Chapter X

Chapter X

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

§ 1. The Ecclesiastical Administration of Earl Harold. 1058–1062.

[Sidenote: Dominant position of Harold.]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Harold at Rome.]

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

[Sidenote: Return of Harold.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Nature of his foundation.]

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: The Confirmation Charter. 1062.]

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Later career of Walter and Gisa.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

§ 2. The Welsh War and its Consequences. 1062–1065.

[Sidenote: Renewed ravages of Gruffydd. 1062.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Legislation about Wales.]

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

[Sidenote: Harold marries Ealdgyth. 1064?]

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

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

§ 3. The Revolt of Northumberland. 1065.

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Morkere’s march southwards.]

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

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

It seems to have been at Northampton that the first attempts at negotiation began between the King and the insurgents.[1455] Eadward and Tostig were still in their woodland retreats, enjoying the slaughter of unresisting animals, while half England was in confusion, and while whole shires were being laid waste. The Earl of the West-Saxons was most likely as keen a hunter as either of them, but he at least did not let his sport interfere with his duty to his country. While his brother and brother-in-law still remained in the woods, Earl Harold hastened to Northampton with a message from the King. Eadward, who had once been so wrathful at Godwine’s appeal to Law on behalf of the men of Dover,[1456] had now, under Harold’s guidance, better learned the duties of a constitutional [Sidenote: Demands of Eadward.] King. Through the mouth of the great Earl, he called on the men of Northumberland to lay down their arms, to cease from their ravages, and, if they had any matter against their own Earl, to bring it forward for discussion in a lawful Assembly. We may conceive the feeling of triumph with which Harold put into the King’s mouth the very words which, in the mouth of Godwine, had led to the temporary overthrow of himself and his house. But [Sidenote: Answer of the Northumbrians.] the Northumbrians would not yield to any proposal which implied even the possibility of Tostig’s return to power. They were freemen born and bred, they would not bow to the pride of any Earl;[1457] they had learned from their fathers to bear no third choice besides freedom or death. If the King wished to retain Northumberland in his allegiance, he must confirm the banishment of Tostig from Northumberland and from all England, he must confirm the election of Morkere to the Northern Earldom. If he persisted in forcing Tostig upon them, they would deal with him as an enemy; if he yielded to their demands, he would see what loyal subjects Northumbrians could be, when they were gently ruled by a ruler of their own choice.[1458] Brave words truly, if they really came from the heart of the Northumbrian people, and were not simply put into their mouths by two ambitious Earls. More than one message passed to and fro; messengers from the rebel camp accompanied Harold to the royal presence;[1459] but there was no sign of yielding on the part of the host encamped at Northampton. At last the matter became so serious that Eadward left his hunting to apply himself [Sidenote: Eadward holds a Gemót at Bretford.] personally to the affairs of his Kingdom. At a royal abode called Bretford, near Salisbury, a place whose name suggests memories of the warfare of five hundred years before, Eadward called an Assembly together. It probably professed to be a Witenagemót of the whole realm, but it must rather have been a meeting of the King’s immediate counsellors, or at most, of the local Witan of Wessex. [Sidenote: Debate in the Council; accusations against Tostig.] This Assembly at once proceeded to discuss the state of the nation;[1460] and the record of their debates at least shows what full freedom of speech was allowed in our ancient national Councils. Some speakers boldly accused Tostig of cruelty and avarice; his severities had been caused, not by any love of justice, but by a wish to seize on the wealth [Sidenote: Tostig charges Harold with stirring up the revolt.] of the rich men of Northumberland.[1461] It was affirmed, on the other hand, that the revolt against Tostig had been simply got up by the secret machinations of Harold. No charge could be more unjust, and we may suspect that it was brought forward by no mouth but that of Tostig himself.[1462] Harold throughout tried in vain to reconcile the [Sidenote: Improbability of the charge.] revolters to his brother.[1463] Up to this time there is not the slightest sign in any trustworthy account of any quarrel between the two brothers.[1464] Now that the revolt had broken out, it was undoubtedly Harold’s interest to settle matters without bloodshed, even at the expense of his brother; but he had no interest, but quite the contrary, in stirring up the revolt in the first instance. It was prudent, under the circumstances, to yield to the demands of the Northumbrians, and to allow the aggrandizement of the rival house; but Harold could have no motive for seeking, of his own accord, to transfer Northumberland from a son of Godwine to a son of Ælfgar. But Tostig doubtless expected his brother to support him, right or wrong, at all hazards and against all foes, and he could not understand any cause for Harold’s hesitating so to do except his being art and part with his enemies. Before the King and all his Court, Tostig so vehemently charged Harold with having kindled the Northumbrian revolt, that Harold [Sidenote: Harold denies it on oath.] thought it necessary to deny the charge, in the usual solemn form, upon oath.[1465] It appears that the Earl’s own oath was thought enough, and that compurgators were not called for. But the question how to quell the revolt was still more urgent than the question how the revolt [Sidenote: Eadward’s eagerness for war.] arose. The King was as vehement against the real rebels of Northumberland as he had been, fourteen years before, against the fancied rebels of Dover. He was as eager to avenge the wrongs of his English favourite Tostig as he had then been to avenge the wrongs of his foreign favourite Eustace. He would, doubtless by deputy, chastise their insolence with the edge of the sword; it would almost seem that the royal summons went out, calling the whole force of England to the royal standard.[1466] But Eadward had counsellors about him who were wiser than himself. They, Harold doubtless at their head, shrank as soldiers from a winter campaign and as patriots from a civil war. They pleaded that, with these two great difficulties in the way of immediate action, it would be impossible to collect an army able to cope with the insurgents.[1467] The Housecarls of the King and of the Earl were doubtless ready to march at their command; but, of all courses in the world, none could be so unpopular as to employ this force to put down a popular insurrection. It would be a renewal of the days [Sidenote: 1041.] of Harthacnut and of the march against Worcester.[1468] The King was so eager for battle that his advisers could not, [Sidenote: He is prevented by Harold and others.] after all, persuade him formally to revoke his orders for war; but they took means to prevent the expedition from actually taking place.[1469] So to do would be no very difficult task, when the feeling of the chiefs and of the people was doubtless exactly the same. So great was Eadward’s wrath and excitement of mind that he fell into the illness of which he never recovered. He complained bitterly before God that he was hindered from chastising the unrighteous, and called for divine vengeance seemingly alike upon the original offenders, and on those who stood in the way of their punishment.[1470] But the wrath of the Saint, if violent for the time, was not always lasting,[1471] and however vigorous he may have been in curses and prophecies, he seems to have practically allowed Harold to act in his name, and to settle matters as he chose.[1472]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Eadward’s last sickness.]

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Legends.]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Summary.]

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

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