CORONATION OF EADWARD.

between

wine.

15

English nationality in opposition to foreign rule. But CHAP. VII. the King so chosen as the embodiment of English feeling was himself an Englishman in little more than in the accident of being born on English ground as the son of a father who was a disgrace to the English name. There was a Kingdom to be guarded against foreign claimants, and there were the wounds inflicted by two unfortunate, though happily short, reigns to be healed at home. The duties which were laid upon the shoulders of the new King were neither few nor easy. He had Relations indeed at hand the mightiest and wisest of guardians Eadward to help him in his task. But we can well understand and Godthat the feelings of Eadward towards the man to whom he owed his Crown were feelings of awe rather than of love. There could be little real sympathy between the stout Englishman and the nursling of the Norman court, between the chieftain great alike in battle and in council and the timid devotee who shrank from the toils and responsibilities of an earthly Kingdom. And we can well believe that, notwithstanding Godwine's solemn acquittal, there still lingered in the mind of Eadward some prejudice against the man who had once been charged with his brother's death. And again, though it was to Godwine Relations and his West-Saxons that Eadward mainly owed his three great Crown, yet Godwine and his West-Saxons did not make Earls. up the whole of England. Their counsels and interests had to be reconciled with the possibly opposing counsels and interests of the other Earldoms and of their rulers. Eadward could not afford to despise the strong arm of the mighty Dane who ruled his countrymen north of the Humber. He could not afford to despise the possible prejudices of the great Earl of central England, who, descendant of ancient Ealdormen, perhaps of ancient Kings,

1 At Githslep, now Islip, in Oxfordshire. Cod. Dipl. iv. 215.

of the

CHAP. VII. may well have looked with some degree of ill-will on the upstarts North and South of him. Eadward, called to the throne by the unanimous voice of the whole nation, was bound to be King of the English and not merely King of the West-Saxons. He was bound yet more strongly to be King of the English in a still higher sense, to cast off the trammels of his Norman education, and to reign as became the heir of Ælfred and Æthelstan. We have now to see how far the good exhortations of Eadsige were effectual; how far the King chosen to the Crown which was his right by birth discharged the duties which were laid upon him alike by his birth and by his election.

Foreign Ambassadors at

coronation.

It was perhaps ominous of the character of Eadward's future reign that his coronation was attended by an appaEadward's rently unusual assemblage of the Ambassadors of foreign princes. It was natural that Eadward should be better known, and that his election should awaken a greater interest, in other lands than could usually be the case with an English King. He was connected by birth or marriage with several continental sovereigns, and his long residence in Normandy must have brought him more nearly within Eadward's the circle of ordinary continental princeship than could foreign connexions, commonly be the case with the Lord of the island Empire,

the Cæsar as it were of another world. The revolutions of England also, and the great career of Cnut, had evidently fixed the attention of Europe on English affairs to an unusual degree. Add to this that, when a King was chosen and crowned immediately on the death of his predecessor, the presence of congratulatory embassies from other princes was hardly possible. But the delay in Eadward's consecration allowed that great Easter-feast at Winchester to be adorned with the presence of the representatives of all the chief sovereigns of Western

1 Vita Eadw. 395.

FOREIGN EMBASSIES.

dors from

17

Christendom. Some there were whom England was, then CHAP. VII. as ever, bound to welcome as friends and brethren, and some whose presence, however friendly was the guise of the moment, might to an eye which could scan the future have seemed a foreboding of the evil to come. First came Ambassathe ambassadors of the prince who at once held the highest King place on earth and adorned it with the noblest display of Henry. every kingly virtue. King Henry of Germany, soon to appear before the world as the illustrious Emperor,1 the great reformer of a corrupted Church, sent an embassy to congratulate his brother-in-law 2 on the happy change in his fortunes, to exchange promises of peace and friendship, and to present gifts such as Imperial splendour and liberality might deem worthy of the one prince whom a future Emperor could look on as his peer.3 The King from the King of of the French too, a prince bearing the same name as the the French; mighty Frank, but far indeed from being a partaker in

4

his glory, sent his representatives to congratulate one whom he too claimed as a kinsman, and to exchange pledges of mutual good-will between the two realms. And, along with the representatives of Imperial and royal from other majesty, came the humbler envoys of the chief Dukes and French and princes of their two kingdoms, charged with the like princes;

64

1 Vita Eadw. 395. Primus ipse Romanorum Imperator Heinricus," &c. But Henry was not crowned Emperor till 1047. Hermannus Contractus

in anno.

2 On the marriage of Henry and Gunhild, see vol. i. pp. 505, 559.

3 Vita Eadw. 395. "Munera imperiali liberalitate exhibenda mittit, et quæ tantos decebat terrarum dominos." Ethelred of Rievaux (X Scriptt. 375), who seems here to copy the Biographer, says the same.

* Vita Eadw. 395. "Rex quoque Francorum item Heinricus nomine." Ib. "Ejusdem Anglorum Regis vicinâ carnis propinquitate consanguineus." The Biographer throughout makes the most of his hero, but there is a marked difference in his tone towards the German King and towards any other prince. The expression "terrarum domini," reserved for the lords of the continental and the insular Empires, is most remarkable. I am at a loss to see what kindred there was between Eadward and Henry of Paris.

German

nus of

CHAP. VII. professions of friendship-our flattering historian would fain have us believe, of homage. Among these we can hardly doubt that a mission from the Court of Rouen held a distinguished place. It may be that, even then, the keen eye of the youthful Norman was beginning to look with more than a neighbour's interest upon the land to which he had in some sort given her newly-chosen King. We from Mag are even told that an embassy of a still humbler kind was Denmark. received from a potentate who soon after appeared on the stage in a widely different character. Magnus of Norway had received the submission of Denmark on the death of Harthacnut, by virtue of the treaty by which each of those princes was to succeed to the other's dominions. He now, we are told, sent an embassy to Eadward, chose him as his father, promised to him the obedience of a son, and strengthened the promise with oaths and hostages. Now in the language used with regard both to Magnus and to the German and French princes, there is doubtless much of the exaggeration of a panegyrist, anxious to raise his

2

1 Vita Eadw. 395. "Ceteri quoque eorumdem Regum tyranni [a very singular expression] et quique potentissimi duces et principes, legatis suis eum adeunt, amicum et dominum sibi suisque constituunt, eique fidelitatem et servitium suum in manus ponunt." Is this merely the flourish of an English Dudo (cf. the talk about Cnut, vol. i. p. 504), or did any foreign princes really plight a formal homage to Eadward in exchange for his gifts and favours? In the later feudalism such a relation would not be impossible.

2 See vol. i. p. 566. For the submission of Denmark to Magnus, see Adam of Bremen, ii. 74, 75. Snorro, Saga of Magnus, c. 19 (Laing, ii. 377). Adam however represents Magnus' first occupation of Denmark as the result of several battles with Swend, while Snorro makes Magnus be peacefully elected in a Thing at Viborg, after which he makes Swend an Earl and leaves him as his representative in Denmark.

Vita Eadw. 395. "Patrem eum sibi eligit, seque ut filium illi in omnibus subjicit." Compare the famous form of the Commendation of Wales and Scotland to a greater Eadward, vol. i. pp. 60, 129. The monastic biographer of Eadward gives quite another picture, by way of preparation for his legendary account of the death of Magnus; "Sola tamen Dacia, adhuc spirans et anhelans cædes, Anglorum interitum minabatur, verum quis fuerit tanti conatus finis sequentia declarabunt." Æthel. Riev. X Scriptt. 375.

RELATIONS WITH MAGNUS.

19

hero's reputation to the highest point. But it is possible CHAP. VII. that Magnus might just now take some pains to conciliate Eadward, in order to hinder English help from being continued to his competitor Swend. In the reception of the Imperial and the Danish envoys there is nothing which has any special meaning; but it is specially characteristic of this reign that the congratulations of the French princes Eadward's gifts to the were acknowledged by gifts from the King personally, French and that some of them were continued in the form of princes. annual pensions. These were undoubtedly, even if the Norman Duke himself was among the pensioners, the gifts of a superior to inferiors; the point is that the connexion between England and the different French states, Normandy above them all, was constantly increasing in amount, and receiving new shapes at every turn.

presents a

Besides the gifts of foreign princes, the new King also Gifts of the English received many splendid presents from his own nobles. nobles. First among them all shone forth the magnificent offering of the Earl of the West-Saxons.2 Godwine had given Godwine a ship to Harthacnut as the price of his acquittal on his ship to the memorable trial;3 he now made the like offering to King. Eadward as a token of the friendship which was to reign between the newly-chosen King and his greatest subject. Two hundred rowers impelled the floating castle. A golden lion adorned the stern; at the prow the national ensign,

1 Vita Eadw. 395. "Mittuntur singulis pro celsitudine suâ ab ipso Rege regalia munera, quæ ut nullius quamlibet multiplex Regis vel principis umquam æquaret munificentia, Regum pulcherrimus et nobilissimus Anglorum Rex Ædwardus facit eisdem Francorum principibus vel annua vel continua." The money seems all to go to France, none to Germany or Denmark.

2 Vita Eadw. 397.

"Multa dedere quidem, verum supereminet omnes

Larga Ducis probitas Godwini munere talis [tali ?]."

The Biographer here, as often, breaks forth into hexameters.

3 Mr. Luard seems to think this ship a mere repetition of the ship given to Harthacnut. Why?