The House of 1035–1053. tween Magnus of Norway and Swein Estrithson CHAP. X. for the throne of Denmark shielded England from any invasion by the Northmen. Friendly embassies, Godwine. too, came from the French court, while the earlier marriage of the emperor, Henry III., with Gunhild, a daughter of Cnut and Emma, had linked him by blood to Eadward, and strengthened the friendly intercourse between the German and English courts which had gone on from the days of Eadward the Elder. Near home Gruffydd, the son of Llewelyn, was building up a formidable power over the western border, but he was too busy as yet with his Welsh rivals to seem a serious danger; while in the north Macbeth, who had lately risen, through the murder of King Duncan, to the throne of Scotland, showed himself a peaceful neighbor. It was rather within than without that Godwine's work had to be done, and that it was well done was proved by the peace of the land; while the popularity which he won in Wessex shows his good government of his own earldom.' The political structure of Cnut's administration, indeed, had been tested by the troubles and revolutions which followed on his death; and the new strength of the crown was shown in the fact that none of these troubles had in the least affected that structure. Even the fourfold division of the English earldoms and the severance of Wessex from the crown was retained, in spite of the return of the line of Wessex to the throne. Part of this, no doubt, may be due to the influence of Godwine, but, in fact, the continuance of Godwine's power mày in itself be looked upon as a proof of the strength of the administrative system and tradition of which he was the embodiment. That system remained, indeed, in all respects firmly established throughout the whole reign of the Confessor to the very conquest of the Normans. The military organization continued unchanged, as we see later from the hus-carls quartered at towns like Wallingford and Dorchester; while, from the description House of CHAP. X. But however wise and successful Godwine's rule The might be, we shall see in years to come how bitterly Godwine. it was resented by the king, who found himself a pup1035-1053. pet in his hands. Eadward was, indeed, powerless in his realm. He could not even hope, like his predSiward of Northum- ecessors, to snatch a fragment of authority by pitbria. ting one great noble against another. In Northum bria, Siward had but just won his earldom by a deed of blood. By his marriage with the daughter of a of the new armament used by Harold in his later wars with the Welsh, it was clearly with this picked body of troops, and not with the fyrd of the neighboring shires, that he won his victories in south Wales; and they formed the real strength of his army both at Stamford Bridge and at Senlac. Of the hoard again we catch a glimpse in the legend of Hugolin, which shows that the Danegeld, if still an unpopular tax, was yet rigidly levied, and formed the mainspring of the royal finance; and in the troubles of Emma we see the first instance of that vital importance to the crown of the possession of the hoard or treasure, as well as of the command of the body of huscarls, whose pay was drawn from it. The administrative machinery, too, was not only maintained, but developed in the more organized form which the Royal Chapel assumed under Godwine and Harold, an incidental proof of which is given in the adoption of the Norman practice of authenticating all documents issued in the king's name by the royal seal; a step which created the chancellor, as the hoard had already created the treasurer, and as the levy of Danegeld, and the necessity of giving formal acquittance of the sums levied under it to the sheriffs, must already, in however inchoate a way, have originated the system of the Exchequer. With the consolidation of the royal administration no doubt there went on, also, a corresponding development of the royal justice, in the shape of appeals to the king himself from subordinate jurisdictions; and with the growing pressure of public business we find that the great office which had been instituted by Cnut in his appointment of a secundarius, was continued under the Confessor in the rule of Godwine and Harold, the predecessors of the Norman justiciar. At the time of the Norman Conquest, therefore, the administrative system which has sometimes been called Norman was already growing up at the English court, and the true work of the Conqueror and his successors lay in its extension and development. House of 1035–1053. former Northumbrian earl, Ealdred, he had, in 1038, CHAP. X. become master of Deira or Yorkshire, but Bernicia The had passed to Ealdred's brother, Eadwulf. Three Godwine. years later, however, Eadwulf was cut down at the very court of Harthacnut, by Siward, who thus, in 1041, became invested with the whole Northumbrian earldom from Humber to Tweed. The new earl, with his giant stature, his Danish blood, the personal vigor which earned him the surname of Digera, or the Strong, was a fitting representative of the district over which he ruled. His stern, rough handling kept the wild Northumbrians in awe; but dreaded as his ruthlessness might be, it brought little peace or order to the land. Northumbria, indeed, stood apart from the rest of Britain. The old anarchy had deepened with the settlement of the Danes. The roads were haunted with robbers, so that men could hardly travel with safety even in companies of thirty at a time; its distance from the south made the attendance of its thegns at the Witenagemots scant and uncertain; and the visits of the king, which in Eadgar's day were few, seem to have ceased altogether under the Confessor. It was the home of savage feuds, of strife handed on from father to son, even in the house of its earls. Marriage sat as lightly on them as bloodshedding; and "Licet dux Siwardus ex feritate judicii valde timeretur tamen tanta gentis illius crudelitas et Dei incultus habebatur ut vix triginta vel viginti in uno comitatu possent ire quin aut interficerentur aut deprædarentur ab insidiantiam latronum multitudine."- Vit. Edw. (Luard), p. 421. * Earl Uhtred, who held Northumbria under Æthelred and Cnut, married the daughter of Bishop Ealdhun of Durham, and with her got a share of the bishop's lands. He sent her back, however, to her father, and returned her lands with her; and took in her stead House of CHAP. X. the rude violence of their life was unchecked even The by religion. Churches gave no sanctuary against Godwine. deeds of blood, and since the conquest of the north 1035–1053. a rich burgher's daughter, whose father gave her to him on the simple terms that he should kill his enemy Thurbrand. But, as he either could not or would not kill Thurbrand, the burgher's daughter, in time, ceased to be his wife, and he wedded Æthelred's daughter Ælfgifu.-Sim. Durh., De Obsess. Dunelm. (Twysden), p. 8o. And with this loose morality went savage bloodshedding, and feuds of vendetta handed on from father to son. If Uhtred could not kill Thurbrand, Thurbrand owed him no thanks for it. When Uhtred submitted to Cnut, and came to do homage "at a place called Wiheal" (Freeman, Norm. Conq. i. 376), “a curtain was drawn aside," and behind it stood Thurbrand with armed men, who forthwith cut down Uhtred and forty of his companions. The feud slumbered till Ealdred, Uhtred's son by the bishop's daughter, got his father's earldom. Then, whether by law or by murder, Thurbrand was slain. His son Carl took up the feud, and he and Earl Ealdred went about seeking each other's lives. Friends strove to make peace between them; they were reconciled; they became even sworn brothers (exchanging blood?); they vowed to go on pilgrimage to Rome together; and when driven back by stress of weather, Carl invited Ealdred to feast at his house and hunt in his woods. There in the woodland he slew him, and a stone cross on the spot recalled the crime for centuries after.—Sim. Durh., De Obsess. Dunelm. (Twysden), p. 81. The murder of his brother Eadwulf, who succeeded him in Bernicia, began the fortunes of Siward. But Siward had married Ealdred's daughter, and if he himself slew Ealdred's brother, the bloodfeud with Thurbrand's house for Ealdred's death fell none the less to his son. Some years after the Norman conquest, as Carl's sons were feasting" in the house of their elder brother at Seterington in Yorkshire," and unarmed, a body of Earl Waltheof's young thegns fell suddenly upon them. The whole family-all the sons and grandsons of Carl-were cut off, save one son, Sumorled, who chanced not to be present, and another, Cnut, whose character had won him such general love that the murderers could not bring themselves to slay him."-Freeman, Norm. Conq. iv. 525; Sim. Durh., Gest. Reg. a. 1073; and, more largely, De Obsess. Dunelm. (Twysden), pp. 81, 82. The young thegns came back with spoil-" deletis filiis et nepotibus Carli reversi sunt multa in variis speciebus spolia reportantes" (Sim. Durh., De Obsess. Dunelm., Twysden, p. 82), while Waltheof “avi sui interfectionem gravissimâ clade vindicavit" (Ibid. p. 81). House of by the Danes not a single monastery of any historic CHAP. X. importance survived in the land once thronged by The religious houses. Northumbria, indeed, wild and Godwine. uncivilized as it was, gave Siward work enough to 1035–1053. do in simply holding it down, and as yet prevented any real danger to the power of Godwine from the northern earl. Mercia. Leofric of Mercia, on the other hand, had held Leofric of his earldom since the days of Cnut, and claimed to be descended from royal English blood. At the death of Cnut his influence, as we have seen, had been strong enough to match the power of Godwine, and to bring about the division of England between Harald and Harthacnut; and his importance must have increased with the submission of all England to Harald in 1037. To the end of his life he remained among the foremost powers of the land, and took rank as one of the three great earls. In mere extent, however, Mercia was now but a shadow of its former self. Even in the days of Cnut the Hwiccas of Worcestershire formed a separate government; under Harthacnut the breaking-up of Mercia was yet more complete. The Magesætas of Hereford were gathered into a distinct earldom on the west, while the eastern provinces of Mercia had been shorn off to form a new earldom of the Middle-English of Leicester, with probably Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. Some of these districts returned in later days to the house of Leofric, and even at this time they may have still owned his supremacy, but his direct rule seems to have been confined to Cheshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, and the border of north Wales. |