CHAP. IX. charge was ever brought against Harold does in truth redound greatly to his honour. Calumny itself instinctively shrank from laying such a crime to the charge of such a man. William was, as I believe, as guiltless of any such baseness as Harold himself. But the charge did not seem wholly inconsistent with the crafty and tortuous policy of the Norman Duke. The West-Saxon Earl, ambitious no doubt and impetuous, but ever frank, generous, and conciliatory, was at once felt to be incapable of such a deed. Heaca, Bishop of the South Saxons, dies. succeeds. 1057. Death Three other deaths followed among the great men of the land, two of which were of no small political importance. It was not of any special moment, as far as we know, when Heaca, Bishop of the South-Saxons, died, and was succeeded in the chair of Selsey by Ethelric, a monk of Ethelric Christ Church, of whom we shall hear in the days of the Conqueror. It was quite another matter when the great Earl of the Mercians, so long the honoured mediator between opposing races and opposing interests, died in a good old age in his own house at Bromley in Staffordshire.2 Of all the churches and monasteries which had been enriched and adorned by the bounty of Leofric and Godgifu, none was dearer to them than the great minster of Coventry, the city with which their names are inseparably connected in one of those silly legends which have helped to displace our early history. There Leofric of Earl Leofric. August 31, 1057. was buried in the church which he and his wife had raised from the foundations, and had enriched with gifts which 1 Chronn. Wig. 1057, Petrib. and Cant. 1058; Fl. Wig. 1057. 2 Fl. Wig. 1057. "Laudabilis Comes Leofricus, Ducis Leofwini filius [Earl Leofric, son of Ealdorman Leofwine, see vol. i. p. 719], in propriâ villâ quæ dicitur Bromleage, in bonâ decessit senectute, ii. Kal. Sept." He had been Earl at least twenty-five years, perhaps thirty-three. 3 See above, p. 48. Florence (u. s.) distinctly says that Leofric and Godgifu built the DEATHS OF LEOFRIC AND RALPH. 415 made it wealthier and more magnificent than all the CHap. ix. minsters of England.1 Godgifu survived her husband many years; she saw her son and grandsons rise and fall; she saw her granddaughter share first a vassal and then an Imperial Crown, and then vanish out of sight as a homeless widow. At last she herself died, still in the possession of some part at least of her vast estates, a subject of the Norman invader.2 A few months after the death of Leofric came the death Death of Earl Ralph. of the stranger who had seemingly held a subordinate December Earldom under his authority. Ralph, Earl of the Mage- 21, 1057. sætas, the French nephew of King Eadward, died near the end of the year, and was buried in the distant minster of Peterborough, to which he had been a benefactor.1 sible pre I have already started the question whether the thoughts His posof Eadward had ever turned towards him as a possible tensions to successor.5 After the death of the Etheling, the hopes the Crown. of Ralph and his brother Walter, if they had any, might again revive. But if so, death soon cut short any such schemes. Walter, the reigning prince of a foreign state, would have no chance. If any such prince were to be chosen, it would be better at once to take the renowned Duke of the Normans than the insignificant Count of Mantes. But Ralph, whether he was ever actually thought of or not, was clearly a possible candidate; his church; "de suo patrimonio a fundamentis construxerunt." So the Peterborough Chronicler, 1066; see above, p. 48. But Orderic (511 A) says, "Elfgarus Comes Coventrense cœnobium construxit," and goes on to speak of Godgifu's gifts of ornaments; he is clearly confounding father and son. 1 Fl. Wig. 1057. "Adeo ditaverunt ut in Angliâ tanta copia auri, argenti, gemmarum, lapidumque pretiosorum in nullo inveniretur monasterio, quanta tunc temporis habebatur in illo." The charter about Coventry in Cod. Dipl. iv. 253 can hardly be genuine as it stands. Pope Alexander was not reigning in 1043. 3 Chron. Wig. and Flor. Wig, in anno. 2 See Appendix II. 5 See above, p. 367. CHAP. IX. death therefore, following so soon after the death of the Ætheling, removed another obstacle from the path of Harold. Redistri bution of Ælfgar Earl of the The deaths of the two Earls involved a redistribution of Earldoms. the chief governments of England, which would naturally Christmas, be carried out in the following Christmas Gemót. The 1057-1058? Earldom of the Mercians, such parts of it at least as had been under the immediate authority of Leofric, was conferred on his son Ælfgar.1 It shows how vast must have been the hereditary influence of his house, when such a trust could not be refused to a man who had so lately trampled on every principle of loyalty and patriotism. But care was taken to make him as little dangerous as possible. Elfgar may have hoped that, on the death of Ralph, the Earldom of the Magesætas would again be merged in Mercia, and that, excepting the shires attached to Northumberland, he might rule over the whole realm of Offa and Ethelflæd. But policy altogether forbade that the Herefordshire border should be again placed in the hands of one who had so lately acted Marriage as the ally of Gruffydd. We know not whether the Welsh of Gruffydd and Eaid King had already entered into a still closer relation with gyth. the English Earl by his marriage with Elfgar's beautiful daughter Ealdgyth.2 The date of that marriage is not recorded; it may have already taken place, or it may have happened on the next occasion, one distant only by a few months, when we shall find the names of Gruffydd and Elfgar coupled together. But if the Welsh King was already the son-in-law of the Mercian Earl, there was a still further reason for placing some special safeguard on that border of the realm. In short, the government of Herefordshire was so important that it could not be safely placed in any hands but those of the foremost man in England. There is distinct evidence to show that, 2 See Appendix II. 1 See Appendix G. HEREFORDSHIRE UNDER HAROLD. 2 417 shire added Earldom. the son within two or three years after the death of Leofric, the CHAP. IX. Earldom of Herefordshire was in the hands of Harold.1 HerefordWe can therefore hardly doubt that, on the resettlement to Harold's which must have followed the deaths of Leofric and Ralph, the Earldom of the Magesætas was attached to the Earldom of the West-Saxons, and that Harold now became the immediate ruler of the district of which he had been the deliverer, and of the city of which he might claim to be the second founder. Earl Ralph had left a son, a name- Harold sake, probably a godson, of the great Earl, and Harold of Ralph. the son of Ralph appears in Domesday as a landowner both before and after the Conquest. His name still survives within his father's Earldom, where it cleaves to an existing parish and to the site of a castle which has wholly vanished. But Earldoms were not hereditary, and the son of Ralph was so young that, eight years later, he was still under wardship. On this ground, if on no other, Harold, the great-nephew of Eadward, the great-grandson of Æthelred, was so far from appearing as a competitor for the Crown of his ancestors that he was not even thought of as a possible successor for his father's Earldom. His name is altogether unknown to history, and but for his place in Domesday and in local tradition, his very existence might have been forgotten. His renowned namesake was now entrusted with the great border government. But it Question is by no means clear whether Harold held Herefordshire as cestershire. a detached possession, as Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire were held by Siward and Tostig, or whether it was connected with his West-Saxon Earldom by the possession of Gloucestershire. If so, the rule of the House of Godwine must now have been extended over nearly all the region which had been West-Saxon land in the days of Ceawlin.3 as to Glou 1 See Appendix G. 2 See Appendix KK. See vol. i. pp. 24, 33. Harold however did not command the whole CHAP. IX. of the East and of Oxfordshire. Policy of these de tached shires. For, while the power of Harold was thus increased, the time seemed to have come for raising the younger sons of Godwine to a share in the honours of his house. Gyrth Earl The East-Anglian Earldom, vacated by the translation of Angles, Elfgar to Mercia, was now conferred on Gyrth. But 1057-1058, the boundaries of the government were changed. Essex was detached from East-Anglia. The new Earl probably received only the two strictly East-Anglian shires, with the addition of Cambridgeshire, to which was afterwards added the detached shire of Oxford.' The policy of attaching these detached shires to distant Earldoms is not very clear. It could not be the same policy which afterwards led the Conqueror to scatter the fiefs of his great vassals over distant portions of the Kingdom. There was certainly no intention of weakening any of the Earls whose governments were thus geographically divided. The object was far more probably to bring the influence of the House of Godwine to bear upon all parts of the country. Some old connexion had attached Northamptonshire to Northumberland at an earlier time, and the example thus given was seized on as a means for planting the authority of the rising house in every convenient quarter. Oxfordshire, it will be remembered, had formed part of the Earldom of Swegen; it was now placed in the hands of Gyrth. For it was highly important that the great frontier town of Mercia and Wessex, the seat of so many important national meetings, should be in thoroughly trustworthy hands. Elfgar's loyalty was most doubtful; it was impossible altogether to oust him from command, but it was expedient to confine his powers of mischief within the smallest possible compass, and to hem him in, wherever it could be, by men who could be relied on. Unfortunately at Severn valley, as Worcestershire was now held by Elfgar. But the other |