Chapter XI: The Election of Harold.1 (1)

January 5th–April 16th, 1066.

[Sidenote: Preeminent importance of the year 1066.]

The central stage of our journey is now reached. We are now on the threshold of the great year, of that year whose effects on all later English, on all later European, history can never be wiped out. No one year in later English history can for a moment compare, in lasting importance, with the year which, with some small exaggeration, we may call the year of the Norman Conquest. [Sidenote: No later time in which one year and one day stand out in the same way.] There have indeed been later periods in our history which have been as memorable in their results as the invasion of William itself. The events of the thirteenth, of the sixteenth, of the seventeenth century, are all fully entitled to be set side by side with the events of the eleventh. But in all these cases we have to set the work of a whole generation against the work of a single year. One age is famous for the great struggle against alien domination, and for the final establishment of English freedom in its later form. Another age gave us all the results, for good and for evil, of the great Reformation of religion. A third age confirmed on a surer and more lasting basis those political rights which the thirteenth century had won back, but which the fifteenth and sixteenth had once more brought into jeopardy. But, in all these great periods of change, the work was gradual; there is no single moment, no single year, on which we can place our finger as the moment or the year when the work was actually done. In the eleventh century the work was gradual also. A long series of events prepared the way for William’s enterprise, and, when he began his work, it needed more than a single day or a single year to put him in full possession of the Empire for which he had yearned so long. Still in the eleventh century there is a single year and a single day which stand forth in a way in which no single day or year stands forth in the ages after them. There is no later year to compare to the year in which the Crown of England was worn by the last King of the old sacred and immemorial stock, by the first and last King who reigned purely because he was the best and bravest among his people, and by the first and last King who could boast that he held his Kingdom purely of God and his own sword. There is no one day in later times to compare to that memorable morning when Northern and Southern Europe, when England and Normandy, when Harold and William, met face to face in the great wager of battle on the day of Saint Calixtus. For days of equal moment in our history we must go back to far earlier times, to times which are still half shrouded in the mist of legend. For a day like the day when England bowed to her first purely foreign lord, we must go back to the day when the first Englishman was baptized into the faith of Christ, to the day when the first Englishman set foot on the shores of Britain.

§ 1. _Sickness and Death of Eadward. December 28, 1065–January 5, 1066._

[Sidenote: Eadward’s last sickness. December 1065–January 5, 1066.]

We left Eadward on his death-bed. His work was over; his newly built minster was hallowed, though he had been himself shut out from taking any part in that great ceremony. The Witan had been gathered, as usual, for the Christmas festival; the special summons to the dedication of Saint Peter’s, and, still more, the pressing urgency of the national affairs, had, we may well believe, called together a greater number than usual of the Thegns and Prelates [Sidenote: National anxiety as to the succession.] of the land. It was plain that the nation would soon be called on to elect a King, and to elect a King under circumstances of which no past age had ever seen the like. Perhaps vague reports may already have found their way into the land, warning men of the dangers which were likely to threaten England alike from her own exiles and from the foreign kinsman of the dying King. But, even if no thought of Tostig or of William crossed men’s minds, there was enough to make those days of Eadward’s last sickness days of the deepest anxiety to every patriotic Englishman. From the beginning of Eadward’s sickness, no hope of his recovery seems to have been entertained. The question in every man’s mind must have been, who should fill his place when he was taken from them. The choice of the electors would be perfectly free. Things were not as they had been when Swend and Cnut were in the land, claiming the votes of the Witan at the point of the sword. But [Sidenote: State of the royal line.] things were as they had never been before since the line of Cerdic had ruled over united England. The King who lay at the point of death was, with the single exception of the boy Eadgar and his sisters, the last of his race. The names of Christina and Margaret were most likely never uttered; England had never yet dreamed of giving herself a female ruler. A sentimental interest might gather round Eadgar as the last male of the kingly house, but a sentimental interest was all that he could awaken. His age and, as events proved, his character rendered him wholly unfit for rule. And Eadgar, it should be borne in mind, did not possess that constitutional claim to a preference which was all that, before the actual election, would have belonged even to a son of the dying King. At three earlier times had the royal line been reduced so low as to number none but members of an age too young for personal government. Eadwig, Eadward the Martyr, Æthelred, had all been chosen in their non-age. But the princes so chosen were all of them true Æthelings, Englishmen born, sons of an English King by an English mother. And, in those days, as there was no better qualified candidate in the royal house, so there was no man out of it marked out by the hand of nature as a born King of Men. In those days the greatest of living Englishmen was no Thegn or Ealdorman, but the renowned Primate Dunstan. England had therefore, in all those cases, accepted a King in his boyhood or even in his childhood. There was now no such need. [Sidenote: No constitutional preference due to Eadgar.] Eadgar, grandson of Ironside as he was, had no constitutional claim upon the votes of the Witan beyond any other male person in the realm. He was not born in the land; he was not the son of a crowned King and his Lady. [Sidenote: Position of Harold.] And close beside the throne, just beyond the strict limits of the royal house, stood the foremost man in England, already, it may be, associated in some sort to the honours of royalty, already an Under-King who received the oaths and homage of vassal princes, as a sharer in the rule of the Empire of Britain.[2] Whether he had been marked out by any formal act or not, we cannot doubt that men had long learned to look to Harold the son of Godwine as their future King. And yet, when the day of choice drew near, men might well stop and wonder at the step which they were about to take. The Law justified the act; the needs of the time commanded it; but it was a strange and unwonted [Sidenote: Novelty of an election from beyond the royal house.] act nevertheless. It was something new, something which might well set the minds and tongues of men at work, to be called on, freely and under no fear of the Danish axe, to choose a King who had no royal forefathers, a King who came not of the stock of Ecgberht, Cerdic, and Woden. Men whose office or whose sagacity had taught them to scan the chances of the time might ask how such [Sidenote: Attitude of William and Tostig.] a choice would be looked on by the exile at the court of Baldwin, and by the prince who now, in the height of success and glory, had made the Norman land the wonder of continental Europe. Rumours might already be afloat that the English Earl, soon about to become the English King, had, in some strange and unknown way, already [Sidenote: Possible attitude of Northumberland.] become the man of the Norman Duke. And without going so far afield, men might ask how the great land north of the Humber would look on the choice which to Wessex and East-Anglia seemed the only choice possible. The Thegns and Prelates of Northumberland might give their votes with the other Witan, but would the fierce people of that proud and distant province submit, without a blow or a murmur, to the kingship of a West-Saxon, a son of Godwine, a brother of Tostig? The days when thoughts like these were working in men’s minds must have been days of [Sidenote: Importance of Eadward’s dying recommendation.] care and perplexity. There was one source from which light and help might be looked for, light and help which might in some sort seem to come directly from heaven. The words of a dying man have been in all times looked on as solemn and almost prophetic utterances. The words of a dying King were, by the traditional feelings of Englishmen, clothed with an authority second only to that of the Law itself. Eadward was a dying man and a dying King. And he was yet more. Strange as it seems to us, he was already beginning to be looked on with somewhat of the reverence due to a Saint. The will of Eadward had perhaps never been held to be of such moment, his voice had perhaps never been so eagerly listened for in the Councils of his Kingdom, as when he lay, helpless and wellnigh speechless, on his bed at Westminster. Men waited for the voice of the dying man, the dying King, the dying Saint, to confirm once more with his last breath the nomination of the successor on whom, amidst all doubts and dangers, the heart of England still was fixed. In choosing for the first time a King not of the blood of Cerdic, it would be no small strength and comfort if they knew that the step was taken with the full approval and the full bidding of the last King of Cerdic’s house. The King was sick unto death; the Witan were gathered round his palace. The moment the breath was out of his body, it would become their duty to choose his successor. It was doubtless with no small anxiety, with somewhat even of religious awe, that they awaited the last expression of the will of Eadward as to who that successor should be.

[Sidenote: The King’s illness. Wednesday, December 28, 1065.]

The West Minster was consecrated on Wednesday; the news was brought to the King, who, as his legend says, on hearing it laid his head on his pillow as if to say, It is finished.[3] For five days his sickness increased, and the public anxiety heightened at every stage of the disorder.[4] [Sidenote: He becomes speechless. Tuesday, January 3, 1066.] On the sixth day from the consecration, his speech began to fail him; his voice was so feeble that his words could no longer be understood; for two days he lay worn out by the extremity of his sickness.[5] It was no time to trouble the weary sufferer with questions even as to the [Sidenote: He recovers his speech. Thursday, January 5.] welfare of his Kingdom. At last, on the following Thursday, the eve of the Epiphany, his flagging powers rallied, as the powers of dying men often do rally at the point of death. He awoke from his sleep in the full possession of [Sidenote: The group round his bed.] his senses and of his speech. On either side of his bed stood the two great chiefs of his realm, Harold the Earl and Stigand the Archbishop.[6] At the bed’s head, in still more immediate personal attendance on his master, stood the Staller, Robert the son of Wymarc, a man of Norman birth, but whom history does not charge with treason towards England. On the ground, close by the foot of the bed, sat the Lady Eadgyth, the sister of the great Earl, cherishing the feet of her royal husband in her bosom. Her thoughts wandered perhaps to the brother beyond the sea, the brother on whose behalf she had so deeply sinned, the brother who had so lately held the place nearest to Eadward’s heart, but who was now for ever cut off from all hopes of crowns or earldoms. The tongue of Eadward was loosened, but his first words were words of prayer.[7] In his long slumber he had seen a vision; if that vision were truly from heaven, he prayed that he might have strength to declare it; if it were but the phantom of a disordered brain, he would that his tongue should rather cleave to the roof of his mouth. He sat up in his bed, supported in the arms of Robert. But the message which he had to declare from heaven called for a larger audience than the four favoured ones who were gathered round him. A few more of his chosen friends—their names are not recorded—were summoned to [Sidenote: He declares his vision.] the bedside of the dying King.[8] He then, fluently and with energy,[9] poured forth the awful words of warning. “Long ago, when I was a youth in Normandy, I knew two monks, most holy men and most dear to me. Many long years have passed away since they were taken away from the cares and sorrows of this world. But now, in my trance, God hath sent them again to me to speak to me in His holy name. ‘Know,’ said they to me, ‘that they who hold the highest place in thy realm of England, the Earls, the Bishops, the Abbots, the men in holy orders of every rank, are not what they seem to be in the eyes of men. In the eye of God they are but [Sidenote: He foretells the sorrows of England.] ministers of the fiend. Therefore hath God put a curse upon thy land; therefore hath He given thy land over into the hand of the enemy. Within a year and a day from thy death, shall fiends stalk through thy whole land, and shall harry it from one end to another with fire and sword and the hand of plunder.’ Then said I to them, ‘Let me then show these things to my people in the name of God. Haply they will repent, and His loving-kindness will have mercy upon them. For He had mercy on the men of Nineveh, when they heard the voice of His threatening, and repented them of their evil ways.’ But they answered me, ‘They will not repent, neither shall the mercy of God come [Sidenote: Allegory of the green tree.] nigh unto them.’ Then said I, ‘What shall be the time or the way in which we may look for these your threatenings to come to an end?’ ‘In that day,’ they answered, ‘when a green tree shall be cut away from the midst of its trunk, when it shall be carried away for the space of three furlongs from its root, when, without the help of man, it shall join itself again to its trunk, and shall again put forth leaves and bear fruit in its season. Then first shall be the time when the woes of England shall come to an end.’”[10]

[Sidenote: Alarm of the other hearers;]

The King ceased his words of prophecy. Harold, Eadgyth, Robert, all who had been gathered to hear, were struck with awe, and remained speechless. One heart alone, we are [Sidenote: disbelief of Stigand.] told, was hardened. Stigand leaned over the King’s bed, and whispered in the ear of Earl Harold that all this prophetic talk was but the babbling of an old man worn out by sickness.[11] The Primate, stout-hearted Englishman as we know him, was, we may well believe, a hard and worldly man, and his experience of men of his own calling, his familiarity with what others looked on as miracle and prophecy, may well have made him less inclined to superstition than to unbelief. The lay heart was more easily touched; the female heart most easily of all. Eadgyth, and others who were devoutly given, knew well, we are told, the sins of England. They shuddered as they thought how often the warning voice of the Roman Pontiff, how often the voice of Eadward and of Eadgyth herself, had spoken in vain to the guilty nation.[12] The pious Lady perhaps deemed that the uncanonical appointment of Stigand was more likely to bring down the wrath of God than the murder of Gospatric. At the last Christmas feast, she whose heart was now so deeply stirred at the thought of ecclesiastical corruptions, had in that very palace stretched forth her hand to shed blood which no Law had bidden to be shed, blood which, as far at least as she was concerned, was innocent.

[Sidenote: The succession.]

But there was other work to be done that day besides hearkening to foretellings of evil, besides disputing as to the degree of trust to be placed in the words of him who foretold it. The moment was come when the all-important question might be pressed on the mind of the dying King. His friends stood and wept around him; the tears of the Lady as she sat at his feet fell faster and more thickly still. He gave orders for his burial. He checked the grief of his friends; he bade them rejoice at his coming deliverance, and he craved the prayers of his people for his soul.[13] He spoke of the constant love and devotion which had been ever shown him by the wife whom he had once driven away from his hearth and board. She had ever been to him as a loving and dutiful daughter;[14] God would reward her for her good deeds in this world and in the next. At last Harold and Stigand—nor have we any right to exclude Robert from their counsels—found means of calling Eadward’s mind to the great subject which then filled the whole heart of England. When all was over, when his body was laid in his new minster, when his soul had gone to its reward, who should fill the place which he had so long filled on earth? Who, when he was gone, should wear the royal crown of England, the Imperial [Sidenote: Eadward names Harold as his successor.] diadem of Britain? Eadward, at that last moment, was not wanting to his last duty. He stretched forth his hand towards the Earl of the West-Saxons, and spake the words, “To thee, Harold my brother, I commit my Kingdom.”[15] He then went on to declare his last wishes to his chosen [Sidenote: Eadward’s last wishes.] successor. For Eadward to give Harold instructions in the art of government was certainly needless, and the dying man doubtless felt it to be so. But there were a few personal wishes which were near to his heart; there were a few personal favourites whom he wished to commend to the [Sidenote: He commends to Harold’s care the Lady] favourable care of his successor. First among these was the Lady herself. I need not again enlarge on the mysterious relations between Eadward and Eadgyth; but, in these his last days at least, she is described as enjoying his perfect confidence and affection. But a sister who certainly abetted Tostig, who perhaps abetted William, against the brother who was now called to reign,[16] might be thought likely to meet with less consideration at the hands of Harold than she had, latterly at least, met with at the hands of Eadward. The King commended her who was so soon to be his widow to the friendly care of his successor. Let him show to her, as a Lady and a sister, all faithful worship and service, and never, while she lived, let her lose [Sidenote: and the Norman favourites.] the honours which he had bestowed upon her.[17] He commended also to Harold his Norman favourites, those whom, in his simplicity, he spoke of as men who had left their native land for love of him.[18] Those who were willing to abide in the land as English subjects under Harold’s allegiance he prayed him to keep and to protect. Those who refused to become the men of the new King he prayed him to dismiss under his safe-conduct to their own land, taking with them all the goods which they had acquired by his own favour.[19]

[Sidenote: His directions for his burial.]

The King had now done the last act of his kingly office. With this last request to Harold all thought of earthly things passed away from the mind of Eadward. But the man and the saint had still friends to comfort; he had a soul for which to request their prayers; he had a body to be committed to the ground with the solemn rites of the Church. He craved that his body might be buried in the minster which he had reared, in a special spot within the hallowed walls which their inmates would point out to [Sidenote: His death not to be concealed, lest he lose the prayers of his people.] those who stood round him.[20] One faint thought of earth perhaps came back to his mind, when he bade them not to hide his death from his people. At such a moment it might perhaps be convenient to let men believe that Eadward still lived, till every arrangement could be made for the quiet election and consecration of his successor. But Eadward’s care for his own soul made him tremble at such a prospect. “Let my death,” he earnestly prayed, “be at once announced everywhere, that all the faithful may at once call on the mercy of Almighty God for me a sinner.”[21] Eadgyth meanwhile wept without ceasing. Eadward comforted her with the allegorical words; “Fear not; I shall not die, but by God’s grace, I shall soon arise to better health.”[22] But the last moment was clearly drawing near; the last comfort of the Church had to be [Sidenote: He communicates and dies. Thursday, January 5, 1066.] given. The dying saint received the Body of his Lord, seemingly at the hands of Stigand; the irregularity of his position as Primate was perhaps not held to affect acts done by him as a simple priest.[23] Strengthened by this spiritual food; Eadward’s soul gently passed away, and the last King of the House of Cerdic was no more. His body lay as in sleep; his cheeks like the rose, his beard like the lily, his white hands falling peacefully by his side; men saw written on the face of the departed saint that he had gone to his Creator.[24]

[Sidenote: Eadward’s last act; his improvement since his earlier days.]

The King was dead. The last day of his kingship had been the worthiest. After all the errors and follies of his reign, Eadward died, not only as a saint, but as an Englishman and a patriot. For the last thirteen years of his life Harold had been his guide and guardian; for the last nine years he had been the expectant successor of the Crown. And now the day had come and the word was spoken. Those years of faithful guardianship had not been without their fruit; Eadward, with Harold and Stigand at his side, had become another man from Eadward who had once listened to every lie which rose to the lips of Robert of Jumièges.[25] The old wayward spirit had again burst forth when revolt overthrew his last favourite;[26] but his last favourite was at least an Englishman and a son of Godwine. [Sidenote: English spirit of Eadward’s last requests.] And the latest act of all had made up for all that had gone before. Eadward showed on his death-bed that he had at last learned that the Norman could never bear sway in England with the good-will of the English people. The dream of the Norman Duke as the heir of the English Crown had passed away. The dream of England portioned out among Norman Earls, Prelates, and Knights had passed away with it. England was to have an English King, the noblest man of the English people. No stranger was to be endured in the land, but such as would plight their homage to the King of England’s choice. For others, however dear to him, all that Eadward now craved was that they might depart, unhurt and unplundered, from the land. Visions of danger may have flitted across his mind, and in the delirium of sickness, in the mere excitement of pious fear, they may have shaped themselves into vague foreshadowings of the wrath to come. But what the last dying wishes of Eadward were we know beyond a doubt. His last wishes, his last hopes, were the same as the wishes and the hopes of every faithful Englishman. His last earthly desire was that Harold should wear his Crown, that Harold should reign over a land freed from the presence of every man whose presence he might find inconsistent with the welfare of England and her King.

[Sidenote: Eadward’s native panegyric.]

And he has had his reward. Far more precious than the vulgar praises of Norman legend-makers, far more precious even than the wrought up panegyric of the courtly chaplain of his widow, is the song in Eadward’s honour preserved in our national Chronicles from the hands of a gleeman of his own time and of his own people.[27] The English poet sang of Eadward’s early troubles, how he had to seek a foreign land, when Cnut overcame the race of Æthelred, and when Danes wielded the dear realm of England for eight and twenty winters.[28] He sang of Eadward’s personal virtues; how he was holy, clean, and mild, how the baleless King was ever blithe of mood.[29] He sang of the glories of his reign; how he guarded his land and people; how renowned warriors stood around his throne; how the son of Æthelred ruled over Angles and Saxons, how Welsh and Scots and Britons all obeyed the mighty sway of the noble Eadward.[30] But before his song ceases, the minstrel has yet to tell of one deed far above all, of one last act which made the name of Eadward truly glorious. Bitter death snatched the noble King from earth; angels bore his truthful soul to [Sidenote: The poet dwells on the nomination of Harold.] heaven. But a truer note of patriotic feeling rings forth in the words which tell us how the wise King made fast his realm to Harold the noble Earl, in the words which, bursting from the poet’s heart, tell us how well the noble Earl deserved the greatest of earthly gifts. He in all time by words and deeds had truly obeyed his lord, and had left nought undone which was needful for the ruler of his people.[31]

§ 2. _The Election and Coronation of Harold. January 5–6, 1066._

[Sidenote: Vacancy of the Throne.]

The throne of England was now vacant, vacant under circumstances such as England had never seen before. The late King’s dying orders were obeyed, and, as soon as Eadward’s breath was out of his body, the Witan of England knew that their King was dead. But by the Law of England in the eleventh century, the announcement that the King was dead could not be answered by a cry for the long life of the King who still was living.[32] The Witan, not yet departed from their Christmas gathering, heard that the throne was vacant, and they knew that it was for them alone to fill it. And, with the news that they had no longer a King, came the news that the last wish of the King who was gone had pointed out to them whom he wished to fill his kingly seat after him. All scruple was taken from every mind when men knew that the son of Æthelred, the heir of Cerdic, had, as his last act, named as his successor the son of Godwine, the grandson [Sidenote: Meeting of the Witan. January 5, 1066.] of Wulfnoth. It was no time for delay. Men came together as speedily upon the death of Eadward as they had come together to choose Eadward himself upon the death of Harthacnut. The King lay dead in his palace, while Earls and Prelates, Thegns and citizens, came together to choose the King who should reign in his stead. [Sidenote: Doubtful candidature of William and Eadgar.] The choice was speedy and unanimous. Later writers speak of voices being raised for Eadgar, even of voices being raised for William.[33] And so it may have been. Here and there sentimental feelings may have caused this or that voice to utter the name of the royal boy, even in preference to the noblest of a merely subject house. And, in our land of free debate, some daring Norman may even have ventured to breathe the thought that the King’s kinsman, who had made Normandy so great and flourishing, might make England no less great and flourishing also. But words [Sidenote: No sign of local jealousies.] like these told not on the spirit of the Assembly. Nor do we hear of any expression of those local jealousies which had divided England on more than one earlier vacancy. We hear nothing of any rivalry of the House of Leofric against the House of Godwine; we hear nothing of any murmurs of the fierce Danes of the North against the inauguration of a new West-Saxon dynasty. If the sons of Ælfgar dreamed, as they doubtless did, of a divided Kingdom—of the Imperial Crown for one of themselves they hardly could have dreamed—their hopes were doomed to disappointment. Such thoughts, as we shall soon see, still lived in men’s minds, but in that great Gemót of London[34] they found no open spokesman. It was not only London, ever foremost in every patriotic cause; it was not only Wessex, proud of her illustrious son; it was not only East-Anglia, cherishing the recollections of his earliest rule; it was not only Hereford, rejoicing in her recovered being, safe alike against British foes and Norman governors; it was the Witan, not of this or that shire or ancient [Sidenote: Harold chosen by all England.] Kingdom, but of the whole realm of England, who chose Harold the son of Godwine to fill the vacant throne.[35] His reign had long been looked for, and now the dying voice of Eadward had marked him out as the worthiest object of their choice. The wise ruler, the unconquered warrior, the bountiful founder,—the shield of the Kingdom, the shelter of the oppressed, the judge of the fatherless and the widow[36]—the Earl of the West-Saxons, the conqueror of Gruffydd, the pacificator of Northumberland, the founder of Waltham—stood forth before them as the foremost man of England. He, and he alone, stood forth above other men, sprung from no line of Kings, but the son of a father greater than Kings, the man who in long years of rule had shown that there was none like him worthy to fill the throne of the heroes of old time, worthy, as none of royal race were worthy, to wield the sword of Æthelstan and sit upon the judgement-seat of Ælfred. The assembled people of England, in the exercise of their ancient and undoubted right, chose with one voice Harold the son of Godwine to be King of the English and Lord of the Isle of Britain. On no day in their annals did the English people win for themselves a higher or a purer fame.

[Sidenote: The Crown formally offered to Harold.]

The choice of the Assembly had now to be announced to the King-elect. We know not whether that choice was made in his presence. Possibly he may have deemed that his most fitting place was still with his departed brother-in-law and his widowed sister. But, in any case, two members of the Assembly were sent, in the name of all, to offer the Crown of England, as the gift of the people of England, to the man whom they had chosen as their King. Who discharged that office we know not. None but men of the highest rank would be sent on such an errand. In the pictured record of that day’s acts they appear, not as Prelates but as lay chieftains. One bears the official axe;[37] the other bears the Crown itself, and points towards the chamber of the dead, whence the Crown had doubtless been brought for the purpose of this symbolic offering.[38] Who then were the men whom England thus trusted to speak such weighty words in her name? Were they the two Northern Earls, perhaps already the brothers-in-law of the elected King, stifling, as they best might, their local and family jealousies, their hopes of a divided kingdom? Or were they rather the two Earls of Eastern England, sons worthy of Godwine, brothers worthy of Harold, who were sent to bear the gift of England to the chief of their own house? That day’s vote had placed that house above the royalties of Gaul and Denmark; it had placed the line of Godwine on a height lower by one step only than the line whose youthful chief now sat on the throne of Augustus. It was for Gyrth and Leofwine, rather than for any other two men in England, to act on [Sidenote: Position of Harold.] that day as the spokesmen of their country. Harold stood, axe in hand, to receive them. The day for which he had looked so long had at last come. The path from which so many obstacles had been so strangely cleared away had at last brought him close to the great object of his life. He had now, not in figure, but in very truth, only to stretch forth his hand, and to grasp the Crown of England, the free gift of the people of England. No surprise could have filled his mind; for years he had been marked out, practically if not by a formal vote, as the man to whom that gorgeous gift must one day come. And yet that moment of realized dreams must have been a moment of anxiety, and even of fear. For him, no son of a kingly father, no scion of legendary heroes and of Gods of the elder faith, to see with his own eyes the diadem of Ecgberht and Cerdic ready for his grasp, was of itself a strange and wondrous feeling, such as few men but him in the world’s history can have felt. He was not like others before and since, who by fraud or violence have risen to royalty or more than royalty. Harold was not a Dionysios, a Cæsar, a Cromwell, or a Buonaparte, whose throne was reared upon the ruins of the freedom of his country. He was not an Eastern Basileus, climbing to the seat from which a fortunate battle or a successful conspiracy had hurled a murdered or blinded predecessor. He was not a Pippin, whose elevation, however expedient and rightful, could be brought about only by the displacement of a lawful, though an incompetent, King. He was not even a Rudolf, whose election, free and honourable as it was, came when the royal office had long been discredited in men’s eyes, and when traditional reverence no longer attached to any one ancient royal house. Harold was freely offered the Crown of England in all its glory and greatness, a Crown which had never before been offered to any but men of royal birth,[39] which had never before been freely offered to any but men of the one Imperial House of Cerdic. [Sidenote: Difficulties of his situation.] He may well have paused as he looked at the glittering gift, through the mere greatness and strangeness of the position in which he stood. And other thoughts may well have pressed upon his mind, before he spoke the word which should change the Earl into a King. Harold knew better than any man the dangers which threatened himself [Sidenote: Double danger from Tostig and William.] and which threatened England. He knew what she had to fear from the vengeance of her own banished son, a vengeance which would be kindled into a sevenfold flame if Harold were King in a land where Tostig might not hold even an Earldom. He knew also, as no man knew, how much more she had to fear from the claims of the mighty and [Sidenote: Effects of the oath to William.] wily Duke beyond the sea. And heavy on his soul may still have pressed the memory of that fatal day when he had become the sworn man of that dangerous rival.[40] If he had promised more than simple homage, casuistry and more than casuistry, the instinctive feeling of every honest man, would declare that an extorted promise, unlawful and impossible to fulfil, was perhaps a crime in him who had plighted it, but could be no crime in him who should obey a higher law by breaking it. But since that day, the heart of Harold could never have beaten so high, his step could never have been so light and joyous, as in the days when his faith was wholly free, when even his enemies could not impeach his truthfulness. And now the full weight of that day’s act must have stared him in the face. Let him accept the Crown now offered him by England, and Normandy [Sidenote: Harold’s anxiety, as expressed in the Tapestry.] would at once declare him a perjurer and a traitor. No wonder then if, as the picture sets him before us, he looked at the Crown at once wistfully and anxiously, and half drew back the hand which was stretched forth to grasp the glittering gift. And yet the risk had to be run. A path of danger opened before him, and yet duty no less than [Sidenote: Greater danger if he declined the Crown.] ambition bade him to enter upon the thorny road. If he declined the Crown, to whom should England offer it? Would the risk be less if the boy Eadgar could win the votes of the Witan, and if to the other dangers of England were to be added all the dangers which beset the land whose King is a child?[41] What if the young Ætheling failed, as he doubtless would fail, to stand his ground at such a [Sidenote: Danger of a division of the Kingdom.] moment? Could the land hope to be united in any single choice? Would Mercia and Northumberland submit to the rule of some West-Saxon boasting neither the royal blood of Eadgar nor the personal glory of Harold? Would Wessex and East-Anglia, would mighty and growing London, submit to Eadwine or Morkere or to the youthful son of Siward? The dangers of accepting the Crown were great, but the dangers of refusing it were greater. Whoever reigned, Tostig and William would still try their chance, and, if it were not Harold who reigned, they would try their chance with far greater hope of success. The accession of Harold would indeed put fresh weapons into the hand of William, but it was not likely that the Duke would wholly cast aside his claims and his projects, simply because he would have some other King, and not Harold, to strive against. The fear indeed was that, if Harold shrank from the burthen, William would find no one single King to resist him. He would win an easy victory over a divided land, a land split asunder as it had been in the days of Harthacnut and the earlier Harold, a land, it might be, already torn in pieces by civil war. Under Harold alone could there be the faintest hope that England would offer an united front to either of the invaders who were sure to attack her. The danger then had to be faced. The call of patriotism distinctly bade Harold not to shrink at the last moment from the post to which he had so long looked forward, and which had at last become his own. The first man in England, first in every gift of war and peace, first in the love of his countrymen, first in renown in other lands, was bound to be first alike in honour and in danger. The gift now lay before him. Ambition bade him seize it. Duty in no way [Sidenote: The Crown accepted by Harold.] held back his hand. The offered gift was accepted. The eve of that great Epiphany, the day on which King Eadward was alive and dead,[42] saw the Crown pass away for ever from the male line of Cerdic, and the next day saw it solemnly placed upon the brow of Harold. The evening of Eadward’s death must have been spent in preparation for the two great ceremonies of the morrow. On the morning of that short winter’s day, the Earl of the West-Saxons had kept his watch by the dying bed of his King and brother. Before its last hour had passed, he had become, not yet indeed a crowned and anointed King, but one called to kingship by the unanimous voice of his country, a King-elect of the English, who on the morrow might claim the sceptre and the diadem as his own.

[Sidenote: Double ceremony of Friday January 6, 1066; the burial of
Eadward and the coronation of Harold.]

The morning of the Epiphany dawned. It was the Feast of the Kings, a fitting day for an august rite within the walls of that minster which was reared to be specially the home of Kings alike in life and in death. On that day began that long series of national ceremonies which has gone on uninterruptedly to our own time, and which has made the Abbey of Saint Peter the hearth and Prytaneion of the English nation. The octave of the consecration-day [Sidenote: Necessity for a speedy coronation,] had barely passed, and there was already a King to be buried and a King to be crowned. Earl Harold was King-elect by the choice of the Witan of all England; but he was not “full King” till he and his people had exchanged their mutual promises, till he had been arrayed with the outward badges of his kingly office, till the blessing of the Church and the unction of her highest minister had made the chosen of the people also the Anointed of the Lord. Those were not days when that crowning rite could be delayed for one needless moment. England could not be safely left for a single day without a King. The twofold right of the new Sovereign, as King alike by the election of the people and by the consecration of the Church, must be at once placed beyond all reach of doubt or cavil. The Christmas feast was not yet over, but it was the last day of the holy season; the Witan were still assembled; to have waited for another feast of the Church, for another gathering of the nation, would have been simple madness.[43] The day of the coronation of Harold must therefore follow at once on the day [Sidenote: and therefore for a speedy burial.] of his election. And the coronation of Harold involved the previous burial of Eadward. England could not see two Kings of the English above ground at the same moment. Before then the Crown could be set on the brow of the King-elect, the hallowed soil of Saint Peter’s must close over the King who was no more. The day of the burial of Eadward must therefore follow at once on the day of his death. And never, even in the long history of that venerable Abbey, has there been such another day. Other [Sidenote: Greatness of the occasion.] Kings have been buried and crowned within its walls; but there has been no day like that, which beheld the last of one kingly line borne to his grave in the holy house of his own building, and which beheld the first—could men deem that he would be also the last?—of a newly-chosen race raised to the vacant throne alike by the bequest of his predecessor and by the will of his people. Of all the gorgeous rites celebrated by Kings and Prelates beneath the vaults of the West Minster, the twofold rite of that great Epiphany, which haste and urgency may well have rendered the least gorgeous of them all, is that around which the national memory of Englishmen may well centre most fondly. The first royal burial, the first royal consecration, within the newly-hallowed temple, possess an historic interest and an historic import beyond all those which have followed them.

[Sidenote: The Burial of Eadward.]

The body of Eadward had been prepared for burial almost as soon as his soul had passed away. Decked in royal robes, the crown on his head, the pilgrim’s ring, so legend said, upon his hand, the saint lay ready for his last home. Stigand, who had stood by him in his last moments, seems to have stayed to help in paying this last tribute to his departed master.[44] But the Primate, patriot in the eyes of Englishmen, schismatic in the eyes of Rome, was not to [Sidenote: Position of Stigand.] minister in either of the ceremonies of the morrow. As a Prelate of doubtful right, he was deemed unfit to hear the chief part in the consecration of Harold. As a simple priest, he might perhaps have been allowed to officiate at the funeral rites of Eadward. But it may well be that the newly-won privileges of the house of Saint Peter gave to the head of that house the ministration of all rites within its walls which did not need the special powers of a consecrated Bishop to give them sacramental efficacy. And Eadward doubtless sought, above all things, the prayers which the monks of the house which he himself had reared would [Sidenote: Stigand did not officiate at the funeral.] put up to Heaven for the soul of their founder. At all events, the priest who holds the first place in Eadward’s funeral procession is not set before us in our pictured record as adorned with any badge of pontifical rank.[45] We may perhaps be allowed to guess that the chief ministry in the funeral rites of Eadward was assigned to his friend and bedesman, Abbot Eadwine. Early on the winter’s morning,[46] perhaps while the minster still needed torchlight within the deep gloom of its massive walls and narrow windows, [Sidenote: Funeral of Eadward.] the King was carried to his grave. The body of Eadward, his form shrouded from sight, was borne on the shoulders of eight of his subjects, laymen all, and doubtless men of high degree. There was no need, as in the case of some later Kings, to assure his people, by the sight of his uncovered body, that he had not come unfairly by his end. Boys ringing bells walked on either side of the bier; behind them followed a crowd of clergy, surrounding the two chief ministers of the funeral ceremony, who walked bearing their office-books in their hands. In this guise the procession moved from the palace to the western door of the newly-hallowed minster. They swept along the nave, between the long rows of tall and massive pillars still fresh from the axe and hammer of the craftsman. They passed beneath the mighty arches, which, in all the strength and solidity of those early days of art, bore up the great central tower like a vast canopy over the choir below. They bore their burthen to the spot which Eadward had long before chosen as his place of burial, and there, before the altar of the saint whom he so deeply reverenced, the patron alike of Westminster and of Rome,[47] the body of the last King of [Sidenote: General sorrow for Eadward.] the olden stock received its last kingly honours. We can well believe that, not only the poor whom he had relieved, the churchmen whom he had enriched, and the strangers on whom he had lavished the wealth of England, but that Englishmen of all ranks might well weep in awe and in sorrow over the grave of the last son of Cerdic and Woden. At such a moment, reversing the poet’s rule, the good that men have done lives after them and the evil is interred with their bones. There, by his grave in his own church, men’s thoughts would dwell on the virtues rather than on [Sidenote: Causes of sorrow and anxiety.] the weaknesses of the King who was taken from them. His faults as a King were great; but men would then think rather of all that was worthy in him as a man, and they might well deem that his last kingly act had covered a multitude of errors. In the crowd which filled the church, there could have been few whom Eadward had personally wronged; there must have been many whom he had personally benefitted. And, more than this, men must have felt that the two great rites of that day placed a great gulf between them and a long and honoured past, while a future rose before them, bright indeed with glorious hopes, but around which two dark clouds were gathering in opposite quarters of the heaven. No wonder then that by the grave of Eadward men wept and trembled.[48] Psalms were sung, masses were said, alms were scattered abroad with a bounteous hand, needless offerings it might seem for a soul which men deemed that angels had already borne to the beatific vision.[49] For three hundred days, days which stretch beyond the reign of Harold, the masses, the hymns, [Sidenote: Miracles wrought at the tomb.] the alms, continued to be daily offered.[50] And wonders soon were wrought at the tomb of the royal saint. The blind received their sight, the lame walked, the sick were healed, the sorrowing received comfort.[51] So thought men of his own day, men who had seen him in the flesh, and who have not shrunk from handing down to us even the less worthy actions of his life. If we deem such a belief and such a worship to be, not only superstitious in itself, but to have been thrown away on an unworthy object, we must remember with how fond a memory men must, ere a year had passed, have looked back to the happy days of the baleless King. We must remember how easily men would forget that the calm of those happy days was due, far less to the crowned monk upon the throne, than to the man of the stout heart and the strong arm who stood beside him. And let us remember too that the canonizing voice of [Sidenote: Other causes of popular canonization.] England was not always raised only to commemorate mere monastic virtues like those of Eadward. Foreign Kings and foreign Pontiffs might forbid, but a day came when England looked with no less devout reverence on the true heroes and martyrs of our land. If miracles adorned the tomb of Eadward at Westminster, no less mighty works were soon deemed to be wrought before Waltheof’s tomb in the chapter-house of Crowland, and two ages later, the sick were again healed and the blind again saw, before the tomb where English hearts still revered the relics which were all that the foeman’s sword had left of the mangled form of the martyr of Evesham.[52]

[Sidenote: Posthumous history of Eadward.]