ELFGAR RESTORED TO HIS EARLDOM.

397

Bishop of

1056.

in battle. June 16, The 1056.

by military as by ecclesiastical considerations. The see of CHAP. IX. the venerable and pious Æthelstan was filled by a Prelate Leofgar, of whom, during a very short career, we hear only in the Hereford. March 27, character of a warrior. This was Leofgar, a chaplain of the Earl, whose warlike doings seem to have been commemorated in popular ballads. He laid aside his chrism and his rood, his ghostly weapons, and took to his spear and his sword and went forth to the war against Gruffydd the Welsh King. But the warfare of this valiant churchman was unlucky. He had not been three months a His death Bishop before he was killed, and with him his priests, as also Ælfnoth the Sheriff2 and many other good men. Chronicler goes on to complain bitterly of the heavy grievances attending on a Welsh war. It is clear that no way had yet been found out of really quelling the active sons of the mountains, when their spirits were thoroughly aroused by an able and enterprising prince like Gruffydd. The complaint does not dwell on losses in actual fight, which were most likely comparatively small. The Welsh Character would seldom venture on an actual battle with the Eng- with Gruflish, even when commanded by captains very inferior to fydd. Harold. They would not run such a risk, except when they were either supported by Scandinavian allies, or

1 The Abingdon and Worcester Chronicles here get poetical; Peterborough is, just here, strangely meagre; "And man sette Leofgar to biscupe; se wæs Haroldes Eorles mæsse-preost; se werede his kenepas on his preosthade, oddat he was biscop. Se forlet his crisman and his brode, his gastlican wæpna, and feng to his spere and to his sweorde æfter his biscuphade, and swa fór to fyrde ongean Griffin pone Wyliscan cing." Yet a fighting Bishop was not so wonderful a thing in those times. See vol. i. p. 391. William of Malmesbury, Gest. Pont. 163, makes some confusion, when he says, "Leovegar. Hunc tempore Regis Edwardi Grifin Rex Walensium urbe crematâ expulit sede et vitâ." And Roger of Wendover makes some further confusion or other when he writes (i. 495), "Ethelstanus Herefordensis præsul obiit, et Levegarus, Ducis Haroldi capellanus, successit; hunc præsulem, in omni religione perfectum, Griffinus Rex Walensium, Herefordensi civitate crematâ, peremit."

2 Was Elfnoth succeeded by Osbern? See p. 345.

of the war

CHAP. IX. else when they were able to take the Saxons at some dis

Ealdred

holds the see of Hereford with that

of Wor

cester.

advantage. What the Chronicler paints is the wearing, cheerless, bootless kind of warfare which is carried on with a restless enemy who can never be brought to a regular battle. It is not ill success in fighting that he speaks of, but the wretchedness of endless marching and encamping, and the loss of men and horses, evidently by weariness rather than by the sword. The wisest heads in the nation agreed that a stop must, at any cost, be put to this state of things. On the death of Leofgar, the see of Hereford was committed to Bishop Ealdred, whose energy seems to have shrunk from no amount of burthens, ecclesiastical, military, or civil. By the counsel of this Prelate and of the Earls Leofric and Harold, the Welsh King was reconciled to his reconciled English over-lord.3 This expression may be only a decorous way of attributing to the King personally a measure which was really the act of the three able statesmen who are represented as intervening between him and his dangerous vassal. But Eadward did sometimes exert a will of his own, and when he did so, his will was often in favour of more violent courses than seemed wise or just in the eyes of his counsellors. It is quite possible then that Eadward was, as he well might be, strongly incensed against Gruffydd, and that it needed all the arguments of Leofric and Harold, and of Ealdred so renowned as a peacemaker,1 to persuade the King to come to any terms with one so

Gruffydd

to Ead

ward. 1056.

1 Chron. Ab. 1056. "Eaforðlic is to atellanne seo gedrecednes, and seo fare eall, and seo fyrdung, and þæt geswine and manna fyll and eac horsa, be eall Englahere dreal."

2 See above, pp. 152, 361, 371. The Chronicles distinctly say, "Ealdred bisceop feng to pam bisceoprice pe Leofgar hæfde." Florence rather softens this, when he says, "Aldredo Wigornensi præsuli, donec antistes constitueretur, commissus est episcopatus Herefordensis." He kept it for four years, holding also the Bishoprick of Wiltshire during part of the time. $ Flor. Wig.

"Idem episcopus et Comites Leofricus et Haroldus cum Rege Eadwardo Walanorum Regem Griffinum pacificaverunt."

See above, p. 86.

PEACE WITH GRUFFYDD.

399

stained with treason and sacrilege. And undoubtedly, at CHAP. IX. this distance of time, there does seem somewhat of national humiliation in the notion of making peace with Gruffydd, after so many invasions and so many breaches of faith, on any terms but those of his unreserved submission. We must take the names of Harold, Leofric, and Ealdred as a His oath of homage. guaranty that such a course was necessary. Gruffydd did indeed so far humble himself as to swear to be for the future a faithful Under-king to Eadward.' It would also seem that the rebellious vassal was mulcted of a small portion of his territories. Eadward had, at some earlier He loses time, granted to Gruffydd certain lands, seemingly that his lands in portion of the present shire of Chester which lies west of the Dee. These lands were now forfeited, and they were restored to the see of Lichfield and to other English possessors from whom they had been originally taken.2 We know not whether the grant was an original act of Eadward, or whether it was a convenient legal confirmation of some irregular seizure made by the Welsh King. Gruffydd was perhaps bought off in this way after some of his former incursions, most likely at the moment of his temporary 1046. cooperation with Swegen.3 If so, the restoration of the alienated lands was now required as a condition of peace.

1 Chron. Ab. 1056. "Swa þæt Griffin swor adas þæt he weolde beon Eadwarde Kinge hold Underkinge and unswicigende."

2 Domesday, 263. "Rex Eadwardus dedit Regi Grifino totam terram quæ jacebat trans aquam quæ De vocatur. Sed postquam ipse Grifin forisfecit ei, abstulit ab eo hanc terram, et reddidit episcopo de Cestre [the see had been moved thither before the Survey. See Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 164 b] et omnibus suis hominibus qui antea ipsam tenebant." A "forisfactio" on the part of Gruffydd can hardly refer to his loss of his whole kingdom in 1063, and this moment of reconciliation and homage is obviously the most natural time for a partial surrender. We have here also another example of church lands being dealt with for political purposes in a way which would naturally give rise to those charges of sacrilege against Harold and others of which I have spoken elsewhere. See Appendix E.

3 See above, p. 87.

Cheshire.

1277.

CHAP. IX. This homage of Gruffydd, and this surrender of lands, remind us of the homage and surrender made, under the like circumstances, by the last successor of Gruffydd to a greater Edward.1 As for the Welsh King's oath, it was kept after the usual fashion, that is, till another favourable opportunity occurred for breaking it.

Coopera

tion of Harold, Leofric,

and Ealdred.

1051.

One other point may be noted in connexion with this last transaction. That is the way in which Harold, Leofric, and Ealdred are described as acting together. If this implies no further cooperation, it at least implies that these three took the same side in a debate in the Witenagemót. Yet Leofric was the father of Harold's rival Ælfgar, and the last time that the names of Harold and Ealdred were coupled together was when Ealdred was sent to follow after Harold on his journey to Bristol. But now all these old grudges seem to have been forgotten. In fact not one of the three men was likely to prolong a grudge needlessly. Harold's policy was always a policy of conciliation; if-what we can by no means affirm-his conduct with regard to the outlawry of Ælfgar was at all of another character, it was the last example in his history. Ealdred was emphatically the peace-maker. He had no doubt long ago made his own peace with Harold, and he had probably used his influence to reconcile him with any with whom reconciliation was still needful. Leofric had often been opposed to Godwine, and he must have looked with uncomfortable feelings on his wonderful rise. But he had never been a bitter or violent enemy; we have always found him playing the part of a mediator between extreme parties. There is no trace of any personal quarrel between him and Harold. He may have thought himself wronged in the outlawry of his son: but he could not fail to condemn Elfgar's later conduct and to approve that of Harold. He must have admired Harold's energetic

1 See the whole account in W. Rishanger, 90, ed. Riley.

COOPERATION OF HAROLD, LEOFRIC, AND EALDRED.

401

carriage in the Welsh campaign and in the restoration of CHAP. IX. Hereford. And Leofric doubtless felt, whether Elfgar felt or not, some gratitude to Harold for his conciliatory behaviour at Billingsley, and for the restoration of Elfgar to his Earldom. All that we know of the good old Earl of the Mercians leads us to look on him as a man who was quite capable of sacrificing the interests and passions of himself or his family to the general welfare of his country.

§ 3. From Harold's first Campaign against Gruffydd to the Deaths of Leofric and Ralph. 1055–1057.

seeks to

Malmes

1055.

A few detached ecclesiastical events must be mentioned Hermann, Bishop of as happening in the course of these two years of war with Wiltshire, Gruffydd. The Bishoprick of Wiltshire was, it will be re- obtain the membered, now held by Hermann, one of the Lotharingian Abbey of Prelates who were favoured by Godwine and Harold as bury. a sort of middle term between Englishmen and Frenchmen.1 This preferment was not, at least in Hermann's eyes, a very desirable one. The church of Ramsbury, the cathedral church of his diocese, unlike other churches of its own rank, seems not to have been furnished with any company of either monks or canons, and the Bishop therefore found himself somewhat lonely. The revenues also of the see were small, an evil which seems to have pressed more heavily on a stranger than it would have done on a native. The Bishops before him, Hermann said, had been natives of the country, and the poverty of their ecclesiastical income had been eked out by the bounty of English friends and kinsfolk. He, a stranger,

1 See above, pp. 79-81, and 357.

2

2 Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. ap. Scriptt. p. Bed. 142. 'Ejus animi magnitudini, vel potius cupiditati, quum non sufficeret rerum angustia, quoniam apud Ramesberiam nec clericorum conventus, nec quo sustentaretur erat."