal descent was well nigh forgotten, and who were no longer allowed to count as Æthelings. There was indeed a grandson of Æthelred dwelling in the Kingdom in the person of Ralph of Hereford. |Position of Ralph.| Ralph would very likely have been the successor to whom Eadward’s personal inclinations would have led him. He shared with William of Normandy the merit of being a stranger speaking the French tongue, and he had the advantage over William of being really a descendant of English royalty. And the tie which bound 368Ralph to Eadward was a very close one. Old Teutonic feelings held the son of a sister to be hardly less near and dear than a son of one’s own loins,^[1091] and we have seen some indications that this feeling was not wholly forgotten in England in the eleventh century. The sister’s son of Brihtnoth and the sister’s son of Siward^[1092] are mentioned in a special way among the chosen companions of their uncles, around whose banners they fought and died. Eadward, in his heart of hearts, would naturally fall back upon Ralph, his own nephew, the son of the daughter of Æthelred and Emma, as a candidate whom the English people might perhaps be persuaded to accept, when the cause of the Norman became hopeless after Godwine’s revolution. |No preference given by female descent.| But however sacred was the relation between a man and his sister’s son, it was not one which by the Law of England conferred any right to the royal succession. The preference attaching to kingly blood was confined to those who were of kingly blood by direct male descent; it does not appear that the son of a King’s daughter had any sort of claim in a royal election beyond any other man in the realm. And, as for Ralph himself, his foreign origin and his personal conduct were, either of them, quite enough to make him thoroughly distasteful to the English people. Men had had quite enough of him as Earl, and they certainly had no wish to have any further experience of him as King. In the present lack of heirs, men’s thoughts turned to a branch of the royal family whose very existence |The sons of Eadmund Ironside.| was perhaps well nigh forgotten. Seven and thirty years before, the infant sons of Eadmund Ironside, Eadmund and |1017.| Eadward, had found a shelter from the fears of Cnut under 369the protection of the sainted Hungarian King Stephen.^[1093] |Eadward the Ætheling; his marriage and children.| Eadmund died, seemingly while still young. Eadward was still living. He had, seemingly through the influence of Stephen’s Queen Gisela, sister of the Emperor Henry the Second, obtained in marriage a lady of royal descent named Agatha, who seems most probably to have been a niece of the Hungarian Queen and of the sainted Emperor.^[1094] This marriage would seem to show that, in those distant lands, Eadward was acknowledged as a prince, perhaps looked to as one who might some day reign in his native island. And the fact that the son of Eadward and Agatha bore the renowned English name of Eadgar, shows that the Ætheling himself cannot have wholly forgotten his native land. Yet, banished, as he was, in his cradle, he could have retained hardly anything of the feelings of an Englishman, and it is hardly possible that he could have spoken the English tongue. Eadward must have been even less of an Englishman than his royal namesake and uncle. Eadward the King had left England when he was many years older than Eadward the Ætheling, and he had lived in a land which had a much closer connexion with England. Still Normandy was dangerous, and Hungary was not. Whatever the Ætheling was, at least he was not a Frenchman; his connexions, though foreign, were in every way honourable and in no way formidable. Hungary was too distant a land to do England either good or harm, but the fame of the youngest Christian Kingdom, and of its renowned and sainted King, was doubtless great throughout Europe. And the connexion with the Imperial House, the distant kindred of the Ætheling’s children with the illustrious Cæsar, the friend and brother-in-law of King Eadward, was, of all foreign ties, that which it most became Englishmen to strengthen. In default therefore 370of any member of the royal house brought up and dwelling in the land, it was determined to recall the banished Ætheling with his wife and family.^[1095] Besides his son Eadgar, he had two daughters, who bore the foreign names of Margaret and Christina. We shall hear of all |Eadgar.| three again. Eadgar lived to be in an especial manner the sport of fortune; a King twice chosen, but never crowned, the last male descendant of Cerdic dragged on a sluggish and contented life as the friend and pensioner |Margaret.| of Norman patrons. One of his sisters won a worthier fame. Margaret obtained the honours alike of royalty and of saintship; she became one of the brightest patterns of every virtue in her own time, and she became the source through which the blood and the rights of the Imperial House of Wessex have passed to the Angevin, the Scottish, and the German sovereigns of England.^[1096]

It is impossible to doubt that the resolution to invite the Ætheling was regularly passed by the authority of the King and his Witan. No lighter authority could have justified such a step, or could have carried any weight with |The Ætheling invited to England: the invitation equivalent to succession to the Crown.| foreign courts. Such an invitation was equivalent to declaring the Ætheling to be successor to the Crown, so far as English Law allowed any man to be successor before the Crown was actually vacant. It is possible that, as in some other cases, an election before the vacancy may have been attempted;^[1097] but it is perhaps more likely that all that was done was to guarantee to Eadward that same strong preference which naturally belonged only to a son of a reigning King. Such a preference, in favour of one who was the last remaining member of the royal family, would in practice hardly differ from an exclusive right. 371The resolution in short placed the Ætheling in the same position as if his father and not his uncle had been on the throne. His position would thus be the same as that of Eadwig and Eadgar during the reign of Eadred.^[1098] But, when we consider what followed, it is important to remember that the preference which undoubtedly belonged to Eadward would not belong to his son. Eadward, though so long an exile, was an Englishman born, the son of a crowned King and his Lady.^[1099] The young Eadgar was a native of a foreign land, and was not the son of |Import of the selection of Eadward.| royal parents. This quasi designation of Eadward to the Crown involves, as I before said, two things. It implies that the King had learned that the succession of William was a thing which he never could bring about.^[1100] It implies also that neither Harold himself nor the English people had as yet formed any serious idea of the possible succession of one not of royal descent. Indeed one can hardly doubt that the resolution to send for the Ætheling, if it was not made at Harold’s own motion, must at any rate have had his full approval. No proposal could be more contrary to the wishes and interests of the Norman courtiers, who must either have unsuccessfully opposed it or else have found it their best wisdom to hold their peace. It was therefore, seemingly at the Whitsun Gemót, 372resolved to send an embassy to obtain the return of the Ætheling. And about the time that Earl Siward was warring in Scotland, the English ambassadors set forth on their errand.

Embassy to the Emperor Henry. July, 1054.

A direct communication with the court of Hungary seems to have been an achievement beyond the diplomatic powers of Englishmen in that age. The immediate commission of the embassy was addressed to the Emperor Henry, with a request that he would himself send a further |Ealdred and Ælfwine ambassadors.| embassy into Hungary. At the head of the English legation was the indefatigable Bishop Ealdred, and with him seems to have been coupled Abbot Ælfwine of Ramsey.^[1101] Both these Prelates had already had some experience of foreign courts. Ealdred had gone on the King’s errand to the Apostolic throne,^[1102] and Ælfwine had been one of the representatives of the English Church at the famous Council of Rheims.^[1103] The Bishop of Worcester clearly reckoned on a long absence, and we get some details of the arrangements which he made for the discharge of his ecclesiastical duties during his absence. The Abbey of Winchcombe, which he had annexed to his Bishoprick the year before, he now resigned,^[1104] and the general government of the see of Worcester he entrusted to a monk of Evesham named Æthelwig.^[1105] The church of that famous monastery, raised by the skill of its Abbot Mannig,^[1106] was now awaiting consecration. For that ceremony he deputed his neighbour Bishop Leofwine 373of Lichfield.^[1107] He then set forth for the court of Augustus. The Emperor was then at Köln, on his return from the consecration of his young son Henry as West-Frankish or Roman King in the Great Charles’s minster at Aachen.^[1108] The immediate tie between Eadward and Henry had been broken by the death of Queen Gunhild; the King who was now to be crowned was the child of Henry’s second wife, the Empress Agnes of Poitiers.^[1109] But the interchange of gifts and honours between the Roman and the insular |Splendid reception given to Ealdred.| Basileus was none the less cordial and magnificent. English writers dwell with evident pleasure on the splendid reception which the English Bishop met with both from the Emperor and from Hermann, the Archbishop of the |His long stay at Köln. 1054–1055.| city where Ealdred had been presented to Henry.^[1110] But the immediate business of his embassy advanced but slowly. The time was ill chosen for an Imperial intervention with the Hungarian court. Andrew, the reigning King of Hungary, was about this time abetting the rebellious Duke Conrad of Bavaria against the Emperor.^[1111] We have no details of the further course of the negotiation. Ealdred abode a whole year at Köln, probably waiting for a favourable opportunity. His embassy was in the end successful; for the Ætheling did in the end return to England. But we have no further details, and 374Eadward did not return to England till long after Ealdred had gone back, and till at least a year after the death of the Emperor.

Death of Osgod Clapa. 1054.

The year of Ealdred’s mission was marked also by the sudden death of a somewhat remarkable person, namely Osgod Clapa, whose movements by sea had been watched with such care five years before.^[1112] The Chronicler remarks, seemingly with some little astonishment, that he died in |Death of Earl Siward. 1055.| his bed.^[1113] Early in the next year death carried off a far more famous man, no other than the great Earl of the Northumbrians.^[1114] The victory of the last year, glorious as it was, had been bought by the bitterest domestic losses, which may not have been without their effect even on the iron spirit and frame of the old Earl. His nephew and his elder son had fallen in the war with Macbeth, and |His son Waltheof.| his only surviving son, afterwards the famous Waltheof, was still a child.^[1115] Siward’s first wife Æthelflæd was dead, and he had in his old age married, and survived, a widow named Godgifu.^[1116] We might have fancied that Waltheof was her son, but we know for certain that he was the son of the daughter of the old Northumbrian Earls, and that he unhappily inherited all the deadly feuds of his mother’s house.^[1117] Siward died at York, the capital of his Earldom. 375|Story of Siward’s death.| A tale, characteristic at least, whether historically true or not, told how the stern Danish warrior, when he felt death approaching, deemed it a disgrace that he should die, not on the field of battle, but of disease, “like a cow.” If he could not actually die amid the clash of arms, he would at least die in warrior’s garb. He called for his armour, and, harnessed as if again to march against Macbeth, the stout |His foundation and burial at Galmanho.| Earl Siward breathed his last.^[1118] But this fierce spirit was not inconsistent with the piety of the time. Saint Olaf, the martyred King of the Northmen, had by this time become a favourite object of reverence, especially among men of Scandinavian descent. In his honour Earl Siward had reared a church in a suburb of his capital called Galmanho,^[1119] a church which, after the Norman Conquest, developed into that great Abbey of Saint Mary, whose ruins form the most truly beautiful ornament of the Northern metropolis. In his own church of Galmanho Siward the Strong, the true relic of old Scandinavian times, was buried with all honour.

The death of Siward led to most important political consequences. The direct authority of the House of Godwine was now, for the first time, extended to the land beyond the Humber. This fact marks very forcibly how fully the 376royal authority was now acknowledged throughout the whole realm. The King and his Witan could now venture to appoint as the successor of Siward an Earl who had absolutely no connexion with any of the great families of Northumberland. Cnut, in the moment of victory, had given the Northumbrians the Dane Eric as their Earl.^[1120] But this was the act of a conqueror, and such was the strength of the Danish element in Northumberland that the appointment of a Dane from Denmark probably seemed less irksome than the appointment of an Englishman from any |Tostig appointed Earl of the Northumbrians. 1055.| other part of the Kingdom. This last was the act, one wholly without a parallel, on which Eadward now ventured. The vacant Earldom of Northumberland, including also the detached shires of Northampton and Huntingdon,^[1121] was |Influences on behalf of Tostig.| conferred on Tostig the son of Godwine. The novelty of the step is perhaps marked by the elaborate description of the influences which were brought to bear on the mind of Eadward to induce him to make the appointment. We hear, not only of Tostig’s own merits, but of the influence employed by his many friends, especially by his sister the Lady Eadgyth and by his brother Earl Harold, whom Norman calumny has represented as depriving Tostig of his hereditary rights.^[1122] We may suspect that we have here an account of influences which it was more necessary to bring to bear on the minds of the Witan than on that of the King.^[1123] For there is no appointment of Eadward’s reign which is more likely to have been the King’s personal act. Tostig, rather than Harold, was Eadward’s personal 377|Eadward’s personal affection for Tostig.| favourite. He was the Hêphaistiôn, the friend of Eadward, while Harold was rather the Krateros, the friend of the King.^[1124] He also stood higher in the good will of their common sister the Lady Eadgyth. Cut off in a great measure from his Norman favourites, the affections of Eadward had settled themselves on the third son of Godwine. He would therefore naturally desire to raise Tostig to the highest dignities in his gift, or, if he felt hesitation in doing so, it could only be from the wish to keep his favourite always about his own person. In fact we shall find that Eadward could not bring himself to give up the society of Tostig to the degree which the interests of his distant Earldom called for. And this frequent absence of the Earl from his government seems to have been among the causes of the misfortunes which afterwards followed.^[1125]

Novelty of a West-Saxon Earl in Northumberland.

This appointment of a West-Saxon to the great Northern Earldom was, as I have already implied, a distinct novelty. Ever since Northumberland had ceased to be ruled by Kings of her own, she had been ruled by Earls chosen from among her own people. The ancient Kingdom had sometimes been placed under one, sometimes under two, chiefs; but they had always been native chiefs. The rule of the stranger Eric had been short, and he seems to have allowed the line of the ancient princes to retain at least a subordinate authority.^[1126] Siward, a stranger by birth, was connected with the ancient family by marriage.^[1127] And 378both Eric and Siward were Danes; Tostig came of a line which most probably sprang from the most purely Saxon part of England. The experiment was a hazardous one, yet it was one which was not only dictated by sound policy, but which circumstances made almost unavoidable. The |Mode of appointment to the great Earldoms.| great Earldoms, I may again repeat, were neither strictly hereditary nor strictly elective. They were in the gift of the King and his Witan, but there was always a strong tendency, just as in the case of the Kingdom itself, to choose out of the family of the deceased Earl, whenever |Impossibility of appointing a native Earl on the death of Siward.| there was no obvious reason to do otherwise. But on the death of Siward there was such an obvious reason to do otherwise, just as there was in the case of the Kingdom when it became vacant by the death of Eadward. The eldest son of Siward had fallen in the Scottish war, and the one survivor of his house was still a child.^[1128] Oswulf, seemingly the only male representative of the ancient Earls,^[1129] was probably still a mere boy.^[1130] There was therefore no available candidate of the old princely line. And, when we think of the state of the country, of the deadly feuds and jealousies which prevailed even between the reigning Earls and other powerful men,^[1131] we shall see that the nomination of any private Northumbrian would have been a still more hazardous experiment than the nomination of a stranger. The Northumbrians themselves seem to have felt this, when, ten years later, the choice of their Earl was thrown into their own hands. They then chose, |Doubtful policy of the appointment of Tostig.| not a Northumbrian, but a Mercian. But it may well be doubted whether it was good policy to appoint a West-Saxon, and especially a member of the House of Godwine. 379This was perhaps going too far in the way of reminding the proud Danes of the North of their subjection to the Southern King. It could not fail to suggest the idea of an intention to monopolize all honours and all authority in a single family. And, as events showed, the personal character of Tostig proved unfitted successfully to grapple with the difficult task which was now thrown upon him.

Character of Tostig.

In weighing the character of the third son of Godwine, we must be on our guard against several distinct sources of error. We are at first tempted to condemn without mercy one who became the antagonist of his nobler brother, who waged open war with his country, and whose invasion of England, by acting as a diversion in William’s favour, was one main cause of the success of William’s expedition. We read the account of his crimes as set forth by his Northumbrian enemies, and we think that no punishment could be too heavy for the man who wrought them. On the other hand, though Tostig, as an adversary of Harold, comes in for a certain slight amount of Norman favour, there was also a temptation, which for the most part was found irresistibly strong, to blacken both sons of the |Legends of Harold and Tostig.| Traitor equally. The opposition between Harold and Tostig during the last two years of their joint lives has thus supplied the materials for a heap of legends of revolting absurdity. The two brothers, who clearly acted together up to those two last years, are described as being full of the most bitter mutual rivalry and hatred, even from their childhood.^[1132] The effect of these two different pictures is that both admirers and depreciators of Harold are alike led to look on the acts of Tostig in the most unfavourable light. The crimes of his later years cannot be denied. He died a traitor, in arms against his country, engaged in an act of treason compared to which Harold’s 380ravages at Porlock, and even Ælfgar’s alliance with Gruffydd, sink into insignificance. His Northumbrian government too was evidently stained with great errors, seemingly with great crimes. But it is remarkable that it is not till the last two years of his life that we hear of anything which puts him in an unfavourable light. And there is nothing in his few recorded earlier actions which is at all inconsistent with the generally high character |Witness of the Biographer of Eadward.| given of him by the biographer of Eadward. That writer compares him with Harold in an elaborate picture of the two which I have already made large use of in describing Harold. And it is clear that, whether from his own actual convictions or from a wish to please his patroness the Lady Eadgyth, it is Tostig rather than Harold whose partizan he is to be reckoned, and it is Tostig whose actions he is most anxious to put in a favourable light. But the two are the two noblest of mortals; no land, no age, ever brought forth two such men at the same time. He makes a comparison of virtues between the two, but he hardly ventures to make the balance decidedly weigh in |His description of Tostig.| favour of either. In person Tostig was of smaller stature than his elder brother, but in strength and daring he was his equal.^[1133] But he seems to have lacked all Harold’s winning and popular qualities. He is set before us as a man of strong will, of stern and inflexible purpose, faithful to his promise, grave, reserved, admitting few or none to share his counsels, so that he often surprised men by the suddenness |His stern and unyielding character.| of his actions.^[1134] His zeal against wrong-doers, the virtue of the ruler for which his father and brother are so loudly extolled, amounted in him to a passion which carried him beyond the bounds of justice and honour.^[1135] 381The whole picture describes him as a man of honest and upright intentions, but of an unbending sternness which must have formed a marked contrast to the frank and conciliatory disposition of his brother. Such a man, placed as a ruler over a turbulent and refractory people, might, almost unconsciously, degenerate into a cruel tyrant. |Disturbed state of Northumberland.| Northumberland, we are told, was, at the time when he undertook its government, in a state to which it is impossible to believe that either Normandy or southern England afforded any likeness. Siward’s strong arm had done something to bring its turbulent inhabitants into order; yet thieves and murderers still had so completely the upper hand that travellers had to go in parties of |Tostig’s effort to restore order.| twenty and thirty, and even then were hardly safe.^[1136] Tostig set himself vigorously, evidently too vigorously, to work to put an end to this state of things. His severity was merciless and impartial; death and mutilation were freely dispensed among all disturbers of public order. His efforts, we are told, were effectual; it is said, in a proverbial form of speech, that under his administration, any man could safely travel through the whole land with all his goods.^[1137] 382Even powerful Thegns were not spared, and here comes the point in which Tostig most deeply erred. Putting our various accounts together, we shall find that, when offenders were too powerful to be reached by the arm of the law, Tostig did not scruple to rid the land of them |Explanation of his later crimes.| by treacherous assassination. We can well understand that a man of Tostig’s disposition, bent on bringing his province into order at any price, may have persuaded himself that the public good was superior to all other considerations, and may have blinded himself to the infamy of the means by which the public good was to be compassed. Very similar conduct in public men of our own day has been condoned by large bodies of men, and by some has even been warmly applauded. The unswerving dictate of justice is that he who, in any age, sheds blood without sentence of law, deserves the heaviest condemnation and the heaviest punishment. Still such conduct does not necessarily imply any original corruption of heart in the offender. Tostig richly deserved all that afterwards fell upon him. Like most sinners, he went on from bad to worse; but there is no reason to believe that he undertook the government of Northumberland with any less sincere intention of doing his duty there than Harold had when he undertook the government of Wessex. Tostig in the end became a great criminal; but he clearly was not a monster or a villain from the beginning of his career.

His personal favour with Eadward.

The strange thing is that a man of this disposition, whose virtues were all of the sterner sort, should have become a personal favourite with a feeble King like Eadward. One may perhaps explain it by the principle which often makes men, both in love and in friendship, prefer those who are most unlike themselves. A man 383like Eadward would cling to a man like Tostig as his natural protector, and, after all, weak as Eadward was, there were elements in his character to which the extreme severity of Tostig would not be unacceptable or even unlike. The King who had commanded Godwine to march against the untried citizens of Dover would not be likely to condemn the harshness of Tostig’s rule in |Tostig’s personal virtues.| Northumberland. And there were other points in Tostig’s character which would naturally and rightly commend him to the favour of the saintly King. Tostig, like William, practised some virtues which Harold neglected. While Harold’s affections seem to have dwelt wholly on an English mistress, Tostig set an example of strict fidelity to his foreign wife.^[1138] The husband of Judith would thus on every ground be more acceptable to Eadward than the lover of Eadgyth. Tostig too was of a bountiful disposition, and Judith, who was a devout woman, directed a large share of his bounty to pious objects.^[1139] Through all these causes Tostig easily won the highest place in the affection of his royal brother-in-law. With his sister the Lady he stood only too well. There is too much reason to fear that Eadgyth did not scruple to become something more than the accomplice of one of his worst deeds.^[1140]

384Such was the man to whom, probably at about the age of thirty-two,^[1141] was entrusted the rule of the ancient realm beyond the Humber. The general picture of his government I have already given; but for nine years no domestic details are supplied. We shall find him, like his brother, making the fashionable pilgrimage to Rome, and aiding his brother in his wars with the Welsh. Notwithstanding Norman legends, there is, at this stage of their history, not the slightest sign of any dissension between them.

Tostig becomes the sworn brother of Malcolm. 1055–1061.

One fact however we learn quite incidentally which touches, not indeed the internal administration of his Earldom, but the measures taken at once for its external defence, and for the maintenance of the supremacy of the Imperial Crown over the great Northern dependency of England. At some time during the first six years of his government, Earl Tostig became the sworn brother of Malcolm, the restored King of Scots.^[1142] This was a tie by which reconciled enemies often sought to bind one another to special friendship. It was the tie by which Cnut had been bound to Eadmund,^[1143] and by which Tostig’s predecessor Ealdred had been bound to the faithless Carl.^[1144] But there is nothing to show that the establishment of this tie between Tostig and Malcolm |Probable reference of the engagement to the war with Macbeth.| had been preceded by any hostilities between them. It is far more probable, considering the date of Tostig’s appointment to his Earldom, that the engagement took place early in Tostig’s government, and that it was made with a view to the joint prosecution of hostilities 385against a common enemy. When Tostig succeeded Siward, Malcolm was still struggling for his crown against Macbeth, and we cannot doubt that Tostig continued to support the man of King Eadward against the usurper.^[1145] Then doubtless it was that the King of Scots and the Earl of the Northumbrians entered into this close mutual relation. But the tie of sworn brotherhood was one which was seldom found strong enough to bind the turbulent spirits of those times. It sat almost as lightly on the conscience of Malcolm as it had sat on the conscience of Carl. The engagement was observed as long as it happened to be convenient, and no longer. While Tostig was the guardian of the English border, Malcolm’s brotherhood with Tostig did not hinder him from violating the frontiers of Tostig’s Earldom. When Tostig was an exile in arms against his country, the tie was remembered, and it procured him a warm welcome at the Scottish Court.

Ælfgar banished. March 20, 1055.

The appointment of Tostig to the Earldom must have been made in the Gemót which was held in London in the Lent of this year.^[1146] In the same Assembly, Ælfgar, Earl of the East-Angles, was banished. The accounts which we have of this transaction are not very intelligible. The fullest narrative that we have, that of the Chronicler who is most distinctly a partizan of Harold’s, tells us that he was charged with treason towards the King and all his people, and that he publicly confessed his guilt, though the confession escaped him unawares.^[1147] The other accounts are satisfied with saying that he was guiltless or nearly 386guiltless.^[1148] With such evidence as this, we are not in a position to determine on the guilt or innocence of Ælfgar. We do not even know what the treason was with which he was charged. But a charge to which the accused party, even in a moment of confusion, pleaded guilty, could hardly have been wholly frivolous on the part of the accuser. This point is important; for, though we have no direct statement who the accuser was, the probability is that a charge against one who stood so high in the rival family could have been brought only by Harold or by some one acting in his interest. At any rate, if Ælfgar was not a traitor before his condemnation, he became one speedily after it. In seeking a forcible restoration, he did but follow the least justifiable act in the career of his rival. But, if Harold had set a bad example, Ælfgar improved upon it. Harold had endeavoured to force his way into the country at the head of mercenaries hired in a foreign land. But he had not allied himself with the enemies of his country; he had not carried on a war against England in the interest of an ever restless foe of England. To this depth of infamy |Ælfgar hires ships in Ireland,| Ælfgar did not scruple to sink. He went over, as Harold had done, to Ireland, and gathered a force of eighteen ships, besides the one in which he had made his own 387voyage. These ships were doubtless manned by the Scandinavian settlers in that country.^[1149] With this fleet he sailed to some haven in Wales, probably of North Wales, |and makes an alliance with Gruffydd.| where he met Gruffydd and made an alliance with him.^[1150] The Welsh Prince was now at the height of his power. He had this very year overthrown and slain his South-Welsh rival, Gruffydd the son of Rhydderch.^[1151] He seems now to have been master of the whole Cymrian territory, and, at the head of such a power, he was more dangerous, and probably more hostile, to England than ever. Nothing then could be more opportune for his purposes than the appearance of a banished English Earl at the head of a powerful force of Irish Danes. Ælfgar at once asked for Gruffydd’s help in a war to be waged against King Eadward.^[1152] The plan of a campaign was speedily settled. Gruffydd summoned the whole force of the Cymry^[1153] for a great expedition against the Saxons. Ælfgar, with his Irish or Danish following, was to meet the Welsh King at some point which is not mentioned, and the combined host was to march on a devastating inroad into Herefordshire. The plan was successfully carried out, and the forces of Gruffydd and Ælfgar entered the southern part of the shire, the district known as Archenfeld, and 388|Gruffydd and Ælfgar ravage Herefordshire,| there harried the country. The border land which they entered was one bound to special service against British enemies. The Priests of the district had the duty of carrying the King’s messages into Wales; its militia claimed the right, in any expedition against the same enemy, to form the van in the march and the rear in the retreat.^[1154] To ravage this warlike district was no doubt a special object with the Welsh King, one which would be carried out with special delight. He did his work effectually. The effects of the harrying under Gruffydd were still to be seen at the time of the Norman survey.^[1155]

The work of destruction thus begun seems to have been carried on by Gruffydd and his allies without opposition, till they came within two miles of the city of Hereford.^[1156] |and meet Earl Ralph near Hereford. October 24, 1055.| There they were at last met by a large force under Ralph, the Earl of the country, consisting partly of the levies of the district, and partly of his own French and Norman following. Richard the son of Scrob, it will be remembered, was among the Normans who had been allowed to remain in England,^[1157] and no doubt the forces of Richard’s Castle swelled the army of Ralph. The timid Earl^[1158] thought himself called upon to be a military reformer. The English, light-armed and heavy-armed alike, were 389|Ralph requires the English to fight on horseback.| always accustomed to fight on foot. The Housecarl, the professional soldier, with his coat of mail and his battle-axe, and the churl who hastened to defend his field with nothing but his javelin and his leathern jerkin, alike looked on the horse only as a means to convey the warrior to and from the field of battle. The introduction of cavalry into the English armies might perhaps have been an improvement, but it was an improvement which could not be carried into effect with a sudden levy within sight of the enemy. But Ralph despised the English tactics, and would have his army arrayed according to the best and newest continental models. A French prince could not condescend to command a host who walked into action on their own feet, according to the barbarous English fashion. The men of Herefordshire were therefore required to meet the harassing attacks of the nimble Welsh, and the more fearful onslaught of Ælfgar’s Danes, while still |The battle is therefore lost.| mounted on their horses. The natural consequences followed; before a spear was hurled, the English took to flight.^[1159] Nothing else could have been reasonably looked for; however strong may have been the hearts of their riders, horses which had not gone through the necessary training would naturally turn tail at the unaccustomed sights and sounds of an army in battle array.^[1160] But in one account we find a statement which is far stranger and more disgraceful. If Ralph required his men to practise an unusual and foreign tactic, he and his immediate companions should at least have shown them in their own persons an example of its skilful and valiant carrying out. But we are told that Ralph, with his French and Normans, were the first to fly, and that the English in their flight 390did but follow the example of their leader.^[1161] I suspect some exaggeration here. Whatever may have been the case with the timid Earl himself, mere cowardice was certainly not a common Norman, or even French, failing. For a party of French knights to take to flight on the field of battle without exchanging a single spear-thrust, is something almost unheard of. It is far more likely that we have here a little perversion arising from national dislike. It is far more likely that, whatever Ralph himself may have done, the Normans in his company were simply carried away by the inevitable, and therefore in no way disgraceful, flight of the English. Anyhow, the battle, before it had begun, was changed into a rout. The enemy pursued. The light-armed and nimble Welsh were probably well able to overtake the clumsily mounted English. Four or five hundred were killed, and many more wounded. On the side of Ælfgar and Gruffydd we are told that not a man was lost.^[1162]

Ælfgar and Gruffydd sack and burn Hereford.

The Welsh King and the English Earl entered Hereford the same day^[1163] without resistance. The chief object of their wrath seems to have been the cathedral church of the |Story of Æthelberht of East-Anglia. 792.| diocese, the minster of Saint Æthelberht. The holy King of the East-Angles, betrothed to the daughter of the famous Offa, had come to seek his bride at her father’s court. He was there murdered by the intrigues of Cynethryth, 391the wife of the Mercian King.^[1164] He became the local saint of Hereford, and the minster of the city boasted |Æthelstan, Bishop of Hereford. 1012–1056.| of his relics as its choicest treasure. That church was now ruled by Æthelstan, an aged Prelate, who had already sat for forty-three years.^[1165] But, for the last twelve years, blindness had caused him to retire from the active government of his diocese, which was administered by a Welsh Bishop named Tremerin.^[1166] Æthelstan is spoken of as a man of eminent holiness, and he had, doubtless in his more active days, rebuilt the minster of Saint Æthelberht, and enriched it with many ornaments. The invaders attacked the church with the fury of heathens; indeed among the followers of Ælfgar there may still have been votaries of Thor and Odin. Seven of the Canons attempted to defend the great door of the church, but they were cut down without mercy.^[1167] The church was burned, and all its relics and ornaments were lost. Of the citizens many were slain, and others were led into captivity.^[1168] The whole town was sacked and set fire to, and the Welsh account specially adds that Gruffydd destroyed the fort or citadel.^[1169] The history which follows seems to imply that the town itself was not fortified, but merely protected by this fortress. At its date or character we can only guess. Hereford is not spoken of among the fortresses raised by Eadward the Elder and his sister Æthelflæd. It 392is an obvious conjecture that the fortress destroyed by Gruffydd was a Norman castle raised by Ralph. A chief who was so anxious to make his people conform to Norman ways of fighting would hardly linger behind his neighbour at Richard’s Castle, in at once providing himself with a dwelling-place, and his capital with a defence, according to the latest continental patterns. If so, we may easily form a picture of the Hereford of those days. By the banks of the Wye rose the minster, low and massive, but crowned by one or more of those tall slender towers, in which the rude art of English masons strove to reproduce the campaniles of Northern Italy. Around the church were gathered the houses of the Bishop, the Canons, the citizens, the last at least mainly of wood. Over all rose the square mass of the Norman donjon, an ominous presage of the days which were soon to come. All, church, castle, houses, fell before the wasting arms of Ælfgar and Gruffydd. They went away rejoicing in their victory and in the rich booty which |Deaths of Tremerin, 1055, and Æthelstan, February 10, 1056.| they carried. The blow seems to have broken the hearts of the two Prelates whose flock suffered so terribly. Tremerin died before the end of the year, and Æthelstan early in the year following.^[1170]

King Eadward was now in his usual winter-quarters at Gloucester. Either the time of the Christmas Gemót was hastened, or the King, in such an emergency, acted on his own responsibility. The defence of the country and the chastisement of the rebels could no longer be left in the hands of his incapable nephew. The occasion called for the wisest head and the strongest arm in the whole realm. |Harold sent against the Welsh.| Though his own government had not been touched, the Earl of the West-Saxons was bidden to gather a force from all England, and to attack the Welsh in their own land. It is not unlikely that his brother was, as in a later war with the same enemy, summoned from Northumberland 393to his help.^[1171] Late as was the season of the year, |Comparison of his earlier and later Welsh campaigns.| Harold did not shrink from the task.^[1172] This seems to have been his first experience of Welsh warfare, and we do not know whether he now adopted those special means of adapting his operations to the peculiar nature of the country, |1063.| which he tried so successfully in his later and more famous campaign. He then, as we shall see, caused his soldiers to adopt the light arms and loose array of the Welsh, and so proved more than a match for them at their own weapons. The story seems rather to imply that he did not do so on this occasion, and that the later stroke of his genius was the result of the lessons which he now learned. In neither case did a Welsh enemy dare to meet Harold in a pitched battle, but there is a marked difference between the two campaigns; in the earlier one, the Welsh successfully escaped Harold’s pursuit, while, in the later one, they were unable to do so. Harold gathered his army at Gloucester; he passed the Welsh border, and pitched his camp beyond the border district of Straddele.^[1173] But the main point is that Gruffydd and Ælfgar, who had marched so boldly to the conflict with Ralph, altogether shrank from giving battle to Harold. They escaped into South Wales. Harold, finding it vain to pursue such an enemy, desisted from the attempt. 394He dismissed the greater part of his army, that is probably the militia of the shires, merely bidding them keep themselves in readiness to withstand the enemy in case of |Harold fortifies Hereford.| any sudden inroad.^[1174] With the rest of his troops, that is probably with his own following, he proceeded to take measures for securing the important post of Hereford against future attacks. The castle had been levelled with the ground, the church was a ruin, the houses of the townsmen were burned. Harold set himself to repair the mischief, but his notions of defending a city were different from those of the Frenchman Ralph. The first object of the English Earl was to secure the town itself, not to provide a stronghold for its governor. It does not appear that he rebuilt the castle, but he at once supplied the city itself with the requisite defences. So important a border town was no longer to be left open to the incursions of every enemy or rebel. As a military measure, to meet a temporary emergency, he surrounded the town with a ditch and a strong wall. This wall, in its first estate, though strengthened by gates and bars, seems to have been itself merely a dyke of earth and rough stones. But, before the reign of Eadward was ended, Harold, then Earl of the shire, followed the example of Eadward at Towcester and Æthelstan at Exeter, and surrounded the town with a wall of masonry.^[1175] The wooden 395houses of the citizens could soon be rebuilt. Hereford was soon again peopled with burghers, both within and without the wall, some of them the men of the King and others the men of Earl Harold.^[1176] The minster had been burned, but we must remember how laxly that word is often taken. All its woodwork, all its fittings and ornaments, were of course destroyed, the walls would be blackened and damaged, but it was capable of at least temporary repair, as Bishop Æthelstan was buried in it next year.^[1177] Under the care of Earl Harold, Hereford was again a city.

Peace of Billingsley. 1055.

Meanwhile Ælfgar and Gruffydd sued for peace. Messages went to and fro, and at last a conference was held between them and Harold at Billingsley in Shropshire, a little west of the Severn. Harold was never disposed to press hardly on an enemy, and he may possibly have felt that he was himself in some sort the cause of all that had happened, if he had promoted any ill-considered charges |General mildness of English political warfare.| against his rival. In fact, rude and ferocious as those times were in many ways, the struggles of English political life were then carried on with much greater mildness than they were in many later generations. Blood was often lightly shed, but it was hardly ever shed by way of judicial sentence. A victorious party never sent the vanquished leaders either to a scaffold or to a dungeon. Banishment was the invariable sentence, and banishment in those days 396commonly supplied the means of return. Thus when Gruffydd and Ælfgar sought for peace, it was easily granted to them; Ælfgar was even restored to the Earldom which he had forfeited. It was probably thought that he was less dangerous as Earl of the East-Angles, than as a banished man who could at any time cause an invasion of the country from Wales or Ireland. His fleet sailed to Chester, and there awaited the pay which he had promised the crews.^[1178] Whether the payment was defrayed out of the spoils of |Ælfgar restored to his Earldom. Christmas, 1055–1056.| Herefordshire we are not told. Ælfgar now came to the King, and was formally restored to his dignity.^[1179] This was done in the Christmas Gemót, in which we may suppose that the terms of the peace of Billingsley were formally confirmed.

Invasion of England by Gruffydd and Magnus. 1056.

Peace with Gruffydd was easily decreed in words, but it was not so easily carried out in act. The restless Briton eagerly caught at any opportunity of carrying his ravages beyond the Saxon border. The Welsh Annals here fill up a gap in our own, and make the story more intelligible. With the help of a Scandinavian chief whom it is not easy to identify, but who is described as Magnus the son of Harold,^[1180] Gruffydd make a new incursion into Herefordshire. We may well believe that the restoration and fortification of Hereford was felt as a thorn in his side. This time the defence of the city and shire was not left in the 397hands of any Earl, fearful or daring, but fell to one of the |Death of Bishop Æthelstan. February 10, 1056.| warlike Prelates in whom that age was so fertile. Bishop Æthelstan, as I have already said, died early in the year at Bosbury, an episcopal lordship lying under the western slope of the Malvern Hills.^[1181] His burial in Saint Æthelberht’s minster must have been the first great public ceremony in the restored city. In the choice of a successor, Eadward, or rather Harold, was actuated at least as much |Leofgar, Bishop of Hereford. March 27, 1056.| by military as by ecclesiastical considerations. The see of the venerable and pious Æthelstan was filled by a Prelate of whom, during a very short career, we hear only in the character of a warrior. This was Leofgar, a chaplain of the Earl’s, whose warlike doings seem to have been commemorated in popular ballads. He laid aside his chrism and his rood, his ghostly weapons, and took to his spear and his sword and went forth to the war against Gruffydd the Welsh King.^[1182] But the warfare of this valiant churchman |His death in battle. June 16, 1056.| was unfortunate. He had not been three months a Bishop before he was killed, and with him his priests, as also Ælfnoth the Sheriff^[1183] and many other good men. The Chronicler goes on to complain bitterly of the heavy 398grievances attending on a Welsh war. It is clear that the way had not yet been found out how really to quell the active sons of the mountains, when their spirits were thoroughly aroused by an able and enterprising prince like Gruffydd. The complaint does not dwell on losses in actual fight, which were probably comparatively |Character of the war with Gruffydd.| small. The Welsh would seldom venture on an actual battle with the English, even when commanded by captains very inferior to Harold. They would not run such a risk, except when they were either supported by Scandinavian allies, or else when they were able to take the Saxons at some disadvantage. What the Chronicler paints is the wearing, cheerless, bootless kind of warfare which is carried on with a restless enemy who can never be brought to a regular battle. It is not ill success in fighting that he speaks of, but the wretchedness of endless marching and encamping, and the loss of men and horses, evidently by weariness rather than by the sword.^[1184] The wisest heads in the nation agreed that a stop must, at any cost, be put |Ealdred holds the see of Hereford with that of Worcester.| to this state of things. On the death of Leofgar, the see of Hereford was committed to Bishop Ealdred, whose energy seems to have shrunk from no amount of burthens, ecclesiastical, military, or civil.^[1185] By the counsel of this Prelate, and of the Earls Leofric and Harold, the Welsh |Gruffydd reconciled to Eadward. 1056.| King was reconciled to his English overlord.^[1186] This expression may be only a decorous way of attributing to the King personally a measure which was really the act of the 399three able statesmen who are represented as intervening between him and his dangerous vassal. But Eadward did sometimes exert a will of his own, and when he did so, his will was often in favour of more violent courses than seemed wise or just in the eyes of his counsellors. It is quite possible then that Eadward was, as he well might be, strongly incensed against Gruffydd, and that it needed all the arguments of Leofric and Harold, and of Ealdred so renowned as a peacemaker,^[1187] to persuade the King to come to any terms with one so stained with treason and sacrilege. And undoubtedly, at this distance of time, there does seem somewhat of national humiliation in the notion of making peace with Gruffydd, after so many invasions and so many breaches of faith, on any terms but those of his complete |His oath of homage.| submission. We must take the names of Harold, Leofric, and Ealdred as a guaranty that such a course was necessary. Gruffydd did indeed so far humble himself as to swear to be for the future a faithful under-King to Eadward.^[1188] It would also seem that the rebellious vassal was |He loses his lands in Cheshire.| mulcted of a small portion of his territories. Eadward had, at some earlier time, granted to Gruffydd certain lands, seemingly that portion of the present shire of Chester which lies west of the Dee. These lands were now forfeited, and restored to the see of Lichfield and other English possessors from whom they had been originally taken.^[1189] We know not whether the grant was an original act of Eadward, or whether it was a convenient legal confirmation of some irregular seizure made by the Welsh King. Gruffydd was perhaps bought off in this 400way after some of his former incursions, most likely at |1046.| the moment of his temporary cooperation with Swegen.^[1190] If so, the restoration of the alienated lands was now required as a condition of peace. This homage of Gruffydd, and this surrender of lands, remind us of the homage |1277.| and surrender made, under the like circumstances, by the last successor of Gruffydd to a greater Edward.^[1191] As for the Welsh King’s oath, it was kept after the usual fashion, that is, till another favourable opportunity occurred for breaking it.

Cooperation of Harold, Leofric, and Ealdred.

One other point may be noted in connexion with this last transaction. That is the way in which Harold, Leofric, and Ealdred are described as acting together. If this implies no further cooperation, it at least implies that these three took the same side in a debate in the Witenagemót. Yet Leofric was the father of Harold’s rival Ælfgar, and the last time that the names of Harold and Ealdred were coupled was when Ealdred was sent to |1051.| follow after Harold on his journey to Bristol. But now all these old grudges seem to have been forgotten. In fact not one of the three men was likely to prolong a grudge needlessly. Harold’s policy was always a policy of conciliation; if—what we can by no means affirm—his conduct with regard to the outlawry of Ælfgar was at all of another character, it was the last example in his history. Ealdred was emphatically the peacemaker. He had no doubt long ago made his own peace with Harold, and he had probably used his influence to reconcile him with any 401with whom reconciliation was still needful. Leofric had often been opposed to Godwine, and must have looked with uncomfortable feelings on his wonderful rise. But he had never been a bitter or violent enemy; we have always found him playing the part of a mediator between extreme parties. There is no trace of any personal quarrel between him and Harold. He may have thought himself wronged in the outlawry of his son; but he could not fail to condemn Ælfgar’s later conduct and to approve that of Harold. He must have admired Harold’s energetic carriage in the Welsh campaign and in the restoration of Hereford. And Leofric doubtless felt, whether Ælfgar felt or not, some gratitude to Harold for his conciliatory behaviour at Billingsley, and for the restoration of Ælfgar to his Earldom. All that we know of the good old Earl of the Mercians leads us to look on him as a man who was quite capable of sacrificing the interests and passions of himself or his family to the general welfare of his country.

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

Hermann, Bishop of Ramsbury, seeks to obtain the Abbey of Malmesbury. 1055.

A few detached ecclesiastical events must be mentioned as happening in the course of these two years of war with Gruffydd. The see of Wiltshire or Ramsbury^[1192] was, it will be remembered, now held by Hermann, one of the Lotharingian Prelates who were favoured by Godwine and Harold as a sort of middle term between Englishmen and Frenchmen.^[1193] This preferment was not, at least in 402Hermann’s eyes, a very desirable one. The church of Ramsbury, unlike other cathedral churches, seems not to have been furnished with any company of either monks or canons,^[1194] and the Bishop therefore found himself somewhat solitary. The revenues also of the see were small, an evil which seems to have pressed more heavily on a stranger than it would have done on a native. Other Bishops of Ramsbury, Hermann said, had been natives of the country, and the poverty of their ecclesiastical income had been eked out by the bounty of English friends and kinsfolk. He, a stranger, had no means of support to look to except the insufficient revenues of his Bishoprick.^[1195] He had, it appears, been long looking forward to annexing, after the manner of the time, a second Bishoprick to his own. As Leofric had united Crediton and Saint German’s, Hermann hoped to unite Ramsbury and Sherborne, whenever a vacancy should occur in the latter see. Hermann, as the mission with which he had been entrusted shows,^[1196] stood high in royal favour, and the Lady Eadgyth had long before promised to use her influence on his behalf, whenever the wished for opportunity should occur.^[1197] But another means of increasing the episcopal wealth of Ramsbury now presented itself. The Abbot of Malmesbury was dead. Though the monasteries had not yet reached their full measure of exemption from episcopal control, we may be sure that the Bishops had already begun to look with jealousy on those heads of great monastic houses who had gradually 403grown up into rival Prelates within their own dioceses. Hermann at Ramsbury felt towards the Abbey of Malmesbury, as in after days his countryman Savaric at Wells felt towards the Abbey of Glastonbury.^[1198] Here was a good opportunity at once for raising his Bishoprick to a proper standard of temporal income and for getting rid of a rival who was doubtless a thorn in his side. He would forsake Ramsbury, with its poor income and lack of clerks, and fix his episcopal throne in the rich and famous minster which boasted of the burying-place of Æthelstan.^[1199] He laid his scheme before the King, who approved of it; he went away from the royal presence already in expectation Bishop of Malmesbury. But two parties interested in the matter had not been consulted, the monks of Malmesbury and the Earl of the West-Saxons. The monks were certain to feel |Relation of Bishops and Monks.| the utmost repugnance to any such union. They might reasonably fear that the Lotharingian Prelate might seek to reconstruct the foundation of his newly made cathedral church according to the canonical pattern of his own country. The rule of Chrodegang, which, to the Canons of Wells and Exeter,^[1200] seemed to be an insufferable approach to monastic austerity, would seem to the monks of Malmesbury to be a no less insufferable approach to secular laxity. Or, even if the Bishop allowed the church to retain its ancient monastic constitution, the monks would have no desire for any such close connexion with the Bishoprick. 404They doubtless, as the monks of Glastonbury did afterwards, greatly preferred a separate Abbot of their own. The monks of Malmesbury therefore betook themselves to the common helper of the oppressed, and laid their grievances at the feet of Earl Harold.^[1201] As the natural protector of all men, monks and otherwise, within his Earldom, Harold pleaded their cause before the King. Within three days after the original concession to Hermann,^[1202] before any formal step had been taken to put him in possession of the Abbey,^[1203] the grant was revoked, and the church of Malmesbury was allowed to retain its ancient constitution.^[1204]

Manifest action of the Witan.

The speed with which this business was dispatched shows that it must have been transacted at a meeting of the Witan held at no great distance from Malmesbury. Such a change as the transfer of a Bishop’s see from one church to another could certainly not have been made or contemplated without the consent of the Witan. And for the monks to hear the news, to debate, to obtain Harold’s help, and for Harold to plead for them, within three days, shows that the whole took place while the Witan were actually in session. Of the places where Gemóts were usually held the nearest to Malmesbury is Gloucester, the usual scene of the Christmas Assembly. The monks, or enough of them to act in the name of the house, may 405perhaps themselves have been present there, and may have determined on their course without going home to Malmesbury. But the distance between Malmesbury and Gloucester is not too great to have allowed the business, in a moment of such emergency, to have been discussed within the three days, both in the Gemót at Gloucester and in the chapter-house at Malmesbury. One can hardly |Christmas, 1055.| doubt that this affair took place in the Christmas Gemót in which the Peace of Billingsley was confirmed and Ælfgar reinstated in his Earldom.

Harold’s action in the matter.

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

Hermann becomes a monk at Saint Omer.

The remainder of the story is curious. Hermann, displeased at being thus balked when he thought himself so near success, gave up, or at least forsook, his Bishoprick, crossed the sea, and assumed the monastic habit in the Abbey of Saint Bertin at Saint Omer.^[1206] But the fire so suddenly 406kindled soon burned out; Hermann chafed under the fetters of monastic discipline, and wished to be again in the world.^[1207] After three years, his earlier scheme once more presented itself to his mind, when the see of Sherborne became vacant by the death of Bishop Ælfwold. He returned to England, he pleaded his cause with the King, and found |Hermann returns and unites Ramsbury and Sherborne. 1058.| no opposition from the Earl.^[1208] No appointment to Ramsbury had been made during Hermann’s absence; the administration of the diocese was entrusted to the indefatigable Bishop Ealdred, who thus had the care of three dioceses, Worcester, Hereford, and Ramsbury.^[1209] Perhaps Hermann was looked on as still being Bishop, and the promise of the Lady with regard to the union of the sees of Ramsbury and Sherborne was held to be still binding. At all events, on Hermann’s return, Ealdred gave up Ramsbury, and Hermann became Bishop of the united Sees. He held |Died 1078.| them for twenty years longer; he survived the Conquest twelve years,^[1210] and he lived to merge the old diocesan names of Ramsbuiy and Sherborne in one drawn from an altogether new seat of episcopal authority, the waterless hill of the elder Salisbury.^[1211]

Death of Earl Odda. August 31, 1056.

407The year of Bishop Leofgar’s unlucky attempt to win fame as a warrior was marked by the death of Earl Odda, the King’s kinsman. He had been set over the western parts of Godwine’s Earldom during the year of his banishment,^[1212] and since his return he had probably held, under the superiority of Leofric, the Earldom of the whole or part of the old land of the Hwiccas.^[1213] His unpatriotic conduct in those times seems, even in the eyes of our most patriotic chroniclers, to have been fully atoned for by his personal virtues and by the favour which he showed to monasteries. He is accordingly sent out of the world with a splendid panegyric.^[1214] Before his death he was admitted a monk by his diocesan Ealdred,^[1215] who might thus, by bringing so goodly a sheep into the monastic fold, atone for having himself forsaken the cloister for the cares of government and warfare. He died at Deerhurst, under the shadow of the minster of his own building, but his own burial-place was at Pershore,^[1216] another of the many Abbeys of a land which, next to the eastern fens, was the richest |Æthelric, Bishop of Durham 1042–1056, resigns his see.| district of England in monasteries of early date. In the course of the same year, Æthelric, Bishop of Durham, the successor of the simoniacal Eadred,^[1217] resigned his see and became again a monk at Peterborough, in which 408|[Dies Oct. 15, 1072.]| monastery he had spent his youth.^[1218] He was, through the influence of Tostig,^[1219] succeeded in his Bishoprick by his brother alike in the flesh and in monastic profession, |Æthelwine succeeds. 1056–1071.| Æthelwine, another monk of the Golden Borough.^[1220] Both brothers survived the Norman Conquest, and we shall see each of them, alike on the throne of Durham and in the cloister of Peterborough, become victims of the watchful jealousy of the Norman Conqueror.

Eadward Ætheling arrives from Hungary. 1057.

The next year is conspicuously a year of deaths, and a year of deaths which affected the state of England far more sensibly than the deaths of Earl Odda and Bishop Æthelric. The first recorded event of the year is the arrival of the Ætheling Eadward from Hungary.^[1221] The 409mission of Ealdred had not failed through the death of |[Death of the Emperor Henry. 1056.]| the great prince to whom he was sent,^[1222] and, three years after the reception of the English Bishop at Köln, the English Ætheling, if English we may call him, set foot on the shores from which he had been sent into banishment as a helpless babe.^[1223] He now, at the age of forty-one, came for the first time to his native country, and he came in a character as nearly approaching to that of heir presumptive to the English Crown as the laws of our |Prospects of his succession to the Crown.| elective monarchy allowed. He came with his foreign wife and his children of foreign birth. And it can hardly fail but that he was himself, in speech and habits, as foreign as the Norman favourites of Eadward, more foreign than the men of kindred tongue whom Godwine and Harold were glad to encourage in opposition to them.^[1224] The succession of such a prince, even less of an Englishman than the reigning King, promised but little good to the Kingdom. Still the succession of the Ætheling would have had one great advantage. It was hardly possible that the claims of William could be successfully pressed against him. A supposed promise of King Eadward in William’s favour could hardly be maintained in the teeth of a bequest and an election in favour of an Englishman of royal birth and mature years, against whom William could have no personal complaint whatever. Incomparably inferior as Eadward doubtless was to Harold in every personal qualification, his succession could never have given William 410the opportunities which were afterwards given him by the accession of Harold. Eadward could not have been held up as an usurper, a perjurer, a man faithless to his lord, nor, had he been the opponent, could the superstitions of the time have been appealed to to avenge the fancied insult offered to the relics of the Norman saints. We can thus fully understand why an English poet, clearly writing by the light of later experience, laments the death of the Ætheling as the cause of all the woes which came upon this poor nation.^[1225] Even at the time, when men’s eyes were not yet so fully opened, we may be sure that England rejoiced in his coming, and bitterly lamented his speedy removal. The son of the hero Ironside, the last adult male of the royal line, must, whatever were his personal qualities, have attracted to himself an interest which was not purely sentimental.

Death of the Ætheling Eadward. 1057.

The Ætheling then came to England; but he never saw his namesake the King. He died almost immediately afterwards in London,^[1226] and was buried with his grandfather Æthelred in Saint Paul’s minster. Why he was shut out from the royal presence was unknown then as well as now.^[1227] |His exclusion from the royal presence,| The fact that his exclusion was commented on at the time might seem to forbid, and yet perhaps it does not wholly forbid, the simplest explanation of all, that he was ill at the time of his landing, and that the illness which caused 411his death also hindered his presentation to his uncle. If the exclusion had a political object, to what party ought |not likely to be due to Harold,| we to attribute it? A distinguished modern writer attributes it, though not very confidently, to the partizans of Harold.^[1228] But it is not at all clear that Harold as yet aspired to the throne; it is far more probable that it was the death of the last adult Ætheling which first suggested to Harold and his friends the possibility of the succession of a King not of the royal house. Because Harold did in the end succeed Eadward, we must beware of supposing that his succession had been looked forward to during the whole reign of Eadward. There must have been some moment when the daring thought—for a daring thought it was—of aspiring to a royal crown first presented itself to the mind of Harold or of those to whom Harold hearkened. And no moment seems so clearly marked out for that purpose by all the circumstances of the case as the moment of the death of the Ætheling. If Harold had wished to thwart a design of King Eadward’s in favour of his nephew, he would hardly have waited for his landing in England to practise his devices. He would rather have laboured to hinder Ealdred’s mission in the first instance, or to render it abortive, in some way or other, during the long period over which the negotiation |but rather to the Norman courtiers,| was spread. If the exclusion of the Ætheling from his uncle’s presence was really owing to the machinations of any political party, there is another party on which the charge may fall with far greater probability. There was another possible successor who had far more to fear from the good will of the King towards the Ætheling 412than Harold had. Whether Harold had begun to aspire to the Crown or not, there can be little doubt that William had, and William was still by no means without influence at the English Court. There were still Normans about Eadward, Bishop William of London, Robert the son of Wymarc, Hugolin the Treasurer, and others whom Godwine or Harold had, perhaps unwisely, exempted from the general proscription. To exclude—by some underhand means, if at all—a prince of the blood from the presence of his uncle and sovereign, sounds much more like the act of a party of this kind, than the act of a man whom both office and character made the first man in the realm. The thing, if done at all, was clearly some wretched court intrigue, the fitting work of a foreign faction. The Earl of the West-Saxons, had his interests been concerned in the matter, would have set about hindering |but, more probably than either, the result of illness.| the Ætheling’s succession in quite another way. But after all, it is far more likely that the fact that the two Eadwards never met was not owing either to the partizans of Harold or to the partizans of William, but that it was simply the natural result of the illness of which the Ætheling presently died.

Surmise of Sir F. Palgrave that Harold caused the death of the Ætheling.

Another, and a far worse, insinuation against the great Earl hardly needs to be refuted. Among all the calumnies with which, for eight hundred years, the name of Harold has been loaded, there is one whose suggestion has been reserved for our own times. Norman enemies have distorted every action of his life; they have misrepresented every circumstance of his position; they have charged him with crimes which he never committed; they have looked at all his acts through such a mist of prejudice that the victory of Stamfordbridge is changed under their hands into a wicked fratricide.^[1229] But no writer of his own time, or 413of any time before our own, has ever ventured to insinuate that Earl Harold had a hand in the death of the Ætheling Eadward. That uncharitable surmise was reserved for an illustrious writer of our own time, in whom depreciation of the whole House of Godwine had become a sort of passion.^[1230] It is enough to say that, has there been the faintest ground for such an accusation, had the idea ever entered into the mind of any man of Harold’s own age,^[1231] some Norman slanderer or other would have been delighted to seize upon it.^[1232] Nothing is more easy than to charge any man with having secretly made away with another man by whose death he profits, and the charge is one which, as it is easy to bring, is sometimes very hard to disprove. For that very reason, it is a charge on which the historian always looks with great suspicion, even when it is known to have been brought at the time and to have been currently believed at the time. The general infamy of Eadric is fully established, but we need not believe in every one of the secret murders which rumour charged him with having committed or instigated. Still less need we believe the tales which charge the Great William with having more than once stooped to the trade of a secret poisoner.^[1233] 414When we think how easy the charge is to bring, and how recklessly it has been brought at all times, the mere fact that no such charge was ever brought against Harold does in truth redound greatly to his honour. Calumny itself instinctively shrank from laying such a crime to the charge of such a man. William was, as I believe, as guiltless of any such baseness as Harold himself. But the charge did not seem wholly inconsistent with the crafty and tortuous policy of the Norman Duke. The West-Saxon Earl, ambitious no doubt and impetuous, but ever frank, generous, and conciliatory, was at once felt to be incapable of such a deed.

Heaca, Bishop of Selsey, dies.

Three other deaths followed among the great men of the land, two of which were of no small political importance. |Æthelric succeeds. 1057.| It was not of any special moment, as far as we know, when Heaca, Bishop of Selsey or of the South-Saxons, died, and was succeeded by Æthelric, a monk of Christ Church.^[1234] It |Death of Earl Leofric. August 31, 1057.| was quite another matter when the great Earl of the Mercians, so long the honoured mediator between opposing races and opposing interests, died in a good old age in his own house at Bromley in Staffordshire.^[1235] Of all the churches and monasteries which had been enriched and adorned by the bounty of Leofric and Godgifu, none was dearer to them than the great minster of Coventry, the city with which their names are inseparably connected in one of those silly legends which have helped to displace our early history.^[1236] There Leofric was buried in the church which he and his 415wife had raised from the foundations,^[1237] and had enriched with gifts which made it wealthier and more magnificent than all the minsters of England.^[1238] Godgifu survived her husband many years; she saw her son and grandsons rise and fall; she saw her granddaughter share first a vassal and then an Imperial Crown, and then vanish out of sight as a homeless widow. At last she herself died, still in the possession of some part at least of her vast estates, a subject of the Norman invader.^[1239]

Death of Earl Ralph. December 21, 1057.

A few months after the death of Leofric came the death of the stranger who had seemingly held a subordinate Earldom under his authority. Ralph, Earl of the Magesætas, the French nephew of King Eadward, died near the end of the year, and was buried in the distant minster of Peterborough,^[1240] to which he had been a benefactor.^[1241] |His possible pretensions to the Crown.| I have already started the question whether the thoughts of Eadward had ever turned towards him as a possible successor.^[1242] After the death of the Ætheling, the hopes of Ralph and his brother Walter, if they had any, might again revive. But if so, death soon cut short any such schemes. Walter, the reigning prince of a foreign state, would have no chance. If any such prince were to be chosen, it would be better at once to take the renowned Duke of the Normans than the insignificant Count of Mantes. But Ralph, whether he was ever actually thought of or 416not, was clearly a possible candidate; his death therefore, following so soon after the death of the Ætheling, removed another obstacle from the path of Harold.

Redistribution of Earldoms. Christmas, 1057–1058?

The deaths of the two Earls involved a redistribution of the chief governments of England, which would naturally be carried out in the following Christmas Gemót. The Earldom of the Mercians, such parts of it at least as had been under the immediate authority of Leofric, was conferred |Ælfgar Earl of the Mercians.| on his son Ælfgar.^[1243] It shows how vast must have been the hereditary influence of his house, when such a trust could not be refused to a man who had so lately trampled under foot every principle of loyalty and patriotism. But care was taken to make him as little dangerous as possible. Ælfgar may have hoped that, on the death of Ralph, the Earldom of the Magesætas would again be merged in Mercia, and that, excepting the shires attached to Northumberland, he might rule over the whole realm of Offa and Æthelflæd. But policy altogether forbade that the Herefordshire border should be again placed in the hands of one who had so lately acted as the |Marriage of Gruffydd and Ealdgyth.| ally of Gruffydd. We know not whether the Welsh King had already entered into a still closer relation with the English Earl by his marriage with Ælfgar’s beautiful daughter Ealdgyth. The date of that marriage is not recorded; it may have already taken place, or it may have happened on the next occasion, one distant only by a few months, when we shall find the names of Gruffydd and Ælfgar coupled together. But if the Welsh King was already the son-in-law of the Mercian Earl, there was a still further reason for placing some special safeguard on that border of the realm. In short, the government of Herefordshire was so important that it could not be safely placed in any hands but those of the foremost man in England. There is distinct evidence to 417show that, within two or three years after the death of |Herefordshire added to Harold’s Earldom.| Leofric, the Earldom of Herefordshire was in the hands of Harold.^[1244] We can therefore hardly doubt that, on the resettlement which must have followed the deaths of Leofric and Ralph, the Earldom of the Magesætas was attached to the Earldom of the West-Saxons, and that Harold now became the immediate ruler of the district of which he had been the deliverer, and of the city of which he might |Harold the son of Ralph.| claim to be the second founder. Earl Ralph had left a son, a namesake, probably a godson, of the great Earl, and Harold the son of Ralph appears in Domesday as a landowner both before and after the Conquest. His name still survives within his father’s Earldom, where it cleaves to an existing parish and to a castle which has wholly vanished. But Earldoms were not hereditary, and the son of Ralph was so young that, eight years later, he was still under wardship.^[1245] On this ground, if on no other, Harold, the great-nephew of Eadward, the great-grandson of Æthelred, was so far from appearing as a competitor for the Crown of his ancestors that he was not even thought of as a possible successor for his father’s Earldom. His name is altogether unknown to history, and but for his place in Domesday and in local tradition, his very existence might have been forgotten. His renowned namesake was now entrusted |Question as to Gloucestershire.| with the great border government. But it is by no means clear whether Harold held Herefordshire as a detached possession, as Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire were held by Siward and Tostig, or whether it was connected with his West-Saxon Earldom by the possession of Gloucestershire. If so, the rule of the Earl of the West-Saxons must now have been extended over nearly all that was West-Saxon land in the days of Ceawlin.^[1246]

418While the power of Harold was thus increased, the time seemed to have come for raising the younger sons of Godwine to a share in the honours of his house. The |Gyrth Earl of the East-Angles, [1057–1058],| East-Anglian Earldom, vacated by the translation of Ælfgar to Mercia, was now conferred on Gyrth. But the boundaries of the government were changed. Essex was detached from East-Anglia. The new Earl probably received only the two strictly East-Anglian shires, with the |and of Oxfordshire.| addition of Cambridgeshire, to which was afterwards added the detached shire of Oxford.^[1247] The policy of attaching |Policy of these detached shires.| these detached shires to distant Earldoms is not very clear. It could not be the same policy which afterwards led the Conqueror to scatter the fiefs of his great vassals over distant portions of the Kingdom. There was certainly no intention of weakening any of the Earls whose governments were thus divided. The object was far more probably to bring the influence of the House of Godwine to bear upon all parts of the country. Some old connexion had attached Northamptonshire to Northumberland at an earlier time, and the example thus given was seized on as a means for planting the authority of the rising house in every convenient quarter. Oxfordshire, it will be remembered, had formed part of the Earldom of Swegen; it was now placed in the hands of Gyrth. For it was highly important that the great frontier town of Mercia and Wessex, the seat of so many important national meetings, should be in thoroughly trustworthy hands. Ælfgar’s loyalty was most doubtful; it was impossible altogether to oust him from command, but it was expedient to confine his powers of mischief within the smallest possible compass, and to hem him in, whenever it could be, by men who could be relied on. Unfortunately at Chester, the most dangerous point of all, the family interest of the House of Leofric was too strong to allow of that 419important shire being put into any hands but those of Ælfgar. We shall presently see the result.

Leofwine Earl of Kent, Essex, &c.

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

The House of Godwine at its greatest point of greatness. 1058–1065.

The House of Godwine had thus reached the greatest height of power and dignity which a subject house could reach. Whatever was the origin of the family, they had won for themselves a position such as no English family ever won before or after. Four brothers, sons of a father who, whether Earl or churl by birth, had risen to greatness by his own valour and counsel, divided by far the greater part of England among them. The whole Kingdom, save a few shires in the centre, was in their hands. And three at least out of the four showed that they well deserved their greatness. To the eldest among the four there evidently belonged a more marked preeminence still. Two of his brothers, those most recently appointed to Earldoms, were clearly little more than Harold’s lieutenants. And 420a prospect of still higher greatness now lay open to him |State of the royal line.| and his house. The royal line was dying out. No adult male descendant of Æthelred remained; no adult descendant of any kind remained within the Kingdom. The only survivors of the true kingly stock were the son and daughters of the Ætheling, children born in a foreign land. If any hopes of royalty had ever flitted before the eyes of Ralph, such hopes could not extend to his son the young Harold or to his brother the Count of Mantes. |Harold’s prospect of the Crown.| The time was clearly coming when Englishmen might choose for themselves a King from among their brethren, unfettered by any traditional reverence for the blood of Ælfred, Cerdic, and Woden. And when that day should come, on whom should the choice of England fall save on the worthiest man of the worthiest house within the realm? We cannot doubt that, from the year when the three deaths of Eadward, Leofric, and Ralph seemed to sweep away all hindrances from his path, Harold looked forward to a day when he and his might rise to a rank yet loftier than that of Earl. It was no longer wholly beyond hope that he might himself ascend the Imperial throne of Britain, and that the Earldoms of England might be held by his brothers as Æthelings of the House of Godwine. The event proves that such were the hopes of Harold, that such, we may add, were the hopes of England. Such hopes may, even at an earlier time, have flashed across the mind of Harold himself or across the minds of zealous friends of his house or zealous admirers of his exploits. But this was the first moment when such hopes could have assumed anything like form and substance; it was the first moment when the chances seemed distinctly to be rather for than against their fulfilment. That Harold from this time doubtless aspired to the Crown, that he directed all his conduct by a hope of securing the Crown, cannot be doubted. And the unanimity with which he was raised 421to the throne when the great day came seems to show that men’s minds had long been prepared to look to him as their future sovereign. We cannot doubt that, after the death of the Ætheling Eadward, Wessex and East-Anglia at least were ready to transfer the English Crown from the line of Æthelred to the line of Godwine.

Questions as to Harold’s position.

Two questions still remain. Did Harold, in thus looking forward to the Crown, know, as he came to know at last, how formidable a rival was making ready for him beyond the sea? And was the succession of Harold merely a probability, a moral certainty it may be, to which men learned to look forward as a matter of course, or were the hopes of the great Earl confirmed by any act of the Witan or any promise of the King? Both questions are hard to answer. Both are inseparably mixed up with the most difficult questions in our whole history, the alleged promise made to William by Eadward and the alleged oath made to him by Harold. I have already expressed my belief that Eadward’s alleged promise to the Norman Duke, which formed the main ground of William’s pretensions to the English Crown, though exaggerated and perverted in the Norman accounts, was not a mere Norman invention. I believe that some promise really was made, and that the time when it was made was when William visited Eadward during the banishment of Godwine.^[1249] Of the nature and form of that promise it is difficult to say anything. We may indeed unhesitatingly dismiss the notion that a settlement was made in William’s favour by a decree |Effects of Eadward’s promise to William.| of the Witan. Still any promise of any kind could hardly have been kept so complete a secret but that it must have got blazed abroad, and have reached the ears of the Earl and his countrymen. The Norman party, during their short moment of complete triumph, would have no motive to 422keep the matter a secret. They would deem themselves to have reached the great accomplishment of all that they had been scheming for, when there seemed a prospect of the English Crown passing, without slash or blow, to the brow of the Norman. The fact of the promise would doubtless be known, and by statesmen it would be remembered. But it does not follow that it would make any deep impression on the mass of the nation. Men would hear of the promise in a vague sort of way, and would at the time be divided between wonder and indignation. But the idea of the succession of the Norman would be looked on as something which had passed away with other Norman ideas, when the English Earls came back to claim their own. Even after Harold’s election as King, the prospect of the Norman invasion is spoken of in a way which seems to show that, to the mass of Englishmen, the claim of William was even then something new and surprising.^[1250] |Policy of the patriotic party;| But by a statesman like Harold, if the matter was once known, it would never be forgotten. It would hardly be a thing to talk much of openly; but to counteract any possible schemes of William must have been the main object of Harold’s policy from the day when he was first called to the head of affairs. We can understand how Eadward was led to deem his promise null, and to send for |candidature first of Eadward the Ætheling,| the Ætheling as his destined successor. This was, under the circumstances, a great triumph of the national policy. A competitor, accepted by the voice of the nation, was placed in William’s path, a competitor whom William himself would hardly dare to attack. The death of the Ætheling made matters more difficult. There was now no such unexceptionable rival to oppose to the Norman. |then of Harold.| Harold indeed, before his oath, was a far more formidable rival to William than Harold after his oath. He had not 423yet given his enemy that fatal advantage which the wily Duke knew so well how to employ. But Harold’s succession would have all the disadvantages of a novelty. If he could not yet be branded as a perjurer, yet he might be, in a way that the Ætheling never could be, branded as an usurper. Either of the Eadwards, in short, with Harold for his guide and counsellor, would be really stronger than Harold himself as King. But the risk had now to be run. The nation at large had most likely but vague notions as to the danger. But Harold, Stigand, and all the leaders of the nation must have known that any step that they took would bring on their country the enmity of a most active and dangerous foe. Harold’s main object during his whole administration clearly was to strengthen England at home and abroad, to make her powerful and united when the inevitable day should come.