CHAP. VII. the Witan. That consent may have been given in the Eadward the only possible choice. Assembly at Gillingham; but such an arrangement seems hardly credible. The English nation no doubt fully intended that the Crown should remain in the House of Cerdic, and Godwine probably already hoped that in the next generation the blood of Cerdic would be united with the blood of Wulfnoth. But it is certain that Swend was in some way or other reconciled to Eadward and Godwine, for we shall presently find Swend acting as the friend of England, and Godwine acting as the special champion of the interests of Swend. The son of Ulf was, it will be remembered, the nephew of Gytha, and this family connexion no doubt pleaded for him as far as was consistent with Godwine's higher and nearer objects. One of Swend's brothers, Beorn, remained in England, where he was soon raised to a great Earldom, and seems to have been counted in all respects as a member of the house of Godwine. But the friends of Swend in general were set down for future punishment. In the end confiscation or banishment fell on the most eminent of them. Among them was Osbeorn, another brother of the Danish King, whom we shall hear of in later times as betraying the claims of his brother, and therewith the hopes of England, into the hand of the Norman Conqueror. 2 Eadward was thus raised to the throne mainly through the exertions of the two patriotic leaders, Godwine and Lyfing. It is vain to argue whether Godwine did wisely in pressing his election. There was in truth no other choice. The only other possible candidates were Swend, and Magnus of Norway, of whose claims we shall hear again presently. But English feeling called for an English King, and there was no English King but Eadward 1 See below under the years 1045 and 1047. 2 Will. Malms. ii. 197. "Et hinc censoriè notati et postmodum ab Anglia expulsi." EADWARD THE ONLY POSSIBLE CHOICE. 11 to be had. That Godwine could have procured his own CHAP. VII. election to the Crown, that the thought of such an election could have occurred to himself or to any one else, is an utterly wild surmise.1 If Godwine met with some opposition when pressing the claims of Eadward, that opposition would have increased tenfold had he ventured to dream of the Crown for himself. The nomination of the West-Saxon Earl would have been withstood to the death, not only by a handful of Danes, but by Leofric and Siward, probably, in Siward's case at least, at the head of the whole force of their Earldoms. The time was not yet come for the election of a King not of the royal house. There was no manifest objection to the election of Eadward, and, though Godwine was undoubtedly the most powerful man in England, he had not reached that marked and undisputed preeminence which was enjoyed by his son twenty-four years later. No English candidate but Eadward was possible. And men had not yet learned, Godwine himself probably had not fully learned, how little worthy Eadward was to be called an English candidate. And when in after years they learned the unhappy truth, still there does not seem to have been at any time the least thought of displacing Eadward in favour of either of his Scandinavian competitors, or even of calling in Swend to succeed him. In raising Eadward to the throne, Godwine acted simply as the mouth-piece of the English people. The opposition, as far as we can see, came wholly from the Danes of what we may call the second importation, those who had come 1 Thierry, i. 180. St. John, ii. 132. * Henry of Huntingdon indeed (M. H. B. 759 A) hints at a suspicion of Eadward's Normannizing tendencies, when he makes the English embassy stipulate that he shall bring the smallest possible number of Normans with him ("quod paucissimos Normannorum secum adduceret"). But Henry's narrative just here is so very wild that it is not safe to rely on his authority. CHAP. VII. into England with Cnut and Harthacnut. There is nothing to show that the old-settled Danish population of Northumberland acted apart from the rest of the country. Eadward then was King. He reigned, as every English King before him had reigned, by that union of popular election and royal descent which formed the essence of statements all ancient Teutonic kingship. But it would seem that, of his right Claims of Eadward to the Crown; different to the political views of the writers. their kingly rank, to different minds. according even in those days, the two elements in his title, the two principles to whose union he and all other Kings owed spoke with different degrees of force Already, in the eleventh century, we may say that there were Whigs and Tories in England. At any rate there were men in whose eyes the choice of the people was the primary and legitimate source of kingship. There were also men who were inclined to rest the King's claim to his Crown mainly on his descent from those who had been Kings before him. The difference is plainly shown in the different versions of the Chronicles. One contemporary writer, a devoted partisan of Godwine, grounds the King's right solely on the popular choice" All folk chose Eadward to King." That the entry was made at the time is plain from the prayer which follows, "May he hold it while God grants it to him."2 Another version, the only one in any degree hostile to the great Earl, seems purposely to avoid the use of any word recognizing a distinct right of choice in the people. "All folk received Eadward to King, as was his right by birth."3 1 See vol. i. p. 117. 2 Chron. Petrib. 1041. "Eall fole geceas Eadward to cynge on Lundene ; healde ba hwile be him God unne." (Cf. Hen. Hunt. M. H. B. 759 A. "Electus est in Regem ab omni populo.") This prayer is the opposite to that of Antinoos, Od. i. 386 : : μή σέ γ' ἐν ἀμφιάλῳ Ιθάκῃ βασιλῆα Κρονίων See Gladstone, Homer, iii. 51. 3 Chron. Ab. 1042. him gecynde was." "Eall folc underfeng da Eadward to cinge, swa "Right of birth" does not very well express NATURE OF HIS CLAIMS. elective A third writer, distinctly, though less strongly, Godwinist, CHAP. VII. seems pointedly to combine both statements; "All folk chose Eadward, and received him to King, as was his right by birth." There can be no doubt that this last is the truest setting forth both of the law and of the facts of the case. The people chose Eadward, and without the choice of Union of the people he would have had no right to reign. But they and herechose him because he was the one available descendant of ditary right. the old kingly stock, because he was the one man at hand who enjoyed that preference by right of birth, which required that, in all ordinary cases, the choice of the electors should be confined to the descendants of former Kings. It might therefore be said with perfect truth that Eadward was chosen because the Kingdom was his by right of birth. But it must not be forgotten, what is abso- Eadward lutely necessary for the true understanding of the case, succession that this right by birth does not imply that Eadward according would have been, according to modern ideas, the next in notions. succession to the Crown. Eadward's right by birth would have been no right by birth at all in the eyes of a modern lawyer. The younger son of Ethelred could, according to our present ideas, have no right to succeed while any representative of his elder brother survived. The heir, in our sense of the word, was not the Eadward who was close at hand in England or Normandy, but the Eadward "gecynde," but I do not see how better to translate it. The word occurs again in Chron. Wig. 1066, as applied to young Eadgar. It will be remembered that the Abingdon Chronicle is the only one which charges Godwine with a share in the death of Ælfred. See vol. i. pp. 545, 546. The Biographer (p. 396) speaks of Eadward as reigning “ex Dei gratiâ et hæreditario jure." This is of course a courtier's view. "Hæreditario jure" must here mean a right derived from ancestors, not a right to be banded on to descendants, as must be the meaning of the words in the Waltham Charter, Cod. Dipl. iv. 154. 1 Chron. Wig. 1042. Eall folc geceas þa Eadward, and underfengon hine to kyninge, eallswa him wel gecynde was." This expression is the exact counterpart of that of Rudolf Glaber describing the election of Lewis in 946. See vol. i. p. 224. not next in to modern CHAP. VII. Who was far away in exile in Hungary or Russia. Modern writers constantly speak of this last Eadward and of his son Eadgar as the lawful heirs of the Confessor. On the contrary, according to modern notions, the Confessor was their lawful heir, and, according to modern notions, the Confessor must be pronounced to have usurped a throne The right which of right belonged to his nephew. In his own time branch not such subtleties were unknown. Any son of Æthelred, any thought of descendant of the old stock, satisfied the sentiment of of the elder Eadward crowned at 3, 1043. Exhorta royal birth, which was all that was needed. To search over the world for the son of an elder brother, while the younger brother was close at hand, was an idea which would never have entered the mind of any Englishman of the eleventh century. 3 The coronation ceremony probably followed soon after Winches- the meeting at Gillingham. It was performed on Easter ter, April Day at Winchester, the usual place for an Easter Gemót, by Archbishop Eadsige, assisted by Elfric of York and most of the other Prelates of England. We are expressly told that the Metropolitan gave much good exhortation both to the newly-made King and to his people. The peculiar circumstances of the time might well suggest Kingdom. such a special admonition. There was a King, wellnigh the last of his race, a King chosen by the distinct expression of the will of the people, as the representative of tion of Eadsige; condition of the 1 With the expressions used about the succession of Eadward compare the still stronger expressions used by Florence about the succession of Eadred in 946; "Proximus hæres Edredus, fratri succedens, regnum naturale [gecynde] suscepit." Yet Eadmund left two sons, both of whom afterwards reigned. 3 Flor. Wig. 2 Chron. Flor. Wig. See Appendix A. Chron. Ab. and Petrib. "6 Eadsige arcebisceop hine halgade, and toforan eallum þam folce wel lærde, and to his agenre neode and ealles folces wel manude." So Will. Malms. ii. 197; "Ab Edsio archiepiscopo sacra regnandi præcepta edoctus, quæ ille tunc memoriâ libenter recondidit, et postea sanctè factis propalavit." |