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Title: The history of the Norman conquest of England, its causes and
its results, Volume 2 (of 6)

Author: Edward A. Freeman

Release date: September 29, 2025 [eBook #76954]

Language: English

Original publication: Oxford: Clarendon, 1867

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY
OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND, ITS CAUSES AND ITS
RESULTS, VOLUME 2 (OF 6) ***

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HISTORY OF THE NORMAN
CONQUEST.

London

HENRY FROWDE

Oxford University Press Warehouse
Amen Corner, E.C.

THE HISTORY
OF THE

NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND,
ITS CAUSES AND ITS RESULTS.

BY

EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M.A.
LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE.

VOLUME II.
THE REIGN OF EADWARD THE CONFESSOR.

Φιλεῖ γὰρ ὁ Θεὸς τοῖς οὔτε ἀγχίνοις οὔτε τι οἰκόθεν μηχανᾶσθαι
οἵοις τε οὖσιν, ἢν μὴ πονηροὶ εἶεν, ἀπορουμένοις τὰ ἔσχατα
ἐπικουρεῖν τε καὶ ξυλλαμβάνεσθαι, ὁποῖον δή τι καὶ τῷ βασιλεῖ
τούτῳ τετύχηκεν.—Procopius, Bell. Vand. i. 2.
Oxford:
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS.

M.DCCC.LXVIII.

[All Rights reserved.]

PREFACE.

My first volume was preliminary. I am now able to announce the exact
extent and scheme of my book. My plan now extends to five volumes. The
present volume takes in the first stage of the actual struggle between
Normans and Englishmen, that is, the Reign of Eadward the Confessor. I
begin with Eadward’s election, and I continue the narrative to his death. I
take in also the early years of William in Normandy. In this period the
struggle is not as yet a struggle of open warfare: it is a political struggle
within the Kingdom of England. Harold and William gradually come to be
the leaders and representatives of their several nations; but they are not,
during the time embraced in the present volume, brought into any actually
hostile relation to one another.
The third volume will, as far as England is concerned, be devoted to the
single year 1066. But, along with the history of that great year, I shall have
to trace the later years of William’s Norman reign. The year itself is the
time of actual warfare between England and Normandy under their
respective sovereigns. It embraces the reign of Harold and the interregnum
which followed his death. I shall, in this volume, describe the election of
Harold, the campaigns of Stamfordbridge and Hastings, and the formal
completion of the Conquest by the acceptance and coronation of William as
King of the English. Of this volume a considerable part is already written.
The fourth volume I shall devote to the reign of William in England. The
Conquest, formally completed by his coronation, has now to be practically
carried out throughout the land. The authority of William, already formally
acknowledged, is gradually established over England; local resistance is
overcome; the highest offices and the greatest landed estates throughout
England are gradually transferred from natives to foreigners. Before
William’s death the work was thoroughly done, and the great Domesday

Survey may be looked on as its record. The Conquest, in its immediate
results, is now fully accomplished.
The second, third, and fourth volumes will therefore embrace the main
narrative, the third being the centre of all. The fifth volume will answer to
the first. It will be supplementary, as the first was preliminary. It will be
devoted to the results of the Conquest, as the first was devoted to its causes.
It will not be necessary to prolong the detailed history beyond the death of
William the Conqueror, but it will be necessary to give a sketch of the
history down to Edward the First, in order to point out the stages by which
the Norman settlers were gradually fused into the mass of the English
nation. I shall also have to examine the permanent results of the Conquest
on government, language, and the general condition of England.
I have again to give my best thanks for help of various kinds to several of
the friends whom I spoke of in my first volume. To them I must now add
Mr. Duffus Hardy and Mr. Edward Edwards. But, above all, I must again
express my deep thanks to Professor Stubbs, not only for the benefit derived
from his writings, but for his personal readiness to correct and to suggest on
all points. Without his help I may truly say that this volume could not be
what I trust it is.
Somerleaze, Wells,
April 21st, 1868.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VII.
FROM THE ELECTION OF EADWARD TO THE BANISHMENT OF GODWINE. 1042–1051.
A. D. PAGE
The struggle between Normans and Englishmen begins with the
accession of Eadward 4
Import of Eadward’s election; resolve of the English people to have
none but an English King 4
Other possible candidates; Swend Estrithson; Eadward the son of
Eadmund 5
Eadward the one available representative of the old stock 5

§ 1. The Election and Coronation of Eadward. 1042–1043.
June, 1042 Popular election of Eadward 5
Delay of the coronation; its probable causes 6
Eadward probably absent from England and unwilling to accept the
Crown 6–7
Embassy to Eadward; negotiations between him and Godwine 7–8
Eadward accepts the Crown and returns to England 8
Christmas?
Witenagemót of Gillingham
1042–1043 9
Opposition to Eadward’s election in the interest of Swend Estrithson 9
Eadward the only possible choice; nature of his claims 10–14
April 3, 1043 Eadward crowned at Winchester 14
Exhortation of Archbishop Eadsige; position of Eadward; his relations
to Godwine and the other great Earls 14–16
Presence of foreign Ambassadors at the coronation; Eadward’s
foreign connexions; his relations with Magnus of Denmark and
with the French Princes 16–19
Gifts of the English nobles; Godwine gives a ship to the King 19–20

§ 2. Condition of England during the early years of Eadward.
Character of Eadward; his position as a Saint 20–21
Eadward’s memory acceptable to Englishmen and Normans alike 22
Eadward’s personal character; purely monastic nature of his virtues;
points of likeness to his father 23–24
His love of hunting; contrast with the humanity of Anselm 25–27
Personal appearance and habits of Eadward 27
His love of favourites; his fondness for foreigners; promotion of
Normans to high office 28–30
The Norman Conquest begins under Eadward 30
Relations between Eadward and Godwine; Norman calumnies against
Godwine and his sons 30–31

Character of Godwine; his relations to ecclesiastical bodies; his over
care for his own household 31–33
His good and strict government of his Earldom 33–34
Godwine never reached the same power as Harold did afterwards 35
Godwine’s eloquence; importance of speech at the time 35
1043 Godwine’s family; Swegen raised to an Earldom 36
1045? Promotion of Beorn and Harold 36–37
Character of Harold; his military genius 37–39
His civil virtues; his singular forbearance; his championship of
England against strangers 39–40
His foreign travels; his patronage of Germans as opposed to
Frenchmen 40–41
Harold’s personal character; his alleged spoliation of monasteries; his
friendship with Saint Wulfstan; his foundation of Waltham 41–42
Frankness and openness of his personal demeanour; alleged charges
of rashness 42–43
Story of Eadgyth Swanneshals 43
Comparison between Harold and Constantine Palaiologos 43–44
Character of Swegen 44–45
Character of the Lady Eadgyth; her doubtful loyalty to England; her
relations to her husband 45–47
Greatness of Godwine and his house 47–48
The other Earldoms; Mercia under Leofric; Northumberland under
Siward 48–50
General condition of England; tendency not to separation but to
union; comparison with Frankish history 50
Nature of the Earldoms as affected by the Danish conquest; special
position of Northumberland 50–51
The King’s Writs; light thrown by them on the condition of Folkland 52–53
General powers of the Witan not lessened 53
1040 Affairs of Scotland; reign and death of Duncan 53–54
1040–1058 Reign of Macbeth; his distribution of money at Rome 54–55
1039–1063 Affairs of Wales; reign of Gruffydd of North Wales 55–56
1039 His victory over Eadwine at Rhyd-y-groes 56
1042 His wars in South Wales and victory at Aberteifi 56
Eadward’s relations with foreign powers; his connexion with
Germany 56
Claims of Magnus of Norway on the Crown of England 57
The reign of Eadward comparatively peaceful 57

§ 3. From the Coronation of Eadward to the Remission of the War-tax. 1043–1051.
1043–1051 Character of the first nine years of Eadward 58

Relations between Eadward and his mother; probable offence given
by Emma 58–61
November 16, Witenagemót of Gloucester; Eadward and the Earls despoil Emma of
1043 her treasure 61–62
Probable connexion of Emma with the partizans of Swend;
1043–1046
banishments of Osbeorn, Osgod Clapa, Gunhild, and others 62–64
April–Nov.
Stigand appointed Bishop of the East-Angles and deposed
1043 64–65
Importance of ecclesiastical appointments; mode of appointing
Bishops; increased connexion with Rome; prevalence of simony 65–68
Siward Abbot of Abingdon appointed Coadjutor to Archbishop
1044–1050
Eadsige; he retires to Abingdon and dies 68–69
July 25, 1044 Death of Ælfweard, Bishop of London 69
August 10,
Restoration of Stigand; Robert of Jumièges Bishop of London
1044 70–71
Baneful influence of Robert; his calumnies against Godwine; his
connexion with the Norman Conquest 70–71
Condition of Northern Europe; war between Swend and Magnus;
1044–1047
conduct of Godescalc 72–73
Magnus claims the English Crown; answer of Eadward; preparations
1044–1045
against Magnus 73–74
Early life and exploits of Harold Hardrada; his escape from
1030–1044
Stikkelstad; he enters the Byzantine service 74–76
1038–1040 He commands the Warangians in Sicily 76
His crusade or pilgrimage; he escapes from Constantinople and joins
Swend in Sweden 76–78
1045 Swend and Harold attack Magnus and save England from invasion 78
Jan. 23, 1045 Marriage of Eadward and Eadgyth; promotions of Harold and Beorn 79
Death of Brihtwold, Bishop of the Wilsætas; Hermann of Lotharingia
succeeds; policy of the promotion of German prelates 79–81
March 23,
Death of Bishop Lyfing; his career and character
1046 81–83
1046–1072 Leofric succeeds him in Cornwall and Devonshire 83
He removes the see to Exeter, and subjects his Canons to the rule of
1050
Chrodegang 83–85
1046–1062 Ealdred succeeds Lyfing at Worcester; his character 85–86
Gruffydd ap Llywelyn reconciled with the King; his joint expedition
with Swegen against Gruffydd ap Rhydderch 87
Swegen’s abduction of Eadgifu; he throws up his Earldom and retires
to Denmark; suppression of Leominster Abbey 87–89
Banishment of Osgod Clapa 89–90
Affairs of Scandinavia; Harold joins Magnus and receives a share of
1047
the Kingdom of Norway 90–91

Swend asks help from England; his request is supported in the
Witenagemót by Godwine, but rejected on the motion of Leofric 91–92
Magnus defeats Swend; he occupies Denmark and dies suddenly 92–93
1048–1061 Harold succeeds in Norway, Swend in Denmark; their long warfare 93
Norwegian and Danish embassies to England; help again refused to
1048
Swend; peace concluded with Harold 93
1046–1047 Physical phænomena 93–94
Aug. 29, 1047 Ælfwine, Bishop of Winchester, dies; Stigand succeeds 94
Ravages of Lothen and Yrling; the King and the Earls pursue the
1048
pirates, but they escape to Flanders 94–96
Relations with Flanders; their analogy with the relations with
Normandy in 991 and 1000 96
Alliance with the Emperor Henry; his nomination of German Popes 96
1048–1054 Pontificate of Leo the Ninth 96–97
Godfrey of Lotharingia and Baldwin of Flanders rebel against the
1047
Emperor 97
Leo excommunicates Godfrey; Godfrey submits, but Baldwin
1049
continues his ravages 97–98
Denmark and England join the Emperor against Baldwin; the English
fleet watches the Channel; submission of Baldwin 98–99
Baldwin’s submission lets loose the English exiles; Osgod Clapa at 99–
sea; Swegen seeks reconciliation with Eadward 100
100–
Harold and Beorn oppose his restoration; his outlawry is renewed
101
102–
Beorn entrapped and slain by Swegen
104
104–
Swegen declared Nithing by the army; nature of the military Gemót
105
Swegen escapes to Flanders and is received by Baldwin; universal 105–
indignation against him in England 107
107–
Midlent, 1050 Swegen restored to his Earldom by the intervention of Bishop Ealdred
109
109–
1049 Various military operations; movements of Osgod Clapa
110
Ships from Ireland in the Bristol Channel joined by Gruffydd of
July
South Wales 110
110–
July 29 Campaign of Bishop Ealdred; his defeat by Gruffydd
111
Increasing connexion of England with the continent; English 111–
1049–1050
attendance at synods; synods at Rheims and Mainz 113
Deaths of Bishops and Abbots; Siward dies, and Eadsige resumes the
1049 primacy; Eadnoth of Dorchester dies and is succeeded by Ulf the
Norman 113
114–
Midlent, 1050 Witenagemót of London; reduction of the fleet; Swegen inlawed
115

The King’s vow of pilgrimage to Rome; Bishops Ealdred and 115–
Hermann sent to obtain a dispensation 116
Synods of Rome and Vercelli; Lanfranc and Berengar; Ulf confirmed 116–
in his Bishoprick; pilgrimage of Macbeth? 118
Death of Archbishop Eadsige; the monks of Christ Church elect 118–
Oct. 29
Ælfric, who is supported by Godwine but rejected by the King 120
Witenagemót of London; Robert of Jumièges appointed to
Midlent, 1051 Canterbury, Spearhafoc to London, and Rudolf to the Abbey of 120–
Abingdon 121
Robert returns from Rome with the pallium; he refuses to consecrate 121–
July 27
Spearhafoc, who holds his see without consecration 123
The remaining ships paid off; remission of the Heregeld; distinction 123–
Midlent?
between Danegeld and Heregeld 125

§ 4. The Banishment of Earl Godwine. 1051.
The foreign influence at its height; contrast between Danish and 125–
Norman influences; revolt of England against the strangers 129
Universal indignation at the appointment of Robert; his cabals against 129–
Godwine 130
Visit of Eustace of Boulogne to Eadward at Gloucester; his outrages 130–
September
at Dover on his return 133
Eustace accuses the men of Dover to Eadward; Eadward commands
Godwine to inflict military chastisement on them; Godwine 133–
refuses, and demands a legal trial 137
Robert excites the King against Godwine; the Witan summoned to 137–
Gloucester to hear charges against the Earl 138
Outrages of the Normans in Herefordshire; building of castles; 138–
Richard’s Castle 140
Godwine and his sons gather the force of their Earldoms at
Beverstone; Siward, Leofric, and Ralph gather theirs at Gloucester 141
Negotiations between Godwine and the King; Godwine’s offers
Sept. 8 refused through the influence of the Frenchmen; he demands the 142–
surrender of Eustace and the other criminals 143
The full force of the Northern Earldoms assembles at Gloucester; 143–
Eadward refuses to surrender Eustace 144
Eagerness of the Northumbrians for battle; march of the West-Saxons 144–
and East-Angles on Gloucester 146
146–
Mediation of Leofric; adjournment to a Gemót in London
147
Gemót of London; Eadward at the head of an army; outlawry of
Sept. 29 Swegen renewed; Godwine and Harold summoned to appear as 147–
criminals 149
Final summons to the Earls; their demand for a safe-conduct is 149–
refused 150

Godwine and his family outlawed; Godwine, Swegen, &c., take
refuge in Flanders 151
Harold determines on resistance; he and Leofwine sail from Bristol to
Dublin, where they are received by King Diarmid; vain pursuit of 152–
Bishop Ealdred 155
155–
Eadgyth sent to Wherwell
156
General character of the story; explanation of Godwine’s conduct: 157–
effect of his fall on the minds of his contemporaries 160
Oct. 1051– Temporary triumph of the Norman party; advancement of Ralph, 160–
Sept. 1052 Odda, and Ælfgar 161
Spearhafoc deposed and William appointed Bishop of London 161
161–
Visit of Duke William
162

CHAPTER VIII.
THE EARLY YEARS OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 1028–1051.

§ 1. Birth, Character, and Accession of William. 1028–1035.
163–
Character and greatness of William; lasting results of his career
164
165–
English and Norman portraits of him
166
His strength of will, military genius, statesmanship, and 166–
unscrupulousness as to means 167
His personal virtues; general excellence of his ecclesiastical 167–
appointments 168
168–
Effects of his reign in Normandy, France, and England
169
169–
General excellence of his government in Normandy
170
His reign in England; skill displayed in his claim on the English 170–
Crown, in his acquisition of it, and in his subsequent government 171
171–
Severity of his police
172
The worst features of his character brought out in England; crimes 172–
and misfortunes of his later years 174
William’s surnames; the Great, the Conqueror, and the Bastard 174
Laxity of the Norman Dukes as to marriage and legitimacy; special 174–
illegitimacy of William 175
Story of William’s birth; description of Falaise; historical associations 175–
of the castle 177

177–
English legend of the birth of William
178
Story of Robert and Herleva; advancement of her family; birth of 178–
1026–1028
William 180
Question of the succession; state of the Ducal family; various 180–
candidates, but none free from objection 182
Unpopularity of the prospect of William’s succession 182
182–
The great Norman houses; their connexion with English history
183
Greatness and wickedness of the house of Belesme; crimes of 183–
William Talvas; he curses young William in his cradle 187
1034–1035 Robert announces his intention of pilgrimage 187
He proposes William as his successor; his succession unwillingly 188–
accepted 189
1035 Robert dies on pilgrimage and William succeeds 189
189–
Childhood of William; necessary evils of a minority
191
191–
Anarchy of the time; building of castles; frequency of assassinations
193
Effects of William’s government in Normandy 193

§ 2. From the Accession of William to the Battle of Val-ès-dunes. 1035–1047.
193–
Guardians of William; Alan of Britanny; Osbern; Gilbert
194
1039–1040 Murders of Alan and Gilbert 195
House of Montgomery; history of Roger of Montgomery and his wife 195–
Mabel 197
Attempt of William of Montgomery on Duke William at Vaudreuil;
murder of Osbern; escape of the Duke; friendship of the Duke for 197–
William Fitz-Osbern 198
Rebellion and death of Roger of Toesny; houses of Grantmesnil and
Beaumont 199
200–
Ralph of Wacey chosen as the Duke’s guardian
201
Relations between Normandy and France; general good
understanding since the Commendation to Hugh the Great; return
of ill-feeling on the accession of William; ingratitude of King 201–
Henry 203
Castle of Tillières demanded by Henry; Gilbert Crispin refuses to
surrender, and is besieged; the castle surrendered, burned, and 203–
restored by Henry contrary to his engagements 205
205–
Treason of Thurstan Goz; capture of Falaise Castle by the Duke
207
207–
Developement of William’s character
208

Abuse of ecclesiastical appointments by the Norman Dukes 208
Position of the Norman Prelates; their subjection to the Ducal
authority 209
209–
1037–1055 Death of Archbishop Robert; succession and primacy of Malger
210
210–
1048–1098 Odo Bishop of Bayeux; his character in England and in Normandy
212
Ecclesiastical movement in Normandy; foundation of monasteries 213
213–
Character of the monastic reformations in various ages
214
214–
Abbeys of Bec and Saint Evroul
216
216–
994–1034 Descent, birth, and early life of Herlwin
219
1034–1037 Herlwin’s foundation at Burneville 219
220–
1037–1078 He removes the monastery to Bec; his administration
222
222–
1005–1039 Descent, birth, and character of Lanfranc
225
1039–1042 He teaches at Avranches 225
225–
1042–1045 He becomes a monk and Prior of Bec; his favour with William
227
1049–1050 He attends the synods of Rome and Vercelli 227
228–
575 Monastery of Saint Evroul; history of its founder Ebrulf or Evroul
229
The house escapes the Danish ravages, but is plundered by Hugh the 229–
943
Great 230
The monastery forsaken and restored by Restold 230
230–
c. 1015 Geroy and his family; their relations to the house of Belesme
232
William the son of Geroy blinded by William Talvas 232
Saint Evroul restored by William the son of Geroy and his nephews
1050
Hugh and Robert of Grantmesnil 233
233–
1050–1063 Succession of Abbots; intrigues and abbacy of the co-founder Robert
234
Connexion of the religious movement in Normandy with the
Conquest of England 234
Origin of the Truce of God; custom of private war; comparison 234–
between the Truce and the Crusades 236
A reform in those times necessarily ecclesiastical 237
237–
1034 The Truce first preached in Aquitaine
239
239–
1041 The Truce preached in a relaxed form in Burgundy and Lotharingia
240

The Truce received in Normandy at the Councils of Caen and 240–
1042–1080
Lillebonne 241
1047 Wide spread conspiracy against William 241
Intrigues of Guy of Burgundy with the Lords of the Bessin and the 242–
Côtentin; scheme for a division of the Duchy 243
Geographical division of parties; Rouen and the French lands loyal; 243–
Bayeux and the Danish lands join in the rebellion 244
The rebel leaders; Neal of Saint Saviour 245
Randolf Viscount of Bayeux 246
Hamon Dentatus of Thorigny 246
Grimbald of Plessis 247
247–
Attempt to seize William at Valognes; his escape
249
Progress of the rebellion; William seeks help of King Henry; probable 250–
motives of Henry for granting it 252
Battle of Val-ès-dunes; its importance in the life of William 252
253–
Val-ès-dunes a battle between Romanized and Teutonic Normandy
254
Description of the field 254
Junction of the Ducal and French forces; Ralph of Tesson joins the 255–
Duke 257
257–
The Battle a mere combat of cavalry
258
258–
Personal exertions and overthrow of King Henry; death of Hamon
260
260–
Exploits and good fortune of William
261
261–
Defeat of the rebels; flight of Randolf; bravery of Neal
263
263–
Escape of Guy; he defends himself at Brionne
264
Siege and surrender of Brionne; William’s treatment of the 264–
1047–1050?
vanquished 267
267–
Guy returns to Burgundy; fate of Grimbald
268
Establishment of William’s power in Normandy; supremacy of the 269–
French element confirmed 270

§ 3. From the Battle of Val-ès-dunes to William’s Visit to England. 1047–1051.
The Counts of Anjou; their connexion with Normandy and England; 270–
characteristics of Angevin history 271
464 Saxon occupation of Anjou 271
271–
870? Ingelgar first Count; legend of the origin of the family
273

888 Succession of Counts; Fulk the Red 273
273–
938 Fulk the Good; his proverb about unlearned Kings
274
958 Geoffrey Grisegonelle; his wars 274
978 His services to King Lothar in the war with Otto 274
987 Fulk Nerra, warrior and pilgrim 274
992 His war with Odo of Chartres 274
1016 Battle of Pontlevois; defeat of Odo 274
1028–1035 Fulk’s pilgrimages to Jerusalem 275
1040 Geoffrey Martel; origin of his surname 276
Geoffrey imprisons William Duke of Aquitaine, marries Agnes, and 276–
April 22, 1033
rebels against his father 277
Last days of Odo of Chartres; his war with King Henry and attempt
1033–1037
on the Kingdom of Burgundy 277
His sons Stephen and Theobald; their wars with King Henry and with
1044 Geoffrey; Geoffrey receives Tours from Henry and imprisons 277–
Theobald 278
Duke William helps King Henry against Geoffrey; his personal 279–
1048
exploits 280
Position of Maine under Geoffrey 280
1015–1036 Succession of Counts; Herbert Wake-the-Dog and Hugh 280
Fortresses of Domfront and Alençon; disloyalty of Alençon; it 281–
1048–1049
receives an Angevin garrison 282
283–
William’s march to Domfront; traitors in the Norman camp
284
284–
Geoffrey comes to relieve Domfront and decamps
286
William’s sudden march to Alençon; insults offered to him; his 287–
capture of the town and cruel vengeance 288
Domfront surrenders; William fortifies Ambières 289
Story of William the Warling; he is charged with treason by Robert 290–
the Bigod 291
Duke William makes him leave Normandy, and gives his county of
Mortain to his own half-brother Robert 292
1049–1054 Prosperous condition of Normandy 293
1049–1053 William’s courtship and marriage with Matilda of Flanders 293
1051–1052 Condition of England 294
1051 William’s visit to England; estimate of him in English eyes 295
Eadward’s alleged promise of the Crown to William probably made at 296–
this time 301
Constitutional value of such a promise; its revocation in favour of
Harold 301
302–
Improbability of any other time for the promise
303

Nature of William’s claims 304
William’s visit an important stage in the history 305
March 6, 1052 Death of Ælfgifu-Emma 306

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

Character of the period; little direct connexion between English and 307–
Norman affairs 308

§ 1. The Return and Death of Godwine. 1052–1053.
General regret at the absence of Godwine; he receives invitations to 308–
1052
return 310
Eadward gathers a fleet at Sandwich to oppose Godwine 310
311–
Ravages of Gruffydd of North Wales; his victory near Leominster
312
Godwine petitions for his restoration; embassies of foreign princes on 312–
his behalf; his restoration is refused 313
313–
Godwine determines on a return by force; estimate of his conduct
315
Harold and Leofwine sail from Dublin and enter the Bristol Channel 315
The people of Somersetshire and Devonshire ill disposed towards
them; probable grounds for their hostility 316
316–
Harold’s landing and victory at Porlock; estimate of his conduct
319
319–
June 22 Godwine sets sail; his first appearance off the English coast
320
320–
Both fleets dispersed by a storm; Godwine returns to Bruges
321
Godwine sails the second time to Wight; meeting of Godwine and 321–
Harold; they sail eastward together 322
Zeal in their cause shown by the men of Sussex, Surrey, Kent, and 322–
Essex 323
They enter the Thames and sail towards London 323
323–
Sept. 14 Godwine reaches Southwark; London declares for him
324
324–
The King hastens to London with an army
325
Godwine before London; zeal of his followers and lukewarmness of 326–
the King’s troops 327
Godwine demands his restoration; Eadward hesitates 328

328–
The indignation of Godwine’s men restrained by the Earl
329
Embassy of Stigand; hostages exchanged; and matters referred to a
Gemót on the morrow 329
Godwine and Harold land 329
Fears of the King’s Norman favourites; general flight of the 329–
foreigners 331
Robert and Ulf cut their way out of London; the Mycel Gemót 332–
Sept. 15
assembles without the walls of London; its popular character 333
Godwine at the Gemót; he supplicates the King and speaks to the 333–
people 334
Votes of the Assembly; acquittal and restoration of Godwine;
outlawry of Archbishop Robert and many other Normans; “Good 335–
law decreed for all folk” 337
Personal reconciliation between Godwine and the King 337
337–
Restoration of Eadgyth
338
Absence of Swegen; his pilgrimage to Jerusalem 338
Sept. 29 He dies in Lykia 338
Disposal of Earldoms; restoration of Harold; Earldoms of Ralph and
Odda 339
339–
The vacant Bishopricks; relations between Church and State
340
Stigand appointed to Canterbury; his doubtful ecclesiastical position; 340–
handle given to the Normans by Robert’s expulsion 344
1053–1067 Wulfwig succeeds Ulf at Dorchester 344
Leofwine Bishop of Lichfield; Leofwine and Wulfwig seek
1053–1067
consecration beyond sea 344
345–
1051–1070 William of London retains his Bishoprick
346
Normans allowed to remain or return; some of them probably restored 346–
after Godwine’s death; Osbern of Richard’s Castle 348
Estimate of Godwine’s conduct; his illness 348
1052–1053 Christmas Gemót at Gloucester 348
Jan. 5, 1053 Rhys ap Rhydderch beheaded and his head brought to Eadward 349
Arnwig resigns the Abbey of Peterborough; succession and 349–
1053–1066
administration of Leofric 350
1053 Easter Gemót at Winchester 350
April 12 Godwine taken ill at the King’s table 350
350–
April 15 His death and burial; gifts of his widow Gytha
352
352–
General grief of the nation; true estimate of Godwine’s character
354

§ 2. From the Accession of Harold to the Earldom of the West-Saxons to his first War with
Gruffydd. 1053–1056.
Nature of the succession to Earldoms; different positions of Mercia 354–
and Northumberland and of Wessex and East-Anglia 355
355–
Reasons for retaining the West-Saxon Earldom
356
Harold Earl of the West-Saxons; Ælfgar Earl of the East-Angles; 356–
Easter, 1053
character of Ælfgar and his sons 357
Probable restoration of Bishop William and other Normans 358
Position of the Normans in Eadward’s later days; political office
forbidden, but court office allowed; Eadward’s later policy 358–
thoroughly English 359
Different positions of Godwine and Harold with regard to the 359–
foreigners 360
Christmas, Ecclesiastical appointments; Leofwine of Lichfield and Wulfwig of
1053–1054 Dorchester 361
1053–1082 Æthelnoth Abbot of Glastonbury 361
1053–July 17, 361–
Bishop Ealdred holds the Abbey of Winchcombe with his See
1054 362
Welsh inroad at Westbury 362
Macbeth in Scotland; Siward’s expedition against him; Macbeth’s 362–
1054
alliance with Thorfinn 364
Siward defeats Macbeth; Malcolm declared King of Scots; legends 364–
July 27
about Siward 365
365–
1054–1058 The war continued by Macbeth; his final defeat and death
366
1058 Ephemeral reign of Lulach; Malcolm King over all Scotland 366
Erroneous popular conception of the war with Macbeth 366
State of the royal family; position of Ralph; of the descendants of 367–
1054
Eadmund Ironside 370
370–
The Ætheling Eadward invited to England; import of the invitation
372
Embassy of Ealdred and Ælfwine to the Emperor Henry; Ealdred’s 372–
July
long stay at Köln 374
Death of Osgod Clapa 374
374–
1055 Death of Earl Siward; his foundation at Galmanho; his son Waltheof
375
Tostig appointed Earl of the Northumbrians; novelty of the 375–
March
appointment; its doubtful policy 379
Character and government of Tostig; his personal favour with 379–
Eadward; legends about him and Harold 383
384–
Tostig’s sworn brotherhood with Malcolm
385
385–
March 20 Banishment of Ælfgar
386

Ælfgar hires ships in Ireland; he ravages Herefordshire in alliance 386–
with Gruffydd 388
Battle near Hereford; defeat of the English through the innovations of 388–
October 24
Earl Ralph 390
390–
Gruffydd and Ælfgar sack and burn Hereford
392
Harold sent against the Welsh; comparison of his earlier and later 393–
Welsh campaigns 394
394–
Harold restores and fortifies Hereford
395
Christmas
Peace of Billingsley; general mildness of English political warfare
1055–1056 395
Ælfgar restored to his Earldom 396
Death of Æthelstan Bishop of Hereford; invasion of Magnus and 396–
Feb. 10, 1056
Gruffydd 397
March 27– Short and warlike episcopate of Leofgar of Hereford; his death in 397–
June 16 battle; character of the war with Gruffydd 398
1056–1060 Ealdred holds the See of Hereford with that of Worcester 398
Gruffydd reconciled to Eadward; his oath of homage; he is mulcted of 398–
1056
his lands in Cheshire 400
400–
Cooperation of Harold, Leofric, and Ealdred
401

§ 3. From Harold’s first Campaign against Gruffydd to the Deaths of Leofric and Ralph. 1055–
1057.
Christmas Ecclesiastical affairs; Hermann of Ramsbury tries to annex the Abbey 401–
1055–1056 of Malmesbury to his Bishoprick; his scheme hindered by Harold 405
Hermann retires to Saint Omer; he returns and unites the Sees of 405–
1056–1058
Ramsbury and Sherborne 406
August 31,
Death of Earl Odda
1056 407

Æthelric of Durham resigns his See; succession of his brother 407–
1056–1071
Æthelwine 408
The Ætheling Eadward comes to England; his intended succession to 408–
1057
the Crown; his death 410
410–
Probable reasons why he never saw the King
412
412–
Surmise of Sir F. Palgrave that Harold caused his death; its injustice
414
Death of Heaca, Bishop of the South-Saxons; Æthelric succeeds 414
414–
August 31 Death of Earl Leofric; fate of Godgifu
415
415–
Dec. 21 Death of Earl Ralph; his possible pretensions to the Crown
416

Christmas Redistribution of Earldoms; Ælfgar Earl of the Mercians; marriage of
1057–1058 his daughter Ealdgyth with Gruffydd 416
Herefordshire added to Harold’s Earldom; Harold the son of Ralph 417
Gyrth Earl of the East-Angles and of Oxfordshire; policy of detached
shires 418
Leofwine Earl of Kent, Essex, &c.; London not under any Earl 419
419–
1058–1065 The House of Godwine at its highest point of greatness
420
Harold’s prospects of the Crown 420
Position of Harold; effects of Eadward’s promise to William; the 420–
candidates of the patriotic party, first the Ætheling, then Harold 422
Quasi-royal position of Harold; probably no formal act, but a general 424–
understanding in his favour 427
Harold chief ruler of England 427

CHAPTER X.
THE REIGN OF EADWARD, FROM THE DEATH OF THE ÆTHELING TO THE DEATH OF
THE KING. 1057–1066.

§ 1. The Ecclesiastical Administration of Earl Harold. 1058–1062.
Dominant position of Harold; predominance of ecclesiastical affairs; 428–
Harold in relation to the Church 430
Harold’s pilgrimage to Rome; he studies the politics of the French 430–
1058?
Princes on his way 431
Succession of Popes; Stephen the Ninth; Benedict the Tenth; Nicholas 431–
1057–1061
the Second 432
Benedict probably in possession at the time of Harold’s visit; he
1058
grants the pallium to Stigand, probably through Harold’s influence 432
Temporary recognition of Stigand after his receipt of the pallium; the
new Bishops Æthelric and Siward are consecrated by him 433
433–
Harold returns to England
434
434–
Second outlawry and return of Ælfgar
435
Ecclesiastical history of Gloucester; death of Abbot Eadric; Bishop
681–1058 Ealdred rebuilds and consecrates the church and appoints Wulfstan 435–
Abbot 436
Ealdred restores the See of Ramsbury to Hermann and makes the 436–
1058
pilgrimage to Jerusalem 437
437–
April 23, 1059 Mannig resigns the abbacy of Evesham and is succeeded by Æthelwig
438
Deposition of Pope Benedict; its effect on the position of Stigand 439
May 3, 1060 Consecration of Harold’s minster at Waltham 439

Nature and importance of the foundation; its character generally 439–
misunderstood 440
Harold’s acquisition of Waltham; he rebuilds the church and founds a 441–
secular college 442
Distinction between the foundation of secular colleges and of
monasteries 442
443–
Harold’s zeal for education; Adelard of Lüttich
444
Continuance of the struggle between regulars and seculars; Harold a
friend of the seculars; general witness to his character borne by the 444–
foundation 446
The church consecrated by Archbishop Cynesige; the foundation 446–
charter dated two years later 447
Dec. 22 Death of Cynesige 447
447–
Dec. 25 Ealdred appointed Archbishop of York in the Gemót at Gloucester
448
1060–1079 Ealdred resigns the See of Hereford and is succeeded by Walter 448
449–
1060–1088 Death of Duduc Bishop of Wells; he is succeeded by Gisa
450
Later careers of Walter and Gisa; Gisa’s changes at Wells; 451–
comparisons between the foundations of Harold and Gisa 453
453–
April 15, 1061 Gisa and Walter consecrated at Rome
454
April 18–May Death of Wulfric, Abbot of Saint Augustine’s; his successor Æthelsige 454–
26 receives the benediction from Stigand 455
455–
Journey to Rome of Ealdred, Tostig, and Gyrth
456
Pope Nicolas confirms the privileges of Westminster, but refuses the 456–
pallium to Ealdred, and deprives him of his See 457
Tostig and the Bishops robbed on their way home 457
They return to Rome, and the Pope yields the pallium to the threats of 457–
Tostig 459
Ill effects of the practice of pilgrimage; Malcolm invades 459–
Northumberland during the absence of Tostig 460
460–
Lent, 1062 Vacancy of the See of Worcester; papal legates in England
461
Ealdred hesitates between Abbot Æthelwig and Wulfstan Prior of 461–
Worcester 462
462–
1012–1062 Life and character of Wulfstan
464
464–
Easter 1062 Wulfstan elected Bishop; the election confirmed by the Witan
466
466–
Sept. 8 Wulfstan consecrated by Ealdred, but makes profession to Stigand
467
Easter 1063 The King’s charter to the College at Waltham. 467

467–
Ælfwig, uncle of Harold, appointed Abbot of New Minster
468

§ 2. The Welsh War and its Consequences. 1062–1065.
Renewed ravages of Gruffydd; probable death of Ælfgar, who is 468–
1062
succeeded in his Earldom by his son Eadwine 469
Christmas 468–
Gemót at Gloucester; Harold’s sudden march to Rhuddlan
1062–1063 470
Harold’s great Welsh campaign; its permanent effect on men’s minds; 470–
testimony of John of Salisbury and of Giraldus Cambrensis 471
Harold and Tostig invade Wales; Harold adopts the Welsh tactics; all 472–
May 26, 1063
Wales reduced to submission 474
August 5 Gruffydd murdered by his own people 475
475–
The Welsh Kingdom granted to Bleddyn and Rhiwallon
476
476–
Alleged legislation about Wales
477
477–
1064? Harold marries Ealdgyth; the marriage probably a political one
478
August 1,
Harold builds a hunting-seat for Eadward at Portskewet
1065 479
August 24 Caradoc son of Gruffydd of South Wales kills the workmen 480

§ 3. The Revolt of Northumberland. 1065.
Oppressive government of Tostig in Northumberland 481
1064 Charges against him; murder of Gamel and Ulf 482
Murder of Gospatric in the King’s Court; attributed to Tostig and
Dec. 28
Eadgyth 482
Oct. 3, 1065 Revolt of Northumberland; rebel Gemót at York 483
Constitutional position of Northumberland; frequent absence of 483–
Tostig; his deputy Copsige 485
Acts of the rebel Gemót; vote of deposition and outlawry against
Tostig; Morkere elected Earl 485
Objects of Eadwine and Morkere; they aim at the division of the 486–
Kingdom; constant treasons of Eadwine 487
Oswulf Earl in Bernicia or Northumberland 487
The Northumbrians put to death Amund and Reavenswart 488
October 4 General massacre of Tostig’s followers and plunder of his treasury 489
Morkere and the Northumbrians march to Northampton; Eadwine 489–
joins them; presence of Welshmen in his army 490
Ravages of the Northumbrians in Northamptonshire and the 490–
neighbouring shires 491
Negotiations between the King and the rebels; Harold carries a 491
summons to lay down their arms and submit their grievances to

legal discussion
491–
Answer of the Northumbrians
492
492–
Eadward holds a Gemót at Bretford; debates in the Council
493
Tostig charges Harold with stirring up the revolt; Harold denies the 493–
charge on oath 494
494–
Eadward’s eagerness for war; he is kept back by Harold and others
495
Position of Harold; his public duty and private interest in the 495–
controversy; complete agreement of the two 498
Gemót of Oxford; acts of the York Gemót confirmed; Waltheof made
October 28 Earl of Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire; renewal of Cnut’s 498–
Law 500
500–
Nov. 1 Banishment of Tostig; he takes refuge in Flanders
501

§ 4. The Last Days of Eadward. 1065–1066.
501–
Eadward’s last sickness; his devotion to Saint Peter
503
His foundation at Westminster in honour of the Apostle; reverse order 503–
1051–1065
of proceeding at Westminster and at Waltham 504
504–
653–1051 Early history of Westminster
505
Permanence of Eadward’s minster and palace; existing remains of his 506–
buildings 508
Completion of the church; the first great example of Norman 508–
1065
architecture in England 510
510–
Legends
513
Sept. 1065 Consecration of Eadgyth’s church at Wilton 513
513–
Dec. 25–28 Midwinter Gemót at Westminster; consecration of the church
514
Jan. 5, 1066 Death of Eadward 515
Jan. 6 Burial of Eadward and coronation of Harold 515
515–
Summary
516

APPENDIX.
Note A. The Election and Coronation of Eadward 517
B. The Legendary History of Eadward 525
C. Eadward’s Fondness for Foreign Churchmen 535
D. English and Norman Estimates of Godwine and Harold 536

E. The Alleged Spoliations of the Church by Godwine and Harold 543
F. The Children of Godwine 552
G. The Great Earldoms during the Reign of Eadward 555
H. The Legend of Emma 568
I. The Welsh Campaign of 1049 571
K. Danegeld and Heregeld 574
L. The Banishment of Godwine 575
M. The Surnames of William 581
N. The Birth of William 583
O. The Battle of Val-ès-dunes 590
P. The Counts of Anjou and of Chartres 591
Q. The Imprisonment of William of Aquitaine 594
R. The Ravages attributed to Harold and Godwine 596
S. The Narratives of the Return of Godwine 598
T. The Pilgrimage of Swegen 603
U. The Ecclesiastical Position of Stigand 605
W. The Death of Earl Godwine 608
X. The War with Macbeth 613
Y. The Mission of Ealdred and the Return of the Ætheling Eadward 619
Z. The Supposed Enmity between Harold and Tostig 623
AA. Æthelstan, Bishop of Hereford 628
BB. The Family of Leofric 629
CC. Harold the Son of Ralph 632
DD. The Quasi-Royal Position of Earl Harold 634
EE. Harold’s Foreign Travels and Pilgrimage 635
FF. The Quarrel between Earl Harold and Bishop Gisa 637
GG. Ælfwig Abbot of New Minster 644
HH. The Revolt of Northumberland 646

ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.

p. 14, note 4, for “manude” read “monude.”
p. 46, note 1, for “men” read “man.”
p. 50, side-note, for “Earldom” read “Earldoms.”
p. 52, l. 7. There is another writ which, though neither Northumberland
nor any Northumbrian Earl is distinctly mentioned, is clearly meant to run
in Northumberland more than anywhere else. This is the writ in Cod. Dipl.
iv. 230, addressed, according to a form found elsewhere, to the Bishops,
Earls, and Thegns of all those shires in which Archbishop Ealdred had any
lands “Eadward cyngc grét míne biscopas and míne eorlas and ealle mýne
þegenas on ðam scýran ðær Ealdred ærcebisceop hæfeð land inne
freóndlíce”). Among these shires Gloucestershire is doubtless included, but
Yorkshire must have stood foremost.
p. 70, note 1. See p. 438.
p. 82, l. 5. There is an odd notice of Lyfing’s plurality of Bishopricks in a
deed in Cod. Dipl. vi. 195. It is a conveyance of lands to Sherborne made in
a Scirgemót of Devonshire held at Exeter under the presidency of Earl
Godwine. Lyfing is one of the witnesses, and he is described as “Lyfing
bisceop be norðan,” as if a Devonshire man’s notions of Worcester were not
very clear. Worcester was clearly the see which Lyfing loved best.
p. 89, note 3. I ought here to have added another entry in the same folio
of Domesday, which I knew perfectly well, but which did not catch my eye
when I wrote this note. In the second column of fol. 180 are the words
“Abbatissa tenet Fencote, et ipsa tenuit T. R. E.” This, and the entry about
“victus monialium,” are the whole account of the monastery. This entry
however may well agree with my view of the case. Fencote is but a small

dependency of Leominster, and it was probably a portion set aside for
Eadgifu’s personal maintenance. If so, she survived her error forty years.
p. 108, l. 14. Perhaps more accurately, in the Earldom of Ralph, under the
superior authority of Leofric. See p. 563.
p. 115, note 5. On seeming anachronisms of this kind see p. 634. Cf. p.
111, note 1.
p. 134, note 2. On the bare possibility that Tostig may have held some
subordinate government as early as this time, see p. 567.
p. 165, l. 3. To prevent misconception, it may be needful to explain to
some readers that there was a Napoleon Buonaparte, who was crowned at
Paris (see vol. i. p. 268) and who died at Saint Helena, and who slew more
men in unjust wars than probably any one man in Europe since Caius Julius
Cæsar.
p. 180, l. 11, for “so perilous an enterprise” read “the same perilous
enterprise.”
p. 209, l. 2, for “Princes” read “Prince.”
p. 248, l. 15, after “half dressed” read “himself.”
p. 249, note 3, for “of the Monasticon” read “in the Monasticon.”
p. 278, note 1, for “contigerât” read “contigerat.”
p. 284, note 2. I have to thank my friend Mr. Dimock for the explanation
that “accipiter” is the goshawk, while the sparrow-hawk is “nisus.” From
the point of view of the small birds the difference is perhaps not very
important.
p. 287, note 2, for “than that at Alençon” read “than he was at Alençon.”
p. 322, l. 24, after “from Kent” read “from Surrey.”
P· 337, l. 17. See p. 602.
p. 342, note 2, for “filli” read “filii.”
p. 347, note 3. Of Ralph the Staller I shall have to speak more at large in
my next volume. I suspect him to be the Ralph mentioned in the Chronicles
under the year 1075.
p. 349, note 2. On Leofric’s plurality of abbeys see also the Peterborough
Chronicle, 1066.

p. 359, note 1. “Bundinus,” that is Bondig, was an Englishman. I shall
have to speak of him again.
p. 368, l. 8, for “around” read “beneath.”
p. 373, l. 3, for “West-Frankish” read “East-Frankish.”
p. 418, l. 4 from bottom, for “whenever” read “wherever.”
p. 423, l. 8 from bottom, dele “indeed.”
p. 433, l. 15, for “fell vacant in the course of the year” read “were now
vacant.” It seems uncertain whether Heaca died in 1057 or in 1058 (see p.
414): if the former year is right, the see of Selsey must have remained
vacant a year. As this is not likely, the expression in the text is probably
true, but it is better to leave the matter uncertain.
Ib. note 1, for “disposition” read “disposal.”
p. 436, l. 10. The three Wulfstans—Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester,
Archbishop of York, and founder of Gloucester Abbey—Wulfstan, monk of
Worcester and Abbot of Gloucester—and Saint Wulfstan, Prior and Bishop
of Worcester,—must be carefully distinguished from each other. All were
alive at once, and the last two were strictly contemporary, and all had more
or less to do with Worcester and Gloucester.
p. 441, l. 8. I shall discuss in my third volume the possibility of this
Esegar being the “Ansgardus” of Guy of Amiens. The idea had not occurred
to me when I wrote this part of the text.
p. 448, l. 18, for “two” read “four” = 1056–1060.
p. 451, note 6. On this Azor and others of the name, see p. 642.
p. 461, note 5, for “436” read “438.”
p. 465, note 5, for “1262” read “1062.”
p. 467, note 3. This charge against Ealdred is confirmed by the entries in
Domesday, 164 b. “Eldred archiepiscopus tenuit Stanedis. De dominio
Sancti Petri de Glouuecestre fuit.” “Sanctus Petrus de Glouuecestre tenuit
Lecce, et Eldred archiepiscopus tenuit cum abbatiâ.” Both these are
lordships in Gloucestershire, which were still held by the see of York at the
time of the Survey. It is not so clear when we read of a third lordship in the
same list; “Eldredus archiepiscopus tenuit Otintune.... Thomas
archiepiscopus tenet. Sanctus Petrus de Glouuecestre habuit in dominio
donec Rex Willelmus in Angliam venit.” Does this mean that Ealdred, who

was, for some time at least, in William’s favour, continued his spoliations of
the monks of Gloucester after his accession?
p. 479, l. 12, for “seem well” read “well seem.” See p. 651.
p. 487, l. 9, and 497, l. 19. See p. 651.
p. 511, l. 16. The Bishop meant would doubtless be Stigand as Bishop of
the diocese; by the same showing the Abbot would most likely be Harold’s
uncle Ælfwig, the Abbot of the neighbouring house of New Minster.
p. 531, l. 24. Cf. Ovid, Metamorph. x. 467;
“Forsitan ætatis quoque nomine, Filia, dicat.”

p. 541, l. 10, for “this” read “his.”
p. 545, l. 7, for “againt” read “against.”
p. 553, l. 14. The list in the Knytlirga Saga, c. 11, is no less strange;
Harold, Tostig, “Maurakaare,” Waltheof, and Swend.
p. 598, l. 9 from bottom, for “late” read “later,” and in last line but one
dele “than.”
p. 607, l. 11 from bottom, for “præsente” read “præsentem.”
p. 611, l. 13 from bottom, for “minded” read “reminded.”

THE HISTORY

OF THE

NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND.

CHAPTER VII.

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

We have thus far gone through the course of those events which acted as the
more distant causes of the Norman Conquest; with the accession of
Eadward we stand on the threshold of the Conquest The struggle between
Normans and
itself. The actual subjugation of England by force Englishmen begins
of arms is still twenty-four years distant; but the with the accession of
struggle between Norman and Englishman for Eadward.
dominion in England has already begun. That such would be the result of
Eadward’s accession was certainly not looked for by those who raised him
to the throne. Never was any prince called to assume a crown by a more
distinct expression of the national will. “All folk chose Eadward to King.”
The choice expressed the full purpose of the Import of Eadward’s
election; resolve of
English nation to endure no King but one who was the English people to
their bone and their flesh. No attachment to the have none but an
memory of the great Cnut could survive the utter English King.
misgovernment of his sons. The thought of another Danish King was now
hateful. Yet the royal house of Denmark contained at least one prince who
was in every way worthy to reign. Could the Other possible
candidates; Swend
national feeling have endured another Danish ruler, Estrithson;
Swend Estrithson might have governed England as
prudently and as prosperously as he afterwards governed Denmark. But the
great qualities of Swend had as yet hardly shown themselves. He could
have been known at this time only as a young adventurer, who had signally
failed in the only great exploit which he had attempted.[2] And, above all

things, the feeling of the moment called for an Englishman, for an Ætheling
of the blood of Cerdic. One such Ætheling only Eadward the son of
Eadmund.
was at hand. One son of Eadmund Ironside was
now grown up to manhood, but he had been from his infancy an exile in a
distant land. Most likely no one thought of him as a possible candidate for
the Crown; it may well be that his very existence was generally forgotten.
In the eyes of Englishmen there was now only one Position of Eadward.
representative of the ancient royal house. Eadward, the son of Æthelred and
Emma, the brother of the murdered and half-canonized Ælfred, had long
been familiar to English imaginations, and, since the accession of his half-
brother Harthacnut, the English Court had been his usual dwelling-place.
Eadward, and Eadward alone, stood forth as the heir of English royalty, the
representative of English nationality. In his behalf the popular voice spoke
out at once and unmistakeably. “Before the King buried were, all folk chose
Eadward to King at London.”

§ 1. The Election and Coronation of Eadward. 1042–1043.

The general course of events at this time is Popular election of
Eadward. June, 1042.
perfectly plain, but there is a good deal of
difficulty as to some of the details.[3] The popular election of Eadward took
place in June, immediately on the death of Harthacnut, and even before his
burial; but it is very remarkable that the coronation His coronation
delayed till the next
of the new King did not take place till Easter in the year.
next year.[4] This delay is singular, and needs
explanation. The consecration of a King was then not a mere pageant, but a
rite of the utmost moment, partaking almost of a Importance of the
coronation-rite.
sacramental character. Without it the King was not
King at all, or King only in a very imperfect sense. We have seen how
impossible it was for the uncrowned Harthacnut to retain his hold upon
Wessex.[5] The election of the Witan gave to the person chosen the sole right
to the Crown, but he was put into actual possession of the royal office only
by the ecclesiastical consecration. Eadward then, for nearly ten months after
his first election, could not be looked on as “full King,”[6] but as at most
King-elect. What could be the cause of such a delay? The notion of a
general war with the Danes in England, which might otherwise account for
it, I have elsewhere shown to be without foundation.[7] The circumstances of
the time would seem to have been singularly unsuited for any delay. We
should have expected that the same burst of popular feeling which carried
Eadward’s immediate and unanimous election would also have demanded
the exclusion of any possible competitor by an immediate coronation. But
the fact was otherwise. The explanation of so Probable causes of the
delay; Eadward most
singular a state of things is most likely to be found likely absent from
in certain hints which imply that it was caused, England, and
partly by Eadward’s absence from England, partly unwilling to accept
the Crown.
by an unwillingness on his part to accept the
Crown. There is strong reason to believe that Eadward was not in England
at the moment of his half-brother’s death. Harthacnut had indeed recalled
him to England, and his court had become the English Ætheling’s ordinary
dwelling-place. But this fact in no way shuts out the possibility that
Eadward may have been absent on the Continent at any particular moment,

on a visit to some of his French or Norman friends, or on a pilgrimage to
some French or Norman sanctuary. Meanwhile the sudden death of
Harthacnut left the throne vacant. As in other cases before and after,[8] the
citizens of London, whose importance grows at every step, together with
such of the other Witan as were at hand, met at once and chose Eadward
King. As he was absent, and his consent was doubtful, an embassy had to be
sent to him, as embassies had been sent to his Embassy to Eadward.
father Æthelred[9] and to his brother Harthacnut,[10] inviting him to return
and receive the Crown. That embassy, we are told, consisted of Bishops and
Earls; we can hardly doubt that at the head of their several orders stood two
men whom all accounts set before us as the leaders in the promotion of
Eadward. These were Lyfing, Bishop of Worcester, Negotiations between
[11] Eadward and
and Godwine, Earl of the West-Saxons. A Godwine.
remarkable negotiation now took place between
the Earl and the King-elect. Details of private conversations are always
suspicious, but the dialogue attributed to the Earl and the Ætheling contains
nothing but what is thoroughly suited to the circumstances of the case. We
can fully understand that Eadward, either from timidity or from his
monastic turn, might shrink from the labour and responsibility of reigning
at all, and that, with his Norman tastes, he might look forward with very
little satisfaction to the prospect of reigning over Englishmen. Such scruples
were driven away by the arguments and eloquence Speech of Godwine.
of the great Earl. The actual speech put into his mouth may be the
composition of the historian, but it contains the arguments which cannot fail
to have been used in such a case. It was better to live gloriously as a King
than to die ingloriously in exile. Eadward was the son of Æthelred, the
grandson of Eadgar; the Crown was therefore his natural inheritance. His
personal position and character would form a favourable contrast to those of
the two worthless youths who had misgoverned England since the death of
Cnut.[12] His years and experience fitted him to rule; he was of an age to act
vigorously when severity was needed; he had known the ups and downs of
life; he had been purified by poverty and exile, and would therefore know
how to show mercy when mercy was called for.[13] If he had any doubts, he,
Godwine, was ready to maintain his cause; his power was great enough
both to procure the election of a candidate, and to secure his throne when
elected.[14] Eadward was persuaded; he consented Eadward accepts the
Crown.
to accept the Crown; he plighted his friendship to

the Earl, and it may be that he promised to confer honours on his sons and
to take his daughter in marriage. But stories of private stipulations of this
kind are always doubtful. It is enough that Godwine had, as all accounts
agree, the chief hand in raising Eadward to the throne.
Eadward now seems to have returned to He returns to
England.
England, probably in company with Godwine and
the other am *bassadors. The Witan presently met Witenagemót of
Gillingham. 1042–3.
at Gillingham in Wiltshire; and it would seem that
the acceptance of Eadward’s claims was now somewhat less unanimous
than it had been during the first burst of enthusiasm which followed the
death of Harthacnut. Godwine brought forward Eadward as a candidate, he
urged his claims with all his powers of speech, and himself set the example
of becoming his man on the spot. Still an Opposition to
Eadward’s election;
opposition arose in the Assembly, which it needed
all the eloquence of Godwine and Lyfing to overcome. They had even, as it
would seem, to stoop to a judicious employment of the less noble arts of
statesmanship. The majority indeed were won over by the authority of the
man whom all England looked on as a father.[15] But the votes of some had
to be gained by presents, or, in plain words, by bribes.[16] Others, it would
seem, stood out against Eadward’s election to the apparently in the
interest of Swend.
last. This opposition, we cannot doubt, came from
a Danish party which supported the claims of Swend Estrithson. That
prince, on return from his first unsuccessful war with Magnus, had found
his cousin Harthacnut dead, and Eadward already King as far as his first
election could make him so.[17] But the delay of the coronation, the
uncertainty of Eadward’s acceptance of the Crown, might well make the
hopes of Swend and his partisans revive. We can Alleged negotiations
between Eadward and
hardly believe the tale, though it rests apparently Swend.
on the assertion of Swend himself, that he
demanded the Crown, and that Eadward made peace with him, making the
usual compromise that Swend should succeed him on his death, even
though he should leave sons.[18] Such an agreement would of course be of
no force without the consent of the Witan. That consent may have been
given in the Assembly at Gillingham; but such an arrangement seems hardly
credible. The English nation no doubt fully intended that the Crown should
remain in the House of Cerdic, and Godwine probably already hoped that in
the next generation the blood of Cerdic would be united with the blood of

Wulfnoth. But it is certain that Swend was in some way or other reconciled
to Eadward and Godwine, for we shall presently find Swend acting as the
friend of England, and Godwine acting as the special champion of the
interests of Swend.[19] The son of Ulf was, it will be remembered, the
nephew of Gytha, and this family connexion no doubt pleaded for him as
far as was consistent with Godwine’s higher and nearer objects. One of
Swend’s brothers, Beorn, remained in England, where he was soon raised to
a great Earldom, and seems to have been counted in all respects as a
member of the house of Godwine. But the friends of Swend in general were
set down for future punishment.[20] In the end confiscation or banishment
fell on the most eminent of them. Among them was Osbeorn, another
brother of the Danish King, whom we shall hear of in later times as
betraying the claims of his brother, and therewith the hopes of England, into
the hand of the Norman Conqueror.
Eadward was thus raised to the throne mainly Eadward the only
possible choice.
through the exertions of the two patriotic leaders,
Godwine and Lyfing. It is vain to argue whether Godwine did wisely in
pressing his election. There was in truth no other choice. The only other
possible candidates were Swend, and Magnus of Norway, of whose claims
we shall hear again presently. But English feeling called for an English
King, and there was no English King but Eadward to be had. That Godwine
could have procured his own election to the Crown, that the thought of such
an election could have occurred to himself or to any one else, is an utterly
wild surmise.[21] If Godwine met with some opposition when pressing the
claims of Eadward, that opposition would have increased tenfold had he
ventured to dream of the Crown for himself. The nomination of the West-
Saxon Earl would have been withstood to the death, not only by a handful
of Danes, but by Leofric and Siward, probably, in Siward’s case at least, at
the head of the whole force of their Earldoms. The time was not yet come
for the election of a King not of the royal house. There was no manifest
objection to the election of Eadward, and, though Godwine was
undoubtedly the most powerful man in England, he had not reached that
marked and undisputed preeminence which was enjoyed by his son twenty-
four years later. No English candidate but Eadward was possible. And men
had not yet learned, Godwine himself probably had not fully learned, how
little worthy Eadward was to be called an English candidate.[22] And when
in after years they learned the unhappy truth, still there does not seem to

have been at any time the least thought of displacing Eadward in favour of
either of his Scandinavian competitors, or even of calling in Swend to
succeed him. In raising Eadward to the throne, Godwine acted simply as the
mouthpiece of the English people. The opposition, as far as we can see,
came wholly from the Danes of what we may call the second importation,
those who had come into England with Cnut and Harthacnut. There is
nothing to show that the old-settled Danish population of Northumberland
acted apart from the rest of the country.
Eadward then was King. He reigned, as every Claims of Eadward to
the Crown; different
English King before him had reigned, by that statements of his right
union of popular election and royal descent which according to the
formed the essence of all ancient Teutonic political views of the
[23] writers.
kingship. But it would seem that, even in those
days, the two elements in his title, the two principles to whose union he and
all other Kings owed their kingly rank, spoke with different degrees of force
to different minds. Already, in the eleventh century, we may say that there
were Whigs and Tories in England. At any rate there were men in whose
eyes the choice of the people was the primary and legitimate source of
kingship. There were also men who were inclined to rest the King’s claim to
his Crown mainly on his descent from those who had been Kings before
him. The difference is plainly shown in the different versions of the
Chronicles. One contemporary winter, a devoted partisan of Godwine,
grounds the King’s right solely on the popular choice—“All folk chose
Eadward to King.” That the entry was made at the time is plain from the
prayer which follows, “May he hold it while God grants it to him.”[24]
Another version, the only one in any degree hostile to the great Earl, seems
purposely to avoid the use of any word recognizing a distinct right of choice
in the people. “All folk received Eadward to King, as was his right by
birth.”[25] A third writer, distinctly, though less strongly, Godwinist, seems
pointedly to combine both statements; “All folk chose Eadward, and
received him to King, as was his right by birth.”[26] There can be no doubt
that this last is the truest setting forth both of the law and of the facts of the
case. The people chose Eadward, and without the choice of the people he
would have had no right to reign. But they chose Union of elective and
hereditary right.
him because he was the one available descendant
of the old kingly stock, because he was the one man at hand who enjoyed
that preference by right of birth, which required that, in all ordinary cases,

the choice of the electors should be confined to the descendants of former
Kings. It might therefore be said with perfect truth that Eadward was
chosen because the Kingdom was his by right of Eadward not next in
succession according
birth. But it must not be forgotten, what is to modern notions.
absolutely necessary for the true understanding of
the case, that this right by birth does not imply that Eadward would have
been, according to modern ideas, the next in succession to the Crown.
Eadward’s right by birth would have been no right by birth at all in the eyes
of a modern lawyer. The younger son of Æthelred could, according to our
present ideas, have no right to succeed while any representative of his elder
brother survived. The heir, in our sense of the word, was not the Eadward
who was close at hand in England or Normandy, but the Eadward who was
far away in exile in Hungary or Russia. Modern writers constantly speak of
this last Eadward and of his son Eadgar as the lawful heirs of the Confessor.
On the contrary, according to modern notions, the Confessor was their
lawful heir, and, according to modern notions, the Confessor must be
pronounced to have usurped a throne which of The right of the elder
branch not thought
right belonged to his nephew. In his own time such of.
subtleties were unknown. Any son of Æthelred,
any descendant of the old stock, satisfied the sentiment of royal birth, which
was all that was needed.[27] To search over the world for the son of an elder
brother, while the younger brother was close at hand, was an idea which
would never have entered the mind of any Englishman of the eleventh
century.

The coronation ceremony probably followed Eadward crowned at
Winchester, April 3,
soon after the meeting at Gillingham. It was 1043.
performed on Easter Day at Winchester,[28] the
usual place for an Easter Gemót, by Archbishop Eadsige, assisted by Ælfric
of York and most of the other Prelates of England.[29] We are expressly told
that the Metropolitan gave much good exhortation Exhortation of
[30] Eadsige; condition of
both to the newly made King and to his people. the Kingdom.
The peculiar circumstances of the time might well
suggest such a special admonition. There was a King, well nigh the last of
his race, a King chosen by the distinct expression of the will of the people,
as the representative of English nationality in opposition to foreign rule. But

the King so chosen as the embodiment of English feeling was himself an
Englishman in little more than in the accident of being born on English
ground[31] as the son of a father who was a disgrace to the English name.
There was a Kingdom to be guarded against foreign claimants, and there
were the wounds inflicted by two unfortunate, though happily short, reigns
to be healed at home. The duties which were laid upon the shoulders of the
new King were neither few nor easy. He had Relations between
Eadward and
indeed at hand the mightiest and wisest of Godwine.
guardians to help him in his task. But we can well
understand that the feelings of Eadward towards the man to whom he owed
his Crown were feelings of awe rather than of love. There could be little
real sympathy between the stout Englishman and the nursling of the
Norman court, between the chieftain great alike in battle and in council and
the timid devotee who shrank from the toils and responsibilities of an
earthly Kingdom. And we can well believe that, notwithstanding Godwine’s
solemn acquittal, there still lingered in the mind of Eadward some prejudice
against the man who had once been charged with his brother’s death. And
again, though it was to Godwine and his West- Relations of the three
great Earls.
Saxons that Eadward mainly owed his Crown, yet
Godwine and his West-Saxons did not make up the whole of England. Their
counsels and interests had to be reconciled with the possibly opposing
counsels and interests of the other Earldoms and of their rulers. Eadward
could not afford to despise the strong arm of the mighty Dane who ruled his
countrymen north of the Humber. He could not afford to despise the
possible prejudices of the great Earl of central England, who, descendant of
ancient Ealdormen, perhaps of ancient Kings, may well have looked with
some degree of ill-will on the upstarts North and South of him. Eadward,
called to the throne by the unanimous voice of the whole nation, was bound
to be King of the English and not merely King of the West-Saxons. He was
bound yet more strongly to be King of the English in a still higher sense, to
cast off the trammels of his Norman education, and to reign as became the
heir of Ælfred and Æthelstan. We have now to see how far the good
exhortations of Eadsige were effectual; how far the King chosen to the
Crown which was his right by birth discharged the duties which were laid
upon him alike by his birth and by his election.
It was perhaps ominous of the character of Foreign Ambassadors
at Eadward’s
Eadward’s future reign that his coronation was

attended by an apparently unusual assemblage of coronation.
the Ambassadors of foreign princes.[32] It was natural that Eadward should
be better known, and that his election should awaken a greater interest, in
other lands than could usually be the case with an English King. He was
connected by birth or marriage with several continental sovereigns, and his
long residence in Normandy must have brought him more nearly within the
circle of ordinary continental princeship than could Eadward’s foreign
connexions.
commonly be the case with the Lord of the island
Empire, the Cæsar as it were of another world. The revolutions of England
also, and the great career of Cnut, had evidently fixed the attention of
Europe on English affairs to an unusual degree. Add to this that, when a
King was chosen and crowned immediately on the death of his predecessor,
the presence of congratulatory embassies from other princes was hardly
possible. But the delay in Eadward’s consecration allowed that great Easter-
feast at Winchester to be adorned with the presence of the representatives of
all the chief sovereigns of Western Christendom. Some there were whom
England was, then as ever, bound to welcome as friends and brethren, and
some whose presence, however friendly was the guise of the moment,
might to an eye which could scan the future have Ambassadors from
King Henry.
seemed a foreboding of the evil to come. First
came the ambassadors of the prince who at once held the highest place on
earth and adorned it with the noblest display of every kingly virtue. King
Henry of Germany, soon to appear before the world as the illustrious
Emperor,[33] the great reformer of a corrupted Church, sent an embassy to
congratulate his brother-in-law[34] on the happy change in his fortunes, to
exchange promises of peace and friendship, and to present gifts such as
Imperial splendour and liberality might deem worthy of the one prince
whom a future Emperor could look on as his peer. from the King of the
[35] French;
The King of the French too, a prince bearing the
same name as the mighty Frank,[36] but far indeed from being a partaker in
his glory, sent his representatives to congratulate one whom he too claimed
as a kinsman,[37] and to exchange pledges of mutual good-will between the
two realms. And, along with the representatives of from other German
and French princes;
Imperial and royal majesty, came the humbler
envoys of the chief Dukes and princes of their two kingdoms, charged with
the like professions of friendship—our flattering historian would fain have
us believe, of homage.[38] Among these we can hardly doubt that a mission

from the Court of Rouen held a distinguished place. It may be that, even
then, the keen eye of the youthful Norman was beginning to look with more
than a neighbour’s interest upon the land to which he had in some sort given
her newly-chosen King. We are even told that an from Magnus of
Denmark.
embassy of a still humbler kind was received from
a potentate who soon after appeared on the stage in a widely different
character. Magnus of Norway had received the submission of Denmark on
the death of Harthacnut, by virtue of the treaty by which each of those
princes was to succeed to the other’s dominions.[39] He now, we are told,
sent an embassy to Eadward, chose him as his father,[40] promised to him the
obedience of a son, and strengthened the promise with oaths and hostages.
Now in the language used with regard both to Magnus and to the German
and French princes, there is doubtless much of the exaggeration of a
panegyrist, anxious to raise his hero’s reputation to the highest point. But it
is possible that Magnus might just now take some pains to conciliate
Eadward, in order to hinder English help from being continued to his
competitor Swend. In the reception of the Imperial and the Danish envoys
there is nothing which has any special meaning; but it is specially
characteristic of this reign that the congratulations of the French princes
were acknowledged by gifts from the King Eadward’s gifts to the
French princes.
personally, and that some of them were continued
in the form of annual pensions.[41] These were undoubtedly, even if the
Norman Duke himself was among the pensioners, the gifts of a superior to
inferiors; the point is that the connexion between England and the different
French states, Normandy above them all, was constantly increasing in
amount, and receiving new shapes at every turn.
Besides the gifts of foreign princes, the new Gifts of the English
nobles.
King also received many splendid presents from
his own nobles. First among them all shone forth the magnificent offering
of the Earl of the West-Saxons.[42] Godwine had Godwine presents a
ship to the King.
given a ship to Harthacnut as the price of his
acquittal on his memorable trial;[43] he now made the like offering to
Eadward as a token of the friendship which was to reign between the
newly-chosen King and his greatest subject. Two hundred rowers impelled
the floating castle. A golden lion adorned the stern; at the prow the national
ensign, the West-Saxon Dragon, shone also in gold, spreading his wings,
the poet tells us, over the awe-struck waves.[44] A rich piece of tapestry,

wrought on a purple ground with the naval exploits of former English
Kings,[45] the sea-fights, no doubt, of Ælfred, the peaceful triumphs of
Eadgar, perhaps that noblest fight of all when the [992.]
fleets of Denmark gave way before the sea-faring men of the merchant-city,
[46]
formed an appropriate adornment of the offering of the English Earl to
the first—men did not then deem that he was to be the last—prince of the
newly-restored English dynasty.

§ 2. Condition of England during the early years of Eadward.

Before we go on to the events of the reign of Character of
Eadward.
Eadward, it will be well to endeavour to gain a
distinct idea of the King himself and of the men who were to be the chief
actors in English affairs during his reign. In estimating the character of
Eadward, we must never forget that we are dealing His position as a
Saint.
with a canonized saint. In such cases it is more
needful than ever to look closely to a man’s recorded acts, and to his
character as described by those who wrote before his formal canonization.
Otherwise we shall be in danger of mistaking hagiology for history. When a
man is once canonized, his acts and character immediately pass out of the
reach of ordinary criticism. Religious edification, and not historical truth,
becomes the aim of all who speak or write of one who has been formally
enrolled as an object of religious reverence.[47] We must also be on our
guard even in dealing with authors who wrote before his formal
canonization, but after that popular canonization which was so often the
first step towards it. It was of course the general reverence in which a man
was held, the general belief in his holiness and miraculous powers, which
formed the grounds of the demand for his formal canonization. But, while
we must be specially on our guard in weighing the character of particular
acts and the value of particular panegyrics, we must remember that the
popular esteem which thus led to canonization proves a great deal as to a
man’s general character. It proves still more when, Nature of his claims
to sanctity.
as in the case of Eadward, there was no one special
act, no one marked deed of Christian heroism or Christian endurance, which
formed the holy man’s claim to popular reverence. Eadward was not like
one of those who died for their faith or for their country, and who, on the
strength of such death, were at once revered as martyrs, without much
inquiry into their actions and characters in other respects. He was not even
like one of those, his sainted uncle and namesake for instance,[48] who
gained the honours of martyrdom on still easier terms, by simply dying an
unjust death, even though no religious or political principle was at stake.
The popular reverence in which Eadward was held could rest on no ground
except the genuine popular estimate of his general character. There were

indeed strong political reasons which attached men to his memory. He was
the one prominent man of the days immediately Eadward’s memory
acceptable both to
before the Conquest whom Normans and Englishmen and to
Englishmen could agree to reverence. The English Normans on political
naturally cherished the memory of the last prince grounds.
of the ancient stock. They dwelt on his real or supposed virtues as a bright
contrast to the crimes and vices of his Norman successors. Under the yoke
of foreign masters they looked back to the peace and happiness of the days
of their native King. The King who reigned on the English throne without a
spark of English feeling became the popular embodiment of English
nationality, and men called for the Laws of King Eadward as in earlier
times they had called for the Laws of Cnut or of Eadgar.[49] On the other
hand, it suited the policy of the Normans to show all respect to the kinsman
of their own Duke, the King by whose pretended bequest their Duke
claimed the English Crown, and whose lawful successor he professed
himself to be. In English eyes Eadward stood out in contrast to the invader
William; in Norman eyes he stood out in contrast to the usurper Harold. A
King whom two hostile races thus agreed in respecting could not fail to
obtain both popular and formal canonization on somewhat easy terms. Still
he could hardly have obtained either the one or the Popular reverence for
him grounded also on
other only on grounds like these. He must have personal qualities.
displayed some personal qualities which really
won him popular affection during life and maintained him in popular
reverence after death. It is worth while to study a little more at length the
character of a man who obtained in his own age a degree of respect which
in our eyes seems justified neither by several of his particular actions nor by
the general tenour of his government.
That Eadward was in any sense a great man, that he displayed any of the
higher qualities of a ruler of those days, no one probably will assert. He was
doubtless in some respects a better man than Cnut, than Harold, or than
William; as a King of the eleventh century no one will venture to compare
him with those three mighty ones. His wars were waged by deputy, and his
civil government was carried on largely by deputy Eadward’s personal
character.
also. Of his many personal virtues, his earnest
piety, his good intentions in every way, his sincere desire for the welfare of
his people, there can be no doubt. Vice of every kind, injustice, wanton
cruelty, were hateful to him. But in all kingly qualities he was utterly

lacking. In fact, so far as a really good man can reproduce the character of a
thoroughly bad one, Eadward reproduced the character of his father
Æthelred. Writers who lived before his canonization, or who did not come
within the magic halo of his sanctity, do not scruple to charge him, as his
father is charged, with utter sloth and incapacity.[50] Points of likeness to
his father.
Like his father, he was quite incapable of any
steady attention to the duties of royalty;[51] but, like his father, he had
occasional fits of energy, which, like those of his father, often came at the
wrong time.[52] His contemporary panegyrist allows that he gave way to
occasional fits of wrath, but he pleads that his anger never hurried him into
unbecoming language.[53] It hurried him however, more than once, into very
unbecoming intentions. We shall find that, on two memorable occasions, it
needed the intervention of his better genius, in the form first of Godwine
and then of Harold, to keep back the saintly King from massacre and civil
war.[54] Here we see the exact parallels to Æthelred’s mad expeditions
against Normandy, Cumberland, and Saint David’s.[55] But Eadward was not
only free from the personal vices and cruelties of his father; there can be no
doubt that, except when carried away by ebullitions of this kind, he
sincerely endeavoured, according to the measure of his ability, to establish a
good administration of justice throughout his dominions. But the duties of
secular government, although doubtless discharged conscientiously and to
the best of his ability, were with Eadward always something which went
against the grain. His natural place was, not on the His virtues wholly
monastic.
throne of England, but at the head of a Norman
Abbey. Nothing, one would think, could have hindered him from entering
on the religious life in the days of his exile, unless it were a vague kind of
feeling that other duties were thrown upon him by his birth. For all his
virtues were those of a monk; all the real man came out in his zeal for
collecting relics, in his visions, in his religious exercises, in his gifts to
churches and monasteries, in his desire to mark his reign, as its chief result,
by the foundation of his great Abbey of Saint Peter at Westminster. In a
prince of the manly piety of Ælfred things of this sort form only a part, a
pleasing and harmonious part, of the general character. In Eadward they
formed the whole man. His time was oddly divided between his prayers and
the pastime which seems least suited to the character of a saint. The
devotion to the pleasures of the chase was so His love of hunting.
universal among the princes and nobles of that age that it is needless to

speak of it as a feature in any man’s character, unless when some special
circumstance forces it into special notice. We remark it in the two Williams,
because it was their love of hunting which led them into their worst acts of
oppression; we remark it in Eadward, because it seems so utterly
incongruous with the other features of his character.[56] There were men
even in those times who could feel pity for animal suffering and who found
no pleasure in the wanton infliction of pain. Contrast with the
humanity of Anselm.
Tenderness for animals is no unusual feature in
either the real or the legendary portraits of holy men. Anselm, the true saint,
like Ceadda in earlier times, saved the life of the hunted beast which sought
his protection, and made the incident the text of a religious exhortation to
his companions. He saw a worthy object for prayer in the sufferings of a
bird tortured by a thoughtless child, and his gentle heart found matter for
pious rejoicing in the escape of the feathered captive.[57] Humanity like this
met with very little response in the breast of the saintly monarch. The
piercing cry, the look of mute agony, of the frightened, wearied, tortured
beast awakened no more pity in the heart of the saintly King than in that of
the rudest Danish Thegn who shared his savage pastime. The sufferings of
the hart panting for the water-brooks, the pangs of the timid hare falling
helpless into the jaws of her pursuers, the struggles of the helpless bird
grasped in the talons of the resistless hawk, afforded as keen a delight to the
prince who had never seen steel flash in earnest, as ever they did to men
whom a life of constant warfare in a rude age had taught to look lightly on
the sufferings and death even of their own kind.[58] Once, we are told, a
churl, resisting, it well may be, some trespass of the King and his foreign
courtiers on an Englishman’s freehold, put some hindrance in the way of the
royal sport. An unsaintly oath and an unkingly threat at once rose to the lips
of Eadward; “By God and his Mother, I will hurt you some day if I can.”[59]
Had Anselm, in the might of his true holiness, thus crossed the path of his
brother saint, he too, as the defender of the oppressed, might have become
the object of a like outburst of impotent wrath. A delight in amusements of
this kind is hardly a fair subject of blame in men of any age to whom the
rights of the lower animals have perhaps never been presented as matter for
serious thought. But in a man laying claim to special holiness, to special
meekness and gentleness of character, we naturally look for a higher
standard, a standard which a contemporary example shows not to have been
unattainable even in that age.

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

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

own countrymen in the South of Europe, no doubt helped to suggest to the
Norman Duke that it was not impossible to win England for himself with
his sword. But it must have been the feeling, on the part both of himself and
of his subjects, that England was a land already half won over to Norman
rule, which made the succession to the English Crown the cherished aim of
the life of the mighty ruler who was now growing up to manhood and to
greatness on the other side of the sea.

The elevation of Eadward to the throne of course Relations between
Eadward and
involved the establishment in still greater honour Godwine.
and authority of the man to whom his elevation
was mainly owing, the great Earl of the West-Saxons. I have already thrown
out some hints as to what the real relations between Eadward and Godwine
probably were.[70] There is not a shadow of Norman calumnies
against Godwine and
evidence for the calumnies of the Norman writers his sons.
which represent Godwine and his sons as holding
the King in a sort of bondage, as abusing his simplicity and confidence,
sometimes as behaving to him with great personal insolence, sometimes,
they even venture to add, practising all kinds of injustice and oppression
throughout the Kingdom. The English writers tell a widely different tale.
The contrast between the two accounts is well set forth by a writer whose
sympathies lie wholly on the Norman side, but who makes at least an effort
to deal fairly between the two. In the English version Godwine and his sons
appear as high-minded and faithful counsellors of the King, who stood
forward as the leaders of the national feeling against his foreign favourites,
but who were never guilty of any undutiful word or deed towards the prince
whom they had themselves raised to power.[71] Eadward probably both
feared and suspected Godwine. But there is nothing to show that, up to the
final outbreak between Godwine and the foreigners, the great Earl had ever
deviated from even formal loyalty to his sovereign. There is distinct
evidence that more than one of his sons had gained Eadward’s warmest
personal affection. From all that we can see, Character of
Godwine.
Godwine was not a man likely to win the same sort
of personal affection from Eadward, perhaps not even from the nation at
large, which was afterwards won by Harold. That Godwine was the
representative of all English feeling, that he was the leader of every national

movement, that he was the object of the deepest admiration on the part of
the men at least of his own Earldom, is proved by the clearest of evidence.
But it is equally clear that Godwine was essentially a wary statesman, and
in no sense a chivalrous hero. We have seen that, mighty as was the power
of his eloquence, he did not trust to his eloquence only.[72] He knew how to
practise the baser as well as the nobler arts of statesmanship. He knew how
to win over political adversaries by bribes, threats, and promises, and how
to find means of chastisement for those who remained to the last
immoveable by the voice of the charmer. When we think of the vast extent
of his possessions,[73] most or all of which must have been acquired by royal
grant, it is almost impossible to acquit him of a His relation to
ecclesiastical bodies.
grasping disposition. It is also laid to his charge
that, in the acquisition of wealth, he did not always regard the rights of
ecclesiastical bodies.[74] This last charge, it must be remembered, is one
which he shares with almost every powerful man of his time, even with
those who, if they took with one hand, gave lavishly with the other. And
accusations of this sort must always be taken with certain deductions.
Monastic and other ecclesiastical writers were apt to make little or no
distinction between acts of real sacrilege, committed by fraud or violence,
and the most legal transactions by which the Church happened to be a loser.
Still it should be noticed that Godwine stands Godwine’s lack of
bounty to the Church.
perhaps alone among the great men of his own age
in having no ecclesiastical foundation connected with his name. As far as I
am aware, he is nowhere enrolled among the founders or benefactors of any
church, religious or secular.[75] Such a peculiarity is most remarkable. How
far it may have arisen from enlightenment beyond his age, how far it was
the result of mere illiberality or want of religious feeling, it is utterly
impossible to say. But it is clear that Godwine is, in this respect,
distinguished in a marked way from his son, whose liberality, guided as it
was by a wise discretion, was conspicuous among his other great qualities.
Again, it is hardly impossible to acquit Godwine of being, like most fathers
who have the opportunity, too anxious for the Godwine’s over care
for his own
advancement of his own family. He promoted his household.
sons, both worthy and unworthy, to the greatest
offices in the Kingdom, at an age when they could have had but little
personal claim to such high distinctions. In so doing, he seems to have
overstepped the bounds of policy as well as those of fairness and good

feeling. Such an accumulation of power in one family could not but raise
envy, and higher feelings than envy, in the breasts of rivals, some of whom
may have had as good or better claims to promotion. That Godwine
sacrificed his daughter to a political object is a charge common to him with
princes and statesmen in all ages. Few men in any time or place would have
thrown away the opportunity of having a King for a son-in-law, and, as
Godwine doubtless hoped, of becoming, at least in the female line, the
ancestor of a line of princes.
The faults of the great Earl then are manifest. Godwine’s
government of his
But his virtues are equally manifest. In the eyes of Earldom.
contemporary Englishmen such faults as I have
mentioned must have seemed little more than a few specks on a burnished
mirror. His good government of his Earldom is witnessed, not only by the
rhetoric of his panegyrist, which however may at least be set against the
rhetoric of his accusers, but by the plain facts of the welcome which greeted
him on his return from banishment, and the zeal in His strict
[76] administration of
his behalf displayed by all classes. As a ruler, justice.
Godwine is especially praised for what in those
days was looked on as the first virtue of a ruler, merciless severity towards
all disturbers of the public peace. In our settled times we hardly understand
how rigour, often barbarous rigour, against thieves and murderers, should
have been looked on as the first merit of a governor, one which was always
enough to cover a multitude of sins. Public feeling went along with the
prince or magistrate who thus preserved the peace of his dominions,
however great might be his own offences in other ways, and however cruel
in our eyes might be the means by which he compassed this first end of
government. To have discharged this great duty stands foremost in the
panegyrics of Godwine and of Harold.[77] It was accepted at the hands of the
Norman Conqueror as almost an equivalent for the horrors of the Conquest.
[78]
It won for his son Henry a splendid burst of admiration at the hands of a
native writer who certainly was not blind to the oppression of which that
prince himself was guilty.[79] A certain amount of tyranny was willingly
endured at the hands of a man who so effectually rid the world of smaller
tyrants. And, in opposition to the praise thus bestowed on Godwine, Harold,
William, and Henry, we find the neglect of this paramount duty standing
foremost in the dark indictments against the ruffian Rufus[80] and the
heedless Robert.[81] Godwine is set forth to us, in set phrases, it may be, but

in phrases which do not the less express the conviction of the country, as a
ruler mild and affable to the good, but stern and merciless to the evil and
unruly.[82] But with all his vigour, all his eloquence, Godwine never
reached the same
it is clear that Godwine never reached to the same power as Harold
complete dominion over King and Kingdom afterwards.
which, in later years, fell to the lot of his nobler
son. He always remained an object of jealousy, not only to the French
favourites of Eadward, but to the Earls of the other parts of England. We
shall find that his eloquent tongue could not always command a majority in
the Meeting of the Wise.[83] But the importance Importance of
eloquence.
attributed to his oratory, the fluctuations of success
and defeat which he underwent in the great deliberative Assembly, show
clearly how advanced our constitution already was in an age when free
debate was so well understood, and when free speech was so powerful.[84] In
this respect the Norman Conquest undoubtedly threw things back. We shall
have to pass over several centuries before we come to another chief whose
influence clearly rested to so great a degree on his power of swaying great
assemblies of men, on the personal affection or personal awe with which he
had learned to inspire the Legislature of his country.

The marriage of Godwine with his Danish wife Godwine’s family.
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 with which we are Swegen Earl, 1043.
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 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]
But, along with the comparatively obscure First appearance of
HAROLD the son of
names of Swegen and Beorn, a greater actor now Godwine. [Earl of the
steps upon the field. We have now reached the first East-Angles, 1045?]
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. It is not hard to paint
his portraiture, alike from his recorded actions, and His character.
from the elaborate descriptions of him which we Contemporary
testimonies.
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 government of Evidence of the
[91] Biographer.
his realm. 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. In hunger and
watchfulness, in the wearing labours of a campaign His military genius.
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.
But the son of Godwine, the heir of his Harold’s civil virtues.
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 of violence had
laid its hand even on him. But, from the time when His singular
forbearance.
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 and
the rewarder of those who did well. Devoted, heart His championship of
England against
and soul, to the service of his country, he was no strangers.
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 jealousy of His foreign travels.
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. But, while the bounty Harold’s patronage of
Germans as opposed
of Eadward was squandered on Normans and to Frenchmen.
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.
Such was Harold as a leader of Englishmen in His personal
character.
war and in peace. As for his personal character, we
can discern that in the received piety of the age he surpassed his father. The
charge of invasion of the rights of ecclesiastical His alleged spoliation
of monasteries.
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 more certain that His friendship with
Saint Wulfstan.
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 service His foundation of the
[102] College at Waltham.
in the day of need. Of his liberality his great [1060–2.]
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 in all things. As to his personal demeanour, His personal
demeanour frank and
he was frank and open in his general bearing, to a open.
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 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 the Conqueror. His connexion with
Eadgyth
The most pathetic incident connected with his Swanneshals.
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]
Such was the man who, seemingly in the fourth Harold Earl of the
East-Angles, 1045;
year of Eadward, in the twenty-third or twenty- Earl of the West-
fourth of his own age, was invested with the rule of Saxons, 1053; King,
one of the great divisions of England; who, seven 1066.
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 stainless loyalty. The
memory of England and of Harold becomes thus Comparison of Harold
with Constantine
strangely interwoven with the memory of the one Palaiologos.
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.

The second son of Godwine was no doubt raised Character of Swegen.
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 name of Swegen. Only one other child Of the Lady Eadgyth.
1045.
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 seems to have become
in some degree infected with her husband’s love of Suspicions of her
loyalty to England.
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 rather Norman than English.[112] Her alleged share in
the murder of
And all her reputation for gentleness and piety has Gospatric.
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 becomes in some Her relation to her
husband.
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 as
a brother with a sister.[114] If this story be true, a Eadward’s alleged
chastity.
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 direct
heirs to his Crown. But it seems probable that this Evidence of the
earliest writers.
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.

We thus find, within a few years after the Greatness of Godwine
and his house.
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 part of Mercia The other Earldoms;
which was not otherwise occupied remained, as Mercia under
Leofric;
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
England. It is clear that Leofric must have been Relations between
Leofric and
more personally annoyed by the rise of Godwine 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.
North of the Humber, the great Dane, Siward the Northumberland
under Siward.
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]

The mention of these great Earls suggests England not tending
to separation but to
several considerations as to the constitutional and union.
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 signs of that Comparison with
Frankish history.
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. The
Earls of Eadward’s reign were, as I have already Nature of the Earldom
[125] as affected by the
explained, not territorial princes, gradually Danish Conquest.
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
kinsmen of Godwine or Leofric. Siward alone Position of
Northumberland.
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 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.
The class of writs of which I have just spoken Further evidence of
the writs as to a
throw some light on constitutional questions in change in the
another way. They come in under Cnut,[130] and condition of the
they become very common under Eadward, being Folkland.
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 Norman. But, if the General powers of the
Witan not lessened.
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.

I have now to end this sketch by a brief view of Scotland under
Macbeth.
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 superior Reign and death of
Duncan. 1040.
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 Crown was assumed by Macbeth, on Reign of Macbeth.
1040–1058.
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 land.[138] Macbeth
and Gruach were also bountiful to churches in their Macbeth distributes
money at Rome.
own land, and Macbeth’s munificence to certain 1050.
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.
In Wales a remarkable power was growing up, Gruffydd of North
Wales. 1039–1063.
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 633.
very first year of his reign, he made an inroad into Mercia, which has been
already spoken of.[142] He penetrated as far as His victory at Rhyd-
y-Groes. 1039.
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. 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 Eadward’s election, he had just won a 1042.
great victory over a combined host of this kind at Aberteifi or Cardigan.[145]
The relations of King Eadward to foreign Eadward’s friendly
relations with foreign
powers were, for the most part, friendly. With powers.
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 the spot, form a memorable

example.[146] The connexion between England and Connexion with
Germany.
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 lay in the
North. Magnus of Norway conceived himself to Relations with the
North; claims of
have acquired, by virtue of his agreement with Magnus.
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.
The reign of Eadward was, on the whole, a reign The reign of Eadward
comparatively
of peace. His admirers use somewhat exaggerated peaceful.
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.
This first period of the reign of Eadward is not Character of the years
1043–1051.
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.

The first act of the new King was one which was Relations between
Eadward and his
perhaps neither unjust nor impolitic, but which, at mother.
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 committed on Probable offence of
Emma.
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. The conduct of
Emma became the subject of debate in a meeting Witenagemót of
Gloucester.
of the Witan; her punishment was the result of a November, 1043.
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 three great Earls,[161] rode from Eadward and the
[162] Earls despoil Emma
Gloucester to Winchester, came unawares upon of her treasures.
[163]
the Lady, occupied her lands, and seized all that November 16, 1043.
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 held the rank of Earl in Banishments of
Swend’s partisans.
England. The brothers must have taken different 1043–1046.
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 Danish Thegn Osgod 1046.
[168]
Clapa was banished a few years later, and it was probably on the same
account that Æthelstan the son of Tofig lost his estate at Waltham,[169] and
that Gunhild, the niece of Cnut and daughter of 1044.
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 fall of one eminent Englishman. Stigand, appointed
Bishop of Elmham,
The disgrace of the Lady was accompanied by the and deposed. April-
disgrace of the remarkable—we might almost say November, 1043.
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.
During the whole of this period ecclesiastical Importance of
ecclesiastical
appointments claim special notice. They are at all appointments at this
times important witnesses to the state of things at time.
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.

It is not very clear what the exact process of Mode of appointing
Bishops.
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 deposing a Bishop. On the other hand, Increased connexion
with Rome.
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]
It is perhaps more startling to find that the court Prevalence of simony.
of Saint Eadward was no more free from the suspicion of simony than the
courts of ruffians like Harold and Harthacnut.[185] It is clear however that it
was neither on the King personally nor on the Earl of the West-Saxons that
this disgraceful imputation rested. One can hardly help suspecting that it
was the itching palms of the King’s foreign favourites which proved the
most frequent resting-place for the gold of those who sought for
ecclesiastical dignities by corrupt means. In the year after Eadward’s
coronation we meet with a story which brings out all these points very
strongly. Archbishop Eadsige found himself Siward appointed
coadjutor to
incapacitated by illness from discharging his Archbishop Eadsige.
functions, and wished either to resign his see or, as 1044.

it would rather seem, to appoint a coadjutor. But he feared lest, if his
intentions were made publicly known, some man whom he did not approve
of might beg or buy the office.[186] He therefore took into his counsels none
but the two first men in the realm, Earl Godwine and King Eadward
himself. Godwine would naturally be glad of the opportunity to put some
check on the growing foreign influences, and Eadward, easily as he was led
astray, would doubtless be anxious, when the case was fairly placed before
him, to follow any course which tended to preserve the purity of
ecclesiastical rule. By the authority then of Eadward and Godwine, but with
the knowledge of very few other persons,[187] Siward, Abbot of Abingdon,
was consecrated as Coadjutor-Archbishop.[188] He acted on behalf of the
Primate for about six years, till illness caused him He returns to
Abingdon and dies.
in his turn to resign his office and return to 1048–50.
Abingdon, where he died.[189] On this Eadsige
again assumed the administration of the Archbishoprick,[190] for a short time
before his own death.
But a more memorable appointment was made Death of Bishop
Ælfweard of London.
in the course of the same year. Ælfweard, Bishop July 25, 1044.
of London and Abbot of Evesham, a Prelate whose
name has already occurred in our history,[191] fell sick of leprosy. He
returned to his Abbey, but the brotherhood with one consent refused him
admission. They met, we are told, with the just reward of their churlishness.
Ælfweard turned away to the distant Abbey of Ramsey, where he had spent
his early years, and where he was gladly received. He soon after died,
leaving great gifts to the hospitable monks of Ramsey.[192] Rumour however
added that they largely consisted of his own former gifts to Evesham, and
that he even did not scruple to remove from that undutiful house some
precious things which had been the gifts of other benefactors.[193] Two great
spiritual preferments were thus vacated, one of them, the see of London,
one of the most important in the Kingdom. The lesser office at Evesham
was conferred on an Englishman, Wulfmær or Mannig, a monk of the
house;[194] but in the nomination to the great East-Saxon Bishoprick, the
foreigners obtained one of their most memorable He is succeeded by
Robert of Jumièges.
triumphs. In a full Witenagemót, holden in London August 10?
in the month of August, the Bishoprick of the city
in which the Assembly was held was bestowed on one Robert, a Norman
monk, who had first been Prior of Saint Ouen’s at Rouen, and afterwards

Abbot of the great house of Jumièges.[195] He has there left behind him a
noble memorial in the stately minster which still survives in ruins, but in
England it is not too much to say, that he became, Baneful influence of
Robert.
in this high post and in the still higher post which
he afterwards reached, the pest of the Kingdom. His influence over the
mind of the feeble King was unbounded.[196] We are ludicrously told that, if
Robert said that a black crow was white, King Eadward would at once
believe him.[197] He is described at all hands as being the chief stirrer up of
strife between Eadward and his native subjects. He it was who separated the
husband from the wife, and the King from his most His calumnies against
Godwine.
faithful counsellors. He it was whose slanderous
tongue again brought up against the great Earl[198] that charge of complicity
in the death of Ælfred of which he had been solemnly pronounced guiltless
by the highest Court in the realm.[199] And the His connexion with
the Norman invasion.
career of Robert is one of great historical
importance. It is closely connected with the immediate causes—it may even
be reckoned among the immediate causes—of the Norman invasion.[200]
Robert’s appointment to the see of London may be fairly set down as
marking a distinct stage in the progress of Norman influence in England. He
was the first man of utterly alien speech who had held an English
Bishoprick since the days of Roman, Scottish, or Cilician missionaries. His
overthrow at a later time was one of the first-fruits [1052.]
of the great national reaction against the strangers, and its supposed
uncanonical character was one of the many pretences put forth by William
to justify his invasion of England.
This appointment of Robert shows the great advance of the Norman
influence. But it had not as yet reached its height. Godwine and the popular
party seem to have been able to make a kind of compromise with the King.
It was necessary to yield to the King’s strong personal inclination in the
case of Robert; but the other vacant preferments were secured for
Englishmen. We have seen that Ælfweard’s Abbey was not allowed to be
held in plurality by his successor in the Bishoprick, but was bestowed on an
Englishman of high character. Stigand too had by Stigand Bishop of
Elmham.
this time made his peace with Eadward and
Godwine, and now began to climb the ladder of preferment afresh. He now
again received the Bishoprick of Elmham or of the Banishment of
Gunhild and her sons.
East-Angles.[201] And it was in the same year, and

seemingly at the same Gemót, that Gunhild, “the noble wife,” the widow of
the Earls Hakon and Harold, the mother of Heming and Thurkill, was
banished together with her sons.[202]

This last event was one of that series of banishments which have been
already spoken of as gradually falling on all who had made themselves in
any way prominent in opposition to the election of Eadward. But it was
most likely not unconnected with the present threatening state of affairs in
Northern Europe. The early years of Eadward in Condition of Northern
Europe.
England were contemporary with the great struggle
between Swend and Magnus for the Crown of Denmark. The details of that
warfare are told in our Scandinavian authorities War of Swend and
Magnus. 1044–1047.
with the usual amount of confusion and
contradiction, and it seems hopeless to think of altogether reconciling their
conflicting statements. Our own Chronicles, as usual, supply the most
promising means of harmonizing them in some small degree. We have seen
that Magnus was in actual possession of both Norway and Denmark at the
time of Eadward’s coronation.[203] Swend, after several battles, had found
himself forsaken by every one, and had taken Connexion of
[204] Godescalc with
refuge in Sweden. Godescalc the Wend, who Swend and Magnus.
had accompanied him from England, had forsaken
him with the rest,[205] and had entered on that mingled career as missionary
and warrior among his heathen countrymen of which I have already spoken.
[206]
In this warfare he most likely acted as an ally of Magnus, who was also
renowned for victories over the same enemy.[207] Triumphant position
of Magnus.
Magnus, now at the height of his power, King of
Denmark and Norway, conqueror of his heathen neighbours, enjoying, as it
would seem, the respect and attachment of the people of both his
Kingdoms, regretted and retracted the engagements of fidelity, perhaps even
of submission, which he had made to Eadward when his own position
seemed less secure. He now fell back on the claim He claims the English
Crown. 1045.
by virtue of which he had possessed himself of
Denmark, and which, in his eyes, gave him an equal right to the possession
of England. Magnus sent an embassy to England, claiming the Crown, and
setting forth his right.[208] He and Harthacnut had agreed that whichever of
them outlived the other should succeed to his dominions. Harthacnut was

dead; Magnus had, by virtue of that agreement, succeeded to the Crown of
Denmark; he now demanded Harthacnut’s other Kingdom of England.
Eadward, we are told, answered in a magnanimous Eadward’s answer.
strain, in which he directly rested his right to the English Crown on the
choice of the English people.[209] While his brother lived, he had served him
faithfully as a private man, and had put forward no claim by virtue of his
birth. On his brother’s death, he had been chosen King by the whole nation
and solemnly consecrated to the kingly office. Lawful King of the English,
he would never lay aside the Crown which his fathers had worn before him.
Let Magnus come; he would raise no army against him, but Magnus should
never mount the throne of England till he had taken the life of Eadward.[210]
Magnus, so the Norwegian Saga tells us, was so struck with this answer,
that he gave up all thoughts of attacking England, and acknowledged
Eadward’s right to the English Crown. This account, as perhaps Eadward’s
answer also, savours somewhat of romance. But that Magnus did
contemplate an invasion of England is certain, and, as England had given
him no cause for war, an invasion of England would seem to imply a claim
on the English Crown. The Norwegian King was Preparations against
Magnus. 1044–5.
looked on as dangerous in the year after Eadward’s
coronation, and in the next year he was kept back from an invasion of
England only by a renewal of the war in the North. In both these years
Eadward found it necessary to gather a fleet together at Sandwich.[211] In the
first year the fleet amounted to thirty-five ships only; in the second year we
are told that it was a fleet such as no man had ever seen before.[212] In this
last case we are distinctly told that its object was to repel an expected
invasion on the part of Magnus.

The war was now renewed by Swend, seemingly The war renewed by
Swend in partnership
in partnership with an actor of greater, though with Harold
perhaps less merited, Early life and exploits Hardrada.
of Harold. 1030–
renown than himself.[213] 1044.
Harold the son of Sigurd,
the half-brother of Saint Olaf, had escaped as a stripling from the field of
Stikkelstad, where his brother, according to one view, received the crown of
martyrdom, while, according to another, he received only the just reward of
hasty and violent, however well-meant, interference with the ancient
institutions of his country. Harold, surnamed Hardrada—the stern in council
—lived to become the most renowned warrior of the North, the last
Scandinavian King who ever set foot as an enemy on purely English
ground, the last invader who was to feel the might of Englishmen fighting
on their own soil for their own freedom, and who was, in his fall, to pave
the way for the victory of an invader yet mightier than himself. The fight of
Stamfordbridge, the fight of the two Harolds, will form one of the most
striking scenes in a later stage of our history. As yet, Harold was known
only as the hero of a series of adventures as wild and wonderful as any that
have ever been recounted in poetry or romance. Escape of Harold
from Stikkelstad.
Wounded at Stikkelstad, the young prince was
saved by a faithful companion, and was cherished during the following
winter by a yeoman ignorant of his rank. He passed through Sweden into
Russia, where he formed a friendship with King He goes to
Constantinople.
Jaroslaf of Novgorod. Thence, after a few years, he
betook himself, with a small train of companions, State of the Empire.
to the Byzantine Court. He found the Eastern Empire in one of those
periods of decay which so strangely alternate in its history with periods of
regeneration at home and victory abroad. The great Macedonian dynasty
was still on the throne; but the mighty Basil was in his grave, and the steel-
clad lancers of the New Rome were no longer the terror of Saracen,
Bulgarian, and Russian. The Empire which he had Reign of Zôê. 1028–
1050.
saved, and which he had raised to the highest pitch
of glory, had now become the plaything of a worthless woman, and the
diadem of the Cæsars was passed on at every caprice of her fancy from one
husband or lover to another. The Norwegian prince reached the Great City,
the Mickelgard of Northern story, in the period of Byzantine history known
as the Reigns of the Husbands of Zôê.[214] The Eastern Cæsars had already

begun to gather the Northern adventurers who appeared at their doors as
friends or as enemies into that famous Warangian The Warangians.
body-guard, the counterpart of the Housecarls of Cnut, which as yet seems
to have been recruited wholly from Scandinavia, but which was afterwards
to be reinforced by so large a body of exiles from our own land.[215] Harold
apparently received the command of this force, and at their head he is said
to have performed a series of amazing exploits.[216] It would almost seem as
if the arrival of these Northern auxiliaries had inspired the Empire with a
new life. Certain it is that, just about this time, we Their services under
Harold in Sicily.
find the Byzantine armies, after an interval of 1038–1040.
torpor, once more in vigorous action, and that in
the very region in which the Norwegian Saga places the most memorable
exploits of Harold. He waged war, we are told, against the Saracens both in
Sicily and in Africa; he fought eight pitched battles, and took castle after
castle from the misbelievers. That is, there can be little doubt, Harold and
his followers served in the Sicilian expedition of Maniakês, who was at this
time waging a vigorous war against the Saracens of Sicily, and who
recovered many of their towns to the Empire.[217] It does not appear that
Maniakês actually ventured on an African campaign, but, as the Saracens of
Africa undoubtedly aided their Sicilian brethren,[218] a landing of Imperial
troops on their coast is quite possible. At all events, warfare with African
Saracens anywhere might easily, in the half-legendary language of the
Sagas, grow into a tale of an actual invasion of His Crusade or
Pilgrimage.
Africa. Harold is next represented as entering on
another series of adventures for which it is more difficult to find a place in
authentic history. He set out, we are told, on a premature Crusade; he
marched with his followers to Jerusalem, clearing the way of robbers, and
winning back countless towns and castles to the allegiance of Christ and
Cæsar. Here we have of course the mere reflexion of the age of the writer,
who could not conceive so famous a warrior as entering the Holy City in
any character but that of a conqueror. But that Harold, as a peaceful pilgrim,
the brother of a canonized Saint, visited Jerusalem, prayed and gave gifts at
the Holy Sepulchre, and bathed in the hallowed stream of Jordan, is quite in
the spirit of the age and of the man.[219] He shared in the penitential devotion
of Robert the father of Norman William and of Swegen the brother of
English Harold; and, more fortunate than either, he returned in safety and
glory to his own land. He came back to Constantinople to find himself

maligned at the Imperial Court, and to be refused the hand of a niece of the
Empress.[220] Scandal went so far as to say that the cause of this refusal was
that Zôê, a woman whose passions survived to an unusually late period of
life, herself cast an eye of love on the valiant Harold escapes from
Constantinople.
Northman. Harold now made his escape from
Constantinople, after—so his Northern admirers ventured to say—putting
out the eyes of the Emperor Constantine Monomachos. This of course is
pure fiction. The historical truth of Harold’s warlike exploits is in no way
impugned by the silence of the Byzantine writers; but so striking an event
as the blinding of an Emperor could hardly fail to have found a native
chronicler. But we may believe, if we please, that Harold carried off the
princess by force, that the Scandinavian galleys burst the chain which
guarded the Bosporos, that Harold then left his fair prize on shore, bidding
her tell her Imperial kinswoman how little her power availed against either
the might or the craft of the Northman. Harold now He returns to Russia,
returned to Russia. He had carried off the Byzantine princess only as a
bravado; his heart was fixed on Elizabeth, the daughter of his former host
Jaroslaf of Novgorod. He now hastened to her father’s court, obtained her in
marriage, and passed over with her into Sweden. and finds Swend in
Sweden.
He there found Swend, defeated and in
banishment. With him he concerted measures for a joint expedition against
Magnus, now in possession of Denmark.[221] There Swend and Harold
attack Magnus, and
can be little doubt that it was this joint expedition save England from
of Swend and Harold which saved England from a invasion. 1045.
Norwegian invasion. King Eadward watched at
Sandwich with his great fleet during the whole summer, expecting the
approach of the enemy. But Magnus came not. Harold and Swend together,
by their invasion of Denmark, gave him full occupation throughout the year.
[222]

It was apparently early in this year of expected Eadward marries
Eadgyth. January 23,
invasion that Eadward at last married Eadgyth the 1045.
daughter of Godwine.[223] It is not easy to see why
the marriage had been so long delayed; but, if the Norman influence was
advancing, the wary Earl might well deem that no time was to be lost in
bringing about the full completion of a promise which the King was

probably not very eager to fulfil. Godwine’s power however was not as yet
seriously shaken. It was also probably in this year, Earldoms given to
Harold and Beorn.
as we have seen, that his son Harold and his wife’s
nephew Beorn received their Earldoms.[224] The ecclesiastical appointments
of the year seem also to point to the predominance of the patriotic party. In
this year died Brihtwold, Bishop of Wilton or Death of Bishop
Brihtwold.
Ramsbury, a Prelate who had in past times been
honoured with a vision portending Eadward’s accession to the Crown, and
who had had the good luck of living to see his Hermann of
[225] Lotharingia succeeds.
prophecy fulfilled. The appointment of his 1045.
successor should be carefully noticed. He was
Hermann of Lotharingia, a chaplain of the King’s, the first of the series of
German or other Imperialist Prelates of whom I Promotion of German
[226] Prelates.
have already spoken. The promotion of
Germans in England was not wholly new. It seems to have begun under
Cnut, and it was probably a fruit of his friendship Duduc Bishop of
Wells. 1033–1060.
with the Emperor Conrad. In his time the Saxon
Duduc had obtained the see of Wells,[227] and another German, Wythmann
by name, had held the great abbey of Ramsey.[228] Wythmann Abbot of
Ramsey.
Had the appointment of Hermann stood alone, we
might have simply looked on it as the result of Eadward’s connexion with
King Henry. Or we might even have looked on it in a worse light, as a sign
that Eadward preferred foreigners of any sort to his own countrymen. But
several considerations may lead us to look on the The German
appointments
matter in another way. These German probably favoured by
appointments are clearly part of a system; the Godwine.
system is continued after the death of Henry the
Third, when the close connexion between Germany and England ceases;
Harold himself, in the height of his power, appears as a special promoter of
German churchmen. We can therefore hardly fail to see in these
appointments, as I have already hinted, an attempt of Godwine and the
patriotic party to counterbalance the merely French Policy of
Lotharingian
tendencies of Eadward himself. We must observe appointments.
that most of these Prelates were natives of
Lotharingia, a term which, in the geography of that age, includes—and
indeed most commonly means—the Southern Netherlands. That is to say,
they came from the border land of Germany and France, where the

languages of both kingdoms were already familiar to every educated man.
[229]
We can well understand that, in those cases in which the patriots found
it impossible to procure the King’s consent to the appointment of an
Englishman, they might well be content to accept the appointment of a
German of Lotharingia as a compromise. One whose blood, speech, and
manners had not wholly lost the traces of ancient brotherhood would be
more acceptable to Godwine and to England than a mere Frenchman. And
one to whom the beloved speech of Gaul was as familiar as his mother-
tongue would be more acceptable to the denationalized Eadward than one
of his own subjects. This policy was probably as sound as any that could be
hit upon in such a wretched state of things. But its results were not wholly
satisfactory. I know of no reason to believe that any of these Lotharingian
Prelates actually proved traitors to England; but they certainly did not, as a
class, offer the same steady resistance to French influences as the men who
had been born in the land. And, if they were not Normannizers, they were at
least Romanizers. They brought with them habits of constant reference to
the Papal See, and a variety of scruples on points of small canonical
regularity, to which Englishmen had hitherto been strangers. Still something
was gained, if Godwine, on the death of Brihtwold, could procure the
appointment of a Lotharingian, instead of a French, successor.[230] A slight
counterpoise was thus gained to the influence of the Norman Bishop of
London. But, at the next great ecclesiastical Death of Bishop
Lyfing. March 23
vacancy, the patriotic party were more successful. 1046.
In the course of the next year England lost one of
her truest worthies; the great Earl lost one who had been his right hand man
in so many crises of his life, in so many labours for His career and
character.
the welfare of his country. Lyfing, the patriot
Bishop of Worcester, died in March in the following year. Originally a
monk of Winchester, he was first raised to the Abbacy of Tavistock. While
still holding that office, he had been the companion 1027.
of Cnut in his Roman pilgrimage, and had been the bearer of the great
King’s famous letter to his English subjects.[231] The consummate prudence
which he had displayed in that and in other commissions,[232] had procured
his appointment to the Bishoprick of Crediton or Devonshire. With that see
the Bishoprick of Cornwall had been finally united during his episcopate.
[233]
With that double see he had held, according to 1038.
a vicious use not uncommon at the time, the Bishoprick of Worcester in

plurality.[234] In that office, he had steadily adhered to the cause of the great
Earl through all the storms of the days of Harold and Harthacnut, and he
had had a share second only to that of Godwine himself in the work of
placing Eadward upon the throne.[235] Either his plurality of benefices had
given, as it reasonably might, offence to strict assertors of ecclesiastical
rule,[236] or, what is at least as likely, the patriotic career of Lyfing had made
him, like Godwine himself, a mark for Norman slander, whether alive or
dead. His death, we are told, was accompanied by strange portents, which
were however quite as capable of a favourable as of an unfavourable
interpretation.[237] But his memory was loved and cherished in the places
where he was best known. Long after the Norman Conquest, the name of
the Prelate whose body rested in their minster still lived in the hearts and on
the mouths of the monks of Tavistock.[238] And the simple entry of a
Chronicler who had doubtless heard him with his own ears bears witness to
that power of speech in the exercise of which he had so often stood side by
side with his illustrious friend. The other Chronicles merely record his
death; the Worcester writer adds the speaking title, “Lyfing the
eloquent.”[239]

The great mass of preferment held by Lyfing did Leofric, Bishop of
Crediton or Exeter.
not pass undivided to a single successor. The 1046–1072.
Bishopricks of Devonshire and Cornwall remained
united, as they have done ever since. They were conferred on the King’s
Chancellor, Leofric, who is described as a Briton, that is, doubtless, a native
of the Cornish portion of his diocese.[240] His name however shows that he
was of English, or at least of Anglicized, descent. But in feeling he was
neither British nor English; as Hermann was a Lotharingian by birth,
Leofric was equally a Lotharingian by education.[241] Four years after his
appointment, he followed the example of Ealdhun He removes the see to
Exeter. 1050.
of Durham in removing his episcopal see to a new
site.[242] He did not however, like Ealdhun, create at once a church and a
city;[243] he rather forestalled the practice of Prelates later in the century by
transferring his throne to the greatest town of his diocese. The humbler
Crediton had to yield its episcopal rank to the great city of the West, the city
which Æthelstan had fortified as a cherished bulwark of his realm,[244] the
city whose valiant burghers had beaten back the Dane in his full might, and
which had fallen into his hands only when the Norman traitor was set to
guard its walls.[245] She whose fatal presence had caused that great
misfortune still lived. The first years of Emma in 1003–1050.
England beheld the capture and desolation of her noble morning-gift. Her
last years saw the restored city become the spiritual capital of the great
western peninsula. And, within the lifetime of 1067.
many who saw that day, Exeter was again to stand a siege at the hands of a
foreign King, and again to show forth the contrast between citizens as
valiant as those who drove Swend from before their walls and captains as
incompetent or as treacherous as Hugh the Churl. The church of Saint Peter
in Exeter now became the cathedral church of the western diocese, and
there Leofric was solemnly enthroned in his episcopal chair by the saintly
King and his virgin wife.[246] Hitherto the church had been occupied by
nuns. They were now removed, and the chapter of the Bishop was formed
of secular Canons. Leofric however required them to conform to the stricter
discipline which he had learned in Lotharingia. He subjects his
Canons to the rule of
The rule of Chrodegang of Metz, the model rule of Chrodegang.
secular Canons, though it did not impose monastic
vows, yet imposed on those who conformed to it much of the strictness of
monastic discipline.[247] The clerks who submitted to it were severed, hardly

less than actual monks, from all the ordinary habits of domestic life. They
were condemned to the common table and the common dormitory; every
detail of their life was regulated by a series of minute ordinances; they were
cut off from lay, and especially from female, society, and bound to a strict
obedience to their Bishop or other ecclesiastical superior. Still they were not
monks; they were even strictly forbidden to wear the monastic garb,[248] and
the pastoral duties of baptism, preaching, and hearing confession were
strictly enforced upon them. In accordance with the precepts of
Chrodegang, the Canons of Exeter were required to eat in a common hall
and to sleep in a common dormitory. Their temporal concerns were
managed by an officer, who provided them with daily food, and with a
yearly change of raiment. This sort of discipline never found favour in
England. All who were not actual monks clave earnestly to the usage of
separate houses, in which they were often solaced by the company of wives
and children. Every earlier and later attempt to introduce the Lotharingian
rule in England utterly failed.[249] Leofric’s discipline seems to have lasted
somewhat longer than commonly happened in the like cases. Vestiges of the
severer rule still remained at Exeter in the next century, but even then the
purity of ancient discipline had greatly fallen off.[250]
One of the sees vacated by the death of Lyfing Ealdred, Abbot of
Tavistock, Bishop of
thus fell to the lot of a zealous ecclesiastical Worcester, 1046;
reformer, but a man who plays no important part in Archbishop of York,
the general history of the time. The fate of Lyfing’s 1061–1069.
other Bishoprick was widely different. It was bestowed on a Prelate who,
without ever displaying any very great qualities, played a prominent, and on
the whole not a dishonourable, part for many years to come. The early
career of the famous Ealdred, who now succeeded Lyfing in the see of
Worcester, had led him through nearly the same stages as that of his
predecessor. Like him, he had been a monk at Winchester; like him, he had
been thence called to the government of one of the great monasteries of the
West. The Abbey of Tavistock, destroyed by 997.
[251]
Danish invaders in the reign of Æthelred, had risen from its ashes, and it
now proved a nursery of Prelates like Lyfing and Character of Ealdred.
Ealdred.[252] The new Bishop was a man of ability and energy. He exhibits,
like Harold, the better form of the increasing connexion between England
and the continent. As an ambassador at the Imperial court, as a pilgrim at
Rome and Jerusalem, he probably saw more of the world than any

contemporary Englishman. He was renowned as a peacemaker, one who
could reconcile the bitterest enemies.[253] But he was also somewhat of a
time-server, and, in common with so many other Prelates of his time, he did
not escape the charge of simony. This charge is one which it is easy to bring
and often hard to answer, but the frequency with which it is brought shows
that the crime itself was a familiar one. Like many other churchmen of his
time, Ealdred did not scruple to bear arms both in domestic and in foreign
warfare, but his campaigns were, to say the least, not specially glorious. His
most enduring title to remembrance is that it fell to his lot to place, within a
single year, the Crown of England on the brow, first of Harold and then of
William, and to die of sorrow at the sight of his church and city brought to
ruin by the mutual contentions of Normans, Englishmen, and Danes.
We shall find the new Bishop of Worcester Gruffydd ap Llywelyn
reconciled with the
appearing a few years later in arms against the King. 1046.
Welsh, to whose incursions the southern part of his
diocese lay open. But as yet it was only his powers of persuasion and
peacemaking which he was called upon to exercise in that quarter. It was
probably by Ealdred’s intervention that a reconciliation was now brought
about between the famous King of North Wales, Gruffydd ap Llywelyn,[254]
and his English overlord.
Gruffydd’s immediate neighbour to the east was Expedition of Swegen
and Gruffydd against
Swegen, whose anomalous Earldom took in the Gruffydd ap
border shires of Gloucester and Hereford. Rhydderch. 1046.
Gruffydd accordingly gave hostages, and
accompanied Swegen in an expedition against the other Gruffydd, the son
of Rhydderch, the King of South Wales.[255] On his triumphant return
Swegen was guilty of an act which embittered the remainder of his days, a
breach of the laws of morality which the ecclesiastical feelings of the time
clothed with tenfold guilt. He sent for Eadgifu, Abbess of Leominster, kept
her awhile with him, and then sent her home.[256] Swegen seduces
Eadgifu, Abbess of
Like the Hamor of patriarchal story, he next Leominster.
sought, with a generosity as characteristic of his
wayward temper as any of his worst deeds, to He seeks in vain to
marry her.
make reparation by marriage.[257] But the law of the
Church stood in his way. Richard of Normandy, as we have seen, found it
easy to raise his mistress to all the honours due to a matron and the wife of
a sovereign. The Lady Emma herself, wife and mother of so many Kings,

was the offspring of an union which the Church had thus hallowed only
after the fact.[258] But no such means of reparation were open to the seducer
of a consecrated virgin. The marriage was of course forbidden, and Swegen,
in his disappointment, threw up his Earldom, left He throws up his
Earldom, and goes to
his country, and betook himself, first to Flanders, Denmark.
the usual place of refuge for English exiles, and
thence to the seat of war in the North.[259] A formal sentence of outlawry
seems to have followed, as the lordships of Swegen were confiscated, and
divided between his brother Harold and his cousin Beorn.[260] On Eadgifu
and her monastery the hand of ecclesiastical discipline seems to have fallen
heavily. The nunnery of Leominster, one of the Fate of Leominster
[261] monastery.
objects of the bounty of Earl Leofric, now
vanishes from history. The natural inference is that the misconduct of
Eadgifu led, not only to her own disgrace, but to the dissolution of the
sisterhood over which she had so unworthily presided.[262] We hear of no
later marriage on the part of Swegen, but in after years we shall meet with a
son of his, probably a child of the frail Abbess of Hakon son of
Swegen.
Leominster. Born under other circumstances, he
might have been head of the house of Godwine. As it was, the son of
Swegen and Eadgifu was the child of shame and sacrilege, and the career to
which he was doomed was short and gloomy.
The banishment of the Staller Osgod Clapa, at Banishment of Osgod
Clapa. 1046.
the bridal of whose daughter King Harthacnut had
come to his untimely end, took place this year.[263] Like the banishment of
Gunhild, this measure was evidently connected with the movements in the
North of Europe. Osgod was doubtless one of those who had been marked
men ever since the election of Eadward,[264] and who, in the present state of
Scandinavian affairs, were felt to be dangerous. The immediate peril came
from Magnus; but there could be little doubt that, of the three princes who
were disputing the superiority of Scandinavia, the successful one, whether
Magnus, Harold, or Swend, would assert some sort of claim to the
possession of England. Magnus had done so 1066.
already. Harold lived to invade England and to perish in the attempt. It was
only the singular prudence of Swend which kept him back from any such
enterprise till he was able to interfere in English affairs in the guise of a
deliverer. Partisans of any one of the contending 1069.
princes were clearly dangerous in England. Osgod was driven out,

seemingly by a decree of the Christmas Gemót,[265] and he presently, after
the usual sojourn in Flanders, betook himself to the seat of war in Denmark.
[266]

Osgod and Swegen most probably took service Affairs of
Scandinavia.
with Swend Estrithson. The presence of Swegen
would doubtless be welcome indeed to that prince’s partisans. The nephew
of Ulf, the cousin of their own leader, the son of the great English Earl,
renowned in the North as the conqueror of the Wends,[267] was a recruit
richly to be prized. And the cause of Swend Estrithson just then greatly
needed recruits. His hopes, lately so flourishing, had been again dashed to
the ground. Magnus had contrived to gain over his Harold Hardrada joins
Magnus and receives
uncle Harold to his side, by the costly bribe of a a share of the
share in the Kingdom of Norway. The gift indeed Kingdom of Norway.
was not quite gratuitous. Besides cooperating in 1047.
the war with Swend, Harold was to share with Magnus the treasures which
he had gathered in his Southern warfare.[268] The two Kings now joined their
forces, and drove Swend out of Jütland and the Danish Isles. He retained
only Scania, that part of the old Danish realm which lies on the Swedish
side of the Sound, and which is now politically part of Sweden.[269] In the
next year Swend was again aiming at the recovery Swend asks for
English help.
of his Kingdom. It was probably the presence of
English exiles in his camp, which suggested to him the idea of obtaining
regular help from England as an ally of the English King. He sent and asked
for the help of an English fleet. In those days His request is
discussed by the
questions of peace and war were not decided either Witan;
by the Sovereign only, or by the Sovereign and a
few secret counsellors; they were debated openly by the Witan of the whole
land. The demand of Swend was discussed in full Gemót. Swend had
certainly acted, whether of set purpose or not, as a friend of England; the
diversion caused by him had saved England from a Norwegian invasion.
But, setting aside any feelings of gratitude on this account, any feelings of
attachment to the kinsman of Cnut and of Godwine, it does not appear that
England had any direct interest in embracing the cause of Swend. A party
which sought only the immediate interest of England might argue that the
sound policy was to stand aloof, and to leave the contending Kings of the
North to wear out each other’s power and their own. Such however was not
the view taken by Godwine. In the Gemót in which the question was

debated, the Earl of the West-Saxons supported the Godwine supports the
claim of Swend;
petition of his nephew, and proposed that fifty
ships should be sent to his help. It is clear that such a course might be
supported by plausible arguments. It is clear that equally plausible
arguments might be brought forward on the other side. And if, as is
possible, this question was discussed in the same Gemót in which sentence
of outlawry was pronounced against Swegen the son of Godwine, it is clear
that the father of the culprit would stand at a great disadvantage in
supporting the request of the prince with whom that culprit had taken
service. It marks the still abiding influence of Godwine that he was able to
preserve the confiscated lordships of Swegen for Harold and Beorn. But in
his recommendation of giving armed support to Swend Estrithson all his
eloquence utterly failed. The cause of non- but his demand is
opposed by Leofric,
intervention was pleaded by Earl Leofric, and his and rejected. 1047.
arguments prevailed. All the people, we are told—
the popular character of the Assembly still impresses itself on the language
of history—agreed with Leofric and determined the proposal of Godwine to
be unwise. The naval force of Magnus, it was said, was too great to be
withstood.[270] Swend Estrithson had therefore to carry on the struggle with
his own unaided forces. Against the combined powers of Magnus and
Harold those forces were utterly unavailing. Swend Magnus defeats
Swend and occupies
was defeated in a great sea-fight; Magnus took Denmark.
possession of all Denmark, and laid a heavy
contribution upon the realm.[271] Swend again took refuge in Sweden, and
now began to meditate a complete surrender of his claims upon Denmark.
Just at this moment, we are told, a messenger appeared, bringing the news
of the sudden death of Magnus.[272] The victorious Sudden death of
Magnus. 1047.
King had perished by an accident not unlike that
which had caused the death of Lewis of France.[273] His horse, suddenly
startled by a hare, dashed his rider against the trunk of a tree.[274] On his
death-bed he bequeathed the crown of Norway to his uncle Harold and that
of Denmark to his adversary Swend. Such a Harold succeeds in
Norway, Swend in
bequest is quite in harmony with the spirit of the Denmark.
correspondence between Magnus and Eadward.[275]
Swend returned and took possession of his Their long warfare.
1048–1061.
Kingdom, and though he was for years engaged in
constant warfare with Harold, he never wholly lost his hold upon the

country. The first act of both the new Kings was to Their embassies to
England.
send embassies to England. Harold offered peace
and friendship; Swend again asked for armed help against Harold.[276] The
debate of the year before was again reopened. Help again refused to
Swend, and peace
Godwine again supported the request of his concluded with
nephew, and again proposed that fifty ships should Harold. 1048.
be sent to his help. Leofric again opposed the
motion, and the people again with one voice supported Leofric. Help was
refused to Swend and peace was concluded with Harold.[277] Swend,
despairing of English aid, seems to have sought for protection in another
quarter, and to have acknowledged himself a vassal of the Empire.[278]
These two years seem to have been marked by Physical phænomena.
1046–7.
several physical phænomena. In the former we
hear of the unusual severity of the winter, May 1, 1048.
accompanied by an extraordinary fall of snow.[279] In the latter several of the
midland shires were visited by an earthquake.[280] We read also of epidemics
both among men and beasts, and of the appearance called wild fire.[281] A
few ecclesiastical appointments are also recorded; but one only calls for
notice. Ælfwine, Bishop of Winchester, died, and Death of Ælfwine of
Winchester, Aug. 29,
his Bishoprick fell neither to Frenchmen nor to 1047. Stigand
Lotharingian. Stigand rose another step in the succeeds.
ladder of promotion by his translation from the
humbler see of Elmham to the Bishoprick of the Imperial city.[282]
As far as we can make out through the confused Ravages of Lothen
and Yrling. 1048.
chronology of these years, it was in the year of the
peace with Norway that England underwent, what we have not now heard
of for many years, an incursion of Scandinavian pirates.[283] Two chiefs,
named Lothen and Yrling, came with twenty-five ships, and harried various
parts of the coast. This event must have been in some way connected with
the course of the war between Harold and Swend. Probably some
enterprising Wikings in the service of one or other of those princes found a
moment of idleness just as the two Kings were taking possession of their
crowns, and thought the opportunity a good one for an attack on England.
Such an attack was doubtless unexpected, especially as such good care had
been taken to keep on good terms with both the contending Kings. But
possibly the more daring policy of Godwine would really have been the
safer.[284] Had fifty English ships, whatever their errand, been afloat in the

Northern seas, Lothen and Yrling could hardly have come to plunder the
shores of England. Anyhow the story shows us the sort of spirit which still
reigned in the North. There were still plenty of men ready to seek their
fortunes in any part of the world as soon as a moment of unwelcome quiet
appeared at home. Harold and Swend at least did the world some service by
finding employment for such men in warfare with one another. The Wikings
harried far and wide. From Sandwich they carried off a vast booty in men,
gold, and silver.[285] In the Isle of Wight they must have met with more
resistance, as many of the best men of the island are said to have been slain.
[286]
In Thanet too the landfolk withstood them manfully, refused them
landing and water, and drove them altogether away.[287] Thence they sailed
to Essex, where they plundered at their pleasure.[288] By this time the King
and the Earls had got together some ships. The Eadward and the
Earls pursue the
Earls were doubtless Godwine and Harold, on pirates, but they
whose governments the attack had been made, and escape to Flanders.
the words of our authorities seem to imply that
Eadward was really present in person.[289] They sailed after the pirates, but
they were too late. The enemy had already made his way to the common
refuge of banished Englishmen and of foes of England. The Wikings were
now safe in the havens of Flanders—of Baldwines land; there they found a
ready market for the spoils of England, and thence they sailed back to their
own country.[290]
We here seem to be reading over again the Analogy with the
relations with
history of the events which led to the first hostile Normandy in 991 and
relations between England and Normandy.[291] The 1000.
Northmen are again plundering England, and a
continental power again gives them so much of help and comfort as is
implied in letting them sell their plunder in his havens. This time the
offending power was not Normandy but Flanders, and Eadward, unlike his
father, had no lack of powerful friends on the Alliance with the
Emperor Henry.
continent. The great prince who had, a year before,
[292]
been raised to the throne of the world was, as we have seen,[293] on the
most intimate terms with his English brother, and it is plain that close
alliance with the Empire formed part of the policy of the patriotic party. The
illustrious Cæsar had filled the Papal chair with a Pontiff like-minded with
himself. A series of German Popes of Imperial The German Popes.
nomination had followed one another in a quick succession of short reigns,

but they had had time to show forth in their virtues a marked contrast to the
utter degradation of the Italian Pontiffs who had gone immediately before
them. The throne of Peter was now filled, at the Leo the Ninth. 1048–
1054.
Imperial bidding, by Bruno, Bishop of Toul, a
native of Elsass and kinsman of the Emperor, who had taken the name of
Leo the Ninth.[294] He was now in his second year of office, having· been
appointed in the year of the peace between England and Norway. It was
perhaps only a later legend which told how, on his way to Rome, he fell in
with the famous Hildebrand, then in exile, how he listened to his rebukes
for the crime of accepting a spiritual office from an earthly lord, how he
entered Rome as a pilgrim, and did not venture to ascend the Pontifical
throne till he was again more regularly chosen thereto by the voice of the
Roman clergy and people.[295] But, in any case, this concession to
ecclesiastical rule or prejudice had abated nothing of Leo’s loyalty to his
Teutonic sovereign, nothing of his zeal for the welfare, both spiritual and
temporal, of lands which the Italian Pontiffs so seldom visited. The Pope
was now at Aachen, ready with his spiritual Rebellion of Godfrey
and Baldwin against
weapons to help the Emperor against a league of the Emperor. 1047.
his rebellious vassals. They had waged war against
their suzerain; they had burned the city and church of Verdun; they had
destroyed the noble palace of the Emperor at Nimwegen. Foremost among
the offenders were Theodoric of Holland, Baldwin of Flanders, and Godfrey
of Lotharingia. Godfrey was specially guilty. After a former rebellion he
had been imprisoned and released, and now he was foremost in the new
insurrection, especially in the deed of sacrilege at Verdun.[296] The Pope
therefore did not hesitate to issue his Leo excommunicates
Godfrey. 1049.
excommunication against him. Godfrey yielded;
the ban of the father of Christendom bent his soul; he submitted to
scourging, he redeemed his hair at a great sum, he contributed largely to the
rebuilding of the cathedral which he had burned, and himself laboured at
the work like a common mason. But Baldwin of Continued ravages of
Baldwin.
Flanders, possibly trusting to his ambiguous
position as a vassal both of the Empire and of the French Crown, was more
obstinate, and still continued his ravages. The Emperor accordingly called
on his vassals and allies for help against a prince whose power might well
seem dangerous even to Kings and Cæsars. King Swend and Eadward
join the Emperor
Swend of Denmark—so low had Denmark fallen against Baldwin.

since the days of Cnut—obeyed the summons as a vassal.[297] King Eadward
of England contributed his help as an ally, and as one who was himself an
injured party. The reception of English exiles at Baldwin’s court, the licence
allowed to Scandinavian pirates of selling the spoils of England in
Baldwin’s havens, caused every Englishman to look on the Count of
Flanders as an enemy. The help which had been refused to Swend was
therefore readily granted to Henry. The King of the English was not indeed
asked to take any share in continental warfare by land. The share of the
enterprise assigned to him was to keep the coast with his ships, in case the
rebellious prince should attempt to escape by sea.[298] Again, as in the days
of Æthelstan and Eadmund, an English fleet appeared in the Channel, ready,
if need be, to take a part in continental warfare. But now, as in the days of
Æthelstan and Eadmund,[299] nothing happened Baldwin defeated
without actual English
which called for its active service. Eadward and his help.
fleet watched at Sandwich, while the Emperor
marched against Baldwin by land. But the Count of Flanders, instead of
betaking himself to the sea, submitted in all things to the will of the mighty
overlord whom he had provoked.[300]
The immediate object for the assembling of the The submission of
Baldwin lets loose the
fleet had been attained; but the events which English exiles.
immediately followed showed that the fleet was
just as likely to be needed for protection at home, as for a share in even just
and necessary warfare abroad. The submission of Baldwin to the Emperor
seems to have let loose the English exiles who had been flitting backwards
and forwards between Flanders and Denmark,[301] and who had possibly
taken a part on Baldwin’s side in the last campaign. Both Osgod Clapa and
Swegen the son of Godwine now appeared at sea. Swegen and Osgod
return.
Swegen had only eight ships; but Osgod had—we
are not told how—gathered a force of thirty-nine. While the King was still
at Sandwich, Swegen returned to England. He sailed first to Bosham, a
favourite lordship of his father’s, and one whose name we shall again meet
with in connexion with events of still greater moment to the house of
Godwine. He there left his ships, and went to the King at Sandwich, and
offered to become his man.[302] His natural Swegen’s
reconciliation with
allegiance as an English subject was perhaps held Eadward. 1049.
to be cancelled by his outlawry or by his having
become the man of Swend of Denmark or of some other foreign prince. A

new personal commendation was seemingly needed for his reconciliation
with his natural sovereign. He seems to have asked for his Earldom again;
at any rate, he was tired of the life of a sea-rover, and asked that his lands
which had been confiscated might be given back to him for his
maintenance. He seems to have found favour, either with the King
personally or with some of those who were about him, for it was proposed,
if not actually resolved, that Swegen should be restored to all his former
possessions.[303] But the strongest opponents of such a course were found in
the kinsmen to whom his confiscated lands had Harold and Beorn
oppose his
been granted, his cousin Beorn and his brother reconciliation.
Harold. They both refused to give up any part of
what the King had given them.[304] Swegen’s petition was accordingly
refused; his outlawry was confirmed; only, as Swegen’s outlawry is
renewed.
seems to have been usual in such cases, he was
allowed four days to get him out of the country. How far Harold and Beorn
were actuated in this matter by mere regard to their own interests, how far
by a regard to the public good, how far by that mixture of motives which
commonly determines men’s actions, we have no means of judging. This is
not the only act of Harold’s early life which may be taken to show that he
had not yet acquired those wonderful gifts of conciliation and self-restraint
which mark his more mature career. Of the character of Beorn we know
nothing except from this story; what we hear of him directly afterwards
certainly sets him before us in a generous and amiable light. The tale is told
us in a perfectly colourless way, without any hint how the conduct of the
two cousins was judged of in the eyes of contemporaries in general or in
those of Earl Godwine. At all events, Swegen went away from Sandwich
disappointed. He thence went to Bosham, where his ships were lying in the
land-locked haven of that place. This was just at the moment when the fleet,
no longer needed for service against Baldwin, was beginning to disperse.
We see that this fleet also had been gathered in the ancient way by the
contingents or contributions of the shires,[305] and that only a small number
of the ships were in the King’s permanent service. Those of the crews who
had come from distant, especially inland, districts were naturally weary of
tarrying when there was no prospect of active service, and the contingent of
Mercia was accordingly allowed to return home.[306] The King remained at
Sandwich with a few ships only. Meanwhile a rumour came that hostile
ships had been seen ravaging to the west. The Earl of the West-Saxons

accordingly sailed forth to the rescue, with forty- Godwine at
Pevensey.
two ships belonging to the men of his Earldom.[307]
He took also two ships of the King’s, commanded respectively by Harold
and by his third son Tostig, of whom we now hear for the first time.[308]
Stress of weather however hindered them from getting further west than
Pevensey. While they lay there, a change, of the motive of which we are not
told, was made in the command of the two royal ships which had
accompanied Godwine. Harold gave up the ship which he had commanded
to his cousin Beorn.[309] This accidental change possibly saved Harold’s life.
[310]
For Swegen now came from Bosham to Pevensey, and there found his
father and cousin. He there spoke with both of them. The result of their
discourse was that Beorn was persuaded to Beorn entrapped and
slain by Swegen.
undertake the office of intercessor with the King
on Swegen’s behalf. What arrangement was to be proposed—whether
Beorn brought himself to consent to the sacrifice which he had before
refused—whether Swegen was to be again invested with his Earldom or
only with his private lordships—whether Harold, Beorn, or Swegen was to
be compensated in any other way for the surrenders which one or more of
them would have to make—of all this nothing is explained to us. We hear
however that Beorn, trusting to his kindred with Swegen,[311] did not hesitate
to set out to ride with him to the King at Sandwich. He even agreed to a
proposal of Swegen’s, according to which they left the road from Pevensey
to Sandwich, and went westward to Bosham. For this deviation from his
original scheme Swegen made an excuse, which was doubtless more
intelligible then than it is now, namely a fear lest the crews of his ships
should forsake him, if they were not confirmed in their faith to him by the
presence of Beorn. The young Earl fell into the snare, and accompanied his
cousin to the haven of Bosham. But when Swegen pressed him to go on
board one of his ships, Beorn’s suspicions were at last aroused, and he
vehemently refused. At last Swegen’s sailors bound him, put him in a boat,
rowed him to the ships, and there kept him a prisoner. They then hoisted
their sails and steered for Dartmouth.[312] There Beorn was killed by
Swegen’s orders, but his body was taken on shore and buried in a church.
As soon as the murder became known, Earl Harold,[313] with others of
Beorn’s friends, and the sailors from London—a clear mark of Beorn’s
popularity—came and took up the body, carried it to Winchester, and there
buried it in the Old Minster by the side of Beorn’s uncle King Cnut.

The general indignation at the crime of Swegen Swegen declared
Nithing by the armed
was intense. The King and the army publicly Gemót.
declared the murderer to be Nithing.[314] This was
the vilest epithet in the English language, implying utter worthlessness. It
was evidently used as a formal term of dishonour. We shall find it at a later
time resorted to by a Norman King as a means of 1087.
appeal to his English subjects. William Rufus, when he needed English
support, proclaimed in the like sort that all who failed to come to his
standard should be declared to be Nithing. But this proclamation has a
deeper importance than the mere use of this curious expression of public
contempt. It is to be noted that the proclamation is Functions of the
Witan discharged by
described as the act of the King and his army. Here the army.
is clearly a case of a military Gemót.[315] The army,
as representing the nation, assumes to itself in time of war the functions
which belonged to the regular Gemót in time of peace. The army declares
Swend to be Nithing, and it was doubtless the army, in the same sense,
which had just before hearkened to, and finally rejected, his petition for
restoration to his estates. So it was the army, Cnut’s Danish army, which
assumed to itself the functions of the English 1014.
Witan by disposing of the English Crown on the death of King Swend.[316]
In the ancient Teutonic constitution the army was the nation and the nation
was the army. In the primitive Gemóts described by Tacitus,[317] to which all
men came armed, no distinction could be drawn Nature of the military
Gemót.
between the two. But it should be noticed that the
word used is not that which denotes the armed levy of the Kingdom, but
that which expresses the army in its special relation to the King.[318] This
fact exactly falls in with the practical, though not formal, change which had
taken place in the constitution of the ordinary Gemóts.[319] The military
Gemót which passed this sentence on Swegen was not the whole force of
England, for we were just before told that the contingents both of Mercia
and Wessex had left Sandwich. This assembly must have consisted of the
King’s Comitatus of both kinds, of the Thegns bound to him by the older
and more honourable tie, and also of the standing force of the Housecarls,
or at any rate of their officers.[320] Setting churchmen aside—though we
have seen that even churchmen often bore arms both by land and by sea—
such a body would probably contain a large proportion of the men who
were likely to attend an ordinary Witenagemót. By an assembly of this kind,

acting, whether constitutionally or not, in the character of a National
Assembly, the outlawry and disgrace of Swegen were decreed.
It would seem that this decree preceded the Swegen, deserted by
most of his ships,
translation of Beorn’s body to Winchester, a escapes to Flanders.
ceremony which may not improbably have been
ordered by the Assembly. For it was before that translation[321] that the men
of Hastings, most probably by some commission from the King or his
military council, sailed forth to take vengeance on the murderer. Swegen
was already forsaken by the greater part of his following. Of his eight ships
six had left him. Their crews were probably rough Wikings from the North,
men familiar with all the horrors of ordinary pirate warfare, not troubled
with scruples about harrying a land whose people had never wronged them,
but who nevertheless shrank from the fouler wickedness of slaying a
kinsman by guile. Two ships only remained with Swegen, those doubtless
whose crews had been the actual perpetrators of the deed. The men of
Hastings chased and overtook these ships, slew their crews, and brought the
ships to the King.[322] How Swegen himself escaped it is not easy to see;
possibly the men of Hastings still scrupled personally to lay hands upon a
son of Godwine. At any rate the murderer baffled pursuit, and again took
shelter in his old quarters. Baldwin, so lately restored to his dominions,
again began his old practice of receiving English exiles, and Swegen spent
the whole winter at the court of Flanders under the full protection of its
sovereign.[323]
The story of the murder of Beorn is told in so Character of the act of
Swegen.
minute and graphic a way that it seems impossible
to throw doubt on any part of the tale. And every account represents the
deed as a deed of deliberate treachery.[324] An act of mere violence would
not have greatly offended the morality of that age. Had Swegen killed even
a kinsman in a moment of provocation or in a fair fight to decide a quarrel,
his guilt would not have seemed very black. Had he even used craft in
carrying out an ancestral deadly feud, he might have quoted many
precedents in Northumbrian history, and, among them, an act in the life of
the reigning Earl of the North hardly inferior in guilt to the worst aspect of
his own.[325] But to kill a kinsman, a confiding Universal indignation
against Swegen.
kinsman, one who had just granted a somewhat
unreasonable prayer, was something which offended the natural instincts
not only of contemporary Englishmen but of Scandinavian pirates. At the

moment Swegen seems to have found no friends; the voice of all England
was against him; there is no sign that any of his family stood by him; the
sympathies of Harold clearly lay with his murdered cousin. It is hardly
possible to conceive a blacker or more unpardonable crime. One would
have thought that Swegen would have failed to find patrons or protectors in
any corner of Christendom. Yet, strange to say, the His reception by
Baldwin.
murderer, forsaken by all, was at once received
with favour by Baldwin, even though Baldwin must have known that by
receiving him he was running the risk of again offending the King of the
English and even the Emperor himself. And what His outlawry is
reversed and he
followed is stranger still. In the next year, in a returns to England.
Witenagemót held in London in Midlent, Swegen’s Midlent, 1050.
outlawry was reversed, and he was restored to his
Earldom.[326] And, strangest of all, his restoration is attributed, not to the
influence of Godwine or his family, not to any revulsion of feeling on the
part of the King or the nation, but to the personal Swegen reconciled to
Eadward by Bishop
agency of Bishop Ealdred the Peacemaker. He it Ealdred.
was who, it would seem, crossed over to Flanders,
brought Swegen to England, and procured his restoration at the hands of the
King and his Witan.[327] There is nothing to show that Ealdred was specially
under the influence of Godwine. We shall before long find him acting in a
manner which, to say the least, shows that he was not one of Godwine’s
special followers. His episcopal city and the greater part of his diocese lay
within the Earldom of Leofric; no part of it lay within the Earldom of
Godwine.[328] And, if part of his diocese lay within the Earldom of the man
whom he sought to restore, that only makes him the more responsible for
the act which was so directly to affect a portion of his own flock. In the
restoration of Swegen, Ealdred seems to have acted purely in his capacity of
peacemaker.[329] At first sight it might seem that Ealdred strove to win the
blessing promised to his class by labouring on behalf of a sinner whom the
most enlarged charity could hardly excuse. The very strangeness of the act
suggests that there must have been some explaining cause, intelligible at the
time, but which our authorities have not recorded. The later history of
Swegen shows that, if he was a great sinner, he was also a great penitent.
We can only guess that Ealdred already marked in him some signs of
remorse and amendment, that he had received from him some confession of
his crime, to which we possibly owe the full and graphic accounts of the

murder of Beorn which have been handed down to us.[330] If so, it was
doubtless wise and charitable not to break a bruised reed; still again to
entrust the government of five English shires to the seducer of Eadgifu and
murderer of Beorn was, to say the least, a perilous experiment.

We must now go back to the time when King Eadward had just dismissed
the Mercian contingent after the reconciliation Various military
operations of the year
between Baldwin and the Emperor. While the 1049.
unhappy events which I have just narrated were
going on, Englishmen had cause to be alert in more than one quarter of the
island against assaults of various kinds. In the comparatively peaceful reign
of Eadward this year stands forth as marked by warlike operations of every
sort. England had to resist the assaults of foreign enemies, of faithless
vassals, and of banished men seeking their restoration. Besides the small
force of Swegen, Osgod Clapa was, as has been Movements of Osgod
[331] Clapa.
already said, at sea with a much larger number
of ships. He first appeared at Wulpe near Sluys on the coast of Flanders,
and the news of his arrival there was brought to Eadward at the moment
when the King was left at Sandwich at the head of a very small force. The
Mercian contingent had just been dismissed, and Godwine, with the force of
Wessex, had sailed westward. Eadward was therefore nearly defenceless.
He therefore countermanded the orders for the dismissal of the Mercian
vessels, and as many of them as was possible were brought back. Osgod
however did not act personally as the enemy of He returns to
Denmark.
England. He merely took his wife from Bruges,
where she had been left, and sailed back to Denmark with six ships. The
remainder of his fleet took to piracy off Piracy and destruction
of his fleet.
Eadulfsness in Essex, and there did much harm.
But a violent storm arose and destroyed all the vessels except four.[332]
These were chased and captured, and the crews slain, whether by Eadward’s
own fleet in pursuit or by some of the foreign allies of England is not very
clear.[333]
The rumour which had called Godwine Ships from Ireland in
the Bristol Channel;
westward from Sandwich was not wholly a false joined by Gruffydd of
one. The ships which were then said to be ravaging South Wales. July,
the south coast, were doubtless Danish pirate 1049.

vessels from Ireland, the same which, in the course of July, sailed up the
Bristol Channel as far as the mouth of the Usk.[334] There they were
welcomed by the South-Welsh King Gruffydd,[335] who was doubtless
rejoiced at the prospect of such allies, alike against the English and against
his Northern namesake, the momentary confederate of England. After a
certain amount of harrying along the coast of the Channel, the combined
forces of Gruffydd and the pirates crossed the Wye, and slew and plundered
within the diocese of Worcester. It is not clear who They invade
Gloucestershire, and
was the Earl responsible for the safety of the defeat Bishop
country since the banishment of Swegen. It was Ealdred.
probably the King’s nephew, Ralph the Timid,
whose name begins about this time to appear in the Charters with the title of
Earl.[336] If this be so, this was the first appointment of a foreigner to a great
temporal office, a further step in the downward course, still more marked
than that of appointing foreign Prelates. Under such a chief as Ralph no
vigorous resistance was to be looked for, and the person who really took
upon himself the defence of the country was Bishop Ealdred. He gathered a
force from among the inhabitants of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire; but
part of his army consisted of Welshmen, whether mere mercenaries hired
for the occasion, or Welshmen living as immediate subjects of England. But
whoever these Welshmen were, their sympathies lay wholly with Gruffydd
and not with Ealdred. They sent a secret message to the Welsh King,
suggesting an immediate attack on the English army. Gruffydd willingly
answered to the call. With his twofold force, Welsh July 29, 1049.
and Danish, he fell on the English camp early in the morning, slew many
good men, and put the rest, together with the Bishop, to flight.[337] Of the
further results of this singular and perplexing campaign, especially when
and how the retreat of the invaders was brought about, we hear nothing.

Everything which happened about this time sets Increasing connexion
with the continent.
before us the great and increasing intercourse
which now prevailed between England and the continent. Our fathers were
now brought into a nearer connexion with both the English attendance at
Synods.
spiritual and the temporal chiefs of Christendom
than they had ever known before. We have already seen England in close
alliance with the Empire; we have now to contemplate her relations with the

Papacy. The active and saintly Pontiff who now presided over the Church
held at this time a series of Councils in various places, at most of which
English Prelates attended. Leo, after receiving the submission of Godfrey at
Aachen, entered France, at the request of Heremar, Abbot of Saint Remigius
at Rheims, to hallow the newly built church of his monastery.[338] He then
held a synod, which sat for six days, and passed Synod of Rheims.
several canons of the usual sort, against the marriage of priests and against
their bearing arms.[339] The days of Otto the Great seemed to have returned,
when the Pope and the Emperor,[340] seemingly without reference to the
Parisian King, held a Council on French ground, attended by a vast
multitude of Prelates, clergy, and laity from the Imperial Kingdoms and
from other parts of Europe. There, besides the Metropolitan of the city in
which the synod was held, was the Archbishop of Burgundy, as our
Chronicles call him,[341] that is, the Archbishop of the great see of Lyons,
Primate of all the Gauls, but no subject or vassal of the upstart dynasty of
Paris. There were the Archbishops of Trier and Besançon; and from
England came Duduc, the Saxon Bishop of Wells, and the Abbots Wulfric
of Saint Augustine’s and Ælfwine of Ramsey, whom King Eadward had
sent to bring him word of all that should be done for the good of
Christendom.[342] It does not appear that any Synod of Mainz.
English Prelates were present at the synod which Leo held soon after at
Mainz;[343] but the two Italian synods which were held soon after were, as
we shall see, connected in a singular manner with English affairs. There
seems to have been about this time a kind of Deaths of Bishops
and Abbots.
mortality among the English Prelates. Among
those who died was the Abbot of Westminster or Thorney, the humbler
foundation which was soon to give way to the great creation of the reigning
King. He bore the name of Wulfnoth, a name which suggests the likelihood
of kindred with the house of Godwine. Another was Oswiu, the Abbot of
the other Thorney in the fen land, the neighbour of Peterborough and
Crowland. This year too died Siward the Siward dies, and
Eadsige resumes the
Coadjutor-Archbishop, and Eadsige again resumed Primacy. 1049.
his functions for the short remainder of his life.[344]
Eadnoth too, the good Bishop of Dorchester,[345] the Eadnoth of
Dorchester dies; Ulf
builder of Stow in Lindesey, died this year, and his succeeds. 1049.
death offered a magnificent bait to Norman
ambition and greediness. The great Bishoprick stretching from the Thames

to the Humber, was conferred by the King on one of his Norman chaplains,
who however bore the Scandinavian name of Ulf. As to the utter unfitness
of this man for such an office there is an universal consent among our
authorities. The King, even the holy Eadward, did evil in appointing him;
the new Prelate did nought bishoplike; it were shame to tell more of his
deeds.[346]
The year which followed was one of great note in ecclesiastical history.
In England the first event recorded is the usual Witenagemót of
London. Midlent,
meeting of the Witan in London at Midlent. The 1050.
proceedings of this Gemót, like those of many
others about this time, give us a glimpse of that real, though very imperfect,
parliamentary life which was then growing up in England, and which the
Norman Conquest threw back for many generations. Then, as now, there
were economists pressing for the reduction of the public expenditure, and
what we should now call the Navy Estimates were chosen as being no doubt
a popular subject for attack. The narrative of the naval events of the last
year shows that, on special occasions, naval contingents were called for,
according to the old law,[347] from various parts of the Kingdom, but that the
King still kept a small naval force in constant pay. Reduction of the
Fleet.
This force had, under Cnut and Harold, consisted
of sixteen ships;[348] it seems now to have consisted only of fourteen. The
experience of the last year showed that England was still open to attack
from the West; but the great fear, fear of invasion from the North, had now
quite passed away. It seemed therefore to be a favourable moment for
further reductions. By the authority of this Gemót nine ships were
accordingly paid off, the crews receiving a year’s pay, and the standing
force was cut down to six.[349] It was in this same assembly that Swegen was
inlawed,[350] that is, his outlawry was reversed, by Swegen inlawed.
the intercession of Bishop Ealdred. That Prelate, as we have seen, seems to
have gone over to Flanders, and to have brought Swegen back with him.[351]
But Ealdred had soon to set forth on a longer Mission of Ealdred
and Hermann to
journey. He and the Lotharingian Bishop Hermann Rome.
were now sent to Rome on the King’s errand.[352]
What that errand was we learn only from legendary writers and doubtful
charters, but, as their accounts completely fit in with the authentic history,
we need not scruple to accept their general outline. The King’s vow of
[353] pilgrimage to Rome.
The King had in his youth vowed a pilgrimage

to Rome, and the non-fulfilment of this vow lay heavy on his conscience. It
probably lay heavier still when he saw so many of his subjects of all ranks,
led by the fashionable enthusiasm of the time, making both the pilgrimage
to Rome and also the more distant pilgrimage to Jerusalem.[354] A broken
vow was a crime; still Eadward had enough of political sense and right
feeling left to see that his absence from his Kingdom at such a time as the
present would be a criminal forsaking of his kingly duty. The Great Cnut
might venture on such a journey; his eye could see and his hand could act
from Rome or Norway or any other part of the world. But the personal
presence of Eadward was the only check by which peace could be for a
moment preserved between the true sons of the soil, and the strangers who
were eating into its vitals. The King laid his case Eadward sends the
Bishops to obtain a
before his Witan; the unanimous voice of the dispensation. 1050.
Assembly forbade him to forsake his post; the
legend adds that the Witan farther counselled him to satisfy his conscience
by obtaining a Papal dispensation from his vow. This was the King’s errand
on which Ealdred and Hermann were sent to attend the great synod[355] held
this year at Rome. They made good speed with their journey; starting at
Midlent, they reached the Holy City on Easter Eve. The Synod of Rome.
[356]
In that synod they stood face to face with a man then known only as a
profound scholar and theologian, the bulwark of Lanfranc.
orthodoxy and the pattern of every monastic virtue, but who was, in years to
come, to hold a higher place in the English hierarchy, and to leave behind
him a far greater name in English history, than either of the English Prelates
whose blessing he may now have humbly craved. In that synod of Rome the
doctrines of Berengar of Tours were debated by the assembled Fathers, and
the foremost champion of the faith to which Rome still cleaves was
Lanfranc of Pavia. Suspected of complicity with the heretic, he produced
the famous letter in which Berengar had maintained the Eucharist to be a
mere figure of the Body of Christ.[357] How far Ealdred or Hermann took
part in these theological debates we know not; but they are said to have
successfully accomplished their own errand. The King’s vow of pilgrimage
was dispensed with, on condition of the rebuilding and endowment on a
grander scale of that renowned West Minster whose name was to be
inseparably bound together with that of the sainted King.[358] Before the year
was out the unwearied Leo held another synod at Synod of Vercelli.
Vercelli. Here the theological controversy was again raised, and Lanfranc

again shone forth as the irresistible smiter of heresy. Berengar was finally
condemned, notwithstanding his appeals to the elder teaching of John
Scotus, and his protests that those who rejected John Scotus rejected
Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, and all the Fathers of the Church.[359] These
disputes, renowned in the Church at large, are wholly passed over by our
insular Chroniclers. To them the famous Synod of Vercelli seems to have
been memorable only as showing the Roman Court in what was apparently
a new relation towards the Prelacy of England. Before the assembled
Fathers came the newly appointed Bishop of Confirmation of Ulf
of Dorchester.
Dorchester, Ulf the Norman, seeking, it would
seem, for consecration or confirmation. His unfitness for his post was
manifest; he was found incapable of going through the ordinary service of
the Church. The Synod was on the point of deposing him, of breaking the
staff which, according to the ceremonial of those times, he had already
received from the King. But the influence which was already all-powerful
at Rome saved him. He retained his Bishoprick; but only at the cost of a
lavish expenditure of treasure, of which we may be sure that no portion
found its way into the private coffers of Leo.[360] It Possible pilgrimage of
Macbeth.
was in this same year that Macbeth made that
mysterious bestowal of alms or bribes at Rome from which some have
inferred a personal pilgrimage on the part of the Scottish usurper.[361] It is
not beyond the bounds of possibility that one who seems to us hardly more
real than the creations of Grecian tragedy may have personally appeared at
Rome or at Vercelli, that he may have shown his pious indignation at the
heresies of the Canon of Tours, or have felt his soul moved within him at
the incapacity of the Bishop of Dorchester. A personal meeting between
Leo, Lanfranc, Ealdred, and Macbeth would form no unimpressive scene in
the hands of those who may venture on liberties with the men of far-gone
times which to the historian are forbidden.
Ealdred and Hermann thus came back from Rome with the wished for
dispensation from the King, and Ulf came back from Vercelli to hold the
great see of Mid-England, and to rule it in his unbishoplike fashion for a
little time. But before long a still greater Death of Archbishop
Eadsige. October 9,
ecclesiastical preferment became vacant. Eadsige, 1050.
who had so lately resumed his archiepiscopal
functions, died before the end of the year.[362] The day of complete triumph
for the Norman monks and chaplains who surrounded Eadward now

seemed to have come. A Frenchman might now sit on the throne of
Augustine. Patriotic Englishmen were of course proportionably alarmed,
and among them none more so than those who were most immediately
concerned, the Chapter of the metropolitan church. The monks of Christ
Church met, and made what is called a canonical election.[363] In the eye of
English law such a process was little more than a petition to the King and
his Witan for the appointment of the man of their choice. That choice fell on
a member of their own body, their selection of whom showed that seclusion
from the world had not made them incapable of a happy union of the dove
and the serpent. There was in their house a monk, The monks of Christ
Church elect Ælfric.
Ælfric by name, who had been brought up in the
monastery from his childhood, and who enjoyed the love of the whole
society. Notwithstanding his monastic education, he was held to be
specially skilled in the affairs of the world. And he had a further merit as
likely as any of the others to weigh either with an English Chapter or with
an English Witenagemót; he was a near kinsman of Earl Godwine.[364] The
monks petitioned the Earl, the natural patron of a corporation within his
government, to use his influence to obtain the King’s confirmation of their
choice.[365] Godwine was doubtless nothing loth to avail himself of so
honourable an opportunity to promote an Englishman and a kinsman. But
his influence was crumbling away. Four years before he had been able to
obtain the confirmation of Siward as Eadsige’s coadjutor; he was now
unable to obtain the confirmation of Ælfric, or of any other man of native
birth, as Eadsige’s successor. The saintly King paid Ælfric rejected by the
King, and Robert
no regard to the canonical election of the Convent, Bishop of London
and in the Midlent Witenagemót of the next year, appointed to the see
the Archbishoprick of Canterbury was bestowed on of Canterbury.
Midlent, 1051.
the King’s French favourite, Robert, Bishop of
London.[366] The national party however prevailed so far as to secure an
English successor to the see which Robert vacated. Spearhafoc appointed
to London, and
Spearhafoc, Abbot of Abingdon, a man famous for Rudolf to the Abbey
his skill in the goldsmith’s craft,[367] was named to of Abingdon.
the see of London by the King’s writ under his
seal.[368] The Abbacy of Abingdon was given to a man whose description
raises our curiosity; he was one Rudolf, described as a kinsman of King
Eadward and as a Bishop in Norway.[369] For a native Northman to have
been a kinsman of the son of Æthelred and Emma is hardly possible, unless

the common ancestor was to be looked for so far back as the days before the
settlement of Rolf. A Norman is hardly likely to have desired or obtained
preferment in so unpromising a land; but it is highly probable that Cnut,
who appointed several Englishmen to Bishopricks in Denmark, may have
made use of a see in Norway either to reward or to remove some remote
and unrecorded member of the English royal family. It is therefore very
probable that Rudolf may have been an Englishman.[370] He was an aged
man and weary of his office. The hand of Harold Hardrada pressed heavily
on the Church. Pilgrim of the Holy Sepulchre as he was, he is charged with
destroying ecclesiastical buildings, and even with sending Christian men to
martyrdom.[371] Rudolf sought and found a place of more quiet, if of
somewhat less honour, in the dominions of his kinsman. The monks of
Abingdon received him, not very willingly, it would seem, but they were
won over by the prospect that the old man would not live very long, and by
the King’s promise that at the next vacancy free election should be allowed.
[372]
Presently the new Archbishop Robert came Robert returns from
Rome. July 27, 1051.
back from Rome with his pallium; he was
enthroned in the metropolitan church, and soon hastened to the royal
presence.[373] Spearhafoc, the Bishop-elect of London, came with the royal
writ, and demanded consecration of his He refuses to
consecrate
Metropolitan. Robert refused, saying that the Pope Spearhafoc.
had forbidden him to consecrate Spearhafoc.[374]
Things had come to such a pass, that an Englishman, appointed to an
English office by the King and his Witan, was to be kept out of its full
possession by one foreigner acting at the alleged bidding of another. There
were times when the Roman see showed itself a real refuge for the
oppressed, and, as far as good intentions went, so it doubtless was in the
days of good Pope Leo. But Englishmen now needed protection against no
one except against the foreign favourites of their own King, and it was on
behalf of those foreign favourites, and against Englishmen, that these
stretches of Papal authority were now made. The unworthy Ulf was
allowed, by the power of bribes, to retain his see—for he was a stranger.
Spearhafoc, on what ground we know not—except so far as his English
birth was doubtless a crime in the eyes of Robert—was refused the rite
which alone could put him into full possession of his office. A second
demand was again made by the Bishop-elect, and consecration was again
refused by the Norman Archbishop.[375] Spearhafoc, rejected, unconsecrated,

nevertheless went to Saint Paul’s, and took Spearhafoc occupies
the Bishoprick
possession of the see which he held by the King’s without consecration.
full and regular grant.[376] No doubt he did not
pretend to discharge any purely episcopal functions, but he kept possession
of the see and its revenues, and probably exercised at least its temporal
authority. This he did, the Chronicler significantly adds, all that summer and
autumn.[377] Before the year was out, the crisis had come, and had brought
with it the momentary triumph of the strangers.

One act more must be recorded before we come to the end of this portion
of Eadward’s reign. In a meeting of the Witan, seemingly that in which
Robert, Spearhafoc, and Rudolf received their The remaining ships
paid off and the
several appointments, the remaining five ships of Heregyld remitted.
the standing or mercenary naval force were paid
off.[378] The war-contribution or Heregyld was therefore no longer exacted.
This tax had now been paid for thirty-eight years, 1012.
ever since Thurkill and his fleet entered the service of Æthelred.[379] This
impost had all along been felt to be a great burthen; we are told that it was
paid before all other taxes, the other taxes themselves, it would seem, being
looked upon as heavy.[380] The glimpse which is thus given us of the
financial system of the time is just enough to make us wish for fuller
knowledge. We must remember that in a rude state of society any kind of
taxation is apt to be looked on as a grievance. It requires a very
considerable political developement for a nation to feel that the power of
the purse is the surest safeguard of freedom. But there must have been
something specially hateful about this tax to account for the way in which it
is spoken of by the contemporary chroniclers, and for the hold which, as the
legends show,[381] it kept on the popular imagination. The holy King, we are
told, in company with Earl Leofric, one day entered the treasury in which
the money raised by the tax was collected; he there saw the Devil sitting
and playing with the coin; warned by the sight, he at once remitted the tax.
In this story the tax is called Danegeld, and as Distinction between
Danegeld and
many of the sailors in the English service were Heregyld.
likely to be Danes, the Heregyld seems to have
been confounded with the Danegeld, and to have been popularly called by
that name.[382] The Danegeld was in strictness a payment made to buy off

the ravages of Danish invaders, a practice of which we have seen instances
enough and to spare in the days of Æthelred. But the tax now taken off was
simply a war-tax for the maintenance of a fleet, a fleet whose crews may
have been to a great extent Danes, but Danes who were not the enemies of
England, but engaged in her service. The two ideas however easily ran into
one another; it might be difficult to say under which head we ought to place
some of the payments made both under Cnut and under Harthacnut. But the
Heregyld, in its more innocent shape, would, according to modern ideas, be
an impost absolutely necessary for the defence of the country. If the tax
were remitted, no naval force would be retained, except the contingents of
the shires, which could not in any case be very readily forthcoming. But,
besides the general dislike to taxation of any kind, Import of the
remission.
this particular tax was a painful and hateful badge
of national disgrace. It was a memory of times when England could find no
defence against strangers except by taking other strangers into her pay. Its
remission was doubtless looked on as a declaration that England no longer
needed the services of strangers, or of hired troops of any kind, but that she
could trust to the ready patriotism and valour of her own sons. The Law
required every Englishman to join the royal standard at the royal summons.
[383]
The effectual execution of that law was doubtless held to be a truer
safeguard than the employment of men, whether natives or strangers, who
served only for their pay. Such reasonings had their weak side even in those
days, but they were eminently in the spirit of the time. The measure was
undoubtedly a popular one, and we are hardly in a position to say that,
under the circumstances of the time, it may not have been a wise one.

§ 4. The Banishment of Earl Godwine. 1051.

The influence of the strangers had now reached The foreign influence
at its height.
its height. As yet it has appeared on the face of the
narrative mainly in the direction given to ecclesiastical preferments. During
the first nine years of Eadward’s reign, we find no signs of any open
warfare between the national and the Normannizing parties. The course of
events shows that Godwine’s power was being practically undermined, but
he was still outwardly in the enjoyment of royal favour, and his vast
possessions were still being added to by royal grants.[384] It is remarkable
how seldom, at this stage of Eadward’s reign, the acts of the Witan bear the
signatures of any foreigners except churchmen.[385] We meet also with slight
indications showing that the King’s foreign kinsmen and the national
leaders were not yet on terms of open enmity.[386] It Its seemingly stealthy
character.
was probably the policy of the strangers to confine
their action in public matters to influencing the King’s mind through his
ecclesiastical favourites, while the mass of them were gradually providing
in other ways for their own firm establishment in the land. But the tale
which I now have to tell clearly reveals the fact that the number of French
landowners in England was already considerable, and that they had made
themselves deeply hateful to the English people. Stealthily but surely, the
foreign favourites of Eadward had eaten into the vitals of England, and they
soon had the means of showing how bitter was the hatred which they bore
towards the champions of English freedom. Comparison between
Danish and Norman
England now, under a native King of her own influences.
choice, felt, far more keenly than she had ever felt
under her Danish conqueror, how great the evil is when a King and those
who immediately surround him are estranged in feeling from the mass of
his people. The great Dane had gradually learned to feel and to reign as an
Englishman, to trust himself to the love of his English subjects, and to
surround the throne of the conqueror with the men whom his own axe and
spear had overcome. Even during the troubled reigns of his two sons, the
degeneracy was for the most part merely personal. Harthacnut indeed laid
on heavy and unpopular taxes for the payment of his Danish fleet;[387] but it
does not appear that, even under him, Englishmen as Englishmen were

subjected to systematic oppression and insult on the part of strangers. And,
after all, the Danish followers of Cnut and his sons were men of kindred
blood and speech. They could hardly be looked on in any part of England as
aliens in the strictest sense, while to the inhabitants of a large part of the
Kingdom they appeared as actual countrymen. But now, as a foretaste of
what was to come fifteen years later, men utterly strange in speech and
feeling stood around the throne, engrossed the personal favour of the King,
perverted the course of justice, shared among themselves the highest places
in the Church, and were already beginning to stretch out their hands to
English lands and lordships as well as to English Bishopricks. The Dane,
once brought to the knowledge of a purer faith and a higher civilization,
soon learned to identify himself with the land in which he had settled, and
to live as an Englishman under the Law of Incapacity of the
French to appreciate
England. But to the French favourites of Eadward English institutions.
the name, the speech, the laws of England were
things on which their ignorant pride looked down with utter contempt. They
had no sympathy with that great fabric of English liberty, which gave to
every freeman his place in the commonwealth, and even to the slave held
out the prospect of freedom. Gentlemen of the school of Richard the Good,
[388]
taught to despise all beneath them as beings of an inferior nature, could
not understand the spirit of a land where the Churl had his rights before the
Law, where he could still raise his applauding voice in the Assemblies of
the nation, and where men already felt as keenly as we feel now that an
Englishman’s house is his castle. Everything in short which had already
made England free and glorious, everything which it is now our pride and
happiness to have preserved down to our own times, was looked on by the
foreign counsellors of Eadward as a mark of manifest inferiority and
barbarism. The Dane spoke a tongue which hardly Diversity in speech;
differed more widely from our own than the dialects of different parts of the
Kingdom differed from one another. But the ancient mother-speech, once
common to Dane and Frank and Angle and Saxon, the speech of which
some faint traces may still have lingered at Laôn and at Bayeux, had now
become only one of many objects of contempt in the eyes of men whose
standards were drawn from the Romanized courts in military tactics.
of Rouen and Paris. The Dane met the Englishman in battle, face to face
and hand to hand, with the same tactics and the same weapons. Shield-wall
to shield-wall, sword to sword or axe to axe, had men waged the long

warfare which had ranged from the fight of 871–1016.
Reading to the fight of Assandun. To the Frenchman the traditions of
Teutonic warfare appeared contemptible.[389] His trust was placed, not in the
stout heart and the strong arm of the warrior, but in the horse which is as
useful in the flight as in the charge, and in the arrow which places the
coward and the hero upon a level.[390] Men brought up in such feelings as
these, full too no doubt of the insolent and biting wit of their nation, now
stood round the throne of the King of the English. They were not as yet, to
any great extent, temporal rulers of the land, but they had already begun to
be owners of its soil; they were already the Fathers of the Church; they
were the personal friends of the King; they were the channels of royal
favour; their influence could obtain the highest ecclesiastical office, when it
was refused alike to the demand of the Earl of the West-Saxons and to the
prayer of the canonical electors. In the company of these men the King was
at home; among his own people he was a stranger. Evils of a
denationalized Court,
The sight of a denationalized Court, a Court where especially in early
the national tongue is despised and where the times.
sounds of a foreign speech are alone thought
worthy of royal lips, a Court in which the heart of the sovereign beats more
warmly for foreign favourites or foreign kinsmen than for the children of
the soil, is a sight which in any age is enough to stir up a nation’s blood. But
far heavier is the wrong in an age when Kings govern as well as reign,
when it is not the mere hangers-on of a Court, but the nation itself, which is
made personally to feel that strangers fill the posts of honour and influence,
on its own soil and at its own cost. Often indeed since the days of Eadward
has the Court of England been the least English thing within the realm of
England. But, for ages past, no sovereign, however foreign in blood or
feeling, could have ventured to place a stranger, ignorant of the English
tongue, on the patriarchal throne of Dunstan and Revolt of England
against the foreign
Ælfheah. Against such a state of things as this the influence.
heart of England rose. And the soul of the patriotic
movement, the leader of the patriotic struggle, was the man whom Norman
calumny has ever since picked out as its special victim, but with whom
every true English heart was prepared to live and die. The man who strove
for England, the man who for a while suffered for England, but who soon
returned in triumph to rescue England, was once more Godwine, Earl of the
West-Saxons.

The refusal of the King to confer the Indignation at the
appointment of
Archbishoprick of Canterbury on a kinsman of the Robert to Canterbury.
great Earl regularly chosen by the Convent of the
metropolitan church, its bestowal instead on an intriguing monk from
Jumièges, had no doubt deeply embittered the feelings of Godwine and of
all true Englishmen. All the sons of the Church, we are told, lamented the
wrong;[391] and we may be sure that the feeling was in no way confined to
those who are no doubt chiefly intended by that description. It now became
the main object of the foreign Archbishop to bring about the ruin of the
English Earl. Robert employed his influence with Robert’s cabals
against Godwine.
the King to set him still more strongly against his 1051.
father-in-law, to fill his ears with calumnies against
him, above all, to bring up again the old charge, of which Godwine had
been so solemnly acquitted, which made him an accomplice in the death of
Ælfred.[392] A dispute about the right to some lands which adjoined the
estates both of the Earl and of the Primate further embittered the dissension
between them.[393] Godwine’s influence was manifestly fast giving way, and
an open struggle was becoming imminent. Just at this moment, an act of
foreign insolence and brutality which surpassed anything which had
hitherto happened brought the whole matter to a crisis.

We have seen that Eadward’s sister Godgifu— Marriages of Godgifu
daughter of Æthelred
the Goda of Norman writers—the daughter of with Drogo of Mantes
Æthelred and Emma, had been married to Drogo, and Eustace of
Count of Mantes or of the French Vexin. Their son, Boulogne.
Ralph the Timid, was now high in favour at the court of his uncle.[394] Drogo
had accompanied Duke Robert on his pilgrimage, and, like him, had died on
his journey.[395] His widow, who must now have been a good deal past her
prime,[396] had nevertheless found a second French husband in Eustace,
Count of Boulogne. This prince, whom English history sets before us only
in the darkest colours, was fated by a strange destiny to be the father of one
of the noblest heroes of Christendom, of Godfrey, Duke of Lotharingia and
King of Jerusalem. We cannot however claim the great Crusader as one who
had English blood in his veins through either parent. The second marriage
of Godgifu was childless, and the renowned sons of Eustace, Godfrey and
his brother Baldwin, were the children of his second wife Ida. The Count of

Boulogne, now brother-in-law of the King of the Visit of Eustace to
Eadward. September,
English, presently came, like the rest of the world, 1051.
to the English Court. The exact object of his
coming is not recorded, but we are told that whatever he came for he got.[397]
Some new favours were doubtless won for foreign followers, and some
share of the wealth of England for himself. It was now September, and the
King, as seems to have been his custom, was spending the autumn at
Gloucester.[398] Thither then came Count Eustace, and, after his satisfactory
interview with the King, he turned his face Return of Eustace.
homewards. We have no account of his journey till he reached Canterbury;
[399]
there he halted, refreshed himself and his men, and rode on towards
Dover. Perhaps, in a land so specially devoted to Godwine, he felt himself
to be still more thoroughly in an enemy’s country than in other parts of
England. At all events, when they were still a few miles from Dover, the
Count and all his company took the precaution of putting on their coats of
mail.[400] They entered the town; accustomed to the Outrages of Eustace
and his party at
unbridled licence of their own land, puffed up no Dover.
doubt by the favourable reception which they had
met with at the King’s Court, they deemed that the goods and lives of
Englishmen were at their mercy. Who was the villain or the burgher who
could dare to refuse ought to a sovereign prince, the friend and brother-in-
law of the Emperor of Britain? Men born on English soil, accustomed to the
protection of English Law, men who for one and 1020–1051.
thirty years[401] had lived under the rule of Godwine, looked on matters in
quite another light. The Frenchmen expected to find free quarters in the
town of Dover, and they attempted to lodge themselves at their pleasure in
the houses of the burghers. There was one Englishman especially—his
name unluckily is not preserved—into whose house a Frenchman was bent
on forcing himself against the owner’s will. The The burghers resist,
master of the house resisted; the stranger drew his weapon and wounded
him; the Englishman struck the intruder dead on the spot.[402] Count Eustace
mounted his horse as if for battle;[403] his followers mounted theirs, the
stout-hearted Englishman was slain within his own house. The Count’s
party then rode through the town, cutting about them and slaying at
pleasure. But the neighbours of the murdered man had now come together;
the burghers resisted valiantly; a skirmish began; and drive the French
out of the town.
twenty Englishmen were slain, and nineteen

Frenchmen, besides many who were wounded. Count Eustace and the
remnant of his party made their way out of the town, and hastened back to
King Eadward at Gloucester. They there told the Eustace accuses the
men of Dover to the
story after their own fashion, throwing of course King.
all the blame upon the insolent burghers of Dover.
[404]
It is not hard to throw oneself into the position of the accusers. To
chivalrous Frenchmen the act of the English burgher in defending his house
against a forcible entry would seem something quite beyond their
understandings. To their notions the appeal to right and law to which
Englishmen were familiar, would seem, on the part of men of inferior rank,
something almost out of the course of nature. We often see the same sort of
feeling now-a-days in men whom a long course of military habits, a life
spent in the alternation of blind obedience and arbitrary command, has
made incapable of understanding those notions of right and justice which
seem perfectly plain to men who are accustomed to acknowledge no master
but the Law.[405] The crime of Eustace was a dark one; but we may be
inclined to pass a heavier judgement still on the crime of the English King,
who, on the mere accusation of the stranger, condemned his own subjects
without a hearing. When Eustace had told his tale, the King became very
wroth with the burghers of Dover,[406] and this time he thought that he had
not only the will but the power to hurt.[407] He sent Eadward commands
Godwine to inflict
for Godwine, as Earl of the district in which the military chastisement
offending town lay. The English champion was on the town.
then in the midst of a domestic rejoicing. He had,
like the King, been strengthening himself by a foreign alliance, and had just
connected his house with that of a sovereign prince. Tostig, the third son of
Godwine, had just married Judith, the daughter or near kinswoman of
Baldwin of Flanders.[408] Such a marriage could hardly have been contracted
without a political object. An alliance with a prince reigning in the
debateable land between France and Germany, a land which, though its
princes were rapidly becoming French, had by no means wholly lost its
Teutonic character, was quite in harmony with the Lotharingian connexion
so steadily maintained by Godwine and Harold. At the same time, an
alliance with a prince who had been so lately in arms against England may
not have tended to increase Godwine’s favour with the King. The Earl left
the marriage-feast of his son, and hastened to the King at Gloucester.
Eadward then told him what insults had been offered within his Earldom to

a sovereign allied to himself by friendship and marriage. Let Godwine go,
and subject the offending town to all the severity of military chastisement.
[409]
Godwine had once before been sent on the like Comparison between
[410] the cases of Worcester
errand in the days of Harthacnut. He had then under Harthacnut and
not dared to refuse, though he had done what he Dover under
could to lighten the infliction of a harsh and unjust Eadward.
sentence. And, after all, the two cases were not alike. In the case of
Worcester, Godwine was required to act as a military commander against a
town which was not within his government, and whose citizens stood in no
special relation to him. The citizens of Worcester too had been guilty of a
real crime. Their crime was indeed one which might readily have been
pardoned, and the punishment decreed was out of all proportion to the
offence. Still the death of the two Housecarls fairly called for some
atonement, though certainly not for an atonement of the kind commanded
by Harthacnut. At that time too it was probably sound policy in Godwine to
undertake the commission in which he was joined with the other great Earls
of England, and merely to do his best to lighten its severity in act. But in the
present case all the circumstances were different. Dover was a town in
Godwine’s own Earldom; it would almost seem that it was a town
connected with him by a special tie, a town whose burghers formed a part
of his personal following.[411] At all events it was a town over which he
exercised the powers of the highest civil magistracy, where, if it was his
duty to punish the guilty, it was equally his duty to defend and shelter the
innocent. Such a town he was now bidden, without the least legal proof of
any offence, to visit with all the horrors of fire and sword. Godwine was not
long in choosing his course. Official duty and Godwine refuses to
obey the King’s
public policy, no less than abstract justice and orders.
humanity, dictated a distinct refusal. Now or never
a stand was to be made against the strangers. Now that Englishmen had
been insulted and murdered by the King’s foreign favourites, the time was
indeed come to put an end to a system under which those favourites were
beginning to deal with England as with a conquered country. The eloquent
voice of the great Earl was raised, in the presence He demands a legal
trial for the burghers.
of the King, probably in the presence of Eustace
and the other strangers, in the cause of truth and justice.[412] In England, he
told them, there was a Law supreme over all, and courts in which justice
could be denied to no man. Count Eustace had brought a charge against the

men of Dover. They had, as he alleged, broken the King’s peace, and done
personal wrong to himself and his companions. Let then the magistrates of
the town be summoned before the King and his Witan, and there be heard in
their own defence and in that of their fellow-burghers. If they could make a
good excuse for their conduct, let them depart unhurt; if they could be
proved to have sinned against the King or against the Count, let them pay
for their fault with their purses or with their persons. He, as Earl of the
West-Saxons, was the natural protector of the men of Dover; he would
never agree to any sentence pronounced against them without a fair trial,
nor would he consent to the infliction of any sort of illegal hardship upon
those whom he was bound to defend. The Earl then went his way; he had
done his own duty; he was accustomed to these momentary ebullitions of
wrath on the part of his royal son-in-law, and he expected that the affair
would soon be forgotten.[413]
But there were influences about Eadward which cut off all hope of any
such peaceful settlement of the matter. Eustace probably still lingered about
the King, to repeat his own story, to enlarge on the insolence of the men of
Dover, and on the disobedience—he would call it the treason—of the West-
Saxon Earl himself. And there was another voice Archbishop Robert
excites the King
ever at the royal ear, ever ready to poison the royal against Godwine.
mind against the English people and their leader.
The foreign monk who sat on the throne of so many English saints again
seized the opportunity to revive the calumnies of past times. He once more
impressed upon the King that the man who refused to obey his orders, the
man who had protected, perhaps excited, rebellious burghers against his
dearest friends, was also the man who had, years before, betrayed his
brother to a death of torment.[414] The old and the new charges worked
together on the King’s mind, and he summoned a The Witan summoned
to Gloucester to hear
Meeting of the Witan at Gloucester, to sit in charges against
judgement, no longer on the men of Dover, who Godwine.
seem by this time to have been forgotten, but on
Godwine himself.[415] The Earl now saw that he must be prepared for all
risks. And, just at this moment, another instance of the insolence and
violence of the foreigners in another part of the Kingdom served to stir up
men’s minds to the highest pitch. Among the Building of Richard’s
Castle in
Frenchmen who flocked to the land of promise was Herefordshire.
one named Richard the son of Scrob, who had

received a grant of lands in Herefordshire. He and his son Osbern had there
built a castle on a spot which, by a singularly lasting tradition, preserves to
this day the memory of himself and his building.[416] The fortress itself has
vanished, but its site is still to be marked, and the name of Richard’s Castle,
still borne by the parish in which it stood, is an abiding witness of the deep
impression which its erection made on the minds of the men of those times.
The building of castles is something of which the Import of the building
of castles.
English writers of this age frequently speak, and
speak always with a special kind of horror.[417] Both the name and the thing
were new. To fortify a town, to build a citadel to protect a town, were
processes with which England had long been familiar.[418] To contribute to
such necessary public works was one of the three immemorial obligations
from which no Englishman could free himself.[419] But for a private
landowner to raise a private fortress to be the terror of his neighbours was
something to which Englishmen had hitherto been unaccustomed, and for
such a structure the English language had hitherto contained no name. But
now the tall, square, massive donjon of the Normans, a building whose
grandest type is to be seen in the Conqueror’s own Tower of London and in
the more enriched keep of Rochester, began, doubtless on a far humbler
scale, to rear itself over the dwellings of Englishmen. Normandy had,
during the minority of William, been covered with such buildings, and his
wise policy had levelled many of them with the ground.[420] Such buildings,
strange to English eyes, bore no English name, but retained their French
designation of castles.[421] Such a castle at once became a centre of all kinds
of oppression. Men were harboured in it, and deeds were done within its
impregnable walls, such as could find no place in the open hall of the
ancient English Thegn. So it was with the castle which was now raised
within the government of the eldest son of Godwine. The Welshmen, as
they are called—that is, not Britons, but Frenchmen, Gal-Welsh, not Bret-
Welsh—built their castle, and “wrought all the harm and besmear”—an
expressive word which has dropped out of the language—“to the King’s
men thereabouts that they might.”[422] Here then was another wrong, a
wrong perhaps hardly second to the wrong which had been done at Dover.
Alike in Kent and in Herefordshire men had felt the sort of treatment which
they were to expect if the King’s foreign favourites were to be any longer
tolerated. The time was now come for Englishmen to make a stand.

The Earl of the West-Saxons was not a man to Godwine and his sons
meet at Beverstone
be wanting to his country at such a moment. He, with the force of their
with his sons Swegen and Harold, gathered Earldoms.
together the force of their three Earldoms at
Beverstone in Gloucestershire. This is a point on the Cotswolds, not far
from the Abbey of Malmesbury, still marked by a castle of far later date, the
remaining fragments of which form one of the most remarkable antiquities
of the district. At this time it seems to have been a royal possession, and it
may not unlikely have contained a royal house, which would probably be at
the disposal of Swegen as Earl of the shire.[423] At Beverstone then
assembled the men of Wessex, of East-Anglia, and of that part of Mercia
which was under the jurisdiction of Swegen. They came, it would seem,
ready either for debate or for battle, as might happen. We must here again
remember what the ancient constitution of our National Assemblies really
was. If all actually came who had a strict right to come, the Gemót was a
ready-made army. On the other hand we have seen that an army, gathered
together as an army, sometimes took on itself the The forces of Siward,
Leofric, and Ralph
functions of a Gemót.[424] Meanwhile, while assemble at
Godwine assembled his men at Beverstone, the Gloucester.
forces of the Earldoms of Siward, Leofric, and
Ralph were assembling round the King at Gloucester. Each of the two
gatherings might pass for the local Witenagemót of one half of England. At
the head of the men of three Earldoms Godwine was still bolder than when
he had stood alone in the royal presence. He had then only refused to punish
the innocent; he now demanded the punishment of the guilty. His first steps
however were conciliatory. He first demanded an audience for himself and
his sons, as Earls of the three Earldoms; they were ready and anxious to
take counsel with the King and his Witan on all matters touching the honour
of the King and his people.[425] He even offered to renew his compurgation
on the old charge of the death of Ælfred.[426] But Godwine’s offers to
the King refused
the Frenchmen swarmed around the King; they through the influence
filled his ears with the usual charges against of Frenchmen.
Godwine and his sons; they assured him that the
only object of the Earls was to betray him.[427] Eadward therefore refused
the audience, and declined to receive the compurgation.[428] Godwine then
took a higher tone; messages were sent in his name Godwine demands the
surrender of Eustace
and in the name of the men of the three Earldoms, and the other

demanding the surrender of Eustace and his men criminals. September
8, 1051.
and of the Frenchmen at Richard’s Castle.[429] The
demand was a bold one; Godwine asked for the surrender of the person of a
foreign prince, the King’s own favourite and brother-in-law. But the
demand, if bold, was perfectly justifiable. The two parties of Frenchmen
had been guilty of outrageous crimes within the jurisdictions of Godwine
and Swegen respectively. The King, instead of bringing them to justice, was
sheltering them, and even listening to their charges against innocent men.
Their lawful judges, the Earls of the two districts, were ready, at the head of
the Witan of their Earldoms, to do that justice which the King had refused.
The demand was seemingly backed by threats of an appeal to that last
argument by which unrighteous rulers must be brought to reason. Godwine
and his followers threatened war against Eadward, as the later Barons of
England threatened war against John.[430] The King was frightened and
perplexed. He sent to hasten the coming of Siward, The Northern Earls
bring their full forces.
Leofric, and Ralph, and bade them bring a force
strong enough to keep Godwine and his party in check. Seemingly they had
at first brought or sent only a small body of men; when they heard the full
state of the case, they hastened to the King with the whole force of their
Earldoms, and restored confidence to his timid mind.[431] This was the sort
of occasion which was sure to awaken those provincial jealousies which in
that age were often lulled to sleep, but which were never completely got rid
of. The northern and southern parts of England were again arrayed against
each other, just as they had been in the great 1035.
[432]
Gemót of Oxford sixteen years before. The French followers of Ralph
and the French friends of Eadward were doubtless glad of any excuse to
shed the blood or to seize the lands of Englishmen. Siward and his Danes
were seemingly not displeased with a state of things in which jealousy of
the West-Saxon Earl could be so honourably cloaked under the guise of
loyalty to the West-Saxon King. They were therefore quite ready to play
into the hands of the strangers. They were still on The King finally
refuses to surrender
their march, but seemingly close to the town, when the Frenchmen.
Eadward gave his final answer to the messengers
of Godwine; Eustace and the other accused persons should not be given up.
The messengers had hardly left Gloucester, when The Northumbrians
ready for battle.
the Northern host entered the city, eager to be led
to battle against the men of Wessex and East-Anglia.[433] Godwine and his

followers saw by this time that there was little hope of bringing the King to
reason by peaceful means. Every offer tending to reconciliation had been
spurned; every demand of the Earls and their people had been refused. The
punishment of the innocent had been commanded; the punishment of the
guilty had been denied; the old charges, of which Godwine had been so
solemnly acquitted eleven years before, were again 1040.
raked up against him by the slanderous tongue of a foreign priest. Loath as
the Earl and his followers were to fight against March of the West-
[434] Saxons and East-
their Lord the King, they saw no hope but in an Angles on
appeal to arms, and the men of the three Earldoms Gloucester.
made themselves ready for battle. From the heights
of the Cotswolds on which they had been gathered, they marched down the
hill-side which overlooks the fairest and most fertile of English valleys.[435]
The broad Severn wound through the plain beneath them; beyond its sandy
flood rose, range beyond range, the hills which guarded the land of the still
unconquered Briton. Far away, like a glimpse of another world, opened the
deep vale of the Welsh Axe,[436] the mountain land of Brecheiniog, where, in
the furthest distance, the giant Beacons soar, vast and dim, the mightiest
natural fortress of the southern Cymry. Even then some glimpses of days to
come may have kindled the soul of Harold, as he looked forth on the land
which was, before many years, to ring with his renown, and to see his name
engraved as conqueror on the trophies of so many battle-fields. They passed
by relics of unrecorded antiquity, by fortresses and tombs reared by the
hands of men who had been forgotten before the days of Ceawlin, some
perhaps even before the days of Cæsar. They passed by the vast hill-fort of
Uleybury, where the Briton had bid defiance to the Roman invader. They
passed by the huge mound, the Giants’-Chamber of the dead, covering the
remains of men whose name and race had passed away, perhaps before even
the Briton had fixed himself in the islands of the West.[437] Straight in their
path rose the towers, in that day no doubt tall and slender, of the great
minster of the city which was their goal, where their King sat a willing
captive in the hands of the enemies of his people. And, still far beyond, rose
other hills, the heights of Herefordshire and Shropshire, the blue range of
Malvern and the far distant Titterstone, bringing the host as it were into the
actual presence of the evil deeds with which the stranger was defiling that
lovely region. Godwine had kept his watch on the heights of Beverstone, as
Thrasyboulos had kept his on the heights of Phylê,[438] and he now came

down, with the truest sons of England at his bidding, ready, as need might
be, to strive for her freedom either in the debates of the Witan or in the
actual storm of battle. But there were now men in War hindered by the
intervention of
the King’s train at Gloucester who were not Leofric.
prepared to shed the blood of their countrymen in
the cause of strangers. Eadward had now counsellors at his side who had no
mind to push personal or provincial jealousy to the extent of treason to their
common country. Earl Leofric had obeyed the command of the King, and
had brought the force of Mercia to the royal muster at Gloucester. Some
jealousies of Godwine may well have rankled in his breast, but love of his
country was a stronger feeling still. He was not ready to sacrifice the
champion of England to men who had trampled on every rule of English
law and of natural right, men who seemed to deem it a crime if Englishmen
refused to lie still and be butchered on their hearth- He effects a
compromise, and
stones. The good old Earl of the Mercians now, as procures the
ever,[439] stood forth as the representative of peace adjournment of the
and compromise between extreme parties. The best Gemót.
men of England were arrayed in one host or the other. It were madness
indeed for Englishmen to destroy one another, simply to hand over the land
to its enemies without defence.[440] But, while two armed hosts stood ready
for battle, there was no room for peaceful debate. Let both sides depart; let
hostages be given on both sides, and let the Meeting of the Witan stand
adjourned, to assemble again, after a few weeks, in another place.
Meanwhile all enmities on either side should cease, and both sides should
be held to be in full possession of the King’s peace and friendship.[441] The
proposal of Leofric was accepted by both parties, and the Gemót was
accordingly adjourned, to meet in London at Michaelmas.

The objects of Leofric in this momentary Gemót of London.
September 29, 1051.
compromise were undoubtedly honourable and
patriotic. But King Eadward and his foreign advisers seem to have been
determined to make the most of the breathing-space thus given them for the
damage of the national cause. The King employed Eadward appears at
the head of an army.
the time in collecting an army still more powerful
than that which had surrounded him at Gloucester. He seems to have got
together the whole force of Northumberland and Mercia, and to have
summoned the immediate following of the King, the royal Housecarls, and
perhaps the King’s immediate Thegns, even within Godwine’s own
Earldom.[442] The King’s quarters were probably at his favourite palace of
Westminster. Godwine came, accompanied by a large force of the men of
his Earldom, to his own house in Southwark.[443] The King’s demands
of Godwine.
Several messages passed to and fro between him
and the King. But it soon became clear that, though the King’s full peace
and friendship had been assured to Godwine, there was no intention in the
royal councils of showing him any favour, or even of treating him with
common justice. The two parties had separated at Gloucester on equal
terms. Each had been declared to be alike the King’s friends; each alike had
given hostages to the other; the matters at issue between them were to be
fairly discussed in the adjourned Gemót. Instead of this agreement being
carried out, Godwine and his sons found themselves dealt with as criminals.
The first act of the Assembly, seemingly before The outlawry of
Swegen renewed.
Godwine and his sons had appeared at all, was to Injustice of its
renew the outlawry of Swegen.[444] No act could be renewal.
more unjust. His old crimes could no longer be
brought up against him with any fairness. The time when they might have
been rightly urged was on the motion for the repeal of his former outlawry.
[445]
But, whether wisely or unwisely, that outlawry had been legally
reversed; Swegen had been restored to his Earldom, a restoration which of
course implied the absolute pardon of all his former offences. Since that
time, we hear of no fresh crime on his part, unless it were a crime to have
been a fellow-worker with his father, his brother, and the men of his
Earldom, in resistance to the wrongs inflicted by the strangers. To condemn
Swegen afresh for his old offences was a flagrant breach of all justice; to
condemn him for his late conduct was a breach of justice equally flagrant in
another way. Besides this, his condemnation on this last ground would carry

with it an equal condemnation of Godwine and Harold. Swegen then was
outlawed, and that, as far as we can see, without a Godwine and Harold
summoned before the
hearing; and Godwine and Harold were summoned King.
to appear before the King, seemingly as criminals
to receive judgement. Bishop Stigand, in whose diocese Godwine was then
living, procured some delay;[446] but Archbishop Robert took advantage of
that very delay, still further to poison the King’s mind against the Earl.[447]
Godwine, after the treatment which his eldest son had just received,
declined to appear, unless he received an assurance of the King’s favour,
guaranteed by the placing of special hostages in his hands, as pledges for
his personal safety during the interview. The King’s answer was apparently
a demand that the Earls should allow, or perhaps compel, all the King’s
Thegns who had joined them, to go over to the King’s side.[448] The demand
was at once obeyed. By this time the tide was clearly turning against
Godwine, and the force which he had brought with him to Southwark was
getting smaller and smaller.[449] The King again Final summons of the
Earls.
summoned the Earls to appear, with twelve
companions only. We can hardly believe that Stigand was compelled,
however against his will, to announce as a serious message to Godwine that
the King’s final resolution was that Godwine could hope for his peace only
when he restored to him his brother Ælfred and his companions safe and
sound.[450] It is inconceivable that such words can have formed part of a
formal summons, but it is quite possible that they may have been uttered in
mockery, either by the King or by his Norman Their demand for a
safe-conduct is
Archbishop. But whatever was the form of the refused.
summons, Godwine and Harold refused to appear,
unless they received hostages and a safe-conduct for their coming and
going.[451] Without such security they could not appear in an Assembly
which had sunk into a mere gathering of their enemies.[452] They had
obeyed, and would obey, the King in all things consistent with their safety
and their honour. But both their safety and their honour would be at stake, if
they appeared before such a tribunal without any sort of safeguard, and
without their usual retinue as Earls of two great Earldoms.[453] The demand
was perfectly reasonable.[454] Godwine and his son could not be expected to
appear, without safeguards of any kind, in such an assembly as that which
now surrounded the King. The adjourned Gemót had been summoned for
the free and fair discussion of all disputes between two parties, each of

which was declared to be in the full enjoyment of the King’s peace and
friendship. It was now turned into a Court, in which one son of Godwine
had been outlawed without a crime or a hearing, in which Godwine himself
was summoned to receive judgement on charges on one of which he had
been years before solemnly acquitted. The hostages and the safe-conduct
were refused. The refusal was announced by Stigand to the Earl as he sat at
his evening meal. The Bishop wept; the Earl sprang to his feet, overthrew
the table,[455] sprang on his horse, and, with his sons, rode for his life all that
night.[456] In the morning the King held his Witenagemót, and by a vote of
the King and his whole army,[457] Godwine and his Godwine and his
family outlawed.
sons were declared outlaws, but five days were
allowed them to get them out of the land.[458] By this time Godwine,
Swegen, Tostig, and Gyrth, together with Gytha Godwine, Swegen,
&c., take refuge in
and Judith, the newly-married wife of Tostig, had Flanders.
reached either Bosham or the South-Saxon
Thorney.[459] There could be little doubt as to the course which they were to
take. Flanders, Baldwines land, was the common refuge of English exiles,
and Godwine and the Flemish Count are said to have been bound to one
another by the tie of many mutual benefits.[460] It was at the court of
Baldwin that Swegen had taken refuge in his exile, and the Count was the
near kinsman, perhaps the father, of Tostig’s bride, whose wedding-
festivities had been so cruelly interrupted by these sudden gatherings of
Gemóts and armies.[461] For Bruges then they set sail in a ship laded with as
much treasure as it would hold.[462] They reached the court of Flanders in
safety; they were honourably received by the Count,[463] and passed the
whole winter with him.[464]
Godwine then, with the greater part of his family,[465] had found shelter in
the quarter where English exiles of that age commonly did find shelter. But
two of his sons sought quite another refuge. To seek shelter in Flanders, a
land forming the natural point of intercommunication between England,
France, and Germany, was the obvious course for one whose first object, as
we shall presently see, was to obtain his restoration by peaceful diplomacy.
Such were the designs of Godwine, the veteran statesman, the man who
never resorted to force till all other means had been Harold determines on
resistance.
tried in vain. But Harold, still young, and at all
times more vehement in temper than his father, had not yet learned this
lesson. His high spirit chafed under his wrongs, and he determined from the

first on a forcible return to his country, even, if need be, by the help of a
foreign force. This determination is the least honourable fact recorded in
Harold’s life. It was indeed no more than was usual Estimate of his
conduct.
with banished men in his age. It is what we have
already seen done by Osgod Clapa;[466] it is what we shall presently see done
by Ælfgar the son of Leofric; it was in fact the natural resource of every
man of those times who found himself outlawed by any sentence, just or
unjust. If we judge Harold harshly in this matter, we are in fact doing him
the highest honour. So to judge him is in fact instinctively to recognize that
he has a right to be tried by a higher standard than the mass of his
contemporaries. Judged by such a standard, his conduct must be distinctly
condemned; but it should be noticed that, among the various charges, true
and false, which were brought against Harold, we never find any reference
to this, which, according to our ideas, seems the He determines to seek
help from the Irish
worst action of his life. In company with his young Danes.
brother Leofwine,[467] he despised the peaceful
shelter of Bruges, and preferred to betake himself to a land where, above all
others, it would be easy to engage warlike adventurers in his cause. The
eastern coast of Ireland, with the numerous towns peopled by Danish
settlers, lay admirably suited for their purpose. Thither then the two
brothers determined to make their way, with the Harold and Leofwine
go to Bristol; growing
fixed purpose of raising forces to effect their own importance of that
return and to avenge their father’s wrongs.[468] For port.
the port of their departure they chose Bristol, a
town in Swegen’s Earldom, unknown to fame in the earlier days of our
history, but which was now rising into great, though not very honourable,
importance. The port on the Avon, the frontier stream of Wessex and
Western Mercia, was the natural mart for a large portion of both those
countries. Commanding, as it did, the whole navigation of the Channel to
which it gives its name, Bristol was then, as now, the chief seat of
communication between England and the South of Ireland. That is to say, it
was in those days the chief seat of the Irish slave-trade.[469] In the haven of
Bristol Earl Swegen had, for what cause we are not told, a ship made ready
for himself.[470] The two brothers made the best of their way towards Bristol,
in order to seize this ship for the purpose of their voyage to Ireland. Perhaps
they had, wittingly or unwittingly, allowed their purpose of appealing to
arms to become known. This would be the only excuse for an act on the

King’s part, which, in any other case, would be one Ealdred sent to
overtake them.
of the most monstrous and unprovoked breaches of
faith on record. It is not likely that the five days, which had been allowed
the outlaws to leave the country, were yet passed. Harold and Leofwine
would be sure to make better speed than that. Yet Bishop Ealdred, whose
diocese of Worcester then took in the town of Bristol, was sent after them
from London with a party to overtake them, if possible, before they got on
ship-board. But the Bishop and his company were not zealous on an errand
which had at least the appearance of shameless perfidy. They failed to
overtake the fugitives; “they could not or they would not,” says the
Chronicler.[471] Harold and Leofwine reached They escape, reach
Ireland, and are well
Bristol in safety. They went on board Swegen’s received by King
ship; stress of weather kept them for a while at the Diarmid.
mouth of the Avon, but a favourable wind
presently carried them to Ireland.[472] They were there favourably received
by Dermot or Diarmid Mac Mael-na-mbo, King of Dublin and Leinster.[473]
He was a prince of native Irish descent, who had lately obtained possession
of the Danish district round Dublin, and whose 1050.
authority seems to have been recognized by the Danes as well as by the
Irish.[474] In such a state of things it would not be difficult to find bold spirits
ready for any adventure, and a King whose position must have been
somewhat precarious would doubtless welcome any chance of getting rid of
some of them. Diarmid gave Harold and Leofwine as kind a reception at
Dublin as the rest of the family had found from Baldwin at Bruges, and they
stayed at his court through the whole winter, plotting schemes of
vengeance.
One member only of the family of Godwine still The Lady Eadgyth
sent to the Abbey of
remained to be disposed of. What had been the Wherwell.
position or the feelings of Eadgyth during the
scenes which have been just described we have no means of knowing; but
she too was doomed to have her share in the misfortunes of her father’s
house. The English Lady, the daughter of Godwine, could not be allowed to
share the honours of royalty, now that all her kinsfolk were driven from the
land,[475] now that the reign of the Normans was about to set in. The
language of one contemporary authority seems almost to imply an actual
divorce, of which Archbishop Robert was of course the main instigator.[476]
The lawfulness or possibility of divorce in such a case might form a curious

subject of speculation for those who are learned in the Canon Law. Eadward
consented, perhaps willingly, to the separation; he allowed the Lady to be
deprived of all her goods, real and personal;[477] but he interfered at least to
save her from personal ignominy. Eadgyth was sent, with no lack of respect
or royal attendance,[478] to the royal monastery of Wherwell,[479] and was
there entrusted to the safe keeping of the Abbess. This Abbess was a sister
of the King,[480] no doubt one of the daughters of Æthelred by his first wife.
One of the widows of the slain and banished Earls, the relict of the traitor
Eadric or of the hero Ulfcytel,[481] had taken the veil in the holy house of
Eadgar and Ælfthryth,[482] and she could there confer with her guest on the
uncertainty of human happiness and the emptiness of human greatness.
The whole of this history of the fall of Godwine General character of
the story; its
is most remarkable; and it is singular that, though it difficulties.
is told in great detail in three distinct accounts, so
much still remains which is far from intelligible. The first point which at
once strikes us is the strength of Godwine in the Gemót of Gloucester and
his weakness in the Gemót of London. Next year indeed we shall see the
tide turn yet again; we shall behold Godwine return in triumph with the
good will of all England. This is of course no difficulty; it would be no
difficulty, even if popular feeling had been thoroughly against Godwine
during the former year. Englishmen welcomed Godwine back again,
because they had learned what it was to be without him. But the change of
Godwine’s position during that eventful September of which we have just
gone through the history is certainly perplexing. At Beverstone and at
Gloucester he appears at the head of the whole force of Wessex, East-
Anglia, and part of Mercia. All are zealous in his cause, ready, if need be, to
fight in his quarrel against the King himself. He is clearly not without well-
wishers even in the ranks of the Northern Sudden collapse of
the power of
Earldoms. A compromise is brought about in which Godwine.
his honour is carefully guarded, and in which his
party and the King’s are studiously put on equal terms. In the London
Gemót, a few weeks later, all is changed. His followers gradually drop away
from him; he does not venture to take his place in the Assembly which he
had so often swayed at his pleasure; he is dealt with as an accused, almost
as a convicted, criminal; he is subjected with impunity to every sort of
unjust and irritating treatment; and he is at last driven to flee from the land,
without a blow being struck, almost without a voice being raised, in his

behalf. Such a falling away is difficult to understand; it is hard to see how
Godwine could have given fresh offence to any one in the time between the
conference at Gloucester and his appearance at Southwark. Norman
flatterers and talebearers may have fanned the King’s prejudice against him
into a still hotter flame; but there is at first sight nothing to account for the
desertion of his own followers. As for the Northern Position of the
Northern Earls.
Earls and their followers, they had no ground of
jealousy against Godwine in London which they had not equally at
Gloucester; and at Gloucester they clearly were not disposed to push
matters to extremities. Still it was clearly the number and strength of the
following of Siward and Leofric in the London Gemót which decided the
day against Godwine. The Earl of the West-Saxons was entrapped. He and
his party came as to a peaceful assembly, and they found the King and his
foreign followers bent on their destruction, and a powerful military force
assembled to crush them. But why did even Siward lend himself to a
scheme like this? Why, still more, did Leofric forsake the part, which he
had so often and so worthily played, of mediator between extreme parties?
Unless we are to suppose, which one would not willingly do, that Leofric
was won by the bait of Harold’s Earldom for his son, we can only suppose
that a mistaken feeling of loyalty hindered him from opposing a project on
which he saw that the King was fully bent. It is in his position and that of
Siward that the main difficulty lies. When Godwine found himself face to
face with all the strength of Northern England, the rest of the story becomes
more intelligible. He had come expecting a fair Explanation of
Godwine’s position
discussion of all the questions at issue. But fair and conduct.
discussion was not to be had amid the clash of the
axes of Siward’s Danes and of the lances of Ralph’s Frenchmen. Godwine
had really no choice but to fight or to yield. Had he chosen to fight, the
whole force of Wessex and East-Anglia would no doubt soon have been
again at his command. But he shrank from a civil war; he saw that it was
better policy to bide his time, to yield, even to flee, certain that a revulsion
of national feeling would soon demand his recall. Such a course was
doubtless wise and patriotic; but it was not one which would be at the time
either acceptable or intelligible to the mass of his followers. If he meant to
resist, he should doubtless have resisted at once; the hopes of an
insurrection always lie in promptness and energy; every hour of delay only
adds to the strength of the other side. We can thus understand how men

began to fall off from a chief who, it might be said, dared not meet his
sovereign either in arms or in council. Still, after all, there is something
strange in the details of the story. There is His complete and
sudden fall.
something amazing in so sudden and so utter a fall,
not only from the general exaltation of himself and his family, but from the
proud and threatening position which he had so lately held at Beverstone
and Gloucester. It is not wonderful that Godwine’s Impression on his
contemporaries.
fall from such an unparalleled height of greatness
made a deep impression on the minds of the men of his own age. The
Biographer of Eadward, who had before likened the children of Godwine to
the rivers of Paradise,[483] now deems it a fitting occasion to call upon his
Muse to set forth the sufferings of the innocent, and to compare the
outlawed Earl to Susanna, Joseph, and other ancient victims of slander.[484]
The plain English of the Chronicler who is less strongly committed to
Godwine’s cause speaks more directly to the heart; “That would have
seemed wonderful to ilk man that in England was, if any man ere that had
said that so it should be. For that ere that he was so upheaven, so that he
wielded the King and all England, and his sons were Earls and the King’s
darlings, and his daughter to the King wedded and married.”[485] He fell
from his high estate; but in his fall he doubtless foresaw that the day of his
restoration was not far distant. Another Gemót of London was soon to
repeal the unrighteous vote of its predecessor; the champion of England was
to return for a moment to his old honours and his old power, and then to
hand them on to a son even more worthy of them than himself.

But for the moment the overthrow of the Complete temporary
triumph of the
patriotic leaders was complete. The dominion of Norman party.
the strangers over the mind of the feeble King was October 1051—
fully assured. The Norman Conquest, in short, September 1052.
might now seem to have more than begun. Honours and offices were of
course divided among the foreigners and among those Englishmen who had
stood on the King’s side. Through the banishment of Godwine and his sons
three great Earldoms were vacant. No one Earl of the West-Saxons seems to
have been appointed. Probably, as in the early days of Cnut,[486] the Imperial
Kingdom, or at least its greater portion, was again put under the immediate
government of the Crown. The anomalous Partition of honours
among the King’s

Earldom of Swegen was dismembered. The King’s friends.
nephew Ralph seems to have been again invested Ralph;
[487]
with the government of its Mercian portions. Of the two West-Saxon
shires held by Swegen, Berkshire is not mentioned, Odda;
but Somersetshire was joined with the other western parts of Wessex to
form a new government under Odda, a kinsman of the King’s.[488] His
Earldom took in the whole of the ancient Wealhcyn, but it is now Cornwall
only which is distinguished as Welsh. The policy of Æthelstan[489] had been
effectual, and no part of the land east of the Tamar is now recognized as a
foreign land. Odda was a special favourite of the monks, and is spoken of as
a man of good and clean life, who in the end became a monk himself.[490]
The third Earldom, that of East-Anglia, hitherto Ælfgar.
held by Harold, was bestowed on Ælfgar, the son of Leofric,[491] of whom
we hear for the first time during these commotions. He had himself, it
would seem, played a prominent part in them,[492] and one would wish to
believe that his promotion was the reward of acts of his own, rather than of
his father’s seeming desertion of the patriotic Spearhafoc deposed,
cause. Among churchmen, Spearhafoc, who had throughout the summer
and autumn held the see of London without consecration,[493] had now to
give up his doubtful possession. The Bishoprick and William made
Bishop of London.
was then given to a Norman named William, a 1051.
chaplain of the King’s.[494] A man might now go
from the Straits of Dover to the Humber, over Kentish, East-Saxon, and
Danish ground, without once, in the course of his journey, going out of the
spiritual jurisdiction of Norman Prelates. It is due however to Bishop
William to say that he bears a very different character in our history from
either his Metropolitan Robert or his fellow-suffragan Ulf. Banished for a
while, he was restored when the patriotic party was in the height of its
power—a distinct witness in his favour, perhaps a witness against his
English competitor.[495] William kept his Bishoprick for many years, and
lived to welcome his namesake and native prince to the throne of England.
But he had not to wait for so distant an opportunity of displaying his new
honours in the eyes of his natural sovereign. While Visit of Duke William
to England. 1051.
Godwine dwelt as an exile at Bruges, while Harold
was planning schemes of vengeance in the friendly court of Dublin,
William the Bastard first set foot on the shores of England.[496]

We are thus at last brought face to face with the two great actors in our
history. Harold has already appeared before us. We have seen him raised at
an early age to the highest rank open to a subject; we have seen him, in the
cause of his country, deprived of his honours and driven to take refuge in a
foreign land. His great rival we have as yet heard of only at a distance; he
now comes directly on the field. There can be no doubt that William’s visit
to England forms a stage, and a most important one, among the immediate
causes of the Norman Conquest. I pause then, at this point, to take up the
thread of Norman history, and to give a sketch of the birth, the childhood,
the early reign, of the man who, in the year of Godwine’s banishment, saw,
for the first time, the land which, fifteen years later, he was to claim as his
own.

CHAPTER VIII.
[497]
THE EARLY YEARS OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.
A.D. 1028–1051.

§ 1. Birth, Character, and Accession of William. A.D. 1028–1035.

William, King of the English and Duke of the Character and
greatness of
Normans, bears a name which must for ever stand WILLIAM.
forth among the foremost of mankind. No man that
ever trod this earth was ever endowed with greater natural gifts; to no man
was it ever granted to accomplish greater things. If we look only to the scale
of a man’s acts, without regard to their moral character, we must hail in the
victor of Val-ès-dunes, of Varaville, and of Senlac, the restorer of
Normandy, the Conqueror of England, one who may fairly claim his place
in the first rank of the world’s greatest men. No Lasting results of his
career.
man ever did his work more effectually at the
moment; no man ever left his work behind him as A good side to his
character.
more truly an abiding possession for all time. And,
when we consider all the circumstances of his life, when we judge him by
the standard of his own age, above all, when we compare him with those
who came after him in his own house, we shall perhaps be inclined to dwell
on his great qualities, on his many undoubted virtues, rather than to put his
no less undoubted crimes in their darkest light. As we cannot refuse to place
him among the greatest of men, neither will a candid judgement incline us
to place him among the worst of men. If we cannot give him a niche among
pure patriots and heroes, he is quite as little entitled to a place among mere
tyrants and destroyers. William of Normandy has no claim to a share in the
pure glory of Timoleôn, Ælfred, and Washington; he cannot even claim the
more mingled fame of Alexander, Charles, and Cnut; but he has even less in
common with the mere enemies of their species, with the
Nabuchodonosors, the Swends, and the Buonapartes, whom God has from
time to time sent as simple scourges of a guilty world. Happily there are
few men in history of whom we have better English and Norman
portraits of him.
materials for drawing the portrait. We see him as
he appeared to admiring followers of his own race; we see him also as he
appeared to men of the conquered nation who had looked on him and had
lived in his household.[498] We have to make allowance for flattery on the
one side; we have not to make allowance for calumny on the other. The
feeling with which the Normans looked on their conquering leader was

undoubtedly one of awe rather than of love; and the feeling with which the
vanquished English looked on their Conqueror was undoubtedly one of awe
rather than of simple hatred. Assuredly William’s English subjects did not
love him; but they felt a sort of sullen reverence for the King who was
richer and mightier than all the Kings that were before him. In speaking of
him, the Chronicler writes as it were with downcast eyes and bated breath,
as if he were hardly dealing with a man of like passions with himself, but
was rather drawing the portrait of a being of Justice done to him by
the English
another nature. Yet he holds the balance fairly Chronicler.
between the dark and the bright qualities of one so
far raised above the common lot of man. He does not conceal his crimes
and his oppressions; but he sets before us the merits of his government and
the good peace that he made in this land; he judicially sums up what was
good and what was evil in him; he warns men to follow the good and to
avoid the evil, and he sends him out of the world with a charitable prayer
for the repose of his soul. And, at the moment when he wrote, it was no
marvel if the Chronicler was inclined to dwell on the good rather than on
the evil. The Crown of William passed to one who shared largely in his
mere intellectual gifts, but who had no fellowship with the greater and
nobler elements of his character. To appreciate William the Conqueror we
have but to cast our glance onwards to William the Red. We shall then well
understand how men writhing under the scorpions of the son might look
back with regret to the whips of the father. We can understand how, under
his godless rule, men might feel kindly towards the memory of one who
never wholly cast away the thoughts of justice and mercy, and who, in his
darkest hours, had still somewhat of the fear of God before his eyes.
In estimating the character of William, one Strength of will in
William.
feature stands out preeminently above all others.
Throughout his career, we admire in him the embodiment, in the highest
degree that human nature will allow, of the fixed purpose and the unbending
will. From time to time there have been men who seem to have come into
the world to sway the course of events at their good pleasure, men who
have made destiny itself their vassal, and whose decrees it seems in vain for
lesser men to seek to withstand. Such was the man who, with the blood of
thousands reeking on his hands, could lay down despotic power, could walk
unattended to his house, and calmly offer to give an account for any of his
actions;[499] and such in might, though assuredly not such in crime, was our

first Norman King. Whatever the will of William decreed, he found a means
to bring it about. Whatever his hand found to do, he did it with all his
might. As a warrior, as a general, it is needless to His military genius.
sound his praises. His warlike exploits set him among the foremost captains
of history, but his warlike exploits are but the smallest part of his fame.
Others beside him could have led the charge at Val-ès-dunes; others beside
him could have chosen the happy moment for the ambush at Varaville;
others beside him could have endured the weariness of the long blockade
beneath the donjon of Brionne. Others, it may even be, beside him could
have cut their way through palisade and shield-wall and battle-axe to the
royal Standard of England. But none in his own His statesmanship.
age, and few in any age, have shown themselves like him masters of every
branch of the consummate craft of the statesman. Calm and clear-sighted,
he saw his object before him; he knew when to tarry and when to hasten; he
knew when to strike and how to strike, and how to use alike the noblest and
the vilest of men as his instruments. Utterly His unscrupulousness
as to means.
unscrupulous, though far from unprincipled, taking
no pleasure in wrong or oppression for its own sake, always keeping back
his hands from needless bloodshed, he yet never shrank from force or fraud,
from wrong or bloodshed or oppression, when they seemed to him the
straightest paths to accomplish his purpose. His crimes admit of no denial;
but, with one single exception, they never were wanton crimes. And when
we come to see the school in which he was brought up, when we see the
men whom he had to deal with from his childhood, our wonder really ought
to be that his crimes were not infinitely blacker. His personal virtues.
His personal virtues were throughout life many and great. We hear much of
his piety, and we see reason to believe that his piety was something more
than the mere conventional piety of lavish gifts to His religious zeal.
monasteries. Punctual in every exercise of devotion, paying respect and
honour of every kind to religion and its ministers, William showed, in two
ways most unusual among the princes of that age, that his zeal for holy
things was neither hypocrisy, nor fanaticism, nor superstition. Like his
illustrious contemporary on the Imperial throne, he appeared as a real
ecclesiastical reformer, and he allowed the precepts of his religion to have a
distinct influence on his private life. He was one of the few princes of that
age whose hands were perfectly clean from the General excellence of
his ecclesiastical
guilt of simony. His ecclesiastical appointments for appointments.

the most part do him honour; the patron of Lanfranc and Anselm can never
be spoken of without respect. In his personal conduct he practised at least
one most unusual virtue; in a profligate age he was a model of conjugal
fidelity. He was a good and faithful friend, an affectionate brother—we
must perhaps add, too indulgent a father. And strong as was his sense of
religion, deep as was his reverence for the Church, open-handed as was his
bounty to her ministers, no prince that ever reigned was less disposed to
yield to ecclesiastical usurpations. No prince ever knew better how to
control the priesthood within his own dominions; none knew better both
how to win the voice of Rome to abet his purposes, and how to bid defiance
to her demands when they infringed on the rights of his Crown and the laws
of his Kingdom. While all Europe rang with the great strife of Pope and
Cæsar, England and Normandy remained at peace under the rule of one who
knew how, firmly and calmly, to hold his own against Hildebrand himself.
But to know what William was, no way is so Effects of his reign in
Normandy, France,
clear as to see what William did in both the and England.
countries over which he was so strangely called to
rule. We are too apt to look on him simply as the Conqueror of England.
But so to do is to look at him only in his most splendid, but at the same time
his least honourable, aspect. William learned to become the Conqueror of
England only by first becoming the Conqueror of Normandy and the
Conqueror of France. He found means to conquer Normandy by the help of
France and to conquer France by the help of Normandy. He turned a jealous
overlord into an effective ally against his rebellious subjects, and he turned
those rebellious subjects into faithful supporters against that jealous
overlord. He came to his Duchy under every His early struggles.
disadvantage. At once bastard and minor, with competitors for his coronet
arising at every moment, with turbulent barons to hold in check and envious
neighbours to guard against, he was, throughout the whole of his early life,
beset by troubles, none of which were of his own making, and he came
honourably out of all. The change which William Excellence of his rule
in Normandy.
wrought in Normandy was nothing less than a
change from anarchy to good order. Instead of a state, torn by internal feuds
and open to the attacks of every enemy, his Duchy became, under his
youthful rule, a loyal and well-governed land, respected by all its
neighbours, and putting most of them to shame by its prosperity. In the face
of every obstacle, the mighty genius of the once despised Bastard raised

himself and his principality to a place in the eyes of Europe such as
Normandy and its prince had never held before. And these great successes
were gained with far less of cruelty or harshness than might have been
looked for in so ruthless an age. He shared indeed His general
forbearance and
in the fierce passions of his race, and in one or two occasional cruelty.
cases his wrath hurried him, or his policy beguiled
him, into acts at which humanity shudders. At all stages of his life, if he was
debonair to those who would do his will, he was beyond measure stern to
all who withstood it.[500] Yet, when we think of all that he went through, of
the treachery and ingratitude which he met with on every side, how his
most faithful friends were murdered beside him, how he himself had to flee
for his life or to lurk in mean disguises, we shall see that it is not without
reason that his panegyrist praises his general forbearance and clemency. In
short, the reign of William as Duke of the Normans was alike prosperous
and honourable in the highest degree. Had he never stretched forth his hand
to grasp the diadem which was another’s, his fame would not have filled the
world as now it does, but he would have gone down to his grave as one of
the best, as well as one of the greatest, rulers of his time.
If we turn from William Duke of the Normans to His reign in England.
William King of the English, we may indeed mourn that, in a moral sense,
the fine gold has become dim, but our admiration for mere greatness, for the
highest craft of the statesman and the soldier, will rise higher than ever. No
doubt he was highly favoured by fortune; nothing but an extraordinary
combination of events could have made the Conquest of England possible.
But then it is the true art of statesmanship, the art Difficulties of his
undertaking.
by which men like William carry the world before
them, to know how to grasp every fortunate moment and to take advantage
of every auspicious turn of events. Doubtless William could never have
conquered England except under peculiarly favourable circumstances; but
then none but such a man as William could have conquered England under
any circumstances at all. He conquered and retained a land far greater than
his paternal Duchy, and a land in which he had not Skill displayed in his
claim on the English
a single native partisan. Yet he contrived to put Crown;
himself forward in the eyes of the world as a legal
claimant, and not as an unprovoked invader. We must condemn the fraud,
but we cannot help admiring the skill, by which he made men believe that
he was the true heir of England, shut out from his inheritance by a perjured

usurper. Never was a more subtle web of fallacy woven by the craft of man;
never did diplomatic ingenuity more triumphantly obtain its end. He
contrived to make an utterly unjust aggression bear the aspect, not only of
righteous, but almost of holy, warfare. The wholesale spoiler of a Christian
people contrived to win for himself something very like the position of a
Crusader. And, landed on English ground, with no rights but those of his
own sword, with no supporters but his own foreign in his acquisition of
it;
army, he yet contrived to win the English Crown
with every circumstance of formal legality. He was elected, crowned, and
anointed like his native predecessors, and he swore at the hands of an
English Primate to observe the ancient laws of England. By force and by
craft, but with the outward pretext of law always put prominently forward,
he gradually obtained full possession of the whole land; he deprived the
nation one by one of its native leaders, and put in and in his subsequent
government.
their places men of foreign birth and wholly
dependent on himself. No prince ever more richly rewarded those to whom
he owed his Crown, but no prince ever took more jealous care that they
should never be able to bring his Crown into jeopardy. None but a man like
him could have held down both conquerors and conquered, and have made
his will the only law for Norman and Englishman alike. His consummate
policy guarded against the dangers which he saw rife in every other
country; he put the finishing stroke to the work of Ecgberht, and made
England the most united Kingdom in Western Christendom. Normans and
Englishmen conspired against him, and called the fleets and hosts of
Denmark to their help. But William held his own alike against revolters at
home and against invaders from abroad. Norman and English rebels were
alike crushed; sometimes the Dane was bought off, sometimes he shrank
from the firm array with which the land was guarded. All opposition was
quelled by fire and sword; but when it was quelled, Severity of his police.
whenever and wherever William’s rule was quietly accepted, his hand was
heavy upon all smaller disturbers of the peace of the world. Life, property,
female honour, stood indeed but a small chance while the process of
Conquest was going on, but, when William’s work was fully accomplished,
they were safer under him than they had ever been under England’s native
Kings. As the stern avenger of crime, even the conquered learned to bless
him, and to crown his good deeds with a tribute of praise hardly inferior to
that which waits on the name of his illustrious rival.[501]

Here then was a career through which none but The worst features of
his character brought
one of the greatest of mankind could have passed out in England.
successfully. But it was a career which brought out
into full play all those darker features of his character which found but little
room for their developement during his earlier reign in his native Duchy.
There is no reason to believe that William came into England with any fixed
determination to rule otherwise in England than he had already ruled in
Normandy. Cnut can hardly fail to have been his model, and William’s
earliest days in England were far more promising than the earliest days of
Cnut. At no time of his life does William appear as one of those tyrants who
actually delight in oppression, to whom the infliction of human suffering is
really a source of morbid pleasure. But, if he took His false position
gradually developed
no pleasure in the infliction of suffering, it was at itself, and led him to
least a matter about which he was utterly reckless; oppression.
he stuck at no injustice which was needed to carry
out his purpose. His will was fixed, to win and to keep the Crown of
England at all hazards. We may well believe that he would have been well
pleased could he have won that Crown without bloodshed. But, rather than
not win it, he did not shrink from the guilt of carrying on a desolating war
against a people who had never wronged him. We may well believe that,
when he swore to govern his new subjects as well as they had been
governed by their own Kings, it was his full purpose to keep his oath. That
he acted on any settled scheme of uprooting the nationality, the laws, or the
language of England is an exploded fable.[502] But he could not govern
England as he had governed Normandy; he could not govern England as
Cnut had governed England; he could not himself be as Cnut, neither could
his Normans be as Cnut’s Danes. He gradually found that there was no way
for him to govern England save by oppressions, exactions, and
confiscations, by the bondage or the death of the noblest of the land. He
made the discovery, and he shrank not from its practical consequences. A
reign which had begun with as good hopes as the reign of a foreign
conqueror could begin with gradually changed into one of the most
tremendous tyrannies on record. Northumberland was hard to be kept in
order, and Northumberland was made a desert. General change for
the worse in his
This was the dictate of a relentless policy; but character.
when William had once set forth on the downward
course of evil, he soon showed that he could do wrong when no policy

commanded it, merely to supply means for his Formation of the New
Forest.
personal gratification. To lay waste Hampshire
merely to make a hunting-ground was a blacker crime than to lay waste
Northumberland to rid himself of a political danger. He could still be
merciful when mercy was not dangerous, but he had now learned to shed
innocent blood without remorse, if its shedding seemed to add safety to his
throne. The repeated revolts of Eadgar were forgiven as often as they
occurred; but Waltheof, caressed, flattered, Death of Waltheof.
promoted, was sent to the scaffold on the first convenient pretext. It is
hardly superstitious to point out, alike with ancient and with modern
authorities,[503] that the New Forest became a spot fatal to William’s house,
and that, after the death of Waltheof, his old prosperity forsook him.
Nothing indeed occurred to loosen his hold on Crimes and
misfortunes of his last
England; but his last years were spent in bickerings years.
with his unworthy son, and in a petty border
warfare, in which the Conqueror had, for the first time, to undergo defeat.
At last he found his death-wound in an inglorious quarrel, in the personal
commission of cruelties which aroused the indignation of his own age; and
the mighty King and Conqueror, forsaken by his servants and children, had
to owe his funeral rites to the voluntary charity of a loyal vassal, and within
the walls of his own minster he could not find an undisputed grave.

Such was William the Great, a title which, in the William’s surnames:
the Great, the
mouths of his contemporaries, he shared with Conqueror, the
Alexander and with Charles, but which in later Bastard.
times has been displaced by the misunderstood
description of Conqueror.[504] But, before he had won any right to either of
those lofty titles, William was already known by another surname drawn
from the circumstances of his birth. Of all princely Laxity of the Norman
Dukes as to marriage
lines the ducal house of Normandy was that which and legitimacy.
paid least regard to the canonical laws of marriage
or to the special claims of legitimate birth.[505] The Duchy had been ruled by
a whole succession of princes who either were sprung from that irregular
kind of union which was known as the Danish marriage,[506] or else were the
sons of concubines raised to the rank of wives after the birth of their
children. But, among all this brood of spurious or irregular heirs, the

greatest of the whole line was the one to whom the reproach, if reproach it
was deemed, of illegitimate birth clave the most Special illegitimacy
of William.
abidingly. William the son of Robert was
emphatically William the Bastard, and the name clave to him through life,
on the Imperial throne of Britain no less than on the ducal chair of
Normandy. For, of all the whole line, William was the one whose bastardy
was the most undoubted, the least capable of being veiled under ambiguous
and euphemistic phrases. The position of Popa and Sprota was a doubtful
one;[507] it may, according to Danish ideas, have been perfectly honourable.
The children of Richard and Gunnor were, according to the law recognized
everywhere but in our own country, legitimated by the subsequent marriage
of their parents. But we may doubt whether the notion of the Danish
marriage survived as late as the days of Robert, and it is certain that no
ecclesiastical sacrament ever gave William a right, according to the law of
the Church, to rank as the lawful son of his father. The mother of William is
never spoken of in the respectful terms which we find applied to the mother
of Richard the Fearless. Throughout the whole of Duke Robert’s life, she
remained in the position of an acknowledged mistress, and her illustrious
son came forth before the world with no other description than the Bastard.
The irregular birth of one so renowned naturally Story of William’s
birth.
became the subject of romance and legend. And
the spot on which William first saw the light is one which seems to call for
the tribute of the legend-maker as its natural due. Position of Falaise.
The town of Falaise, in the Diocese of Seez, is one of the most famous spots
both in the earlier and in the later history of Normandy, and none assuredly
surpasses it in the striking character of its natural position. Lying on the
edge of the great forest of Gouffer, the spot had its natural attractions for a
line of princes renowned, even above others of their time, for their devotion
to the sports of the field. The town itself lies in a sort of valley between two
eminences. The great Abbey, a foundation of a later date than the times
which we are concerned with, has utterly vanished; but two stately parish
churches, one of them dating from the days of Norman independence, bear
witness to the ecclesiastical splendour of the place. Passing by them, the
traveller gradually ascends to the gate of the Historical
associations of the
Castle, renowned alike in the wars of the twelfth, Castle.
the fifteenth, and the sixteenth centuries. A tall
round tower still bears the name of the great Talbot, the guardian of the

castle in the great English war, and who afterwards 1417–1450.
won a still higher fame as the last champion of the ancient freedom of
Aquitaine against the encroachments of the Kings 1453.
[508]
of Paris. But this witness of comparatively recent strife is but an
excrescence on the original structure. It is the addition made by an English
King to one of the noblest works of his Norman forefathers. The Castle
where legend fixes the birth of William of Normandy, and where history
fixes the famous homage of William of Scotland, is 1175.
[509]
a vast donjon of the eleventh or twelfth century. One of the grandest of
those massive square keeps which I have already spoken of as
distinguishing the earliest military architecture of Normandy, crowns the
summit of a precipitous rock, fronted by another mass of rock wilder still,
on which the cannon of England were planted during Henry’s siege. To
these rocks, these felsen, the spot owes its name of The rocks give its
[510] name to the town.
Falaise, one of the many spots in Normandy
where the good old Teutonic speech still lingers in local nomenclature,
though in this case the Teutonic name has also preserved its permanent
being in the general vocabulary of the Romance speech. Between these two
rugged heights lies a narrow dell, through which runs a small beck, a
tributary of the neighbouring river Ante. The dell is crowded with mills and
tanneries, but the mills and tanneries of Falaise have their share in the
historic interest of the place. The mills play no inconsiderable part in the
records of the Norman Exchequer,[511] and the The Tanneries of
Falaise.
tanneries at once suggest the name of the greatest
son of Normandy. In every form which the story has taken in history or
legend, the mother of the Conqueror appears as the William the son of a
Tanner’s daughter.
daughter of a tanner of Falaise, plying his
unsavoury craft on the spot where it has continued to be plied through so
many ages. The conquered English indeed strove to claim the Norman Duke
as their own, by representing his mother as a descendant of their own royal
house.[512] But, even in this version, the traditional trade of her father is not
forgotten. The daughter of the hero Eadmund English legend of the
birth of William.
disgraced herself by a marriage or an intrigue with
her father’s tanner, to whom in process of time she bore three daughters.
The pair were banished from England, and took refuge on the opposite
coast. In the course of their wanderings they came to beg alms at the gate of
Duke Richard the Good. The Prince discovered the lofty birth of the

mother, and took the whole family into his favour. The youngest daughter
became the mistress of his son Robert, and of them sprang the mighty
William, great-grandson of Eadmund Ironside no less than of Richard the
Fearless.
Such a tale is of course valuable only as illustrating the universal
tendency of conquered nations to try to alleviate the shame and grief of
conquest by striving to believe that their tyrants are at least their
countrymen. The story of William’s English origin clearly comes from the
same mint as the story in which Egyptian vanity gave out that Kambysês
was Egyptian by his maternal origin,[513] as the story which saw in
Alexander himself a scion of the royal house of Persia.[514] It seems however
to preserve one grain of truth in the midst of so much that is mythical. It
represents the connexion between Robert and his mistress as having begun
before he ascended the ducal throne. There can be little doubt that this was
the case, though the story is generally told as if Robert had been already
Duke of the Normans. But it is more likely that Story of Herleva.
Robert was as yet only Count of the Hiesmois, and, as such, Lord of
Falaise, when his eye was first caught by the beauty of Arlette, or rather
Herleva, the daughter of Fulbert the Tanner. Some say he first saw her
engaged in the dance,[515] others when she was busied in the more homely
work of washing linen in the beck which flows by her father’s tannery at the
foot of the castle.[516] The prince himself, a mere stripling, saw and loved
her. He sought her of her father, who, after some reluctance, gave up his
child to his lord, by the advice, according to one account, of a holy hermit
his brother.[517] She was led the same evening to the castle; the poetical
chroniclers are rich in details of her behaviour.[518] She became the cherished
mistress of Robert, and her empire over his heart was, we are told, not
disturbed by another connexion, lawful or unlawful.[519] After the example
of former princes, Robert in after times raised the Advancement of her
family.
kinsfolk of his mistress to high honours. Half the
nobility of Normandy had sprung from the brothers and sisters of Gunnor,
so now Fulbert the Tanner, the father of Herleva, was raised to the post of
ducal chamberlain,[520] and her brother Walter was placed in some office
which, in after times, gave him close access to the person of his princely
nephew.[521] After Robert’s death, Herleva obtained Her marriage with
Herlwin of
an honourable marriage, and became, by her Conteville.
husband Herlwin of Conteville,[522] the mother of

two sons who will fill no small space in our history. But her union with the
Duke produced but one son, perhaps but one child. Legends of omens.
[523]
That child however was one whose future greatness was, so we are told,
prefigured by omens and prodigies from the moment of his birth, and even
from the moment of his conception. On the night of her first visit to the
castle, Herleva dreamed that a tree arose from her body which
overshadowed all Normandy and all England.[524] At the moment of his
birth, the babe seized the straw on the chamber floor with so vigorous a
grasp that all who saw the sight knew that he would become a mighty
conqueror, who would never let go anything that he had once laid his hand
upon.[525] Leaving tales like these apart, it is certain Birth of William.
1027–1028.
that William, the bastard son of Robert and
Herleva, was born at Falaise, perhaps in the year in which the great Cnut
made his famous pilgrimage to the threshold of the Apostles.[526]

Before Robert undertook so perilous an Question of the
succession: state of
enterprise, it was clearly needful for him to the Ducal family.
regulate the succession to the Duchy. The reigning
prince had neither brother nor legitimate child. The heir, according to
modern notions of heirship, was a churchman, Robert, Archbishop of
Rouen. This Prelate we have already seen in Robert Archbishop of
[527] Rouen. 989–1037.
rebellion against his namesake the Duke,
probably on account of this very claim to the succession. He was one of the
children of Richard the Fearless, legitimated and made capable of
ecclesiastical honours by the late marriage of his parents. Indeed, according
to one account, the marriage of Richard and Gunnor was contracted
expressly to take away the canonical objections which were raised against
the appointment of a bastard to the metropolitan see.[528] Archbishop Robert
was thus an uncle of Duke Robert and a great-uncle of the child William.
Besides his Archbishoprick, he held the County of Evreux as a lay fee. Like
the more famous Odo of Bayeux, he drew a marked distinction between his
ecclesiastical and his temporal character. As Count of Evreux, he had a
wife, Herleva by name,[529] and was the father of children of whom we shall
hear again in our history. In his latter days, his spiritual character became
more prominent; he repented of his misdeeds, gave great alms to the poor,
and began the rebuilding of the metropolitan church.[530] There were also

two princes whose connexion with the ducal house was by legitimate,
though only female, descent. One was Guy of Guy of Burgundy;
Burgundy, a nephew of Duke Robert, being grandson of Richard the Good
through his daughter Adeliza.[531] The other was Alan of Britanny;
Robert’s cousin, Count Alan of Britanny, the son of Hadwisa daughter of
Richard the Fearless.[532] Nearer in blood, but of more doubtful legitimacy,
were Robert’s own half-brothers, the sons of Richard the Good by Papia.
These were the churchman Malger, who afterwards Malger;
succeeded Archbishop Robert in the see of Rouen, William of Arques;
[533]
and William, who held the County and castle of Nicholas.
[534]
Arques near Dieppe. There was also the monk Nicholas, the young, and
no doubt illegitimate, son of Richard the Third.[535] No candidate free
from objection.
None of these were promising candidates for the
ducal crown. Robert, the lineal heir, might be looked on as disqualified by
his profession; Alan and Guy were strangers, and could claim only through
females; the nearer kinsmen were of spurious or doubtful birth, and some of
them were liable also to the same objection as Robert. Had any strong
opposition existed, William of Arques would probably have been found the
best card to play; but there was no candidate whose claims were absolutely
without cavil; there was none round whom national feeling could
instinctively centre; there was none who was clearly marked out, either by
birth or by merit, as the natural leader of the Norman people. This state of
things must be borne in mind, in order to understand the fact, otherwise so
extraordinary, that Robert was able to secure the succession to a son who
was at once bastard and minor. There were strong objections against young
William; but there were objections equally strong against every other
possible candidate. Under these circumstances it Unpopularity of
William’s succession.
was possible for William to succeed; but it
followed, almost as a matter of course, that the early years of his reign were
disturbed by constant rebellions. William’s succession was deeply offensive
to many of his subjects, especially to that large portion of the Norman
nobility who had any kind of connexion with the ducal house. From the
time of the child’s birth, there can be little doubt that his father’s intentions
in his favour were at least suspected, and the suspicion may well have given
rise to some of the rebellions by which Robert’s reign was disturbed.[536]
At this stage of our narrative it becomes The great Norman
houses; their
necessary to form some clear conception of the

personality and the ancestry of some of the great connexion with
English history.
Norman nobles. Most of them belonged to houses
whose fame has not been confined to Normandy. We are now dealing with
the fathers of the men, in some cases with the men themselves, who fought
round William at Senlac, and among whom he divided the honours and the
lands of England. These men became the ancestors of the new nobility of
England, and, as their forefathers had changed in Gaul from Northmen into
Normans, so now, by a happier application of the same law, they gradually
changed from Normans into Englishmen. Many a name famous in English
history, many a name whose sound is as familiar to us as any word of our
own Teutonic speech, many a name which has long ceased to suggest any
thought of foreign origin, is but the name of some Norman village, whose
lord, or perhaps some lowlier inhabitant, followed his Duke to the Conquest
of England and shared in the plunder of the conquered. But the names
which are most familiar to us as names of English lords and gentlemen of
Norman descent belong, for the most part, to a sort of second crop, which
first grew up to importance on English soil. The great Norman houses
whose acts—for the most part whose crimes—become of paramount
importance at the time with which we are now dealing, were mostly worn
out in a few generations, and they have left but few direct representatives
on either side of the sea.
High among these great houses, the third in rank Greatness of the
[537] House of Belesme.
among the original Norman nobility, stood the
house of Belesme, whose present head was William, surnamed Talvas.[538]
The domains held by his family, partly of the Crown of France, partly of the
Duchy of Normandy, might almost put him on a level with princes rather
than with ordinary nobles. The possession from which the family took its
name lay within the French territory, and was a fief of the French Crown.
But, within the Norman Duchy, the Lords of Belesme were masters of the
valley bounded by the hills from which the Orne flows in one direction and
the Sarthe in another. Close on the French frontier, they held the strong
fortress of Alençon, the key of Normandy on that side. They are called
Lords of the city of Seez,[539] and, at the time of which we are speaking, a
member of their house filled its episcopal throne.[540] Their domains
stretched to Vinoz, a few miles south-east of Falaise, and separated from the
town by the forest of Gouffer. Ivo, the first founder of this mighty house,
had been one of the faithful guardians of the childhood of Richard the

Fearless, and had been enriched by him as the reward of his true service in
evil days.[541] But with Ivo the virtue of his race seems to have died out, and
his descendants appear in Norman and English history as monsters of
cruelty and perfidy, whose deeds aroused the Their supposed
hereditary
horror even of that not over scrupulous age. Open wickedness.
robbery and treacherous assassination seem to have
been their daily occupations. The second of the line, William of Belesme,
had rebelled against Duke Robert, and had defended his fortress of Alençon
against him.[542] His eldest son Warren murdered a harmless and
unsuspecting friend, and was for this crime, so the men of his age said,
openly seized and strangled by the fiend. Of his other sons, Fulk, presuming
to ravage the ducal territory, was killed in battle, Robert was taken prisoner
by the men of Le Mans and beheaded by way of reprisals for a murder
committed by his followers. The surviving heir of the possessions and of
the wickedness of his race was his one remaining son William Talvas.[543]
This man, we are told, being displeased by the William Talvas; his
crimes.
piety and good manners of his first wife
Hildeburgis, hired ruffians to murder her on her way to church.[544] At his
second wedding-feast he put out the eyes, and cut off the nose and ears, of
an unsuspecting guest.[545] This was William the son of Geroy, one of a
house whose name we shall often meet again in connexion with the famous
Abbeys of Bec and Saint Evroul. A local war ensued, in which William
Talvas suffered an inadequate punishment for his crimes in the constant
devastation of his lands. At last a more appropriate avenger arose from his
own house. The hereditary wickedness of his line passed on to his daughter
Mabel and his son Arnulf. Mabel, the wife of Roger of Montgomery, will be
a prominent character in our story for many years. Arnulf rebelled against
his father, and left him to die wretchedly in exile. An act of wanton rapacity
was presently punished by a supernatural avenger; Arnulf, like his uncle
Warren, was strangled by a dæmon in his bed.[546] Such was the character of
the family whose chief, first in power and in crime among the nobility of
Normandy, stood forth, as the story goes, as the mouthpiece of that nobility,
to express the feelings with which the descendants of the comrades of Rolf,
the descendants of Richard the Fearless, even the descendants of the
brothers and sisters of Gunnor, looked on the possible promotion of the
Tanner’s grandson to be their lord.

William Talvas, says the tale, in the days of his William Talvas curses
young William.
prosperity, was one day in the streets of Falaise, a
town where the close neighbourhood of his possessions doubtless made him
well known. The babe William, the son of the Duke and Herleva, was being
nursed in the house of his maternal grandfather. A burgher, meeting the
baron, bade him step in and see the son of his lord. William Talvas entered
the house and looked on the babe. He then cursed him, saying that, by that
child and his descendants, himself and his descendants would be brought to
shame.[547] A curse from the mouth of William Talvas might almost be
looked on as a blessing, and the form of the prediction was such as to come
very near to the nature of a panegyric. It is indeed the highest praise of the
babe who then lay in his cradle, that he did something to bring to shame,
something to bring under the restraints of law and justice, men like the
hoary sinner who instinctively saw in him the destined enemy of his kind.
But the words, when uttered, would be meant and understood simply as a
protest against the insult which was preparing for the aristocratic pride of
the great Norman houses. Possibly indeed the tale, like other tales of the
kind, may have been devised after the event; still it would mark none the
less truly the feelings with which a man like William Talvas, boasting of a
descent from the original conquerors of the land, looked on the unworthy
sovereign whom destiny seemed to be providing for them.
Duke Robert however was bent on his purpose. Robert announces his
intention of
He gathered an assembly of the great men of his pilgrimage. 1034–5.
Duchy, among whom the presence of Archbishop
Robert, perhaps as being a possible competitor for the succession, is
specially mentioned.[548] The Duke set forth his intention of visiting the
Holy Sepulchre, and told his hearers, that, aware of the dangers of such a
journey, he wished to settle the succession to the Duchy before he set out.
The voice of the Assembly bade him stay at home and continue to discharge
the duties of government in person, especially at a time when there was no
one successor or representative to whom they could be entrusted with any
chance of the general good will. It was of course desirable to stave off the
question. Robert might yet have legitimate heirs; or, in the failure of that
hope, the Norman chiefs might gradually come to an agreement in favour of
some other candidate. Let the Duke stay at home and guard his Duchy
against the pretensions of the Breton and the Burgundian.[549] But Robert
would brook no delay in the accomplishment of his pious purpose; he

would go at once to the Holy Land; he would settle He proposes William
as his successor.
the succession before he went. He brought forward
the young William, and acknowledged him as his son. He was little, he told
them, but he would grow; he was one of their own stock, brought up among
them.[550] His overlord the King of the French had engaged to acknowledge
and protect him.[551] He called on them to accept, to choose—the never-
ceasing mixture of elective and hereditary claims appears here as
everywhere—the child as their future Lord, as his successor in the Duchy,
should he never return from the distant land to which he was bound.[552] The
Normans were in a manner entrapped. There can be no doubt that nothing
could be further from the wishes of the majority of the Assembly than to
agree to the Duke’s proposal; but there was nothing else to be done. If
Robert could not be prevailed on to stay at home, some settlement must be
made; and, little as any of them liked the prospect of the rule of the young
Bastard, there was no other candidate in whose favour all parties could
come to an agreement on the spot. Unwillingly William’s succession
accepted.
then the Norman nobility consented; they accepted
the only proposal which was before them; they swore the usual oaths, and
did homage to the son of Herleva as their future sovereign.[553] The kinsmen
of Gunnor, the descendants of the comrades of Rolf, became the men of the
Tanner’s grandson, and he himself was received as the man of King Henry
at Paris.[554] As far as forms went, no form was wanting which could make
William’s succession indisputably lawful. Duke Robert then set forth on the
pilgrimage from which he never returned. Within a few months, his short
life and reign came to an end at Nikaia.[555] Thus, in William succeeds his
father in the Duchy.
the same year which beheld the great Empire of 1035.
Cnut parted among his sons, did William, the seven
years old grandson of the Tanner Fulbert, find himself on the seat of Rolf
and Richard the Fearless, charged with the mission to keep down, as his
infant hands best might, the turbulent spirits who had been unwillingly
beguiled into acknowledging him as their sovereign.

Anarchy at once broke forth; all the evils which Necessary evils of a
minority.
attend a minority in a rude age were at once poured
forth upon the unhappy Duchy. We see the wisdom with which the custom
of our own and of most contemporary lands provided that the government

of men should be entrusted to those only who had themselves at least
reached man’s estate. In England the exceptional minorities of the sons of
Eadmund and of Eadgar had been calamitous, but they were nothing to
compare to the minority of William of Normandy. In England the custom of
regular national assemblies, the habit of submitting all matters to a fair vote,
the recognition of the Law as supreme over every man, hindered the state
from falling into utter dissolution, even in those perilous times. The
personal reign of Æthelred proved far weaker than the administration which
Dunstan carried on in his name in his early years. But in Normandy, where
constitutional ideas had found so imperfect a developement as compared
with England, there was nothing of this kind to fall back upon. Nothing but
the personal genius of a determined and vigorous Prince could keep that
fierce nobility in any measure of order. With the accession of an infant there
at once ceased to be any power to protect or to punish. “Woe to the land
whose King is a child” is the apt quotation of an Childhood of
[556] William.
historian of the next age. The developement of
the young Duke both in mind and body was undoubtedly precocious; but
his early maturity was mainly owing to the stern discipline of that terrible
childhood. It was in those years that he learned the arts which made
Normandy, France, and England bow before him; but, at the age of seven
years, William himself was no more capable than Æthelred of personally
wielding the rod of rule. The child had good and faithful guardians,
guardians perhaps no less well disposed to fulfil their trust towards him
than Dunstan had been towards the children of Eadgar. But there was no
one man in Normandy to whom every Norman could look up as every
Englishman had looked up to the mighty Primate, and the bowl and the
dagger soon deprived the young Prince of the support of his wisest and
truest counsellors. The minority of William was truly a time when every
man did that which was right in his own eyes. And what seemed right in the
eyes of the nobles of Normandy was commonly Utter anarchy of the
time.
rebellion against their sovereign, ruthless
oppression of those beneath them, and endless deadly feuds with one
another. We have already seen some specimens of their crimes in the doings
of the house of Belesme. That house is indeed always spoken of as
exceptionally wicked; but a state of things in which such deeds could be
done, and could go unpunished, must have come very nearly to a complete
break-up of society. The general pictures which we find given us of the time

are fearful beyond expression. Through the withdrawal of all controlling
power, every landowner became a petty sovereign, and began to exercise all
the sovereign rights of slaughter and devastation. Building of castles.
The land soon bristled with castles. The mound crowned with the square
donjon rose as the defence or the terror of every lordship.[557] This castle-
building is now spoken of in Normandy with a Building of castles.
condemnation nearly as strong as that with which it was spoken of in
England, when, a few years after this time, the practice was introduced into
England by the Norman favourites of Eadward.[558] But there is a
characteristic difference in the tone of the two complaints. The English
complaint always is that the Frenchmen built castles and oppressed the poor
folk,[559] or that they did all possible evil and shame to their English
neighbours.[560] The Norman complaint, though not wholly silent as to the
oppression of the humbler ranks,[561] yet dwells mainly on the castle-
building as a sign of rebellion against the authority of the Prince, and as an
occasion of warfare between baron and baron. And it would have been well
for the reputation of the Norman nobles of that age if they had confined
themselves to open warfare with one another and open rebellion against
their sovereign. But they sank below the common Frequency of
assassinations.
morality of their own age; private murder was as
familiar to them as open war. The house of Belesme had a bad preeminence
in this as in other crimes; but, if they had a preeminence, they were far from
having a monopoly. Probably no period of the same length in the history of
Christendom contains the record of so many foul deeds of slaughter and
mutilation as the early years of the reign of William. And they were
constantly practised, not only against avowed and armed enemies, but
against unarmed and unsuspecting guests. Some of the tales may be
inventions or exaggerations; but the days in which such tales could even be
invented must have been full of deeds of horror. Isolated cases of similar
crimes may doubtless be found in any age; but this period is remarkable
alike for the abundance of crimes, for the rank of the criminals, and for the
impunity which they enjoyed. To control these men was the duty laid upon
the almost infant years of William, a duty with which nothing short of his
own full and matured powers might seem fit to grapple. Yet over all these
difficulties the genius of the great Duke was at last Effects of William’s
government in
triumphant. His hand brought order out of the Normandy.
chaos, and changed a land wasted by rebellion and

intestine warfare into one of the most prosperous regions of Europe, a land
flourishing as no Norman ruler had seen it flourish before. When we think
of the days in which William spent his youth, of the men against whom his
early years were destined to be one continued struggle, we shall be less
inclined to lift up our hands in horror at his later crimes than to dwell with
admiration on the large share of higher and better qualities which, among
all his evil deeds, clave to him to his dying day.

§ 2. From the Accession of William to the Battle of Val-ès-dunes.
1035–1047.

We have seen among what kind of men the Guardians of William.
young Duke of the Normans had to pass the first years of his life and
sovereignty. But his father, in leaving his one lamb among so many wolves,
had at least provided him with trustworthy Alan of Britanny.
guardians. Alan of Britanny, a possible competitor for the Duchy, a
neighbouring prince with whom Duke Robert had so lately been at war,[562]
was disarmed when his overlord committed his son to his faith as kinsman
and vassal, and even invested him with some measure of authority in
Normandy itself.[563] The immediate care of the young Duke’s person was
given to one Thurcytel or Thorold, names which point to a genuine
Scandinavian descent in their bearer, and which would make us look to the
Bessin as the probable place of his birth.[564] Other Osbern.
guardians of high rank were the Seneschal Osbern, and Count Gilbert, both
of them connected in the usual way with the ducal family. Osbern was the
son of Herfast, a brother of the Duchess Gunnor; he was also married to a
daughter of Rudolf of Ivry, the son of Asperleng and Sprota, the savage
suppressor of the great peasant revolt.[565] Gilbert’s Gilbert.
connexion was still closer. He was illustrious alike in his forefathers and in
his descendants. He sprang of the ducal blood of Normandy, and of his
blood sprang the great houses of Clare and Pembroke in England. His father
Godfrey was one of those natural children of Richard the Fearless who did
not share the promotion of the offspring of Gunnor.[566] He was lord of the
border fortress of Eu, renowned in Norman history as early as the days of
Rolf;[567] he was lord too of the pleasant valley of the Risle, separated only
by one wooded hill from the more memorable valley which is hallowed by
the names of Herlwin, Lanfranc, and Anselm. All Alan poisoned. 1039–
1040.
these worthy men paid the penalty of their fidelity.
Count Alan died of poison, while he was besieging the castle of
Montgomery, the stronghold of a house which we shall often have again to
mention. He died at Vinmoutier, and was buried in the abbey of Fécamp.
Breton slander afterwards threw the guilt of this crime upon the Duke
himself,[568] the person who had least to gain by it. Norman slander threw it

on Alan’s own subjects;[569] but one can hardly doubt that, if the poisoned
bowl was administered at all, it was administered by some one or other of
the rebellious Norman nobles.[570] Count Gilbert Murder of Gilbert.
was murdered by assassins employed by Ralph of Wacey, son of
Archbishop Robert.[571] The sons of the murdered man fled to Flanders, and
took refuge with the common protector of banished men, Count Baldwin.
The lands of Gilbert were divided among various claimants; the County of
Eu seems to have passed into the hands of his uncle William;[572] but his
famous castle of Brionne fell to the lot of Guy of Burgundy, of whom, and
of whose possession of the fortress, we shall hear much as we go on.[573]
Another still more criminal attempt directly Castle and house of
Montgomery.
introduces us for the first time to another of the
great Norman houses, and one whose name has been more abiding than any
other. I have just before mentioned Count Alan’s siege of the castle of
Montgomery. The name of that castle, a hill fortress in the diocese of
Lisieux, enjoys a peculiar privilege above all others in Norman geography.
Other spots in Normandy have given their names to Norman houses, and
those Norman houses have transferred those names to English castles and
English towns and villages. But there is only one shire in Great Britain
which has had the name of a Norman house impressed upon it for ever.
Roger, the present Lord of Montgomery, was, at Roger of Montgomery
and his five sons.
the time of Duke Robert’s death, in banishment at
Paris.[574] His five sons remained in Normandy, and were among the
foremost disturbers of the peace of the country.[575] But one of the five,
Hugh, had a son, named, like his grandfather, The younger Roger.
Roger, who bore a better character and was destined to a higher fate. He
had, through his mother, a connexion of the usual kind with the ducal
house. Weva, a sister of Gunnor, was the wife of Thorulf of Pont-Audemer,
the son of Torf,[576] and her daughter Joscelina was the wife of Hugh of
Montgomery, and the mother of the younger Roger.[577] On this Roger,
William Talvas, in his old age, bestowed the hand His wife Mabel,
daughter of William
of his daughter Mabel, who transferred the name, Talvas.
the honours, and the hereditary wickedness of the
house of Belesme to her sons of the house of Montgomery.[578] Mabel, small
in stature, talkative, and cruel, guilty of fearful crimes and destined to a
fearful doom,[579] fills a place in history fully equal to that filled by her
husband. Of him we shall hear again as literally the foremost among the

conquerors of England; we shall see him enriched with English estates and
honours, bearing the lofty titles of Earl of Arundel and Shrewsbury, and,
once at least, adorned with the loftier title which had been borne by
Æthelred and Leofric. Once, and that while 1087.
engaged in rebellion against his prince, he flits before us for a moment as
Roger Earl of the Mercians.[580] A munificent friend of monks both in
England and in Normandy, he has left behind him a different reputation
from that of either his father, his wife, or his sons. In one of those sons we
shall see the name of his maternal ancestors revive, and, with their name, a
double portion of their wickedness.
But we have as yet to deal with the house of Montgomery only in its least
honourable aspect. William, son of the elder, and Attempt of William of
Montgomery on Duke
uncle of the younger, Roger, stands charged with William at Vaudreuil.
an attempt, aimed no longer at guardians or tutors,
but at the person of the young Duke himself. William was staying with his
guardian Osbern at Vaudreuil, a castle on an island in the Eure, said to have
been the place of captivity of the famous Fredegunda in Merowingian
times.[581] Thorold, it would seem, had been already murdered, but his
assassins are spoken of only in general terms.[582] But Osbern still watched
over his young lord day and night. While at Murder of Osbern;
escape of the Duke.
Vaudreuil he was butchered by William of
Montgomery in the very bedchamber of the Duke, and the young prince
owed his own safety on this, and on many other occasions, to the zealous
care of his maternal uncle Walter. Many a time did this faithful kinsman
carry him from palace and castle to find a lurking-place from those who
sought his life in the cottages of the poor.[583] The blood of Osbern was soon
avenged; a faithful servant of the murdered Seneschal presently did to
William of Montgomery as William of Montgomery had done to Osbern.[584]
In the state of things in Normandy at that moment crime could be punished
only by crime. The remembrance of the faithful Osbern lived also in the
memory of the Prince whose childhood he had so well guarded. His son
William grew up from his youth as the familiar Friendship of the
Duke with William
friend and counsellor of his namesake the Duke. Fitz-Osbern.
This is that famous William Fitz-Osbern who lived
to be, next to the Duke himself, the prime agent in the Conquest of England,
who won, far more than the Duke himself, the hatred of the conquered

people, and who at last perished in a mad enterprise after a crown and a
wife in Flanders.
The next enemy was Roger of Toesny, whom we have already heard of as
a premature Crusader, the savage foe of the Rebellion and death
of Roger of Toesny.
Infidels of Spain.[585] Disappointed in his dream of
a Kingdom in the Iberian peninsula, he returned to his native land to find it
under the sway of the son of the Tanner’s daughter. The proud soul of the
descendant of Malahulc scorned submission to such a lord; “A bastard is
not fit to rule over me and the other Normans.”[586] He refused all allegiance,
and began to ravage the lands of his neighbours. The one who suffered most
was Humfrey de Vetulis, a son of Thorulf of Pont-Audemer, and of Weva
the sister of Gunnor. He sent his son Roger of Beaumont against the
aggressor. A battle followed, in which Roger of Toesny and his two sons
were killed, and Robert of Grantmesnil received a mortal wound.[587] This
fight was fought rather in defence of private property than in the assertion
of any public principle. But the country gained by the destruction of so
inveterate an enemy of peace as Roger of Toesny. And here, as at every step
of this stage of our narrative, we become acquainted with men whose names
are to figure in the later portion of our history. Houses of
Grantmesnil and
Robert of Grantmesnil was the father of Hugh of Beaumont.
Grantmesnil, who had no small share in the
conquest of England and the division of its spoil. Roger of Beaumont
became the patriarch of the first house of the Earls of Leicester. One of his
descendants played an honourable part in the great struggle between King
and Primate in the latter half of the twelfth century;[588] and his honours
passed by female succession to that great deliverer who made the title of
Earl of Leicester the most glorious in the whole peerage of England.[589]
By this time William was getting beyond the Ralph of Wacey
chosen as the Duke’s
years of childhood, and he was beginning to guardian.
display those extraordinary powers of mind and
body with which nature had endowed him. He could now in some measure
exercise a will of his own. He still needed a guardian, but, according to the
principles of Roman Law, he had a right to a voice in determining who that
guardian should be. He summoned the chief men of his Duchy, and, by their
advice, he chose as his own tutor and as Captain-General of the armies of
Normandy,[590] Ralph the son of Archbishop Robert. The choice seems a
strange one, as Ralph was no other than the murderer of William’s former

guardian Count Gilbert.[591] But it may have been thought politic for the
young Duke to strengthen his hands by an alliance with a former enemy,
and to make, as in the case of Count Alan of Britanny, a practical appeal to
the honour of a possible rival. The appointment of Ralph seems in fact to
have had that effect. A time of comparative internal quiet now followed. But
there still were traitors in the land. Many, we are told, of the Norman
nobles, even of those who professed the firmest fidelity to the Duke, and
were loaded by him with the highest honours, still continued to plot against
him in secret.[592] For a while they no longer revolted openly on their own
account; but there was a potentate hard by whose ear was ever open to their
suggestions, and who was ever ready to help them in any plots against their
sovereign and their country.

From this point a new chapter opens in the Relations between
Normandy and France
relations between Normandy and France. We have hitherto friendly.
seen that, ever since the Commendation made by
Richard the Fearless to Hugh the Great,[593] the relations between the
Norman Princes and the Dukes and Kings of Paris had been invariably
friendly.[594] It was to 987. 945.
Norman help that the Parisian dynasty in a great measure owed its rise to
royalty;[595] it was to Norman help that the reigning 1031.
[596]
King of the French owed his restoration to his throne. Henry of Paris,
made King by the help of Robert, had received Robert’s son as his vassal,
[597]
and had promised to afford him the protection due from a righteous
overlord to a faithful vassal. But we now, from the Return to ill-feeling
from the accession of
accession of William, begin to see signs of William.
something like a return on the French side to the
old state of feeling in the days when the Normans were still looked on as
heathen intruders, and their Duke was held to be Duke only of the Pirates.
[598]
We find the French applying contemptuous epithets to the Norman
people,[599] and we find the King of the French ready to seize every
opportunity for enriching himself at the expense of the Norman Duke.
It is not easy at first sight to explain this return Causes of this change
of feeling.
to a state of things which seemed to have passed
away for more than a generation. Still we must not forget that any prince
reigning at Paris could hardly fail to look with a grudging eye on the

practically independent power which cut him off from the mouth of his own
river. The great feudatory at Rouen seemed, in a way in which no other
feudatory seemed, to shut up his overlord in a kind of prison. The wealth
and greatness and prosperity of Normandy might seem, both historically
and geographically, to be something actually taken away from the
possessions of France. This feeling would apply to Normandy in a way in
which it did not apply to the other great fiefs of Flanders and Aquitaine.
And the feeling would on every ground be stronger in the mind of a King
reigning at Paris than in that of a King reigning at Laôn. To a French King
at Paris the Normans were the nearest and the most powerful of all
neighbours, those whose presence must have made itself far more
constantly felt than that of any other power in Gaul. Hitherto this inherent
feeling of jealousy had been kept in check by the close hereditary
connexion between the two states. The league established between Richard
and Hugh had hitherto been kept unbroken by their descendants. But the
main original object of that league, mutual support against the Carolingian
King at Laôn, had ceased to exist when the Parisian Duke assumed the
royal dignity. Since that time, the league could have rested on little more
than an hereditary sentiment between the Norman and French princes,
which probably was never very deeply shared by their subjects on either
side. And now that sentiment was giving way to the earlier and more
instinctive feeling which pointed out the Rouen Duchy as the natural enemy
of the Parisian Kingdom. It had once been convenient to forget, it was now
equally convenient to remember, that the original grant to Rolf had been
made at the immediate expense, not of the King of Laôn but of the Duke of
Paris.[600] Under these changed circumstances, the old feeling, dormant for a
time, seems to have again awakened in all its strength. And now that
Normandy held out temptations to every aggressor, now that Norman
nobles did not scruple to invite aid from any quarter against a prince whose
years were the best witness of his innocence, every Ingratitude of King
Henry.
feeling of justice and generosity seems to have
vanished from the mind of King Henry. The King who owed his Crown to
the unbought fidelity of Duke Robert did not scruple to despoil the helpless
boy whom his benefactor had entrusted to his Dispute about
Tillières.
protection. The border fortress of Tillières formed
the first pretext. That famous creation of Richard the Good had been raised
as a bulwark, not against the King, but against the troublesome Count of

Chartres.[601] But Odo had found it convenient to surrender the disputed
territory of Dreux to the Crown;[602] the Arve therefore now became the
boundary between Normandy and the royal domain. Tillières was
accordingly declared to be a standing menace to Paris, whose retention was
inconsistent with any friendly relations between King and Duke.[603] The
loyal party in Normandy thought it better to yield than to expose their
young Duke to fresh jeopardy.[604] But the actual commander of the fortress
was of another mind. Tillières had been entrusted Gilbert Crispin
besieged in Tillières.
by Duke Robert to Gilbert Crispin, the ancestor of
a race by whom, after its restoration to Normandy, the border fortress was
held for several generations.[605] He scorned to agree to a surrender which he
looked on as dangerous and disgraceful;[606] he shut himself up in the castle
with a strong force, and there endured a siege at the hands of the King.
Besides his own subjects, Henry had a large body of Normans in the
besieging host.[607] It is not clear whether these were Normans of the
disaffected party, or whether the Duke’s own adherents, when they had once
pledged themselves to surrender the castle, deemed it expedient to display
this excess of zeal against a comrade who had carried his loyalty to the
extreme of disobedience. It is certain that it was Tillières surrendered
and burned.
only in deference to orders given in the Duke’s
name, and which seem to imply the Duke’s personal presence,[608] that the
gallant Gilbert at last surrendered his trust. The fortress of which Normandy
had been so proud was handed over to the French King, and was at once
given to the flames, to the sorrow of every true Norman heart.[609] The King
pledged himself, as one of the conditions of the surrender, not to restore the
fortress for four years.[610] But, if the Norman writers may be trusted, he
grossly belied his faith. His somewhat unreasonable demand had been
granted, and no further provocation seems to have been given on the
Norman side. But, now that the protecting fortress Henry invades
Normandy and
was dismantled, Henry ventured on an actual restores Tillières.
invasion. He retired for a while; but he soon
returned and crossed the border. He passed through the County of Hiesmes,
the old appanage of Duke Robert; from the valley of the Dive he passed
into the valley of the Orne, and burned the Duke’s own town of Argentan.
He then returned laden with booty, and, on his way back, in defiance of his
engagements, he restored and garrisoned the dismantled fortress of Tillières.

[611]
The border fortress, so long the cherished defence of Normandy, now
became the sharpest thorn in her side.
It is impossible to doubt that this devastation of the County of Hiesmes
was made by special agreement with the man who was most bound to
defend it. The commander of the district was Thurstan surnamed Goz, the
son of Ansfrid the Dane.[612] In this description, so long after the first
occupation of the country, we must recognize a son of a follower of Harold
Blaatand,[613] not a son of an original companion of Rolf. And a son of a
follower of Harold Blaatand must have been by this time a man advanced in
life. But neither his age and office, nor his Scandinavian descent and name,
hindered Thurstan from playing into the hands of Treason of Thurstan
Goz.
the French invaders. Seeing that the Duke had been
thus compelled to yield to the King, Thurstan He garrisons Falaise
Castle against the
looked upon the moment as one propitious for Duke.
revolt. He took some of the King’s soldiers into his
pay, and with their help he garrisoned the castle of Falaise against the Duke.
[614]
Young William’s indignation was naturally great. To select that
particular spot as a centre of rebellion was not only a flagrant act of
disloyalty, but the grossest of personal insults. Acting under the guidance of
his guardian Ralph of Wacey, he summoned all loyal Normans to his
standard, and advanced to the siege of his The castle besieged
and taken by the Duke
birthplace. The castle was attacked by storm, a fact and Ralph of Wacey.
which shows that the town was loyal, proud as it
well might be of numbering among its sons not only a sovereign, but a
sovereign who was beginning to be renowned even in his boyhood. It was
only on the side of the town that the castle could be assaulted in this way.
William himself could hardly have swarmed up the steep cliffs which
looked down upon the dwelling of his grandfather, nor could he, like the
English invader four centuries later, command the fortress by artillery
planted on the opposite heights. By dint of sheer personal strength and
courage, the gallant Normans assaulted the massive walls of the Norman
fortress, in the heart of the Norman land, which French hirelings, in the pay
of a Norman traitor, were defending against the prince to whom that fortress
owes a renown which can never pass away. Their attacks made a breach,
perhaps not in the donjon itself, but at any rate in its external defences;
night alone, we are told, put an end to the combat, and saved Thurstan and
his party from all the horrors of a storm. But the rebel chief now saw that

his hopes were vain; he sought a parley with the Duke, and was allowed to
go away unhurt on condition of perpetual banishment from Normandy.
Thurstan’s son, Richard, Viscount of Avranches, Thurstan’s
descendants, the Earls
proved a loyal servant to William, and in the end of Chester.
procured the pardon of his father.[615] The son of the
loyal Richard, the grandson of the rebel Thurstan, finds a place in English
history by the name of Hugh the Wolf, the first of the mighty but short-lived
line of the Counts Palatine of Chester.[616]

The young Duke’s great qualities were now fast Developement of
Williams’s character.
displaying themselves. At the earliest age which
the rules of chivalry allowed, he received the ensigns of knighthood from
King Henry, and his subjects now began, not without reason, to look
forward to a season of peace and order under his rule.[617] We hardly need
the exaggerated talk of his extravagant panegyrist to feel sure that William,
at an unusually early age, taught men to see in him the born ruler. We hear,
not only of his grace and skill in every warlike exercise, not only of his
wisdom in the choice of his counsellors, but of his personally practising
every virtue that becomes a man and a prince. William, we are told, was
fervent in his devotions, righteous in his judgements, and he dealt out a
justice as strict as that of Godwine or Harold upon all disturbers of the
public peace.[618] All this we can well believe. Of all these virtues he
retained many traces to the last. A long career of ambition, craft, and
despotic rule, never utterly seared his conscience, never brought him down
to the level of those tyrants who neither fear God nor regard man. And in
the fresh and generous days of youth, we can well believe that one so highly
gifted, and who as yet had so little temptation to abuse his gifts, must have
shone forth before all men as the very model of every princely virtue. In
one important point however, the public acts of William, or of those who
acted in his name, hardly bear out the language of his panegyrists. His first
ecclesiastical appointments were quite unworthy of Ecclesiastical
appointments abused
the prince who was, somewhat later in life, to learn by the Norman
to appreciate and to reward the virtues of Lanfranc Dukes.
and Anselm. The two greatest preferments of the
Norman Church fell vacant during this period, and the way in which they
were filled illustrates a not uncommon practice of the Norman princes

which had few or no parallels in England. There have been few instances in
England in any age of great spiritual preferments being perverted into
means of maintenance for cadets or bastards of the royal house. In
Normandy, at least since the days of Richard the Fearless, the practice had
been shamefully common, and in the early days of William the scandal still
continued.
It must be remembered that the Prelates of Normandy, like the Prelates of
the other great fiefs of the French Crown, were, in Position of the
Norman Prelates.
every sense, the subjects of the Princes within
whose immediate dominions they found themselves. Here was one great
point of difference between the condition of France and the condition of
Germany. In Germany all the great churchmen, in every part of the country,
held immediately of the Emperor. Every Bishop was therefore reckoned as
a Prince. The episcopal city also commonly became a Free City of the
Empire, and, as such, a commonwealth enjoying practical independence.
No such oases of ecclesiastical or municipal Their subjection to
the Ducal authority.
privilege interrupted the continuous dominion of a
Norman or Aquitanian Duke. The Metropolitan of Rouen or of Bourdeaux
might be either the loyal subject or the refractory vassal of his immediate
Prince; but in no case was he a coordinate sovereign, owning no superior
except in the common overlord. It is only among the Bishops within the
Crown lands, those who, in the extemporized jurisprudence of a later age,
sat as Peers of France, alongside of the great Dukes and Counts, that the
slightest signs of any such hierarchical independence can be discerned. At
an earlier age we have indeed seen the metropolitan see of Rheims holding
a position which faintly approached that of Mainz or Köln;[619] but even
Rheims had now considerably fallen from its ancient greatness, and no such
claims to princely authority were at any time put forward by the proudest
Prelate of Rouen or Bayeux. It was as Count of Evreux, rather than as
Primate of Normandy, that Archbishop Robert had been able to make
himself so troublesome to his nephew and Death of Archbishop
Robert. 1037.
sovereign. That turbulent Prelate, after an
episcopate of forty-eight years, had amended his ways, and had at last
vacated both County and Archbishoprick by death.[620] In his temporal
capacity he was succeeded by a son and a grandson, after whom the County
of Evreux passed by an heiress to the house of Montfort, giving the Count-
Primate the honour of being, through female descendants, a forefather of

the great Simon.[621] The vacancy of the Archbishoprick placed the greatest
spiritual preferment in the Duchy at the disposal of the young Duke. The
choice of the new Primate was as little directed by considerations of
ecclesiastical merit as that of his predecessor, and it proved in every way
unfortunate. At the head of the Norman Church Malger, Archbishop
of Rouen. 1037–
William’s counsellors placed his uncle Malger, one 1055.
of the sons of Richard the Good by Papia.[622] We
shall presently find him displaying no very priestly qualities, and the only
act of his life which could be attributed to Christian or ecclesiastical zeal
was one which wounded the Duke himself in the tenderest point. So too,
when, some years later, the great see of Bayeux fell Odo, Bishop of
Bayeux. 1048–1098.
vacant, William bestowed it on his half-brother
Odo, the son of Herleva by her husband Herlwin of Conteville.[623] Odo, like
Hugh of Rheims in earlier times,[624] must have been a mere boy at the time
of his appointment;[625] but he held the see of Bayeux for fifty years,[626] and,
during most part of that time, his name was famous and terrible on both
sides of the Channel. The character which he left His character in
England,
behind him was a singularly contradictory one.[627]
In England he was remembered only as the foremost among the conquerors
and oppressors of the land, the man who gained for himself a larger share of
English hatred than William . himself, the man 1086
whose career of wrong was at last cut short by his royal brother, who, stern
and unscrupulous as he was, at least took no pleasure in deeds of wanton
oppression. Of Odo’s boundless ambition and love of enterprise there is no
doubt. The one quality led him to aspire to the Papal throne;[628] the other
led him first to forsake his diocese to rule as an Earl in England, and then to
forsake it again to follow his nephew Duke Robert to the first Crusade. That
he was no strict observer of ecclesiastical rules in his own person is shown
by the fact that he left behind him a son, on whom however he at least
bestowed the ecclesiastical name of John.[629] Still Norman ecclesiastical
history sets Odo before us in a somewhat fairer and in Normandy.
light than that in which we see him in English secular history. He at least
possessed the episcopal virtue of munificence, and, whatever were the
defects of his own conduct, he seems to have been an encourager of
learning and good conversation in others. He was bountiful to all, specially
to those of his own spiritual household. He rebuilt His works at Bayeux.
Cathedral
his own church at Bayeux, where parts of his work consecrated, 1077.

still remain. The lower part of the lofty towers of the western front, the dim
and solemn crypt beneath the choir, of that stately and varied cathedral, are
relics of the church reared by its most famous Bishop. These precious
fragments, severe but far from rude in style, form a striking contrast to the
gorgeous arcades which in the next century supplanted Odo’s nave, and to
the soaring choir and apse raised by a still later age. Besides renewing the
fabric, he increased the number of the clergy of his church, and founded or
enriched a monastery in the outskirts of the city, in honour of Saint Vigor, a
canonized predecessor in the see of Bayeux.[630] The name of Odo is one
which will be constantly recurring in this history, from the day when his
Bishop’s staff and warrior’s mace were so successfully wielded against the
defenders of England, till the day when he went forth to wield the same
weapons against the misbelievers of the East, and found on his road a tomb,
far from the heavy pillars and massive arches of his own Bayeux, among
the light and gorgeous enrichments with which the art of the conquered
Saracen knew how to adorn the palaces and churches of the Norman lords
of Palermo.[631]

But, though the appointments of Malger and Odo might bode but little
good for the cause of ecclesiastical reformation, it is certain that a great
movement was at this time going on in the interior Ecclesiastical
movement in
of the Norman Church. The middle of the eleventh Normandy;
century was, in Normandy, the most fruitful æra of foundation of
the foundation of monasteries. The movement in monasteries.
that direction, which had begun under Richard the Fearless, had continued
under Richard the Good, and it seems to have reached its height under
Robert and William. A Norman noble of that age thought that his estate
lacked its chief ornament, if he failed to plant a colony of monks in some
corner of his possessions.[632] No doubt the fashion of founding monasteries
became, in this case, as in other cases earlier and later, little more than a
mere fashion. Many a man must have founded a religious house, not from
any special devotion or any special liberality, but simply because it was the
regular thing for a man in his position to do.[633] And, as an age of founding
monasteries must also be an age in which men are unusually eager to enter
the monastic profession, we may infer that many men took that profession
on them out of mere imitation or prevalent impulse, without any real

personal call to the monastic life. Still, though Character of the
monastic reformations
movements of this sort may end in becoming a in various ages.
mere fashion, they never are a mere fashion at their
beginning. The Norman Benedictine movement in the eleventh century, the
English Cistercian movement in the twelfth century, the still greater
movement of the Friars in the thirteenth century—we may add the revulsion
in favour of the Seculars in the fourteenth century, and the great Jesuit
movement in the sixteenth—all alike point to times when all classes of men
were dissatisfied with the existing state of the Church, and were filled with
a general desire for its reformation. The evil in every case was that the
monastic reformations were never more than temporary. Some new
foundations were created, perhaps even some old ones were reformed; the
newly kindled fire burned with great fervour for a generation or two; a crop
of saints arose, with their due supply of legends and miracles. But presently
love again waxed cold; the new foundations fell away like the elder ones,
and the next age saw its new order arise, to run the same course of primitive
poverty and primitive holiness, degenerating into wealth, indolence, and
corruption. Still there is a peculiar charm in contemplating the early years,
the infant struggles, the simple and fervent devotion, of one of these
religious brotherhoods in the days of its first purity. Two monasteries
claiming special
And, among the countless monasteries which arose notice, Bec and Saint
in Normandy at this time, there are two which Evroul.
claim some special notice at the hands of an
historian whose chief aim is to connect the history of Normandy with that
of England. The famous Abbey of Bec became the Three Archbishops of
Canterbury from Bec;
most renowned school of the learning of the time,
and, among the other famous men whom it sent forth, it gave three Primates
to the throne of Augustine. Thence came Lanfranc, the right hand man of
the Conqueror—the scholar whose learning drew Lanfranc, 1070–
1089.
hearers from all Christendom, and before whose
logic the heretic stood abashed—the courtier who could win the favour of
Kings without stooping to any base compliance with their will—the ruler
whose crozier completed the conquest which the ducal sword only began,
and who knew how to win the love of the conquered, even while rivetting
their fetters. Thence too came also the man of Anselm, 1093–1109.
simple faith and holiness, the man who, a stranger in a strange land, could
feel his heart beat for the poor and the oppressed, the man who braved the

wrath of the most terrible of Kings in the cause at once of ecclesiastical
discipline and of moral righteousness. Such are the truest claims of Anselm
to the reverence of later ages, but it must not be forgotten that, if Bec sent
forth in Lanfranc the great reformer of ecclesiastical discipline, it sent forth
also in his successor the father of the whole dogmatic theology of later
times. The third Metropolitan who found his way Theobald, 1139–
1161.
from Bec to Canterbury cannot compete with the
fame of either of his great predecessors; yet Theobald lives in history as the
first to discern the native powers of one whose renown presently came to
outshine the renown of Lanfranc and Anselm. The early patron of Thomas
the burgher’s son of London may fairly claim some reflected share of the
glory which surrounds the name of Thomas the Chancellor of England, the
Primate and the Martyr of Canterbury. By the side Ouche or Saint
Evroul.
of the house which sent forth men like these the
name of the other Norman monastery of which I speak may seem
comparatively obscure. Yet the Abbey of Ouche or Saint Evroul has its own
claim on our respect. It was the spot which beheld the composition of the
record from which we draw our main knowledge of the times following
those with which we have immediately to deal; it The home of Orderic
Vital.
was the home of the man in whom, perhaps more
than in any other, the characters of Norman and Englishman were
inseparably mingled. There the historian wrote, who, though the son of a
French father, the denizen of a Norman monastery, still clave to England as
his country and gloried in his English birth[634]—the historian who could at
once admire the greatness of the Conqueror and sympathize with the
wrongs of his victims, who, amid all the conventional reviling which
Norman loyalty prescribed, could still see and acknowledge with genuine
admiration the virtues and the greatness even of the perjured Harold.[635] To
have merely produced a chronicler may seem faint praise beside the fame of
producing men whose career has had a lasting influence on the human
mind; yet, even beside the long bead-roll of the worthies of Bec, some
thought may well be extended to the house where Orderic recorded the
minutest details of the lives alike of the saints and of the warriors of his
time.
The tale of the early days of Bec is one of the Early history of Bec.
most captivating in the whole range of monastic history or monastic legend.
It has a character of its own. The origin of Bec differs from that of those

earlier monasteries which gradually grew up around the dwelling-place or
the burial-place of some revered Bishop or saintly hermit. It differs again
from the origin of those monasteries of its own age which were the creation
of some one external founder. Or rather it united the two characters in one.
It gradually rose to greatness from very small beginnings; but, gradual as
the process was, it took place within the lifetime of one man. And that man
was at once its founder and its first ruler. The part of Cuthberht at
Lindisfarne, the parts of William and of Lanfranc at Caen, were all united in
Herlwin, Knight, Founder, and Abbot. This famous Herlwin, founder of
Bec, born 994.
man passed thirty-seven years of his life as a man
of the world, a Norman gentleman and soldier. His father Ansgod boasted
of a descent from the first Danes who occupied His descent
[636]
Neustria, that is to say, from the original companions of Rolf as
distinguished from the later settlers under Harold Blaatand.[637] And this
descent agrees with the geographical position of his estates, which lay,
though on the left bank of the Seine, yet on the right bank of the Dive,
within the limits of the original grant of Charles the Simple.[638] On the
spindle side he boasted of a still higher ancestry; his mother Heloise is said,
on what authority it is not very clear, to have been a near kinswoman of the
reigning house of Flanders.[639] He was a vassal of and early life.
Count Gilbert of Brionne, the faithful guardian of William, in the
neighbourhood of whose castle his own estates lay. He had proved his
faithfulness to his immediate lord by many services of various kinds, and he
had won the favour, not only of Count Gilbert but of their common
sovereign Duke Robert. On one occasion, an injury received from the Count
had caused him to forsake his service. But His virtues.
presently the Count was engaged in a more dangerous warfare with
Ingelram, Count of Ponthieu. Herlwin with his followers came at a critical
moment to Gilbert’s help, and the Count restored all, and more than all, that
he had taken away from one who so well knew how to return good for evil.
[640]
At another time Gilbert sent Herlwin to the ducal court on an errand of
which his conscience disapproved;[641] he failed to execute the unjust
commission; in revenge the Count ravaged the lands of Herlwin and did
great damage to their poor occupiers.[642] Herlwin went to the Count, and
made light of his own injury, but prayed that in any case the losses of the
poor might be made good to them. Such a man was already a saint in
practice, if not in profession; and we have no right to assume that, in this

carrying out of Christian principles into daily life, Herlwin stood alone
among the gallant gentlemen of Normandy. But the misfortune always was
that men like Herlwin, who were designed to leaven the world by their
virtues, were in that age open to so many temptations to forsake the world
altogether. Herlwin began to feel himself out of He contemplates
monastic retirement.
place in the secular world of Normandy, full, as it
was in those days, of strife and bloodshed, where every man sought to win
justice for himself by his own sword. But he was hardly more out of place
in the Norman ecclesiastical world, where priests not only married freely,
but bore arms and lived the life of heathen Danes,[643] and where even
monks used their fists in a way which would hardly have been becoming in
laymen.[644] The faith of Herlwin nearly failed him when he saw the disorder
of one famous monastery; but he was comforted by accidentally beholding
the devotions of one godly brother, who spent the whole night in secret
prayer. He was thus convinced that the salt of the earth had not as yet
wholly lost its savour.[645]
Herlwin now, at the age of forty, retired from the Herlwin begins his
foundation at
world, and received the habit of religion from Burneville. 1034.
Herbert, Bishop of Lisieux.[646] Count Gilbert
released him from his service, and seemingly released his lands from all
feudal dependence on himself.[647] Herlwin then began the foundation of a
monastery on his own estate of Burneville near Brionne.[648] A few devotees
soon gathered round him. They lived a hard life, Herlwin himself joining
them in tilling the ground, and in raising with his own hands the church and
the other buildings needed by the infant brotherhood.[649] The church, when
finished, was consecrated by Bishop Herbert, who He becomes Priest
and Abbot. 1037.
at the same time ordained Herlwin a priest, and
gave him the usual benediction as Abbot of the new society.[650] About the
same time he for the first time learned to read, and that to such good
purpose that he gradually became mighty in the Scriptures, and that without
ever neglecting the daily toil which his austere discipline imposed upon
himself.[651] His mother Heloise also, struck by the example of her son, gave
up her dower-lands, and became a sort of serving sister to the brotherhood,
washing their clothes, and doing for them other menial services.[652] But
after a while it was found that the site of Burneville was unsuited for a
religious establishment; it seems not to have been well supplied with the
two great monastic necessities of wood and water.[653] Herlwin therefore

determined to remove his infant colony to a spot He removes the
monastery to Bec.
better suited to his purpose, a spot to which his
own name has ever since been inseparably attached. A wooded hill divides
the valley of the Risle, with the town and castle of Brionne, from another
valley watered by a small stream, or, in the old Teutonic speech of the
Normans, a beck.[654] That stream gave its name to the most famous of
Norman religious houses, and to this day the name of Bec is never uttered
to denote that spot without the distinguishing addition of the name of
Herlwin. The hills are still thickly wooded; the Present condition of
the spot.
beck still flows, through rich meadows and under
trees planted by the water-side, by the walls of what once was the renowned
monastery to which it gave its name. But of the days of Herlwin no trace
remains besides these imperishable works of nature. A tall tower, of rich
and fanciful design, one of the latest works of mediæval skill, still attracts
the traveller from a distance; but of the mighty minster itself all traces, save
a few small fragments, have perished.[655] The monastic buildings, like those
of so many other monasteries in Normandy and elsewhere in Gaul, had
been rebuilt in the worst days of art, and they are now applied to the
degrading purposes of a receptacle of French cavalry. The gateway also
remains, but it is, like the rest of the buildings, of a date far later than the
days of Herlwin. The truest memorial of that illustrious Abbey is now to be
found in the parish church of the neighbouring village. In that lowly shelter
is still preserved the effigy with which after times had marked the resting-
place of the Founder. Such are all the traces which now remain of the house
which once owned Lanfranc and Anselm as its inmates.
In this valley it was that Herlwin finally fixed Herlwin’s government
as Abbot.
his infant settlement, devoting to it his own small
possessions in the valley itself, and obtaining from Count Gilbert a grant of
the adjoining wood, one of the most precious possessions of the lordship of
Brionne.[656] There Herlwin built his first church, and added a wooden
cloister, which he afterwards exchanged for one of stone.[657] There he ruled
his house in peace and wisdom, his knowledge of the outer world, and
especially his familiarity with the laws of Normandy, standing him, we are
told, in good stead.[658] Bec seemed destined to the ordinary lot of a
monastic house—to a short succession of men of primitive zeal and
primitive virtue, followed by a period of worldly prosperity, leading to its
usual results of coldness and laxity. And such doubtless would have been its

fate, the glory of Bec would have been as transitory as that of other
monastic houses, but for the appearance of one Effects of the
admission of
illustrious man, who came to be enrolled as a Lanfranc.
private member of the brotherhood, and who gave
Bec for a while a special and honourable character with which hardly any
other monastery in Christendom could compare. Abbot Herlwin survived
his first conversion forty-four years;[659] his first Herlwin’s death.
1078.
humble church was pulled down and rebuilt, and
the new fabric was hallowed in his presence by one The church
consecrated by
whom he had himself received to the monastic Lanfranc. 1077.
order, one who had made Bec the light of the
world, and who then returned to his old home in all the greatness of the
Patriarch of the nations beyond the sea.[660] If the first origin of the house
was owing to the simple devotion of its founder and Abbot Herlwin, its
lasting fame and splendour were no less owing to the varied learning and
soaring genius of its renowned Prior Lanfranc.
The future Primate of England was one of the Origin and character
of Lanfranc.
most illustrious witnesses to that feature in the
Norman character which made the men of that race welcome strangers from
every quarter, and which led to the settlement of so many eminent men of
various nations, both in Normandy itself and in the conquered lands of
Britain and Sicily.[661] In the days of Richard the Good, monks and priests
had flocked into Normandy, even from such distant lands as Greece and
Armenia, and the Norman Duke had kept up a close intercourse even with
the monks of Mount Sinai.[662] The first great teacher of Bec came from a
nearer, though still a distant, region. Lanfranc, His birth at Pavia.
1005.
Prior of Bec, Abbot of Saint Stephen’s, Archbishop
of Canterbury, was a native of the Lombard city of Pavia, and was born of a
family which, though perhaps not technically noble, was at any rate eminent
and honourable.[663] He was full of all the secular His learning;
learning of the time, and his range of study seems to have taken in the
unusual accomplishment of a knowledge of Greek.[664] A knowledge of that
tongue was then probably less rare than it became somewhat later, and it is
an accomplishment which might be looked for in Italy, even in the northern
part of the peninsula, more naturally than in any his knowledge of
Greek,
country north of the Alps. At the time of Lanfranc’s
birth and youth, a large part of Southern Italy was still subject to the Eastern

Emperors, and the use of the Greek language survived, both in Sicily and on
the main land, long after the establishment of the Norman dynasty. A
knowledge of that tongue must therefore have been highly expedient for
those who were likely to have any intercourse, diplomatic or commercial,
with the parts of Italy where it was spoken; still we cannot suppose that its
acquirement formed any part of the ordinary course of study of a Lombard
scholar. But the great object of Lanfranc’s study and of Civil Law.
was one specially adapted to the Imperialist city where he was born, the
study of the Civil Law. It was an hereditary calling in his family; his father
Hanbald had been a lawyer of distinction,[665] and his son more than
maintained the credit of his house. As a pleader, he was eminently
successful; the veterans of the courts could not resist the eloquence and the
learning with which he spoke, and his legal opinions were accepted as
decisive by the magistrates of his native city.[666] His father died while
Lanfranc was still young, and his honours and offices were offered to his
son.[667] Why a man who had such fair prospects at home should have
forsaken that home for the distant and barbarous Normandy, it is not easy to
guess.[668] We are told only that he heard that Normandy was a land which
lacked learning, and that its young Duke was He opens a school at
[669] Avranches. 1039.
disposed to give encouragement to learned men.
At all events, early in the period of anarchy which formed the early years of
the reign of William, Lanfranc came into Normandy with a following of
scholars, and opened a school in the episcopal city of Avranches.[670] The
cathedral church of that city beheld in after times 1172.
the penance by which the greatest successor of William atoned for his share
in the death of the most renowned among the successors of Lanfranc. But
the glory of Avranches has passed away. From it, alone among the seven
episcopal towns of Normandy, minster and Bishoprick have wholly
vanished.[671] But, for those few years of the life of Lanfranc, Avranches
must have been an intellectual centre without a rival on this side of the
Alps. The fame of the great teacher was spread abroad, and scholars flocked
to him from all quarters. But as yet his learning was wholly secular; his
pursuits were peaceful, but he thought perhaps less of divine things than
Herlwin had thought when he rode after Count Gilbert to battle. At last
divine grace touched his heart; a sudden conversion made him resolve to
embrace the monastic profession. He left He becomes a monk
at Bec. 1042.
Avranches suddenly, without giving any notice to

his friends and scholars, and set forth to seek for the poorest and most lowly
monastery that could be found, for one which his own fame had never
reached.[672] A happy accident led him to Bec, which then fully answered his
ideal.[673] Received as a monk by Abbot Herlwin, he strove to hide himself
from the world; he even at one time thought of leaving the monastery, and
leading a life of utter solitude in the wilderness.[674] But the Abbot required
him on his obedience to remain, and he was He becomes Prior.
1045.
advanced to the dignity of Prior.[675] He had already
proved his fitness to command by his readiness to obey. His predecessor in
the Priorship, an unlearned man, had bidden him, when reading in the
refectory, to shorten the second syllable of docere. The great scholar did as
he was bid, deeming holy obedience to be something higher than the rules
of Donatus.[676] But such necessity was not long laid upon him; such a light
as his could not long be hid under a bushel; his fame was again spread
abroad, and, with it, the fame of the house in which he sojourned. Clerks
and scholars, men of noble birth, even sons of princes, flocked to profit by
the instruction of the learned Prior, and enriched the Abbey with costly gifts
for his sake.[677] The society increased so fast that the buildings were found
to be too small, and the site not healthy enough for so great a multitude.[678]
By the persuasion of Lanfranc, Herlwin was induced to change his abode
once more, and to raise a third house, larger and more stately than either of
its predecessors,[679] but still within the same valley and upon the banks of
the same beck. At last the name of the Prior of Bec His favour with
William.
reached the ears of Duke William himself.
Lanfranc became his trusted counsellor,[680] and we shall presently find him
acting zealously and successfully on his sovereign’s behalf, in pursuit of the
object which, next to the Crown of England, was nearest to William’s heart.
The fame of Lanfranc soon spread beyond the He appears at the
Synods of Rome and
bounds of Normandy; he appeared, as we have Vercelli. 1049, 1050.
already seen, at a succession of synods, as the
champion of the received doctrine of the Church.[681] The theological
position of Lanfranc I leave to be discussed by others;[682] it is enough to say
that, summoned before Pope and Council as a suspected heretic, he came
away from Rome and Vercelli with the reputation of the most profound and
most orthodox doctor of his time.[683]
The monastery of Ouche or Saint Evroul had, as The monastery of
Ouche or Saint
far as the eleventh century was concerned, an

origin of a different kind from that of Bec; but its Evroul.
story is really little more than that of Bec carried back into an earlier age.
That is to say, while Bec was altogether a new foundation, Saint Evroul
was, like many other religious houses both in England and Normandy, a
restoration of an earlier one. In both countries the Scandinavian invaders
had destroyed or pillaged countless churches and monasteries. Many of
these last, sometimes after complete destruction, sometimes after dragging
on a feeble existence during the intermediate time, rose again, like
Crowland and Jumièges, in more than their former greatness. But the case
of Saint Evroul was a peculiar one. Its temporary fall was owing, not to the
devastations of heathen Northmen, but to the wars between Christian
Normandy and Christian France. The history of its Story of Ebrulf or
Evroul. 575.
founder, Ebrulf or Evroul, a saint of the sixth
century, is, in many respects, a forestalling of the history of Herlwin of Bec.
[684]
Of noble birth in the city of Bayeux,—perhaps therefore of Saxon,
rather than of either Frankish or Gaulish, blood,—high in favour at the
court of Hlothar the son of Hlodwig, he lived, even as a layman, the life of a
saint.[685] At last he forsook the world; his wife and himself both took
monastic vows; but Ebrulf, as Lanfranc had wished to do, presently forsook
his monastery for a deeper seclusion. With three companions only, he
sought out a lonely spot by the river Charenton, close by the forest of
Ouche, on the borders of the dioceses of Lisieux, Evreux, and Seez. There
he lived a hermit’s life, adorned, as we are told, by many miracles,[686] and
his cell, like the cell of Guthlac at Crowland, became the small beginning of
a famous monastery. The secluded site of the house Monastery of Saint
Evroul; it escapes the
saved it from the ravages of the Northmen, and the Danish ravages;
votaries of Saint Evroul, with almost unique good
luck, remained undisturbed, while Hasting and Rolf were overthrowing so
many holy places of their brethren elsewhere.[687] But, during the troubled
minority of Richard the Fearless, when King Lewis of Laôn and Duke Hugh
of Paris were invading the defenceless Duchy,[688] the monks of Saint Evroul
received two seemingly honourable, but, as it but is pillaged by
Hugh the Great. 943.
turned out, highly dangerous, guests. These were
Herlwin, Abbot of Saint Peter’s at Orleans, the Chancellor of Hugh the
Great, and Ralph of Drangy his Chamberlain.[689] Both, we are told, were
men of great piety, but they showed their piety in a strange fashion. Soon
after their visit, Duke Hugh gave orders for the ravage of that part of

Normandy. His devout officers either despised or scrupled at plunder of a
more vulgar kind;[690] they remembered the hospitality of the monks of Saint
Evroul, and requited it by carrying off all the ornaments of their church,
including, what they most valued, the relics of their founder and other
saints. The holy spoil was duly shared among various churches of the
Duchy of France,[691] and a large body of the monks The monastery
forsaken.
of Saint Evroul followed the objects of their
veneration. A few however remained behind, and the brotherhood still
dragged on a feeble existence for some time. At last the house of Saint
Evroul was utterly forsaken and forgotten, and miracles were needed to
point out the spot where it had stood. A pious The church restored
[692] by Restold.
priest from Beauvais, Restold by name, moved
by a divine vision, came and dwelt on the spot, and found benefactors
willing to repair the ruined church.[693] At last one special benefactor arose.
Geroy, a man of great valour and piety, was lord of Geroy and his family.
Escalfoy by the forest of Ouche, and of Montreuil near the Dive.[694] Of
mingled French and Breton extraction, he had been attached to the fortunes
of the elder William of Belesme, probably as a vassal of some of the estates
held by him under the Crown of France. In a fight c. 1015.
against Count Herbert of Maine, when William and all the rest of his
followers had fled, Geroy regained the day by his single valour.[695] In return
for this exploit, William introduced him at the court of Richard the Good,
by whom he was allowed to succeed to the lordships already spoken of.[696]
They had been the property of Helgo, a Norman noble, to whose daughter
Geroy had been betrothed, but the marriage was hindered by the premature
death of the bride.[697] By another wife he had a numerous family, many of
whom were distinguished in Norman history.[698] William son of
Geroy.
He was himself succeeded by his second son
William who, like his father, was attached to the house of Belesme, and also
distinguished himself in the war with Maine.[699] He had however to contend
for the possession of his estates against the violence of Count Gilbert of
Brionne, a man who, on this as on some other occasions,[700] seems to have
failed to carry into his private relations those principles of honourable
conduct which in so marked a way distinguished his administration of
public affairs. William was a brave soldier and a faithful vassal, ready to
undergo any personal loss on behalf of his lord or of his friend.[701] He was
also bountiful to the Church, though he strictly maintained the ecclesiastical

privileges of his own lordships.[702] Twice he made the pilgrimage to
Jerusalem, once during the height of his prosperity, and once after the great
misfortune which clouded his later days. For he it Blinded by William
Talvas.
was whom the fierce Talvas, in defiance of every
tie of gratitude, of hospitality, and of feudal honour, blinded and mutilated
when he came as a guest to his bridal.[703] The daughter of Talvas too, the
cruel Mabel, pursued the house of Geroy throughout life with unrelenting
hatred.[704] In his old age he became a monk at Bec, He grants Saint
Evroul to Bec.
a house to which he had already been a benefactor.
[705]
He had given to Herlwin and his monks the lands of Saint Evroul and
the church lately restored by Restold. It now became a cell to the Abbey,
inhabited by a small body of monks with Lanfranc at their head.[706] But
presently William’s nephews, Hugh and Robert of Grantmesnil,[707] were
designing the foundation of a monastery near the lordship on the Oudon
from which they took their name. Of these two brothers, Robert became a
monk of Saint Evroul; of Hugh we shall hear again in the history both of
Normandy and of England. Their pious uncle Restoration of Saint
Evroul. 1050.
approved of the design, but pointed out that the site
which they had chosen was lacking in the two great monastic necessaries of
wood and water.[708] Let them rather join with him in restoring to its ancient
splendour the fallen house of Saint Evroul, placed on a spot suited for every
monastic want.[709] Uncle and nephews joined their energies and their
purses; the rights of Bec over the church and lands were exchanged for
another estate, and the new Saint Evroul arose with the full licence of Duke
William, of Archbishop Malger, and of the other Prelates of Normandy.
Monks were brought from Jumièges, and a brother of that house, Theodoric
by name, became the first Abbot of the new 1050.
[710]
foundation. But the house seems to have been 1058.
far less fortunate than Bec in its rulers. Theodoric after a while laid aside
his office, driven to resignation, it is said, by the cabals of the co-founder
Robert of Grantmesnil, who, having made his profession in the house, had
obtained the rank of Prior.[711] Robert was chosen to 1059.
the Abbotship, but, a few years after, he was 1063.
himself deposed, or driven to resignation, by Duke William,[712] and long
controversies followed between him and his successor Osbern.[713]

I have given a sketch of the origin of these two famous monasteries,
partly because their stories bring before us so many members of the leading
Norman families, but mainly as illustrating the Connexion of the
religious movement in
great religious movement which was then at work Normandy with the
in Normandy, and which was not without its share Conquest of England.
in bringing about the Conquest of England. When
we come to a later stage in our history, we shall see with what art William,
and his trusty counsellor Lanfranc, contrived to appeal to the religious
feelings of the Normans, to represent the English King as a sinner against
the local saints of Normandy, and to represent the Conquest of England as a
holy war undertaken to chastise the ungodly. Such a vein of sentiment could
hardly have been safely appealed to except at a time when there was a great
religious stir in the national mind. One side of this movement is shown in
the foundation of so many monasteries, in the zeal with which men gave of
their substance for their erection, in the eagerness with which men, often
the same men, pressed to become members of the holy brotherhoods. But a
still more honourable fruit of the religious mind of Normandy, one however
which Normandy only shared with many other parts of Europe, is to be
found in the acceptance during this period of the famous Truce of God.

This extraordinary institution is the most The Truce of God.
speaking witness, at once to the ferocity of the times, and also to the deep
counter feeling which underlaid men’s minds. Clergy and laity alike felt that
the state of things which they saw daily before their eyes was a standing sin
against God and man, repugnant alike to natural humanity and to the
precepts of the Christian religion. States were everywhere so subdivided,
governments were everywhere so weak, that, in most parts of Europe, every
man who had the needful force at his command simply did that which was
right in his own eyes. We cannot doubt that in those parts of Britain where
the authority of the English Kings was really established, the evil was
smaller than it was in any part of Gaul.[714] Neither can we doubt that in
Normandy, during the minority of William, the evil was even greater than it
was in other parts of Gaul. But the extreme disorder of that minority was
simply an exaggerated form of what might be called the normal state of
things throughout the greater part of Western Private war.
Europe. Every man claimed the right of private war against every other man
who was not bound to him by any special tie as his lord or his vassal. And
the distinction between private war and mere robbery and murder was not
always very sharply drawn. It is clear that, in such a state of things, an
utterly unscrupulous man, to whom warfare, however unjust, was a mere
trifle, had a decided advantage over his more peaceable neighbours. A few
such men as William Talvas might throw a whole province into disorder;
and men who were in no way naturally disposed to wrong or violence were
necessarily driven to constant warfare in sheer self-defence. The poor and
the weak were of course the chief victims; when one gentleman harried the
lands of another, the immediate tillers of the earth must have suffered far
more severely than their master. It was the tenants of Herlwin, rather than
Herlwin himself, who had most bitterly to complain of the ravages of Count
Gilbert.[715] The lower classes then had especial Undercurrent against
the violence of the
reason to curse the lawlessness of the times; yet we time.
can well believe that there were many men of
higher rank, who were dragged into these wretched contests against their
own will, and who would have been well pleased to keep their swords
sheathed, save when the lawful command of their sovereign required them
to be drawn. These two contending feelings can always be traced side by
side. Every attempt to put any kind of check on the violence of the times
was always received with general good will; and yet the practical result of

so many praiseworthy attempts was, after all, something extremely small.
The men who were ready to keep the peace, and to observe the rules made
to preserve it, were left in a manner at the mercy of those who refused to
obey any rule whatsoever. Whatever laws were made to preserve the peace,
the peaceable man was still, as before, driven to fight in his own defence.
Still the movement in favour of law and order was a very remarkable and a
very general one. The call to observe peace towards Christians at home was
a call, quite as general, though much more gradual, than the call to wage
war against the Infidels in other lands. But the call Comparison between
the Truce of God and
to the Crusade fell in with every side of the temper the Crusades.
of the times; the proclamation of the Truce of God
fell in with only one, and that its least powerful, side. Good and bad men
alike were led by widely different motives to rush to the Holy War. The men
who endeavoured to obey the Truce of God must often have found
themselves the helpless victims of those who despised it.
A movement on behalf of peace and good will towards men could not fail
in those days to assume an ecclesiastical form. As The form taken by the
movement necessarily
of old the Amphiktyonic Council, the great ecclesiastical.
religious synod of Greece, strove to put some
bounds to the horrors of war as waged between Greek and Greek,[716] so
now, in the same spirit, a series of Christian synods strove, by means of
ecclesiastical decrees and ecclesiastical censures, to put some bounds to the
horrors of war as waged between Christian and Moderation of the
reform attempted.
Christian. And at both times the spiritual power
showed its wisdom in not attempting too much. War was not wholly
forbidden in either case, for such a precept would have been hopelessly
impossible to carry out. But certain extreme measures were to be avoided,
certain classes of persons were to be respected, certain holy seasons were to
be kept altogether free from warfare. Such at least was the form in which
the Truce of God was preached in Normandy. But Normandy was one of the
last countries to receive the Truce, and it seems not to have appeared there
in its earliest shape. It would rather seem as if the first attempts at its
establishment had tried to compass too much, and as if later preachers of
peace had been driven to content themselves with a much less close
approach to universal brotherhood. The movement The Truce first
preached in
began in Aquitaine, and the vague and rhetorical Aquitaine. 1034.
language of our authority would seem to imply that

all war, at any rate all private war, was forbidden under pain of
ecclesiastical censures.[717] It must not be forgotten that, in that age, it must
have been exceedingly difficult to draw the Difficulty of defining
public and private
distinction between public and private war. In war.
England indeed, where an efficient constitutional
system existed, the distinction was plain. Except when sudden invasion
required the immediate action of the local power, no war could be lawful
which was not decreed by the King and his Witan. There might be
rebellions and civil wars, but there was no recognized private warfare in the
continental sense. But in Gaul it would have been impossible to deny the
right of war and peace to the great vassals of the Crown, to the sovereigns
of Normandy and Aquitaine. And, if the vassals of the Crown might make
war on each other, on what principle could the same right be refused to their
vassals, to the Lords of Alençon and Brionne? Among the endless links of
the feudal chain, it was hard to find the exact point where sovereignty
ended and where simple property began. A preacher therefore who
denounced private war must have had some difficulty in so doing without
denouncing war altogether. But the doctrine, hard Enthusiastic reception
of the Truce.
as it might be to carry out in practice, was
rapturously received at its first announcement. As the first preaching of the
Crusade was met with one universal cry of “God wills it,” so the Bishops,
Abbots, and other preachers of the Truce were met with a like universal cry
of Peace, Peace, Peace.[718] Men bound themselves to God and to one
another to abstain from all wrong and violence, and they engaged solemnly
to renew the obligation every five years.[719] From Aquitaine the movement
spread through Burgundy, royal and ducal.[720] But it seems to have been
gradually found that the establishment of perfect Relaxation about
1041.
peace on earth was hopeless. After seven years
from the first preaching of peace, we find the requirements of its apostles
greatly relaxed. It was found vain to forbid all war, even all private war. All
that was now attempted was to forbid violence of every kind from the
evening of Wednesday till the morning of Monday.[721] It was in this shape
that the Truce was first preached in northern and Reception of the
Truce in Burgundy
eastern Gaul. The days of Christ’s supper, of His and Lotharingia.
passion, of His rest in the grave and His
resurrection, were all to be kept free from strife and bloodshed. The
Burgundian Bishops were zealous in the cause; so especially was Richard,

Bishop of Verdun in Lotharingia.[722] But Bishop Gerard of Cambray
maintained, on the other hand, that the whole affair Opposition of Gerard
of Cambray.
was no concern of the ecclesiastical power. It was,
he argued, the business of temporal rulers to fight, and the business of
spiritual men to pray; the pious scheme of his brethren could never be
carried out, and the attempt to enforce it could lead only to an increase of
false-swearing.[723] This Prelate, in his worldly wisdom, seems to have
looked deeper into the hearts of the men of his time than his more hopeful
and enthusiastic brethren. At last the new teaching reached Normandy. The
luxury of mutual destruction was dear to the Norman mind; for a long time
any restraint upon it was strongly resisted, and even the preaching of
Bishop Richard himself had for a long time no effect.[724] Miracles were
needed to convince so stiff-necked a generation, but at last the apostolic
labours of Hagano, the successor of Richard, The Truce received at
[725] the Councils of Caen
brought even Normandy to a better mind. The [1042],
young Duke and his counsellors were urgent in
behalf of the Truce, and it was at last received by the Clergy and Laity of
Normandy in the famous Council held for that purpose at Caen.[726] We are
told that it was most carefully observed;[727] but, nearly forty years after,
when the long reign of William was drawing towards its end, it had to be
again ordained in another Council at Lillebonne, and Lillebonne
[1080].
and all the powers of the State, ecclesiastical and
temporal, were called on to help in enforcing its observance.[728]

The men who laboured to put even this small check on the violence of
the times are worthy of eternal honour, and it is probable that the institution
of the Truce of God really did something for a while to lessen the frightful
anarchy into which Normandy had fallen. But we can hardly doubt that a
far more effectual check was supplied by the increasing strength of
William’s government, as he drew nearer to manhood, and more and more
fully displayed the stern and vigorous determination of his character. But
neither the one nor the other could avail wholly to preserve Normandy for
some years to come either from civil war or from Wide spread
conspiracy against
foreign invasion. A far more deeply spread William. 1047.
conspiracy than any that we have as yet heard of
was now formed against the Duke. We have now reached one of the great

epochs in the life of the Conqueror; we shall soon have to tell of his first
battle and his first victory. Within a few years after the proclamation of the
Truce of God, not this or that isolated Baron, but the whole of the most
Norman part of Normandy rose in open revolt Intrigues of Guy of
Burgundy.
against its sovereign. The prime mover in the
rebellion was Guy of Burgundy.[729] He had been His friendship with
the Duke, and his
brought up with the Duke as his friend and large possessions.
kinsman,[730] and he had received large possessions
from his bounty. Among other broad lands, he held Vernon, the border
fortress on the Seine, so often taken and retaken in the wars between France
and Normandy. He held also Brionne, the castle on the Risle, lately the
home of William’s faithful guardian Count Gilbert.[731] But the old jealousy
was never lulled to sleep; the sway of the Bastard was insupportable, and,
the greater the qualities that William displayed, the more insupportable was
it doubtless felt to be. William had now reached manhood. After such a
discipline as he had gone through, his nineteen years of life had given him
all the caution and experience of a far more advanced age. He was as ready
and as able to show himself a born leader of men as Cnut had been at the
same time of life.[732] The turbulent spirits of Normandy began to feel that
they had found a master; unless a blow were struck in time, the days of
anarchy and licence, the days of castle-building and oppression, would soon
be over. Guy of Brionne therefore found many He plots with the
lords of the Bessin
ready listeners, especially among the great lords of and Côtentin.
the true Norman land west of the Dive. He, the
lawful heir of their Dukes, no bastard, no tanner’s grandson, but sprung of a
lawful marriage between the princely houses of Burgundy and Normandy,
claimed the Duchy as his right by birth.[733] But, if the lords of the Bessin
and the Côtentin would aid him in dispossessing Scheme for a division
of the Duchy.
the Bastard, he would willingly share the land with
them.[734] This most probably means that he would content himself with the
more purely French parts of the Duchy, the original grant to Rolf, and
would leave the Barons of the later settlements in the enjoyment of
independence. We can thus understand, what at first sight seems puzzling,
why the cause of Guy was taken up with such zeal. Otherwise it is hard to
see why the chiefs of any part of Normandy, and, above all, the chiefs of
this more strictly Scandinavian part, should cast aside a prince who was at
any rate a native Norman, in favour of one whose connexion with

Normandy was only by the spindle side, and who must have seemed in their
eyes little better than a Frenchman. We can thus Geographical division
of Parties;
also understand the geographical division of parties
during the war which followed. William is faithfully supported by the
French districts to the East; by Rouen and the Rouen and the French
lands loyal to
whole land to the right of the Dive. These are the William.
districts which the division between Guy and the
confederate Lords would have given to the Burgundian prince, and which
no doubt armed zealously against any such arrangement. To them the
overthrow of William’s authority meant their own handing over to a foreign
ruler. But to the inhabitants, at any rate to the great Bayeux and the
Danish lands join the
lords, of the Lower Normandy, the Scandinavian rebellion.
land, it would seem that the struggle against the
ducal power was simply a struggle for renewed independence. We are told
that the sympathies of the mass of the people, even in the Bessin and the
Côtentin, lay with William.[735] This is quite possible. The peasant revolt
may well have left behind it some root of abiding bitterness, bitterness
which would show itself far more strongly against the immediate lords of
the soil than against the distant sovereign, who is, in such cases, always
looked to as a possible protector. But the great lords of the western districts
joined eagerly in the rebellion; and the smaller gentry, willingly or
unwillingly, followed their banners. The descendants of the second colony
of Rolf,[736] of the colonies of William Longsword and Harold Blaatand,
drew the sword against the domination of the districts which, even a
hundred years before, had become French.[737] Saxon Bayeux and Danish
Coutances rose against Romanized Rouen and Evreux. We know not
whether the old speech and the old worship may not still have lingered in
some out-of-the-way corners; it is certain that the difference in feeling
between the two districts was still living and working, just as the outward
difference is still to this day stamped on their inhabitants. The foremost men
of western Normandy at once attached themselves Rebel leaders;
to Guy, and joined zealously in his plans. First in the revolt was Nigel or
Neal of Saint Saviour, Viscount[738] of Coutances, the son of the chief who
had, forty-six years before, beaten back the host of Neal of Saint
[739] Saviour.
Æthelred. The elder Neal had died, full of years,
during the days of anarchy,[740] and his son was destined to an equally long
possession of his honours. In the very heart of his peninsula stood his castle

by the Ouve, already consecrated by a small college of Canons, the
foundation of his grandfather Roger, soon to give way to his own famous
Abbey of Saint Saviour.[741] This point formed the natural centre of the
whole conspiracy. From that castle, Neal, the ruler of the Côtentin,
commanded the whole of that varied region, its rich meads, its hills and
valleys, its rocks and marshes, the dreary landes by the great minster of
Lessay, the cliffs which look down on the fortress of Cæsar, and which had
stood as beacons to guide the sails of Harold Blaatand to the rescue.[742] The
Viscount of Saint Saviour now became the chief leader of the rebellion,
won over by the promises and gifts of Guy, who did not scruple to rob his
mother of her possessions, and to bestow them on his ally.[743] With Neal
stood Randolf, Viscount of Bayeux, who, from his Randolf, Viscount of
Bayeux.
castle of Brichessart, held the same sway over the
Saxons of the Bessin which Neal held over the Danes of the Côtentin.[744] In
the same company was Hamon, lord of Thorigny, Hamon Dentatus.
lord too of the steep of Creuilly, where a vast fabric of later times has
displaced his ancient donjon, and where the adjoining church bears witness
to the splendour and bounty of the generation immediately following his
own.[745] Some personal peculiarity entitled him to bear, in the language of
our Latin chroniclers, one of the most glorious cognomina of old Rome, and
Hamon Dentatus became the forefather of men famous in British as well as
in Norman history.[746] One loyal chronicler, in his zeal, speaks of the rebel
by the strange name of Antichrist;[747] but, as in the case of Thurstan of
Falaise, the stain was wiped out in the next generation. His son, Robert
Fitz-Hamon, was destined to set the seal to the work of Offa and of Harold,
to press down the yoke for ever upon the necks of the southern Cymry, and
to surround his princely fortress of Cardiff with the lowlier castles of his
twelve homagers of the land of Morganwg. Hardly Grimbald of Plessis.
less famous was a third Baron from the Saxon land, Grimbald of Plessis,
whose ancestors and whose descendants have won no renown, but whose
own name still remains impressed upon his fortress, and whose sister’s son
became the forefather of a mighty house in England. Of her stock came
William of Albini, who, like the Tudor of later days, won the love of a
widowed Queen, and whose name still lives among his works in the
fortresses of Arundel and Castle Rising.[748] By the help of these men the
claims of the Burgundian became widely acknowledged. They swore to
support his rights, and to deprive the Bastard of the Duchy which he had

invaded, whether by force of arms or by the baser acts of treachery. They
put their castles into a state of thorough defence; Preparations for the
[749] revolt.
they stored them for a campaign or a siege, and
made ready for the most extensive and thoroughly organized revolt which
the troubled reign of the young Duke had yet beheld.
The revolt began, as an earlier revolt had begun,[750] with a treacherous
attempt to seize or murder the Duke, in which Grimbald seems to have been
the immediate agent.[751] The opportunity was Attempt to seize
William at Valonges.
tempting, as William was now at a point in Neal’s
own Viscounty, at no great distance from his own castle. He was at
Valognes, the old town so rich in Roman remains, and the rich and fanciful
outline of whose Gothic cupola is one of the most striking objects in the
architecture of the district. Perhaps some scent of the coming danger had
reached him, and he had ventured into the enemy’s country in order to
search out matters for himself. But, in any case, he did not neglect the
chosen amusement to which he and his race were given up, even beyond
other men of their time. Several days had been spent in the employment of
William’s favourite weapon the bow[752] against either savage or harmless
victims. At last, one night, when all his party, William warned by
his fool.
except his immediate household, had left him,
while he was yet in his first sleep, Gallet his fool, like his uncle Walter at an
earlier stage of his life,[753] burst into his room, staff in hand, and aroused
him. If he did not arise and flee for his life, he would never leave the
Côtentin a living man. The Duke arose, half His escape.
dressed in haste, leaped on his horse, seemingly alone, and rode for his life
all that night. A bright moon guided him, and he pressed on till he reached
the estuary formed by the rivers Ouve and Vire. There the ebbing tide
supplied a ford, which was afterwards known as the Duke’s Way. William
crossed in safety, and landed in the district of Bayeux, near the church of
Saint Clement. He entered the building, and prayed for God’s help on his
way. His natural course would now have been to strike for Bayeux; but the
city was in the hands of his enemies; he determined therefore to keep the
line between Bayeux and the sea, and thus to take his chance of reaching
the loyal districts. As the sun rose, he drew near to the church and castle of
Rye,[754] the dwelling-place of a faithful vassal named Hubert. The Lord of
Rye was standing at his own gate, between the church and the mound on
which his castle was raised.[755] William was still urging on his foaming

horse past the gate; but Hubert knew and stopped His reception by
Hubert of Rye.
his sovereign, and asked the cause of this headlong
ride. He heard that the Duke was flying for his life before his enemies. He
welcomed his prince to his house, he set him on a fresh horse, he bade his
three sons ride by his side, and never leave him till he was safely lodged in
his own castle of Falaise.[756] The command of their He reaches Falaise.
father was faithfully executed by his loyal sons. We are not surprised to
hear that the house of Rye rose high in William’s favour; and we can hardly
grudge them their share in the lands of England, when we find that Eudes
the son of Hubert, the King’s Dapifer and Sheriff of Essex, was not only the
founder of the great house of Saint John at Colchester, but won a purer fame
as one of the very few Normans in high authority who knew how to win the
love and confidence of the conquered English.[757]
The Bessin and the Côtentin were now in open Progress of the
rebellion.
rebellion. We are told that men cursed the rebels,
and wished well to the Duke in their hearts. But the revolted Barons had for
the time the upper hand. They seized on the ducal revenues within their
districts, and robbed and slew many who still clave to their allegiance. The
dominion of the male line of Rolf, the very existence of Normandy as an
united state, seemed in jeopardy. William did not venture to meet his
enemies with the forces of the districts which still He seeks help of the
King of the French.
remained faithful. He was driven to seek for
foreign aid, and he sought it in a quarter where one would think that nothing
short of despair could have led him to think of seeking for it. He craved
help of one who was indeed bound to grant it by every official and by every
personal tie, but who had hitherto acted towards William only as a faithless
enemy, ready to grasp at any advantage, however mean and treacherous.
The Duke of the Normans, driven to such humiliation by the intrigues of an
ungrateful kinsman, crossed the French border, and made his suit to his
Lord King Henry at Poissy.[758] He met with favour Henry comes to his
help in person.
in the eyes of his suzerain; a French army, with the
King at its head, was soon ready to march to the support of Duke William
against his rebels. It is hard to see why Henry, whose whole earlier and later
conduct is of so opposite a kind, stood forth for this once faithfully to
discharge the duties of an honourable overlord towards an injured vassal.
One would have thought that a revolt which, above His probable
motives.
all others, tended to the dismemberment of

Normandy would have been hailed by Henry as exactly falling in with the
interests of the suzerain power. Instead of the one strong and united state
which had hitherto cut him off from the whole coast from Britanny to
Ponthieu, there was now a chance of the establishment of two or three small
principalities, each insignificant in itself, and all probably hostile to one
another. Such states would run a fair risk of being recovered one by one by
their overlord. Henry had himself in past years encroached on the Norman
territory, and he had not scrupled to give encouragement to Norman traitors
against their own sovereign. Yet the common interest of princes may have
led him to see that it was bad policy to abet open rebellion, and he may
have doubted whether the aggrandizement of the mutinous Barons of the
Bessin and the Côtentin would be any real gain to France. Such neighbours
might prove far more turbulent as vassals, and might not be much more
easy to subdue as enemies, than the comparatively firm and orderly
government of the Dukes of Rouen. At all events French aid was freely
granted to the princely suppliant.[759] The King set forth at the head of his
army to join the troops which William had gathered from the loyal districts,
and to share with them in a decisive encounter with the rebel forces.
The French and the loyal Normans joined their Battle of Val-ès-
dunes, 1047;
forces some miles to the east of Caen, in the
neighbourhood of the memorable field of Val-ès-dunes. The spot is not one
specially attractive in itself; it is not one of those spots which seem marked
out by the hand of nature as specially designed to become the scene of great
historical events. But we shall see that, for the purposes of the particular
battle which was fought there, no ground could have been better suited.
Nor, at first sight, does the fight of Val-ès-dunes, an engagement of cavalry
between two Norman factions, seem to have any claim to a place among the
great battles of history. But Val-ès-dunes was the its importance in the
life of William.
first pitched battle of the Conqueror; it was the
field on which he first won a right to that lofty title, and the lessons which
he learned there stood him in good stead on a far more awful day. And,
more than this, it was there that William conquered his own land and his
own people, and by that earlier conquest both schooled and strengthened
himself for his mightier conquest beyond the sea. Normandy had first to be
firmly grasped, and her fierce Barons to be brought under the yoke, before
the hand of William could be stretched forth to fix its grasp on England, and
to press the yoke upon the necks of her people. In a word, the strife with

Randolf and Neal and their revolted provinces was the needful forerunner
of the strife with Harold and his Kingdom. The tourney of Norman
horsemen upon the open slope of Val-ès-dunes was William’s school of
fence for the sterner clashing of axe and spear upon the palisaded heights of
Senlac.
And there is another aspect in which the two Val-ès-dunes a battle
between Romanized
battles have a common feature. Val-ès-dunes, no and Teutonic
less than Senlac, was a struggle between the Normandy.
Roman and the Teuton. The fact was not indeed
forced in the same way upon men’s minds by the outward contrast of
language, of tactics, of every badge of national difference. Still it is none
the less true that, at Val-ès-dunes, the old Scandinavian blood of Normandy
found its match, and more than its match, in the power of France and of the
French portions of the Norman Duchy. Danish Coutances and Saxon
Bayeux were brought face to face with Romanized District which
supported William.
Rouen and Evreux and with royal Paris itself.
From all the lands east of the Dive men flocked to the Ducal standard. The
episcopal cities of Lisieux and Evreux, along with primatial Rouen, sent
forth their loyal burghers, and the men of the surrounding districts pressed
no less eagerly to the muster. They came, according to the old division,
which the suppression of the peasant revolt had not wholly broken up,
arranged in companies which still retained the name of communes,
suggesting the freedom which they had perhaps not wholly lost.[760] From
beyond the Seine came the troops of Caux, and from the south of the Duchy
came the men of Auge, and of Duke Robert’s County of Hiesmes. And who
can doubt that foremost among them all were the burghers of William’s own
Falaise, zealous on behalf of a Prince who was also their own immediate
countryman? But the whole west of Normandy, the land where the old
Norman speech and spirit had longest lingered, was arrayed on the side of
the rebels. Except the contingent of his own birthplace and its
neighbourhood, no part of the Duke’s force seems to have come from the
lands west of the Dive; all else came from the old domain of Rolf, the
oldest, but, then as now, not the most Norman Normandy.[761]
The field of battle lies just within the hostile Description of the
[762] field of battle.
country. South-east of Caen, in continuation of
the high ground of Allemagne[763] immediately south of the town, stretches a
long, broad, and slightly elevated plain, sloping gently towards the east.[764]

It hardly deserves to be called a hill, and the indentations with which its
sides are broken hardly deserve to be called valleys.[765] Several villages and
churches, Secqueville, Bellengreville, Billy, Chicheboville, form the
boundaries of the field, but the plain itself is open and without any
remarkable feature. A ridge somewhat higher than the rest of the ground,
known as Mount Saint Lawrence, is the only conspicuous point of the plain
itself, and this marks the western boundary of the actual battle-ground. The
little stream of the Muance, a tributary of the Orne, bounds the plain to the
south-east.[766] To the north lies the high ground of Argences, over which
William advanced with the troops of the loyal districts. The French
auxiliaries, approaching from the south by way of Mezidon, first reached
the little village of Valmeray, where a ruined tower of later date marks the
site of the church of Saint Brice in which King Henry heard mass before the
battle.[767] Meanwhile the Duke’s forces crossed the Junction of the Ducal
[768] and French forces.
Muance at the ford of Berengier, and at once
joined the French. King and Duke now ranged their troops in the order in
which it was most natural to meet an enemy advancing from the west. The
Normans, who had come from the north, formed the right wing, while the
French, coming from the south, naturally formed the left.[769] There was
pitched the royal standard, on which we are told that the presumption of the
upstart house of Paris had dared to emblazon the eagle of Julius and
Charles.[770] King Henry and Duke William, each baton in hand,[771] were
now marshalling their troops, and the battle seemed about to begin, when, if
we may trust our only detailed narrative of that day’s fight, one side was
cheered and the other dispirited by an unlooked for incident.
Ralph of Tesson was lord of the forest of Cingueleiz, the forest some way
to the south of Caen, between the rivers Orne and Ralph of Tesson joins
the Duke.
Lise, and his chief seat was at Harcourt Thury. He
was a lord of great power, and his contingent is said to have mustered no
less than a hundred and twenty knights with their banners and tokens.[772] He
had no ground of offence against the Duke; yet he had joined in the
conspiracy, and had sworn on the saints at Bayeux to smite William
wherever he found him.[773] But his heart smote him when he found himself
standing face to face against his lord in open battle. His knights too pressed
around him, and reminded him of his homage and plighted faith, and how
he who fought against his natural lord had no right to fief or honour.[774] On
the other hand the Viscounts Neal and Randolf pressed him to stand firmly

by them, and promised great rewards as the price of his adherence. For a
while he stood doubtful, keeping his troop apart from either army. We are
told that the King and the Duke marked them as they stood, and that
William told Henry that he knew them for the men of Ralph of Tesson, that
their leader had no grudge against him, and that he believed that they would
all soon be on his side. Presently the arguments of his own knights
prevailed with Ralph; he bade them halt, and he himself spurred across the
field, shouting as his war-cry the name of his lordship of Thury.[775] He rode
up to the Duke, he struck him with his glove, and so performed his oath to
smite William wherever he found him.[776] The Duke welcomed the
returning penitent, and Ralph rode back to his men. His detachment stood
aside for a space till the two hosts were engaged in the thick of the battle.
He then watched his opportunity, and made a vigorous charge on the side of
the Duke.
Such an auspicious reinforcement might well stir Character of the
battle; a mere combat
up the spirits of the young Duke and his followers. of cavalry.
Every man was eager for battle. A fierce combat of
cavalry began. We have heard of the infantry of the communes as appearing
at the ducal muster, but we hear nothing of them in the battle. We hear
nothing of the Norman archers, who were to win so terrible a renown upon
a later field. All is one vast tourney, mounted knights charging one another
with shield, sword, and lance. The first great battle of William, like the first
great battle of Alexander,[777] was truly a battle of chivalry in every sense of
the word, a hand to hand personal fight between mounted nobles on either
side. On pressed the Duke, sword in hand, seeking out the perjured
Viscounts,[778] and shouting the war-cry of Normandy, “Dex aie.”[779] On the
same side rose the shout of “Montjoye-Saint-Denys,” the national war-cry
of the French Kingdom. From the rebel host arose the names of various
local saints, patrons of the castles and churches of the revolted leaders,
Saint Sever, Saint Amand, and others of less renown.[780] On the rebel left
rode the men of the Bessin, on the right those of the Côtentin. The men of
the peninsula thus came face to face with the royal Personal exertions of
King Henry.
troops; the King of the French, as in the old days of
Lewis and Harold,[781] had to meet in close fight with the fiercest and most
unconquerable warriors of the Norman name. And well and bravely did
King Henry do his duty on that one day of his life. Even in the Norman
picture, it is around the King, rather than around the Duke, that the main

storm of battle is made to centre. The knights now met on each side, lance
to lance, and, when their lances were shivered, sword to sword. There was
no difference of tactics, no contrast between one weapon and another; the
fight of Val-ès-dunes was the sheer physical encounter of horse and man,
the mere trial of personal strength and personal skill in knightly exercises.
The King, as in such a fight any man of common courage must do, exposed
himself freely to danger; but, as far as his personal adventures went, the
royal share in the battle was somewhat unlucky. Once, if not twice, the
King of the French, the overlord of Normandy, was hurled from his horse
by the thrust of a Norman lance. A knight of the Côtentin first overthrew
him by a sudden charge. The exploit was long remembered in the rhymes of
his warlike province,[782] but the hero of it purchased his renown with his
life. The King was unhurt, but the report of such an accident might easily
spread confusion among his army. Like more renowned warriors before and
after, like Eadmund at Sherstone,[783] like William at Senlac, it was needful
that he should show himself to his followers, and wipe out the misfortune
by fresh exploits. Henry was therefore soon again in the thickest of the
fight; but, less fortunate than either Eadmund or William, the like mishap
befell him a second time.[784] The King presently encountered one of the
three great chiefs of the rebellion; another thrust, dealt by the lance of
Hamon, again laid Henry on the ground; but a well timed stroke from a
French knight more than avenged this second overthrow; the Lord of
Thorigny was carried off dead on his shield like an old Spartan.[785]
The King honoured his valiant adversary, and, by his express order,
Hamon was buried with all fitting splendour before the Church of Our Lady
at Esquai on the Orne.[786]
The King is thus made decidedly the most prominent figure in the
picture, and, somewhat inglorious as were Henry’s personal experiences
that day, it is to him and his Frenchmen that the Norman poet does not
scruple to attribute the victory.[787] The fight appears throughout as a fight
between Normans and Frenchmen.[788] But the Exploits and good
fortune of William.
Duke of the Normans himself was not idle. If his
royal ally was personally unlucky, it was on this day that William began
that career of personal success, of good fortune in the mere tug of battle,
which, till the clouded evening of his life, was as conspicuous as the higher
triumphs of his military genius and his political craft. Men loved to tell how
the young Duke slew with his own hand the beloved vassal of Randolf,

Hardrez, the choicest warrior of Bayeux;[789] how the veteran champion, in
the pride of his might, rode defiant in the front rank; how the Duke rode
straight at him, not justing with his lance as in a mimic tourney, but smiting
hand to hand with the sword. The poet rises to an almost Homeric flight,
when he tells us how William smote the rebel below the chin, how he drove
the sharp steel between the throat and the chest, how the body fell beneath
his stroke and the soul passed away.[790]
The fortune of the day was now distinctly Randolf loses heart
and flees.
turning against the rebels; but, had all of them
displayed equal courage, the issue of the struggle might still have been
unfavourable to King and Duke. Neal of Saint Saviour still fought among
the foremost of the men of his peninsula, but the heart of his accomplice
from Bayeux began to fail him. Randolf had seen his most cherished vassal
fall by the hand of his young sovereign; his heart quailed lest the like fate
should be his own; he feared lest Neal had fled; he feared that he was
betrayed to the enemy; he repented that he had ever put on his helmet; it
was sad to be taken captive, it was a still worse doom to be slain. The battle
ceased to give him any pleasure;[791] he gave way before every charge; he
wandered in front and in rear; at last he lost heart altogether; he dropped his
lance and his shield, he stretched forth his neck,[792] and rode for his life.
The cowards, we are told, followed him; but Neal Neal continues the
fight to the last.
still continued the fight, giving and taking blows
till his strength failed him. The French pressed upon him; their numbers
increased, the numbers of the Normans lessened; some of his followers had
fled, others lay dead and dying around him. At last the mighty lord of the
Côtentin saw that all hope was lost. On the rising ground of Saint Lawrence
the last blow seems to have been struck. The spot was afterwards marked by
a commemorative chapel, which was destroyed by the Huguenots in the
religious wars. On its site it doubtless was that the valiant Neal at last
turned and left the field, seemingly the last man of the whole rebel army.
The rout now became general. The example of Rout of the Rebels.
Randolf drew after it far more followers than the example of Neal. The
rebels rode for their lives in small parties, the troops of the King and the
Duke following hard upon them, and smiting them from the rear. From the
ridge of Saint Lawrence they rode westward, to reach the friendly land of
Bayeux;[793] they rode by the Abbey of Fontenay and the quarries of
Allemagne; but the flood of the Orne checked their course; men and horses

were swept away by the stream, or were slaughtered by the pursuers in the
attempt to cross; the mills of Borbillon, we are told, were stopped by the
dead bodies.[794]

The victory was a decisive one, and it was one Completeness of the
victory.
which proved no less decisive in its lasting results
than it had been as a mere success on the field of The French auxiliaries
return.
battle. King Henry, who had done his work well
and faithfully, now went back to his own land, and left William to complete
the reduction of his revolted subjects. One of them, the original author of
the plot, still offered him a long and vigorous resistance. Of the conduct of
Guy of Burgundy in the field we hear nothing, except an incidental mention
of a wound which he received there.[795] Indeed, since the appearance of his
three great Norman adherents, the Burgundian Escape of Guy.
[796]
prince has nearly dropped out of sight. He now reappears, to receive
from the Norman writers a vast out-pouring of scorn on account of his flight
from the field,[797] though it does not appear to have been in any way more
ignominious than the flight of the mass of his Norman allies. At any rate he
was not borne away in the indiscriminate rush of his comrades towards the
Orne. He escaped, with a large body of companions,[798] in quite the
opposite direction, to his own castle of Brionne on the Risle. There he took
up a position of defence, and was speedily He defends himself at
Brionne.
followed and besieged by Duke William. The
castle of Brionne of those days was not the hill fortress, the shell of a
donjon of that or of the next age, which now looks down upon the town and
valley beneath. The stronghold of Count Guy had natural defences, but they
were defences of another kind. The town itself seems to have been strongly
fortified; but the point of defence which was most relied on at Brionne was
the fortified hall of stone which stood on an island in the river.[799] William
had, before now, by one vigorous assault, brought his own native Falaise to
surrender;[800] but, though we are expressly told that the stream was
everywhere fordable, the island fortress seems to have been deemed proof
against any attacks of this kind. A regular siege Siege of Brionne
1047–1050?
alone could reduce it, and William was driven to
practise all the devices of the military art of his day against his rebellious
cousin. He built a castle, this time very possibly of wood, on each side of

the river, and thus cut off the besieged from their supplies of provisions.[801]
Constant assaults on the beleaguered castle are spoken of, but their aim
seems to have been mainly to frighten the besieged rather than to produce
any more practical effect;[802] hunger was the sure and slow means on which
William relied to bring Guy to reason. The siege was clearly a long one,
though it is hardly possible to believe, on the incidental statement of a
single authority, that it was spread over a space of three years.[803] At last the
endurance of Guy and his companions gave way, Surrender of Brionne.
and he sent messengers praying for mercy. The Duke required the surrender
of the castle; but touched, we are told, by the tie of kindred blood, he bade
Guy remain in his court.[804] Nor was the Duke’s William’s clemency
to the vanquished.
hand, on the whole, heavy on the other offenders.
No man was put to death, though William’s panegyrist holds that death was
the fitting punishment for their offences.[805] But in Rarity of political
executions.
those days, both in Normandy and elsewhere, the
legal execution of a state criminal was an event which seldom happened.
Men’s lives were recklessly wasted in the endless warfare of the times, and
there were men, as we have seen, who did not shrink from private murder,
even in its basest form.[806] But the formal hanging or beheading of a noble
prisoner, so common in later times, was, in the eleventh century, distinctly
an unusual sight.[807] And, strange as it may sound, there was a sense in
which William the Conqueror was not a man of William’s ordinary
treatment of enemies.
blood. He would sacrifice any number of lives to
his boundless ambition; he did not scruple to condemn his enemies to cruel
personal mutilations; he would keep men for years, as a mere measure of
security, in the horrible prison-houses of those days; but the extinction of
human life in cold blood was something from which he shrank. His
biographer exultingly points out this feature in his character, and his
recorded acts do not belie his praise.[808] Once only did he swerve from this
rule, when he sent the noble Waltheof to the scaffold. And, as that act stands
out conspicuously from its contrast to his ordinary conduct, so it is the act
from which it is impossible not to date the decline of his high fortune. And,
at the time of his first great victory, William was of an age which is
commonly disposed to be generous, and none of the worse features of his
character had hitherto come to the surface. With one exception only, no very
hard punishments were inflicted on the conquered Destruction of the
castles.
rebels. The mass of the rebellious Barons paid

fines, gave hostages, and had to submit to the destruction of the castles
which they had raised without the ducal licence.[809] To this, and to other
measures of the same kind, it is owing that such small traces of the Norman
castles of the eleventh century now remain. Neal of Saint Saviour had to
retire for a time to Britanny, but his exile must have been short, as we find
him, seemingly in the very next year, again in office and in the ducal favour.
He survived his restoration forty-four years;[810] he lived to repay at Senlac
the old wrong done by Englishmen to his father’s province; but, almost
alone among the great Norman chiefs, he received Guy returns to
Burgundy.
no share in the spoils of England. As for Guy, he
presently left the country of his own free will. His sojourn at William’s
court must have been little else than an honourable imprisonment, and it
would seem that he now found little respect or sympathy in Normandy.[811]
He returned to his native land, the Burgundian Palatinate, and there, we are
told, spent the rest of his days in plotting against his brother, the reigning
Count William.[812] One criminal only was reserved Fate of Grimbald.
for a harsher fate. Grimbald was taken to Rouen, and there kept in prison—
such as prisons were in those days—and in fetters. He was looked on as the
foulest traitor of all; he it was whom the Duke charged with the personal
attempt on his life at Valognes.[813] Grimbald confessed the crime, and
named as his accomplice a knight named Salle the son of Hugh. The
accused denied the charge, and challenged Grimbald to the judicial combat.
Before the appointed day of battle came, Grimbald was found dead in his
prison. He was buried with his fetters on his legs, his lands were
confiscated, and part of them was given to the church of Bayeux. Plessis
became a domain of the see, and other portions of the estates of Grimbald
became the corpses of various prebends in the cathedral church.[814]
The power of William was now on the whole Establishment of
William’s power in
firmly established. He had still to repel many Normandy.
attacks from hostile neighbours, and we shall have
yet to record one more considerable revolt within the Norman territory. But
the Norman Barons now knew that they had a master.[815] For some years to
come, internal discord, strictly so called, underwent a sort of lull to a degree
most remarkable in such an age. Under the firm and equal government of
her great Duke, Normandy began to recover from her years of anarchy, and
to rise to a higher degree of prosperity than she had ever yet attained to.[816]
The Duchy became, more completely than it had Effect of the struggle.

ever been before, a member of the European and of the Capetian
commonwealth. The Capetian King indeed soon The supremacy of the
French element
learned again to look with a grudging eye on his confirmed.
northern neighbour; but the general result of the
struggle must have been to make Normandy still more French than before.
The French and the Scandinavian elements had met face to face, and the
French element had had the upper hand. Frenchmen and French Normans
had overthrown the stout Saxons of the Bessin and the fierce Danes of the
Côtentin. The distinction between the two parts of Normandy is still one
which even the passing traveller may remark; but, from the day of Val-ès-
dunes, it ceased to manifest itself in the great outward expressions of
language and political feeling. The struggle which began during the
minority of Richard the Fearless was now finally decided at the close of the
minority of William the Bastard. The Count of Rouen had overcome Saxons
and Danes within his own dominions, and he was about to weld them into
his most trustworthy weapons wherewith to overcome Saxons and Danes
beyond the sea. The omen of the fight against Neal and Hamon might well
have recurred to the mind of William, when Neal himself and the son of
Hamon marched forth at his side from the camp at Hastings, and went on to
complete the conquest of England at Exeter and York.

§ 3. From the Battle of Val-ès-dunes to William’s Visit to
England. 1047–1051.

William was thus at peace at home; his next war was indeed one of his
own seeking, but it was one from which he could not have shrunk without
breaking through every tie alike of gratitude and of The Counts of Anjou;
their connexion with
feudal duty. This is the first time that I have had Norman and English
directly to mention a power, which had been, for history.
more than a hundred years, steadily growing up to
the south of Normandy, and which was to exercise a most important
influence on the future history of Normandy and, through Normandy, on
that of England. I mean the dynasty of the Counts of Anjou. That house, the
house which mounted the throne of England in the 1154.
person of a great-grandson of William, produced a succession of princes to
whose personal qualities it must mainly have been owing that their
dominions fill the place which they do fill in French and in European
history. Anjou holds a peculiar position among the Characteristics of
Angevin history.
great fiefs of France. It was a singular destiny
which gave so marked a character, and so conspicuous a history, to a
country which seems in no way marked out for separate existence by any
geographical or national distinction. Normandy, Britanny, Flanders,
Aquitaine, Ducal Burgundy, all had a being of their own; they were fiefs of
the Crown of France, but they were in no sense French provinces. But
Anjou was at most an outpost on the Loire, a border district of France and
Aquitaine; beyond this position it had nothing specially to distinguish it
from any other part of the great Parisian Duchy.[817] Saxon occupation.
464.
A momentary Saxon occupation in the fifth
century[818] cannot be supposed to have left behind it any such abiding traces
as were certainly left by the settlement of the same people at Bayeux,
perhaps even by their less famous settlement at Seez.[819] It was wholly to
the energy and the marked character of its individual rulers that Anjou owes
its distinct and prominent place among the principalities of Gaul. The
restless spirit of the race showed itself sometimes for good and sometimes
for evil, but there was no Count of Anjou who could be called a fool, a
coward, or a fainéant. The history or legends of the family which was to

rise to such greatness laid claim to no very remote Ingelgar, first Count.
870?
or illustrious pedigree.[820] The first Count of
Anjou, who held a part only of the later County,[821] was invested with that
dignity either by Charles the Bald or by his son Lewis the Stammerer.[822]
He bore the name of Ingelgar, and he seems to be the first member of the
family who can be unhesitatingly set down as historical. His grandfather,
Torquatius or Tortulfus, was, according to the Peasant origin of the
family.
legend, a peasant, and seems to have sprung from
that Breton race of which his descendants became the most persevering
enemies. It must have been a later version of the tale which invented for
him a Roman name and a Roman descent.[823] The Torquatius and
Tertullus.
son of Torquatius, Tertullus, rose, we are told, to
importance at the court of Charles, and founded the Historical value of
[824] these tales.
greatness of his house. Whatever may be the
amount of strictly historical truth preserved in these stories, they are, in one
point of view, of no small historical value. Like the similar story of the
origin of Godwine, they point to a belief, which can hardly have been ill-
founded, that, in Gaul in the ninth century and in England in the eleventh,
ignoble birth did not disqualify a man from rising to the highest dignities, or
from founding a dynasty of Princes or even of Kings.[825] But, when we
reach Ingelgar, we seem to stand on more distinctly historical ground. He
held Amboise in Touraine as an allodial possession,[826] and he was, as we
have seen, invested with the Countship of Anjou on the hither side of the
Mayenne. But it is plain that no detailed account of his actions, or of those
of his immediate successors, was preserved.[827] His Fulk the Red. 888.
son Fulk the Red received from Charles the Simple the remaining portion of
the County of Anjou, that beyond the Mayenne, and he vigorously defended
his enlarged dominions against the attacks of Northmen and Bretons.[828]
This Romulus was appropriately succeeded by a Fulk the Good. 938.
Numa, Fulk the Good, renowned for his piety, his almsdeeds, his just and
peaceful government, and for being the traditional author of the proverb
that an unlettered King is but a crowned ass.[829] Geoffrey
[830] Grisegonelle. 958.
His son, Geoffrey Grisegonelle, renewed the
warlike fame of his house; he fought with his neighbours of Britanny and
Aquitaine; and he is said to have borne an 978.
important share in the wars between King Lothar and the Emperor Otto the
Second.[831] After him came his son Fulk,[832] Fulk Nerra. 987.

surnamed Nerra or the Black, renowned as a warrior and still more
renowned as a pilgrim, and who is the first prince of his house whose name
has found its way into the general history of France. He overthrew his
brother-in-law Conan of Britanny in one or more 992.
pitched battles, which French, as well as Breton and Angevin, writers
thought worthy of record. He was also engaged in His war with Odo of
Chartres.
a war with his neighbour Odo the Second, Count of
Blois and Chartres, the grandson of the famous Theobald, a war which
passed on as an inheritance to the next generation, and which proved the
origin of the first entanglements between Normandy and Anjou.[833] It
sounds like an incursion from another hemisphere, when we read how
Aldebert, Count of Perigueux, Perigueux with its cupolas and its Roman
tower, far away in the heart of Aquitaine, appeared as an ally of the Angevin
Count. He took Tours and gave it to Fulk, but the Fulk gains and loses
Tours. 990.
citizens were ill disposed to their new master, and
Odo recovered it after a short time. Later in his Battle of Pontlevois.
1016.
reign, Fulk defeated Odo in a great battle at
Pontlevois in the territory of Touraine, and 1031.
afterwards gained or recovered Saumur. We have already met with him in
the character of a mediator between contending candidates for the Crown of
France,[834] and he appears also in the less honourable light of an assassin,
who removed a courtier of King Robert who stood in the way of the plans
of his own termagant niece Queen Constance.[835] We hear also heavy
complaints of him as a violator of ecclesiastical rule, by setting up the
usurped authority of the See of Rome against the rights of the independent
metropolitans of Gaul.[836] But he is perhaps best His pilgrimages.
1028, 1035.
known for his two pilgrimages to the Holy
Sepulchre, for the ready ingenuity which he displayed on his first journey,
and for the extreme of penitential humiliation by which he edified all men
on the second.[837] Less happy in his private than in his public career, he was
troubled in his last years by a rebellion of his son;[838] he was charged, truly
or falsely, with the murder of one wife, and with driving another from him
by ill-treatment.[839] A reign of unusual length made him, during a few years,
a contemporary of the Great William, and at last he left his dominions to a
son under whom Normans and Angevins met for the first time in open
warfare.