NORMAN PREDOMINANCE IN ENGLAND.

297

Stallers, Treasurers, personal officers of every kind, swarmed CHAP. VIII. around the person of the King. Norman Thegns were already scattered through the land, and were already filling the land with those threatening castles, of which the wise policy of William had destroyed so many within his own dominions. Robert the son of Wymarc, Richard the son of Scrob, and the whole herd of strangers who were fattening on English soil, would flock to pay their duty to a more exalted countryman who came on the same errand as themselves. They would tell him with delight and pride how the insolence of the natives had been crushed, how the wrongs of Count Eustace had been avenged, and how the rebel leaders had been driven to flee from justice. They would speak of England as a land which Norman influences had already conquered, and which needed only one exertion of the strong will and the strong hand to enable the Norman to take formal possession. The land was fast becoming their own. Some wild tribes, in parts of the island to which William's journey was not likely to extend, might still remain under aged chieftains of English or Danish birth. But even these rude men had been found, whether through fear or policy, ready to fall in with the plans of the Norman faction, and to range themselves against the champions of the national cause. And the richest and most civilized parts of the land, the very parts which had been so lately held by the sturdiest champions of Norman innovations, had now become one great field for Normans of every class to settle in. From Kent to Hereford they might enrich themselves with the lands and largesses which a gracious King was never weary of showering upon them. That King was childless; he had no heir apparent or presumptive near to him; he had had

1 1 According to modern laws of succession, the heir of Eadward was undoubtedly Walter of Mantes, the son of his sister Godgifu, and elder brother of Ralph of Hereford. The Etheling Eadward, it must always be

Lack of direct heirs

in the royal house.

CHAP. VIII. a brother, but that brother had been done to death by English traitors, with the fallen captain of traitors at their head. Not a single near kinsman of the royal house could be found in England. The only surviving male descendant of Ethelred was the banished son of Eadmund, who, far away in his Hungarian refuge, perhaps hardly occurred to the minds of Norman courtiers. William was Eadward's kinsman; it was convenient to forget that, though he was Eadward's kinsman, yet not a single drop of royal or English blood flowed in his veins. It was convenient to forget that, even among men of foreign birth, there were those who were sprung, by female descent at least, from the kingly stock of England. Ralph of Hereford was the undoubted grandson of Ethelred, but the claims of the timid Earl of the Magesætas could hardly be pressed against those of the renowned Duke of the Normans. It was convenient to forget that, by English Law, mere pect of the descent gave no right, and that, if it had given any right, William had no claim by descent to plead. It was easy to dwell simply on the nearness by blood, on the nearness by mutual good offices, which existed between the English King and the Norman Duke. There was everything to suggest the thought of the succession to William's own mind; there was everything to suggest it to the foreign counsellors who stood around the throne of Eadward. Probably William, Eadward, and Eadward's counsellors were alike ignorant or careless of the English Constitution. They did not, or they would not, remember that the Kingdom was not a private estate, to be passed from man to man

Constitutional as

promise.

remembered, was not, according to our notions, the heir of the King, but the King was the heir of the Ætheling. But, as female descent had never been recognized, one can hardly suppose that the children of Godgifu were looked on as Æthelings, or as at all entitled to any preference in disposing of the Crown. I am therefore justified in saying that Eadward had neither apparent nor presumptive heir. This is a principle to which I shall have to refer again.

EADWARD'S PROMISE TO WILLIAM.

299

either according to the caprice of a testator or according to CHAP. VIII. the laws of strict descent. They did not remember that no man could hold the English Crown in any way but as the free gift of the English people. The English people would seem to them to be a conquered race, whose formal consent, if it needed to be asked at all, could be as easily extorted as it had been by Swend and Cnut. If they dared to refuse, they might surely be overcome by the Norman no less easily than they had been overcome by the Dane. It would probably seem to them that the chances were all in favour of William's being able to succeed quietly as the heir or legatee of Eadward. If those chances failed, it would still be open to him to make his entry by arms as the avenger of the blood of Elfred and his companions.

evidence on

The moment was thus in every way favourable for No direct suggesting to William on the one hand, to Eadward on the point. the other, the idea of an arrangement by which William should succeed to the English Crown on Eadward's death. We have no direct evidence that any such arrangement took place at this time, but all the probabilities of the story lead irresistibly to the belief that such was the case. The purely English writers are silent, but then they are silent as to any bequest or arrangement in William's favour at any time. They tell us nothing as to the nature of his claim to the Crown; they record his invasion, but they record nothing as to its motives.1 The Norman writers, on the other hand, so full of Eadward's promise to William, nowhere connect it with William's visit to England, which one only among them speaks of at all.2 But Norman writers, Norman records, the

1 See the Abingdon and Worcester Chronicles, and Florence of Worcester, under 1066.

2 Namely Wace, quoted above, p. 295. He must have got his account from an English source.

evidence of

the Eng

lish writers.

CHAP. VIII. general consent of the age, confirmed rather than conNegative futed by the significant silence of the English writers, all lead us to believe that, at some time or other, some kind of promise of the succession was made by Eadward to William. The case of Eadward's promise is like the case of Harold's oath. No English writer mentions either; but the silence of the English writers confirms rather than disproves the fact of both. All those Norman calumnies which they could deny, the English writers do most emphatically deny.1 The fact then that they never formally deny the reports, which they must have heard, that Harold swore an oath to William, that Eadward made a promise in favour of William, may be accepted as the strongest proof that some kind of oath was sworn, that some kind Some pro- of promise was made. Had either Eadward's promise or

mise of Eadward, and some oath of Harold, historical, but the Norman details

untrustworthy.

Harold's oath been a pure Norman invention, William could never have paraded both in the way that he did in the eyes of Europe; he could never have turned them to the behoof of his cause in the way that he so successfully did. I admit then some promise of Eadward, some oath of Harold. But that is all. The details, as they are given by the various Norman writers, are so different, so utterly contradictory, that we can say nothing, on their showing, as to the time, place, or circumstances of either event. We are left with the bare fact, and for anything beyond it we must look to the probabilities of the case. The oath of Harold I shall discuss at the proper time; at present

1 When we come to Florence's account of Harold's election and coronation, we shall see how carefully every word is weighed, with the obvious intention of excluding some Norman misrepresentation or other. The fables about Harold seizing the crown, about his crowning himself, his being crowned by Stigand, and so forth, are all implicitly denied; so is Eadward's alleged last bequest to William; but there is not a word to exclude either an earlier promise on the part of Eadward or an oath on the part of Harold. Both these subjects are avoided.

PROBABILITIES OF THE CASE.

301

we are concerned with the bequest of the English CHAP. VIII. Crown said to have been made by Eadward in favour

of William.

not

of recom

changes of purpose; his final

recommen

Harold.

Every one who has grasped the true nature of the No power of bequest English Constitution, as it stood in the eleventh century, in the will fully understand that, strictly speaking, any bequest of King, only the kind was altogether beyond the power of an English mendation. King. The Law of England gave the King no power to dispose of a Crown which he held solely by the free choice of the Witan of the land. All that Eadward could constitutionally do was to pledge himself to make in William's favour that recommendation to the Witan which the Witan were bound to consider, though not necessarily to consent to. That, when the time came, Eadward's Eadward did make such a recommendation, and did make it in favour of William, we know for certain. The last will of Eadward, so far as such an expression can be dation of allowed, was undoubtedly in favour of Harold. We shall see, as we go on, that there is the strongest reason to believe that Eadward at one time designed his namesake the Ætheling as his successor. It is even possible that his thoughts were at one time directed towards his nephew Ralph of Hereford. In a weak prince like Eadward changes of purpose of this kind are in no way wonderful. And in truth the changes in the condition of the country were such that a wiser King than Eadward might well have changed his purpose more than once between the visit of William and his own death. Now there is not the slightest sign of any intention on behalf of William during the later years of Eadward; first the Ætheling, and then the great Earl, are the persons marked out in turn for the succession. And yet, as we have seen, it is impossible not to believe that some promise was, at some time or other, made in

1 See vol. i. pp. 118, 291, 533.