CHAP. X. north-east frontier of Wales. The spot is famous in our 1283. history as the seat of a Parliament of the great Edward, and its military position is important, as standing at no great distance from the sea, and commanding the vale of Clwyd, the southern Strathclyde. There Gruffydd had a palace, the rude precursor no doubt of the stately castle whose remains now form the chief attraction of Rhuddlan. The Welsh King heard of the approach of the English; he had just time to reach the shore and to escape by sea. Earl Harold was close in pursuit, and the escape of Gruffydd was a narrow one; but he did escape, and the main object of this sudden expedition was thwarted. Harold's force was not strong enough to endure a long winter campaign in so wild a country; so he contented himself with burning the palace and the ships which were in the haven. The same day on which this destruction was done, he set out on his return march to Gloucester.1

Harold's great campaign of 1063.

Harold's attempt at a sudden blow had thus, through an unavoidable accident, been unsuccessful. It was therefore determined to open a campaign on a great scale, which should crush the power of Gruffydd for ever. It was in this campaign that the world first fully learned how great > a captain England possessed in her future King. Never was a campaign more ably planned or more vigorously Its perma- executed. The deep impression which it made on men's minds is shown by the way in which it is spoken of by writers who lived a hundred years later, when men had long been taught to look on Harold and his house as Testimony a brood of traitors and perjurers. John of Salisbury, Salisbury writing under the Angevin Henry, chooses this campaign and Giral- of Harold's as the most speaking example of the all

nent effect

on men's minds.

of John of

dus Cam

brensis.

important difference between a good general and a bad one. The name of Harold could of course not be uttered without some of the usual disparaging epithets, but he

Flor. Wig. "Eodemque die rediit."

HAROLD'S GREAT WELSH CAMPAIGN.

471

allows that the faithless usurper was a model of every CHAP. x. princely and soldier-like excellence.1 He compares the days of Harold with his own, and wishes that England had captains like him to drive back the marauders who, in his own time, harried her borders with impunity. Another writer of the same age, the famous Giraldus, attributes to this campaign of Harold the security which England enjoyed on the side of the Welsh during the reigns of the three Norman Kings. These two writers, evidently speaking quite independently of each other, give us several details of the campaign. These are fully confirmed by the witness of Eadward's Biographer, and all their accounts fit without difficulty into the more general narrative given by the Chroniclers.

3

The campaign opened in the last days of May. Its Harold and Tostig general plan was a combined attack on the Welsh territory invade from both sides. Harold sailed with a fleet from Bristol, Wales. May 26, the haven from which he had set sail on so different 1063. an errand twelve years before; Tostig set forth with

1 Joan. Sarisb. Polyc. vi. 6 (iv. 16-18 Giles). His general argument is, "Videsne quantùm electio ducis et exercitium juventutis militiæ conferant?" He introduces Harold thus; "Anglorum recens narrat historia, quod, quum Britones, irruptione factâ, Angliam depopularentur, à piissimo Rege Edwardo ad eos expugnandos missus est Dux Haraldus, vir quidem in armis strenuus [his common epithet with Florence], et laudabilium operum fulgens insignibus, et qui tam suam quam suorum posset apud posteros gloriam dilatare, nisi meritorum titulos, nequitiam patris imitans, perfidè præsumpto regno, decoloraret."

2 He enlarges at some length on the inadequate preparations made in his time to resist the invaders; "Nivicollini Britones irruunt, et jam protendunt terminos suos, et egressi de cavernis suis latebrisque silvarum, plana occupant, nobilium procerum, videntibus ipsis, impugnant, expugnant, et diruunt, aut sibi retinent, munitiones." After some rhetorical complaints of the luxury of his own age, he goes on, "Depopulantur illi fines nostros; dum juventus nostra instruitur, et dum nobis miles armatur, hostis evadit." Presently comes the account of Harold.

* De Illaud. Walliæ, ii. 7, ap. Ang. Sacr. ii. 451. He describes Harold's campaign, and adds, "Ob has igitur tam cruentas tamque recentes Anglorum de hâc gente victorias primi tres Normannorum Reges in tantâ subjectione tamque pacificam suis diebus Walliam tenuere."

CHAP. X. Bleddyn and Rhiwallon,1 who received the land as underKings of the English Emperor. They swore oaths and gave hostages to King Eadward, and to Earl Harold, seemingly as his destined successor.2 They engaged also to pay the tribute which had been accustomed in past times, but which, we may be sure, had been very irregularly paid in the days of Gruffydd.3

Legislation about Wales.

Two pieces of legislation are said to have followed the conquest of Wales. Harold is said to have ordained that any Welshman found in arms on the English side of Offa's Dyke should lose his right hand. If this was anything more than a temporary military regulation, Harold's ordaining it can only mean that it was he who proposed the enactment to the Witan. The other decree is attributed to the special indulgence of Eadward himself. The slaughter of the male population of Wales had been so great that there was no chance of the widows and daughters of the slain finding husbands among their own people. Lest the whole race should die out, the King allowed them to marry Englishmen, which we must infer had hitherto been unlawful.5 Stories like these must be

1 The Worcester Chronicle (1063) says expressly that the two princes were Gruffydd's brothers; "And se kyng Eadward betahte þæt land his twam gebrobran Blebgente and Rigwatlan." In the two Welsh Chronicles no notice is taken of this investiture of Gruffydd's successors, but in 1068 we find Bleddyn and Rhiwallon reigning; they are however called sons of Cynfyn, and are described as waging war with the sons of Gruffydd. Of Bleddyn we have heard before in the invasion of Herefordshire. See above, p. 388. 2 See Appendix DD. The Peterborough Chronicle leaves out all mention of Eadward; "And he [Harold] sette operne cyng þærto."

Chron. Wig. "And hig [Bleddyn and Rhiwallon] abas sworon and gislas saldan þæm Cynge and þæm Eorle, þæt heo him on allum þingum unswicende beon woldon, and eighwar him gearwe, on wætere and on lande, and swyle of þam lande gelæstan swylc man dyde toforan ær oþrum kynge." 4 Joan. Sarisb. iv. 18. " 'Legem statuit ut quicumque Britonum exinde citra terminum, quem eis præscripsit, fossam scilicet Offæ, cum telo inveniretur, ei ab officialibus regni manus dextra præcideretur."

5 Ib. " Adeoque virtute Ducis tunc Britones confecti sunt ut fere gens

HAROLD MARRIES EALDGYTH.

477

taken at what they are worth. Though coming from the CHAP. X. same source, they do not bear about them the same stamp of truth as the military details of the campaign.

marries

If any law was now passed authorizing the marriage of Englishmen and Welshwomen, the greatest of living Englishmen was not slow to take advantage of it, so far as it could be considered as extending to an Englishwoman who had become Welsh by adoption. We have now reached a year which stands bare of events in the Chronicles. It may have been the year of Harold's fatal visit to Nor- Harold mandy; it can hardly fail to have been the year of his Ealdgyth. marriage. There is nothing to imply that the great Earl 1064? had ever been married before. Putting together such indications as we have, it seems that Harold's connexion with his East-Anglian mistress Eadgyth Swanneshals, if it still existed, now came to an end.1 The bride of Harold was in some sense the prize of his own sword and spear. The fallen Gruffydd had once, like eastern Kings, taken the wife of a conquered enemy to be his wife. Her successor, now in her present widowhood, met, willingly or unwillingly, with the like fate. The fair Ealdgyth, the daughter of Ælfgar, the sister of Eadwine, the widow of Gruffydd, became the wife of the rival of her father, the conqueror of her husband. Harold's enemies are of course scandalized at a marriage between Harold and the widow of a man of whom they choose to call him the murderer.3 But it is hard to see any objection to the union, except the possible wrong done to

tota deficere videretur, et ex indulgentiâ jam dicti Regis mulieres eorum nupserunt Anglis."

1 I shall speak more largely of her in my third volume.

2 Brut y Tywysogion, 1039. "Gruffydd overcame Howel and captured his wife, and took her to be his own wife."

3 It is certainly hard measure when Sir Francis Palgrave (Hist. Ang.

Sax. p. 372) speaks of Harold's wife as "her whose husband he had murdered." Did Alexander murder Darius ?

The marriage probably a political

one.

CHAP. X. the forsaken Eadgyth. Of the circumstances we know nothing. Ealdgyth may, like an earlier namesake in a somewhat similar case, have inspired her conqueror with a sudden passion. But it is far more likely that Harold's marriage was a sacrifice of love to policy, and that his main object was to win to his side the interest of the great Mercian house which had stood so long in rivalry against himself and his father. Harold in short, with a Crown in prospect, acted after the manner of crowned heads. Eadgyth was perhaps forsaken, Ealdgyth was almost certainly married, in order to secure Mercian votes in the Gemót which should finally dispose of the Kingdom. Harold doubtless flattered himself that by this marriage he had extended his influence over the whole Kingdom. He himself ruled in Wessex; one brother ruled in Northumberland, another in East-Anglia, another in the South-Eastern shires. And now the one remaining Earldom was in the hands of the brother of his wife. But, as events turned out, Harold would have done better to cleave to his earlier and humbler love, whose love for him survived desertion and death. He gained little by seeking political support in an union with the widow of a foe and the sister of a traitor. Of Ealdgyth personally we know hardly anything;2 but we know what her brothers were, and, when the day of trial came, she seems to have sided with her brothers rather than with her husband.

Wales was thus, to all appearance, thoroughly conquered. North Wales, the original Kingdom of Gruffydd, seems to have remained fairly quiet; but elements of

1 See vol. i. p. 411.

2 Excepting Dr. R. Vaughan (Revolutions in English History, i. 300), who, from some undescribed sources not open to other writers, has found out that "the marriage could hardly have been a happy one. Ea[1]dgyth was a woman of great ambition, and unscrupulous in her use of means to gratify her passions."