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Chapter VI
- ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD HAREFOOT, HARDICANUTE, AND EDWARD
THE CONFESSOR
CANUTE left three sons, by name SWEYN, HAROLD, and HARDICANUTE; but
his Queen, Emma, once the Flower of Normandy, was the mother of
only Hardicanute. Canute had wished his dominions to be divided
between the three, and had wished Harold to have England; but the
Saxon people in the South of England, headed by a nobleman with
great possessions, called the powerful EARL GODWIN (who is said to
have been originally a poor cow-boy), opposed this, and desired to
have, instead, either Hardicanute, or one of the two exiled Princes
who were over in Normandy. It seemed so certain that there would
be more bloodshed to settle this dispute, that many people left
their homes, and took refuge in the woods and swamps. Happily,
however, it was agreed to refer the whole question to a great
meeting at Oxford, which decided that Harold should have all the
country north of the Thames, with London for his capital city, and
that Hardicanute should have all the south. The quarrel was so
arranged; and, as Hardicanute was in Denmark troubling himself very
little about anything but eating and getting drunk, his mother and
Earl Godwin governed the south for him.
They had hardly begun to do so, and the trembling people who had
hidden themselves were scarcely at home again, when Edward, the
elder of the two exiled Princes, came over from Normandy with a few
followers, to claim the English Crown. His mother Emma, however,
who only cared for her last son Hardicanute, instead of assisting
him, as he expected, opposed him so strongly with all her influence
that he was very soon glad to get safely back. His brother Alfred
was not so fortunate. Believing in an affectionate letter, written
some time afterwards to him and his brother, in his mother's name
(but whether really with or without his mother's knowledge is now
uncertain), he allowed himself to be tempted over to England, with
a good force of soldiers, and landing on the Kentish coast, and
being met and welcomed by Earl Godwin, proceeded into Surrey, as
far as the town of Guildford. Here, he and his men halted in the
evening to rest, having still the Earl in their company; who had
ordered lodgings and good cheer for them. But, in the dead of the
night, when they were off their guard, being divided into small
parties sleeping soundly after a long march and a plentiful supper
in different houses, they were set upon by the King's troops, and
taken prisoners. Next morning they were drawn out in a line, to
the number of six hundred men, and were barbarously tortured and
killed; with the exception of every tenth man, who was sold into
slavery. As to the wretched Prince Alfred, he was stripped naked,
tied to a horse and sent away into the Isle of Ely, where his eyes
were torn out of his head, and where in a few days he miserably
died. I am not sure that the Earl had wilfully entrapped him, but
I suspect it strongly.
Harold was now King all over England, though it is doubtful whether
the Archbishop of Canterbury (the greater part of the priests were
Saxons, and not friendly to the Danes) ever consented to crown him.
Crowned or uncrowned, with the Archbishop's leave or without it, he
was King for four years: after which short reign he died, and was
buried; having never done much in life but go a hunting. He was
such a fast runner at this, his favourite sport, that the people
called him Harold Harefoot.
Hardicanute was then at Bruges, in Flanders, plotting, with his
mother (who had gone over there after the cruel murder of Prince
Alfred), for the invasion of England. The Danes and Saxons,
finding themselves without a King, and dreading new disputes, made
common cause, and joined in inviting him to occupy the Throne. He
consented, and soon troubled them enough; for he brought over
numbers of Danes, and taxed the people so insupportably to enrich
those greedy favourites that there were many insurrections,
especially one at Worcester, where the citizens rose and killed his
tax-collectors; in revenge for which he burned their city. He was
a brutal King, whose first public act was to order the dead body of
poor Harold Harefoot to be dug up, beheaded, and thrown into the
river. His end was worthy of such a beginning. He fell down
drunk, with a goblet of wine in his hand, at a wedding-feast at
Lambeth, given in honour of the marriage of his standard-bearer, a
Dane named TOWED THE PROUD. And he never spoke again.
EDWARD, afterwards called by the monks THE CONFESSOR, succeeded;
and his first act was to oblige his mother Emma, who had favoured
him so little, to retire into the country; where she died some ten
years afterwards. He was the exiled prince whose brother Alfred
had been so foully killed. He had been invited over from Normandy
by Hardicanute, in the course of his short reign of two years, and
had been handsomely treated at court. His cause was now favoured
by the powerful Earl Godwin, and he was soon made King. This Earl
had been suspected by the people, ever since Prince Alfred's cruel
death; he had even been tried in the last reign for the Prince's
murder, but had been pronounced not guilty; chiefly, as it was
supposed, because of a present he had made to the swinish King, of
a gilded ship with a figure-head of solid gold, and a crew of
eighty splendidly armed men. It was his interest to help the new
King with his power, if the new King would help him against the
popular distrust and hatred. So they made a bargain. Edward the
Confessor got the Throne. The Earl got more power and more land,
and his daughter Editha was made queen; for it was a part of their
compact that the King should take her for his wife.
But, although she was a gentle lady, in all things worthy to be
beloved - good, beautiful, sensible, and kind - the King from the
first neglected her. Her father and her six proud brothers,
resenting this cold treatment, harassed the King greatly by
exerting all their power to make him unpopular. Having lived so
long in Normandy, he preferred the Normans to the English. He made
a Norman Archbishop, and Norman Bishops; his great officers and
favourites were all Normans; he introduced the Norman fashions and
the Norman language; in imitation of the state custom of Normandy,
he attached a great seal to his state documents, instead of merely
marking them, as the Saxon Kings had done, with the sign of the
cross - just as poor people who have never been taught to write,
now make the same mark for their names. All this, the powerful
Earl Godwin and his six proud sons represented to the people as
disfavour shown towards the English; and thus they daily increased
their own power, and daily diminished the power of the King.
They were greatly helped by an event that occurred when he had
reigned eight years. Eustace, Earl of Bologne, who had married the
King's sister, came to England on a visit. After staying at the
court some time, he set forth, with his numerous train of
attendants, to return home. They were to embark at Dover.
Entering that peaceful town in armour, they took possession of the
best houses, and noisily demanded to be lodged and entertained
without payment. One of the bold men of Dover, who would not
endure to have these domineering strangers jingling their heavy
swords and iron corselets up and down his house, eating his meat
and drinking his strong liquor, stood in his doorway and refused
admission to the first armed man who came there. The armed man
drew, and wounded him. The man of Dover struck the armed man dead.
Intelligence of what he had done, spreading through the streets to
where the Count Eustace and his men were standing by their horses,
bridle in hand, they passionately mounted, galloped to the house,
surrounded it, forced their way in (the doors and windows being
closed when they came up), and killed the man of Dover at his own
fireside. They then clattered through the streets, cutting down
and riding over men, women, and children. This did not last long,
you may believe. The men of Dover set upon them with great fury,
killed nineteen of the foreigners, wounded many more, and,
blockading the road to the port so that they should not embark,
beat them out of the town by the way they had come. Hereupon,
Count Eustace rides as hard as man can ride to Gloucester, where
Edward is, surrounded by Norman monks and Norman lords. 'Justice!'
cries the Count, 'upon the men of Dover, who have set upon and
slain my people!' The King sends immediately for the powerful Earl
Godwin, who happens to be near; reminds him that Dover is under his
government; and orders him to repair to Dover and do military
execution on the inhabitants. 'It does not become you,' says the
proud Earl in reply, 'to condemn without a hearing those whom you
have sworn to protect. I will not do it.'
The King, therefore, summoned the Earl, on pain of banishment and
loss of his titles and property, to appear before the court to
answer this disobedience. The Earl refused to appear. He, his
eldest son Harold, and his second son Sweyn, hastily raised as many
fighting men as their utmost power could collect, and demanded to
have Count Eustace and his followers surrendered to the justice of
the country. The King, in his turn, refused to give them up, and
raised a strong force. After some treaty and delay, the troops of
the great Earl and his sons began to fall off. The Earl, with a
part of his family and abundance of treasure, sailed to Flanders;
Harold escaped to Ireland; and the power of the great family was
for that time gone in England. But, the people did not forget
them.
Then, Edward the Confessor, with the true meanness of a mean
spirit, visited his dislike of the once powerful father and sons
upon the helpless daughter and sister, his unoffending wife, whom
all who saw her (her husband and his monks excepted) loved. He
seized rapaciously upon her fortune and her jewels, and allowing
her only one attendant, confined her in a gloomy convent, of which
a sister of his - no doubt an unpleasant lady after his own heart -
was abbess or jailer.
Having got Earl Godwin and his six sons well out of his way, the
King favoured the Normans more than ever. He invited over WILLIAM,
DUKE OF NORMANDY, the son of that Duke who had received him and his
murdered brother long ago, and of a peasant girl, a tanner's
daughter, with whom that Duke had fallen in love for her beauty as
he saw her washing clothes in a brook. William, who was a great
warrior, with a passion for fine horses, dogs, and arms, accepted
the invitation; and the Normans in England, finding themselves more
numerous than ever when he arrived with his retinue, and held in
still greater honour at court than before, became more and more
haughty towards the people, and were more and more disliked by
them.
The old Earl Godwin, though he was abroad, knew well how the people
felt; for, with part of the treasure he had carried away with him,
he kept spies and agents in his pay all over England.
Accordingly, he thought the time was come for fitting out a great
expedition against the Norman-loving King. With it, he sailed to
the Isle of Wight, where he was joined by his son Harold, the most
gallant and brave of all his family. And so the father and son
came sailing up the Thames to Southwark; great numbers of the
people declaring for them, and shouting for the English Earl and
the English Harold, against the Norman favourites!
The King was at first as blind and stubborn as kings usually have
been whensoever they have been in the hands of monks. But the
people rallied so thickly round the old Earl and his son, and the
old Earl was so steady in demanding without bloodshed the
restoration of himself and his family to their rights, that at last
the court took the alarm. The Norman Archbishop of Canterbury, and
the Norman Bishop of London, surrounded by their retainers, fought
their way out of London, and escaped from Essex to France in a
fishing-boat. The other Norman favourites dispersed in all
directions. The old Earl and his sons (except Sweyn, who had
committed crimes against the law) were restored to their
possessions and dignities. Editha, the virtuous and lovely Queen
of the insensible King, was triumphantly released from her prison,
the convent, and once more sat in her chair of state, arrayed in
the jewels of which, when she had no champion to support her
rights, her cold-blooded husband had deprived her.
The old Earl Godwin did not long enjoy his restored fortune. He
fell down in a fit at the King's table, and died upon the third day
afterwards. Harold succeeded to his power, and to a far higher
place in the attachment of the people than his father had ever
held. By his valour he subdued the King's enemies in many bloody
fights. He was vigorous against rebels in Scotland - this was the
time when Macbeth slew Duncan, upon which event our English
Shakespeare, hundreds of years afterwards, wrote his great tragedy;
and he killed the restless Welsh King GRIFFITH, and brought his
head to England.
What Harold was doing at sea, when he was driven on the French
coast by a tempest, is not at all certain; nor does it at all
matter. That his ship was forced by a storm on that shore, and
that he was taken prisoner, there is no doubt. In those barbarous
days, all shipwrecked strangers were taken prisoners, and obliged
to pay ransom. So, a certain Count Guy, who was the Lord of
Ponthieu where Harold's disaster happened, seized him, instead of
relieving him like a hospitable and Christian lord as he ought to
have done, and expected to make a very good thing of it.
But Harold sent off immediately to Duke William of Normandy,
complaining of this treatment; and the Duke no sooner heard of it
than he ordered Harold to be escorted to the ancient town of Rouen,
where he then was, and where he received him as an honoured guest.
Now, some writers tell us that Edward the Confessor, who was by
this time old and had no children, had made a will, appointing Duke
William of Normandy his successor, and had informed the Duke of his
having done so. There is no doubt that he was anxious about his
successor; because he had even invited over, from abroad, EDWARD
THE OUTLAW, a son of Ironside, who had come to England with his
wife and three children, but whom the King had strangely refused to
see when he did come, and who had died in London suddenly (princes
were terribly liable to sudden death in those days), and had been
buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. The King might possibly have made
such a will; or, having always been fond of the Normans, he might
have encouraged Norman William to aspire to the English crown, by
something that he said to him when he was staying at the English
court. But, certainly William did now aspire to it; and knowing
that Harold would be a powerful rival, he called together a great
assembly of his nobles, offered Harold his daughter ADELE in
marriage, informed him that he meant on King Edward's death to
claim the English crown as his own inheritance, and required Harold
then and there to swear to aid him. Harold, being in the Duke's
power, took this oath upon the Missal, or Prayer-book. It is a
good example of the superstitions of the monks, that this Missal,
instead of being placed upon a table, was placed upon a tub; which,
when Harold had sworn, was uncovered, and shown to be full of dead
men's bones - bones, as the monks pretended, of saints. This was
supposed to make Harold's oath a great deal more impressive and
binding. As if the great name of the Creator of Heaven and earth
could be made more solemn by a knuckle-bone, or a double-tooth, or
a finger-nail, of Dunstan!
Within a week or two after Harold's return to England, the dreary
old Confessor was found to be dying. After wandering in his mind
like a very weak old man, he died. As he had put himself entirely
in the hands of the monks when he was alive, they praised him
lustily when he was dead. They had gone so far, already, as to
persuade him that he could work miracles; and had brought people
afflicted with a bad disorder of the skin, to him, to be touched
and cured. This was called 'touching for the King's Evil,' which
afterwards became a royal custom. You know, however, Who really
touched the sick, and healed them; and you know His sacred name is
not among the dusty line of human kings.
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