CHAPTER X

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

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

[Sidenote: Dominant position of Harold.]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Harold at Rome.]

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

[Sidenote: Return of Harold.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Nature of his foundation.]

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: The Confirmation Charter. 1062.]

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Later career of Walter and Gisa.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Renewed ravages of Gruffydd. 1062.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Legislation about Wales.]

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

[Sidenote: Harold marries Ealdgyth. 1064?]

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

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

§ 3. _The Revolt of Northumberland._ 1065.

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

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

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

Thus far the Northumbrian Assembly, however irregularly called together, had acted in something like the character of a lawful Gemót. To depose and elect an Earl was a stretch of power beyond the constitutional authority of a local Gemót; still the unconstitutional character of the

## act consisted solely in the Gemót of a single Earldom taking upon itself

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

[Sidenote: Morkere’s march southwards.]

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

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

It seems to have been at Northampton that the first attempts at negotiation began between the King and the insurgents.[1455] Eadward and Tostig were still in their woodland retreats, enjoying the slaughter of unresisting animals, while half England was in confusion, and while whole shires were being laid waste. The Earl of the West-Saxons was most likely as keen a hunter as either of them, but he at least did not let his sport interfere with his duty to his country. While his brother and brother-in-law still remained in the woods, Earl Harold hastened to Northampton with a message from the King. Eadward, who had once been so wrathful at Godwine’s appeal to Law on behalf of the men of Dover,[1456] had now, under Harold’s guidance, better learned the duties of a constitutional [Sidenote: Demands of Eadward.] King. Through the mouth of the great Earl, he called on the men of Northumberland to lay down their arms, to cease from their ravages, and, if they had any matter against their own Earl, to bring it forward for discussion in a lawful Assembly. We may conceive the feeling of triumph with which Harold put into the King’s mouth the very words which, in the mouth of Godwine, had led to the temporary overthrow of himself and his house. But [Sidenote: Answer of the Northumbrians.] the Northumbrians would not yield to any proposal which implied even the possibility of Tostig’s return to power. They were freemen born and bred, they would not bow to the pride of any Earl;[1457] they had learned from their fathers to bear no third choice besides freedom or death. If the King wished to retain Northumberland in his allegiance, he must confirm the banishment of Tostig from Northumberland and from all England, he must confirm the election of Morkere to the Northern Earldom. If he persisted in forcing Tostig upon them, they would deal with him as an enemy; if he yielded to their demands, he would see what loyal subjects Northumbrians could be, when they were gently ruled by a ruler of their own choice.[1458] Brave words truly, if they really came from the heart of the Northumbrian people, and were not simply put into their mouths by two ambitious Earls. More than one message passed to and fro; messengers from the rebel camp accompanied Harold to the royal presence;[1459] but there was no sign of yielding on the part of the host encamped at Northampton. At last the matter became so serious that Eadward left his hunting to apply himself [Sidenote: Eadward holds a Gemót at Bretford.] personally to the affairs of his Kingdom. At a royal abode called Bretford, near Salisbury, a place whose name suggests memories of the warfare of five hundred years before, Eadward called an Assembly together. It probably professed to be a Witenagemót of the whole realm, but it must rather have been a meeting of the King’s immediate counsellors, or at most, of the local Witan of Wessex. [Sidenote: Debate in the Council; accusations against Tostig.] This Assembly at once proceeded to discuss the state of the nation;[1460] and the record of their debates at least shows what full freedom of speech was allowed in our ancient national Councils. Some speakers boldly accused Tostig of cruelty and avarice; his severities had been caused, not by any love of justice, but by a wish to seize on the wealth [Sidenote: Tostig charges Harold with stirring up the revolt.] of the rich men of Northumberland.[1461] It was affirmed, on the other hand, that the revolt against Tostig had been simply got up by the secret machinations of Harold. No charge could be more unjust, and we may suspect that it was brought forward by no mouth but that of Tostig himself.[1462] Harold throughout tried in vain to reconcile the [Sidenote: Improbability of the charge.] revolters to his brother.[1463] Up to this time there is not the slightest sign in any trustworthy account of any quarrel between the two brothers.[1464] Now that the revolt had broken out, it was undoubtedly Harold’s interest to settle matters without bloodshed, even at the expense of his brother; but he had no interest, but quite the contrary, in stirring up the revolt in the first instance. It was prudent, under the circumstances, to yield to the demands of the Northumbrians, and to allow the aggrandizement of the rival house; but Harold could have no motive for seeking, of his own accord, to transfer Northumberland from a son of Godwine to a son of Ælfgar. But Tostig doubtless expected his brother to support him, right or wrong, at all hazards and against all foes, and he could not understand any cause for Harold’s hesitating so to do except his being art and part with his enemies. Before the King and all his Court, Tostig so vehemently charged Harold with having kindled the Northumbrian revolt, that Harold [Sidenote: Harold denies it on oath.] thought it necessary to deny the charge, in the usual solemn form, upon oath.[1465] It appears that the Earl’s own oath was thought enough, and that compurgators were not called for. But the question how to quell the revolt was still more urgent than the question how the revolt [Sidenote: Eadward’s eagerness for war.] arose. The King was as vehement against the real rebels of Northumberland as he had been, fourteen years before, against the fancied rebels of Dover. He was as eager to avenge the wrongs of his English favourite Tostig as he had then been to avenge the wrongs of his foreign favourite Eustace. He would, doubtless by deputy, chastise their insolence with the edge of the sword; it would almost seem that the royal summons went out, calling the whole force of England to the royal standard.[1466] But Eadward had counsellors about him who were wiser than himself. They, Harold doubtless at their head, shrank as soldiers from a winter campaign and as patriots from a civil war. They pleaded that, with these two great difficulties in the way of immediate

## action, it would be impossible to collect an army able to cope with the

insurgents.[1467] The Housecarls of the King and of the Earl were doubtless ready to march at their command; but, of all courses in the world, none could be so unpopular as to employ this force to put down a popular insurrection. It would be a renewal of the days [Sidenote: 1041.] of Harthacnut and of the march against Worcester.[1468] The King was so eager for battle that his advisers could not, [Sidenote: He is prevented by Harold and others.] after all, persuade him formally to revoke his orders for war; but they took means to prevent the expedition from actually taking place.[1469] So to do would be no very difficult task, when the feeling of the chiefs and of the people was doubtless exactly the same. So great was Eadward’s wrath and excitement of mind that he fell into the illness of which he never recovered. He complained bitterly before God that he was hindered from chastising the unrighteous, and called for divine vengeance seemingly alike upon the original offenders, and on those who stood in the way of their punishment.[1470] But the wrath of the Saint, if violent for the time, was not always lasting,[1471] and however vigorous he may have been in curses and prophecies, he seems to have practically allowed Harold to

## act in his name, and to settle matters as he chose.[1472]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Eadward’s last sickness.]

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Legends.]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Summary.]

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

APPENDIX.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The English Chroniclers, and their harmonizer Florence, record Eadward’s

## actions with perfect impartiality. Nowhere in their narratives do they

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

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

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

William of Malmesbury, clearly with the Biographer before him, enlarges greatly on Eadward’s miraculous and prophetic powers (ii. 220–227), adding to the stories in the Life the vision of the Seven Sleepers (see above, p. 511). But the main disseminator of legendary lore about Eadward was Osbern or Osbert of Clare, Prior of Westminster, who had a hand in procuring his formal canonization, and who wrote a book on his life and miracles (Introduction to M. H. B. 16. Luard, Preface xxv. Hardy’s Catalogue of British History, i. 637, 642). His work has never been printed, but it is the groundwork of the well known Life by Æthelred of Rievaux, printed in the Decem Scriptores. On this again is founded the French Life printed by Mr. Luard, which however adds many

## particulars which are not to be found in Æthelred. Both of these are

truly wonderful productions. Of the French writer I have already given a specimen in vol. i. p. 592. Perhaps his grandest achievement is to make Godwine kill Eadmund Ironside (p. 47. V. 775). Both he and the Abbot of Rievaux agree in describing King Æthelred as a mighty warrior, fighting manfully against the Danes. He is “Rex strenuissimus,” “gloriosus Rex” (X Scriptt. 372. Cf. the Abbot’s Genealogia Regum, 362, 363), and in the French Life (v. 131) we read—

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

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

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

Let us now look through the evidence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this passage William very fairly carries out his promise of letting each side tell its own story. Which of the two pictures is borne out by

## particular facts, we shall see at the proper stages of the history; it

may not be amiss to collect here a few of the more general pictures of Godwine and Harold drawn according to the two models. In the case of Harold, I confine myself to those passages, whether panegyrics or invectives, which concern his general character and his administration as Earl. Those which concern either his relations to William or his character as King I reserve for notice at a later stage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: THE EARLDOMS IN 1045.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTE K. p. 124. DANEGELD AND HEREGELD.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I will discuss these questions in order.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See Taylor’s note, p. 102.

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

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

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

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

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

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

With Geoffrey Grisegonelle, and still more with Fulk Nerra, we begin to get on firmer historical ground than we can find in the days of the earlier Counts. Fulk occupies an important place in the history of Rudolf Glaber, having two whole chapters (ii. 3, 4) pretty well to himself. And the exploits of Geoffrey derive more or less of corroborative testimony from several independent sources. The panegyrist of the family (Gest. Cons. 246) tells us that Geoffrey took an active

## part in resisting Otto’s invasion of France in 978 (see vol. i. p. 265).

We learn from a distinct and contemporary authority that Geoffrey had before that taken a part in that wild raid against Aachen (see vol. i. p. 264) by which Lothar had provoked the German inroad. “Lotarius ... Lotharingiam calumniatus est. Cujus expeditionibus Gosfridus Comes Andegavorum, pater _Fulconis ultimi_, interfuit, _nostræque ætatis multi viri_” (Chron. S. Maxentii, Labbe, ii. 203). The words “Fulconis ultimi” could hardly have been used during the life of Fulk Nerra; it looks therefore as if the Chronicler wrote, in extreme old age, after Fulk’s death in 1040. These entries about Geoffrey’s attendance on Lothar fit in curiously with a Breton account (Chron. Brioc., Morice, p. 32), how Geoffrey seized on Guerech, the Breton Bishop and Count, on his return from the King’s Court, and forced him—setting a precedent for two more famous acts of his grandson—to surrender Nantes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Biographer of Eadward seems to have thought differently. He greatly exaggerates the ravaging, and tells the tale (405) in a tone of distinct triumph; “Ab ipsis Occidentalium Britonum sive Anglorum finibus usque quò Dux consederat, ferro, igne, et abductâ prædâ omne regnum sunt devastati.” It has been ingeniously suggested to me from this passage that the Biographer was a foreigner. His way of looking at this

## particular matter certainly stands out in distinct contrast to that of

all the native writers. The supposition that he was a foreigner would account for many of the characteristics of his work. It would quite explain his evidently minute personal knowledge of many things, combined with his frequent inaccuracy about others. It would account for his invariable tendency to dwell on all personal details about the King, the Lady, and the Earls, and rather to slur over the political affairs of the Kingdom. But, if he was a foreigner, the spirit in which he writes forbids the notion that he was a Frenchman. Probably he was a member of the other importation from Lotharingia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Quid Domini facient, audent qui talia servi?)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“1021. Alnothus.

1035. Alwyus.

1057. Alfnotus.

1063. Alwyus, frater Godwyni Comitis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-----

Footnote 1:

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

Footnote 2:

See vol. i. p. 589.

Footnote 3:

On the different statements, see Appendix A.

Footnote 4:

Chronn. and Flor. Wig. 1043.

Footnote 5:

Vol. i. p. 560.

Footnote 6:

See vol. i. p. 396.

Footnote 7:

Vol. i. p. 592.

Footnote 8:

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

Footnote 9:

Vol. i. p. 404.

Footnote 10:

Vol. i. p. 568.

Footnote 11:

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

Footnote 12:

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

Footnote 13:

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

Footnote 14:

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

Footnote 15:

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

Footnote 16:

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

Footnote 17:

See vol. i. p. 591.

Footnote 18:

Adam Brem. ii. 74. See Appendix A.

Footnote 19:

See below under the years 1045 and 1047.

Footnote 20:

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

Footnote 21:

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

Footnote 22:

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

Footnote 23:

See vol. i. p. 117.

Footnote 24:

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

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

See Gladstone, Homer, iii. 51.

Footnote 25:

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

Footnote 26:

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

Footnote 27:

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

Footnote 28:

Chron. Flor. Wig. See Appendix A.

Footnote 29:

Flor. Wig.

Footnote 30:

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

Footnote 31:

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

Footnote 32:

Vita Eadw. 395.

Footnote 33:

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

Footnote 34:

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

Footnote 35:

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

Footnote 36:

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

Footnote 37:

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

Footnote 38:

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

Footnote 39:

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

Footnote 40:

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

Footnote 41:

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

Footnote 42:

Vita Eadw. 397.

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

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

Footnote 43:

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

Footnote 44:

Vita Eadw. 397.

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

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

Footnote 45:

Ib.

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

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

Footnote 46:

See vol. i. p. 307.

Footnote 47:

On the legendary history of Eadward see Appendix B.

Footnote 48:

See vol. i. pp. 288, 365.

Footnote 49:

See vol. i. pp. 244, 462.

Footnote 50:

See Appendix B.

Footnote 51:

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

Footnote 52:

See vol. i. p. 327.

Footnote 53:

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

Footnote 54:

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

Footnote 55:

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

Footnote 56:

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

Footnote 57:

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

Footnote 58:

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

Footnote 59:

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

Footnote 60:

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

Footnote 61:

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

Footnote 62:

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

Footnote 63:

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

Footnote 64:

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

Footnote 65:

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

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

Footnote 66:

Vita Eadw. 414. “Abbates religiosos et monachos, _potissimum autem transmarinos_ ... quam benignè susceperit.” So Will. Malms. 220; “Pauperibus hospitibusque, _maximè transmarinis_ et religiosis, benignus appellando, munificus dando.” See Appendix C.

Footnote 67:

Vit. Eadw. 399. “Quum prædictus sanctæ memoriæ Ædwardus Rex repatriaret à Franciâ, ex eâdem gente comitati sunt quamplures non ignobiles viri, quos plurimis honoribus ditatos secum retinuit idem Rex, utpote compos totius regni, ordinariosque constituit secretorum consilii sui, et rectores rerum regalis palatii.” It is remarkable how seldom, especially in the early part of Eadward’s reign, the foreigners appear to sign charters. They were doubtless jealously watched.

Footnote 68:

Vol. i. p. 584.

Footnote 69:

Vol. i. p. 593.

Footnote 70:

See above, p. 15.

Footnote 71:

Will. Malms. ii. 197. See Appendix D.

Footnote 72:

See above, p. 9.

Footnote 73:

See vol. i. p. 471. The French biographer of Eadward says (p. 57):—

“Godwin k’out mis entente Cunquere tresor e rente, Mut fu garniz e estorez D’or e de argent dunt out asez, Ke par plaiz e par achatz De grant aver out fait purchaz; Mut out cunquis par boesdie Plus ke par chivalerie.”

Footnote 74:

See Appendix E.

Footnote 75:

A Godwine appears (W. Thorn. X Scriptt. 2224) as a benefactor of Christ Church, Canterbury. This may be the great Earl, or it may be the Godwine whose marriage settlement we have in Cod. Dipl. iv. 10.

Footnote 76:

This comes out nowhere more emphatically than in the comparatively hostile Abingdon Chronicle, 1052.

Footnote 77:

Vita Eadw. 408. cf. Fl. Wig. 1066.

Footnote 78:

See the Peterborough Chronicler’s character of William, under the year 1087.

Footnote 79:

Ib. 1135.

Footnote 80:

Will. Malms. iv. 314.

Footnote 81:

Ord. Vit. 672 B.

Footnote 82:

Vit. Eadw. 408.

Footnote 83:

Fl. Wig. 1048, 1049.

Footnote 84:

“When the chronicler praises the gift of speech, he unconsciously proves the existence of constitutional freedom.” Lytton, Harold, i. 165.

Footnote 85:

I attribute the Danish names in Godwine’s family to the influence of Gytha rather than to any Danish tastes prevalent at the Court of Cnut, because the Danes settled in England seem to have so often adopted English names for their children. See vol. i. pp. 580, 591.

Footnote 86:

I should perhaps have done better had I used the English form of this name throughout, as _Swegen_ is clearly more correct etymologically than Svein, Sven, or Swend. It may however be convenient to distinguish the English and Danish bearers of the name.

Footnote 87:

On the sons and daughters of Godwine, see Appendix F.

Footnote 88:

Cod. Dipl. iv. 74. This charter must be early in the year 1043, earlier at least than the Gemót which we shall presently see was held in November. Swegen was therefore probably appointed in the Gemót at which Eadward was finally established as King. Another charter, of 1044 (Cod. Dipl. iv. 80), signed by Harold, Leofwine, Swegen, Tostig, and Gyrth, all with the rank of “Dux,” is deservedly marked as doubtful by Mr. Kemble.

Footnote 89:

See vol. i. p. 580, and Appendix G, on the Great Earldoms. His first signature is in 1045. Cod. Dipl. iv. 97.

Footnote 90:

Fl. Wig. 1051.

Footnote 91:

Chronn. Ab. and Wig. 1065. See Appendix D.

Footnote 92:

Vita Eadw. 408. “Virtute corporis et animi in populo præstabat ut alter Judas Machabæus.”

Footnote 93:

In the Bayeux Tapestry Harold is represented as lifting the Norman soldiers from the quicksands with the greatest ease.

Footnote 94:

Vita Eadw. 409. “Uterque [the writer is comparing Harold and Tostig] satis pulcro et venusto corpore et, ut conjicimus, non inæquali robore, non disparis audaciæ. Sed major natu Haroldus procerior staturâ, patris satis [these words are clearly corrupt] infinitis laboribus, vigiliis et inediâ, multâ animi lenitate et promptiori sapientiâ.”

Footnote 95:

See vol. i. p. 640.

Footnote 96:

De Inv. c. 14. “Tum ... astutiâ et legum terræ peritiâ, tum quia se talem gerebat quod non solum Angli, verum etiam Normanni et Gallici imprimis invidebant pulcritudini et prudentiæ, militiæ et sagacitati.”

Footnote 97:

Vita Eadw. 409. “Multum obloquia perferre, nam non facile prodere, non facile quoque, et in civem sive compatriotum, ut reor, nusquam, ulcisci.” Compare the character of Edward the First,

“Totus Christo traditur Rex noster Edwardus; Velox est ad veniam, ad vindictam tardus.”

Political Songs (Camd. Soc.), p. 163.

Footnote 98:

See the poem in the Chronicles. So Snorro (Ant. Celt. Scand. 189. Laing, iii. 75), while strangely making Harold the youngest of the family and hardly realizing his position in the Kingdom, bears ample testimony to the kindly relations existing between him and the King. He is there called Eadward’s “foster son.” The Biographer (p. 433) calls him “nutricius suus frater.”

Footnote 99:

Vita Eadw. 410; a passage which I shall have to refer to again.

Footnote 100:

I refer both to Harold’s own proceedings at Waltham and to the general promotion of Germans under this reign. See Stubbs, De Inv. ix.

Footnote 101:

See Appendix E.

Footnote 102:

See William of Malmesbury’s Life of Wulfstan, Angl. Sacr. ii. 248, 253.

Footnote 103:

He was however a benefactor to the Abbey of Peterborough. The local historian Hugo Candidus says (p. 44. ap. Sparke), “Comes Haroldus dedit Cliftune et terram in Londone juxta monasterium Sancti Pauli, juxta portum qui vocatur Etheredishythe.” Harold’s connexion with London should be noticed. It was also at his advice that King Eadward made a grant to Abingdon (Hist. Mon. Ab. i. 469), and that a Thegn named Thurkill, of whom we shall hear again, commended himself to the same church (Ib. i. 484).

Footnote 104:

Vita Eadw. 409. “Cum quovis, quem fidelem putaret, interdum communicare consilium operis sui, et hoc interdum adeò differre, si debet duci, ut minùs conducibile à quibusdam videretur fore suæ commoditati.”

Footnote 105:

Ib. 410. “Uterque [Harold and Tostig] interdum quædam simulare adeò egregiè, ut qui eos non noverit incertius nil æstimare poterit.” In connexion with this curious passage I may quote a singular exaggeration from an unknown author; it is found in a marginal note on one of the manuscripts of the Winchester Annals (Luard, 27); “Haroldus Rex, si sapientèr ageret quidquid agebat furore, nullus hominum illum [sic] resisteret. Sed adeò erat animi inconstantis, quod nullus suorum se credidit illi.” Yet “sapientèr” is the adverb which the Biographer specially applies to Harold, in distinction to the “fortitèr” of Tostig.

Footnote 106:

The charge of rashness as brought against Harold during the last scene of his life I shall discuss elsewhere. I here add the Biographer’s disclaimer (Vita Eadw. 409); “Porro de vitio præcipitationis sive levitatis, quis hunc vel illum sive quemvis de Godwino patre genitum, sive ejus disciplinâ et studio educatum arguerit?” There is a very remarkable passage further on (p. 422), in which the Biographer says that Harold was “ad sacramenta nimis (proh dolor) prodigus.” The allusion clearly is to Harold’s oath to William, which the Biographer never distinctly mentions.

Footnote 107:

I refer of course to the tale of Eadgyth Swanneshals, of which I shall have to speak again more than once.

Footnote 108:

See vol. i. p. 577.

Footnote 109:

Chron. Ab. Cant. 1044. Petrib. 1043. I shall discuss the exact date afterwards.

Footnote 110:

Vita Eadw. 415. She sat at his feet, unless he lifted her up to sit at his side. This must be compared with the account of the legislation about West-Saxon Kings’ wives after the crime of Eadburh (Asser, M. H. B. 471 B). She had shown personal kindness to the Biographer (427);

“Scribes Reginam primo tibi subvenientem, Et quicquid scribes, laus et honor sit ei.”

This perhaps gave occasion for the more elaborate and better known description in the false Ingulf.

William of Malmesbury’s account of her (ii. 197) is singular; “Femina in cujus pectore omnium liberalium artium esset gymnasium, sed parvum in mundanis rebus ingenium; quam quum videres, si literas stuperes, modestiam certè animi et speciem corporis desiderares.”

Footnote 111:

Hist. Rams. cxiv. (p. 457). Abbot Ælfwine, wishing to obtain certain lands bequeathed to the monastery by one Æthelwine the Black, but which were withheld from it by one Ælfric the son of Wihtgar, “apposuit quoque de divitis crumenæ dispendio viginti marcas auri, quibus gratiam Regis mercaretur, Ædthithæ [sic] quippe Reginæ sedulitatem quinque marcarum auri pretio exegit interponi, ut pias ejus preces regiis auribus fideliter importaret.” So again, in a charter of 1060 in Cod. Dipl. iv. 142, Eadgyth lays claim to certain lands claimed by the Abbey of Peterborough, but on the intercession of her husband and her brothers Harold and Tostig (none of whom seem to have taken anything), and on the gift of twenty marks and certain church ornaments, she is induced to confirm the grant. That she looked carefully after her rents in money, kine, and honey, and after the men who stole her horse, is no blame to her (Cod. Dipl. iv. 257).

Footnote 112:

Will. Pict. 199 A, B (Duchesne).

Footnote 113:

Flor. Wig. 1065.

Footnote 114:

See Appendix B.

Footnote 115:

Vita Eadw. 431, (cf. 433).

Footnote 116:

Ibid. 403. See below.

Footnote 117:

Godgifu was the sister of Thorold the Sheriff, founder of the Priory of Spalding. See John of Peterborough, a. 1052. p. 49. Giles. The legend of her riding naked through Coventry is found in Bromton (949), and Knighton (2334). They do not mention peeping Tom, who, it is some comfort to think, must at any rate have been one of King Eadward’s Frenchmen.

Footnote 118:

See Will. Malms. ii. 196. Cf. Æthel. Riev. 389. Chron. Evesham. 84. This last writer extends Leofric’s authority to the borders of Scotland. Did Cumberland reach to the Ribble in those days?

Footnote 119:

“Stow sub promontorio Lincolniæ.” Bromton, 949. See the charters of Bishop Wulfwig, Cod. Dipl. iv. 290. The church was not built by Leofric, but by Eadnoth the Second, Bishop of Dorchester (1034–1050); Leofric’s benefaction took the form of ornaments. See Flor. Wig. 1057, where he calls Stow “locus famosus qui Sanctæ Mariæ Stou Anglicè, Latinè verò Sanctæ Mariæ Locus appellatur.” The antiquity of part of the church is indisputable, but a more wretched village cannot be found.

A document, professing to be a petition from Godgifu to Pope Victor, praying for the confirmation of her gifts to Stow, is marked doubtful by Mr. Kemble (Cod. Dipl. iv. 168), doubtless on good grounds. But I do not understand his date, 1060–1066, as the Popedom of Victor the Second was from 1055 to 1057. Siward, who died early in 1055, could hardly have signed an address to Pope Victor.

Footnote 120:

See vol. i. p. 539.

Footnote 121:

See vol. i. p. 588.

Footnote 122:

See Appendix G.

Footnote 123:

Vita Eadw. 421, 422.

Footnote 124:

See Chronn. 1055.

Footnote 125:

See vol. i. p. 274.

Footnote 126:

See Appendix G.

Footnote 127:

Chron. 1051.

Footnote 128:

Chron. 1055.

Footnote 129:

Cod. Dipl. vi. 203.

Footnote 130:

For the earliest example, one of 1020, see Kemble, Archæological Journal, xiv. 61, 62.

Footnote 131:

See vol. i. p. 102.

Footnote 132:

See vol. i. p. 499.

Footnote 133:

See vol. i. p. 564.

Footnote 134:

Orkneyinga Saga, Ant. Celt. Scand. 172 et seqq. Robertson, i. 114. Burton, i. 369.

Footnote 135:

Fordun, iv. 44. Robertson, i. 116. Marianus Scotus (Pertz, v. 557) says expressly, “Donnchad Rex Scotiæ in autumno occiditur a duce suo Macbethad mac Finnloech, cui successit in regnum annis xvii.”

Footnote 136:

Fordun, u. s. “Consanguinea Siwardi Comitis.”

Footnote 137:

Robertson, i. 120 et seqq. Burton, i. 371–2.

Footnote 138:

Innes, Scotland in the Middle Ages, p. 118.

Footnote 139:

Marianus (Pertz, v. 558). “Rex Scottiæ Macbethad Romæ argentum pauperibus seminando distribuit.” Florence (1050) leaves out the word “pauperibus,” and changes “seminando” into “spargendo.” The change can hardly be undesigned, and of the influence of money at Rome we shall hear presently in the case of Bishop Ulf. Chron. Petrib. 1047. John of Peterborough (48) combines the two readings, saying, “Machetus Rex Scotorum Romæ argentum spargendo pauperibus distribuit.”

Footnote 140:

See Robertson, i. 122. Burton, i. 373.

Footnote 141:

See vol. i. p. 36.

Footnote 142:

See vol. i. p. 564.

Footnote 143:

Ann. Camb. 1039. Brut y Tywysogion, 1037.

Footnote 144:

Brut. 1040, 1042. Ann. Camb. 1039–1047. In one battle in 1040 Gruffydd seems to have been taken prisoner by the Danes of Dublin. But the whole narrative is very confused. See the entries under 1041 and 1042.

Footnote 145:

Brut, 1042. Ann. Camb. 1045?

Footnote 146:

See above, p. 40.

Footnote 147:

See above, p. 41.

Footnote 148:

See above, p. 18.

Footnote 149:

Æthel. R. 375. “Tunc elevatus est sol et luna stetit in ordine suo, quando, Edwardo gloriâ et honore coronato, sacerdotes sapientiâ et sanctitate fulgebant, monasteria omni relligione pollebant, clerus in officio suo, populus stabat in gradu suo; videbatur etiam terra fecundior, aer salubrior, sol serenior, maris unda pacatior. Quoniam diu Rege pacifico regnante in uno vinculo pacis omnia convenirent, ut nihil pestilentiosum esset in aere, nihil in mari tempestuosum, in terrâ nihil infecundum, nihil inordinatum in clero, nihil in plebe tumultuosum.” It would be endless to contrast all these details with those found in the Chronicles and the Biographer. Even William of Malmesbury, comparatively sober as he is, goes too far when he says (ii. 196), “Denique eo regnante, nullus tumultus domesticus qui non citò comprimeretur, nullum bellum forinsecùs, omnia domi forisque quieta, omnia tranquilla.”

Footnote 150:

“Forðam heo hit heold ǽr to fæste wið hine,” say the Abingdon, Peterborough, and Canterbury Chronicles. Worcester is more explicit; “Forþan þe heo wæs æror þam cynge hire suna swiðe heard, _þæt heo him læsse dyde þonne he wolde_, ær þam þe he cyng wære, and eac syððan.” This is translated by Florence; “Vel quia priusquam Rex esset effectus, vel post, _minus quam volebat illi dederat_, et ei valdè dura exstiterat;” and by Roger of Wendover, “eo quod priusquam Rex fuerat, _nihil illi contulerat quod petebat_” (i. 482). William of Malmesbury says (ii. 196), “Mater ‘Angustos filii jamdudum riserat annos,’ nihil umquam de suo largita.” He then gives the reason, namely her preference for Cnut over Æthelred.

Footnote 151:

See vol. i. p. 454.

Footnote 152:

See vol. i. pp. 544, 555, 559.

Footnote 153:

See vol. i. p. 545 et seqq.

Footnote 154:

See vol. i. pp. 535, 561.

Footnote 155:

See the writ quoted at vol. i. p. 580, which cannot belong to the _first_ reign of Harthacnut in Wessex only.

Footnote 156:

Besides land, the Abingdon Chronicle speaks of her wealth “on golde and on seolfre and on unasecgendlicum þingum.” So that of Worcester says of her treasures, “þa wæron unatellendlice.” So Florence; “quicquid in auro, argento, gemmis, lapidibus, aliisve rebus pretiosum habuerat.”

Footnote 157:

Will. Malms. ii. 196. “Congestis undecumque talentis crumenas infecerat, pauperum oblita; quibus non patiebatur dari nummum ne diminueret numerum. Itaque _quod injustè coacervârat_ non inhonestè ablatum, ut egenorum proficeret compendio _et fisco sufficeret regio_.” Though accepting this account (hæc referentibus etsi plurimum fides haberi debeat), he goes on, as he does elsewhere (ii. 181. see vol. i. p. 487), to speak of her bounty to monasteries, especially at Winchester.

Footnote 158:

A meeting of the Witan is implied in the language of the Worcester Chronicle, “Man gerædde þan cynge þæt he rád of Gleawcestre,” and in the presence and consent of the three Earls—“ut illi [Leofricus, Godwinus, et Siwardus] consilium ei dederant,” as Florence says.

Footnote 159:

See vol. i. p. 539.

Footnote 160:

See vol. i. p. 588.

Footnote 161:

So says the Worcester Chronicle, followed by Florence; “He rád of Gleawcestre, and Leofric eorl and Godwine eorl and Sigwarð eorl mid heora genge, to Wincestre;” “Festinato Rex cum comitibus Leofrico, Godwino, et Siwardo de civitate Glawornâ Wintoniam venit.” The other Chronicles do not imply the King’s personal presence; “se cyng let geridan,” &c.

Footnote 162:

Chron. Wig. “On únwær on þa hlæfdian.” Flor. Wig. “Venit improvise.”

Footnote 163:

Chronn. Ab., Petrib., Cant. “Se cyng let geridan ealle þa land þe his modor ahte him to handa.” The Worcester Chronicler says nothing of the land.

Footnote 164:

Flor. Wig. “Verumtamen sufficienter ei ministrari necessaria præcepit et illam ibidem quietam manere jussit.”

Footnote 165:

Emma signs a charter of her son’s during this year 1043 (Cod. Dipl. iv. 74), which therefore belongs to an earlier Gemót than this of November, probably to one held at Winchester at the time of the coronation. From this time we find her signing only a few private documents (Cod. Dipl. iv. 86, 116) and documents connected with the Church of Winchester (iv. 90, 93). After her son’s marriage she seems not to sign her son’s charters at all. The documents at iv. 80, 99 are doubtful or spurious. On the Legend of Emma see Appendix H.

Footnote 166:

See above, p. 10.

Footnote 167:

Adam of Bremen, iii. 13.

Footnote 168:

Chronn. and Flor. Wig. 1044, 1045, 1046, 1047. All dates are given.

Footnote 169:

De Inv. 14. “Adelstanus ... degenerans à patris astutiâ et sapientiâ ... multa ex his perdidit, et inter cetera Waltham.” This may however only mean that he squandered his estate. His son Esegar was Staller two years later. See Professor Stubbs’ note, and vol. i. p. 591.

Footnote 170:

Chron. Wig. 1045. Flor. Wig. 1044. If Gunhild’s sons were old enough to be dangerous, they must have been the children of Hakon who died in 1030. The names Heming and Thurkill have already appeared as those of a pair of brothers. Vol. i. p. 376. Cf. Knytlinga Saga, ap. Johnston, Ant. Celt. Scand. 105.

Footnote 171:

On this Harold see vol. i. p. 476. The signature to a charter of Bishop Lyfing’s, 1042 (Cod. Dipl. iv. 69), must be his.

Footnote 172:

Adam Brem. ii. 75. “Caussa mortis ea fuit quod de regali stirpe Danorum genitus, propior sceptro videbatur quam Magnus.”

Footnote 173:

The Chronica Sclavica, c. 13, makes Godescalc leave England after the death of Cnut (vol. i. 649, 494), but Adam (u. s.) puts his departure after the death of Cnut _and his sons_. If this last account be correct, it looks very much as if Godescalc was banished. According to Saxo (p. 204), he served for some time under Swend in his war with Magnus. Saxo also (p. 208) marries him to Siritha (Sigrid?) a natural daughter of Swend, but the national Chronicle distinctly makes his wife Demmyn, Cnut’s sister or daughter, alive at the time of his death.

These banishments probably helped, along with the displaced massacre of Saint Brice, to form the groundwork for the legend of the general expulsion or massacre of Danes in England. See vol. i. p. 592.

Footnote 174:

See vol. i. p. 473.

Footnote 175:

See vol. i. p. 563.

Footnote 176:

A private document in Cod. Dipl. iv. 116 is signed by “Stigand p̃.” It is assigned to the year 1049, but this date must be wrong, as it is signed by Ælfweard Bishop of London, who died in 1044. As it is signed by Eadward and Emma, it must belong to the early Gemót of 1043, that at which Stigand received his appointment as Bishop and Swegen as Earl.

Footnote 177:

Chron. Ab. 1043. Chronn. Petrib. and Cant. 1042.

Footnote 178:

Chron. Ab. “And raðe þǽs man sette Stigant of his bisceoprice, and nam eal þæt he ahte þam cinge to handa; forðam he wæs nehst his modor rǽde, and heo for swá swá he hire rædde; þæs ðe men wendon.”

Footnote 179:

Chron. Petrib. 1048.

Footnote 180:

See vol. i. p. 320. Chron. Ab. 1050.

Footnote 181:

See vol. i. p. 565. Vita Eadw. p. 399.

Footnote 182:

In very much later times, in the fifteenth century, we find Parliament, King, and Chapter all combining in the appointment of Bishops, in a way which would rather surprise us now. The House of Commons petitions the King to recommend a particular person to the Chapter. Two such applications were made in favour of Archbishop Bourchier, at different stages of his advancement. See Hook, Lives of Archbishops, v. 276, 282. The order in Eadward’s time was different, as the Chapter seems, sometimes at least, to have first elected and then to have asked the confirmation of King and Witan. But the principle is much the same. At all events, in the eleventh century, though the papal veto was just beginning to be heard of, a papal provision was quite unknown.

Footnote 183:

See Lingard, Anglo-Saxon Church, i. 94, where the whole matter is very fairly stated. Investiture by the staff is implied in the famous legend of Saint Wulfstan at the tomb of Eadward.

Footnote 184:

Chron. Petrib. 1047.

Footnote 185:

See vol. i. pp. 563, 588.

Footnote 186:

Chron. Ab. 1044. Petrib. 1043. “Forðam se arcebiscop wende þæt hit sum oðer man _abiddan wolde, oþþe gebicgan_, þe he wyrs truwode and uðe, gif hit ma manna wiste.”

Footnote 187:

Ib. “Be þæs cynges leafe, and ræde, and Godwines eorles. Hit wæs elles feawum mannum cuð ær hit gedón wæs.” So William of Malmesbury, ii. 197. “Ante cum Rege tantùm et Comite communicato consilio, ne quis ad tantum fastigium aspiraret indignus, vel prece vel pretio.”

Footnote 188:

He was consecrated to the see of Upsala, according to Professor Stubbs (Ep. Succ. p. 20) and Dean Hook (i. 491); to Rochester, according to the Abingdon History (i. 452). But Florence (1049) calls him “Siwardus, Edsii Dorubernensis archiepiscopi chorepiscopus.” William of Malmesbury (De Gest. Pont. 116) has a strange story, how Siward was to succeed Eadsige, but treating him harshly, and not even allowing him enough to eat, was deprived of the succession to the Archbishoprick, and had to content himself with Rochester—“quo leviaret verecundiam, quo detrimentum consolaretur.” Siward signs charters with the title of Archbishop, Cod. Dipl. iv. 96, 103, 105; as Bishop only in iv. 99; as Abbot only in a very doubtful charter, iv. 102. See also Hen. Hunt. M. H. B. 759 B. Angl. Sacr. i. 106. Bromton, 938.

Footnote 189:

Chron. Ab. 1048. Chron. Wig. 1050. Fl. Wig. 1049. See Hist. Ab. i. 461. Siward was a benefactor to his abbey, and fills a considerable place in its history.

Footnote 190:

Chron. Ab. 1048. Petrib. 1046.

Footnote 191:

See vol. i. p. 568.

Footnote 192:

Chron. Wig. 1045. Fl. Wig. 1044. Hist. Eves. p. 85. Hist. Ram. c. 104.

Footnote 193:

Fl. Wig. u. s. “Ablatis ex maximâ parte libris et ornamentis, quæ ipse eidem contulerat loco, et quædam, ut fertur, quæ alii contulerant.” Cf. Hist. Rams. u. s. But the Evesham historian, who uses very strong language against the monks of his own house, does not charge Ælfweard with more than transferring his intended gifts from Evesham to Ramsey; “quæ huic loco offerre cogitabat, versâ vice præfatæ ecclesiæ Ramesiæ omnia condonabat.” Hist. Eves. p. 85.

Footnote 194:

Chron. Wig. 1045. Fl. Wig. 1044. Hist. Eves. p. 86. Mannig rebuilt the church (Chronn. Ab. and Wig. 1054), and continued Abbot till 1066, when he died, having been for some time disabled by palsy.

Footnote 195:

Will. Malm. Gest. Pont. 134 b. He is there spoken of simply as a monk of Jumièges, but from the Biographer (399) and from the Nova Chronica Normanniæ, A. 1037, it appears that he had been Abbot. (See Neustria Pia, p. 309.) He became Abbot in 1037, and began the church in 1040. William himself, in his History (ii. 199), speaks of his building as “Ecclesia Sanctæ Mariæ, quam ipse præcipuo et sumptuoso opere construxerat.” He begins to sign as Bishop in 1046. Cod. Dipl. iv. 110.

Footnote 196:

William of Malmesbury (Gest. Pont. 116) makes Robert’s influence with Eadward the recompense of some services done to him in Normandy. He goes on, “Is ergo et amore antiquo et recenti honore primas partes in consiliis regalibus vendicabat, quos vellet deponeret, quos liberet, sublimaret.”

Footnote 197:

Ann. Wint. 21, Luard. “Tanti fuit homo ille in oculis Regis ut si diceret nigram cornicem esse candidam Rex citiùs ori illius quam oculis suis crederet.”

Footnote 198:

Vita Eadw. 400. So William of Malmesbury (u. s.); “Ille contra pertinaciùs insistere, donec præcipuos optimates, Godwinum dico et filios ejus, proditionis apud Regem accusatos Angliâ expelleret. Expulsionis aliæ quoque fuere caussæ, et alii auctores, sicut aliàs non tacuimus. Sed ille clariùs classicum cecinit, instantiùs accusavit.”

Footnote 199:

See vol. i. p. 573.

Footnote 200:

Bishop Godwin (Cat. of Bishops, p. 25) says truly, but without fully understanding the force of his own words; “This man is said to have laid the first foundation of the Normans conquest in England.”

Footnote 201:

Chron. Petrib. 1043. Fl. Wig. 1044.

Footnote 202:

See above, p. 63.

Footnote 203:

See above, p. 18.

Footnote 204:

Snorro, Saga of Magnus, 33, of Harold, 18 (Laing, ii. 391. iii. 17). Chron. Roskild. Lang. i. 377. Saxo, 203.

Footnote 205:

Saxo, 204.

Footnote 206:

See vol. i. p. 649.

Footnote 207:

Saxo, 203. Swend. Agg. c. 5 (Lang. i. 56). So Adam Brem. ii. 75; “Magnus autem Rex pro justitiâ et fortitudine carus fuit Danis, verùm Sclavis terribilis, qui post mortem Chnut Daniam infestabant.”

Footnote 208:

Snorro, Magnus, 38 (Laing, ii. 397). Ant. Celt. Scand. 184.

Footnote 209:

Snorro, Ant. Celt. Scand. 185. “Var þat þá rád her allra landsmanna at taka mik till Konungs her í Englandi.”

Footnote 210:

Does this mean that Eadward meant to meet Magnus in single combat?

Footnote 211:

Chron. Ab. 1044, 1045. Chron. Petrib. 1043.

Footnote 212:

Chron. Ab. 1045. “And þar wæs swa mycel here gegæderod swa nan man ne geseh, sciphere nænne maran on þysan lande.”

Footnote 213:

For the life of Harold Hardrada our chief authority is his Saga in Snorro, which will be found in the third volume of Laing’s Translation. It fits in better than might have been expected with authentic history. There are also notices in Adam of Bremen and the Danish writers.

Footnote 214:

See Finlay, Byz. Emp. i. 466.

Footnote 215:

See vol. i. p. 577, and above, p. 44.

Footnote 216:

Adam Brem. iii. 16. “Erat vir potens et clarus victoriis, qui prius in Græciâ et in Scythiæ regionibus multa contra barbaros prœlia confecit.” For some legends, see Saxo, 205.

Footnote 217:

See Finlay, i. 487.

Footnote 218:

Ib.

Footnote 219:

It is worth noticing that the reigning Emperor Constantine Monomachos had a hand in restoring the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It would be singular indeed if Harold Hardrada were in any way the instrument of his bounty. See Finlay, i. 503.

Footnote 220:

So says the Saga, but it is hard to say who is meant by this niece of Zôê. It is possible that, if there be any truth in the story, some niece or other kinswoman of Constantine is intended. William of Malmesbury (iii. 260) gives another turn to the story. He was “pro stupro illustris fœminæ leoni objectus.” Of course he kills the beast. In Saxo (205) the crime becomes murder, and the lion is exchanged for a dragon.

Footnote 221:

Snorro, Harold, c. 18 (Laing, iii. 17).

Footnote 222:

Chron. Wig. 1046. “On þam geare gegaderade Eadward cyng mycele scypferde on Sandwic, þurh Magnus þreatunge on Norwegon; ac his gewinn and Swegenes on Denmarcon geletton þæt he her ne com.” So Fl. Wig. 1045. Rog. Wend. i. 483.

Footnote 223:

Chron. Ab. 1044. Petrib. 1043. Cant. 1045. But 1043 in Peterborough really means 1045, and the 1044 of Abingdon takes in the whole Christmas season running into the next year. The Hyde writer (288), amusingly enough, places the marriage after Godwine’s return in 1052. Eadward “adveniens multâ probitate multâque animi industriâ cœpit florere, et _Normannos quos adduxerat principes per Angliam constituere_; contra hunc quoque Comes Godwinus, pacis inimicus, tentans rebellare, irâ commotus, Angliâ discessit, moxque repatrians usque in ipsam metropolim Londoniam classem suam advexit. Denique _se non posse prævalere animadvertens_, pacem cum Edwardo statuit componere, et ut nullius rebellionis suspicio remaneret, filiam suam Editham nomine ei matrimonio copulavit, filiumque suum Haroldum ejus dapiferum constituit.”

Footnote 224:

See above, p. 36.

Footnote 225:

This legend occurs in the Vita Eadwardi, p. 394. It is of course not omitted by the professed hagiographers. See Appendix B.

Footnote 226:

See above, p. 41.

Footnote 227:

See Gisa’s narrative in Hunter’s Ecclesiastical Documents, pp. 15, 16. Compare the promotion of Savaric to the same see by the less kindly influence of a later Emperor. Canon. Well. ap. Angl. Sacr. i. 563.

Footnote 228:

Hist. Rams. c. 75. (p. 434). “Quum esset bonæ vitæ et prudentiæ laudabilis, genuinâ tum animi feritate, utpote Teutonicus natione, damnum aliquod suæ attulit laudi.” His appointment is more remarkable, as he succeeded Wulfsige who died at Assandun (vol. i. p. 432), so that he must have been promoted very early in Cnut’s reign, before his connexion with Conrad began. Wythmann got into all kinds of trouble with his monks, and at last, after a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, died a solitary. His story in the Ramsey History is worth reading.

Footnote 229:

See vol. i. p. 178.

Footnote 230:

Chron. Ab. 1045. “Eadward cyng geaf Heramanne his preoste þæt bisceoprice.” Chron. Wig. 1046. “Man sette Hereman on his setle,” an expression implying the consent of the Witan. Florence says, “Regis capellanus Herimannus, de Lotharingiâ oriundus.”

Footnote 231:

Fl. Wig. 1031. Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 145 _b_.

Footnote 232:

“Vir prudentissimus Livingus,” says Florence (1031); “Omnibus quæ injuncta fuerant, sapientèr et mirificè ante adventum Regis consummatis,” says William.

Footnote 233:

Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 145 _b_. Cf. Gest. Regg. iii. 300.

Footnote 234:

See vol. i. p. 563.

Footnote 235:

See above, p. 7.

Footnote 236:

Will. Malms. u. s. “Ambitiosus et protervus ecclesiasticarum legum tyrannus, ut fertur, invictus, qui nihil pensi haberet, quominùs omni voluntati suæ assisteret.”

Footnote 237:

Will. Malms. u. s. “A majoribus accepimus, quum ille spiritum efflaret, tum horrisonum crepitum per totam Angliam auditum, ut ruina et finis totius putaretur orbis.” The loss of men like Lyfing is indeed the ruin of nations.

Footnote 238:

Will. Malms. (u. s.), who speaks of his gifts to the monastery, and of the services still said for him, “ut hodieque xv. graduum psalmos continuatâ per successores consuetudine pro ejus decantent quiete.”

Footnote 239:

“Lyfing se wordsnotera biscop.” He adds, “he hæfde iii. biscoprice an on Defenascire, and on Cornwalon, and on Wigracestre.” So Florence calls him “Hwicciorum, Domnaniæ, et Cornubiæ præsul.” In the Peterborough Chronicle he is “biscop on Defenascire,” which the Canterbury Chronicler, using the language of his own age, turns into “biscop of Exceastre.”

Footnote 240:

Flor. Wig. 1046. “Regis cancellario Leofrico Brytonico mox Cridiatunensis et Cornubiensis datus est præsulatus.”

Footnote 241:

Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 145 _b_. “Lefricus apud Lotharingos altus et doctus.”

Footnote 242:

See vol. i. p. 320.

Footnote 243:

See vol. i. p. 353.

Footnote 244:

Will. Malms. u. s. He again speaks of Æthelstan’s walls. See vol. i. pp. 337–340.

Footnote 245:

See vol. i. pp. 345, 346.

Footnote 246:

Such a personal installation seems to be the meaning of the description in the foundation charter of the new see of Exeter, in Cod. Dipl. iv. 118. The Charter is doubtful, but it may probably be trusted for a fact of this kind. Cf. Will. Malms. iii. 300.

Footnote 247:

See the whole subject fully illustrated by Professor Stubbs in the Preface to the _De Inventione_, p. ix. et seqq.

The rule of Chrodegang will be found at length in D’Achery’s Spicilegium, i. 565 et seqq.

Footnote 248:

Cap. 53. “Ut Canonici cucullos monachorum non induant.”

Footnote 249:

See Stubbs, De Inventione, p. x.

Footnote 250:

Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 145 _b_. “Canonicos statuit qui, _contra morem Anglorum_, ad formam Lotharingorum uno triclinio comederent, uno cubiculo cubitarent. Transmissa est hujuscemodi regula ad posteros, quamvis pro luxu temporum nonnullâ jam ex parte deciderit, habentque clerici œconomum ab episcopo constitutum, qui eis diatim necessaria victui, annuatim amictui commoda suggerat.”

Footnote 251:

See vol. i. p. 353.

Footnote 252:

The name of Ealdred will be constantly recurring in our history for the next twenty-three years. His general life and character are described by William of Malmesbury, De Gest Pont. 154, and Thomas Stubbs, Gest. Pont. Eb. X Scriptt. 1700 et seqq.

Footnote 253:

T. Stubbs, u. s. “Iste apud Regem Edwardum tantæ erat auctoritatis, ut cum eo mortales inimicos reconciliaret et de inimicissimis amicissimos faceret.”

Footnote 254:

The reconciliation of Gruffydd appears from his acting immediately afterwards in concert with Earl Swegen. That Ealdred brought about this present reconciliation is not distinctly stated, but it quite falls in with his general character, and with the fact that he played a prominent part in a later reconciliation between Eadward and Gruffydd. The success of Ealdred in reconciling both Swegen and Gruffydd to the King is specially commented on by Thomas Stubbs, the biographer of the Archbishops of York (X Scriptt. 1701). Now Stubbs wrote more than three hundred years after the time; still he is not a romancer like Bromton or Knighton, but a really honest and careful writer, and he doubtless had access to materials which are now lost or unprinted. He may indeed refer to the later reconciliation in 1056, but the combination of the names of Swegen and Gruffydd might lead us to think that he was speaking of some event at this time.

Footnote 255:

Chron. Ab. 1046. “Her on þysum geare for Swegn eorl into Wealan, and Griffin se Norþerna cyng forð mid him, and him man gislode.” In Ann. Camb. 1046 we read, “Seditio magna orta fuit inter Grifud filium Lewelin et Grifud filium Riderch.” Or possibly the expedition may be that recorded under the next year, when Gruffydd ap Llywelyn ravaged all South Wales in revenge for the treacherous slaughter of one hundred and forty of his nobles. In any case the two independent accounts exactly fit in to one another.

Footnote 256:

Chron. Ab. 1046. “þa he hamwerdes wæs þa het he feccan him to þa abbedessan on Leomynstre, and hæfde hi þa while þe him geliste, and let hi syððan faran ham.”

Footnote 257:

Florence does not mention the affair of Swegen and Eadgifu in its chronological order, but refers to it when he describes the return of Swegen in 1049. “Suanus ... qui, relictâ prius Angliâ, eo quod Edgivam Leonensis monasterii abbatissam, quam corruperat, in matrimonium, habere non licuerit, Danemarciam adierat.” So the Worcester Chronicle, which does not mention Eadgifu, says, under 1050, “Swegen Eorl, þe fór ær of þisan lande to Denmarcon, and þær forworhte hine wið Denum.” Abingdon, the only Chronicle which mentions Eadgifu, does not speak directly of Swegen’s departure, but implies it under 1049. Mr. St. John (ii. 148 et seqq.) works up the story into an elaborate romance, with a glowing description of the beauty, accomplishments, and wickedness of Eadgifu and of nuns in general. M. de Bonnechose (ii. 85) tells us, “Sweyn _cinquième_ fils de Godwin, fit violence (?) à _Elgive_, abbesse de Leominster; banni par le roi pour ce crime,” &c.

Footnote 258:

See vol. i. p. 279.

Footnote 259:

Chronn. Petrib. 1045. Cant. 1046. “On ðam ilcan geare ferde Swegen eorl ut to Baldewines lande to Brycge, and wunode þær ealne winter, and wende þa to sumere út.” “Út” means, of course, to Denmark. William of Malmesbury says (ii. 200), “Swanus, perversi ingenii et infidi in Regem, multotiens à patre et fratre Haroldo descivit, et pirata factus, prædis marinis virtutes majorum polluit.” Whom did William look on as the forefathers of Swegen?

Footnote 260:

Chron. Petrib. 1046. Swegen on his return asks for their restoration.

Footnote 261:

Will. Malms. ii. 196. “Leofricus ... monasteria multa constituit ... _Leonense_, et nonnulla alia.” So Flor. Wig. 1057. On Leominster see Monasticon, iv. 51.

Footnote 262:

Leominster Monastery had no existence in the time of Henry the First, when it was a “dirutum monasterium” which that King granted to his new Abbey of Reading (Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. Scriptt. p. Bed. 144). I infer also from Domesday (180) that the house had no corporate being at the time of the Survey. Leominster was then held by the King; in King Eadward’s time it had been held by Queen Eadgyth. The monastery is only casually mentioned; it holds no land, but a rent seems to be reserved for the “victus monialium.” These facts together seem to me to show that the society was dissolved, a certain rent being set aside for the surviving members, like the pensions granted at the general Dissolution under Henry the Eighth. See Appendix E.

Footnote 263:

Chronn. Ab. 1046. Wig. 1047. “Man utlagode Osgod stallere.” Chron. Petrib. 1044. “On þis ilcan geare wearð aflemed ut Osgot Clapa.” Chron. Cant. 1045. “And Osgod Clapa wærð ut adriven.” The difference of expression in the different Chronicles is remarkable. On “ut adriven,” see vol. i. p. 561. Florence, 1046, says, “Osgodus Clapa expellitur Angliâ.”

Footnote 264:

See above, p. 7.

Footnote 265:

The Abingdon Chronicle says “on þis ylcan geare man geútlagode Osgod Clapan _foran to middanwintre_.”

Footnote 266:

This is implied in the narrative of Florence, 1049. “Osgodus autem ... Danemarciam rediit.”

Footnote 267:

See vol. i. p. 466.

Footnote 268:

Snorro, Harold, 21 (Laing, iii. 19).

Footnote 269:

Ibid. 26, 28 (Laing, iii. 25, 27).

Footnote 270:

The application of Swend and the refusal by the Witan come from the Worcester Chronicle, 1048. “And Swegen eac sende hider, bead him fylstes ongeon Magnus Norwega cyng; þæt man sceolde sendan L. scypa him to fultume; ac hit þuhte unræd _eallum folce_; and hit wearð þa gelet, þurh þæt þe Magnus hæfde mycel scypecræft.” The personal share of Godwine and Leofric in the debate comes from Florence, 1047. “Tunc comes Godwinus consilium Regi dedit ut saltem L. naves militibus instructas ei mitteret; sed quia Leofrico comiti _et omni populo_ id non videbatur consilium, nullam ei mittere voluit.”

Footnote 271:

Flor. Wig. 1047.

Footnote 272:

Snorro, Harold, 30 (Laing, iii. 29).

Footnote 273:

Saxo, 204. Cf. vol. i. p. 257.

Footnote 274:

For a mythical version of the death of Magnus, mixed up with a story of a vision of Eadward’s, see Æthel. Riev. X Scriptt. 378.

Footnote 275:

See above, p. 73.

Footnote 276:

Flor. Wig. 1048. I insert this story with a certain amount of fear and trembling, as it reads so like a mere repetition of what happened the year before. Still the authority of Florence is high, and it is not unlikely that Swend, in his new circumstances, might make a second application.

Footnote 277:

Fl. Wig. 1048. “Haroldus ... nuntios ad Regem Eadwardum misit et pacem amicitiamque illi obtulit, et recepit.”

Footnote 278:

See below, p. 98.

Footnote 279:

Chron. Ab. 1046. Fl. Wig. 1047. Chron. Wig. 1048. It was after Candlemas, i. e. of 1047.

Footnote 280:

Chronn. Ab. 1048. Wig. 1049. Fl. Wig. 1048.

Footnote 281:

Chron. Wig. 1049. “Þæt wilde fyr on Deorbyscire micel yfel dide.” Florence (1048) calls it “ignis aërius, vulgo dictus silvaticus.”

Footnote 282:

Chronn. Ab. 1047. Wig. 1048. Petrib. 1045. Cant. 1046. Fl. Wig. 1047. By some extraordinary confusion Florence places here the death of Eadmund, Bishop of Durham, and the succession of Eadred, which happened in 1041. See vol. i. pp. 588–9.

Footnote 283:

Chron. Ab. 1048. Chron. Petrib. 1046. These clearly refer to the same event. I hardly understand Mr. Thorpe’s note to his Translation of the Chronicles, p. 137. “This predatory expedition, assigned here to the year 1046, is of a much earlier date”—one seemingly before the year 1000. This is because a Lothen and an Yrling occur in the story of Olaf Tryggwesson. But the Chronicler could hardly be mistaken on such a point. Lappenberg (499. Thorpe, ii. 239) seems to have no doubt on the matter.

Footnote 284:

“Godwines Rath wurde bald als der richtige erkannt.” Lappenberg, 499.

Footnote 285:

I make up the details by joining the narratives of the two Chronicles. Both mention Sandwich; but the Peterborough Chronicle alone speaks of the vast booty.

Footnote 286:

Chron. Ab. 1048. “Man gehergode Sandwic and Wiht, and ofslohan þa betsta men þe þa wæron.”

Footnote 287:

Chron. Petrib. 1046. “And wendon þa onbuton Tenet, and woldon þær þet ilce don; ac þet landfolc hardlice wiðstodon, and forwerndon heom ægðer ge upganges ge wæteres, and aflymdon hi þanon mid ealle.” The refusal of water is remarkable. Probably in other cases the landfolk had to provide provisions out of sheer fear.

Footnote 288:

Chron. Petrib. u. s.

Footnote 289:

Chron. Ab. 1048. “And Eadward cining and þa eorlas foran æfter þam út mid heore scypun.” Eadward had been on board the fleet once before (see p. 74), but that time he saw no service.

Footnote 290:

Chron. Petrib. 1046.

Footnote 291:

See vol. i. pp. 313, 330, 633.

Footnote 292:

Lamb. Herz. 1047.

Footnote 293:

See above, p. 17.

Footnote 294:

See the Life of Leo by the contemporary Archdeacon Wibert, in Muratori, iii. 282.

Footnote 295:

The intervention of Hildebrand, as told by Otto of Freisingen in his Annals, lib. vi. c. 33, seems apocryphal, as Muratori remarks in his note, iii. 292. But the germ of the story is to be found in Wibert; Leo entered Rome barefoot, and though he announced his appointment by the Emperor, he demanded the assent of the clergy and people before he entered on his office.

Footnote 296:

On this war see Hermannus Contractus, 1044–1050. Lambert, 1044–1050. Sigebert, 1044–1049 (ap. Pertz, vi. 358–9). Ann. Leodienses (ap. Pertz, iv. 19, 20). Otto Fris. Chron. vi. 33. Conrad Ursp. 1045–9 (p. 229, ed. 1537). Annalista Saxo (ap. Pertz, vol. vi. p. 689). Struvius, i. 352. The destruction of the palace is mentioned in our own Abingdon and Worcester Chronicles, 1049, 1050; “Se casere gaderode unarimedlice fyrde ongean Baldewine of Brycge þurh þæt þæt he bræc þæne pallant æt Neomagan, and eac fela oðra unþanca þe he him dyde.” So Florence, 1049; “Quod apud Neomagum suum palatium combussisset atque fregisset pulcherrimum.” The year of its destruction was 1046, according to Lambert (“Inter alias quas rei publicæ intulit clades, Neumago domum regiam miri et incomparabilis operis incendit”), 1047 according to Sigebert, (“Godefridus palatium Neomagi incendit et irreparabiliter destruit”). Both writers speak of the destruction of the church of Verdun; Lambert adds the singular penance of Godfrey, which must have followed his submission in 1049. “Post modicum facti in tantum pœnituit, ut publicè se verberari faceret, et capillos suos ne tonderentur [one is reminded of the Merwings] multâ pecuniâ redimeret, sumptus ad reædificandam ecclesiam daret, et in opere cæmentario per seipsum plerumque vilis mancipii ministerio functus deserviret.” Abbot Hugh in the Verdun Chronicle (Labbe, i. 190) makes the destruction at Verdun still more extensive; “Templum Sanctæ Mariæ à Duce Godefrido et Balduino succensum est, vasa sacra ablata, civitasque destructa, viii. Kal. Nov.” So in another Verdun Chronicle (ib. 401); “1048 Civitas Virdunensis a Duce Godefrido et Balduino Comite deprædatur et unà cum Monasterio Sanctæ Mariæ incenditur.”

Footnote 297:

Florence (1049) seems pointedly to distinguish the relations in which Swend and Eadward stood to the Emperor. “Suanus ... ut Imperator illi _mandârat_, cum suâ classe ibi affuit, et eâ vice fidelitatem Imperatori juravit. Misit quoque ad Regem Anglorum Eadwardum et _rogavit_ illum ne Baldwinum permitteret effugere, si vellet ad mare fugere.”

Footnote 298:

Flor. Wig. 1049. Chronn. Ab. and Wig. ib. “þæt he ne geþafode þæt he him on wætere ne ætburste.”

Footnote 299:

See vol. i. pp. 229, 245.

Footnote 300:

Chronn. Ab. and Wig. “þæt se casere hæfde of Baldwine eall þæt he wolde.” The reconciliation was at Aachen. Sigebert, 1049. Hermann, 1050. Lambert seems to confound this reconciliation with the later synod at Mainz. William of Poitiers boldly turns the tables; the father-in-law of Duke William could not have made submission even to an Emperor; “Nomine siquidem Romani Imperii miles fuit, re decus et gloria summa consiliorum in summâ necessitudine ... Est enim et nationibus procul remotis notissimum quam frequentibus, quamque gravibus bellis Imperatorum immanitatem fatigaverit, pace demum ad conditiones ipsius arbitratu dictatas compositâ, quum Regum dominos terræ ipsorum nonnullâ parte mulctaverit violenter extortâ, sua quæque vel inexpugnatâ vel indefessâ potiùs manu tutam.” Giles, 90. Duchesne, 183 D.

Footnote 301:

See pp. 88, 90.

Footnote 302:

Chron. Ab. 1049. “He com hider mid hiwunge, cwæð þæt he wolde his man beon.”

Footnote 303:

Chron. Petrib. 1046. “And com Swegn eorl in mid vii. scypum to Bosenham, et griðode wið þone cyng, and behet man him þæt he moste wurðe [beon] ælc þæra þinga þe he ǽr ahte.

Footnote 304:

Chron. Petrib. 1046. “Da wiðlæg Harold eorl his broðor and Beorn eorl þæt he ne moste beon nan þære þinga wurðe þe se cyng him geunnen hæfde.” So Chron. Ab. 1049. The Worcester Chronicle and Florence do not mention this opposition of Harold and Beorn.

Footnote 305:

See vol. i. p. 370.

Footnote 306:

“Fóron fela scypa hám,” says the Worcester Chronicle; but Abingdon puts it more distinctly; “And þa se cing lyfde eallon Myrceon ham; and hig swa dydon.”

Footnote 307:

Abingdon and Worcester mention Godwine’s going with forty-two ships, but Peterborough has more distinctly, “Ða ge[wende] Godwine eorl west onbuton mid þæs cynges ii. scipum þan anan steorde Harold eorl and þan oðran Tostig his broðor, and landesmanna sciþa xlii.”

Footnote 308:

The first certainly authentic signature of Tostig seems to be in this year. Cod. Dipl. iv. 115. The charter, after the signatures of Godwine, Leofric and Siward, has those of “Harold Dux,” “Beorn Dux,” “Tosti nobilis,” “Leowine nobilis.” Leofwine must have been very young.

Footnote 309:

Chron. Petrib. “Ða scyfte man _Harold_ eorl úp þæs cynges scipe þe Harold eorl ǽr steorde.” Mr. Earle’s conjecture that for “Harold eorl” we should read “Beorn eorl” is absolutely necessary to make sense of the passage. Parallel Chronicles, 343.

Footnote 310:

Was it some feeling that a brother’s life had been at least in jeopardy that led William of Malmesbury, or those whom he followed, into the strange statement (ii. 200), “Pro conscientiâ Brunonis cognati interempti, _et, ut quidam dicunt, fratris_”?

Footnote 311:

Chron. Ab. “Þa wende Beorn for þære sibbe þæt he him swican nolde.” So Wig.

Footnote 312:

“To Dertamuðan,” Chronn. Ab. and Wig. “to Axamuðan,” Chron. Petrib.

Footnote 313:

The personal share of Harold in the burial comes from the Abingdon Chronicle, the one least favourable to Godwine. Peterborough, so strongly Godwinist, is silent.

Footnote 314:

Chron. Ab. “And se cing þa and eall here cwæðon Swegen for niðing.” Cf. Chron. Petrib. 1088. “Ða se cyng ... sende ofer eall Englalande, and bead þæt ælc man þe wære unniðing sceolde cúman to hé.” Will. Malms. iv. 306. “Jubet ut compatriotas advocent ad obsidionem venire, nisi si qui velint sub nomine Niðing, quod _nequam_ sonat, remanere.” Matt. Paris. p. 15 (Wats); “Absque morâ ut ad obsidionem veniant jubet; nisi velint sub nomine _Nithing_, quod Latinè _nequam_ sonat, recenseri. Angli, qui nihil contumeliosius et vilius æstimant quam hujusmodi ignominioso vocabulo notari, catervatim ad Regem confluentes,” &c.

Footnote 315:

On military Assemblies, Macedonian, Ætolian, and even Achaian, see Hist. Fed. Gov. i. pp. 413, 511, 549.

Footnote 316:

See vol. i. p. 404.

Footnote 317:

See vol. i. p. 86.

Footnote 318:

_Here_, which implies a standing force, very often a paid force, not _fyrd_, the general levy of the country.

Footnote 319:

See vol. i. p. 109.

Footnote 320:

On the Housecarls, as a later and inferior form of the _Comitatus_, see vol. i. p. 490.

Footnote 321:

“Lytel ær þan” (namely the second burial of Beorn), the men of Hastings set forth, according to the Worcester Chronicle, the only one which mentions their exploit.

Footnote 322:

So I understand the words of the Worcester Chronicle. The men of Hastings go after Swegen and take “his twa scypa”—the only ships he then had. To explain his having only two ships the writer adds, “ehta scypa he hæfde ær he Beorn beswice; syððan hine forleton ealle buton twam.” The only meaning of these words seems to be that which I have given, though it involves the difficulty as to the personal escape of Swegen. But it is clear that Florence took them differently; “Dimiserunt illum sex naves, quarum duas paullò post cœperunt Hastingenses ... Swanus verò ad Flandriam duabus fugiens navibus ibi mansit.” This accounts for his escape, but I cannot see how “his twa scypa” can mean two of the ships which had left him. The Abingdon Chronicle also mentions the desertion of the six ships, but not the exploit of the Hastings men.

For other examples of the vigorous action of the men of the “Cinque Ports” in 1293 and 1297, see Walter of Hemingburgh, vol. ii. pp. 41, 158 (Hist. Soc. Ed.).

Footnote 323:

Chron. Ab. “And þar wunode mid Baldwine.” Chron. Petrib. “And Swegen gewende þa east to Baldewines lande, and sæt þær ealne winter on Brycge mid his fullan griðe.”

Footnote 324:

Chron. Wig. 1050. “Swein eorl bæd Beorn eorl mid facne,” “ær he Beorn beswice.” Chron. Ab. 1049. “ær he Beorn amyrðrode.”

Footnote 325:

See vol. i. p. 588.

Footnote 326:

I think that by comparing the Abingdon Chronicle under 1050 with the Peterborough Chronicle under 1047, it will appear that Swegen was reinstated in this Gemót of Midlent 1050, one which I shall have to mention again.

Footnote 327:

Flor. Wig. “Swanus ... ibi mansit, quoad Wigornensis episcopus Aldredus illum reduceret, et cum Rege pacificaret.” This seems to imply that Ealdred brought him over in person.

Footnote 328:

The old diocese of Worcester took in the shires of Worcester and Gloucester and part of Warwick. Of these Gloucestershire was in Swegen’s Earldom, the rest in Leofric’s.

Footnote 329:

The reconciliation of Swegen with Eadward is mentioned by Thomas Stubbs (see above, p. 87) as an instance of the peacemaking powers of Ealdred, along with that of Gruffydd.

Footnote 330:

It is clear that the details of the murder could come only from Swegen himself, as his accomplices were killed by the Hastings men. Ealdred would be the obvious person for Swegen to confess them to. I do not suspect the Bishop of betraying the secrets of the confessional. A public crime like that of Swegen was doubtless followed by a public confession.

Footnote 331:

See above, pp. 90, 100.

Footnote 332:

Four, according to the Worcester Chronicle, two, according to Florence. The Abingdon Chronicle does not mention this last incident, and that of Peterborough passes by the whole story of Osgod.

Footnote 333:

Chron. Wig. “þa man ofsloh begeondan sæ.” Flor. Wig. “Quæ in transmarinis partibus captæ sunt, occisis omnibus qui in illis erant.”

Footnote 334:

Chron. Wig. “On Wylisce Axa.” Flor. Wig. “Ostium intrantes Sabrinæ, in loco qui dicitur _Wylesc Eaxan_ appulerunt.” The “Welsh Axe” is of course the Usk. The rivers of the same name in Somersetshire and Devonshire had ceased to be looked on as Welsh.

Footnote 335:

On the details of this perplexing campaign, see Appendix I.

Footnote 336:

Ralph’s signatures seem to begin in 1050. See Cod. Dipl. iv. 123, 125. That in 121 is more doubtful. That in 113 Mr. Kemble marks as doubtful, but refers it to 1044–1047. But it must be spurious. It makes Eadsige Archbishop and Ælfgar Earl at the same time, as also Tostig, who was not an Earl till long after. See Appendix G.

Footnote 337:

Chron. Wig. 1050. “And hi comon unwær on heom, on ealne ærne morgen, and fela godra manna þær ofslagon; and þa oþre ætburston forð mid þam biscope.”

Footnote 338:

“Þæt micele mynster æt Rémys,” says the Worcester Chronicle, which might seem to mean the Metropolitan church; but Florence makes it plain that the Abbey is meant; “Rogatu eximiæ religionis Abbatis Herimari.... sancti Remigii Francorum apostoli monasterium, Remis constitutum, maximo cum honore dedicavit.” Cf. Will. Gem. vii. 15.

Footnote 339:

Ord. Vit. 575 A.

Footnote 340:

The presence of the Emperor is asserted by the Worcester Chronicle; “Þær wæs se Papa Leo and se Casere.” Florence does not speak of the Emperor, but says that Leo took with him “præfectum et digniores quosdam Romuleæ urbis.”

Footnote 341:

Chron. Petrib. 1046. “Þær wæs on Leo se Papa and se arcebiscop of Burgundia and se arcebiscop of Bysincun and se arcebiscop of Treviris, and se arcebiscop of Remis, and manig mann þærto ge hadode ge læwede.”

Footnote 342:

Chron. Petrib. 1046. “Eadward cyng sende þider Dudoce [the Abbots only and not Dudoc are mentioned by the Worcester Chronicle, 1050] ... þæt hi sceolden þam cynge cyðan hwæt þær to Christendome gecoren wære.”

Footnote 343:

Lambert, 1050 (see above, p. 99). Herm. Contr. 1050.

Footnote 344:

See above, p. 68.

Footnote 345:

Chron. Ab. 1049. “Forðferde Eadnoð se goda biscop on Oxnafordscire.” The same words seem to have dropped out of the Worcester Chronicle.

Footnote 346:

Chron. Ab. 1049. “Eadwerd cing geaf Ulfe his preoste þæt biscoprice, and hit yfele beteah.” Chron. Wig. 1050. “Ac he wæs syððan of adryfon, forþan þe he ne gefremede naht biscoplices þæron, swa þæt us sceamað hit nu mare to tellanne.” Flor. Wig. “Regis capellanus Ulfus genere Nortmannus.”

Footnote 347:

See vol. i. p. 368.

Footnote 348:

See vol. i. p. 570.

Footnote 349:

Chron. Petrib. 1047. “Her on þisum geare wæs mycel gemót on Lundene to midfestene, and man sette ut ix. litsmanna scipa, and fif belifan wið æftan.” The Abingdon Chronicle, 1049, to much the same account as that just quoted, adds the words, “and se cyng heom behet xii. monað gyld.”

Footnote 350:

Chron. Ab. 1050 (the chronology of this Chronicle is utterly confused); “and man _geinlagode_ Swegen Eorl.”

Footnote 351:

See above, p. 108.

Footnote 352:

Chron. Ab. 1049. “On þæs cinges ærende.”

Footnote 353:

See the charter in Cod. Dipl. iv. 173, and the accounts in Æthelred of Rievaux, 379. Estorie de S. Ædward, 65 et seqq.

Footnote 354:

Besides the many exalted persons who followed the example of Cnut, some of whose pilgrimages are of historical importance, the prevalence of the fashion is shown by its incidental mention in more than one charter. Thus in Cod. Dipl. iv. 140 we find the mention of the Roman pilgrimage of a Lincolnshire Thegn whose name of Anskill or Anscytel witnesses to his Danish origin. (The charter may be quoted for such a point as this, though there is clearly something wrong in the signature of “Wulfwinus _Lincolniensis_ episcopus.”) And at p. 141 we find “Leofgyva femina Lundonica” (a holder of property in Lincolnshire) dying on her way to Jerusalem.

Footnote 355:

Chron. Petrib. 1047. “On þysum ilcan geare wæs se myccla sinoð on Rome”—like our own “mycel gemót” just before.

Footnote 356:

Ib. “Hi comon þyder on Easter æfen.”

Footnote 357:

Vita Lanfr. c. 10. ap. Giles, i. 288. Will. Malms. iii. 284. Sig. Gemb. 1051. See Milman, Latin Christianity, iii. 24.

Footnote 358:

Æthel. Riev. ap. X Scriptt. 381. If the letter there given be genuine, the dispensation was granted by the authority of the synod as well as of the Pope. Eadward was either to build a new or restore an old monastery of Saint Peter; “aut novum construas aut vetustum augeas et emendes.” Cf. the French Life, 1601 et seqq., where the Bishops are both quartered on wrong sees, Ealdred prematurely at York, Hermann at Winchester. The story does not occur in the contemporary Life, p. 417.

Footnote 359:

See the first letter in Dr. Giles’ collection, p. 17.

Footnote 360:

Our ancient tongue appears to advantage in the pithy narrative of this affair given in the Peterborough Chronicle (1047); “And eft se Papa hæfde sinoð on Uercel, and Ulf biscop com þærto; and forneah man sceolde tobrecan his stef, gif he ne sealde þe mare gersuman; forðan he ne cuðe don his gerihte swa wel swa he sceolde.” Florence passes by the story; his Latin would be feeble after such vigorous English.

Footnote 361:

See above, p. 54.

Footnote 362:

Chron. Petrib. 1047. Flor. Wig. 1050.

Footnote 363:

Vita Eadw. 400. Ælfric was “secundum canonica instituta electus,” by a “petitio et electio ecclesiastici conventûs.”

Footnote 364:

Ibid. 399. “Ex supradicti ducis Godwini stirpe.”

Footnote 365:

Ib. 399–400. “Quem tam totius ecclesiæ universales filii quam ipsius monasterii monachi in archipræsulem sibi exposcunt dari, huncque et affectu communi et petitione eligunt præesse regulari. Mittunt etiam ad supradictum Godwinum, qui regio favore in eâ dominabatur parte regni, commonent eum generis sui, precantur ut ex affectu propinquitatis Regem adeat, et hunc, utpote in eâdem ecclesiâ nutritum et secundum canonica instituta electum, sibi pontificem annuat. Promittit fideliter pro viribus suis Dux inclitus, Regemque adiens innotescit petitionem et electionem ecclesiastici conventûs.”

Footnote 366:

Chron. Ab. 1050. “þa hæfde Eadward cing witenagemot on Lunden to Midlencten, and sette Hrodberd to arcebiscop to Cantwarebyrig, and Sperhafoc abbud to Lunden, and geaf Roðulfe biscop his mæge þæt abbudrice on Abbandune.”

Footnote 367:

See the Abingdon History, i. 463. He was a monk of Saint Eadmund’s, and was charged with alienating some of the lordships of the house to Stigand. The account of his promotion to London I do not fully understand; “Spearhavoc autem a Rege civitati Lundonensi [civitatis Lundonensis?] eodem prædictæ pactionis anno, in episcopatum promotus, dum auri gemmarumque electarum pro coronâ _imperiali_ cudendâ, Regis ejusdem assignatione receptam haberet copiam.” Was Saint Eadward’s favour purchased by the materials of an earthly crown?

Footnote 368:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “Mid þæs cinges gewrite and insegle.” See above, p. 67.

Footnote 369:

Rudolf’s kindred to the King is asserted more positively in the local Chronicle just quoted than in the local History (463); “Inde Rodulfum quemdam longævum abbatis loco ponendum Rex transmisit, qui episcopatum apud Norweiam gentem diu moderans, et tandem ab hujusmodi fasce privatum se agere malens, ad Regem ipsum suum, ut ferebatur, cognatum venit; a quo et susceptus est.”

Footnote 370:

Rudolf, in any of its forms, is not an usual English name, but it might occur, like the rare names of Carl and Lothar (Hloðhære). See vol. i. p. 334.

Footnote 371:

Adam Brem. iii. 16. “Rex Haraldus crudelitate suâ omnes tyrannorum excessit furores. Multæ ecclesiæ per illum virum dirutæ, multi Christiani ab illo per supplicia sunt necati.... Itaque multis imperans nationibus, propter avaritiam et crudelitatem suam omnibus erat invisus.” He goes on to give a full account of Harold’s dealings with the Archbishop of Trondhjem.

Footnote 372:

Hist. Mon. Ab. 463. “Ut vero tam Dei quam sui respectu eum monachi reciperent honorificèque tractarent, utpote summâ canitie jam maturum, eo discedente, licere eis dedit quem de suis vellent, potiùs successorem eligere. Paretur Regi. Reverentiæ subjectio debitæ a fratribus viro competenter impenditur. At ipsos regia nequaquam fefellit in posterum promissio.” Rudolf survived only two years.

Footnote 373:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “Þæs sylfan Lentenes he for to Rome æfter his pallium.... Ða com se arcebiscop fram Rome ane dæge ǽr Sc̃s Petrus mæsse æfene, and gesæt his arcebiscopstol at Xp̃es cyrcean on Sc̃s Petrus mæssedæg, _and sona þæs to þam cyng gewænde_.”

Footnote 374:

The Peterborough Chronicle (1048) is here again very graphic; “Ða com Sparhafoc abbod to him mid þæs cynges gewrite and insegle (see above, p. 120); to þan þet he hine hadian sceolde to biscop into Lundene. Þa wiðcweð se arcebiscop, and cwæð þet se papa hit him forboden hæfde.”

Footnote 375:

Chron. Petrib. The pithy narrative of this writer is cut much shorter in the Worcester Chronicler (1051), followed by Florence; “Spearhafoc ... feng to þan biscoprice on Lundene, and hit wæs eft of him genumen ær he gehadod wære.” Florence turns this into, “Antequam esset consecratus, a Rege Eadwardo est ejectus.” Now the Chronicles do not at all imply that the refusal of Robert was at all the King’s personal act. Florence is perhaps confounding this business with the final expulsion of Spearhafoc later in the year, which he however places under another year.

Footnote 376:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “Ða gewende se abbod to Lundene, and sæt on þam biscoprice, þe _se cyng him ær geunnan hæfde be his fulre leafe_.” This is one of those little touches which show the sympathies of the writer.

Footnote 377:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “Ealne þone sumor and þone hærfest.”

Footnote 378:

Chron. Ab. 1050. “And þæs ylcan geare he settle ealle þa litsmen of male.”

Footnote 379:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “On þan ylcan geare aléde Eadward cyng þæt heregyld þæt Æþelred cyng ær astealde; þæt was on þam nigon and þrittigoðan geare þæs þe he hit ongunnon hæfde.” Flor. Wig. 1051. “Rex Eadwardus absolvit Anglos a gravi vectigali tricesimo octavo anno ex quo pater suus Rex Ægelredus primitus id Danicis solidariis solvi mandârat.” See vol. i. p. 391. The _Heregyld_ is a tax for the maintenance of the _here_ or standing army as distinguished from the _fyrd_ or militia.

Footnote 380:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “Þæt gyld gedrehte ealle Engla þeode on swa langum fyrste swa hit bufan her awriten is; ðæt was æfre ætforan oðrum gyldum þe man myslice geald, and men mid menigfealdlice drehte.”

Footnote 381:

See Bromton, 942. Estoire de S. Ædward, 919 et seqq. Leofric is also Eadward’s partner in another vision. Æthel. Riev. X Scriptt. 389. Bromton, 949.

Footnote 382:

See Appendix K.

Footnote 383:

See vol. i. p. 366.

Footnote 384:

There is a grant of lands to Godwine (uni meo fideli Duci nuncupato nomine Godwino) as late as 1050. Cod. Dipl. iv. 123. The description of the grantee as “Dux” of course identifies him with the Earl.

Footnote 385:

The only absolutely certain instances that I can find at this time are the signatures of Earl Ralph in 1050. See above, p. 111. His name is added to doubtful charters at pp. 113, 121, and another doubtful one is signed by Robert the son of Wimarc, of whom more anon. The signatures of ecclesiastics, Rægnbold the Chancellor and others, are more common.

Footnote 386:

Ralph’s wife bore the name of Gytha, and their son was named Harold. Robert the son of Wimarc had also a son named Swegen, afterwards famous in Domesday. See Ellis, i. 433, 489. ii. 117. These names certainly point to a certain identification with England, and suggest the idea that the sons of Ralph and Robert were godsons of the two sons of Godwine.

Footnote 387:

See vol. i. p. 570.

Footnote 388:

See vol. i. p. 281.

Footnote 389:

“Nescia gens belli solamina spernit equorum,” says Guy of Amiens of the English (Giles, p. 38), but his following lines are, however unwittingly, a noble panegyric.

Footnote 390:

Thuc. iv. 40. ἀπεκρίνατο αὐτῷ πολλοῦ ἂν ἄξιον εἶναι τὸν ἄτρακτον (λέγων τὸν ὀϊστὸν), εἰ τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς διεγίγνωσκε.

Footnote 391:

Vita Eadw. 400. “Totius ecclesiæ filiis hanc injuriam pro nisu suo reclamantibus.”

Footnote 392:

Vita Eadw. 401. See vol. i. pp. 543, 573.

Footnote 393:

Vita Eadw. 400. See Appendix E.

Footnote 394:

See vol. i. p. 584.

Footnote 395:

Ord. Vit. 487 D, 655 C.

Footnote 396:

A daughter of Æthelred and Emma must have been thirty-five years old at this time, and she may have been forty-seven. Considering the position held by her son, Godgifu is likely to have been approaching the more advanced age of the two.

Footnote 397:

Will. Malms. ii. 199. “Collocutus cum eo, et re impetratâ quam petierat.” This perhaps comes from Chron. Petrib. 1048; “And spæc wið hine þæt þæt he þa wolde.”

Footnote 398:

Chronn. Wig. 1052, Petrib. 1048. See vol. i. p. 588.

Footnote 399:

I reserve an examination of the authorities for this narrative for the Appendix. See Note L. I here refer to the Chronicles only for details.

Footnote 400:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “Ða he wæs sume mila oððe mare beheonan Dofran, þa dyde he on his byrnan, and his geferan ealle, and foran to Dofran.”

Footnote 401:

Thirty-one, reckoning from Godwine’s appointment as Earl of the West-Saxons in 1020. See vol. i. p. 469. If Godwine really became Earl of Kent in 1017 or 1018 (see vol. i. p. 451) two or three years more must be added.

Footnote 402:

Chron. Petrib. “Þa com an his manna, and wolde wician æt anes bundan huse, his unðances, and gewundode þone husbundon, and se husbunda ofsloh þone oðerne.” So Will. Malms. ii. 199; “Unus antecursorum ejus ferociùs cum cive agens, et vulnere magis quam prece hospitium exigens, illum in sui excidium invitavit.” I do not know why Mr. Hardy says that William implies that all this happened at Canterbury. Surely “per Doroberniam” means Dover.

Footnote 403:

Chron. Petrib. “Ða wearð Eustatius uppon his horse, and his gefeoran uppon heora, and ferdon to þam husbundon, and ofslogon hine binnan his agenan heorðæ.” It shows how impossible it seemed to a French noble of that age to strike a blow except on horseback, that Eustace and his companions mounted their horses at such a moment as this, when one would have thought that horses were distinctly in the way.

Footnote 404:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “Forþan Eustatius hæfde gecydd þam cynge þet hit sceolde beon mare gylt þære burhwaru þonne his. Ac hit næs na swa.” So Will. Malms. “Inde ad curiam pedem referens, nactusque secretum, suæ

## partis patronus assistens, iram Regis in Anglos exacuit.”

Footnote 405:

Herod, vii. 104. ἔπεστι γάρ σφι δεσπότης νόμος, τὸν ὑποδειμαίνουσι πολλῷ ἔτι μᾶλλον ἢ οἱ σοὶ σέ· ποιεῦσι γῶν τὰ ἂν ἐκεῖνος ἀνώγῃ.

Footnote 406:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “And wearð se cyng swyþe gram wið þa burhware.”

Footnote 407:

See above, p. 26.

Footnote 408:

“Baldwines mage” says the Worcester Chronicler; Florence (1051) alters this into “filia.” The Biographer of Eadward, p. 404, says “soror,” making her Eadward’s niece, which is hard to understand. It is from this passage that we learn that all this happened just at the very time of Tostig’s marriage; “Acciderant hæc in ipsis nuptiis filii sui ducis Tostini.” The title of “Dux” is premature.

Footnote 409:

Chron. Petrib. “And ofsænde se cyng Godwine eorl, and bæd hine faran into Cent mid unfriða to Dofran.” The full force of the word “unfriða” may be understood by its being so constantly applied to the Danish armies and fleets. See vol. i. p. 327. So William of Malmesbury (ii. 199); “Quamvis Rex jussisset illum continuò cum exercitu in Cantiam proficisci, in Dorobernenses graviter ulturum.”

Footnote 410:

See vol. i. p. 580.

Footnote 411:

Chron. Petrib. “And se eorl nolde na geðwærian þære infare; forþan him wæs lað to amyrrene his agene folgað.” One might be tempted to believe that this last word implied some special connexion between Godwine and Dover, were it not that we directly after read, “on Swegenes eorles folgoðe,” where it can hardly mean more than that the place was within his jurisdiction as Earl. The very first entry in Domesday represents Godwine as receiving a third of the royal revenues in Dover, but this was of course simply his regular revenue as Earl. The relations of the townsmen to the Crown are rather minutely described. They held their privileges by providing twenty ships yearly for fifteen days; each had a crew of twenty-one men. There is not a word to show that the demands of Eustace and his followers were other than utterly illegal.

Footnote 412:

I get my speech from William of Malmesbury (ii. 119), whose account is very clear and full, and thoroughly favourable to Godwine. “Intellexit vir acrioris ingenii, unius tantùm partis auditis allegationibus, non debere proferri sententiam. Itaque ... restitit, et quòd omnes alienigenas apud Regis gratiam invalescere invideret, et quòd compatriotis amicitiam præstare vellet. Præterea videbatur ejus responsio in rectitudinem propensior, ut magnates illius castelli blandè in curiâ Regis de seditione convenirentur; si se possent explacitare, illæsi abirent; si nequirent, pecuniâ vel corporum suorum dispendio, Regi cujus pacem infregerant, et Comiti quem læserant, satisfacerent: iniquum videri ut quos tutari debeas, eos ipse potissimum inauditos adjudices.” Here are the words which either tradition put into the mouth of Godwine, or else which a hostile historian deliberately conceived as most in keeping with his character. Who would recognize in this assertor of the purest principles of right the object of the savage invectives of William of Poitiers?

Footnote 413:

Will. Malms. ii. 199. “Ita tunc discessum, Godwino parvi pendente Regis furorem quasi momentaneum.” On these occasional fits of wrath on the part of Eadward, see above, p. 23.

Footnote 414:

The revival of the story about Ælfred and the special part played by Archbishop Robert comes from the Biographer of Eadward. I shall discuss this point in Appendix L.

Footnote 415:

The summoning of the Witan is distinctly set forth in the Peterborough Chronicle; “Ða sende se cyng æftre eallon his witan, and bead heom cuman to Gleaweceastre neh þære æfter Sc̃a Maria mæssan.” The charge against Godwine comes from the Life of Eadward, p. 401; “Ergò perturbato Rege de talibus plus justo, convenerunt de totâ Britanniâ [did any Scottish or Welsh princes appear?] quique potentes et duces Glaucestræ regio palatio, ubique in eo querimoniam talium habente, perlata est in insontem Ducem tanti criminis accusatio.”

Footnote 416:

Richard, the son of Scrob or Scrupe, and son-in-law of Robert the Deacon (Flor. Wig. 1052), appears in Domesday, 186 _b_. His son Osbern, of whom we shall hear again, appears repeatedly in Domesday as a great landowner in Herefordshire and elsewhere. See 176 _b_, 180, 186 _b_, 260.

Footnote 417:

See the entries in the Chronicles, Wig. 1066, Petrib. 1087, 1137. In all these passages the building of castles is reckoned among the chief grievances of the reign of the Conqueror and of the anarchy of the time of Stephen. Compare Giraldus’ description of Ireland, after the invasions in the time of Henry the Second. (Exp. Hib. ii. 34. vol. v. p. 865 Dimock); “Insula Hibernica, de mari usque ad mare, ex toto subacta et _incastellata_.” Cf. ii. 38, 39.

Footnote 418:

On the different developements of fortification in England, see vol. i. pp. 64, 338. The Norman castle makes the _fifth_ stage.

Footnote 419:

See vol. i. pp. 99–101.

Footnote 420:

I shall have to speak of this destruction of castles in Normandy when I come to deal with the reign of William in that country. This is the real cause why Normandy contains so few castles earlier than the twelfth century. I can see no reason whatever to believe that the castles of the eleventh century, either in Normandy or in England, were commonly of wood. The temporary wooden towers which were often used in the military art of the time, and which sometimes are called castles, are also sometimes pointedly distinguished from the permanent stone fortresses. Thus in the Angevin Chronicle in Labbé, i. 286, 287, we read how in 1025 Count Odo of Chartres (see vol. i. p. 509, and in the next chapter) besieged the castle which Fulk of Anjou had built as an ἐπιτειχισμός against Tours (contra civitatem Turonicam firmaverat), and “turrem _ligneam_ miræ altitudinis super domgionem ipsius castri erexit.” The donjon itself was surely of stone. We shall find other evidence of the same kind in the next Chapter. Stone was also fast coming into use for domestic as well as for military and ecclesiastical buildings. Avesgaud, Bishop of Le Mans, rebuilt in stone both the episcopal palace and also a hospital; before him they had been of wood—“quæ antea ligneæ fuerat, petrinas ... constituit.” Gest. Ep. Cenom. ap. Mabillon, Vetera Analecta, iii. 300*.

Footnote 421:

The word “castel” evidently appears at this stage to denote some new thing, quite distinct from the familiar “burh” of earlier times. So Orderic (511 C), in speaking of the rarity of castles in England before the Norman Conquest, speaks of the name as something specially French; “Munitiones (_quas castella Galli nuncupant_) Anglicis provinciis paucissimæ fuerant.” He adds, “ob hoc Angli, licet bellicosi fuerint et audaces, ad resistendum tamen inimicis exstiterant debiliores.”

Footnote 422:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “þa hæfdon þa _Welisce menn_ gewroht ænne castel on Herefordscire on Swegenes eorles folgoðe, and wrohton ælc þæra harme and bismere þæs cynges mannan þær abutan þe hi mihton.” These Welshmen are undoubtedly Frenchmen (see Earle, p. 345. Lingard, i. 337. Lappenberg, 508); Britons did not build castles, nor were they on such terms of friendly intercourse with King Eadward. William of Malmesbury’s misconception of the whole passage (ii. 199) is amusing; “ut Walenses compescerent qui, tyrannidem in Regem meditantes, oppidum in pago Herefordensi obfirmaverant, ubi tunc Swanus, unus ex filiis Godwini, militiæ prætendebat excubias.” This last is simply a misunderstanding of the words “on Swegenes eorles folgoðe,” which seems merely to mean “within Swegen’s government.”

Footnote 423:

Beverstone appears in Domesday (163) only as an appendage to the royal lordship of Berkeley, and is not mentioned as a possession of Godwine. Otherwise one would have expected to find one of the Earl’s many houses chosen as the place of meeting. But perhaps the suggestion in the text may explain matters.

On the other hand the mysterious connexion between Godwine and Berkeley (see Appendix E) must not be forgotten.

Footnote 424:

See above, p. 104.

Footnote 425:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “Ða com Godwine eorl and Swegen eorl and Harold eorl togædere æt Byferesstane and manig mann mid heom, to ðon þæt hi woldon faran to heora cyne-hlaforde, and to þam witan eallon þe mid him gegaderode wæron, þæt hi þæs cynges ræd hæfdon, and his fultum, and ealra witena, hu hi mihton þæs cynges bismer awrecan and ealles þeodscipes.”

Footnote 426:

Vita Eadw. 401. “Quod ubi per quosdam fideles comperit [Godwinus], missis legatis, pacem Regis petivit, legem purgandi se de objecto crimine frustrà prætulit.”

Footnote 427:

Chron. Petrib. “Ða wæron þa Wælisce menn ætforan mid þam cynge, and forwregdon þa eorlas þæt hi ne moston cuman on his eagon gesihðe, forðan hi sædon þæt hi woldon cuman þider for þes cynges swicdome.”

Footnote 428:

Vita Eadw. p. 401. “Nam adeo super hujus sceleris fide animum Rex induxerat ut nec verbum aliquod oblatæ purgationis audire posset.”

Footnote 429:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “Ealle gearwe to wige ongean þone cyng, buton man ageafe Eustatsius and his men heom to handsceofe, and eac þa Frencyscan þe _on þan castelle_ wæron.” “The castle” undoubtedly means Richard’s Castle, as it must mean in the entry of the next year in the same Chronicle. The Frenchmen in the castle are distinguished from Eustace and his men. So Lappenberg, 508. Florence (1051) clearly misunderstood the passage when he translated it “insuper et Nortmannos et Bononienses qui castellum in Doruverniæ clivo tenuerant.” It shows the impression which Richard’s Castle had made on men’s mind that it was known generally as “the castle,” and this reference by the Worcester Chronicler to a part of the story which he has not himself given at length is a strong confirmation of the truth of the Peterborough narrative.

Footnote 430:

Rog. Wend. iii. 294. “Juraverunt super majus altare, quod, si Rex leges et libertates jam dictas concedere diffugeret, ipsi ei guerram tamdiu moverent et ab ejus fidelitate se subtraherent.”

Footnote 431:

Flor. Wig. 1051. “Ob id autem ad tempus Rex perterritus, et in angore magno constitutus, quid ageret ignorabat penitus. Sed ubi exercitum Comitum Leofrici, Siwardi, et Radulfi adventare comperit, se nullatenus Eustatium aliosque requisitos traditurum constanter respondit.”

Footnote 432:

See vol. i. p. 534 et seqq.

Footnote 433:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “Wurdan þa ealle swa anræde mid þam cynge, þæt hy woldon Godwines fyrde gesecan, gif se cyng þæt wolde.”

Footnote 434:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “And wæs þam eorle Godwine and his sunan gecydd, þæt se cyng and þa menn þe mid him wæron woldon rædon on hi. And hi trymedon gefæstlice ongean, þæh him lað wære þæt hi ongean heora _cyne-hlaford_ standan sceoldon.”

Footnote 435:

See the splendid panegyric of William of Malmesbury on this region in the Gesta Pontificum (Scriptt. p. Bedam, 161). He especially speaks of the abundance of the vineyards and the excellence of the wine, which was not sour, as seemingly other English wine was, but as good as that of France. No wine is now grown in the vale of Severn, but there is excellent cider and perry.

On the prospect here spoken of see Sydney Smith’s Sketches of Moral Philosophy, p. 218.

Footnote 436:

See above, p. 110.

Footnote 437:

For descriptions of these two remarkable monuments of primæval times, by Dr. Thurnam and Professor C. C. Babington, see the Archæological Journal, vol. xi. (1854), pp. 315, 328.

Footnote 438:

Childe Harold, ii. 84;

“Spirit of Freedom, when on Phyle’s brow Thou sat’st with Thrasybulus and his train,” &c.

Footnote 439:

See vol. i. p. 539.

Footnote 440:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “Þæt mycel unræd wære þæt hy togedere comon [see vol. i. p. 435], forþam þær wæs mæst þæt rotoste þæt was on Ænglalande on þam twam gefylcum; and leton þæt hi urum feondum rymdon to lande, and betwyx us sylfum to mycclum forwyrde.”

Footnote 441:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “Ða gerædden þa witan on ægðer halfe, þæt man ða ælces yfeles geswác, and geaf se cyng godes grið and his fulne freondscipe on ægðre healfe.”

Footnote 442:

See Appendix L.

Footnote 443:

Ib.

Footnote 444:

So I infer from the Peterborough Chronicle, 1048; “Ða cwæð man Swegen eorl útlah, and stefnode man Godwine eorle and Harolde eorle to þon gemote.” The Worcester Chronicle puts it a little later, along with the demand for the hostages.

Footnote 445:

See above, p. 108.

Footnote 446:

Vita Eadw. 402. “Elaborante Stigando ... qui etiam tunc medius ibat, procrastinata est judicii dies, dum Rex suorum uteretur consiliou.”

Footnote 447:

Vita Eadw. 402.

Footnote 448:

Such on the whole I take to be the meaning of the very difficult expressions of the two Chroniclers, which I have discussed at length in Appendix L.

Footnote 449:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “And his wered wanode æfre þe leng þe swiðor.”

Footnote 450:

Vita Eadw. 402. “Eo [Rodberto] agente tandem a Rege prolata est in Ducem hæc indissolubilis caussæ quæ agebatur diffinitio; Illum scilicet à Rege tunc primùm posse sperare pacem, ubi ei reddidit vivum suum fratrem cum suis omnibus et quæ eis viventibus vel interfectis ablata sunt cum integritate eorum.”

Footnote 451:

Chron. Petrib. “Ða geornde se eorl eft griðes and gisla, þæt he moste hine betellan æt ælc þæra þinga þe him man onlede.”

Footnote 452:

William of Malmesbury (ii. 199), from whom I get the materials of Godwine’s answer, makes them call the Assembly “conventiculum factiosorum.”

Footnote 453:

Will. Malms. u. s. “Si veniant inermes, vitæ timeri dispendium; si paucos stipatores habeant, gloriæ fore opprobrium.”

Footnote 454:

Kemble, ii. 231. “They very properly declined, under such circumstances, to appear.”

Footnote 455:

Vita Eadw. p. 402. “Flente nimium episcopo Stigando, qui hujus legationis mœrens bajulus erat, _reppulit à se mensam quæ adstabat_, equis ascensis, viam ad Bosanham maritimam celeriùs tetendit.” This little touch, coming from a contemporary and friendly writer, increases our confidence in the story of the Biographer, difficult, as it is, at first sight to reconcile with the Chronicles.

Footnote 456:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “For ða on niht awæg; and se cyng hæfde þæs on morgen witenagemot.”

Footnote 457:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “Se cyng ... cwæd hine utlage, and _eall here_.” See above, p. 104.

Footnote 458:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. “And sceawede him mann v. nihta grið út of lande to farenne.” See vol. i. p. 561.

Footnote 459:

To “Bosenham,” according to the Peterborough Chronicler and the Biographer; to “Thornege,” according to the Worcester Chronicler and Florence. As it is of course the South-Saxon Thorney near Chichester (see Lappenberg, 509) which is meant, the two accounts no doubt merely refer to different stages of the same journey.

Footnote 460:

Vita Eadw. 404. “Tum pro antiquæ fœderationis jure, tum pro multorum ipsius Ducis beneficiorum vicissitudine.” One would like to know more of this connexion between Godwine and Baldwin. It is odd, when we think of the war of 1049, that the Biographer (p. 403) calls Baldwin “antiquum Anglicæ gentis amicum.”

Footnote 461:

See above, p. 134.

Footnote 462:

Chron. Wig. “Mid swa miclum gærsuman swa hi mihton þær on mæst gelogian to ælcum mannum.” Cf. Florence and the Biographer, 402. “Cum conjuge et liberis et omnibus quæ illius erant ad manum.”

Footnote 463:

“Cum magno honore.” Vita Eadw. 404.

Footnote 464:

Chron. Petrib. “And gesohton Baldewines grið, and wunodon þær ealne þone winter.” Vita Eadw. 404. “Hiemati sunt à Comite Baldwino in Flandriam.”

Footnote 465:

The younger members of the family, Wulfnoth, Ælfgifu, Gunhild, and Hakon the son of Swegen, are not mentioned. They doubtless accompanied Godwine and are included among the “liberi” of the Biographer.

Footnote 466:

See above, p. 100.

Footnote 467:

“Harold eorl and Leofwine,” says the Worcester Chronicle; the Biographer has “Haroldus et Leof_ricus_.” See Appendix F. The Peterborough Chronicle mentions Harold only.

Footnote 468:

Vita Eadw. 404. “Transfretaverant in Hiberniam, ut, inde adductâ militari copiâ, patris ulciscerentur injuriam.”

Footnote 469:

See vol. i. p. 365. Compare also the passage about Bristol with which William of Malmesbury winds up his panegyric on Gloucestershire (Gest. Pont, in Scriptt. p. Bed. 161). “In eâdem valle est vicus celeberrimus Bristow nomine, in quo est navium portus ab Hiberniâ et Noregiâ et cæteris transmarinis terris venientium receptaculum, ne scilicet genitalibus divitiis tam fortunata regio peregrinarum opum fraudaretur commercio.”

Footnote 470:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “Harold eorl and Leofwine foran to Brycgstowe, on þæt scip þe Swegen eorl hæfde him silfum ær gegearcod and gemetsod.”

Footnote 471:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “And se cining sende Ealdred biscop of Lundene mid genge, and sceoldon hine ofridan ær he to scipe come. Ac hi ne mihton oððe hi noldon.” Compare the unwillingness of the Earls under Harthacnut to act against Worcester, vol. i. p. 581. According to the Biographer (403), Godwine was also pursued, through the devices of Archbishop Robert.

Footnote 472:

Chron. Wig. u. s.

Footnote 473:

Vita Eadw. 404. “Hiemati sunt à Rege Dermodo in Hiberniam.” These words at once explain the whole matter, and give us the true explanation of the otherwise difficult expression in the Peterborough Chronicle, “Harold eorl gewende west to Yrlande, and wæs þær ealne þone winter, _on þes cynges griðe_.” Sir Francis Palgrave (Hist. Ang. Sax. 342) takes this King to be Eadward, and says, “Harold crossed to Ireland, and he was so far favoured as to be allowed to remain in that country under the king’s protection. This fact should be noticed, because it seems to show that he was not considered as being out of the king’s dominions; or, in other words, that the opposité coast of Ireland was part of Eadward’s realm.” This is rather slight evidence, even with the further support of a spurious charter (see vol. i. p. 66), to prove that Ireland, or its eastern coast, was part of the English Empire. Lappenberg (510; Mr. Thorpe’s version, ii. 250, again does not represent the original) saw that, odd as the expression is, an Irish King must be meant, and now the Life of Eadward puts the matter beyond doubt. The “grið” of Diarmid answers to the “grið” of Baldwin.

Footnote 474:

Diarmid conquered the Fine-gall or Danish district in 1052, according to the Four Masters (ii. 860) and Dr. Todd (Wars of Gaedhil and Gaill, 291); in 1050, according to the Chronica Scotorum, 280. The incidental evidence of the Biographer shows the earlier date to be the right one.

Footnote 475:

Will. Malms. ii. 199. “Ne scilicet omnibus suis parentibus patriam suspirantibus sola _sterteret_ in plumâ.” This odd phrase sounds like a real sneer of some contemporary Frenchman.

Footnote 476:

Vita Eadw. 403. See above, p. 47. Florence says “repudiavit.”

Footnote 477:

The Worcester Chronicle, Florence, and the Biographer do not mention the seizure of the Lady’s property. The Peterborough Chronicle says, “þa forlet se cyng þa hlæfdian, seo wæs gehalgod him to cwene, and let niman of hire eall þæt heo ahte on lande and on golde and on seolfre.” So William of Malmesbury; “Omnis reginæ substantia ad unum nummum emuncta.”

Footnote 478:

Both the Chronicles are quite colourless on this head; it is simply “man gebrohte,” “betæhte.” So William of Malmesbury. But Florence says “cum unâ pedissequâ ad Hwereweallam eam sine honore misit.” In the Life of Eadward (403), on the other hand, we read, “Cum regio honore et imperiali comitatu, mœrens tamen perducitur.” The narrative, addressed to Eadgyth herself, is here the better authority.

Footnote 479:

Wherwell, according to all our authorities, except the Biographer. He says Wilton. As he could hardly be mistaken on such a point, and as the evidence for Wherwell seems conclusive, we must set down Wilton as a clerical error.

Footnote 480:

The Worcester Chronicle, Florence, and the Biographer do not mention the kindred of the Abbess with the King; it is assumed by the Peterborough Chronicle and by William of Malmesbury.

Footnote 481:

On the daughters of Æthelred see vol. i. pp. 358, 363, 378, 458.

Footnote 482:

See vol. i. p. 341.

Footnote 483:

Vita Eadw. 397. See Appendix F.

Footnote 484:

Vita Eadw. 403. Twenty hexameters are devoted to the comparison.

Footnote 485:

Chron. Wig. 1052. “Þæt wolde ðyncan wundorlic ælcum men þe on Englalande wæs, gif ænig man ær þam sæde þæt hit swa gewurþan sceolde. Forðam þe he wæs ær to þam swyce up ahafen, swyðe he weolde þæs cynges and ealles Englalandes, and his sunan wæron eorlas and þæs cynges dyrlingas, and his dohtor þæm cynge bewedded and beawnod.”

Footnote 486:

See vol. i. pp. 448.

Footnote 487:

See Appendix G.

Footnote 488:

See Appendix G.

Footnote 489:

See vol. i. p. 338.

Footnote 490:

Chron. Wig. 1056. “Se wæs to munece gehadod ær his ende. god man and clæne and swiðe æðele.” Cf. Chron. Ab. and Fl. Wig. in anno. Florence seems to translate “clæne” by “virginitatis custos.” He built the present church of Deerhurst (see vol. i. p. 387), as an offering for the soul of his brother Ælfric. See Earle, p. 345.

Footnote 491:

Chron. Petrib. 1048. Will. Malms. ii. 199. “Comitatus ejus [Haroldi] attributus Elgaro, Leofrici filio, viro industrio; quem ille suscipiens tunc rexit nobiliter, reverso restituit libenter.”

Footnote 492:

The Biographer (401, 2) mentions his coming to Gloucester along with his father and Siward.

Footnote 493:

See above, p. 122.

Footnote 494:

Chron. Wig. 1052. Petrib. 1048. Flor. Wig. 1051.

Footnote 495:

Flor. Wig. 1052.

Footnote 496:

Chron. Wig. 1052. Flor. Wig. 1051.

Footnote 497:

In this