CHAP. IX. the last at least mainly of wood.

Over all rose the square mass of the Norman donjon, an ominous foreboding of the days which were soon to come. All, church, castle, houses, fell before the wasting arms of Ælfgar and Gruffydd. They went away rejoicing in their victory and in the rich booty which they carried. The blow seems to have 1055, and broken the hearts of the two Prelates whose flock suffered Æthelstan, so fearfully. Tremerin died before the end of the year, February 10, 1056. and Ethelstan early in the year following.1

Deaths of

Tremerin,

Harold

sent

Welsh.

King Eadward was now in his usual winter-quarters at Gloucester. Either the time of the Christmas Gemót was hastened, or the King, in such an emergency, acted on his own responsibility. The defence of the country and the chastisement of the rebels could no longer be left in the hands of his incapable nephew. The occasion called for the wisest head and the strongest arm in the whole realm. Though his own government had not been touched, the against the Earl of the West-Saxons was bidden to gather a force from all England, and to attack the Welsh in their own land. It is not unlikely that his brother was, as in a later war with the same enemy, summoned from Northumberland to his help. Late as was the season of the year, Compari- Harold did not shrink from the task. This seems to have son of his earlier and been his first experience of Welsh warfare, and we are not later Welsh told whether he now adopted those special means of adaptcampaigns. ing his operations to the peculiar nature of the country, which he tried so successfully in his later and more famous campaign. He then, as we shall see, caused his soldiers to

1063.

1 Chronn. Ab. and Wig. and Flor. Wig. 1055, 1056.

2 Florence, at this point, seems quite to boil over with admiration for Harold; "Quod ubi Regi innotuit, de totâ mox Angliâ exercitum congregari jussit, cui Glawornæ congregato strenuum Ducem Haroldum præfecit, qui, devote jussis obtemperans, Griffinum et Algarum impigre insequitur, ac fines Walanorum audacter ingressus, ultra Straddele castrametatus est; sed illi, quia virum fortem et bellicosum ipsum sciebant, cum eo committere bellum non audentes, in Suth-Waliam fugerunt."

HAROLD'S FIRST WELSH CAMPAIGN.

393

adopt the light arms and loose array of the Welsh, and CHAP. IX. thereby proved more than a match for them at their own weapons. The story seems rather to imply that he did not do so on this occasion, and that the later stroke of his genius was the result of the lessons which he now learned. In neither case did a Welsh enemy dare to meet Harold in a pitched battle; but there is a marked difference between the two campaigns; in the earlier one the Welsh successfully escaped Harold's pursuit, while in the later one they were unable to do so. Harold gathered his army at Gloucester; he passed the Welsh border, and pitched his camp beyond the frontier district of Straddele.1 But the main point is that Gruffydd and Ælfgar, who had marched so boldly to the conflict with Ralph, altogether shrank from giving battle to Harold. They escaped into South Wales. Harold, finding it vain to pursue such an enemy, gave up the attempt. He dismissed the greater part of his army, that is probably the militia of the shires, merely bidding them keep themselves in readiness to withstand the enemy in case of any sudden inroad.2 With the rest Harold of his troops, that is probably with his own following, Hereford. he went on to take measures for securing the important post of Hereford against future attacks. The castle had been levelled with the ground, the church was a ruin, the houses of the townsmen were burned. Harold set himself to repair the mischief, but his notions of defending a city

1 See Flor. Wig. 1055. "Straddele" or "Stratelei" (see Domesday,

182 6, 186, 187) is a border district reckoned along with Herefordshire in Domesday. Here also we find (182 b) "unam hidam Walescam T. R. E. vastatam;" and it is added, "Hujus terræ maxima pars erat in defensu Regis." Roger of Wendover (i. 494), in a fine fit of exaggeration, carries Harold as far as Snowdon; "Castra usque ad Snaudunam perduxit.” Mr. Woodward (History of Wales, 210) makes Straddele to be Ystrad-clwyd, the southern Strathclyde of Denbighshire, but the witness of Florence and Domesday seems decisive.

2 Fl. Wig. 1055. "Majorem exercitus partem ibi dimisit, mandans eis ut suis adversariis, si res exposceret, viriliter resisterent."

fortifies

CHAP. IX. were different from those of the Frenchman Ralph. The first object of the English Earl was to secure the town itself, not to provide a stronghold for its governor. It does not appear that he rebuilt the castle, but he at once supplied the city itself with the needful defences. So important a border town was no longer to be left open to

the raids of every enemy and every rebel.

As a military

measure, to meet a temporary emergency, he surrounded the town with a ditch and a strong wall. This wall, in its first estate, though strengthened by gates and bars, seems to have been merely a dyke of earth and rough stones. But, before the reign of Eadward was ended, Harold, then Earl of the shire, followed the example of Eadward at Towcester and Ethelstan at Exeter, and surrounded the town with a wall of masonry. The wooden houses of the citizens could soon be rebuilt. Hereford was soon again

peopled with burghers, both within and without the wall, some of them the men of the King and others the men of Earl Harold. The minster had been burned, but we must

1 I infer this from a comparison of the Chronicles, Florence, and Domesday. The Abingdon Chronicle says, "And Harald Eorl let dician da die abutan þæt port pa hwile." Florence says more distinctly, "Herefordam rediens, vallo lato et alto illam cinxit, portis et seris munivit." These accounts, as well as the probability of the case, point to a mere “vallum.” But in Domesday, 179, we read of there being a "murus" at Hereford in the time of King Eadward, which seems to imply a stone wall. Nothing is more likely than that Harold should throw up a hasty mound now, and afterwards make a more elaborate fortification, when, as I shall presently show, Hereford came under his immediate government. On the walls of Exeter and Towcester see vol. i. pp. 308, 315.

2 One hundred and three burghers held of the King, twenty-seven of Earl Harold, whose customs were the same as those of the King's men. The customs are detailed at great length. The burghers were liable to military service against the Welsh, and they paid a fine of forty shilling s to the King in case of disobedience to the Sheriff's summons for that purpose. Some served with horses. The Reeve paid twelve pounds to the King and six to Earl Harold, that is the Earl's third penny. The King had a mint, and also the Bishop. The whole details are exceedingly curious, and I shall probably have to refer to them again,

HAROLD RESTORES HEREFORD.

395

remember how laxly that word is often taken. All its CHAP. IX. woodwork, all its fittings and ornaments, were of course destroyed, the walls would be blackened and damaged, but it was capable of at least temporary repair, as Bishop Æthelstan was buried in it next year.1 Under the care of Earl Harold, Hereford was again a city.

Mes- Peace of Billingsley. 1055.

mildness

warfare.

Meanwhile Ælfgar and Gruffydd sued for peace. sages went to and fro, and at last a conference was held between them and Harold at Billingsley in Shropshire, a little west of the Severn. Harold was never disposed to press hardly on an enemy, and he may possibly have felt that he was himself in some sort the cause of all that had happened, if he had promoted any ill-considered charges against his rival. In fact, rude and ferocious as those General times were in many ways, the struggles of English poli- of English tical life were then carried on with much greater mildness political than they were in many later generations. Blood was often lightly shed, but it was hardly ever shed by way of judicial sentence. A victorious party never sent the vanquished leaders either to a scaffold or to a dungeon. Banishment was the invariable sentence, and banishment in those days. commonly supplied the means of return. Thus when Gruffydd and Ælfgar sought for peace, it was easily granted to them; Elfgar was even restored to the Earldom which he had forfeited. It was probably thought that he was less dangerous as Earl of the East-Angles than as a banished man who could at any time cause an invasion of the country from Wales or Ireland. His fleet sailed to Chester, and there awaited the pay which he had promised the crews.3 Whether the payment was defrayed out of the spoils of

1 Chronn. Ab. and Wig. Flor. Wig. 1056. "Cujus corpus Herefordam delatum, in ecclesiâ quam ipse a fundamentis construxerat, est tumulatum." Yet he had the year before said, "monasterio quod . . . Æthelstanus construxerat... combusto." 2 See vol. i. p. 490, and above, p. 263.

3 Chron. Ab. 1055. "And þæt sciplio gewende to Legeceastre, and þær abiden heora males be Ælfgar heom behét." So Florence.

Elfgar restored

CHAP. IX. Herefordshire we are not told. Ælfgar now came to the King, and was formally restored to his dignity. This was done in the Christmas Gemót, in which we may suppose Earldom. that the terms of the peace of Billingsley were formally

to his

Christmas,

1055-1056. confirmed.

England by Gruf

fydd and Magnus. 1056.

Invasion of Peace with Gruffydd was easily decreed in words, but it was not so easily carried out in act. The restless Briton eagerly caught at any opportunity of carrying his ravages beyond the Saxon border. The Welsh Annals here fill up a gap in our own, and make the story more intelligible. With the help of a Scandinavian chief who is described as Magnus the son of Harold,2 Gruffydd made a new incursion into Herefordshire. We may well believe that the restoration and fortification of Hereford was felt as a thorn in his side. This time the defence of the city and shire was not left in the hands of any Earl, fearful or daring, but fell to one of the warlike Prelates in whom that age was so fertile. Death of Bishop Æthelstan, as I have already said, died early in the Bishop Æthelstan. year at Bosbury, an episcopal lordship lying under the February western slope of the Malvern Hills. His burial in Saint

10, 1056.

Æthelberht's minster must have been the first great public ceremony in the restored city. In the choice of a successor, Eadward, or rather Harold, was guided at least as much

1 The Worcester Chronicle, which, as well as (still more strangely) that of Peterborough, wholly leaves out Harold's exploits, seems to record Ælfgar's restoration with some degree of sarcasm ; "And pa pa hi hæfdon mæst to yfele gedồn, man gerædde pone ræd, þæt man Ælfgar Eorl geinnlagode, and ageaf him his eorldom, and eall þæt him ofgenumen was.”

2 The Annales Cambria have "Magnus filius Haraldi vastavit regionem Anglorum, auxiliante Grifino Rege Britonum." The Brut gives him the strange description "Magnus uab Heralt, brenhin Germania," which I do not understand. Was he Ælfgar's Irish ally, defrauded of his pay? The entry the year before, about waiting at Chester, looks like it. But it is just possible that Magnus the son of Harold may mean the son of Harold Hardrada.

Fl. Wig. 1056. "In episcopali villâ quæ vocatur Bosanbyrig decessit." A fine thirteenth century church and some remains of the episcopal manor still exist.