BEORN MURDERED BY SWEGEN.

103

Beorn en

was persuaded to undertake the office of intercessor with CHAP. VII. the King on Swegen's behalf. What arrangement was trapped to be proposed-whether Beorn brought himself to con- and slain by Swegen. sent to the sacrifice which he had before refused-whether Swegen was to be again invested with his Earldom or only with his private lordships-whether Harold, Beorn, or Swegen was to be compensated in any other way for the surrenders which one or more of them would have to make— of all this nothing is explained to us. We hear however that Beorn, trusting to his kindred with Swegen,1 did not hesitate to set out to ride with him to the King at Sandwich. He even agreed to a proposal of Swegen's, according to which they left the road from Pevensey to Sandwich, and went westward to Bosham. For this deviation from his original scheme Swegen made an excuse, which was doubtless more intelligible then than it is now, namely a fear lest the crews of his ships should forsake him, if they were not confirmed in their faith to him by the presence of Beorn. The young Earl fell into the snare, and accompanied his cousin to the haven of Bosham. But when Swegen pressed him to go on board one of his ships, Beorn's suspicions were at last aroused, and he vehemently refused. At last Swegen's sailors bound him, put him in a boat, rowed him to the ships, and there kept him a prisoner. They then hoisted their sails and steered for Dartmouth.2 There Beorn was killed by Swegen's orders, but his body was taken on shore and buried in a church. As soon as the murder became known, Earl Harold,3 with others of Beorn's friends, and the sailors

1 Chron. Ab. "pa wende Beorn for þære sibbe þæt he him swican nolde." So Wig.

"To Dertamuðan," Chronn. Ab. and Wig. "to Axamuðan," Chron. Petrib.

3 The personal share of Harold in the burial comes from the Abingdon Chronicle, the one least favourable to Godwine. Peterborough, so strongly Godwinist, is silent.

CHAP. VII. from London-a clear mark of Beorn's popularity-came and took up the body, carried it to Winchester, and there buried it in the Old Minster by the side of Beorn's uncle King Cnut.

Swegen declared

Gemót.

1087.

The general indignation at the crime of Swegen was Nithing by intense. The King and the army publicly declared the the armed murderer to be Nithing. This was the vilest epithet in the English language, implying utter worthlessness. It was evidently used as a formal term of dishonour. We shall find it at a later time resorted to by a Norman King as a means of appeal to his English subjects. William Rufus, when he needed English support, proclaimed in the like sort that all who failed to come to his standard should be declared to be Nithing. But this proclamation has a deeper importance than the mere use of this curious expression of public Functions contempt. It is to be noted that the proclamation is Witan dis- described as the act of the King and his army. Here is charged by clearly a case of a military Gemót.2 The army, as representing the nation, assumes to itself in time of war the functions which belonged to the regular Gemót in time of peace. The army declares Swend to be Nithing, and it was doubtless the army, in the same sense, which had just before hearkened to, and finally rejected, his petition for restoration to his estates. So it was the army, Cnut's Danish army, which assumed to itself the functions of the English Witan by disposing of the English Crown on the

of the

the army.

1014.

1 Chron. Ab. "And se cing þa and eall here cwadon Swegen for niðing.” Cf. Chron. Petrib. 1088. “Ɖa se cyng. . . sende ofer eall Englalande, and bead þæt ælc man be 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 Latinè nequam sonat, recenseri. Angli, qui nihil contumeliosius et vilius æstimant quam hujusmodi ignominioso vocabulo notari, catervatim ad Regem confluentes," &c.

* On military Assemblies, Macedonian, Ætolian, and even Achaian, see Hist. Fed. Gov. i. pp. 413, 511, 549.

SWEGEN DECLARED NITHING BY THE ARMY.

1

3

105

death of King Swend. In the ancient Teutonic constitu- CHAP. VII. tion the army was the nation and the nation was the army. In the primitive Gemóts described by Tacitus,2 to which all men came armed, no distinction could be drawn between the two. But it should be noticed that Nature of the military the word used is not that which denotes the armed levy Gemót. of the Kingdom, but that which expresses the army in its special relation to the King. This fact exactly falls in with the practical, though not formal, change which had taken place in the constitution of the ordinary Gemóts.4 The military Gemót which passed this sentence on Swegen was not the whole force of England, for we were just before told that the contingents both of Mercia and Wessex had left Sandwich. This assembly must have consisted of the King's Comitatus of both kinds, of the Thegns bound to him by the older and more honourable tie, and also of the standing force of the Housecarls, or at any rate of their officers.5 Setting churchmen aside― though we have seen that even churchmen often bore arms both by land and by sea-such a body would probably contain a large proportion of the men who were likely to attend an ordinary Witenagemót. By an assembly of this kind, acting, whether constitutionally or not, in the character of a National Assembly, the outlawry and disgrace of Swegen were decreed.

It would seem that this decree preceded the translation Swegen, deserted by of Beorn's body to Winchester, a ceremony which may most of his not improbably have been ordered by the Assembly. For ships, esit was before that translation that the men of Hastings, Flanders.

1 See vol. i. p. 404.

2 See vol. i. p. 86.

3 Here, which implies a standing force, very often a paid force, not fyrd,

the general levy of the country.

4 See vol. i. p. 109.

5 On the Housecarls, as a later and inferior form of the Comitatus, see vol. i. p. 490.

"Lytel ær þan" (namely the second burial of Beorn), the men of

capes to

CHAP. VII. most probably by some commission from the King or his military council, sailed forth to take vengeance on the murderer. Swegen was already forsaken by the greater part of his following. Of his eight ships six had left him. Their crews were probably rough Wikings from the North, men familiar with all the horrors of ordinary pirate warfare, not troubled with scruples about harrying a land whose people had never wronged them, but who nevertheless shrank from the fouler wickedness of slaying a kinsman by guile. Two ships only remained with Swegen, those doubtless whose crews had been the actual perpetrators of the deed. The men of Hastings chased and overtook these ships, slew their crews, and brought the ships to the King. 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

Hastings set forth, according to the Worcester Chronicle, the only one which mentions their exploit.

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 ar he Beorn beswice; syððan 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 paullò post cœperunt Hastingenses. Swanus verò 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.

SWEGEN RECEIVED BY BALDWIN.

107

Character

The story of the murder of Beorn is told in so minute CHAP. VII. and graphic a way that it seems impossible to throw doubt of the act on any part of the tale. And every account represents the of Swegen. deed as a deed of deliberate treachery. An act of mere violence would not have greatly offended the morality of that age. Had Swegen killed even a kinsman in a moment of provocation or in a fair fight to decide a quarrel, his guilt would not have seemed very black. Had he even used craft in carrying out an ancestral deadly feud, he might have quoted many precedents in Northumbrian history, and, among them, an act in the life of the reigning Earl of the North hardly inferior in guilt to the worst aspect of his own. But to kill a kinsman, a confiding kins- Universal indignation man, one who had just granted a somewhat unreasonable against prayer, was something which offended the natural instincts Swegen. not only of contemporary Englishmen but of Scandinavian pirates. At the moment Swegen seems to have found no friends; the voice of all England was against him; there is no sign that any of his family stood by him; the sympathies of Harold clearly lay with his murdered cousin. It is hardly possible to conceive a blacker or more unpardonable crime. One would have thought that Swegen would have failed to find patrons or protectors in any corner of Christendom. Yet, strange to say, the mur- His reception by derer, forsaken by all, was at once received with favour by Baldwin. 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, His outlawry is in a Witenagemót held in London in Midlent, Swegen's reversed

"And Swegen gewende pa east to Baldewines lande, and sæt þær ealne winter on Brycge mid his fullan griðe.”

1 Chron. Wig. 1050.

"Swein eorl bad Beorn eorl mid facne," "ær he

Beorn beswice." Chron. Ab. 1049. "ær he Beorn amyrðrode."

2 See vol. i. p. 588.