THE ELECTION OF HAROLD.[1]
January 5th–April 16th, 1066.
[Sidenote: Preeminent importance of the year 1066.]
The central stage of our journey is now reached. We are now on the threshold of the great year, of that year whose effects on all later English, on all later European, history can never be wiped out. No one year in later English history can for a moment compare, in lasting importance, with the year which, with some small exaggeration, we may call the year of the Norman Conquest. [Sidenote: No later time in which one year and one day stand out in the same way.] There have indeed been later periods in our history which have been as memorable in their results as the invasion of William itself. The events of the thirteenth, of the sixteenth, of the seventeenth century, are all fully entitled to be set side by side with the events of the eleventh. But in all these cases we have to set the work of a whole generation against the work of a single year. One age is famous for the great struggle against alien domination, and for the final establishment of English freedom in its later form. Another age gave us all the results, for good and for evil, of the great Reformation of religion. A third age confirmed on a surer and more lasting basis those political rights which the thirteenth century had won back, but which the fifteenth and sixteenth had once more brought into jeopardy. But, in all these great periods of change, the work was gradual; there is no single moment, no single year, on which we can place our finger as the moment or the year when the work was actually done. In the eleventh century the work was gradual also. A long series of events prepared the way for William’s enterprise, and, when he began his work, it needed more than a single day or a single year to put him in full possession of the Empire for which he had yearned so long. Still in the eleventh century there is a single year and a single day which stand forth in a way in which no single day or year stands forth in the ages after them. There is no later year to compare to the year in which the Crown of England was worn by the last King of the old sacred and immemorial stock, by the first and last King who reigned purely because he was the best and bravest among his people, and by the first and last King who could boast that he held his Kingdom purely of God and his own sword. There is no one day in later times to compare to that memorable morning when Northern and Southern Europe, when England and Normandy, when Harold and William, met face to face in the great wager of battle on the day of Saint Calixtus. For days of equal moment in our history we must go back to far earlier times, to times which are still half shrouded in the mist of legend. For a day like the day when England bowed to her first purely foreign lord, we must go back to the day when the first Englishman was baptized into the faith of Christ, to the day when the first Englishman set foot on the shores of Britain.
§ 1. _Sickness and Death of Eadward. December 28, 1065–January 5, 1066._
[Sidenote: Eadward’s last sickness. December 1065–January 5, 1066.]
We left Eadward on his death-bed. His work was over; his newly built minster was hallowed, though he had been himself shut out from taking any part in that great ceremony. The Witan had been gathered, as usual, for the Christmas festival; the special summons to the dedication of Saint Peter’s, and, still more, the pressing urgency of the national affairs, had, we may well believe, called together a greater number than usual of the Thegns and Prelates [Sidenote: National anxiety as to the succession.] of the land. It was plain that the nation would soon be called on to elect a King, and to elect a King under circumstances of which no past age had ever seen the like. Perhaps vague reports may already have found their way into the land, warning men of the dangers which were likely to threaten England alike from her own exiles and from the foreign kinsman of the dying King. But, even if no thought of Tostig or of William crossed men’s minds, there was enough to make those days of Eadward’s last sickness days of the deepest anxiety to every patriotic Englishman. From the beginning of Eadward’s sickness, no hope of his recovery seems to have been entertained. The question in every man’s mind must have been, who should fill his place when he was taken from them. The choice of the electors would be perfectly free. Things were not as they had been when Swend and Cnut were in the land, claiming the votes of the Witan at the point of the sword. But [Sidenote: State of the royal line.] things were as they had never been before since the line of Cerdic had ruled over united England. The King who lay at the point of death was, with the single exception of the boy Eadgar and his sisters, the last of his race. The names of Christina and Margaret were most likely never uttered; England had never yet dreamed of giving herself a female ruler. A sentimental interest might gather round Eadgar as the last male of the kingly house, but a sentimental interest was all that he could awaken. His age and, as events proved, his character rendered him wholly unfit for rule. And Eadgar, it should be borne in mind, did not possess that constitutional claim to a preference which was all that, before the actual election, would have belonged even to a son of the dying King. At three earlier times had the royal line been reduced so low as to number none but members of an age too young for personal government. Eadwig, Eadward the Martyr, Æthelred, had all been chosen in their non-age. But the princes so chosen were all of them true Æthelings, Englishmen born, sons of an English King by an English mother. And, in those days, as there was no better qualified candidate in the royal house, so there was no man out of it marked out by the hand of nature as a born King of Men. In those days the greatest of living Englishmen was no Thegn or Ealdorman, but the renowned Primate Dunstan. England had therefore, in all those cases, accepted a King in his boyhood or even in his childhood. There was now no such need. [Sidenote: No constitutional preference due to Eadgar.] Eadgar, grandson of Ironside as he was, had no constitutional claim upon the votes of the Witan beyond any other male person in the realm. He was not born in the land; he was not the son of a crowned King and his Lady. [Sidenote: Position of Harold.] And close beside the throne, just beyond the strict limits of the royal house, stood the foremost man in England, already, it may be, associated in some sort to the honours of royalty, already an Under-King who received the oaths and homage of vassal princes, as a sharer in the rule of the Empire of Britain.[2] Whether he had been marked out by any formal act or not, we cannot doubt that men had long learned to look to Harold the son of Godwine as their future King. And yet, when the day of choice drew near, men might well stop and wonder at the step which they were about to take. The Law justified the act; the needs of the time commanded it; but it was a strange and unwonted [Sidenote: Novelty of an election from beyond the royal house.] act nevertheless. It was something new, something which might well set the minds and tongues of men at work, to be called on, freely and under no fear of the Danish axe, to choose a King who had no royal forefathers, a King who came not of the stock of Ecgberht, Cerdic, and Woden. Men whose office or whose sagacity had taught them to scan the chances of the time might ask how such [Sidenote: Attitude of William and Tostig.] a choice would be looked on by the exile at the court of Baldwin, and by the prince who now, in the height of success and glory, had made the Norman land the wonder of continental Europe. Rumours might already be afloat that the English Earl, soon about to become the English King, had, in some strange and unknown way, already [Sidenote: Possible attitude of Northumberland.] become the man of the Norman Duke. And without going so far afield, men might ask how the great land north of the Humber would look on the choice which to Wessex and East-Anglia seemed the only choice possible. The Thegns and Prelates of Northumberland might give their votes with the other Witan, but would the fierce people of that proud and distant province submit, without a blow or a murmur, to the kingship of a West-Saxon, a son of Godwine, a brother of Tostig? The days when thoughts like these were working in men’s minds must have been days of [Sidenote: Importance of Eadward’s dying recommendation.] care and perplexity. There was one source from which light and help might be looked for, light and help which might in some sort seem to come directly from heaven. The words of a dying man have been in all times looked on as solemn and almost prophetic utterances. The words of a dying King were, by the traditional feelings of Englishmen, clothed with an authority second only to that of the Law itself. Eadward was a dying man and a dying King. And he was yet more. Strange as it seems to us, he was already beginning to be looked on with somewhat of the reverence due to a Saint. The will of Eadward had perhaps never been held to be of such moment, his voice had perhaps never been so eagerly listened for in the Councils of his Kingdom, as when he lay, helpless and wellnigh speechless, on his bed at Westminster. Men waited for the voice of the dying man, the dying King, the dying Saint, to confirm once more with his last breath the nomination of the successor on whom, amidst all doubts and dangers, the heart of England still was fixed. In choosing for the first time a King not of the blood of Cerdic, it would be no small strength and comfort if they knew that the step was taken with the full approval and the full bidding of the last King of Cerdic’s house. The King was sick unto death; the Witan were gathered round his palace. The moment the breath was out of his body, it would become their duty to choose his successor. It was doubtless with no small anxiety, with somewhat even of religious awe, that they awaited the last expression of the will of Eadward as to who that successor should be.
[Sidenote: The King’s illness. Wednesday, December 28, 1065.]
The West Minster was consecrated on Wednesday; the news was brought to the King, who, as his legend says, on hearing it laid his head on his pillow as if to say, It is finished.[3] For five days his sickness increased, and the public anxiety heightened at every stage of the disorder.[4] [Sidenote: He becomes speechless. Tuesday, January 3, 1066.] On the sixth day from the consecration, his speech began to fail him; his voice was so feeble that his words could no longer be understood; for two days he lay worn out by the extremity of his sickness.[5] It was no time to trouble the weary sufferer with questions even as to the [Sidenote: He recovers his speech. Thursday, January 5.] welfare of his Kingdom. At last, on the following Thursday, the eve of the Epiphany, his flagging powers rallied, as the powers of dying men often do rally at the point of death. He awoke from his sleep in the full possession of [Sidenote: The group round his bed.] his senses and of his speech. On either side of his bed stood the two great chiefs of his realm, Harold the Earl and Stigand the Archbishop.[6] At the bed’s head, in still more immediate personal attendance on his master, stood the Staller, Robert the son of Wymarc, a man of Norman birth, but whom history does not charge with treason towards England. On the ground, close by the foot of the bed, sat the Lady Eadgyth, the sister of the great Earl, cherishing the feet of her royal husband in her bosom. Her thoughts wandered perhaps to the brother beyond the sea, the brother on whose behalf she had so deeply sinned, the brother who had so lately held the place nearest to Eadward’s heart, but who was now for ever cut off from all hopes of crowns or earldoms. The tongue of Eadward was loosened, but his first words were words of prayer.[7] In his long slumber he had seen a vision; if that vision were truly from heaven, he prayed that he might have strength to declare it; if it were but the phantom of a disordered brain, he would that his tongue should rather cleave to the roof of his mouth. He sat up in his bed, supported in the arms of Robert. But the message which he had to declare from heaven called for a larger audience than the four favoured ones who were gathered round him. A few more of his chosen friends—their names are not recorded—were summoned to [Sidenote: He declares his vision.] the bedside of the dying King.[8] He then, fluently and with energy,[9] poured forth the awful words of warning. “Long ago, when I was a youth in Normandy, I knew two monks, most holy men and most dear to me. Many long years have passed away since they were taken away from the cares and sorrows of this world. But now, in my trance, God hath sent them again to me to speak to me in His holy name. ‘Know,’ said they to me, ‘that they who hold the highest place in thy realm of England, the Earls, the Bishops, the Abbots, the men in holy orders of every rank, are not what they seem to be in the eyes of men. In the eye of God they are but [Sidenote: He foretells the sorrows of England.] ministers of the fiend. Therefore hath God put a curse upon thy land; therefore hath He given thy land over into the hand of the enemy. Within a year and a day from thy death, shall fiends stalk through thy whole land, and shall harry it from one end to another with fire and sword and the hand of plunder.’ Then said I to them, ‘Let me then show these things to my people in the name of God. Haply they will repent, and His loving-kindness will have mercy upon them. For He had mercy on the men of Nineveh, when they heard the voice of His threatening, and repented them of their evil ways.’ But they answered me, ‘They will not repent, neither shall the mercy of God come [Sidenote: Allegory of the green tree.] nigh unto them.’ Then said I, ‘What shall be the time or the way in which we may look for these your threatenings to come to an end?’ ‘In that day,’ they answered, ‘when a green tree shall be cut away from the midst of its trunk, when it shall be carried away for the space of three furlongs from its root, when, without the help of man, it shall join itself again to its trunk, and shall again put forth leaves and bear fruit in its season. Then first shall be the time when the woes of England shall come to an end.’”[10]
[Sidenote: Alarm of the other hearers;]
The King ceased his words of prophecy. Harold, Eadgyth, Robert, all who had been gathered to hear, were struck with awe, and remained speechless. One heart alone, we are [Sidenote: disbelief of Stigand.] told, was hardened. Stigand leaned over the King’s bed, and whispered in the ear of Earl Harold that all this prophetic talk was but the babbling of an old man worn out by sickness.[11] The Primate, stout-hearted Englishman as we know him, was, we may well believe, a hard and worldly man, and his experience of men of his own calling, his familiarity with what others looked on as miracle and prophecy, may well have made him less inclined to superstition than to unbelief. The lay heart was more easily touched; the female heart most easily of all. Eadgyth, and others who were devoutly given, knew well, we are told, the sins of England. They shuddered as they thought how often the warning voice of the Roman Pontiff, how often the voice of Eadward and of Eadgyth herself, had spoken in vain to the guilty nation.[12] The pious Lady perhaps deemed that the uncanonical appointment of Stigand was more likely to bring down the wrath of God than the murder of Gospatric. At the last Christmas feast, she whose heart was now so deeply stirred at the thought of ecclesiastical corruptions, had in that very palace stretched forth her hand to shed blood which no Law had bidden to be shed, blood which, as far at least as she was concerned, was innocent.
[Sidenote: The succession.]
But there was other work to be done that day besides hearkening to foretellings of evil, besides disputing as to the degree of trust to be placed in the words of him who foretold it. The moment was come when the all-important question might be pressed on the mind of the dying King. His friends stood and wept around him; the tears of the Lady as she sat at his feet fell faster and more thickly still. He gave orders for his burial. He checked the grief of his friends; he bade them rejoice at his coming deliverance, and he craved the prayers of his people for his soul.[13] He spoke of the constant love and devotion which had been ever shown him by the wife whom he had once driven away from his hearth and board. She had ever been to him as a loving and dutiful daughter;[14] God would reward her for her good deeds in this world and in the next. At last Harold and Stigand—nor have we any right to exclude Robert from their counsels—found means of calling Eadward’s mind to the great subject which then filled the whole heart of England. When all was over, when his body was laid in his new minster, when his soul had gone to its reward, who should fill the place which he had so long filled on earth? Who, when he was gone, should wear the royal crown of England, the Imperial [Sidenote: Eadward names Harold as his successor.] diadem of Britain? Eadward, at that last moment, was not wanting to his last duty. He stretched forth his hand towards the Earl of the West-Saxons, and spake the words, “To thee, Harold my brother, I commit my Kingdom.”[15] He then went on to declare his last wishes to his chosen [Sidenote: Eadward’s last wishes.] successor. For Eadward to give Harold instructions in the art of government was certainly needless, and the dying man doubtless felt it to be so. But there were a few personal wishes which were near to his heart; there were a few personal favourites whom he wished to commend to the [Sidenote: He commends to Harold’s care the Lady] favourable care of his successor. First among these was the Lady herself. I need not again enlarge on the mysterious relations between Eadward and Eadgyth; but, in these his last days at least, she is described as enjoying his perfect confidence and affection. But a sister who certainly abetted Tostig, who perhaps abetted William, against the brother who was now called to reign,[16] might be thought likely to meet with less consideration at the hands of Harold than she had, latterly at least, met with at the hands of Eadward. The King commended her who was so soon to be his widow to the friendly care of his successor. Let him show to her, as a Lady and a sister, all faithful worship and service, and never, while she lived, let her lose [Sidenote: and the Norman favourites.] the honours which he had bestowed upon her.[17] He commended also to Harold his Norman favourites, those whom, in his simplicity, he spoke of as men who had left their native land for love of him.[18] Those who were willing to abide in the land as English subjects under Harold’s allegiance he prayed him to keep and to protect. Those who refused to become the men of the new King he prayed him to dismiss under his safe-conduct to their own land, taking with them all the goods which they had acquired by his own favour.[19]
[Sidenote: His directions for his burial.]
The King had now done the last act of his kingly office. With this last request to Harold all thought of earthly things passed away from the mind of Eadward. But the man and the saint had still friends to comfort; he had a soul for which to request their prayers; he had a body to be committed to the ground with the solemn rites of the Church. He craved that his body might be buried in the minster which he had reared, in a special spot within the hallowed walls which their inmates would point out to [Sidenote: His death not to be concealed, lest he lose the prayers of his people.] those who stood round him.[20] One faint thought of earth perhaps came back to his mind, when he bade them not to hide his death from his people. At such a moment it might perhaps be convenient to let men believe that Eadward still lived, till every arrangement could be made for the quiet election and consecration of his successor. But Eadward’s care for his own soul made him tremble at such a prospect. “Let my death,” he earnestly prayed, “be at once announced everywhere, that all the faithful may at once call on the mercy of Almighty God for me a sinner.”[21] Eadgyth meanwhile wept without ceasing. Eadward comforted her with the allegorical words; “Fear not; I shall not die, but by God’s grace, I shall soon arise to better health.”[22] But the last moment was clearly drawing near; the last comfort of the Church had to be [Sidenote: He communicates and dies. Thursday, January 5, 1066.] given. The dying saint received the Body of his Lord, seemingly at the hands of Stigand; the irregularity of his position as Primate was perhaps not held to affect acts done by him as a simple priest.[23] Strengthened by this spiritual food; Eadward’s soul gently passed away, and the last King of the House of Cerdic was no more. His body lay as in sleep; his cheeks like the rose, his beard like the lily, his white hands falling peacefully by his side; men saw written on the face of the departed saint that he had gone to his Creator.[24]
[Sidenote: Eadward’s last act; his improvement since his earlier days.]
The King was dead. The last day of his kingship had been the worthiest. After all the errors and follies of his reign, Eadward died, not only as a saint, but as an Englishman and a patriot. For the last thirteen years of his life Harold had been his guide and guardian; for the last nine years he had been the expectant successor of the Crown. And now the day had come and the word was spoken. Those years of faithful guardianship had not been without their fruit; Eadward, with Harold and Stigand at his side, had become another man from Eadward who had once listened to every lie which rose to the lips of Robert of Jumièges.[25] The old wayward spirit had again burst forth when revolt overthrew his last favourite;[26] but his last favourite was at least an Englishman and a son of Godwine. [Sidenote: English spirit of Eadward’s last requests.] And the latest act of all had made up for all that had gone before. Eadward showed on his death-bed that he had at last learned that the Norman could never bear sway in England with the good-will of the English people. The dream of the Norman Duke as the heir of the English Crown had passed away. The dream of England portioned out among Norman Earls, Prelates, and Knights had passed away with it. England was to have an English King, the noblest man of the English people. No stranger was to be endured in the land, but such as would plight their homage to the King of England’s choice. For others, however dear to him, all that Eadward now craved was that they might depart, unhurt and unplundered, from the land. Visions of danger may have flitted across his mind, and in the delirium of sickness, in the mere excitement of pious fear, they may have shaped themselves into vague foreshadowings of the wrath to come. But what the last dying wishes of Eadward were we know beyond a doubt. His last wishes, his last hopes, were the same as the wishes and the hopes of every faithful Englishman. His last earthly desire was that Harold should wear his Crown, that Harold should reign over a land freed from the presence of every man whose presence he might find inconsistent with the welfare of England and her King.
[Sidenote: Eadward’s native panegyric.]
And he has had his reward. Far more precious than the vulgar praises of Norman legend-makers, far more precious even than the wrought up panegyric of the courtly chaplain of his widow, is the song in Eadward’s honour preserved in our national Chronicles from the hands of a gleeman of his own time and of his own people.[27] The English poet sang of Eadward’s early troubles, how he had to seek a foreign land, when Cnut overcame the race of Æthelred, and when Danes wielded the dear realm of England for eight and twenty winters.[28] He sang of Eadward’s personal virtues; how he was holy, clean, and mild, how the baleless King was ever blithe of mood.[29] He sang of the glories of his reign; how he guarded his land and people; how renowned warriors stood around his throne; how the son of Æthelred ruled over Angles and Saxons, how Welsh and Scots and Britons all obeyed the mighty sway of the noble Eadward.[30] But before his song ceases, the minstrel has yet to tell of one deed far above all, of one last act which made the name of Eadward truly glorious. Bitter death snatched the noble King from earth; angels bore his truthful soul to [Sidenote: The poet dwells on the nomination of Harold.] heaven. But a truer note of patriotic feeling rings forth in the words which tell us how the wise King made fast his realm to Harold the noble Earl, in the words which, bursting from the poet’s heart, tell us how well the noble Earl deserved the greatest of earthly gifts. He in all time by words and deeds had truly obeyed his lord, and had left nought undone which was needful for the ruler of his people.[31]
§ 2. _The Election and Coronation of Harold. January 5–6, 1066._
[Sidenote: Vacancy of the Throne.]
The throne of England was now vacant, vacant under circumstances such as England had never seen before. The late King’s dying orders were obeyed, and, as soon as Eadward’s breath was out of his body, the Witan of England knew that their King was dead. But by the Law of England in the eleventh century, the announcement that the King was dead could not be answered by a cry for the long life of the King who still was living.[32] The Witan, not yet departed from their Christmas gathering, heard that the throne was vacant, and they knew that it was for them alone to fill it. And, with the news that they had no longer a King, came the news that the last wish of the King who was gone had pointed out to them whom he wished to fill his kingly seat after him. All scruple was taken from every mind when men knew that the son of Æthelred, the heir of Cerdic, had, as his last act, named as his successor the son of Godwine, the grandson [Sidenote: Meeting of the Witan. January 5, 1066.] of Wulfnoth. It was no time for delay. Men came together as speedily upon the death of Eadward as they had come together to choose Eadward himself upon the death of Harthacnut. The King lay dead in his palace, while Earls and Prelates, Thegns and citizens, came together to choose the King who should reign in his stead. [Sidenote: Doubtful candidature of William and Eadgar.] The choice was speedy and unanimous. Later writers speak of voices being raised for Eadgar, even of voices being raised for William.[33] And so it may have been. Here and there sentimental feelings may have caused this or that voice to utter the name of the royal boy, even in preference to the noblest of a merely subject house. And, in our land of free debate, some daring Norman may even have ventured to breathe the thought that the King’s kinsman, who had made Normandy so great and flourishing, might make England no less great and flourishing also. But words [Sidenote: No sign of local jealousies.] like these told not on the spirit of the Assembly. Nor do we hear of any expression of those local jealousies which had divided England on more than one earlier vacancy. We hear nothing of any rivalry of the House of Leofric against the House of Godwine; we hear nothing of any murmurs of the fierce Danes of the North against the inauguration of a new West-Saxon dynasty. If the sons of Ælfgar dreamed, as they doubtless did, of a divided Kingdom—of the Imperial Crown for one of themselves they hardly could have dreamed—their hopes were doomed to disappointment. Such thoughts, as we shall soon see, still lived in men’s minds, but in that great Gemót of London[34] they found no open spokesman. It was not only London, ever foremost in every patriotic cause; it was not only Wessex, proud of her illustrious son; it was not only East-Anglia, cherishing the recollections of his earliest rule; it was not only Hereford, rejoicing in her recovered being, safe alike against British foes and Norman governors; it was the Witan, not of this or that shire or ancient [Sidenote: Harold chosen by all England.] Kingdom, but of the whole realm of England, who chose Harold the son of Godwine to fill the vacant throne.[35] His reign had long been looked for, and now the dying voice of Eadward had marked him out as the worthiest object of their choice. The wise ruler, the unconquered warrior, the bountiful founder,—the shield of the Kingdom, the shelter of the oppressed, the judge of the fatherless and the widow[36]—the Earl of the West-Saxons, the conqueror of Gruffydd, the pacificator of Northumberland, the founder of Waltham—stood forth before them as the foremost man of England. He, and he alone, stood forth above other men, sprung from no line of Kings, but the son of a father greater than Kings, the man who in long years of rule had shown that there was none like him worthy to fill the throne of the heroes of old time, worthy, as none of royal race were worthy, to wield the sword of Æthelstan and sit upon the judgement-seat of Ælfred. The assembled people of England, in the exercise of their ancient and undoubted right, chose with one voice Harold the son of Godwine to be King of the English and Lord of the Isle of Britain. On no day in their annals did the English people win for themselves a higher or a purer fame.
[Sidenote: The Crown formally offered to Harold.]
The choice of the Assembly had now to be announced to the King-elect. We know not whether that choice was made in his presence. Possibly he may have deemed that his most fitting place was still with his departed brother-in-law and his widowed sister. But, in any case, two members of the Assembly were sent, in the name of all, to offer the Crown of England, as the gift of the people of England, to the man whom they had chosen as their King. Who discharged that office we know not. None but men of the highest rank would be sent on such an errand. In the pictured record of that day’s acts they appear, not as Prelates but as lay chieftains. One bears the official axe;[37] the other bears the Crown itself, and points towards the chamber of the dead, whence the Crown had doubtless been brought for the purpose of this symbolic offering.[38] Who then were the men whom England thus trusted to speak such weighty words in her name? Were they the two Northern Earls, perhaps already the brothers-in-law of the elected King, stifling, as they best might, their local and family jealousies, their hopes of a divided kingdom? Or were they rather the two Earls of Eastern England, sons worthy of Godwine, brothers worthy of Harold, who were sent to bear the gift of England to the chief of their own house? That day’s vote had placed that house above the royalties of Gaul and Denmark; it had placed the line of Godwine on a height lower by one step only than the line whose youthful chief now sat on the throne of Augustus. It was for Gyrth and Leofwine, rather than for any other two men in England, to act on [Sidenote: Position of Harold.] that day as the spokesmen of their country. Harold stood, axe in hand, to receive them. The day for which he had looked so long had at last come. The path from which so many obstacles had been so strangely cleared away had at last brought him close to the great object of his life. He had now, not in figure, but in very truth, only to stretch forth his hand, and to grasp the Crown of England, the free gift of the people of England. No surprise could have filled his mind; for years he had been marked out, practically if not by a formal vote, as the man to whom that gorgeous gift must one day come. And yet that moment of realized dreams must have been a moment of anxiety, and even of fear. For him, no son of a kingly father, no scion of legendary heroes and of Gods of the elder faith, to see with his own eyes the diadem of Ecgberht and Cerdic ready for his grasp, was of itself a strange and wondrous feeling, such as few men but him in the world’s history can have felt. He was not like others before and since, who by fraud or violence have risen to royalty or more than royalty. Harold was not a Dionysios, a Cæsar, a Cromwell, or a Buonaparte, whose throne was reared upon the ruins of the freedom of his country. He was not an Eastern Basileus, climbing to the seat from which a fortunate battle or a successful conspiracy had hurled a murdered or blinded predecessor. He was not a Pippin, whose elevation, however expedient and rightful, could be brought about only by the displacement of a lawful, though an incompetent, King. He was not even a Rudolf, whose election, free and honourable as it was, came when the royal office had long been discredited in men’s eyes, and when traditional reverence no longer attached to any one ancient royal house. Harold was freely offered the Crown of England in all its glory and greatness, a Crown which had never before been offered to any but men of royal birth,[39] which had never before been freely offered to any but men of the one Imperial House of Cerdic. [Sidenote: Difficulties of his situation.] He may well have paused as he looked at the glittering gift, through the mere greatness and strangeness of the position in which he stood. And other thoughts may well have pressed upon his mind, before he spoke the word which should change the Earl into a King. Harold knew better than any man the dangers which threatened himself [Sidenote: Double danger from Tostig and William.] and which threatened England. He knew what she had to fear from the vengeance of her own banished son, a vengeance which would be kindled into a sevenfold flame if Harold were King in a land where Tostig might not hold even an Earldom. He knew also, as no man knew, how much more she had to fear from the claims of the mighty and [Sidenote: Effects of the oath to William.] wily Duke beyond the sea. And heavy on his soul may still have pressed the memory of that fatal day when he had become the sworn man of that dangerous rival.[40] If he had promised more than simple homage, casuistry and more than casuistry, the instinctive feeling of every honest man, would declare that an extorted promise, unlawful and impossible to fulfil, was perhaps a crime in him who had plighted it, but could be no crime in him who should obey a higher law by breaking it. But since that day, the heart of Harold could never have beaten so high, his step could never have been so light and joyous, as in the days when his faith was wholly free, when even his enemies could not impeach his truthfulness. And now the full weight of that day’s act must have stared him in the face. Let him accept the Crown now offered him by England, and Normandy [Sidenote: Harold’s anxiety, as expressed in the Tapestry.] would at once declare him a perjurer and a traitor. No wonder then if, as the picture sets him before us, he looked at the Crown at once wistfully and anxiously, and half drew back the hand which was stretched forth to grasp the glittering gift. And yet the risk had to be run. A path of danger opened before him, and yet duty no less than [Sidenote: Greater danger if he declined the Crown.] ambition bade him to enter upon the thorny road. If he declined the Crown, to whom should England offer it? Would the risk be less if the boy Eadgar could win the votes of the Witan, and if to the other dangers of England were to be added all the dangers which beset the land whose King is a child?[41] What if the young Ætheling failed, as he doubtless would fail, to stand his ground at such a [Sidenote: Danger of a division of the Kingdom.] moment? Could the land hope to be united in any single choice? Would Mercia and Northumberland submit to the rule of some West-Saxon boasting neither the royal blood of Eadgar nor the personal glory of Harold? Would Wessex and East-Anglia, would mighty and growing London, submit to Eadwine or Morkere or to the youthful son of Siward? The dangers of accepting the Crown were great, but the dangers of refusing it were greater. Whoever reigned, Tostig and William would still try their chance, and, if it were not Harold who reigned, they would try their chance with far greater hope of success. The accession of Harold would indeed put fresh weapons into the hand of William, but it was not likely that the Duke would wholly cast aside his claims and his projects, simply because he would have some other King, and not Harold, to strive against. The fear indeed was that, if Harold shrank from the burthen, William would find no one single King to resist him. He would win an easy victory over a divided land, a land split asunder as it had been in the days of Harthacnut and the earlier Harold, a land, it might be, already torn in pieces by civil war. Under Harold alone could there be the faintest hope that England would offer an united front to either of the invaders who were sure to attack her. The danger then had to be faced. The call of patriotism distinctly bade Harold not to shrink at the last moment from the post to which he had so long looked forward, and which had at last become his own. The first man in England, first in every gift of war and peace, first in the love of his countrymen, first in renown in other lands, was bound to be first alike in honour and in danger. The gift now lay before him. Ambition bade him seize it. Duty in no way [Sidenote: The Crown accepted by Harold.] held back his hand. The offered gift was accepted. The eve of that great Epiphany, the day on which King Eadward was alive and dead,[42] saw the Crown pass away for ever from the male line of Cerdic, and the next day saw it solemnly placed upon the brow of Harold. The evening of Eadward’s death must have been spent in preparation for the two great ceremonies of the morrow. On the morning of that short winter’s day, the Earl of the West-Saxons had kept his watch by the dying bed of his King and brother. Before its last hour had passed, he had become, not yet indeed a crowned and anointed King, but one called to kingship by the unanimous voice of his country, a King-elect of the English, who on the morrow might claim the sceptre and the diadem as his own.
[Sidenote: Double ceremony of Friday January 6, 1066; the burial of Eadward and the coronation of Harold.]
The morning of the Epiphany dawned. It was the Feast of the Kings, a fitting day for an august rite within the walls of that minster which was reared to be specially the home of Kings alike in life and in death. On that day began that long series of national ceremonies which has gone on uninterruptedly to our own time, and which has made the Abbey of Saint Peter the hearth and Prytaneion of the English nation. The octave of the consecration-day [Sidenote: Necessity for a speedy coronation,] had barely passed, and there was already a King to be buried and a King to be crowned. Earl Harold was King-elect by the choice of the Witan of all England; but he was not “full King” till he and his people had exchanged their mutual promises, till he had been arrayed with the outward badges of his kingly office, till the blessing of the Church and the unction of her highest minister had made the chosen of the people also the Anointed of the Lord. Those were not days when that crowning rite could be delayed for one needless moment. England could not be safely left for a single day without a King. The twofold right of the new Sovereign, as King alike by the election of the people and by the consecration of the Church, must be at once placed beyond all reach of doubt or cavil. The Christmas feast was not yet over, but it was the last day of the holy season; the Witan were still assembled; to have waited for another feast of the Church, for another gathering of the nation, would have been simple madness.[43] The day of the coronation of Harold must therefore follow at once on the day [Sidenote: and therefore for a speedy burial.] of his election. And the coronation of Harold involved the previous burial of Eadward. England could not see two Kings of the English above ground at the same moment. Before then the Crown could be set on the brow of the King-elect, the hallowed soil of Saint Peter’s must close over the King who was no more. The day of the burial of Eadward must therefore follow at once on the day of his death. And never, even in the long history of that venerable Abbey, has there been such another day. Other [Sidenote: Greatness of the occasion.] Kings have been buried and crowned within its walls; but there has been no day like that, which beheld the last of one kingly line borne to his grave in the holy house of his own building, and which beheld the first—could men deem that he would be also the last?—of a newly-chosen race raised to the vacant throne alike by the bequest of his predecessor and by the will of his people. Of all the gorgeous rites celebrated by Kings and Prelates beneath the vaults of the West Minster, the twofold rite of that great Epiphany, which haste and urgency may well have rendered the least gorgeous of them all, is that around which the national memory of Englishmen may well centre most fondly. The first royal burial, the first royal consecration, within the newly-hallowed temple, possess an historic interest and an historic import beyond all those which have followed them.
[Sidenote: The Burial of Eadward.]
The body of Eadward had been prepared for burial almost as soon as his soul had passed away. Decked in royal robes, the crown on his head, the pilgrim’s ring, so legend said, upon his hand, the saint lay ready for his last home. Stigand, who had stood by him in his last moments, seems to have stayed to help in paying this last tribute to his departed master.[44] But the Primate, patriot in the eyes of Englishmen, schismatic in the eyes of Rome, was not to [Sidenote: Position of Stigand.] minister in either of the ceremonies of the morrow. As a Prelate of doubtful right, he was deemed unfit to hear the chief part in the consecration of Harold. As a simple priest, he might perhaps have been allowed to officiate at the funeral rites of Eadward. But it may well be that the newly-won privileges of the house of Saint Peter gave to the head of that house the ministration of all rites within its walls which did not need the special powers of a consecrated Bishop to give them sacramental efficacy. And Eadward doubtless sought, above all things, the prayers which the monks of the house which he himself had reared would [Sidenote: Stigand did not officiate at the funeral.] put up to Heaven for the soul of their founder. At all events, the priest who holds the first place in Eadward’s funeral procession is not set before us in our pictured record as adorned with any badge of pontifical rank.[45] We may perhaps be allowed to guess that the chief ministry in the funeral rites of Eadward was assigned to his friend and bedesman, Abbot Eadwine. Early on the winter’s morning,[46] perhaps while the minster still needed torchlight within the deep gloom of its massive walls and narrow windows, [Sidenote: Funeral of Eadward.] the King was carried to his grave. The body of Eadward, his form shrouded from sight, was borne on the shoulders of eight of his subjects, laymen all, and doubtless men of high degree. There was no need, as in the case of some later Kings, to assure his people, by the sight of his uncovered body, that he had not come unfairly by his end. Boys ringing bells walked on either side of the bier; behind them followed a crowd of clergy, surrounding the two chief ministers of the funeral ceremony, who walked bearing their office-books in their hands. In this guise the procession moved from the palace to the western door of the newly-hallowed minster. They swept along the nave, between the long rows of tall and massive pillars still fresh from the axe and hammer of the craftsman. They passed beneath the mighty arches, which, in all the strength and solidity of those early days of art, bore up the great central tower like a vast canopy over the choir below. They bore their burthen to the spot which Eadward had long before chosen as his place of burial, and there, before the altar of the saint whom he so deeply reverenced, the patron alike of Westminster and of Rome,[47] the body of the last King of [Sidenote: General sorrow for Eadward.] the olden stock received its last kingly honours. We can well believe that, not only the poor whom he had relieved, the churchmen whom he had enriched, and the strangers on whom he had lavished the wealth of England, but that Englishmen of all ranks might well weep in awe and in sorrow over the grave of the last son of Cerdic and Woden. At such a moment, reversing the poet’s rule, the good that men have done lives after them and the evil is interred with their bones. There, by his grave in his own church, men’s thoughts would dwell on the virtues rather than on [Sidenote: Causes of sorrow and anxiety.] the weaknesses of the King who was taken from them. His faults as a King were great; but men would then think rather of all that was worthy in him as a man, and they might well deem that his last kingly act had covered a multitude of errors. In the crowd which filled the church, there could have been few whom Eadward had personally wronged; there must have been many whom he had personally benefitted. And, more than this, men must have felt that the two great rites of that day placed a great gulf between them and a long and honoured past, while a future rose before them, bright indeed with glorious hopes, but around which two dark clouds were gathering in opposite quarters of the heaven. No wonder then that by the grave of Eadward men wept and trembled.[48] Psalms were sung, masses were said, alms were scattered abroad with a bounteous hand, needless offerings it might seem for a soul which men deemed that angels had already borne to the beatific vision.[49] For three hundred days, days which stretch beyond the reign of Harold, the masses, the hymns, [Sidenote: Miracles wrought at the tomb.] the alms, continued to be daily offered.[50] And wonders soon were wrought at the tomb of the royal saint. The blind received their sight, the lame walked, the sick were healed, the sorrowing received comfort.[51] So thought men of his own day, men who had seen him in the flesh, and who have not shrunk from handing down to us even the less worthy actions of his life. If we deem such a belief and such a worship to be, not only superstitious in itself, but to have been thrown away on an unworthy object, we must remember with how fond a memory men must, ere a year had passed, have looked back to the happy days of the baleless King. We must remember how easily men would forget that the calm of those happy days was due, far less to the crowned monk upon the throne, than to the man of the stout heart and the strong arm who stood beside him. And let us remember too that the canonizing voice of [Sidenote: Other causes of popular canonization.] England was not always raised only to commemorate mere monastic virtues like those of Eadward. Foreign Kings and foreign Pontiffs might forbid, but a day came when England looked with no less devout reverence on the true heroes and martyrs of our land. If miracles adorned the tomb of Eadward at Westminster, no less mighty works were soon deemed to be wrought before Waltheof’s tomb in the chapter-house of Crowland, and two ages later, the sick were again healed and the blind again saw, before the tomb where English hearts still revered the relics which were all that the foeman’s sword had left of the mangled form of the martyr of Evesham.[52]
[Sidenote: Posthumous history of Eadward.]
The funeral rites were over; but the history of Eadward, as the history of a saint, is one which reaches beyond the grave. A King at whose tomb wonders were daily wrought, a King whom two hostile races could unite to look upon with reverence, gradually filled a larger and a larger space in men’s minds. Such a King, already canonized by the popular voice, a King who had done more than any King before him to bring the English Church into close connexion with the Roman See, could not fail, ere long, to obtain, by Papal authority, a formal admission into the register of the saints. But the steps by which he won his saint’s rank were gradual. Six-and-thirty years after [Sidenote: Examination of his body by Abbot Gilbert. 1102.] Eadward’s death, a Bishop and an Abbot of Norman birth, who had most likely never seen him in the flesh, were the first whom pious curiosity led to disturb the rest of the departed. It was already whispered that the body of Eadward, the instrument of so many miracles, was itself the subject of miracle. The holy King, men said, had never seen corruption. Abbot Gilbert, one of the great Norman line of Crispin, whom Lanfranc had put in charge of the house of Westminster,[53] deemed it his duty to see whether the tale that so often met his ears were true. In company with Bishop Gundulf of Rochester, the Prelate to whose skill we owe the White Tower of London and the lowlier keep of Malling, and with other noble and pious persons, he opened the grave of Eadward. A sweet savour filled the minster; they unfolded the garments in which Eadward had been wrapped under the eyes of Stigand; the body lay as in sleep; the powers of nature had failed to do their work; the skin was still white and rosy; the limbs were still flexible; they might deem that he might again arise from his trance and again denounce the sins of England. The Bishop would fain have carried off one hair of his snowy beard to keep as a relic more precious than all the treasures of the earth.[54] But not a hair could be pulled away from the face of the sleeping saint. The Abbot, with a reverence to which those ages were commonly strangers, checked the attempt; he restored the vestments and the body to their place, and bade that the remains of the man of God should rest in peace.
[Sidenote: Attempt of Osbert to procure]
Thirty-eight years later a vain attempt was made by Osbert, Prior of Westminster, the special trumpeter of [Sidenote: Eadward’s canonization. 1140.] Eadward’s renown,[55] to obtain formal canonization for him from Innocent the Second. But a day came when the House of William had passed away like the House of Cerdic, a day when men had taught themselves to hail a stranger from Anjou as the corner-stone which united Norman [Sidenote: Eadward canonized by Alexander the Third. 1161.] and English royalty. Then, at last, the influence of a King who reigned from the Orkneys to the Pyrenees was able to procure from Rome the decree which placed the predecessor whom all his subjects agreed to reverence among authorized objects of religious honour.[56] The green tree had now returned to the trunk; it had brought forth its queenly leaves and its kingly fruit, and the day was now come to do special homage to the seer who had foretold that the good time would at last come back again. As one Pope Alexander had given the blessing of Rome to the enterprise of the Norman invader, his next successor of the same name might seem in some sort to undo the wrong by making the last King of the old royal stock of England [Sidenote: First Translation of Eadward. October 13, 1163.] an object of worship to the Church Universal. In the presence of the Angevin King, in whom men now saw the heir of Eadward, in the presence of the Norman Primate whom England learned to love as her champion and martyr, the body of Eadward was translated from his royal tomb to the shrine which was the fitting resting-place of the relics of a saint in glory. Things were not now as they were in the days of Abbot Gilbert. Then the body, entitled only to the reverence due to the remains of a departed Christian, was allowed to return unhurt and unplundered to the grave. But now that Eadward claimed the worship due to a canonized saint, whatever had touched the holy corpse became endowed with sanctity and miraculous power. The ring, the subject of so many legends, was drawn from his finger and was preserved as a wonder-working relic. The royal robes in which the body had been enfolded were borne away from the tomb and became vestments for the holiest worship of the sanctuary.[57] And the anniversary of that day still preserves the memory of Eadward in the Kalendar of the English Church. It was not without a certain fitness that the Feast of the Translation of Saint Eadward should be kept, not on the eve of the Epiphany, but on the eve of the day of Saint Calixtus. It is well that two successive days should remind us of the memory of Eadward and of the memory of him who fell on the morrow of his festival.
[Sidenote: Second Translation of Eadward. October 13, 1269.]
Years rolled on, and the spot to which Eadward had been moved on his first translation was now deemed unworthy of a Saint who was already looked upon as the patron of England. A King now sat on the throne of Eadward, who was in many points a reproduction of Eadward himself. The same fervent zeal for God, the same neglect of duty towards man, the same vehemence in speech and weakness in action, the same love for men of foreign lands, the same spiritual bondage to a foreign yoke, the same deep and lavish devotion to the holy house of Saint Peter, appeared in Henry the Third which had already appeared in the predecessor whom he reverenced and resembled. The King who, like Eadward, aroused the feelings of the nation by his wasteful preference for strangers of every land, chose as the special objects of his religious devotion two royal saints of English birth. Before all other saints, King Henry’s worship was paid to the East-Anglian Eadmund and the West-Saxon Eadward. By his act those kingly names again found their way into the royal house, and the name of the saint himself became the most glorious in the later history of England.[58] In honour of [Sidenote: Rebuilding of the West Minster. 1245.] Eadward the work of Eadward was destroyed.[59] The church which he himself had reared was now deemed unworthy to be the dwelling-place of so great a saint.[60] The “massive arches, broad and round,”[61] of the church which so long was the model for all England,[62] now gave way to those slender pillars and soaring arches which, alone among English minsters, go some way to reproduce the boundless height of Amiens and of Beauvais. There, alone among English minsters of its own date,[63] did the tall apse and its surrounding chapels crown the eastern end of what was now the church of Saint Eadward. But that apse was not reared, as at Amiens and at Le Mans, at Pershore and at Tewkesbury, to form the most glorious of canopies for the [Sidenote: The shrine of Eadward.] altar of the Most High. Not in any subordinate chapel, but in the noblest spot of all, in the spot which elsewhere was reserved for the highest acts of Christian worship, was the new shrine of Eadward reared. And the workmanship of that gorgeous shrine was of a type fit for him who reared it, and for him in whose honour it was reared. Among all the Kings whose tombs are gathered together in that solemn spot, two alone reveal in their style of art the work of craftsmen from beyond the sea and even from beyond the [Sidenote: Comparison of Eadward and Henry the Third.] mountains. The resting-places of the two Kings in whose heart beat no English feeling, the two Kings who loved to be surrounded by men of any nation rather than their own, the two Kings who, more than any other Kings in English history, laid England, of their own act, prostrate at the feet of Rome,[64] the shrine of Eadward, the tomb of Henry, are fittingly adorned with forms which awake no English associations, the work not of English but of [Sidenote: The Translation. October 13, 1269.] Italian hands. To that shrine, a hundred and three years after its first translation, the body of the saint was borne by a crowd of the noblest of the land.[65] Among them two Kings and two Kings’ sons bowed their shoulders beneath the hallowed weight. The two highest of earthly rulers, the continental and the insular Basileus, Richard of Germany and Henry of England, were foremost to bear the burthen to which it was deemed a holy work to stretch forth a single finger.[66] With the one English Augustus there joined in the task his nephew, the one Englishman besides himself who ever bore the titles of foreign royalty, Edmund of Lancaster, whose vain pretensions to the Sicilian crown had been already transferred to the stronger hand of the conqueror from Anjou. Fit bearers for the foreign-hearted saint were an English King who hated Englishmen, and English princes who wasted English [Sidenote: Presence of Edward the First.] treasure in seeking after the kingship of other lands. But there was one who shared in their work who might seem sent there expressly to remind us that the object of their worship was, after all, an Englishman. Among those who bent to bear Eadward’s body was the prince who was named after his name, but whose life reproduced, not the life of Eadward the Confessor, but the life of Eadward the Unconquered.[67] Those who then pressed to win spiritual blessings by touching the corpse of Eadward hardly deemed that among themselves was one who was to make his name more worthy of honour among Englishmen than the royal saint could ever make it. It was then deemed an honour and a privilege to draw near to the body of Eadward. Was it not rather the highest of honours paid to Eadward himself, that Harold stood by his side at his first burial, and that in the great rite of his translation a share was borne by him who did in truth live to wield the sceptre of the Isle of Albion, and in whom the Scot and the Briton once more bowed to an Eadward of England as their father and their lord?[68]
[Sidenote: Eadward’s shrine becomes the centre of the royal tombs.]
But the posthumous history of Eadward the Confessor did not end even with this crowning triumph. His shrine at Westminster became the centre of a group of royal tombs such as gathered in earlier times in the more ancient seats of royalty at Winchester and Sherborne. Or a closer parallel still might be looked for in that renowned sanctuary of the West, the resting-place of Eadward’s nobler brother, where Briton and Englishman agreed to revere the name of the legendary Arthur, as at Westminster Englishman and Norman agreed to revere the name of the now well-nigh [Sidenote: Burial of Eadgyth, 1074;] legendary Eadward.[69] Eight years after the burial of Eadward, his widow, the loving sister of Tostig, the loyal subject of William, was laid by his side before the altar of Saint Peter.[70] The zeal of King Henry thought of her also, and her remains, translated to the chapel of her husband, were laid as near to his side as the remains of an ordinary sinful mortal might lie to those of a wonder-working saint. [Sidenote: of Eadgyth-Matilda, 1118.] To the other side of his shrine was moved the dust of another Eadgyth, disguised in history by her Norman name Matilda, her in whom the green tree first began to return to the trunk, and in whose grandson Normandy and England alike became parts of the dominions of the Angevin.[71] No legend or effigy marks the graves of these royal Ladies, but soon the choicest skill of the craftsman was lavished on the tombs of Kings and princes which crowded round the shrine of their sainted predecessor. To the north King [Sidenote: Henry the Third.] Henry sleeps in his tomb of foreign work, beneath the [Sidenote: Edward and Eleanor.] shadow of the patron whom he had so deeply honoured.[72] Worthier dust lies east and west of him. No graven figure marks the resting-place of his immortal son, but the loveliest work of all within that mighty charnel-house records the love and grief of the great King for a consort worthy of him. Succeeding ages surrounded the sacred spot with the sculptured forms of succeeding generations of English royalty. There sleeps the victor of Crecy and the victor of [Sidenote: Richard the Second.] Azincourt; there sleeps, beside his nobler Queen, the King from whom the Parliament of England, in the exercise of its [Sidenote: 1399.] ancient right, took away the Crown of which he had shown himself unworthy. Thus around the shrine of Eadward were gathered the successors who in life had sworn to keep his fancied Laws, and who deemed it their highest honour to wear his Crown and to sit upon his royal seat. At last a King arose in whose eyes the wealth which earlier Kings had lavished on that spot outweighed the reverence with which so many ages had surrounded Eadward’s name. One Henry had reared alike the shrine and the pile which held it; the word of another Henry went forth to cast to the owls and to the bats all that earlier ages had deemed holy. [Sidenote: The body of Eadward removed under Henry the Eighth,] And yet some remorse seems to have smitten the soul of the destroyer before the shrine of the royal patron and lawgiver of England. Elsewhere the shrines of more ancient saints were levelled with the ground; elsewhere the dust of Kings and heroes was scattered to the winds. The wealth of Eadward’s shrine was indeed borne away to be sported broadcast among the minions of Henry’s court, but the empty casket still stood untouched, and the hallowed remains found another, if a lowlier, resting-place within the minster-walls. And the days yet came when one translation [Sidenote: and restored under Philip and Mary.] more restored the corpse of Eadward to its place of honour. And again it was from fitting hands that he received this last act of veneration. The foreign-hearted Eadward had been first placed in that shrine by the foreign-hearted Henry, the King whose foreign marriage proved the curse of England, and whose foreign tastes made England the victim and the bondslave of Rome. Shorn of his honours by a King who, with all his crimes, was at least an Englishman, Eadward was brought back to his shrine by a Queen whose work it was to bend the neck of England beneath the spiritual yoke of the Roman See and the temporal yoke of her Spanish husband.[73] Translated first by the zeal of Henry and Eleanor, he was again restored to his old honours by the zeal of Philip and Mary. And now, while the dust of Eadmund and Harold is scattered to the winds, Eadward still sleeps in his shrine, unworshipped indeed but undisturbed; and the spot where an Englishman would best love to stand and muse in awe and wonder has become ground from which the votaries of devotion and art and history are bidden to turn away.
[Sidenote: The Coronation of Harold. January 6, 1066.]
But we must come back to the doings of the great Epiphany. The last King of the House of Cerdic was laid in his grave; it was time for the first King of the House of Godwine to be placed upon his throne. Short as the interregnum had been, England could not go a moment longer without a crowned and anointed ruler. From the burial of Eadward men turned at once to the coronation of Harold. That great rite was performed with all solemnity, no doubt according to those venerable forms whose substance has been followed in the consecration of every English King down to our own time.[74] The chief actor in that august ceremony was one not wholly unworthy of so high a function. The Primate of all England, while his canonical right to his see was called in question at home and abroad, could not be allowed to discharge the highest duty belonging to his office. The hands of Stigand might not minister an unction which was held to confer somewhat [Sidenote: The ceremony performed by Ealdred.] of sacramental grace and even of priestly sanctity.[75] In his stead, the rite was performed by the Primate of Northumberland, his marked adhesion to the new King being perhaps taken as one pledge of the allegiance of his distant province. No living Englishman had seen so much of other lands, none had so often stood face to face with the rulers of other nations, as he who was now called upon to set the English Crown upon the brow of Harold. Ealdred, alone of living English Prelates, had gone, at the bidding of his King or at the call of his own devotion, to the banks of the Rhine, the Tiber, and the Jordan. He alone had stood, as the representative of England, before the thrones of the spiritual and the temporal chiefs of Christendom. He alone had gone, with such worship as none had gone before him,[76] far beyond the threshold of the Apostles, to the city where the Infidel bore sway over the very spot of man’s redemption. He had tarried in the court of Cæsar, he had knelt at the tomb of Christ; but in all his wanderings he had never seen such a day or such a scene as when the Witan of all England came together to choose their Father and their Lord, and the diadem of Ecgberht rested on the lordly brow of the King chosen from his brethren. Could he have deemed that, at the next Christmas Feast, he should be called upon again to repeat that solemn rite on the same spot, under circumstances yet more new and wonderful? In the whole range of history, it is hard to point to a stranger fate than that of him to whose lot it fell to receive, within a single year, the coronation-oath of Harold and the coronation-oath of William.
[Sidenote: The King-elect led to the high altar.]
The rite began. Earl Harold, the King-elect, was led by two Bishops, with hymns and processions, up to the high altar of the minster. Later usage assigned that honourable function to the Prelates of Durham and of Wells.[77] It may then well be that Gisa, the supposed victim and enemy of Harold, really discharged one of the chief parts in his admission to his kingly office. The hymn sung by the choir in that great procession prayed that the hand of Harold might be strengthened and exalted, that justice and judgement might be the preparation of his seat, that mercy and truth might go before his face.[78] Before the high altar the Earl of the West-Saxons bowed himself to the ground, and while he lay grovelling, the song of Ambrose, the song of faith and of victory, was sung over one whose sin at Porlock, whose atonement at Waltham, might well make him seem another Theodosius.[79] The Earl then rose from the pavement, and for the last time he looked on the crowd [Sidenote: The Ecclesiastical Election.] around him, the Prelates and Thegns and the whole people of England, as still one of their own number. Their voice had already named him as their King, but a still more solemn election before the altar of God was needed before the Church admitted him to the sacramental unction. Once more the voice of Ealdred demanded of the English people, in ancient form, whether they would that Earl Harold should be crowned as their Lord and King. A loud shout [Sidenote: The Coronation oath.] of assent rang through the minster. Chosen thus by Prelates and people,[80] the King-elect swore with a loud voice his threefold oath to God and to all his folk. Kings swore in after days that they would observe all the rights and liberties which the glorious Eadward had granted to his clergy and his people. The oath of the prince who had so lately renewed the Laws of Cnut was of a simpler form. Earl Harold swore to preserve peace to the Church of God and to all Christian people. He swore to forbid wrong and robbery to men of every rank within his realm. He swore to enforce justice and mercy in all his judgements, as he would that God should have mercy upon him. And all the people said Amen. The Bishops then prayed for the ruler whom they had chosen, for his guidance by the Spirit of wisdom in the government of his realm, for peace to his Church and people, for his welfare in this world and in the next.[81] Then a yet more solemn prayer from the lips of Ealdred followed. In that ancient English form, which other nations have been fain to borrow of us,[82] the God who had wrought His mighty works by the hands of Abraham and Moses and Joshua and David and Solomon was implored to shower down all the gifts and graces of those famous worthies upon him who was that day chosen to be King of the Angles and Saxons. Ealdred prayed that Harold, faithful as Abraham, gentle as Moses, brave as Joshua, humble as David, wise as Solomon, might teach and rule and guard the Church and realm of the Angles and Saxons[83] against all visible and invisible foes. With feelings too deep for words must that prayer have risen from the hearts of all who could already see the gathering storm, which was still but like a little cloud out of the sea. The Primate prayed that their chosen King might never fail the throne and sceptre of the Angles and Saxons, that for long years of life he might reign over a faithful people, in peace and concord, and, if need be, in victory. Christ Himself was prayed to raise him to the throne of His kingdom, and to pour down upon him the unction of the Holy One.
[Sidenote: The Unction.]
“The oaths were said, the prayers were prayed.”[84] And now came the sacramental rite itself which changed an Earl into a King, and which gave him, so men then deemed, grace from on high to discharge the duties which were laid upon him. The holy oil was poured by Ealdred upon the head of Earl Harold.[85] And while the symbolic act was in doing, the choir raised their voices in that glorious strain to which the noblest music of later times has given a still higher majesty. The walls of the West Minster echoed to the anthem which told how Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet anointed Solomon King, and which added the prayer of England that Harold might live for ever.[86] Again the Primate prayed that, as of old Kings and Priests and Prophets were anointed with oil, so now the oil poured on the head of God’s servant might be a true sign of the inner unction of the heart, a means of grace for His glory and the [Sidenote: The Investiture.] welfare of His people.[87] And now King Harold, the Lord’s Anointed, the chosen of the people, the consecrated of the Church, vested in the robes of royalty and priesthood,[88] received in due order the insignia of his kingly office. The sword was placed in his hand, with the prayer that he might therewith defend his realm, and smite his enemies and the [Sidenote: The Crowning.] enemies of the Church of God.[89] The King then bowed his head, and the Imperial diadem of Britain was placed by the hand of Ealdred on the head of the King of the Angles and Saxons, the Emperor of the Isle of Albion.[90] God was again implored to crown His Anointed with glory and justice and might, and to give him a yet brighter Crown in a more enduring Kingdom. Then the sceptre crowned with the cross, and the rod crowned with the holy dove, were placed, one after the other, in the royal hands. Prayer was again made that the sceptre of Harold’s Kingdom might be a sceptre of righteousness and strength, that he who had been anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows might through all his days be a lover of righteousness and a hater of iniquity.[91] Further prayers, further blessings, followed; the prayers and merits of all the saints, of the Virgin Mother of God, of the Prince of the Apostles, and of his successor the special Apostle of the English nation,[92] were [Sidenote: “Hic residet Harold Rex Anglorum.”] implored on behalf of the crowned and anointed King. And now King Harold of England sat on his royal throne, the crown upon his brow, in his right hand the sceptre, in his left the orb of Empire,[93] the proud badge which belonged of right to the Cæsar of another world. Two chiefs, perhaps his faithful brothers, bore the sword at his side; his people stood and gazed upon him with wonder and [Sidenote: Import of the ceremony.] delight.[94] The day at last had come for which Harold and England had looked so long. The reward of thirteen years of loyal service had been given by the nation to her noblest son. And the die too had been cast; the danger was now to be faced in common; King and people were pledged to stand by one another in the struggle which was to come. And King and people did stand by one another, and, if they both fell, they both fell gloriously. The rite of that great day gave Harold, instead of the long and peaceful reign prayed for by his consecrator, a reign of nine months of little stillness.[95] Then England was given over to bondage, and the name of Harold was given over to the voice of slander. But in the eye of truth, those nine months of little stillness, spent in the cause of England, were better than long years of inglorious ease and luxury, better than long years of hardly less inglorious sloth and superstition. As the momentary glory of Eadmund follows on the weary years of Æthelred, so the momentary glory of Harold followed on those years of Eadward which Harold alone had saved from being as weary as those of his father. And, in the eye of authentic history, never was crown more lawfully won, more worthily worn, than that which Ealdred placed that day on the head of him whom calumny marked so long as Harold the Usurper. If there ever was a lawful ruler in this world, such of a truth was Harold, King of the English and Lord of the Isle of Britain—King, not by the mouldering titles of a worn-out dynasty, not by the gold of the trafficker or the steel of the invader, but by the noblest title by which one man can claim to rule over his fellows, the free choice of a free people.
[Sidenote: Was Ealdgyth crowned?]
The rite was over. Earl Harold was now King; but we cannot help asking whether he stood alone in the great ceremony which had made him so. Did the Lady Ealdgyth, once again the wife of a King, share in the consecration of her husband? Her coronation is nowhere distinctly spoken of, but our ancient ritual provides a form for the anointing of the King’s consort, and for her investiture with the ring and crown.[96] There is no reason to suppose that the wife of Harold, the grand-daughter of Leofric, would be debarred from any honour befitting the wife of a King, the mother of future Æthelings. But, in the absence of direct testimony, I do not venture to affirm the fact. Indeed I must confess that I feel less certain than I did when writing my last chapter, whether the marriage of Harold and Ealdgyth may not have followed his election to the Crown.[97] Whether then the new King had a consort to share in his honours is a point which I must leave uncertain. But, according to all precedent, on the coronation followed the mass, with prayers and collects appropriate for the great solemnity.[98] At that mass the King partook of the holiest rite of Christian worship. On the mass followed the banquet, and there, on the last day of the Christmas Festival, we cannot doubt that King Harold, in all the glory of his new dignity, wore his Crown with all kingly state in what was now his Palace of Westminster. The old dynasty had passed away; the new dynasty had taken possession; but not many days had gone before voices of warning came which showed that King Harold of England would soon have to do battle for his Crown.
§ 3. _The First Days of Harold’s Reign. January 6–April 16, 1066._
[Sidenote: No new Earl of the West-Saxons appointed.]
Within the bounds of his former Earldom the rule of Harold, King of the English, was simply a continuation of the rule of Harold, Earl of the West-Saxons. It is plain that no other Earl of the great southern Earldom was appointed in his place. In any view of general policy this might be looked on as a backward step. It might be looked on as again uprearing a throne which should be West-Saxon rather than English. It might be looked on as again reducing Mercia and Northumberland from integral parts of the realm into dependent provinces.[99] But under the circumstances of the moment, it would seem to have been the wiser course. England was threatened by two enemies in different quarters, and even the energy of Harold could not personally provide for the safety of the [Sidenote: Necessity of confidence in Eadwine and Morkere.] land against both. It was absolutely necessary, in Harold’s position, to treat the Earls of the Northumbrians and the Mercians, perhaps already his brothers-in-law, with a degree of confidence which they certainly did not deserve. It was something that they had allowed his election and coronation to take place without any open opposition. It was something that he had received the votes of the Northumbrian Witan, and had been crowned and anointed by the hands of the Northumbrian Primate. Harold could not do otherwise than at least affect to treat Eadwine and Morkere as [Sidenote: Division of labour between them and the King.] loyal subjects or even as loving brothers. He was obliged to trust to them for the defence of Northern England. And, if they could be trusted for anything, they might surely, it would seem, be trusted to keep their personal enemy Tostig out of their own Earldoms. While they guarded the North against the English exile, it was Harold’s own work to guard the South against the foreign pretender. In the eastern shires, from the Wash to the Straits of Dover, he had the trustiest of lieutenants in his brothers Gyrth and Leofwine. It was clearly his own business, while not abdicating his duty of general care over the whole Kingdom, to undertake as his special work the defence of the lands which had formed his own Earldom. No one could do that work [Sidenote: No available candidate for the West-Saxon Earldom.] so well as himself. We can hardly see whom Harold, had he been so inclined, could have invested with the West-Saxon Earldom. Every man who could lay claim to so high a dignity on the score either of birth or of merit was already provided for. The King’s remaining brother Wulfnoth was probably a hostage in Normandy; his own sons, his nephew Hakon, were all young and untried. The representatives of the two Northumbrian families, Waltheof and Oswulf, were equally untried, and they were already invested with the government of districts with which they had an ancestral connexion. Nor can we point to the name of any West-Saxon of special personal eminence beyond the [Sidenote: Military policy of keeping Wessex in the King’s own hands.] limits of the great houses. It was clearly the policy of the moment, a moment when military considerations must have been supreme above all others, for the King to keep the immediate administration of the South in his own hands, availing himself only of the co-operation of his brothers the two Eastern Earls. And, after all, though Northumberland and Mercia again became in a sense dependencies on the West-Saxon Crown, the arrangement might very well suit the purposes of Eadwine and Morkere. They might deem that a step was thereby taken towards the division of the Kingdom, when its administration was practically divided between the House of Leofric and the House of Godwine, and when the King took his own share along with his brothers and brothers-in-law. A King who had his own portion of the Kingdom in his own hands might seem to be less painfully exalted over their heads, he might seem to remain more nearly on their own level, than a King who acted simply as a central power, equally controlling every portion of the realm. Harold therefore kept the West-Saxon Earldom in his own hands. But it is clear that he kept a watchful eye over his whole Kingdom, and that he was ready to act at a moment’s notice in any part of his Kingdom where his presence might be needed.
[Sidenote: Character of Harold’s government.]
On the character of Harold’s government as King there is no need to enlarge. His government as King was, as I have just before said, simply a continuation of his government as Earl. Whatever was the character of the one was [Sidenote: Norman calumnies.] the character of the other. The Norman writers describe his government as stained by frightful crimes. As usual, stories grow and become more definite as they are further removed from the time. The slanderers of Harold’s own age veiled their charges in the most general terms; but the slanderers of the thirteenth century were ready with long stories of rapine and sacrilege and evil doings of every kind, and the slanderers of a still later age knew perfectly well how cruelly Harold enforced the forest laws, and how the husband of Ealdgyth remained without a wife, that he might the more easily carry off the wives and daughters [Sidenote: Asserted general expulsion of Normans.] of the “Barons” of the realm.[100] A charge which better deserves serious examination is that Harold drove out of the land all the Normans who were settled in it, doubtless confiscating their lands.[101] Now the dying charge of Eadward himself suggested the banishment, though not the spoliation, of any Normans who might refuse to become the men of the new King.[102] The fact that the charge is brought against Harold may lead us to think that some such cases actually occurred, and that Eadward’s rule was [Sidenote: Some Normans at least remained in England.] put in force with regard to them. But it is quite impossible to believe that all the Frenchmen who were naturalized in England[103] were now driven out. Some record of such a process would certainly have found its way into Domesday. And we know for certain that some [Sidenote: Bishop William and Robert the son of Wymarc not molested.] Normans of high rank were not driven out. William of London retained his Bishoprick. His name does not actually occur in the history of Harold’s reign, but it is quite certain that, if he had been meddled with, some Norman writer or other would have taken care to record the fact. The wrongs of the living Bishop of London would have made an excellent sequel to the wrongs of the dead Archbishop of Canterbury. And we know distinctly, from the testimony of Norman writers,[104] that Robert the son of Wymarc was living quietly in England, as a man of wealth and importance, at the time of William’s landing. He clearly retained his lands; there is no evidence whether [Sidenote: Other Stallers.] he did or did not retain his office of Staller. Nor have we any direct evidence as to the position retained in Harold’s reign by Robert’s fellow-Staller Ralph,[105] or by any other of Eadward’s Norman favourites. We cannot say whether Hugolin the Treasurer and Reginbald the Chancellor[106] retained their offices in the Court of the English King. We can only say that, among the English Stallers employed by Eadward, three at least, Bondig,[107] Esegar, and Eadnoth, retained their offices. Esegar and Bondig play not unimportant [Sidenote: Eadnoth.] parts in the great struggles of the year.[108] Eadnoth, who held large possessions in the western shires, was probably a man who had risen by the favour of Harold during his government of Wessex as Earl. We shall hear [Sidenote: 1067.] of him again as acting against the son of his benefactor.
[Sidenote: English descriptions of Harold’s good government.]
In opposition to the slanders of his enemies, Harold appears in the national writers as the model of a patriot King. In the words of the splendid panegyric which became almost a set form among all true Englishmen, “he began to abolish unrighteous laws, to establish righteous ones, to be the patron of churches and monasteries, to reverence Bishops, Abbots, monks, and churchmen of every sort, to show himself pious, lowly, and affable to all good men, and to be the enemy of all evil doers.”[109] We are told how he bade his Earls, Sheriffs, and magistrates of every kind, and generally all his Thegns, to seize all thieves, robbers, and disturbers of the public peace, while he himself laboured for the defence of the country by sea and land.[110] That is to say, his government as King was a continuation of his government as Earl. We must not infer from the opening words of the description that Harold appeared at all as a lawgiver. Those few months of little stillness were not likely to be largely devoted either to the repeal of old laws or to the enactment of new ones. By good and bad law is meant, as usual,[111] good and bad government. What we are to understand is that Harold’s rule continued to be as just and as vigorous as it had ever been. It would in truth be more vigorous, now that he could act freely for himself, and had no longer to take the pleasure of the wayward Eadward upon any matter. His strictness against all breaches of the peace is simply his old virtue as Earl;[112] only we see, what of course naturally follows from the state of things at the time, that this duty was now, more than it had been before, thrown upon the King’s officers and representatives, while the King himself was mainly occupied with his military [Sidenote: His military preparations began early in his reign.] preparations. We see also that those preparations began from the very beginning of his reign, that there is no ground to believe that Harold despised either of his enemies, or that he failed from the first to make ready for anything that might happen. His great difficulty must have been to make others feel the importance of the crisis as he felt it himself, and at the same time to avoid anything which could dishearten men’s minds or chill the warmth of the hopes kindled by a new reign and a new dynasty. The spirit of Harold’s rule is impressed in a striking, and even touching, way on the few material monuments of his [Sidenote: His coinage.] short reign. The new King found time for a new coinage, and the device on Harold’s coin well spoke the longings of a King whose heart yearned for peace, though he knew that peace could be had only through war. On the one side is the simple legend, PAX, on the other side the King wears the Imperial Diadem.[113] All that man could do for his realm and people King Harold did. The evil was that, according to the old Greek saying, even Hêraklês could not struggle with two foes at once.[114]
[Sidenote: Good position of Harold towards the National Church.]
As for Harold’s devotion to the Church, which is so strongly insisted on by his panegyrist, we can see that he had every motive at this time to make friends of all classes of men, and to make friends of the clergy more than of any other class. He must have known that something like a holy war was likely to be proclaimed against him. He must have felt that he had, wittingly or unwittingly, done an act which ran counter to the religious feelings of the time. If Harold had really done despite to the bones of the Norman Saints, it was the more needful for him to show to other lands that he enjoyed the confidence of the national Church, and to show to the national Church that he was a King who did not belie the oil of his consecration. [Sidenote: His relations to the monks.] It is quite possible, and it may be implied in the words of the panegyric, that the founder of Waltham, the great patron of the seculars, now found it expedient to extend more of his countenance than before to the religious foundations of his Kingdom. It is certain that the few notices that we have of the reign of Harold show that more of his attention was given to ecclesiastical matters than might have been looked for in a reign so short and so [Sidenote: His further gifts to Waltham.] stormy. He continued his care and bounty to his own foundation at Waltham; what the Earl had loved, the [Sidenote: His writ to Gisa.] King could not love less.[115] If Bishop Gisa had any fears, they were quieted by a writ securing him in all the rights and possessions of his see.[116] The construction which we put upon this act must depend upon the view which we take of the relations between Harold and Gisa at this moment. We have seen that, according to Gisa’s own account, the King promised to restore the disputed lands, and was hindered only by his death.[117] At any rate, Harold showed either that he was unconscious of wrong, or that, if he was conscious, he was anxious to make atonement. [Sidenote: His friendship with the Abbots Leofric and Æthelwig;] Among the monastic Prelates, the history will show that he could count on the loyal service, not only of his uncle at the New Minster of Winchester,[118] but of the member of the rival house who ruled over the Golden Borough.[119] Peterborough, it should be remembered, is the only monastic foundation of which Harold is distinctly recorded as a benefactor.[120] The intercourse between Harold and Abbot Leofric was plainly one of mutual confidence and mutual good offices. Æthelwig also, the prudent Abbot of Evesham, stood high in the new King’s favour. The soul of the saintly Mannig had passed away at the same hour as the soul of the saintly Eadward,[121] and the church of Evesham was now under the sole rule of the Prelate whose wisdom had already commended him to Ealdred and was afterwards still more specially to commend him to William. With Harold the influence of Æthelwig was great; the Abbot, we are told, obtained from the King whatever he asked.[122] One would like to know more clearly the nature of the requests made by such a Prelate to such a King. [Sidenote: and with Saint Wulfstan.] But among the ranks of monks and Bishops there was one greater than Gisa or Leofric or Æthelwig, one whose prayers and whose counsels Harold had long learned to value. The holy Wulfstan had for years been his tried friend, and it was on the tried friendship of that true man of God that Harold chose to lean in the first of the many trials of his short reign.
[Sidenote: Formal concurrence of Northumberland in Harold’s election.]
There can be no doubt that the Witan of Northumberland, no less than the Witan of the rest of England, had concurred in the election of Harold. The expressions of our best authorities declare that the chief men of all England concurred in the choice;[123] the Primate of the Northumbrians had filled the first place in the work of Harold’s formal admission to his Kingdom, and there is nothing to show that the Earl of the Northumbrians openly dissented. But a little thought will show that the real feelings of Northumberland could not be so easily tested in an Assembly held in London as the real feelings of Wessex and East-Anglia. We cannot suppose that the North was represented in such an Assembly in anything like the same proportion as the districts nearer to the place of meeting. [Sidenote: Working of the Witenagemót as a Primary Assembly.] This is always one of the weak points of a Primary, as distinguished from a Representative, Assembly. In a Representative Assembly, if members are fairly apportioned to districts, a part of the country far away from the place of meeting may be as well represented as one that is close to it. In a Primary Assembly the different parts of the country cannot be put on an equality except by taking the votes, not by heads, but by tribes, cities, or cantons.[124] Northumberland might, by this means, have had an equal voice with Wessex in the national Councils, though the West-Saxons present might have been counted by hundreds or thousands, and the Northumbrians only by tens or units. But this political subtlety does not seem to have been thought of in the primitive parliamentary system of our forefathers. It follows then that, wherever a Gemót was held, some part of the country was placed at a disadvantage. East-Anglia was placed at a disadvantage when the Gemót was held at Gloucester; Western Mercia was placed at a disadvantage when the Gemót was held in London. [Sidenote: Northumberland never fairly represented.] And as no regular Gemót seems to have been held in Eadward’s time at any place north of Gloucester,[125] Northumberland was always placed at a disadvantage. We may conceive that, in the Gemót which elected Harold, that is, the Gemót assembled for the consecration of the West Minster, Wessex, East-Anglia, and south-eastern Mercia were largely represented. The citizens of London were ready on the spot. But it is not likely that the Northumbrians present would be more than a mere handful. The Archbishop, the Earls, the Bishop of Durham, and a few of the leading Thegns would doubtless obey the royal summons. But it is not likely that many besides these would undertake such a journey in the middle of winter. We can therefore fully understand that the mass of the Northumbrian people might feel that an election had been made to which they had not consented. The election had been made in all due constitutional form. Still a most important step, a step affecting the whole Kingdom, a step likely to be in many ways repugnant to Northumbrian feeling, a step to which Northumberland had practically not been a consenting party, had been taken by a part of England in the name of the whole. By that step the mass of the Northumbrian people refused to be bound.[126]
[Sidenote: Harold’s election naturally repugnant to Northumbrian feelings.]
That the old provincial jealousy should break out again at this moment was not wonderful. It was something strange and new even for West-Saxons to set over them a King of their own blood, who was not of the royal house. But it was something stranger and newer still for Northumbrians to be called on to acknowledge a King, who was neither of their own blood nor of the blood of their old West-Saxon conquerors, but who sprang from a West-Saxon house which, two generations back, had been undistinguished, perhaps ignoble. This feeling on the part of the Northumbrian people was short-sighted and ungenerous, but it was perfectly natural. The question is, how far the sons of Ælfgar, who had not dared to oppose Harold’s election in open Gemót, now stirred up, or took advantage of, the natural feeling of the Northumbrian people. Our evidence is very slight, but the conduct of Eadwine and Morkere a few months later makes it almost impossible to doubt that they saw, in the unwillingness of Northumberland to acknowledge the newly-chosen King, an admirable means towards carrying out their schemes for the division of the Kingdom. We have no distinct details of what actually happened in Northumberland at this moment. The one writer who tells the story wraps [Sidenote: The Northumbrians refuse to acknowledge Harold.] up the minuter facts in a cloud of rhetoric.[127] It is plain however that the Northumbrians did, in some shape or other, refuse to acknowledge Harold as their King. There is nothing to show that there was any armed resistance, or that any Northumbrian Gemót took upon itself to elect another King. The resistance to Harold’s authority was probably passive, but resistance of some kind there was. [Sidenote: Similar position of Harold in January and of William in December.] Harold, in short, found himself in January in very nearly the same position with regard to the northern part of his Kingdom in which William found himself in December. Each alike had been elected and crowned; each had received the allegiance of the Northumbrian Earl, and had been hallowed as King by the Northumbrian Primate. But Harold and William alike found that the submission of Morkere and the benediction of Ealdred did not necessarily carry with them any practical authority over the old Northumbrian realm. And we cannot doubt that [Sidenote: Probable agency of Eadwine and Morkere.] the heart of Morkere went forth as little in his oath to Harold as it went forth in his oath to William. We cannot doubt that Morkere, and Eadwine also, took advantage, in the former case as in the latter, of the natural disposition of the Northumbrian people. The momentary hopes which were roused by the unwillingness of the Danish and Anglian North to acknowledge the West-Saxon King overcame the fear lest Tostig should come to recover his Earldom by force. Weighed against such hopes, the tie of allegiance, the tie of gratitude, the tie of affinity, was not likely to be strong. The claims of a King, a benefactor, perhaps a brother, would seem small compared with a chance of personal exaltation. The duty of keeping England united in the face of her foes would seem as nothing compared with the chance of gratifying a paltry provincial jealousy. I may seem to be passing a harsh judgement on the sons of Ælfgar in a matter in which their names are not directly mentioned. But I am simply supposing that their conduct now was of a piece with their conduct a few months before and a few months after. And it is hard to see what form could be taken by even a passive resistance to Harold’s authority, unless that resistance was fostered by the connivance, to say the least, of the reigning Earl.
[Sidenote: Harold’s way of recovering the disaffected.]
Harold then found himself in January, as William found himself in December, King of a realm of which Northumberland constitutionally formed a part, but a King to whom Northumberland presented a front of at least passive resistance. But Harold’s way of bringing in the proud Danes of the North to his obedience was not exactly the same as William’s way. Harold knew how to win back the revolted province without shedding a drop of blood and without harrying a single acre of ground. It is small blame to William, granting his position in England at all, that no such peaceful means were open to him as were open to Harold. But, if Harold’s way of recovering rebels differed widely from William’s, it differed no less widely from that of Harthacnut, of Tostig, or of Eadward himself. Three months before, the saintly King had been eager to carry fire and sword into a province which, though it despised his authority, does not seem to have disputed his title. His good genius, in the shape of Harold, had then kept him back from a bootless war against his own people.[128] That same province was now in revolt against Harold himself; but it was soon shown that the policy of Harold the King was in no way changed from the policy of Harold the Earl. The conqueror of Gruffydd was less eager for war and bloodshed than the King who had never grasped axe or sword except in a peaceful pageant. King Harold showed that the motto on his coin was one which he was ready fully to carry out in practice. He at least knew that, at such a moment, civil war, civil dissension, between [Sidenote: He determines to visit Northumberland in person.] Englishmen, was simple madness. With that noble and generous daring which is sometimes the highest prudence, Harold determined to trust himself in the hands of the people who refused to acknowledge him. Those his enemies who would not that he should reign over them, instead of being brought and slain before him, were to be won over by the magic of his personal presence in their own land. We know not whether Harold had ever before set foot on Northumbrian ground. His vast possessions indeed extended beyond the Humber. The lordship of Coningsburgh, more famous in romance than in history, together with a large surrounding territory, owned Harold as its lord.[129] A house of Harold’s probably marked the height which is now crowned by the renowned castle of later times; but we know not whether the great Earl ever found leisure to visit a possession so far removed both from the scenes of his labours at Gloucester, Winchester, and London, and from the scenes of his pleasure and devotion in his own woods and by his own minster at Waltham. But one thing is certain, that years had [Sidenote: 1031. Rarity of royal visits to the North.] passed since Northumberland had seen a King. Thirty-five years earlier Cnut had passed through the land on his victorious march against the Scots.[130] Whether the first Harold, whose capital seems to have been Oxford, ever found his way to York is uncertain. But there is nothing to lead us to suppose that Harthacnut or Eadward had ever seen any part of their dominions north of Shrewsbury, perhaps not even north of Gloucester.[131] Thus the mere presence of a King in the North of England would be something strange and exciting, and the mere presence of a King can, as we all know, often work wonders. Harold then set off for Northumberland, to win over the disaffected province, not by arms, but by the power of speech and the magic of royal courtesy. But he went [Sidenote: He takes Bishop Wulfstan with him.] not alone. The companion whom he chose seems to show how important a part of Harold’s policy it was at this moment to show himself as the choice and the friend of the national Church. With the King went the best and holiest Prelate in England, his old and tried friend, the saintly Bishop of Worcester. On the example and the eloquence of Wulfstan Harold relied to win over those in whose ears he might himself charm in vain.
Harold and Wulfstan then set forth on their journey northward. They would probably take with them Housecarls enough for their own personal protection, but it is plain that they took with them no force capable of controlling or overawing the country. The power of speech and of reason, the example and the influence of the brightest light of the national priesthood, were the arms to which Harold trusted. [Sidenote: Harold and Wulfstan persuade the Northumbrians to submit.] Our narrative tells us only the result and not the process. The proud Danes, unconquerable by steel,[132] bowed their necks to the gentle yoke of Harold and Wulfstan, and the authority of the new King was acknowledged throughout Northumberland. One could well wish to know more of the details. The biographer of Wulfstan attributes the happy result wholly to the reverence with which the Saint inspired the fierce spirits of the North. From the merits and the honour of Wulfstan, a true Saint and the chosen friend of Harold, I should be sorry to derogate one jot or one tittle. But I cannot but think that the presence, the arguments, the eloquence, of the hero-King himself must have had some share in winning over his people to his [Sidenote: Harold in the Gemót at York.] allegiance. In the Gemót at York, which was evidently summoned for the purpose,[133] he might appeal to every feeling of patriotism, and conjure them, as Englishmen, not, at such a moment, to separate the cause of one Earldom from the common cause of England. If England were torn by civil war, even if England were peacefully divided, what assurance was there that Wessex alone could withstand the attacks of William, that Northumberland alone could withstand the attacks of Tostig? But if England were united—and under none but Harold could she be united—she might be able to hold up against both enemies at once. He might appeal to every feeling of personal gratitude; he might remind the Northumbrian people how lately he had sacrificed his brother to their will, how lately he had saved them from a civil war, when King Eadward was eager to march his armies against them. The personal pleadings of a King, even when they are far weaker in themselves, are seldom heard in vain; and the voice of reason and prudence, speaking from the lips of such a King as Harold, was still less likely to be without fruit. The Northumbrian Danes had received from Harold a mark of consideration and confidence such as they had hardly [Sidenote: Harold acknowledged in Northumberland.] received from any King since the days of Eadgar.[134] It is no wonder then that the mission of the King and his saintly companion was successful for the moment. Harold was received as King by Northumberland, as he had already been received as King by the rest of England. Perhaps none of his exploits was more glorious than thus to win for himself a great province, an ancient Kingdom, by the mere force of reason and justice. And there is nothing to show that the Northumbrian people fell away from their loyalty, or showed themselves unworthy of the trust which [Sidenote: Continued dangers from Eadwine and Morkere.] their King had placed in them. But the root of evil was left behind. On the decisive step of removing the sons of Ælfgar from their Earldoms Harold could not venture. He was obliged to leave a portion of the Kingdom stretching at least from the Welland to the Tweed in the hands of rulers who could not be trusted. The very ease with which Harold had won the hearts of the Northumbrian people would be of itself a root of bitterness in the hearts of Eadwine and Morkere. They were now further than ever from any hopes of peaceful kingship. They must either be loyal lieutenants of their brother-in-law[135] or else open or secret rebels against him. We shall see what was the fate of Northumberland and of England, when so vast a power had to be left in such unworthy hands.
[Sidenote: Harold King]
But for the moment King Harold was indeed King over the whole realm. He had won the hearts of the whole [Sidenote: over all England.] English people from Wight to Lindisfarne, as perhaps no other King had won them since England had acknowledged a single King. It may be that the holy man whom he had chosen as his guide and partner chose that moment of his highest exaltation to set before him a picture of the sins of England, and to exhort him to devote himself to their reformation.[136] Or it may be that the warnings of Wulfstan to Harold, like the warnings of Solon to Crœsus, are merely part of a grand dramatic picture, showing how the shadow of the wrath to come was already spreading over the land. But, for the moment, all was brighter than at any other moment of the year. King Harold, full King over all England, came back in peace to his palace at Westminster.
[Sidenote: Harold keeps Easter at Westminster. April 16.]
It was there that he kept the Easter Festival, and held his Easter Gemót, the one recorded Festival and the one recorded Gemót of his short reign.[137] But the reign of Harold, short as it was, marks an important stage in the [Sidenote: Increased importance of London under Harold.] gradual process by which London became the capital of England. Eadward and Harold were both, by widely different motives, drawn to Westminster as their chief dwelling-place. Eadward loved to dwell under the shadow of the church which he was rearing. Harold saw that London was the fittest spot for the ordinary abode of a King who might at any moment be called to the defence [Sidenote: Advantages of the position of London.] of any part of his Kingdom. Less suited than Oxford to be the gathering-place of assemblies from North and South, the great inland haven of the Thames, the city guarded alike by its Roman walls and by the strong hearts of its citizens, was the best centre for operations which might have to be carried on by land or by sea, eastward, northward, or southward. Wales was subdued; Ireland was seemingly friendly; at any rate the danger from both those quarters was comparatively trifling, and the western shore and the western frontier might be left to take care of themselves. But the whole southern and eastern coast of England was exposed to the double enemy, and for the defence of the southern and eastern coast London was obviously the best centre. For that part of England which was under the immediate rule of the new royal house, for Harold’s own Wessex, for the Earldoms of Gyrth and Leofwine, the city was almost geographically central. London then became, under Harold, a more constant royal dwelling-place [Sidenote: Four successive festivals at Westminster. Christmas 1065–1066; Easter 1066; Pentecost 1066; Christmas 1066–1067.] than it had ever been before. It had perhaps never before happened that four successive festivals of the Church were kept by an English King on the same spot. But such must have been the case at Westminster during this year of wonders. Gloucester had been forsaken for that great Midwinter Feast at Westminster, in which the Crown was worn by Eadward on the day of the Nativity and by Harold on the day of the Epiphany. Winchester was now forsaken for Harold’s one Paschal festival. For Pentecost Westminster was now the usual place, and if King Harold found time to hold a Whitsun Feast at all, it was doubtless at Westminster that he held it. At the next Midwinter Feast Westminster again beheld another master, and her church and palace became the scene of other crowning rites. Thick and fast indeed came the events which caused the creation of Eadward to become, from its very birth, the hearth and home of the English nation.
[Sidenote: Did Harold avoid Winchester?]
It is possible that Harold may have had another, a secondary, motive, which led him to hold his Festival in some other place than the capital of his former Earldom, the resting-place of his father and of his murdered cousin. Harold had faithfully carried out all the dying wishes of Eadward. Those of Eadward’s Norman friends who were willing to dwell peaceably in the land were not disturbed. Every day of Harold’s reign saw masses and prayers go up from the altars of the West Minster on behalf of the soul of its founder. And Eadward’s other request, that his widow might keep her royal rank and honours, was carried [Sidenote: Eadgyth at Winchester.] out no less faithfully. Eadgyth, now, in Old-English phrase, the Old Lady, withdrew to that royal dwelling-place at Winchester which seems, in this age, to have been specially reserved for the widows of Kings. There Emma had spent the last days of her life,[138] and there now Eadgyth [Sidenote: Her apparent disaffection.] dwelt with all the honours of her rank, but in all probability as no faithful subject of her royal brother. Her sisterly affection was set upon Tostig, and it would even seem that, after Tostig’s overthrow, her sympathies were transferred from the brother who had overthrown him to the invader who might be looked on as his avenger.[139] It is possible that Harold might feel inclined to avoid a city whose chief inhabitant was a sister in such a frame of mind. But it may simply be that he found London the best centre for his councils and operations. And we may add that the mere fact of Winchester being assigned as the place of dowry to the widows of Cnut and Eadward shows of itself that the old West-Saxon capital was fast yielding the first place among the cities of England to the great military and commercial post on the Thames.
[Sidenote: Easter Gemót at Westminster. April 16–23.]
At Westminster then King Harold held his one Easter Feast, and there doubtless he wore his Crown in the same kingly state as the Kings who had gone before him. The Feast implies the Gemót, and of the main subjects of debate in a Gemót at such a moment we can have little doubt. It would be the King’s business to obtain from the assembled nation every help that was needed for the defence of the country. It would be his business to warn his people alike against unworthy fear, against unreasonable confidence, and against that mere slowness of movement, that shrinking from prolonged and wearying service, which were the besetting sins of Englishmen. It was in short the part of Harold to inspire his people, as far as might be, with that unconquerable energy which was the distinguishing feature of his own character. But of the acts of that Assembly we have no record. All that we can say is that it must have been at that Easter gathering that the two recorded ecclesiastical appointments of Harold’s reign were made. At the time of Eadward’s death the great Abbey of Ely was without an Abbot, and Harold had been only a few weeks on the throne when a vacancy also occurred in the Abbey of Abingdon. To this last house the Earl of the West-Saxons had more than once acted a friendly part, sanctioning and suggesting the benefactions of others, even if he did not directly appear as a benefactor [Sidenote: Death of Ordric, Abbot of Abingdon. January 22.] himself.[140] Seventeen days after the death of Eadward Abbot Ordric of Abingdon died.[141] The appointment of his successor, Ealdred, a monk of the house, must have taken place at the Easter Gemót. Of the new Prelate we shall hear again during the troubles of the next reign.[142]
[Sidenote: Wulfric Abbot of Ely. 1044–1065?]
The appointment to Ely is of more moment, as it plainly sets forth Harold in the character of an ecclesiastical reformer. The last Abbot Wulfric, who is spoken of as [Sidenote: The Abbey held in plurality by Stigand.] a kinsman of King Eadward, had lately died. On his death the Abbey was given to Archbishop Stigand, as an addition to his already large stock of preferment. Neither Wulfric nor Stigand is spoken of as a good husband of his church’s worldly wealth. Wulfric had secretly conveyed some of the lands of the Abbey to his brother Guthmund, and he is described as dying of grief and shame for this sin. Stigand now, we are told, suggested to Harold the appointment of an Abbot. But, with Florence’s panegyric before us, we may be inclined to believe that Harold, now at least become the patron of monks and monasteries, was anxious that his reign should be an æra of ecclesiastical reform. It would be a good beginning to put a stop to the scandal of the Archbishop of Canterbury holding the Abbey of Ely in plurality. Possibly the exhortations of Saint Wulfstan may have dwelt upon this evil, as upon so many others. We may therefore be inclined to believe that it was Harold who suggested to Stigand, rather than Stigand who suggested to Harold, the appointment of an independent [Sidenote: Thurstan appointed Abbot. 1066–1076.] Abbot. At any rate an appointment was made by the royal authority, and we cannot doubt that it was duly made by King Harold and his Witan at this Easter Gemót. The new Prelate, Thurstan, whose name proclaims his Danish descent, bears a good character in the local history; he had been brought up in the house from his childhood, and had been well instructed in the learning of [Sidenote: He is blessed by Stigand.] the times. By the King’s order, he received the abbatial benediction from the Archbishop who had made way for him. Stigand had before been deemed fit to bless an Abbot, though not to consecrate a King or a Bishop.[143] The new Abbot’s reign was a busy and a troubled one. We shall hear again of him and of his house in the course of the great struggle against the Conqueror. At present he had to deal [Sidenote: Lands of Ely detained by Stigand and Guthmund.] with adversaries on a smaller scale. Stigand, like many other Prelates on resigning one preferment for another, and especially on resigning one held in plurality, continued, so the local writers tell us, to keep a large share of the lands of Ely in his own hands. He made up however in some measure for this fault by the most splendid gifts to the church of Ely in the way of vessels and ornaments.[144] With Stigand perhaps it might not have been prudent for the new Abbot to meddle, but he did his best to recover the lands which Wulfric had conveyed to his brother. Guthmund was brought to a compromise not unusual in such cases, by which the lands were to revert to the Abbey at his death. But the coming overthrow of England carried the stolen possessions away alike from Guthmund and from Saint Æthelthryth. In the storms which soon fell upon the monastery of Ely, the lands of which Abbot Wulfric had defrauded his brotherhood came into the hands of the Norman Hugh of Montfort.[145]
[Sidenote: The Crown challenged by William. [January 15?]]
Signs of those no longer distant days were already beginning to show themselves in the heaven above and in the earth beneath. Perhaps at that very Easter Feast, perhaps at some yet earlier moment of Harold’s reign,[146] came the message which told him to his face, what he had all along known in his heart, that his reign over England would not be undisputed. Harold was King, acknowledged as King by every Earldom and every shire in England. He was King, alike by the will of his predecessor, by the choice of his people, by the consecration of the Church, by the homage of the Thegns and Prelates of England. But now a voice came proclaiming aloud to Harold, to England, and to Europe, that another claimed the Crown he wore, and claimed it by an earlier bequest of Eadward, by an earlier homage of Harold himself. The great enemy had at last openly thrown down the gauntlet. Duke William of Normandy had proclaimed himself to all the world as the true heir of Eadward, as the lawful King of the English. The benediction of Thurstan of Ely was the last peaceful event of Harold’s reign. Wars and rumours of wars, challenges and answers between leaders of armies, fill up the six months which still divide us from the last act of the great tragedy.
[Sidenote: Appearance of the Comet. April 24–30.]
And, if those days were on earth days of distress of nations and perplexity, days when men’s hearts were failing them for fear, they were days too in which the men of those times were led to deem that the very powers of heaven were shaken. Strange and awful signs, mighty storms, a horror of great darkness at noon-day, are recorded in the chronicles of distant lands among the portents of this memorable year.[147] But there was one sign above all which struck the hearts of all mankind with awe. Men looked to the sky, and there they saw such a token in the heavens as no man had ever seen before.[148] Not only over all England, but, as men deemed, over the whole world,[149] the sky was ablaze with a mighty mass of flame, which no man doubted was sent to kindle a fire upon the earth. The octave of the Easter Feast had barely passed, when, on the evening of the ninth day, the hairy star, the comet as some had learned to call it,[150] shone over the land with a fearful glare. For seven—some say for thirty—nights,[151] from sunset to dawn,[152] its bright orb blazed with rays like the noon-tide sun, while the vast train of light streaming behind it seemed to set the whole [Sidenote: Effect of its appearance on men’s minds.] southern quarter of the heavens on fire. Men gazed and wondered in every land. The appearance of that great star is recorded in chronicles written too far from our shores for the fate of Harold or of England to be deemed of any moment. But no man in any land ventured to deem that such a token came without its mission. As of old the stars in their courses fought against Sisera, so now that wondrous star was doubtless sent to fight against some one among the great ones of the earth. And in England, where men’s minds must already have been wrought up to the highest pitch, where a new native dynasty had just arisen, where two foreign invaders were already threatening, the wonder and anxiety must have been even greater than in other lands. The vulgar gazed in silence, lifting up their hands in wonder. The more learned or the more daring took on them to expound the prodigy to their fellows. One such interpreter of the future bore the news of the token to King Harold on his throne.[153] Holy men, prophets of evil, spoke openly, in the spirit of Kalchas, of Micaiah, or of Eadward himself, of the woes which were coming upon the land. Far away in his cell at Malmesbury, an aged monk, Æthelmær by name, a dabbler in arts and sciences beyond his age,[154] broke forth into a flood of vague and terrible prediction. The star had come to bring tears to many mothers; he had beheld the same sign in former days, but now it had come to bring a far more fearful overthrow upon his native [Sidenote: Comet of 975;] land.[155] The sign was indeed one of awe and warning. Ninety years before, such another sign had been seen in the heavens, and fast on its appearance had followed the troubles of the reign of the martyred Eadward.[156] Famines, earthquakes, civil commotions, had followed hard upon the track of the [Sidenote: of 989.] blazing beacon. Only a few years later, so the reckonings of astronomers tell us, the very comet on which men were now gazing must have come to herald in the great renewal [Sidenote: [991–994.]] of the Scandinavian invasions, the terrible invasions of Olaf and Swend, the fight of Maldon and the general ravaging of England.[157] Still the message of warning was not necessarily a message of despair. Another such token had—not [Sidenote: of 1017.] ushered in but closed—the horrors of the year of strife between Cnut and Eadmund;[158] it had come as it were to shine over the grave of the English hero, to shine as a beacon lighting the path of glory which opened before the Danish conqueror. So now, some great event was doubtless portended; some mighty ruler was soon to meet with his overthrow; but who could say whether the fiery sword which hung over the world was drawn on behalf of Harold or on behalf of William? But from that day forth no man doubted that the sword of the Lord was drawn; no man doubted that that sword could not be quiet, and that it would not return to its scabbard till it had drunk its fill.
[Sidenote: Summary.]
We must now turn from that great Easter Feast at Westminster, and from the portent which must have served to light the Witan of England to their homes. We leave King Harold on his throne, the acknowledged chief of his own people, but with his right challenged by the one man among living princes who could stand forth and defy the chosen of England as an equal and worthy rival. The details and the substance of that challenge form the beginning of another portion of my tale. I reserve them therefore till we have traced out the later actions, the wars and the intrigues, of the great enemy beyond the sea. I have now to sketch the events of years neither few nor unimportant in the history of William, and therein to bring to light one page which I would gladly blot out in the history of Harold. I have now to take up the thread of my Norman history, from the day when William, the guest of Eadward, went back to his own land, already deeming himself the heir of England, to the day when, as the open rival of Harold, he put forth before heaven and earth his claim to the Crown which the choice of England had given to another.