Chapter VII (2)

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Harold’s civil virtues.]

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

[Sidenote: His personal character.]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Character of Swegen.]

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

[Sidenote: Greatness of Godwine and his house.]

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

[Sidenote: Northumberland under Siward.]

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

[Sidenote: England not tending to separation but to union.]

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

[Sidenote: Further evidence of the writs as to a change in the condition
of the Folkland.]

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

[Sidenote: Scotland under Macbeth.]

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

[Sidenote: Gruffydd of North Wales. 1039–1063.]

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

[Sidenote: Eadward’s friendly relations with foreign powers.]

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

[Sidenote: The reign of Eadward comparatively peaceful.]

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

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

[Sidenote: Character of the years 1043–1051.]

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

[Sidenote: Relations between Eadward and his mother.]

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

Now the last order, to live quietly at Winchester, seems to imply some scheme or intrigue on the part of Emma more serious than even an illegal refusal to contribute of her wealth to the exigencies of the State. Is it possible that she had been one of the opponents of her son’s election? A woman who had so completely transferred her affection to her second husband and his children, even though she had no hand in actual conspiracies against the offspring of her first marriage, may conceivably have preferred the nephew of Cnut to her own son by Æthelred. If so, her punishment was only the first act of a sort of persecution which during the next three or four years seems to have fallen upon all who had supported the claims of Swend to the Crown. The whole party became marked men, and were gradually sent out of the Kingdom as occasion served.[166] A few of their names may probably be recovered. We have records of several cases of banishment and confiscation during the early years of Eadward, which are doubtless those of the partisans of Eadward’s Danish opponent. First and foremost was a brother of Swend himself, Osbeorn, who, like his brother Beorn, seems to have [Sidenote: Banishments of Swend’s partisans. 1043–1046.] held the rank of Earl in England. The brothers must have taken different sides in the politics of the time, as Osbeorn was banished, while Beorn retained his Earldom.[167] The banishment of Osbeorn did not stand alone. The great [Sidenote: 1046.] Danish Thegn Osgod Clapa was banished a few years later,[168] and it was probably on the same account that Æthelstan the son of Tofig lost his estate at Waltham,[169] [Sidenote: 1044.] and that Gunhild, the niece of Cnut and daughter of Wyrtgeorn, was banished together with her two sons Heming and Thurkill.[170] She was then a widow for the second time through the death of her husband Earl Harold.[171] He had gone on a pilgrimage to Rome, and was on his way back to Denmark, when he was treacherously murdered by Ordulf, the brother-in-law of Magnus of Norway.[172] That Harold was bound for Denmark, and not for England, where his wife and children or stepchildren were, may perhaps tend to show that he was already an exile from England. It is not impossible that Godescalc the Wend ought to be added to the list.[173]

Whether the fall of Emma was or was not connected with the penalties which thus fell on the relics of the Danish party, it certainly carried with it the momentary [Sidenote: Stigand, appointed Bishop of Elmham, and deposed. April-November, 1043.] fall of one eminent Englishman. The disgrace of the Lady was accompanied by the disgrace of the remarkable—we might almost say the great—churchman by whose counsels she was said to be governed. We have already seen Stigand, once the Priest of Assandun,[174] appointed to a Bishoprick and almost immediately deprived of it.[175] The like fate now happened to him a second time. He was, it would seem, still unconsecrated;[176] but, seemingly about the time of Eadward’s coronation, he was named and consecrated to the East-Anglian Bishoprick of Elmham.[177] But the spoliation of Emma was accompanied by the deposition of Stigand from the dignity to which he had just been raised. He was deprived of his Bishoprick, and his goods were seized into the King’s hands, evidently by a sentence of the same Gemót which decreed the proceedings against the Lady. Whatever Emma’s fault was, Stigand was held to be a sharer in it. The ground assigned for his deposition was that he had been partaker of the counsels of the Lady, and that she had acted in all things by his advice.[178] That Stigand should have supported the claims of Swend is in itself not improbable. He had risen wholly by the favour of Cnut, his wife, and his sons. The strange thing is that so wary a statesman should not have seen how irresistibly the tide was setting in favour of Eadward. One thing is certain, that, if Stigand mistook his interest this time, he knew how in the long run to recover his lost place and to rise to places far higher.

[Sidenote: Importance of ecclesiastical appointments at this time.]

During the whole of this period ecclesiastical appointments claim special notice. They are at all times important witnesses to the state of things at any particular moment, and in a period of this kind they are the best indications of the direction in which popular and royal favour is setting. The patrons or electors of an ecclesiastical office can choose far more freely, they can set themselves much more free from the control of local and family influences, than those who are called on to appoint to temporal offices. For King Eadward to appoint a French Earl would prove much more than his appointment of a French Bishop. It would prove much more as to his own inclinations; it would prove much more again as to the temper of the people by whom such an appointment was endured. To appoint a French or German Earl as the successor of Godwine or Leofric would doubtless have been impossible. But Eadward found means to fill the sees of Canterbury, London, and Dorchester with French Prelates. In those matters he had a freer choice, because, in the case of an ecclesiastical office, no hereditary claim or preference could possibly be put forward. The same freedom of choice still remains to the dispensers of church patronage in our own times. The Lord Lieutenant, the Sheriff, the ordinary magistrates, of any county are necessarily chosen from among men belonging to that county. But the Bishop, the Dean, the ordinary clergy, may never have set foot in the diocese till they are called on to exercise their functions within it. Then, as now, various influences limited the choice of temporal functionaries which did not limit the choice of spiritual functionaries. It is therefore of special moment to mark the course of ecclesiastical appointments at this time, as supplying our best means of tracing the growth of the foreign influence and the course of the resistance made to it.

[Sidenote: Mode of appointing Bishops.]

It is not very clear what the exact process of appointing a Bishop at this time was. It is clear that the royal will was the chief power in the appointment. It is clear that the official document which gave the Bishop-elect a claim to consecration was a royal writ, to which now, under the French influences of Eadward’s court, a royal seal, in imitation of continental practice, was beginning to be attached.[179] It is also clear that the appointment was regularly made in full Witenagemót.[180] This of course implies that the Witan had at least the formal right of saying Yea or Nay to the King’s nomination. But we hear at the same time of capitular elections,[181] which clearly were not a mere form, though it rested with the King to accept or reject the selected candidate. No doubt some process was in use, in which the Chapter, the Witan, and the King all took their parts,[182] but in ordinary speech the appointment is always said to rest with the King, who is constantly described as giving a Bishoprick to such and such a man. The King too at this time exercised the right, which afterwards became the subject of so much controversy, of investing the Bishop-elect with the ring and staff.[183] It is clear also, from the case of Stigand just recorded, that the King and his Witan had full power of [Sidenote: Increased connexion with Rome.] deposing a Bishop. On the other hand, probably owing to the number of foreign ecclesiastics now in the Kingdom, references to the Court of Rome become from this time far more frequent. For an Archbishop to go to Rome for his pallium was nothing new; but now we hear of Bishops going to Rome for consecration or confirmation, and of the Roman Court claiming at least a veto on the nomination of the English King.[184]

[Sidenote: Prevalence of simony.]