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

CHAPTER IX. THE REIGN OF EADWARD FROM THE RETURN OF GODWINE TO THE DEATH OF EADWARD THE ÆTHELING.^[921] 1052–1057.

Character of the Period.

The two streams of English and Norman history were joined together for a moment in the year when the sovereigns of England and Normandy met face to face for the only time in the course of their joint reigns. Those streams will now again diverge. England shook off the Norman influence, and became once more, to all outward appearance, the England of Æthelstan and Eadgar. For |Little direct connexion between English and Norman affairs.| several years the history of each country seems to have no direct influence upon the history of the other. But this mutual independence is more apparent than real. England once more became free from Norman influence as regarded her general policy; but the effects of Eadward’s Norman tendencies were by no means wholly wiped away. 308Normans still remained in the land, and the circumstances of the deliverance of England were not without their effect as secondary causes of the expedition of William. Through the whole period we may be sure that the wise statesmen of both countries were diligently watching each other’s actions. Harold and William, though not as yet open enemies or avowed rivals, must have found out during these years that each was called on by his own policy to do all that he could to thwart the policy of the other. But though there was this sort of undercurrent closely connecting the interests of the two countries, yet, in all the outward events of history, it was a period of remarkable separation between them. The events recorded by English historians within this period belong almost exclusively to the affairs of our own island. It is a period in which the relations between the vassal Kingdoms of Britain and the Imperial power again assume special importance. But it is still more emphatically marked by the death of the greatest of living Englishmen, and the transmission of his power, and more than his power, to a |Growth of the power of Harold.| worthy successor. We left Godwine and Harold banished men. We have now to record their triumphant return to a rejoicing nation. We have then to record the death of Godwine, the accession of Harold to his father’s formal rank, and the steps by which he gradually rose to be the virtual ruler of the Kingdom, perhaps the designated successor to the Crown.

§ 1. The Return and Death of Godwine. 1052–1053.

General regret at the absence of Godwine.

If the minds of Englishmen had been at all divided in their estimate of Godwine during his long tenure of power, it only needed his exile to bring every patriotic heart to one opinion with regard to him. Godwine doubtless had his 309enemies; no man ever stood for thirty years and more at the head of affairs without making many enemies; and there were points in his character which may have given reasonable offence to many. Even if the whole of his enormous wealth was fairly and legally acquired, its mere accumulation in the hands of one man^[922] must have excited envy in many breasts. His eagerness to advance his family may well have offended others, and the crimes and the restoration of Swegen, even under the guaranty of Bishop Ealdred, cannot fail to have given general scandal. It is possible then that there were Englishmen, not devoid of love and loyalty to England, who were short-sighted enough to rejoice over the fall of the great Earl. But, when Godwine was gone, men soon learned that, whatever had been his faults, they were far outweighed by his merits. Men now knew that the Earl of the West-Saxons had been the one man who stood between them and the dominion of strangers. During that gloomy winter England felt as a conquered land, as a land too conquered by foes who had not overcome her in open battle, but who had, by craft and surprise, deprived her of her champions and guardians. The common voice of England soon began to call for the return of Godwine. The banished Earl was looked to by all men as the Father of his Country; England now knew that in his fall a fatal blow had been dealt to her own welfare and freedom.^[923] Men began openly to declare that it was better to share the banishment of Godwine than 310to live in the land from which Godwine was banished.^[924] |Godwine invited to return.| Messages were sent to the court of Flanders, praying the Earl to return. If he chose to make his way back into the land by force, he would find many Englishmen ready to take up arms in his cause. Others crossed the sea in person, and pledged themselves to fight for him, and, if need were, to die in his behalf.^[925] These invitations, we are told, were no secret intrigue of a few men. The common voice of England, openly expressed and all but unanimous, demanded the return of the great confessor of English freedom.^[926]

The King’s preparations against Godwine.

These open manifestations on behalf of the exiles could not escape the knowledge of the King and his counsellors. It was thought necessary to put the south-eastern coast into a state of defence against any possible attack from the side of Flanders. The King and his Witan^[927]—one would like to have fuller details of a Gemót held under such influences—decreed that ships should be sent forth to |The fleet at Sandwich.| watch at the old watching-place of Sandwich.^[928] Forty ships were accordingly made ready, and they took their place at the appointed station under the command of the King’s nephew Earl Ralph, of Odda, the newly appointed Earl of the Western shires.^[929]

311Precautions of this kind against the return of one for whose return the mass of the nation was longing must have been unpopular in the highest degree. And, if anything could still further heighten the general discontent |Ravages of Gruffydd of North Wales. 1052.| with the existing state of things, it would be the events which were, just at this time, going on along the Welsh border. The Norman lords whom Eadward had settled in Herefordshire proved but poor defenders of their adopted country. The last continental improvements in the art of fortification proved vain to secure the land in the absence of chiefs of her own people. Gruffydd of North Wales marked his opportunity; he broke through his short-lived alliance with England, and the year of the absence of Godwine and his sons was marked by an extensive and successful invasion of the land of the Magesætas.^[930] Gruffydd doubtless took also into his reckoning the absence of the local chief at Sandwich. He crossed the border, he harried far and wide, and he seems not to have met with any resistance till |His victory near Leominster.| he had reached the neighbourhood of Leominster.^[931] There he was at last met by the levies of the country, together with the Norman garrison of Richard’s Castle.^[932] Perhaps, as in a later conflict with the same enemy in the same neighbourhood, English and foreign troops failed to act 312well together; at all events the Welsh King had the victory, and, after slaying many men of both nations, he went away with a large booty.^[933] Men remarked that this heavy blow took place exactly thirteen years after Gruffydd’s |1039.| first great victory at Rhyd-y-Groes.^[934] Though the coincidence is thus marked, we are not told, what day of what month was thus auspicious to the Welsh prince; but the dates of the events which follow show that it must have been early in the summer.

Godwine petitions for his return.

Godwine must by this time have seen that the path for his return was now open, and it was seemingly this last misfortune which determined him to delay no longer.^[935] It was not till all peaceful means had been tried and failed, that the banished Earl made up his mind to attempt a restoration by force. He sent many messages to the King, praying for a reconciliation. He offered now to Eadward, as he had before offered both to Harthacnut and to Eadward himself, to come into the royal presence and make a compurgation in legal form in answer to all the charges which had been brought against him.^[936] But all such petitions were in vain. It marks the increasing intercourse between England and the continent, that Godwine, when his own messages were not listened to, sought, as a last resource, to obtain his object through the intercession of foreign princes.^[937] Embassies on his behalf were sent by his host 313|Embassies from foreign princes on his behalf.| Count Baldwin and by the King of the French. Baldwin, who had so lately been at war with England, might seem an ill-chosen intercessor; but his choice for that purpose may have been influenced by his close connexion with the Court of Normandy. William was just now earnestly pressing his suit for Matilda. The ally of the great Duke might be expected to have some influence, if not with Eadward, at least with Eadward’s Norman favourites. King Henry, it will be remembered, claimed some sort of kindred with Eadward, though it is not easy to trace the two princes to a common ancestor.^[938] But King and Marquess alike pleaded in vain. Eadward was surrounded by his foreign priests and courtiers, and no intercessions on behalf of the champion of England were allowed to have any weight with the royal mind, even if they were ever allowed to reach the royal ear.^[939]

Godwine determines on a return by force.

The Earl was now satisfied that nothing more was to be hoped from any attempts at a peaceful reconciliation. He was also satisfied that, if he attempted to return by force, the great majority of Englishmen would be less likely to resist him than to join his banners. He therefore, towards the middle of the summer,^[940] finally determined to attempt his restoration by force of arms, and |Estimate of his conduct.| he began to make preparations for that purpose. His conduct in so doing hardly needs any formal justification. It is simply the old question of resistance or non-resistance. If any man ever was justified in resistance to established authority, or in irregular enterprises of any kind, undoubtedly Godwine was justified in his design of making 314his way back into England in arms. So to do was indeed simply to follow the usual course of every banished man of those times who could gather together the needful force. The enterprises of Osgod Clapa^[941] at an earlier time, and of Ælfgar at a later time, are not spoken of with any special condemnation by the historians of the time. And the enterprise of Godwine was of a very different kind from the enterprises of Ælfgar and of Osgod Clapa. Ælfgar and Osgod may have been banished unjustly, and they may, according to the morality of those times, have been guilty of no very great crime by seeking restoration with weapons in their hands. Still the question of their banishment or restoration was almost wholly a personal question. The existence or the welfare of England in no way depended on their presence or absence. But the rebellion or invasion of Godwine was a rebellion or an invasion in form only. His personal restoration meant nothing short of the deliverance of England from misgovernment and foreign influence. He had been driven out by a faction; |Comparison of Godwine with Henry of Bolingbroke (1399) and William of Orange (1688).| he was invited to return by the nation. The enterprise of Godwine in short should be classed, not with the ordinary forcible return of an exile, but with enterprises like those of Henry of Bolingbroke in the fourteenth century and of William of Orange in the seventeenth. In all three cases the deliverer undoubtedly sought the deliverance of the country; in all three he also undoubtedly sought his own restoration or advancement. But Godwine had one great advantage over both his successors. They had to deal with wicked Kings; he had only to deal with a weak King. They had to deal with evil counsellors, who, however evil, were still Englishmen. Godwine had simply to deliver King and people from the influence and thraldom of foreigners. He was thus able, while they were not able, to deliver 315England without resorting to the death, deposition, or exile of the reigning King, and, as far as he himself was personally concerned, without shedding a drop of English blood.

The narrative of this great deliverance forms one of the most glorious and spirit-stirring tales to be found in any age of our history. It is a tale which may be read with unmixed delight, save for one event, which, whether we count it for a crime or for a misfortune, throws a shadow on the renown, not of Godwine himself, but of his nobler son. Harold and Leofwine, we have seen, had made up their minds from the beginning to resort to force, whenever the opportunity should come. They had spent the winter in Ireland in making preparations for an expedition.^[942] They were by this time ready for action, and, now that their father had found all attempts at a peaceful reconciliation to be vain, the time for action seemed clearly to have come. |Harold and Leofwine sail from Dublin.| It was doubtless in concert with Godwine that Harold and Leofwine^[943] now set sail from Dublin with nine ships. Their crews probably consisted mainly of adventurers from the Danish havens of Ireland, ready for any enterprise which promised excitement and plunder. But it is quite possible that Englishmen, whether vehement partisans or simply desperate men, may have also taken service under the returning exiles. The part of England which they chose for their enterprise would have been well chosen, if |They enter the Bristol Channel.| they had been attacking a hostile country. They made for the debateable land forming the southern shore of the Bristol Channel, where no doubt large traces of the ancient British blood and language still remained.^[944] The 316country was left, through the absence of its Earl Odda with the fleet, without any single responsible chief. |The people of Somersetshire and Devonshire ill disposed towards them.| But it soon appeared that, from whatever cause, the wishes of the people of this part of the kingdom were not favourable to the enterprise of Harold and Leofwine. Possibly the prevalence of Celtic blood in the district may have made its inhabitants less zealous in the cause |Possible grounds for their hostility.| of the English deliverer than the inhabitants of the purely English shires. Possibly the evil deeds of Swegen, whose government had included Somersetshire, may have made men who had lived under his rule less attached to the whole House of Godwine than those who had lived under the rule of Harold or of Godwine himself. And we must remember that, up to this time, Harold had done nothing to win for himself any special renown or affection beyond the bounds of his own East-Anglian Earldom. As yet he shone simply with a glory reflected from that of his father. And his enterprise bore in some points an ill look. He had not shared the place of exile of his father, nor had he taken any part in his father’s attempts to bring about a peaceful restoration. He had gone, determined from the first on an armed return, to a land which might almost be looked on as an enemy’s country. He now came back at the head of a force whose character could not fail to strike Englishmen with suspicion and dread. We are therefore not surprised to hear that the men of Somerset and Devon met him in arms. |Harold’s landing at Porlock;| He landed on the borders of those two shires, in a wild and hilly region, which to this day remains thinly peopled, cut off from the chief centres even of local life, the last 317|description of the country.| place within the borders of South Britain where the wild stag still finds a shelter. The high ground of Exmoor, and the whole neighbouring hilly region, reaches its highest point in the Beacon of Dunkery, a height whose Celtic name has an appropriate sound among the remains of primæval times with which it is crowned. It is the highest point in its own shire, and it is overtopped by no point in Southern England, except by some of the Tors of Dartmoor in the still further west. A descent, remarkably gradual for so great a height, leads down to the small haven of Porlock, placed on a bay of no great depth, but well defined by two bold headlands guarding it to the east and west. The coast has been subject to many changes. A submarine forest,^[945] reaching along the whole shore, shows that the sea must have made advances in earlier times. And there is as little doubt that it has again retreated, and that what is now an alluvial flat was, eight hundred years back, a shallow and muddy inlet, accessible to the light craft of those days. Harold therefore landed at a spot nearer than the present small harbour to the small |Object of the enterprise.| town, or rather village, of Porlock.^[946] A landing in this remote region could contribute but little to the advancement of the general scheme of Godwine; the object of Harold must have been merely to obtain provisions for his crews. He came doubtless, as we shall find his father did also, ready for peaceable supplies if a friendly country afforded them, but ready also to provide for his followers 318|Harold’s victory at Porlock; he plunders the country, and sails to join his father.| by force, if force was needed for his purpose.^[947] But the whole neighbourhood was hostile; a large force was gathered together from both the border shires, and Harold, whether by his fault or by his misfortune, had to begin his enterprise of restoration and deliverance by fighting a battle with the countrymen whom he came to deliver. The exiles had the victory, but it is clear that they had to contend with a stout resistance on the part of a considerable body of men. More than thirty good Thegns and much other folk were slain.^[948] So large a number of Thegns collected at such a point shows that the force which they headed must have been gathered together, not merely from the immediate neighbourhood of Porlock, but from a considerable portion of the two shires.^[949] We may conceive that the system of beacons, which has been traced out over a long range of the hill-tops in the West of England, had done good service over the whole country long before the fleet of Harold had actually entered the haven of Porlock. But the crews of Harold’s ships were doubtless picked men, and their success, over even a much larger force of irregular levies, would have been in no way wonderful. Harold now plundered without opposition, and carried off what he would in the way of goods, cattle, and men.^[950] He then sailed to the south-west, he doubled the Land’s End,^[951] and sailed along the English Channel to meet his father.

Estimate of Harold’s conduct.

319This event is the chief stain which mars the renown of Harold, and which dims the otherwise glorious picture of the return of Godwine and his house. Harold’s own age perhaps easily forgave the deed. No contemporary writer speaks of it with any marked condemnation; one contemporary writer even seems distinctly to look upon it as a worthy exploit.^[952] It was in truth nothing more than the ordinary course of a banished man. Harold acted hardly worse than Osgod Clapa; he did not act by any means so badly as Ælfgar. But a man who towers above his own generation must pay, in more than one way, the penalty of his greatness. We instinctively judge Harold by a stricter standard than that by which we judge Ælfgar and Osgod Clapa. On such a character as his it is distinctly a stain to have resorted for one moment to needless violence, or to have shed one drop of English blood without good cause. The ravage and slaughter at Porlock distinctly throws a shade over the return of Godwine and over the fair fame of his son. It is a stain rather to be regretted than harshly to be condemned; but it is a stain nevertheless. It is a stain which was fully wiped out by later labours and triumphs in the cause of England. Still we may well believe that the blood of those thirty good Thegns and of those other folk was paid for in after years by prayers and watchings and fastings before the Holy Rood of Waltham; we may well believe that it still lay heavy on the hero’s soul as he marched forth to victory at Stamfordbridge and to more glorious overthrow at Senlac.

Godwin sets sail. June 22, 1052.

Harold and Leofwine were thus on their way to meet their father. Meanwhile the revolution was going on rapidly on the other side of England.^[953] Godwine had 320gathered together a fleet in the Yser,^[954] the river of Flanders which flows by Dixmuyden and Nieuport, and falls into the sea some way south-west of Bruges. He thence set |His first appearance off the English coast.| sail, one day before Midsummer eve, and sailed straight to Dungeness, south of Romney.^[955] At Sandwich the Earls Ralph and Odda were waiting for him, and a land force had also been called out for the defence of the coast.^[956] Some friendly messenger warned the Earl of his danger, and he sailed westward to Pevensey. In Sussex he was in his own country, among his immediate possessions and his immediate followers, and he seems to have designed a landing on the very spot where a landing so fatal to his house was made fourteen years later. The King’s ships followed after him, but a violent storm hindered either party from carrying out its designs. Neither side knew the whereabouts of the other;^[957] the King’s fleet |He returns to Bruges.| put back to Sandwich, while Godwine retired to his old quarters in Flanders.^[958] Great discontent seems to have 321followed this mishap on the King’s side. The blame was clearly laid on the Earls and on the force which they commanded. Eadward may not have learned the lesson of Cnut, and he perhaps thought that the elements were bound to submit to his will. The fleet was ordered to return to London, where the King would put at its head other Earls, and would supply them with other rowers.^[959] To London accordingly the fleet returned, but it was found easier to get rid of the old force than to provide a new one; everything lagged behind; probably nobody was zealous in the cause; even if any were zealous, their zeal would, as ever happened in that age, give way beneath the irksomeness of being kept under arms without any hope of immediate action. At last the whole naval force, which was to guard the coast and keep out the returning traitor, gradually dispersed, and each man went to his own home.^[960]

Godwine sails the second time to Wight.

The coast was now clear for Godwine’s return, and his friends in England were doubtless not slow to apprize him that his path was now open. He might now, it would seem, have sailed, without fear of any hindrance, from the mouth of the Yser to London Bridge. But, with characteristic wariness, he preferred not to make his great venture till he had strengthened his force by the addition of the ships of Harold and Leofwine, and till he had tried and made himself sure of the friendly feeling of a large part of England. In the first district however where he landed, he found the mass of the people either unfriendly 322to him or kept in check by fear of the ruling powers. From Flanders he sailed straight for the Isle of Wight, as a convenient central spot in which to await the coming of his sons from Ireland. He seems to have cruised along the coast between Wight and Portland, and to have harried the country without scruple wherever supplies were refused to him.^[961] But of armed resistance, such as Harold had met with at Porlock, we hear nothing, and there is nothing which implies that a single life was lost on either |Meeting of Godwine and Harold: they sail eastward.| side. At last the nine ships of Harold, rich with the plunder of Devon and Somerset, joined the fleet of his father at Portland. We need hardly stop to dwell on the mutual joy of father, sons, and brothers, meeting again after so many toils and dangers, and with so fair a hope of restoration for themselves and of deliverance for their country.^[962] It is more important to note that, from this time, we are expressly told that all systematic ravaging ceased; provisions however were freely taken wherever need demanded. But as the united fleet steered its course eastward towards Sandwich, the true feeling of the nation showed itself more and more plainly. As the deliverer sailed along the South-Saxon coast, the |Zeal in their cause shown by the men of Sussex, Kent, and Essex.| sea-faring men of every haven hastened to join his banners. From Kent, from Hastings,^[963] even from comparatively distant Essex,^[964] from those purely Saxon lands, whence the Briton had vanished, and where the Dane had never settled, came up the voice of England to welcome the men who had come to set her free. At every step men pressed to the shore, eager to swell the force of the patriots, with one voice pledging themselves to the 323national cause, and raising the spirit-stirring cry, “We will live and die with Earl Godwine.”^[965] At Pevensey, at Hythe, at Folkestone, at Dover, at Sandwich, provisions were freely supplied, hostages were freely given,^[966] every ship in their havens was freely placed at the bidding of their lawful Earl. The great body of the fleet |They enter the Thames and sail towards London.| sailed round the Forelands, entered the mouth of the Thames, and advanced right upon London. A detachment, |Unexplained ravages in Sheppey.| we are told, lagged behind, and did great damage in the Isle of Sheppey, burning the town of King’s Middleton. They then sailed after the Earls towards London.^[967] The language of our story seems to imply that neither Godwine nor Harold had any hand in this seemingly quite wanton outrage. Needlessly to harm the house or estate of any Englishman at such a moment was quite contrary to Godwine’s policy, quite contrary to the course which both he and Harold had followed since they met at Portland. The deed was probably done by some unruly portion of the fleet, by some Englishman who seized the opportunity to gratify some local jealousy, by some Dane who, consciously or unconsciously, looked with a pirate’s eye on the corner of Britain where his race had first found a winter’s shelter.^[968]

Godwine reaches Southwark. September 14, 1052.

The fleet was now in the Thames. Strengthened by the whole naval force of south-eastern England, the Earl had now a following which was formidable indeed. The river was covered with ships; their decks were thick 324with warriors harnessed for the battle.^[969] In such guise the Earl advanced to Southwark, and paused there, in sight doubtless of his own house, of the house whence he and his sons had fled for their lives a year before.^[970] He had to wait for the tide, and he employed the interval in sending messages to the citizens of London.^[971] The townsfolk of the great city were not a whit behind their brethren of Kent and Sussex in zeal for the national cause. |London declares for Godwine.| The spirit which had beaten back Swend and Cnut, the spirit which was in after times to make London ever the stronghold of English freedom, the spirit which made its citizens foremost in the patriot armies alike of the thirteenth and of the seventeenth centuries, was now as warm in the hearts of those gallant burghers as in any earlier or later age. With a voice all but unanimous, the citizens declared in favour of the great Earl; a few votes only, the votes, it may be, of strangers or of courtiers, were given against the emphatic resolution that what the Earl would the city would.^[972]

The King hastens to London with an army.

But meanwhile where was King Eadward? At a later crisis of hardly inferior moment we shall find him taking his pleasure among the forests of Wiltshire, and needing no little persuasion to make him leave his sport and give a moment’s thought to the affairs of his Kingdom. He must have been engaged at this time in some such absorbing pursuit, as he appears to have heard nothing of 325Godwine’s triumphant progress along the southern coast till the Earl had actually reached Sandwich. The news awakened him to a fit of unusual energy. The interests at stake were indeed not small; the return of Godwine might cut him off from every face that reminded him of his beloved Normandy; he might be forced again to surround himself with Englishmen, and to recall his wife from her cloister to his palace. In such a cause King Eadward did not delay. He came with speed to London, accompanied by the Earls Ralph and Odda, and surrounded by a train of Norman knights and priests, and sent out orders for the immediate gathering in arms of such of his subjects as still remained loyal to him.^[973] But men had no heart in the cause; the summons was slowly and imperfectly obeyed. The King contrived however, before the fleet of Godwine actually reached the city, to get together fifty ships,^[974] those no doubt whose crews had forsaken them a few weeks earlier. And he contrived, out of his own housecarls, strengthened, it would seem, by the levies of some of the northern shires, to gather a force strong enough to line the northern shore of the Thames with armed men.^[975]

Godwine before London.

The day on which Godwine and his fleet reached Southwark was an auspicious one. It was the Feast of the 326|Monday, September 14, 1052.| Exaltation of the Holy Cross.^[976] It was the day kept in memory of the triumphant return and the devout humility of that renowned Emperor who restored the glory of the Roman arms, who rivalled the great Macedonian in a second overthrow of the Persian power, and who brought with him, as the choicest trophy of his victories, that holiest |628.| of Christian relics which his sword had won back from heathen bondage. Harold, like Heraclius, was returning to his own, perhaps already the sworn votary of that revered relic whose name he chose as his war-cry, and in whose honour he was perhaps already planning that great foundation which was of itself enough to make his name immortal. The day of the Holy Cross must indeed have been a day of the brightest omen to the future founder of Waltham. And a memorable and a happy day it was. Events were thickly crowded into its short hours, events which, even after so many ages, may well make every English heart swell with pride. It is something indeed to feel ourselves of the blood and speech of the actors of that day and of its morrow. The tide for which the fleet had waited came soon after the Earls had received the promise of support from the burghers of London. The anchors were weighed; the fleet sailed on with all confidence. The bridge was passed without hindrance, and the Earls found themselves, as they had found themselves a year before, face to face with the armies of their sovereign. But men’s minds had indeed changed since the Witan of England had passed a decree of outlawry against Godwine and his house. Besides his fleet, Godwine now found himself at the head of a |Zeal of Godwine’s followers.| land force which might seem to have sprung out of the earth at his bidding. The King’s troops lined the north bank of the Thames, but its southern bank was lined, at 327least as thickly, with men who had come together, like their brethren of the southern coasts, ready to live and die with the great Earl. The whole force of the neighbourhood, instead of obeying the King’s summons, had come unsummoned to the support of Godwine, and stood ready in battle array awaiting his orders.^[977] And different indeed was the spirit of the two hosts. The Earl’s men were eager for action; it needed all his eloquence, all his authority, to keep them back from jeoparding or disgracing his cause by too hasty an attack on their sovereign |Lukewarmness of the King’s troops.| or on their countrymen.^[978] But the Englishmen who had obeyed Eadward’s call were thoroughly disheartened and lukewarm in his cause. The King’s own housecarls shrank from the horrors of a civil war, a war in which Englishmen would be called on to slaughter one another, for no object but to rivet the yoke of outlandish men about their necks.^[979] With the two armies in this temper, the success of Godwine was certain; all that was needed was for the 328Earl to insure that it should be a bloodless success. The |Godwine demands his restoration;| object of Godwine was to secure his own restoration and the deliverance of his country without striking a blow. He sent a message to the King, praying that he and his might be restored to all that had been unjustly taken from |Eadward hesitates; increased indignation of Godwine’s men;| them.^[980] The King, with his Norman favourites around him, hesitated for a while. The indignation of the Earl’s men grew deeper and louder; fierce cries were heard against the King and against all who took part with him; no power less than that of Godwine could have checked the demand for instant battle.^[981] The result of a battle could hardly have been doubtful. Ralph the Timid and Richard the son of Scrob, even the pious Earl Odda himself, would hardly, even at the head of more willing soldiers, have found themselves a match for the warrior who had fleshed his sword at Sherstone and Assandun, and who had made the name of Englishman a name of terror among the stoutest |Godwine restrains their eagerness.| warriors of the shores of the Baltic.^[982] But it was not with axe and javelin that that day’s victory was to be won. The mighty voice, the speaking look and gesture, of that old man eloquent could again sway assemblies of Englishmen at his will.^[983] His irresistible tongue now pleaded 329with all earnestness against any hasty act of violence or disloyalty. His own conscience was clear from any lack of faithfulness; he would willingly die rather than do, or allow to be done on his behalf, any act of wrong or irreverence towards his Lord the King.^[984] The appeal was successful in every way. The eagerness of his own men was checked, and time was given for wiser counsels to |Embassy of Stigand; hostages exchanged and matters referred to a Gemót.| resume their sway on the other side. Bishop Stigand and other wise men, both from within and from without the city, appeared on board the Earl’s ship in the character of mediators. It was soon agreed to give hostages on both sides, and to defer the decision of all matters to a solemn Gemót to be holden the next morning.^[985] Godwine, Harold, and such of their followers as thought good, now left their |Godwine and Harold land.| ships, and once more set foot in peace on the soil of their native island.^[986] The Earl and his sons no doubt betook themselves to his own house in Southwark, and there waited for the gathering of the next day with widely different feelings from those with which they had last waited in that house for the decisions of an Assembly of the Wise.

But there were those about Eadward who could not with the like calmness await the sentence of the great tribunal which was to give judgement on the morrow. |Fears of the King’s Norman favourites.| There were those high in Church and State who knew too well what would be the inevitable vote of a free assembly of Englishmen. There were Thegns and Prelates in Eadward’s court who saw in the promised meeting of 330the Witan of the land only a gathering of men eager to inflict on them the righteous punishment of their evil deeds. First and foremost among them was the Norman monk whom the blind partiality of Eadward had thrust into the highest place in the English Church. Robert of Jumièges, the man who, more than any other one man, had stirred up strife between the King and his people, the man who, more than any other one man, had driven the noblest sons of England into banishment, now felt that his hour was come. He dared not face the assembled nation which he had outraged; he dared not take his place in that great Council of which his office made him the highest member. The like fear fell on Ulf of Dorchester, the Bishop who had done nought bishoplike, on William of London, and on all the Frenchmen, priests and knights alike, who had sunned themselves in the smiles of the court, but who shrank from meeting the assembly of the people. Flight |General flight of the foreigners.| was their only hope. As soon as the news came that peace was made, and that all matters were referred to a lawful Gemót, the whole company of the strangers who had been the curse of England mounted their horses and rode for their lives. Eastward, westward, northward, Norman knights and priests were seen hurrying. Godwine and Harold, in the like case, had been treacherously pursued;^[987] but these men, criminals as they were fleeing from the vengeance of an offended nation, were allowed to go whither they would unmolested. Whatever violence was done was wholly the act of the strangers. Some rode west to the castle in Herefordshire, Pentecost’s castle, the original cause of so much mischief; some rode towards a castle in the north, belonging to the Norman Staller, Robert the son of Wymarc.^[988] The Bishops, perhaps the objects of a still fiercer 331popular indignation than even the lay favourites, undertook a still more perilous journey by themselves. What became of William of London is not quite plain,^[989] but we have |Flight of Archbishop Robert and Bishop Ulf.| a graphic description of the escape of the Prelates of Canterbury and Dorchester. Robert and Ulf, mounted and sword in hand, cut their way through the streets, wounding and slaying as they went;^[990] they burst through the east gate of London; they rode straight for the haven of Eadwulfsness;^[991] there they found an old crazy ship;^[992] they went on board of her and so gat them over sea. Never again did those evil Prelates trouble England with their personal presence; but the tongue of Robert was still busy in other lands to do hurt to England and her people. The patriotic chronicler raises an emphatic note of triumph over the ignominious flight of the stranger Primate. “He left behind his pall and all Christendom here in the land, even as God it willed; for that he had before taken upon him that worship, as God willed it not.”^[993]

Meeting of the Mycel Gemót. Tuesday, September 15th.

332In the morning the great Assembly met.^[994] The great city and its coasts were now clear of strangers, save such as had come in the train of the deliverers.^[995] The people of England—for such a gathering may well deserve that name—came together to welcome its friends and to pronounce sentence upon its enemies. The two armies and the citizens of London formed a multitude which no building could |It meets in the open air.| contain. That Mickle Gemót, whose memory long lived in the minds of Englishmen, came together, in old Teutonic fashion, in the open air without the walls of London.^[996] The scene was pictured ages before by the pencil of Tacitus and sung in yet earlier days by the voice of Homer. It may still be seen, year by year, among the |Its popular character.| mountains of Uri and in the open market-place of Trogen. Other Assemblies of those times may have shrunk up into Councils of a small body of Thegns and Prelates; but on that great day the English people appeared, in all the fulness of its ancient rights, as a coordinate authority with the English King.^[997] Men came armed to the place of meeting;^[998] our fathers did so in their old homes beyond the 333sea, and our distant kinsmen still preserve the same immemorial use in the free assemblies of Appenzell.^[999] But the enemy was no longer at hand; in that great gathering of liberated and rejoicing Englishmen sword and axe were needed only as parts of a solemn pageant, or to give further effect to the harangue of a practised orator. There, girt with warlike weapons, but shorn of the help and countenance of Norman knights and Norman churchmen,^[1000] sat the King of the English, driven at last to meet face to face with a free assembly of his people. There were all the Earls and all the best men that were in this land;^[1001] there was the mighty multitude of English freemen, gathered to hail the return of the worthiest of their own blood. And |Godwine at the Gemót.| there, surrounded by his four valiant sons, stood the great deliverer, the man who had set the King upon his throne, the man who had refused to obey his unlawful orders, who had cleared the land of his unworthy favourites, but who had never swerved in his true loyalty to the King and his Kingdom. The man at whose mere approach the foreign knights and Prelates had fled for their lives,^[1002] could now |He supplicates the King;| afford to assume the guise of humble supplication towards the sovereign who had received his Crown at his hands. 334Godwine stood forth; he laid his axe at the foot of the throne, and knelt, as in the act of homage, before his Lord the King.^[1003] By the Crown upon his brow, whose highest and brightest ornament was the cross of Christ, he conjured his sovereign to allow him to clear himself |he speaks to the people.| before the King and his people of all the crimes which had been laid against him and his house.^[1004] The demand could not be refused, and the voice which had so often swayed assemblies of Englishmen, was heard once more, in all the fulness of its eloquence, setting forth the innocence of Godwine himself and of Harold and all his sons.^[1005] Few^[1006] and weighty were the words which the great Earl spoke that day before the King and all the people of the land.^[1007] But they were words which at once carried the whole Assembly with them. Those who have heard the most spirit-stirring of earthly sounds, when a sovereign people binds itself to observe the laws which it has itself decreed, when thousands of voices join as one man in the repetition of one 335solemn formula,^[1008] can conceive the shout of assent with which the assembled multitude agreed to the proposal that Godwine should be deemed to have cleared himself of |The Assembly decrees his acquittal and restoration.| every charge. The voice of that great Assembly, the voice of the English nation, at once declared him guiltless, at once decreed the restoration of himself, his sons, and all his followers, to all the lands, offices, and honours which they had held in the days before his outlawry. The old charges were thus again solemnly set aside, and an amnesty was proclaimed for all the irregular acts of the last three months of revolution. The last year was as it were wiped out; Godwine was once more Earl of the West-Saxons, Harold was once more Earl of the East-Angles, as if Eustace and Robert had never led astray the simplicity |It decrees the outlawry and deprivation of Archbishop Robert and many other Normans.| of the royal saint. And yet more; it was not enough merely to put England again into the state in which she stood at the moment of the banishment of Godwine. It was needful to punish the authors of all the evils that had happened, and to guard against the possible recurrence of such evils in days to come. The deepest in guilt of all the royal favourites was felt to be the Norman Archbishop. He had taken himself beyond the reach of justice; but, had he been present, the mildness of English political warfare would have hindered any severer sentence than that which was actually pronounced. “He had done most to cause the strife between Earl Godwine and the King”^[1009]—the words of the formal resolution peep out, 336as they so often do, in the words of the Chronicler—and, on this charge, Robert was deprived of his see, and was solemnly declared an outlaw. The like sentence was pronounced against “all the Frenchmen”—we are again reading the words of the sentence—“who had reared up bad law, and judged unjust judgements, and counselled evil |Normans excepted from the sentence.| counsel in this land.”^[1010] But the sentence did not extend to all the men of Norman birth or of French speech who were settled in the country. It was intended only to strike actual offenders. By an exception capable of indefinite and dangerous extension, those were excepted “whom the King liked, and who were true to him and all his folk.”^[1011] Lastly, in the old formula which we have so often already |“Good law” decreed.| come across—“Good law was decreed for all folk.”^[1012] As in other cases, the expression refers far more to administration than to legislation, to the observance of old laws rather than to the enactment of new. The Frenchmen had reared up bad law; that is, they had been guilty of corrupt and unjust administration; the good law, that is, the good government of former times, was now to be restored. There was no need to renew the Law of Eadgar or of Cnut or of any other King of past times. The “good state,” as an Italian patriot might have called it, was not, in the eyes of that Assembly, a vision of past times, a tradition of the days of their fathers or of the old time before them. It was simply what every man could remember for himself, in the days before Robert, and men 337like Robert, had obtained exclusive possession of the royal ear. There was no need to go back to any more distant standard than the earliest years of the reigning King. Good Law was decreed for all folk. Things were to be once more as they had been in the days when Earl Godwine had been the chief adviser of the King on whom he had himself bestowed the Crown.

Personal reconciliation of Godwine and the King.

The work of the Assembly was done; the innocent had been restored, the guilty had been punished; the nation had bound itself to the maintenance of law and right. Godwine was again the foremost man in the realm. But though the political restoration was perfect, the personal reconciliation seems still to have cost the King a struggle.^[1013] It required the counsel of wise men, and a full conviction that all resistance was hopeless, before Eadward again received his injured father-in-law to his personal friendship. At last he yielded; King and Earl walked unarmed to the Palace of Westminster, and there, on his own hearth, Eadward again admitted Godwine to the kiss of peace. To receive again to his friendship the wife and sons of Godwine, Gytha, Harold, Tostig, Gyrth, and Leofwine, probably cost him no special struggle. They had never personally offended him, and they seem, even before their outlawry, to have won his personal affection. But the complete restoration of the family to its former honours required another step which |Restoration of the Lady Eadgyth.| may perhaps have caused Eadward a pang. When Godwine, his wife and his sons, were restored to their old honours, it was impossible to refuse the like restitution to his daughter. The Lady Eadgyth was brought back with all royal pomp from her cloister at Wherwell; she received again all the lands and goods of which she had been deprived, and was restored to the place, whatever that 338place may have been, which she had before held in the court and household of Eadward.^[1014]

Absence of Swegen;

The restoration of the house of Godwine to its rank and honours was thus complete, so far as the members of that house had appeared in person to claim again that which they had lost. But in the glories of that day the eldest born of Godwine and Gytha had no part. Swegen had shared his father’s banishment; he had not shared his father’s return. His guilty, but not hardened, soul had been stricken to the earth by the memory of his crimes. |his pilgrimage to Jerusalem,| The blood of Beorn, the wrongs of Eadgifu, lay heavy upon his spirit. At the bidding of his own remorse, he had left his father and brothers behind in Flanders, and had gone, barefooted, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Tomb. He fulfilled his vow, but he lived not to return to his Earldom or to his native land. While his father and brothers were making their triumphant defence before their assembled countrymen, Swegen was toiling back, slowly and wearily, through the dwelling-places of men of other tongues and of other creeds. The toil was too great for a frame no doubt already bowed down by remorse and penance. Cold, |and death in Lykia. September 29, 1052.| exposure, and weariness were too much for him, and fourteen days after Godwine’s solemn restoration in London, the eldest son of Godwine breathed his last in some unknown spot of the distant land of Lykia.^[1015]

339There is no doubt that the three great decrees, for the restoration of Godwine and his family, for the outlawry of the Archbishop and the other Normans, and for the renewal of the good laws, were all passed in the great Gemót of this memorable Tuesday.^[1016] Other measures which were their natural complement may well have been dealt with in later, perhaps in less crowded and excited, |Disposition of Earldoms; Ælfgar gives way to Harold.| assemblies. Some of the greatest offices in Church and State had to be disposed of. Godwine and Harold received their old Earldoms back again. The restoration of Harold implied the deposition of Ælfgar. It is singular that we find no distinct mention either of him or of his father, or yet of Siward, through the whole history of the revolution. The only hint which we have on the subject seems to imply that they at least acquiesced in the changes which were made, and even that Ælfgar cheerfully submitted to the loss |Ralph.| of his Earldom.^[1017] As Swegen did not return, there was no need to disturb Ralph in his Earldom of the Magesætas. |Odda.| Odda must have given up that portion of Godwine’s Earldom which had been entrusted to him,^[1018] but he seems to have been indemnified by the Earldom of the Hwiccas, held most probably with the reservation of a superiority on the part of Leofric.^[1019]

The vacant Bishopricks.

The disposal of the Bishopricks which had become vacant by the flight of their foreign occupants was a more important matter, at least it led to more important consequences in the long run. At the moment of Godwine’s restoration, it probably did not occur to any Englishman to doubt that they were vacant both in fact and in law. Robert and Ulf had fled from their sees; they had been declared outlaws by the highest authority of the nation, 340or rather by the nation itself. Our forefathers most likely thought very little about canonical subtleties. They would hardly argue the point whether the Bishops had resigned or had been deprived, nor would they doubt that the nation had full power to deprive them. In whatever way the vacancies had occurred, the sees were in fact vacant; there was no Archbishop at Canterbury and no Bishop at Dorchester. That the King and his Witan would be stepping beyond their powers in filling those sees was not likely to come into |Relation of Church and State at the time. Identity of the two bodies.| any man’s head. We must remember how thoroughly the English nation and the English Church were then identified. No broad line was drawn between ecclesiastical and temporal causes, between ecclesiastical and temporal offices. The immediate personal duties of an Earl and of a Bishop were undoubtedly different; but the two dignitaries acted within their shire with a joint authority in many matters which, a hundred years later, would have been divided between a distinct civil and a distinct ecclesiastical tribunal. In appointing a Bishop, though we have seen that canonical election was not shut out, we have also seen that the Witan of the land had their share in the matter, and that it was by the King’s writ that the Bishoprick was formally bestowed.^[1020] What the King and his Witan gave, the King and his Witan could doubtless take away, and they accordingly proceeded to deal with the sees of the outlawed Bishops exactly as they would have dealt |Vacancy of Canterbury filled by Stigand. 1052.| with the Earldoms of outlawed Earls. It might almost seem that the see of the chief offender, the Norman Primate, was at once bestowed by the voice of the great Assembly which restored Godwine.^[1021] It was at all events 341bestowed within the year, while the Bishopricks of London and Dorchester were allowed to remain vacant some time longer. It may perhaps be thought that the appointment which was actually made to the see of Canterbury bears signs of being an act of the joyous fervour with which the nation welcomed its deliverance. It might have been expected that the claims of Ælfric to the Primacy would have revived on the expulsion of Robert. Ælfric had been canonically elected by the monks of Christ Church; no one seems to have objected to him except the King and his Frenchmen; he possessed all possible virtues, and he was moreover a kinsman of Earl Godwine. But, in the enthusiasm of the moment, there was one name which would attract more suffrages than that of any other Prelate or Priest in England. On that great Holy Cross Day the services of Stigand to the national cause had been second only to those of Godwine himself. As Robert had been the first to make strife, so Stigand had been the first to make peace, between the King and the great Earl. For such a service the highest place in the national Church would not, at the moment, seem too splendid a reward. Ælfric was accordingly forgotten, and Stigand was, either in the great Gemót of September or in the regular Gemót of the following Christmas, appointed to the Archbishoprick of Canterbury. With the Primacy, according to a practice vicious enough in itself, but which might have been defended by abundance of precedents, he continued to hold the see of Winchester in plurality.

Importance of this appointment.

This appointment of Stigand was one of great moment in many ways. Amongst other things, it gave an |Handle given to the Normans by Robert’s expulsion.| excellent handle to the wily Duke of the Normans, and thus became one of the collateral causes of the Norman Conquest. The outlawed Robert retired in the end to his own monastery of Jumièges, and there died and was buried. But he did not die till he had made Europe resound 342with the tale of his wrongs. The world soon heard how a Norman Primate had been expelled from his see, how an Englishman had been enthroned in his place, by sheer secular violence, without the slightest pretence of canonical form. Robert told his tale at Rome;^[1022] we may be sure that he also told it at Rouen. William treasured it up, and knew how to use it when the time came. In his bill of indictment against England, the expulsion of Archbishop Robert appears as a prominent count.^[1023] It is bracketted with the massacre of Saint Brice, with the murder of Ælfred, and with all the other stories which, though they could not make William’s claim to the Crown one whit stronger, yet served admirably to discredit the cause of England in men’s minds. No one knew better than William how to make everything of this sort tell. The restoration of Godwine was an immediate check to all his plans; it rendered his hopes of a peaceful succession far less probable. But the expulsion of Robert and the other Normans was a little sweet in the cup of bitterness. The English, and Earl Godwine himself, in their insular recklessness of canonical niceties, had unwittingly put another weapon into the hands of the foe who was carefully biding his time.

Doubtful ecclesiastical position of Stigand.

Even in England the position of Stigand was a very doubtful one.^[1024] He was de facto Archbishop, he acted as such in all political matters, and was addressed as such in royal writs. We hear of no opposition to him, of no attempt at his removal, till William himself was King. 343He was undoubtedly an able and patriotic statesman, and his merits in this way doubtless prevented any direct move against him. And yet even Englishmen, and patriotic Englishmen, seem to have been uneasy as to his ecclesiastical position. For six years he was an Archbishop without a pallium; it was one of the charges against him |He receives the pallium from the Antipope Benedict. 1058.| that he used the pallium of his predecessor Robert. At last he obtained the coveted ornament from Rome, but it was from the hands of a Pontiff whose occupation of the Holy See was short, and who, as his cause was unsuccessful, was not looked on by the Church as a canonical Pope. In fact, in strict ecclesiastical eyes, Stigand’s reception of the pallium from Benedict the Tenth seems only to have |His ministrations commonly avoided.| made matters worse than they were before. At any rate, both before and after this irregular investiture, men seem to have avoided recourse to his hands for any great ecclesiastical rite. Most of the Bishops of his province were, during his incumbency, consecrated by other hands.^[1025] Even Harold himself, politically his firm friend, preferred the ministry of other Prelates in the two great ecclesiastical ceremonies of his life, the consecration of Waltham and his own coronation. One of our Chroniclers, not indeed the most patriotic of their number, distinctly and significantly denies Stigand’s right to be called Archbishop.^[1026] One cannot help thinking that all this canonical precision must have arisen among the foreign ecclesiastics who held English preferment, among the Lotharingians favoured by Godwine and Harold, no less than among the King’s own Normans. But at all events the scruple soon became prevalent among Englishmen of all classes. An ecclesiastical punctilio which led Harold himself, on the occasion of two of the most solemn events of his life, to offer a distinct slight to 344a political friend of the highest rank, must have obtained a very firm possession of the national mind.

Ulf succeeded by Wulfwig. 1053–1067.

The case of Stigand is the more remarkable, because no such difficulties are spoken of as arising with regard to the position of another Prelate whose case seems at first sight to have been just the same as his own. If Robert was irregularly deprived, Ulf was equally so. Yet no objection seems to have been made to the canonical character of Wulfwig, who, in the course of the next year, succeeded Ulf in the see of Dorchester.^[1027] It is possible that the key to the difference may be found in the fact of the long vacancy of Dorchester. This suggests the idea of some application to Rome, which was successful in the case of Wulfwig and unsuccessful in the case of Stigand. We can well conceive that the deprivation of Ulf may have been confirmed, and that of Robert, as far as the Papal power could annul it, annulled. It must be remembered that Ulf, on account of his utter lack of learning, had found great difficulty in obtaining the Papal approval of his first nomination. The sins of Robert, on the other hand, seem to have been only sins against England, which would pass for very venial errors at Rome. This difference may perhaps account for the different treatment of their two successors. At any rate, Wulfwig seems to have found no opposition in any quarter to his occupancy of the great Mid-English Bishoprick. And he seems to have himself set the example of the scruple which has been just mentioned against recognizing Stigand in any |Leofwine Bishop of Lichfield. 1053–1067.| purely spiritual matter. Along with Leofwine, who in the same year became Bishop of Lichfield, he went beyond sea to receive consecration, and the way in which this journey is mentioned seems to imply that their motive 345was a dislike to be consecrated by the hands of the new Metropolitan.^[1028]

William of London retains his Bishoprick.

The see of London was treated in a different way from those of Canterbury and Dorchester, and a way certainly most honourable to its Norman occupant. We have seen that it is not certain whether Bishop William accompanied Robert and Ulf in their escape from England.^[1029] It is certain that, if he left England, he was before long invited to return and to reoccupy his see. This may have been the act of Harold after the death of his father. It is an obvious conjecture that Harold would be somewhat less strict in such matters than his wary and experienced parent, and that he would listen with somewhat more favour to the King’s requests for the retention or restoration of some of his favourites.^[1030] But it is certain that a Norman whom either Godwine or Harold allowed either to retain, or to return to, the great see of London must have been a man of a very different kind from Robert and Ulf. We are expressly told that William’s Bishoprick was restored to him on account of his good character.^[1031] Indeed the character which could obtain such forbearance for a Norman at such a moment must have been unusually good, when we remember that he actually had an English competitor for the see. Spearhafoc, it will not be forgotten, had been regularly nominated to the Bishoprick, and though refused consecration, had held its temporalities 346till the outlawry of Godwine allowed a Norman to be put in his place.^[1032] But the claims of Spearhafoc on the see of London seem to have been as wholly forgotten as the claims of Ælfric on the see of Canterbury. William retained the Bishoprick throughout the reigns of Eadward and Harold, and he died, deeply honoured by the city over which he |1070.| ruled, four years after the accession of his namesake.

Normans allowed to remain or return.

William was the only Norman who retained a Bishoprick, as Ralph was the only stranger of any nation—for we can hardly count Siward as a stranger—who retained an Earldom, after the restoration of Godwine. But, under the terms of the exception to the general outlawry of Normans, a good many men of that nation retained or recovered inferior, though still considerable, offices. We have a list of those who were thus excepted, which contains some names which we are surprised to find there. The exception was to apply to those only who had been true to the King and his people. Yet among the Normans who remained we find Richard the son of Scrob,^[1033] |Osbern of Richard’s castle.| and among those who returned we find his son Osbern. These two men were among the chief authors of all evil. Osbern was so conscious of guilt, or so fearful of popular vengeance, that, in company with a comrade named Hugh, he threw himself on the mercy of Earl Leofric. Osbern and Hugh surrendered their castles, and passed with the Earl’s safe-conduct into Scotland, where, along with other exiles, they were favourably received by the reigning King Macbeth.^[1034] Yet it is certain that Osbern afterwards returned, and held both lands and offices in Herefordshire.^[1035] 347Others mentioned are Robert the Deacon, described as the father-in-law of Richard, and who must therefore have been an old man,^[1036] Humphrey Cocksfoot, whom I cannot further identify, and Ælfred the King’s stirrup-holder.^[1037] The list might be largely extended on the evidence of Domesday and the Charters. Some of the most remarkable names are those of the Stallers, Robert the son of Wymarc and Ralph,^[1038] and the King’s Chamberlain, Hugh or Hugolin, a person who has found his way from the dry entries in the Survey and the Charters into the legend of his sainted master.^[1039] Altogether the number of Normans who remained in England during the later days of |Some of them probably restored after Godwine’s death.| Eadward was clearly not small. And, as some at least were evidently restored after flight or banishment, the suggestion again presents itself that their restoration was owing to special entreaties of the King after the death of Godwine. Harold, in the first days of his administration, may hardly have been in a position to refuse such entreaties. And, in any case, though we may call it a weakness to allow 348men, some of whom at least were dangerous, to remain in, or return to, the country, yet for a subject newly exalted to give too willing an ear to the prayers of his sovereign, is a weakness which may easily be forgiven.

The revolution was thus accomplished, a revolution of |Estimate of Godwine’s conduct.| which England may well be proud. In the words of a contemporary writer, the wisdom of Godwine had redressed all the evils of the country without shedding a drop of blood.^[1040] The moderation of the Earl, the way in which he kept back his ardent followers, the way in which he preserved his personal loyalty to the King,^[1041] are beyond all praise. He had delivered his country, he and his had been restored to the favour of their prince, and he now again entered on his old duties as Earl of the West-Saxons and virtual ruler of the Kingdom of England. We may be sure that his popularity had never been so high, or his general authority so boundless, as it was during the short remainder of his life. For Godwine was not destined to any long enjoyment of his renewed honour and prosperity; England was not destined to look much longer |Godwine’s illness.| upon the champion who had saved her. Soon after his restoration the Earl began to sicken;^[1042] but he still continued his attention to public affairs, and we can see the working of his vigorous hand in the energetic way in |Christmas Gemót at Gloucester. 1052–1053.| which a Welsh marauder was dealt with at the Christmas Gemót of this year, held as usual at Gloucester. Rhys, 349the brother of Gruffydd King of the South-Welsh, had been guilty of many plundering expeditions at a place called Bulendún, the position of which seems to be unknown. Early in the year the Northern Gruffydd had ravaged the border at pleasure; now we read, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, that a decree of the Witan—a bill of attainder we may call it—was passed for the |Rhys beheaded and his head brought to Eadward. January 5, 1053.| execution of the Welsh prince.^[1043] The decree was duly carried out, and the Christmas festivities were not over, when the head of Rhys was brought to King Eadward, on the vigil of the Epiphany, exactly thirteen years before his |Arnwig resigns the Abbey of Peterborough. Leofric succeeds.| own death.^[1044] It was seemingly in the same Gemót that Arnwig, Abbot of Peterborough, resigned his abbey, “and gave it to Leofric the monk by the King’s leave and that of the monks.”^[1045] This expression is remarkable, as illustrating that union of royal, capitular, and we may add parliamentary, action, which we have already noticed as prevailing in the appointment of English Prelates in those days.^[1046] The process was no doubt the same as that by 350which it had been attempted to raise Ælfric to the see of Canterbury. The monks, at the suggestion of Arnwig, elected Leofric as his successor. They petitioned the King and his Witan to confirm the election. In this case the |Leofric Abbot of Peterborough. 1053–1066.| confirmation was granted, whereas in the case of Ælfric it had been refused. Abbot Leofric, a nephew of his namesake the Earl, was a man of high birth and of high spirit.^[1047] He ruled the great house of Saint Peter with all honour for thirteen years; he enriched the monastery with lands and ornaments of all kinds, and won for it the favour of the King and all the great men of the land. Peterborough, under his rule, became so rich in the precious metals that men called the house Gildenborough.^[1048] But, in the eyes of English patriots, Abbot Leofric has won a still higher fame by an act less clearly coming within the range of his ecclesiastical duties. He was one of those great Lords of the Church who did not feel that they were hindered by their monastic vows from marching by the side of Harold to the great battle.^[1049]

Easter Gemót at Winchester. 1053.

The next great festival of the Church, the next great assembly of the English Witan, beheld the death of the most renowned Englishman of that generation. The King kept the Easter festival at Winchester, and on the Monday of that week of rejoicing, the Earl of the West-Saxons, with his sons Harold, Tostig, and Gyrth, were admitted |Godwine’s illness, April 12,| to the royal table. During the meal Godwine fell from his seat speechless and powerless. His sons lifted him from the ground, and carried him to the King’s own bower, in hopes of his recovery. Their hopes were in vain; the Earl |and death, April 15.| never spoke again, and, after lying insensible for three days, he died on the following Thursday. Such is the 351simple, yet detailed, account which a contemporary writer gives us of an event which has, perhaps even more than any other event of these times, been seized upon as a subject for Norman romance and calumny. There was undoubtedly something striking and awful in the sight of the first man in England, in all the full glory of his recovered power, thus suddenly smitten with his death-blow. He had been, as we have seen, ailing for some months, but the actual stroke, when it came, seems to have been quite unlooked for. It is not wonderful that, in such a death at such a moment, men saw a |Norman fictions about the death of Godwine.| special work of divine judgement. It is not wonderful that Norman enemies brought the old scandals up again, and decked out the tale of the death of the murderer of Ælfred with the most appalling details of God’s vengeance upon the hardened and presumptuous sinner. I shall elsewhere discuss their romantic inventions, which in truth belong less to the province of the historian than to that of the comparative mythologist.^[1050] It is more important to note here that one English writer seems to see in Godwine’s death the punishment of his real or supposed |Bounty of Gytha.| aggressions on the property of the Church.^[1051] On this last score however the bounty of his widow did all that she could to make atonement for any wrongdoings on the part of the deceased. The pious munificence of Gytha is acknowledged even by those who are most bitter against her husband, and it now showed itself in lavish offerings for the repose of the soul of Godwine.^[1052] His place of burial 352|Godwine buried in the Old Minster.| need hardly be mentioned. The man who was greater than a King, the maker and the father of Kings, found his last resting-place among Kings. His corpse was laid by that of the King under whom he had risen to greatness, by that of the Lady whose rights he had so stoutly defended, by that of the first King whom he had placed on the West-Saxon throne, by that of the murdered nephew whose death had cast the first shade of gloom upon his house. The Earl of the West-Saxons, dying in the West-Saxon capital, was buried with all pomp in the greatest of West-Saxon sanctuaries, in the Old Minster of Winchester.^[1053] That renowned church was enriched with lands |General grief of the nation.| and ornaments in memory of the dead. But the noblest offering of all was the grief of the nation which he had saved. His real faults, his imaginary crimes, were all forgotten. Men remembered only that the greatest man of their blood and speech was taken from them. They thought of the long years of peace and righteous government which they had enjoyed under his rule; they thought of the last and greatest of his great deeds, how he had chased the stranger from the land, and had made England England once again. Around the bier of Godwine men wept as for a father; they wept for the man 353whose hand had guided England and her people through all the storms of so many years of doubt and danger.^[1054] They little deemed that, ages after his death, calumnies would still be heaped upon his name. They deemed not that the lies of the stranger would take such root that the deliverer for whom they mourned would live in the pages of pretended history as Godwine the traitor. The time is now come to redress the wrong, and to do tardy justice to the fair fame of one of the greatest of England’s worthies. |True estimate of Godwine’s character.| To know what Godwine was, we have but to cast away the fables of later days, to turn to the records of his own time, to see how he looked in the eyes of men who had seen and heard him, of men who had felt the blessings of his rule and whose hearts had been stirred by the voice of his mighty eloquence. No man ever deserved a higher or a more lasting place in national gratitude than the first man who, being neither King nor Priest, stands forth in English history as endowed with all the highest attributes of the statesman. In him, in those distant times, we can revere the great minister, the unrivalled parliamentary leader, the man who could sway councils and assemblies at his will, and whose voice, during five and thirty years of political life, was never raised in any cause but that of the welfare of England. Side by side with all that is worthiest in our later history—side by side with his own counterpart two ages afterwards, the second deliverer from the yoke of the stranger, the victor of Lewes, the martyr of Evesham—side by side with all who, from his day to ours, have, in the field or in the senate, struggled or suffered in the cause of English freedom—side by side with the worthies of the thirteenth and the worthies of the seventeenth century—will the voice of truthful history, rising above the calumnies of ages, place the name of the great deliverer of the eleventh, 354the Earl of happy memory,^[1055] whose greatness was ever the greatness of England, whose life was one long offering to her welfare, and whose death came fittingly as the crown of that glorious life, when he had once more given peace and freedom to the land which he loved so well.

§ 2. From the Accession of Harold to the Earldom of the West-Saxons to his first War with Gruffydd. 1053–1056.

The great Earl was dead, and the office which he had held, an office which no man had ever held before him,^[1056] was again at the disposal of the King and his Witan. As Godwine’s death had happened at the Easter festival, the Great Council of the nation was doubtless still in session. We may therefore assume, with perfect safety, that the appointments which the Earl’s death rendered needful |Nature of the succession to Earldoms.| were made at once, before the Assembly dispersed. The nature of the succession to these great governments must by this time be perfectly well understood. The King and his Witan might nominate whom they would to a vacant Earldom; but there was a strong feeling, whenever there was no special reason to the contrary, in favour of appointing the son of a deceased Earl. In Earldoms, like those of Mercia and Northumberland, where an ancient house had been in possession for several generations, this sort of preference had grown into the same kind of imperfect hereditary right which existed in the case of the Crown itself. It would have required a very strong case indeed for King and Witan to feel themselves justified in appointing any one but a son of Leofric to succeed Leofric in the government of Mercia. But in the case of 355|Special position of East-Anglia.| Wessex and East-Anglia no such inchoate right could be put forward by any man. The old East-Anglian house had probably become extinct, either through the slaughter of Assandun, or through the executions in the early days of Cnut.^[1057] If not extinct, it had, at all events, sunk into insignificance, and had become lost to history. The Danish Thurkill had founded no dynasty in his Earldom. We cannot even make out with certainty the succession of Earls between |and Wessex.| him and Harold. The Earldom of the West-Saxons was a mere creation of Cnut himself. It would have broken in upon no feeling of ancient tradition, if the office had been abolished, and if the King had taken into his own hands the immediate government of the old cradle of his |Reasons for retaining the West-Saxon Earldom.| house. But such a step would have been distinctly a backward step. The King of the English was now King in every part of his realm alike. Certain parts of his realm might enjoy more of his personal presence than others; certain parts might even be practically more amenable to his authority than others; each great division of the Kingdom might still retain its local laws and customs; but there was still only one English Kingdom; no part of that Kingdom was a dependency of any other part; the King was King of the West-Saxons in no other sense than that in which he was King of the Northumbrians. But, if the local West-Saxon Earldom had been abolished, instead of a King of the English, reigning over one united Kingdom, there would again have been a King of the West-Saxons, holding East-Anglia, Mercia, and Northumberland as dependent provinces. Here then were good political reasons for retaining the institution of the Great Cnut, and for again appointing an Earl of the West-Saxons. Reverence also for the memory of the great man who was gone pleaded equally for the same course. An 356Earl of the West-Saxons had done more for England than any other subject had ever done. With Godwine and his great deeds still living in the minds and on the tongues of men, there could be little doubt as to giving him a successor; there could be hardly more of doubt as to who that successor should be.

Harold Earl of the West-Saxons. Easter, 1053.

The choice of the King and his Witan fell upon the eldest surviving son of the late Earl.^[1058] Harold was removed from the government of the East-Angles to the greater government of the West-Saxons. This was, under such a King as Eadward, equivalent to investing him with the practical management of the King and his Kingdom. Harold then, when he could not have passed the age of thirty-two,^[1059] became the first man in England. His career up to this time had been stained by what in our eyes seems to be more than one great fault, but it is clear that, in the eyes of his contemporaries, his merits far outweighed his errors. He had perhaps been guilty of selfishness in the matter of his brother Swegen;^[1060] he had certainly been guilty of |Joy of the nation.| needless violence in the affair at Porlock. But the universal joy of the nation at his new promotion^[1061] shows that the general character of his East-Anglian government must have given the brightest hopes for the future. Grief for the loss of Godwine was tempered by rejoicing at the elevation of one who at once began to walk in his father’s |Character of his government.| steps. From henceforth, as Earl and as King, the career of Harold is one of vigorous and just government, of skill and valour in the field, of unvarying moderation towards political foes. He won and he kept the devoted love of 357the English people. And, what was a harder task, he won and kept, though in a less degree than another of his house, the personal confidence and affection of the weak and wayward prince with whom he had to deal.

Ælfgar Earl of the East-Angles.

The translation of Harold to the greater government of Wessex made a vacancy in his former Earldom of the East-Angles. It would probably have been difficult to refuse the post to the man who had already held it for a short space, Ælfgar, the son of Leofric of Mercia. His appointment left only one of the great Earldoms in the House of Godwine, while the House of Leofric now again ruled from the North-Welsh border to the German Ocean.^[1062] But it quite fell in with Harold’s conciliatory policy to raise no objection to an arrangement which seemed to reverse the positions of the two families. The possession of Wessex was an object paramount to all others, and all the chances of the future were in favour of the rising House. Ælfgar accordingly became Earl of the |Character of Ælfgar and his sons.| East-Angles.^[1063] His career was turbulent and unhappy. The virtues of Leofric and Godgifu seem not to have been inherited by their descendants.^[1064] We hear of Ælfgar and of his sons mainly as rebels in whom no confidence could be placed, as traitors to every King and to every cause, as men who never scrupled to call in the aid of any foreign enemy in order to promote their personal objects. Rivalry towards Harold and his house was doubtless one great mainspring of their actions, but the Norman Conqueror and the last male descendant of Cerdic found it as vain as ever Harold had found it to put trust in the grandsons of Leofric.

Probable restoration of Bishop William and other Normans.

358I have already suggested that it was probably in consequence of the death of Godwine and the succession of Harold that the restoration of some of the King’s Norman favourites, especially of William Bishop of London, was allowed.^[1065] This may have taken place at this same Easter festival; but it is more natural to refer it to some later Gemót of the same year. It is certain that, during this second portion of the reign of Eadward, a considerable number of Normans, or others bearing Norman or French |Position of the Normans in the later days of Eadward.| names, were established in England.^[1066] It is equally certain that their position differed somewhat from what it had been before the outlawry of Godwine. The attempts to put them in possession of the great offices of the Kingdom were not renewed. Ralph retained his Earldom, William was allowed to return to his Bishoprick. The royal blood of the one, the excellent character of the other, procured for them this favourable exception, which, in the case of Ralph the Timid, proved eminently unlucky. But we hear of no other Norman or French Earls, Bishops, or Abbots. |Political office forbidden,| Excepting a few of the favoured natives of Lotharingia, none but Englishmen are now preferred to the great posts of Church and State. No local office higher than that of Sheriff, and that only in one or two exceptional cases,^[1067] |but Court office allowed.| was now allowed to be held by a stranger. But mere Court preferment, offices about the King’s person, seem to have been freely held by foreigners to whom there was no manifest personal objection. The King was allowed to have about him his Norman stallers, his 359Norman chaplains, and, an officer now first beginning· to creep into a little importance, his Norman chancellor. And those Normans who were tolerated at all seem to have been looked on with less suspicion than they had been during the former period. They are now freely allowed to witness the royal charters, which implies their acting as members of the national assemblies.^[1068] Their position is now clearly one of personal favour, not of political influence. They are hardly mentioned in our history; we have to trace them out by the light of entries |English character of Eadward’s later policy.| in Domesday and of signatures to Charters. Once only shall we have any reason to suspect that the course of events was influenced by them. And in that one case their influence is a mere surmise, and if it was exercised at all, it must have been exercised in a purely underhand way. The policy of Eadward’s reign is from henceforth distinctly an English policy. In other words, it is the policy of Harold.

Difference between the position of Godwine and that of Harold.

It is easy to understand that the feelings of Harold with regard to the foreigners differed somewhat from those of his father. They belonged to different generations. Godwine’s whole education, his whole way of looking at things, must have been purely English. It is hardly needful to make any exception on behalf of influences from Denmark. The rule of Cnut was one under which Danes became Englishmen, not one under which Englishmen became Danes. We can hardly conceive that Godwine understood the French language. Such an accomplishment 360would in his early days have been quite useless. We can well believe that, along with his really enlightened and patriotic policy, there was in the old Earl a good deal of mere sturdy English prejudice against strangers as strangers. But every act of Harold’s life shows that this last was a feeling altogether alien to his nature. His travels of inquiry abroad, his encouragement of deserving foreigners at home, all show him to have been a statesman who, while he maintained a strictly national policy, rose altogether above any narrow insular prejudices. That he understood French well it is impossible to doubt.^[1069] If he erred at all, he was far more likely to err in granting too much indulgence to the foreign fancies of his wayward master. His policy of conciliation would forbid him to be needlessly harsh even to a Norman, and he had every motive for dealing as tenderly as possible with all the wishes and prejudices of the King. Harold stood towards Eadward in a position wholly different from that in which Godwine had stood. Godwine might claim to dictate as a father to the man to whom he had given a crown and a wife. Harold could at most claim the position of a younger brother. That Harold ruled Eadward there is no doubt, but he very distinctly ruled by obeying.^[1070] Habit, temper, policy, would all lead him not to thwart the King one jot more than the interests of the Kingdom called for. The |Compromise between Harold and the King.| position of the strangers during the remaining years of Eadward’s reign is a manifest compromise between Eadward’s foreign weaknesses and Harold’s English policy. 361They were to be allowed to bask in the sunshine of the court; they were to be carefully shut out from political power. If Harold erred, his error, I repeat, lay in too great a toleration of the dangerous intruders.

Ecclesiastical appointments. Christmas, 1053–1054.

The remaining events of the year of Godwine’s death are some ecclesiastical appointments, which must have been made at the Christmas Gemót, and a Welsh inroad, which seems to have happened about the same time. In the one month of October three Prelates died,^[1071] Wulfsige, Bishop of Lichfield, and the Abbots Godwine of Winchcombe and |Leofwine of Lichfield. 1053.| Æthelweard of Glastonbury. The see of Lichfield was bestowed on Leofwine, Abbot of Earl Leofric’s favourite monastery of Coventry.^[1072] In this appointment we plainly see the hand of the Mercian Earl, of whom, considering his name, the new Bishop is not unlikely to have been a kinsman.^[1073] |Wulfwig of Dorchester. 1053.| At the same time, it would seem, the see of Dorchester was at last filled by the appointment of Wulfwig, and the two Bishops, as we have seen, got them beyond sea for consecration.^[1074] |Æthelnoth of Glastonbury. 1053–1082.| The new Abbot of Glastonbury was Æthelnoth, a monk of the house, who bears an ill character for dilapidation of the revenues of the monastery, but who continued to weather all storms, and to die in possession of |Bishop Ealdred holds Winchcombe.| his Abbey sixteen years after the Norman invasion.^[1075] The disposition of Winchcombe is more remarkable. Ealdred, the Bishop of the diocese, who seems never to have shrunk 362from any fresh duties, spiritual or temporal, which came in his way, undertook the rule of that great monastery in addition to his episcopal office.^[1076] This may have been mere personal love of power or pelf; but it may also have been a deliberate attempt, such as we shall see made in other cases also, to get rid of a powerful, and no doubt often troublesome, neighbour, by annexing an abbey to the Bishoprick. If such was the design of Ealdred, it did not prove successful. |He resigns it to Godric. July 17, 1054.| After holding Winchcombe for some time, he next year, willingly or unwillingly, resigned it to one Godric, who is described as the son of Godman, the King’s Chaplain.^[1077]

Of the Welsh inroad, recorded by one Chronicler only, all that is said is that many of the “wardmen” at Westbury were slain.^[1078] This is doubtless Westbury in Gloucestershire, on the Welsh side of the Severn. The expression seems to imply the maintenance of a permanent force to guard that exposed frontier.

Position of Macbeth in Scotland.

The next year was marked by a military and a diplomatic event, both of which were of high importance. The former is no other than the famous Scottish expedition of Earl Siward, an event which has almost passed from the domain of history into that of poetry. Macbeth, it will be remembered, was now reigning in Scotland.^[1079] Like 363Siward himself,^[1080] he had risen to power by a great crime, the murder of his predecessor, the young King Duncan. And, like Siward, he had made what atonement he could by ruling his usurped dominion vigorously and well. We have seen that there is no reason to believe that Macbeth had, since he assumed the Scottish Crown, renewed the fealty which he had paid to Cnut when he was under-King,^[1081] or, in more accurate Scottish phrase, Maarmor of Moray. We have also seen that he had been striving, in a remarkable way, to make himself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness in the quarter where that mammon was believed to have the greatest influence, |Siward’s designs against Macbeth.| namely at the threshold of the Apostles.^[1082] We may be sure that Earl Siward, the kinsman, probably the guardian, of the young prince whom Macbeth shut out from the Scottish Crown,^[1083] had all along looked on his formidable northern neighbour with no friendly eye. It is not easy to see why the attack on Macbeth, if it was to be made at all, was so long delayed. It may be that the internal troubles of England had hitherto forbidden any movement of the kind, and that Siward took advantage of the first season of domestic quiet to execute a plan which he had long cherished. It may be that the scheme fell in better with the policy of Harold than with the policy of Godwine. Between Godwine and Siward, between the West-Saxon and the Dane, there was doubtless a standing rivalry, partly national, partly personal. But it would fall in with the conciliatory policy of Harold to help, rather than to thwart, any designs of the great Northern Earl which were not manifestly opposed to the public welfare. At all events, in this year the consent of Eadward^[1084] was given, a consent which certainly implies the decree of a Witenagemót, 364and which almost certainly implies the good will of |Siward’s expedition against Macbeth. 1054.| Earl Harold. An expedition on a great scale was undertaken against the Scottish usurper.^[1085] That it was undertaken on behalf of Malcolm, the son of the slain Duncan, can admit of no reasonable doubt. To restore the lawful heir of the Scottish Crown was an honourable pretext for interference in Scottish affairs on which any English statesman would gladly seize. And to Siward it was more than an honourable pretext; it was asserting the rights and avenging the wrongs of a near kinsman. The Earl of the Northumbrians accordingly attacked Scotland at the head of a great force both by land and by sea. The army was largely composed of the Housecarls of the King and of the Earl, picked and tried soldiers, Danish and English. |Macbeth’s alliance with Thorfinn.| Macbeth was supported^[1086] by a Prince who had now become a neighbour of England, and one probably quite as dangerous as himself. This was Thorfinn, the famous Earl of the Orkneys, who had established his power over the whole of the Western Islands, and even over the coast of Scotland and Strathclyde as far south as Galloway. With his help, the Scottish King ventured to meet the host of |Defeat of Macbeth. July 27, 1054.| Siward in a pitched battle. He was encouraged by the presence of a body of the Normans who had been driven out of England at the return of Godwine. They are spoken of as if their number was large enough to form a considerable contingent of the Scottish army. The fight was an obstinate one. The Earl’s son Osbeorn and his sister’s son Siward were slain, and with them a large number of the Housecarls, both those of the Earl himself and of the King. The slaughter on the Scottish side was more fearful still. Dolfinn, seemingly a kinsman of the Earl of Orkney, was killed,^[1087] and the Norman division, fighting no 365doubt with all the gallantry of their race, enhanced by all the desperation of exiles, were slaughtered to a man. We thus see that the battle was a most stoutly contested one, and that, as usual, the slaughter fell mainly on the best troops on both sides, the Normans on the Scottish side and the Housecarls on the English. But the fortune of England prevailed; the Scots, deprived of their valiant allies, were utterly routed, and King Macbeth escaped with difficulty from the field. The plunder was of an amount which struck the minds of contemporary writers with wonder.^[1088]