STATE OF THE SUCCESSION. the suc 367 at Midsummer, possibly that in which the expedition CHAP. Ix. against Macbeth was decreed,' a most important step was State of taken with regard to the succession to the Crown. It was cession. a step which proved altogether fruitless, but it is most 1054. important as showing what men's feelings and wishes were at the time. It proves incontestably that now, two years after the return of Godwine, the idea of the succession of William had quite passed away, and that the idea of the succession of Harold had not yet occurred to men's minds. The state of the royal house was such as to cause the deepest anxiety. The English people, though they cared little for any strict law of succession, still reverenced the blood of their ancient princes, and had ever been wont, save under the irresistible pressure of foreign conquest, to choose their Kings only from among the descendants of former Kings. But now the line of their former Kings seemed to be altogether dying out. Eadward was without children or hopes of children. There was no man in the land sprung from the male line of Æthelred and Eadgar. It is quite possible that there may have been men descended from earlier Kings; but, if so, they could only have been distant kinsmen, whose royal descent was well nigh forgotten, and who were no longer allowed to count as Æthelings. There was indeed a grandson of Æthelred dwelling in the Kingdom in the person of Ralph of Hereford. Ralph would very likely have been the successor Position of Ralph. to whom Eadward's personal inclinations would have led him. He shared with William of Normandy the merit of being a stranger speaking the French tongue, and he had the advantage over William of being really a descendant of English royalty. And the tie which bound 1 Now that the Housecarls are an established institution, wars are carried on with much greater speed than they were in Ethelred's time. If the expedition was voted at the end of June, Siward could easily have met Macbeth in the field before the end of July. CHAP. IX. Ralph to Eadward was a very close one. No preference given by female Old Teutonie feelings held the son of a sister to be hardly less near and dear than a son of one's own loins,1 and we have seen some indications that this feeling was not wholly forgotten in England in the eleventh century. The sister's son of Brihtnoth and the sister's son of Siward2 are mentioned in a special way among the chosen companions of their uncles, around whose banners they fought and died. Eadward, in his heart of hearts, would naturally fall back upon Ralph, his own nephew, the son of the daughter of Ethelred and Emma, as a candidate whom the English people might perhaps be persuaded to accept, when the cause of the Norman became hopeless after Godwine's revolution. But however sacred was the relation between a man and his sister's son, it was not one which by the Law of England conferred any right to the royal succession. The preference attaching to kingly blood was confined to those who were of kingly blood by direct male descent; it does not appear that the son of a King's daughter had any sort of claim in a royal election beyond any other man in the realm. And, as for Ralph himself, his foreign origin and his personal conduct were, either of them, quite enough to make him thoroughly distasteful to the English people. had had quite enough of him as Earl, and they certainly had no wish to have any further experience of him as King. In the present lack of heirs, men's thoughts turned to a branch of the royal family whose very existence The sons of was perhaps well nigh forgotten. Seven and thirty years before, the infant sons of Eadmund Ironside, Eadmund and Eadward, had found a shelter from the fears of Cnut under descent. Eadmund Ironside. 1017. Men Tac. Mor. Germ. c. 20. "Sororum filiis idem apud avunculum, qui apud patrem honor. Quidam sanctiorem arctioremque hunc nexum sanguinis arbitrantur, et in accipiendis obsidibus magis exigunt." 2 See above, p. 364, for Siward nephew of Siward, and vol. i. p. 300 for Wulfmær nephew of Brihtnoth. THE ETHELING EADWARD. 369 Stephen.1 CHAP. IX. the Æthel the protection of the sainted Hungarian King Eadmund died, seemingly while still young. was still living. He had, seemingly through the influence ing; his of Stephen's Queen Gisela, sister of the Emperor Henry marriage the Second, obtained in marriage a lady of royal descent ren. named Agatha, who seems most probably to have been a niece of the Hungarian Queen and of the sainted Emperor.2 This marriage would seem to show that, in those distant lands, Eadward was acknowledged as a prince, perhaps looked to as one who might some day reign in his native island. And the fact that the son of Eadward and Agatha bore the renowned English name of Eadgar, shows that the Ætheling himself cannot have wholly forgotten his native land. Yet, banished, as he was, in his cradle, he could have retained hardly anything of the feelings of an Englishman, and it is hardly possible that he could have spoken the English tongue. Eadward must have been even less of an Englishman than his royal namesake and uncle. Eadward the King had left England when he was many years older than Eadward the Ætheling, and he had lived in a land which had a much closer connexion with England. Still Normandy was dangerous, and Hungary was not. Whatever the Ætheling was, at least he was not a Frenchman; his connexions, though foreign, were in every way honourable and in no way formidable. Hungary was too distant a land to do England either good or harm, but the fame of the youngest Christian Kingdom, and of its renowned and sainted King, was doubtless great throughout Europe. And the connexion with the Imperial House, the distant kindred of the Etheling's children with the illustrious Cæsar, the friend and brother-in-law of King Eadward, was, of all foreign ties, that which it most became Englishmen to strengthen. In default there 1 See vol. i. p. 455. VOL. II. Bb 2 See Appendix Y. CHAP. IX. fore of any member of the royal house brought up and Eadgar. 1 dwelling in the land, it was determined to recall the banished Ætheling with his wife and family. Besides his son Eadgar, he had two daughters, who bore the foreign names of Margaret and Christina. We shall hear of all three again. Eadgar lived to be in an especial manner the sport of fortune; a King twice chosen, but never crowned, the last male descendant of Cerdic dragged on a sluggish and contented life as the friend and pensioner Margaret. of Norman patrons. One of his sisters won a worthier fame. Margaret obtained the honours alike of royalty and of saintship; she became one of the brightest patterns of every virtue in her own time, and she became the source through which the blood and the rights of the Imperial House of Wessex have passed to the Angevin, the Scottish, and the German sovereigns of England.2 It is impossible to doubt that the resolution to invite the Etheling was regularly passed by the authority of the King and his Witan. No lighter authority could have justified such a step, or could have carried any weight with The Ethel- foreign courts. Such an invitation was equivalent to ing invited declaring the Ætheling to be successor to the Crown, so land: the far as English Law allowed any man to be successor before equivalent the Crown was actually vacant. It is possible that, as sion to the in some other cases, an election before the vacancy may to Eng invitation to succes Crown. have been attempted; but it is perhaps more likely that all that was done was to guarantee to Eadward that same strong preference which naturally belonged only to a son of a reigning King. Such a preference, in favour of one who was the last remaining member of the royal family, would in practice hardly differ from an exclusive right. 1 See Appendix Y. 2 It is only through Margaret that our Kings from Henry the Second onward were descended from Eadward the Elder, Eadmund, or Eadgar. But it must not be forgotten that every descendant of Matilda of Flanders was a descendant of Ælfred. 3 See vol. i. pp. 118, 533. THE ETHELING INVITED TO ENGLAND. 371 the selec The resolution in short placed the Etheling in the same CHAP. IX. position as if his father and not his uncle had been on the throne. His position would thus be the same as that of Eadwig and Eadgar during the reign of Eadred.1 But, when we consider what followed, it is important to remember that the preference which undoubtedly belonged to Eadward would not belong to his son. Eadward, though so long an exile, was an Englishman born, the son of a crowned King and his Lady. The young Eadgar was a native of a foreign land, and was not the son of royal parents. This quasi designation of Eadward to the Import of Crown involves, as I before said, two things. It implies tion of that the King had learned that the succession of William Eadward. was a thing which he never could bring about. It implies. also that neither Harold himself nor the English people had as yet formed any serious idea of the possible succession of one not of royal descent. Indeed one can hardly doubt that the resolution to send for the Ætheling, if it was not made at Harold's own motion, must at any rate have had his full approval. No proposal could be more contrary to the wishes and interests of the Norman courtiers, who must either have unsuccessfully opposed it or else have found it their best wisdom to hold their peace. It was therefore, seemingly at the Whitsun Gemót, 1 See vol. i. pp. 65, 117, 118. 2 See vol. i. pp. 117, 291. 3 I rely far more on the probability of the case than on the account given by William of Malmesbury under the influence of those Norman prejudices against which he sometimes struggles, but to which he sometimes yields. He tells us (ii. 228), "Rex Edwardus, pronus in senium [fifty, or a year or two older], quod ipse non susceperat liberos, et Godwini videret invalescere filios, misit ad Regem Hunorum ut filium fratris Edmundi, Edwardum, cum omni familiâ suâ mitteret; futurum ut aut ille aut filii sui succedant regno hæreditario Angliæ; orbitatem suam cognatorum suffragio sustentari debere." He then goes on to describe the Ætheling ("vir neque promptus manu neque probus ingenio"), his family, his return, and his death. He then adds, "Rex itaque, defuncto cognato, quia spes prioris erat soluta suffragii, Willelmo Comiti Normanniæ successionem Angliæ dedit." I believe exactly the reverse to be the truth. |