realm by Godwine and his house. Eadward was CHAP. X. Godwine. 1035 1053. the first descendant of Elfred who was not lord of The House of Wessex. He had indeed no local hold on the land at all; he was simply king, and it may possibly have been owing to this that he found his home no longer at Winchester but at Westminster. The fact indeed that this creation of a West-Saxon earldom, so obviously a mere expedient to meet the exigencies of the Danish rule, was not at once reversed, and the old connexion of Wessex with the crown restored on the accession of the Confessor, shows how absolutely powerless that king was from the first in the hands of Earl Godwine. Nor could Eadward look to either of the rival earls for aid in disputing with the allpowerful Godwine the mastery of his kingdom. And yet by a singular irony of fate it was just through this mastery of Godwine's that England remained a kingdom at all. Had the three earldom's been of equal weight, or their possessors men of the same temper, the energies of Godwine as of his fellowearls might have been spent in the building up of a separate dominion. It was his superiority of power as well as his keener ambition that drew him from the mere establishment of a great fief to the larger ambition of ruling the land. With such an aim the earl saw that his profit lay, not in weakening or annihilating the authority of the crown, but in seizing that authority for his own. purposes, and in paving the way by a dexterous use of Eadward for the succession of the house of Godwine to the throne. Such a design can alone account for the steady policy of annexation by which he at His policy. CHAP. X. Godwine. 10351053. once began to draw all England into his own hands The House of or those of his kindred. The importance of keeping watch over Wales, and of preserving the means of communication with it as Gruffydd built up a national sovereignty, may explain the establishment of Godwine's eldest son, Swein, in the border-district of Hereford. But a new earldom was created for him by the addition to this district of two other Mercian shires, the shires of Oxford and Gloucester; and this earldom was again swelled by the detachment of Berkshire and Somerset from Godwine's own Wessex. The position of Oxford as commanding the line of the Thames, and of Gloucester as commanding the lower Severn, gave Swein's earldom a military as well as a political importance. But while in Swein the house of Godwine pressed upon the west, a grant of the East-Anglian earldom to the second son, Harold, gave it the mastery of the east. In the very heart of England Godwine set his nephew Beorn, a brother of Swein Estrithson, as earl of the Middle-English about Leicester. The addition to Beorn's earldom of Nottingham and the old land of the Gyrwas and Lindiswaras made him master of the Trent, as Swein of the Severn and the Thames; and by 1045 the whole English coast from Humber round to Severn mouth had passed into the hands of the house of Godwine. Extension of Nor was this all. Two years after the king's his power. coronation Eadgyth, Godwine's daughter, became Eadward's wife. We can hardly doubt the meaning of this step. In setting Eadgyth beside the king Godwine aimed at meeting the secret hostility of 1 CHAP. X. Godwine. 1035 1053. the court, and detaching Eadward from the Norman councillors who, as he was conscious, were busy The House of working against him. The influence of Robert of Jumiéges, who had been appointed bishop of London a year before, was as certain as his ill-will, and the memory of his brother's doom was stirred busily in Eadward's mind by the strangers round him. But so vast a stride towards the mastery of the realm as Godwine was making would of itself awake Eadward's suspicion, and hardly fail to rouse jealousy in other minds besides the king's. The house of Godwine had no hold on the North. In central England Leofric could hardly look with satisfaction on the advancing supremacy of his old rival. Godwine might still indeed have defied the efforts of the Norman courtiers, and the jealousies of his fellow earls, had he retained the confidence of the nation at large. But the national trust which his good government had won was at this moment shaken by the deeds of one who stood next to him in his own house. of Godwine. The first blow at Godwine's power came from the Difficulties lawless temper of his eldest son, Swein. In the opening of 1046, a year after Eadgyth's marriage, Swein carried off the abbess of Leominster from her nunnery, and sent her back great with child. Such an act was too daring an outrage on the religious feeling of the country to pass unheeded. Ere Christmas came the young earl fled, outlawed it would seem, from his earldom to the court of Bruges; in the summer of 1047 he again left Baldwin's land, perhaps to take part in the war in the northern seas. Godwine was carefully watching the changes which went СНАР. Х. Godwine. 10351053. on in the North, for both the rival claimants to the The House of dominions of Harthacnut, Magnus and Swein, alike laid claim to the English crown. But a year before Magnus had threatened England with invasion, and a great fleet had been gathered at Sandwich to meet his expected attack. It had been averted by successes of Swein Estrithson, which drew the host of Magnus to Denmark instead of the Channel; but the Norwegian king was now again victorious, and his triumph promised a renewal of the danger to England. Swein had been driven from all but a fragment of the Danish realm; the union of Denmark and Norway seemed certain; and the forces of the two realms in the hands of Magnus would in such a case have been thrown on English shores. Opposition to his policy. It was no wonder therefore that Swein hastened to his cousin's help; or that Godwine proposed in the Witan of 1047 to send a squadron of fifty ships to support his nephew's cause. But politic as the plan was, it met with a resistance which shows how greatly the earl's influence was shaken. The proposal, it is said at Leofric's instigation, was rejected, and Swein Estrithson was left to fight his battle alone. The result was the coming of that peril which Godwine foresaw. A new and overwhelming defeat drove Swein from his last hold in Denmark, and brought about the submission of the whole Danish kingdom to Magnus. Luckily for England, the conqueror's death at once followed his victory, and the two northern lands again parted from one another. Harald Hardrada became king in Norway: Swein Estrithson was welcomed back by the Danes; and the strife which shielded СНАР. Х. Godwine. 1035 1053. England from Scandinavian attack broke out afresh on more equal terms. The decision of the Witan was The House of far from proving any heedlessness of the safety of the realm; had the attack come which Godwine feared, an English fleet was ready at this very time to meet it in the Channel. Their will was simply against intervention in the North itself, against actual meddling in a distant quarrel, and no doubt against spending English blood in the support of a nephew of Godwine. Enough, it may have been thought, had been done for Godwine's house at home. England could hardly be called on to spend blood and treasure in winning a throne for his nephew abroad. But behind this natural hesitation of wiser men stirred the bitter enmity of the Norman group which Eadward had gathered round him. Even at this moment their opposition took a new vigour from the events which were passing over sea. Ever since his kinsman left Normandy for the English shores, William had been slowly rising to his destined greatness. Troubles on the French frontier, occasional outbreaks of a baron here and there, failed to shake the hold on the land which tightened with every day of the young duke's grasp. Round him the men who were to play their part in our history were already grouping themselves. William FitzOsbern was growing up as William's friend and adviser. The duke's half-brother, Odo, was already Bishop of Bayeux. But chance had brought a wiser counsellor to William's side than Odo or Fitz-Osbern. In the early years of his rule, Lanfranc, a wandering scholar from Lombardy, had opened a school at William and |