Godwine buried in the Old

Minster.

CHAP. IX. need hardly be mentioned. The man who was greater than a King, the maker and the father of Kings, found his last resting-place among Kings. His corpse was laid by that of the King under whom he had risen to greatness, by that of the Lady whose rights he had so stoutly defended, by that of the first King whom he had placed on the West-Saxon throne, by that of the murdered nephew whose death had cast the first shade of gloom upon his house. The Earl of the West-Saxons, dying in the WestSaxon capital, was buried with all pomp in the greatest of West-Saxon sanctuaries, in the Old Minster of Winchester. That renowned church was enriched with lands and ornaments in memory of the dead. But the noblest offering of all was the grief of the nation which he had saved. His real faults, his imaginary crimes, were all forgotten. Men remembered only that the greatest man of their blood and speech was taken from them. They thought of the long years of peace and righteous government which they had enjoyed under his rule; they thought of the last and greatest of his great deeds, how he had chased the stranger from the land, and had made England England once again. Around the bier of Godwine men wept as for a father; they wept for the man

General grief of the nation.

multa contulit, et Wintoniæ ecclesiæ dedit duo maneria, scilicet, Bleodonam et Crawecumbam et ornamenta diversi generis." Of these lordships, Bleadon and Crowcombe in Somersetshire, Bleadon still remained to the Church at the time of the survey (Domesday, 87 b), but Crowcombe had been alienated to Count Robert of Mortain (91 b). Another gift for her husband's soul made by Gytha to the church of Saint Olaf at Exeter is found in Cod. Dipl. iv. 264. This charter, signed by her sons Tostig and Gyrth as Earls, must be of a later date (1057–1065), and shows that her pious anxiety still continued. Of Gytha's religious scruples a specimen will be found in Appendix E. She is said (Tanner, Notitia Monastica, Devon. xxv. New Monasticon, vi. 435) to have founded a College at Hartland in Devon. A secular establishment founded by Harold's mother should be noted.

1 Chron. Ab. 1053. "And he lið þær binnan ealdan mynstre." Vita Eadw. 408. "Tumulatur ergo condigno honore in monasterio quod nuncupant veteri Wintoniæ, additis in eâdem ecclesiâ multis ornamentorum muneribus et terrarum reditibus pro redemptione ipsius animæ."

TRUE CHARACTER OF GODWINE.

mate of

353

character.

whose hand had guided England and her people through CHAP. IX. all the storms of so many years of doubt and danger.1 They little deemed that, ages after his death, calumnies would still be heaped upon his name. They deemed not that the lies of the stranger would take such root that the deliverer for whom they mourned would live in the pages of pretended history as Godwine the traitor. The time is now come to redress the wrong, and to do tardy justice to the fair fame of one of the greatest of England's worthies. To know what Godwine was, we have but to cast away the True estifables of later days, to turn to the records of his own time, Godwine's to see how he looked in the eyes of men who had seen and heard him, of men who had felt the blessings of his rule and whose hearts had been stirred by the voice of his mighty eloquence. No man ever deserved a higher or a more lasting place in national gratitude than the first man who, being neither King nor Priest, stands forth in English history as endowed with all the highest attributes of the statesman. In him, in those distant times, we can revere the great minister, the unrivalled parliamentary leader, the man who could sway councils and assemblies at his will, and whose voice, during five and thirty years of political life, was never raised in any cause but that of the welfare of England. Side by side with all that is worthiest in our later history -side by side with his own counterpart two ages afterwards, the second deliverer from the yoke of the stranger, the victor of Lewes, the martyr of Evesham-side by side. with all who, from his day to ours, have, in the field or in the senate, struggled or suffered in the cause of English freedom-side by side with the worthies of the thirteenth and the worthies of the seventeenth century-will the voice of truthful history, rising above the calumnies of ages, place the name of the great deliverer of the eleventh,

1 Vita Eadw.408. "Exsequiis suis in luctum decidit populus, hunc patrem, hunc nutricium suum regnique, memorabant suspiriis et assiduis fletibus." VOL. II.

A a

1

CHAP. IX. the Earl of happy memory, whose greatness was ever the greatness of England, whose life was one long offering to her welfare, and whose death came fittingly as the crown of that glorious life, when he had once more given peace and freedom to the land which he loved so well.

§ 2. From the Accession of Harold to the Earldom of the West-Saxons to his first War with Gruffydd.

1053-1056.

The great Earl was dead, and the office which he had held, an office which no man had ever held before him,2 was again at the disposal of the King and his Witan. As Godwine's death had happened at the Easter festival, the Great Council of the nation was doubtless still in session. We may therefore assume, with perfect safety, that the appointments which the Earl's death rendered needful Nature of were made at once, before the Assembly dispersed. The the succes- nature of the succession to these great governments must Earldoms. by this time be perfectly well understood. The King

sion to

and his Witan might nominate whom they would to a vacant Earldom; but there was a strong feeling, whenever there was no special reason to the contrary, in favour of appointing the son of a deceased Earl. In Earldoms, like those of Mercia and Northumberland, where an ancient house had been in possession for several generations, this sort of preference had grown into the same kind of imperfect hereditary right which existed in the case of the Crown itself. It would have required a very strong case indeed for King and Witan to feel themselves justified in appointing any one but a son of Leofric to succeed Leofric in the government of Mercia. But in the case of

THE WEST-SAXON EARLDOM.

position

sex.

355

for retain

Saxon

Wessex and East-Anglia no such inchoate right could be CHAP. IX. put forward by any man. The old East-Anglian house had Special probably become extinct, either through the slaughter of of EastAnglia. Assandun, or through the executions in the early days of Cnut. If not extinct, it had, at all events, sunk into insignificance, and had become lost to history. The Danish Thurkill had founded no dynasty in his Earldom. We cannot even make out with certainty the succession of Earls between him and Harold. The Earldom of the West-Saxons was a and Wesmere creation of Cnut himself. It would have broken in upon no feeling of ancient tradition, if the office had been abolished, and if the King had taken into his own hands the immediate government of the old cradle of his house. But such a step would have been distinctly a Reasons backward step. The King of the English was now King ing the in every part of his realm alike. Certain parts of his Westrealm might enjoy more of his personal presence than Earldom. others; certain parts might even be practically more amenable to his authority than others; each great division of the Kingdom might still retain its local laws and customs; but there was still only one English Kingdom; no part of that Kingdom was a dependency of any other part; the King was King of the West-Saxons in no other sense than that in which he was King of the Northumbrians. But, if the local West-Saxon Earldom had been abolished, instead of a King of the English, reigning over one united Kingdom, there would again have been a King of the West-Saxons, holding East-Anglia, Mercia, and Northumberland as dependent provinces. Here then were good political reasons for retaining the institution of the Great Cnut, and for again appointing an Earl of the WestSaxons. Reverence also for the memory of the great man who was gone pleaded equally for the same course. An

1 See vol. i. p. 432: cf. 456.

CHAP. IX. Earl of the West-Saxons had done more for England than any other subject had ever done. With Godwine and his great deeds still living in the minds and on the tongues of men, there could be little doubt as to giving him a successor; there could be hardly more of doubt as to who that successor should be.

Harold

Earl of

Saxons. Easter, 1053.

The choice of the King and his Witan fell upon the the West- eldest surviving son of the late Earl.1 Harold was removed from the government of the East-Angles to the greater government of the West-Saxons. This was, under such a King as Eadward, equivalent to investing him with the practical management of the King and his Kingdom. Harold then, when he could not have passed the age of thirtytwo, became the first man in England. His career up to this time had been stained by what in our eyes seems to be more than one great fault, but it is clear that, in the eyes of his contemporaries, his merits far outweighed his errors. He had perhaps been guilty of selfishness in the matter of his brother Swegen ;3 he had certainly been guilty of Joy of the needless violence in the affair at Porlock. But the universal joy of the nation at his new promotion shows that the general character of his East-Anglian government must have given the brightest hopes for the future. Grief for the loss of Godwine was tempered by rejoicing at the elevation of one who at once began to walk in his father's Character steps. From henceforth, as Earl and as King, the career of Harold is one of vigorous and just government, of skill and valour in the field, of unvarying moderation towards political foes. He won and he kept the devoted love of

nation.

of his

government.

1 Chron. Petrib. 1053. "And feng Harold Eorl his sunu to dam eorldome and to eallum þam be his fæder ahte." So the others in other words. 2 See above, pp. 37, 43. 3 See above, p. 101.

4 Vita Eadw. 408. "Subrogatur autem regio favore in ejus [Godwini] ducatu filius ejus major natu et sapientiâ Haroldus, unde in consolationem respirat universus Anglorum exercitus." Then follows the panegyric quoted in Appendix D.