Chapter VII (1)

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

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

§ 1. _The Election and Coronation of Eadward._ 1042–1043.

[Sidenote: Popular election of Eadward. June, 1042.]

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

[Sidenote: He returns to England.]

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

[Sidenote: Eadward the only possible choice.]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Eadward crowned at Winchester, April 3, 1043.]

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

[Sidenote: Foreign Ambassadors at Eadward’s coronation.]

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

[Sidenote: Gifts of the English nobles.]

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

§ 2. _Condition of England during the early years of Eadward._

[Sidenote: Character of Eadward.]

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

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

[Sidenote: Personal appearance and habits of Eadward.]

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

[Sidenote: Eadward’s fondness for foreigners.]

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

[Sidenote: Relations between Eadward and Godwine.]

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

[Sidenote: Godwine’s government of his Earldom.]

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

[Sidenote: Godwine’s family.]