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CHAP. VII. all hope of any such peaceful settlement of the matter. Eustace probably still lingered about the King, to repeat

Robert

King against Godwine.

his own story, to enlarge on the insolence of the men of Dover, and on the disobedience-he would call it the Archbishop treason-of the West-Saxon Earl himself. And there was excites the another voice ever at the royal ear, ever ready to poison the royal mind against the English people and their leader. The foreign monk who sat on the throne of so many English saints again seized the opportunity to revive the calumnies of past times. Robert once more reminded the King that the man who refused to obey his orders, the man who had protected, perhaps stirred up, rebellious burghers against his dearest friends, was also the man who had, years before, betrayed his brother to a death of torment. The old and the new charges worked together on The Witan the King's mind, and he summoned a meeting of the to Glouces. Witan at Gloucester, to sit in judgement, no longer on the men of Dover, who seem by this time to have been forgotten, but on Godwine himself." The Earl now saw that he must be prepared for all risks. And, just at this moment, another instance of the insolence and violence of the foreigners in another part of the Kingdom served Building of to stir up men's minds to the highest pitch. Among the Frenchmen who had flocked to the land of promise was one named Richard the son of Scrob, who had received a grant of lands in Herefordshire. He and his son Osbern

summoned

ter to hear charges against

Godwine.

Richard's

Castle in
Hereford-

shire.

1 The revival of the story about Ælfred and the special part played by Archbishop Robert comes from the Biographer of Eadward. I shall discuss this point in Appendix R.

2 The summoning of the Witan is distinctly set forth in the Peterborough Chronicle; "Da sende se cyng æftre eallon his witan, and bead heom cuman to Gleaweceastre neh þære æfter Sea Maria mæssan." The charge against Godwine comes from the Life of Eadward, p. 401; "Ergo perturbato Rege de talibus plus justo, convenerunt de totâ Britanniâ [did any Scottish or Welsh princes appear?] quique potentes et duces Glaucestræ regio palatio, ubique in eo querimoniam talium habente, perlata est in insontem Ducem tanti criminis accusatio."

BUILDING OF RICHARD'S CASTLE.

137

3

the build

castles.

had there built a castle on a spot which, by a singularly CHAP. VII. lasting tradition, preserves to this day the memory of himself and his building. The fortress itself has vanished, but its site is still to be marked, and the name of Richard's Castle, still borne by the parish in which it stood, is an abiding witness of the deep impression which its erection made on the minds of the men of those times. The Import of building of castles is something of which the English ing of writers of this age frequently speak, and speak always with a special kind of horror.2 Both the name and the thing were new. To fortify a town, to build a citadel to protect a town, were processes with which England had long been familiar. To contribute to such necessary public works was one of the three immemorial obligations from which no Englishman could free himself. But for a private landowner to raise a private fortress to be the terror of his neighbours was something to which Englishmen had hitherto been unaccustomed, and for such a structure the English language had hitherto contained no name. But now the tall, square, massive donjon of the Normans, a class of buildings whose grandest type is to be seen in the Conqueror's own Tower of London and in the more enriched keep of Rochester, began, doubtless on a far humbler scale, to rear itself over the dwellings of Englishmen. Normandy had, during the minority of William, been covered with such buildings, and his wise policy had levelled many of them with the ground. Such strongholds, strange to English eyes, bore no English name, but retained their French designation of castles.

Such a castle

1 Richard, the son of Scrob or Scrupe, and son-in-law of Robert the Deacon (Flor. Wig. 1052), appears in Domesday, 186 b. His son Osbern, of whom we shall hear again, appears repeatedly in Domesday as a great landowner in Herefordshire and elsewhere. See 176 b, 180, 186 b, 260. 2 On the castles and the English feeling with regard to them, see Appendix S.

3 See vol. i. n. 92.

CHAP. VII. at once became a centre of all kinds of oppression. Men were harboured in it, and deeds were done within its impregnable walls, such as could find no place in the open hall of the ancient English Thegn. So it was with the castle which was now raised within the government of the eldest son of Godwine. The Welshmen, as they are called -that is, not Britons, but Frenchmen, Gal-Welsh, not Bret-Welsh-built their castle, and "wrought all the harm and besmear "—an expressive word which has dropped out of the language-"to the King's men thereabouts that they might."1 Here then was another wrong, a wrong perhaps hardly second to the wrong which had been done at Dover. Alike in Kent and in Herefordshire men had felt the sort of treatment which they were to expect if the King's foreign favourites were to be any longer tolerated. The time was now come for Englishmen to make a stand. The Earl of the West-Saxons was not a man to be sons meet wanting to his country at such a moment. He, with his sons Swegen and Harold, gathered together the force of stone with the force of their three Earldoms at Beverstone in Gloucestershire. their EarlThis is a point on the Cotswolds, not far from the Abbey of Malmesbury, which is still marked by a castle of far later date, the remaining fragments of which form one of the most remarkable antiquities of the district. At this time it seems to have been a royal possession, and it may

Godwine

and his

at Bever

doms.

1 Chron. Petrib. 1048. "pa hæfdon pa Welisce menn gewroht ænne castel on Herefordscire on Swegenes eorles folgode, and wrohton alc þæra harme and bismere þæs cynges mannan þær abutan þe hi mihton." These Welshmen are undoubtedly Frenchmen (see Earle, p. 345 ; Lingard, i. 337; Lappenberg, 508); Britons did not build castles, nor were they on such terms of friendly intercourse with King Eadward. William of Malmesbury's misconception of the whole passage (ii. 199) is amusing; “ut Walenses compescerent qui, tyrannidem in Regem meditantes, oppidum in pago Herefordensi obfirmaverant, ubi tunc Swanus, unus ex filiis Godwini, militiæ prætendebat excubias." This last is simply a misunderstanding of the words "on Swegenes eorles folgode," which seems merely to mean "within Swegen's government."

GODWINE AND HIS SONS MEET AT BEVERSTONE.

139

of Siward,

not unlikely have contained a royal house, which would pro- CHAP. VII. bably be at the disposal of Swegen as Earl of the shire.1 At Beverstone then assembled the men of Wessex, of EastAnglia, and of that part of Mercia which was under the jurisdiction of Swegen. They came, it would seem, ready either for debate or for battle, as might happen. We must here again remember what the ancient constitution of our National Assemblies really was. If all actually came who had a strict right to come, the Gemót was a ready-made army. On the other hand we have seen that an army, gathered together as an army, sometimes took on itself the functions of a Gemót.2 Meanwhile, while Godwine The forces assembled his men at Beverstone, the forces of the Earl- Leofric, doms of Siward, Leofric, and Ralph were assembling round and Ralph the King at Gloucester. Each of the two gatherings might Gloucester. pass for the local Witenagemót of one half of England. At the head of the men of three Earldoms Godwine was still bolder than he had been when he had stood alone in the royal presence. He then had only refused to punish the innocent; he now demanded the punishment of the guilty. His first steps however were conciliatory. He first demanded an audience for himself and his sons, as Earls of the three Earldoms; they were ready and anxious to take counsel with the King and his Witan on all matters touching the honour of the King and his people.3 He

1 Beverstone appears in Domesday (163) only as an appendage to the royal lordship of Berkeley, and is not mentioned as a possession of God wine. Otherwise one would have expected to find one of the Earl's many houses chosen as the place of meeting. But perhaps the suggestion in the text may explain matters.

On the other hand the mysterious connexion between Godwine and Berkeley (see Appendix E) must not be forgotten.

2 See above, p. 103.

3 Chron. Petrib. 1048. "Ɖa com Godwine eorl and Swegen eorl and Harold eorl togædere æt Byferesstane and manig mann mid heom, to don þæt hi woldon faran to heora cyne-hlaforde, and to þam witan eallon þe mid him gegaderode wæron, þæt hi pas cynges ræd hæfdon, and his fultum,

assemble at

offers to the

King re

fused through the in

fluence of

men.

Godwine demands

the sur

render of Eustace and the

CHAP. VII. even offered to renew his compurgation on the old charge Godwine's of the death of Alfred.' But the Frenchmen swarmed around the King; they filled his ears with the usual charges against Godwine and his sons; they assured him. that the only object of the Earls was to betray him. the French- Eadward therefore refused the audience, and declined to receive the compurgation.3 Godwine then took a higher tone; messages were sent in his name and in the name of the men of the three Earldoms, demanding the surrender of Eustace and his men and of the Frenchmen at Richard's Castle. The demand was a bold one; Godwine asked for criminals. the surrender of the person of a foreign prince, the King's September own favourite and brother-in-law. But the demand, if bold, was perfectly justifiable. The two parties of Frenchmen had been guilty of outrageous crimes within the jurisdictions of Godwine and Swegen respectively. The King, instead of bringing them to justice, was sheltering them, and was even listening to their charges against innocent Their lawful judges, the Earls of the two districts, were ready, at the head of the Witan of their Earldoms, to

other

8, 1051.

men.

and ealra witena, hu hi mihton pas cynges bismer awrecan and ealles peodscipes."

1 Vita Eadw. 401. "Quod ubi per quosdam fideles comperit [Godwinus], missis legatis, pacem Regis petivit, legem purgandi se de objecto crimine frustra prætulit."

2 Chron. Petrib. "Da wæron pa Wælisce menn ætforan mid pam cynge, and forwregdon pa eorlas þæt hi ne moston cuman on his eagon gesihde, forðan hi sædon þæt hi woldon cuman þider for þes cynges

swicdome."

3 Vita Eadw. p. 401. "Nam adeo super hujus sceleris fide animum Rex induxerat ut nec verbum aliquod oblatæ purgationis audire posset." 4 Chron. Wig. 1052. "Ealle gearwe to wige ongean bone cyng, buton man ageafe Eustatsius and his men heom to handsceofe, and eac pa Frencyscan be on pan castelle wæron." "The castle" undoubtedly means Richard's Castle, as it must mean in the entry of the next year in the same Chronicle. The Frenchmen in the castle are distinguished from Eustace and his men. So Lappenberg, 508. Florence (1051) clearly misunderstood the passage when he translated it "insuper et Nortmannos et Bononienses qui castellum in Doruverniæ clivo tenuerant." See Appendix S.

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