BEORN MURDERED BY SWEGEN. 103 the armed of the murderer to be Nithing.1 This was the vilest epithet in the CHAP. VII. English language, implying utter worthlessness. It was declared Swegen evidently used as a formal term of dishonour. We shall Nithing by find it at a later time resorted to by a Norman King as a Gemót. means of appeal to his English subjects. William Rufus, 1087. when he needed English support, proclaimed in the like sort that all who failed to come to his standard should be declared to be Nithing. But this proclamation has a deeper importance than the mere use of this curious expression of public contempt. It is to be noted that the proclamation Functions is described as the act of the King and his army. Here is Witan disclearly a case of a military Gemót.2 The army, as repre- the army. charged by senting the nation, assumes to itself in time of war the functions which belonged to the regular Gemót in time of peace. The army declares Swegen to be Nithing, and it was doubtless the army, in the same sense, which had just before hearkened to, and finally rejected, his petition for restoration to his estates. So it was the army, Cnut's Danish army, which assumed to itself the functions of the English Witan by disposing of the English Crown on the death of the elder Swegen. In the ancient Teutonic constitution the army was the nation and the nation was the army. In the primitive Gemóts described by Tacitus, to which all men came armed, no distinction could be drawn between the two. But it should be noticed that the word 1 Chron. Ab. “And se cing þa and eall here cwæðon Swegen for niðing.” Cf. Chron. Petrib. 1088. "Da se cyng . . . sende ofer eall Englalande, and bead þæt æle man þe wære unniðing sceolde cúman to hé." Will. Malms. iv. 306. “Jubet ut compatriotas advocent ad obsidionem venire, nisi si qui velint sub nomine Niðing, quod nequam sonat, remanere." Matt. Paris. p. 15 (Wats); Absque morâ ut ad obsidionem veniant jubet; nisi velint sub nomine Nithing, quod Latine nequam sonat, recenseri. Angli, qui nihil contumeliosius et vilius æstimant quam hujusmodi ignominioso vocabulo notari, catervatim ad Regem confluentes," &c. 2 On military Assemblies, Macedonian, Ætolian, and even Achaian, see Hist. Fed. Gov. i. pp. 413, 511, 549. * See vol. i. p. 365. See vol. i. p. 80. 1014. CHAP. VII. used is not that which denotes the armed levy of the Kingdom, but that which expresses the army in its special Nature of the military Gemót. ships, escapes to Flanders. relation to the King. This fact exactly falls in with the formal, change which had taken practical, though not Swegen, It would seem that this decree preceded the translation deserted by most of his of Beorn's body to Winchester, a ceremony which may not improbably have been ordered by the Assembly. For it was before that translation that the men of Hastings, most probably by some commission from the King or his military council, sailed forth to take vengeance on the murderer. Swegen was already forsaken by the greater part of his following. Of his eight ships six had left him. Their crews were probably rough Wikings from the North, 1 Here, which implies a standing force, very often a paid force, not fyrd, the general levy of the country. 2 See vol. i. p. 101. 3 On the Housecarls, as a later and inferior form of the Comitatus, see vol. i. p. 441. "Lytel ær þan" (namely the second burial of Beorn), the men of Hastings set forth, according to the Worcester Chronicle, the only one which mentions their exploit. ACTION OF THE ARMED GEMÓT. 105 men familiar with all the horrors of ordinary pirate warfare, CHAP. VII. not troubled with scruples about harrying a land whose people had never wronged them, but who nevertheless shrank from the fouler wickedness of slaying a kinsman by guile. Two ships only remained with Swegen, those doubtless whose crews had been the actual perpetrators of the deed. The men of Hastings chased and overtook these ships, slew their crews, and brought the ships to the King.1 How Swegen himself escaped it is not easy to see; possibly the men of Hastings still scrupled personally to lay hands upon a son of Godwine. At any rate the murderer baffled pursuit, and again took shelter in his old quarters. Baldwin, so lately restored to his dominions, again began his old practice of receiving English exiles, and Swegen spent the whole winter at the court of Flanders under the full protection of its sovereign.2 of the act The story of the murder of Beorn is told in so minute Character and graphic a way that it seems impossible to throw doubt of Swegen. on any part of the tale. And every account represents the deed as a deed of deliberate treachery.3 An act of mere 1 So I understand the words of the Worcester Chronicle. The men of Hastings go after Swegen and take "his twa scypa"-the only ships he then had. To explain his having only two ships the writer adds, "ehta scypa he hæfde ær he Beorn beswice; syddan hine forleton ealle buton twam." The only meaning of these words seems to be that which I have given, though it involves the difficulty as to the personal escape of Swegen. But it is clear that Florence took them differently; "Dimiserunt illum sex naves, quarum duas paullo post cœperunt Hastingenses . . . Swanus vero ad Flandriam duabus fugiens navibus ibi mansit." This accounts for his escape, but I cannot see how "his twa scypa" can mean two of the ships which had left him. The Abingdon Chronicle also mentions the desertion of the six ships, but not the exploit of the Hastings men. For other examples of the vigorous action of the men of the "Cinque Ports" in 1293 and 1297, see Walter of Hemingburgh, vol. ii. pp. 41, 158 (Hist. Soc. Ed.). 2 Chron. Ab. "And þar wunode mid Baldwine." Chron. Petrib. "And Swegen gewende pa east to Baldewines lande, and sæt þær ealne winter on Brycge mid his fullan gride." 3 Chron. Wig. 1050. "Swein eorl bæd Beorn eorl mid facne,' Beorn beswice." Chron. Ab. 1049. ær he Beorn amyrðrode." ær he indignation CHAP. VII. violence would not have greatly offended the morality of that age. Had Swegen killed even a kinsman in a moment of provocation or in a fair fight to decide a quarrel, his guilt would not have seemed very black. Had he even used craft in carrying out an ancestral deadly feud, he might have quoted many precedents in Northumbrian history, and, among them, an act in the life of the reigning Earl of the North hardly inferior in guilt to the worst aspect of Universal his own. But to kill a kinsman, a confiding kinsman, one against who had just granted a somewhat unreasonable prayer, was Swegen. a deed which offended the natural instincts not only of contemporary Englishmen but of Scandinavian pirates. At the moment Swegen seems to have found no friends; the voice of all England was against him; there is no sign that any of his family stood by him; the sympathies of Harold clearly lay with his murdered cousin. It is hardly possible to conceive a blacker or more unpardonable crime. One would have thought that Swegen would have failed to find patrons or protectors in any corner of Christendom. His recep- Yet, strange to say, the murderer, forsaken by all, was tion by at once received with favour by Baldwin, even though Baldwin must have known that by receiving him he was running the risk of again offending the King of the English and even the Emperor himself. And what followed is stranger still. In the next year, in a Witenagemót held in London in Midlent, Swegen's outlawry was reversed, and he was restored to his Earldom.2 And, strangest of all, his restoration is attributed, not to the influence of Godwine or Baldwin. His outlawry is reversed and he re turns to England. 1050. Midlent, his family, not to any revulsion of feeling on the part of Swegen re- the King or the nation, but to the personal agency of Eadward Bishop Ealdred the Peacemaker. He it was who, it would conciled to 1 See vol. i. p. 522. 2 I think that by comparing the Abingdon Chronicle under 1050 with the Peterborough Chronicle under 1047, it will appear that Swegen was reinstated in this Gemót of Midlent 1050, one which I shall have to mention again. SWEGEN'S OUTLAWRY REVERSED. 107 Ealdred. seem, crossed over to Flanders, brought Swegen to Eng- CHAP. VII. land, and procured his restoration at the hands of the King by Bishop and his Witan.1 There is nothing to show that Ealdred was specially under the influence of Godwine. We shall before long find him acting in a manner which, to say the least, shows that he was not one of Godwine's special followers. No part of his diocese lay within the Earldom of Godwine. And if part of it lay within the Earldom of the man whom he sought to restore, that only makes him the more responsible for the act which was so directly to affect a portion of his own flock. In the restoration of Swegen, Ealdred seems to have acted purely in his capacity of peacemaker. At first sight it might seem that Ealdred strove to win the blessing promised to his class by labouring on behalf of a sinner for whom the most enlarged charity could hardly plead. The very strangeness of the act suggests that there must have been some explaining cause, intelligible at the time, but which our authorities have not recorded. The later history of Swegen shows that, if he was a great sinner, he was also a great penitent. We can only guess that Ealdred had already marked in him some signs of remorse and amendment, that he had received from him some confession of his crime, to which we possibly owe the full and graphic account of the murder of Beorn which has been handed down to us. If so, it was doubtless wise 1 Flor. Wig. "Swanus . . . ibi mansit, quoad Wigornensis episcopus Aldredus illum reduceret, et cum Rege pacificaret." This seems to imply that Ealdred brought him over in person. The old diocese of Worcester took in the shires of Worcester and Gloucester and part of Warwick. Of these Gloucestershire was in Swegen's Earldom, the rest most probably in Ralph's. See above, p. 48, and Appendix G. 3 The reconciliation of Swegen with Eadward is mentioned by Thomas Stubbs (see above, p. 87) as an instance of the peacemaking powers of Ealdred, along with that of Gruffydd. It is clear that the details of the murder could come only from Swegen himself, as his accomplices were killed by the Hastings men. Ealdred would be the obvious person for Swegen to relate them to. |