CHARACTER OF SWEGEN. 45 Lady Ead common powers, but wayward, violent, and incapable of CHAP. VII. self-control, he was hurried first into a flagrant violation of the sentiment of the age, and next into a still fouler breach of the eternal laws of right. His end may well arouse our pity, but his life, as a whole, is a dark blot on the otherwise chequered escutcheon of the house of Godwine. It was clearly felt to be so; the panegyrist of the family never once brings himself to utter the name of Swegen. Only one other child of Godwine Of the calls for personal notice at this stage of our history. gyth. Eadgyth, his eldest daughter, became, nearly two years 1045. after Eadward's coronation, the willing or unwilling bride of the saintly monarch. She is described as being no less highly gifted among women than her brothers were among men; as lovely in person and adorned with every female accomplishment, as endowed with a learning and refinement unusual in her age, as in point of piety and liberality a fitting help-meet for Eadward himself." But there are some strange inconsistencies in the facts which are recorded of her. Her zeal and piety did not hinder her from receiving rewards, perhaps, in plain words, from taking bribes. Undoubtedly this is a subject on which the feelings of past times differed widely from those 1 Chron. Ab. Cant. 1044. Petrib. 1043. I shall discuss the exact date afterwards. Vita Eadw. 415. She sat at his feet, unless he lifted her up to sit at his side. This must be compared with the account of the legislation about West-Saxon Kings' wives after the crime of Eadburh (Asser, M. H. B. 471 B). She had shown personal kindness to the Biographer (427); "Scribes Reginam primo tibi subvenientem, This perhaps gave occasion for the more elaborate and better known de- William of Malmesbury's account of her (ii. 197) is singular; "Femina in cujus pectore omnium liberalium artium esset gymnasium, sed parvum in mundanis rebus ingenium; quam quum videres, si literas stuperes, modestiam certè animi et speciem corporis desiderares." CHAP. VII. of our own; but we are a little staggered when we find the saintly King and his pious Lady receiving money from religious houses to support claims which, if just, should have been supported for nothing, and, if unjust, should not have been supported at all.' But Eadgyth has been charged with far heavier offences than this. She Suspicions seems to have become in some degree infected with her loyalty to husband's love of foreigners, perhaps even in some sort England. to have withdrawn her sympathies from the national cause. of her She has won the doubtful honour of having her name extolled by Norman flatterers as one whose heart was Her al- rather Norman than English. And all her reputation for leged share in the mur- gentleness and piety has not kept her from being branded der of Gos- in the pages of one of our best chroniclers as an accomplice patric. tion to her husband. in a base and treacherous murder.3 Her character thus Her rela- becomes in some sort an ænigma, and her relation to her husband is not the least ænigmatical part of her position. One of Eadward's claims to be looked on as a saint was the general belief, at least of the next generation, that the husband of the beautiful Eadgyth lived with her only Eadward's as a brother with a sister. If this story be true, a more alleged chastity. enlightened standard of morality can see no virtue, but rather a crime, in his conduct. We can see nothing to 'Hist. Rams. cxiv. (p. 457). Abbot Elfwine, wishing to obtain certain lands bequeathed to the monastery by one Æthelwine the Black, but which were withheld from it by one Ælfric the son of Wihtgar, "apposuit quoque de divitis crumenæ dispendio viginti marcas auri, quibus gratiam Regis mercaretur, Ædthitha [sic] quippe Reginæ sedulitatem quinque marcarum auri pretio exegit interponi, ut pias ejus preces regiis auribus fideliter importaret." So again, in a charter of 1060 in Cod. Dipl. iv. 142, Eadgyth lays claim to certain lands claimed by the Abbey of Peterborough, but on the intercession of her husband and her brothers Harold and Tostig (none of whom seem to have taken anything), and on the gift of twenty marks and certain church ornaments, she is induced to confirm the grant. That she looked carefully after her rents in money, kine, and honey, and after the men who stole her horse, is no blame to her (Cod. Dipl. iv. 257). 2 Will. Pict. 199 A, B (Duchesne). 3 Flor. Wig. 1065. See Appendix B. CHARACTER OF EADGYTH. 47 the earliest admire in a King who, in such a crisis of his country, him- CHAP. VII. self well-nigh the last of his race, and without any available member of the royal family to succeed him, shrank, from whatever motive, from the obvious duty of raising up direct heirs to his Crown. But it seems probable that Evidence of this report is merely part of the legend of the saint and writers. not part of the history of the King. His contemporary panegyrists undoubtedly praise Eadward's chastity. But it is not necessary to construe their words as meaning more than might be asserted of Ælfred, of William, of Saint Lewis, or of Edward the First. The conjugal faith of all those great monarchs remained, as far as we know, unbroken; but not one of them thought it any part of his duty to observe continence towards his own wife. Still, from whatever cause, the marriage of Eadward and Eadgyth was undoubtedly childless; and the relations of the royal pair to each other in other respects are hardly more intelligible. Eadgyth is described as the partaker of all her husband's good works, and as nursing him with the most affectionate care during his last illness. Yet, at the moment of his reign when he could most freely exercise a will of his own, if he did not absolutely of his own accord banish her from his court, he consented, seemingly without any reluctance, to her removal from him by the enemies of her family and her country. The anxiety of Eadward's Norman favourites to separate Eadgyth from her husband is, after all, the most honourable record of her to be found among the singularly contradictory descriptions of her character and actions. of Godwine We thus find, within a few years after the accession of Greatness Eadward, the whole of the ancient Kingdoms of Wessex, and his Sussex, Kent, Essex, East-Anglia, and part of Mercia, under house. the government of Godwine, his two elder sons, and his 1 Vita Eadw. 431, (cf. 433). 2 Ibid. 403. See below. Earldoms; Mercia under Leofric; CHAP. VII. nephew. His daughter meanwhile shared the throne, of England with a King whom he had himself placed upon it. Such greatness could hardly be lasting. It rested wholly on Godwine's own personal character and influence, for the fame of Harold was yet to be won. The The other part of Mercia which was not otherwise occupied remained, as before, in the hands of Leofric the son of Leofwine. This Earl and his famous wife Godgifu, the Lady Godiva of legend,1 were chiefly celebrated for their boundless liberality to ecclesiastical foundations. Worcester, Leominster, Evesham, Chester, Wenlock, Stow in Lindesey, and, above all, Coventry, were special objects of their bounty. They seem not to have been satisfied with mere grants of lands and privileges, but to have taken a special interest in the buildings and ornaments of the houses which they favoured. The minster of Coventry, rebuilt and raised to cathedral rank after their time, has utterly vanished from the earth, and recent changes have abolished even the titular position of the city as a see of a Bishop. But at Stow, the ancient Sidnacester, a place even then of infinitely less consideration than Coventry, portions of the church enriched by Leofric still remain. Leofric, 3 1 Godgifu was the sister of Thorold the Sheriff, founder of the Priory of Spalding. See John of Peterborough, a. 1052. p. 49. Giles. The legend of her riding naked through Coventry is found in Bromton (949), and Knighton (2334). They do not mention peeping Tom, who, it is some comfort to think, must at any rate have been one of King Eadward's Frenchmen. 2 See Will. Malms. ii. 196. Cf. Æthel. Riev. 389. Chron. Evesham. 84. This last writer extends Leofric's authority to the borders of Scotland. Did Cumberland reach to the Ribble in those days? 3 "Stow sub promontorio Lincolniæ." Bromton, 949. See the charters of Bishop Wulfwig, Cod. Dipl. iv. 290. The church was not built by Leofric, but by Eadnoth the Second, Bishop of Dorchester (1034-1050); Leofric's benefaction took the form of ornaments. See Flor. Wig. 1057, where he calls Stow "locus famosus qui Sanctæ Mariæ Stou Anglicè, Latinè verò Sanctæ Mariæ Locus appellatur." The antiquity of part of the church is indisputable, but a more wretched village cannot be found. A document, professing to be a petition from Godgifu to Pope Victor, praying for the confirmation of her gifts to Stow, is marked doubtful by EARLDOMS OF LEOFRIC AND SIWARD. between Godwine. 49 his son Ælfgar, his grandsons and his granddaughter, CHAP. VII. play an important part in the history of this period down to the complete establishment of the Norman power in England. It is clear that Leofric must have been more Relations personally annoyed by the rise of Godwine and his house Leofric and than any other of the great men of England. A race whom he could not fail to look down upon as upstarts hemmed him in on every side except towards the North. Later in the reign of Eadward, we shall find the rivalries and the reconciliations of the two houses of Godwine and Leofric forming a considerable portion of the history. But, while Leofric himself lived, he continued to play the part which we have already seen him playing,1 that part of a mediator between two extreme parties, which was dictated to him by the geographical position of his Earldom. berland North of the Humber, the great Dane, Siward the NorthumStrong, still ruled over the Earldom which he had won under by the murder of his wife's uncle. The manners of the Siward. Northumbrians were so savage, murders and hereditary deadly feuds were so rife among them, that it is quite possible that the slaughter of Eadwulf may, by a party at least, have been looked on as a praiseworthy act of vigour. Perhaps however, as we go on, we may discern signs that Siward and his house were not specially popular in Northhumberland, and that men looked back with regret to the more regular line of their native Earls. At any rate, Siward remained for the rest of his days in undisturbed possession of both the Northumbrian governments, and along with these he seems to have held the Earldoms of Northampton Mr. Kemble (Cod. Dipl. iv. 168), doubtless on good grounds. But I do not understand his date, 1060-1066, as the Popedom of Victor the Second was from 1055 to 1057. Siward, who died early in 1055, could hardly have signed an address to Pope Victor. 1 See vol. i. p. 539. VOL. II. 2 See vol. i. p. 588. E |