CHAP. IX. than Harold had. Whether Harold had begun to aspire to the Crown or not, there can be little doubt that William had, and William was still by no means without influence at the English Court. There were still Normans about Eadward, Bishop William of London, Robert the son of Wymare, Hugolin the Treasurer, and others whom Godwine or Harold had, perhaps unwisely, exempted from the general proscription. To shut out-by some underhand means, if at all—a prince of the blood from the presence of his uncle and sovereign, looks much more like the act of a party of this kind than the act of a man whom both office and character made the first man in the realm. The thing, if done at all, was clearly some wretched court intrigue, the fitting work of a foreign faction. The Earl of the West-Saxons, had his interests been concerned in the matter, would have set about hindering the Ætheling's but, more succession in quite another way. But after all, it is far probably than either, more likely that the fact that the two Eadwards never the result met was not owing either to the partizans of Harold or to the partizans of William, but that it was simply the natural result of the sickness of which the Etheling presently died. of sickness. Surmise of Sir F. that Harold caused the death of the Etheling. Another, and a far worse, insinuation against the great Palgrave Earl hardly needs to be refuted. Among all the calumnies with which, for eight hundred years, the name of Harold has been loaded, there is one of which suggestion has been reserved for our own times. Norman enemies have distorted every action of his life; they have misrepresented every circumstance of his position; they have charged him with crimes which he never committed; they have looked at all his acts through such a mist of prejudice that the victory of Stamfordbridge is changed under their hands into a wicked fratricide.1 But no writer of his own time, 1 See vol. iii. p. 725. NO GROUND FOR SUSPICION AGAINST HAROLD. 413 or of any time before our own,1 has ever ventured to in- CHAP. IX. sinuate that Earl Harold had a hand in the death of the Ætheling Eadward. That uncharitable surmise was reserved for an illustrious writer of our own time, in whom depreciation of the whole House of Godwine had become a sort of passion.2 It is enough to say that, had there been the faintest ground for such an accusation, had the idea ever entered into the mind of any man of Harold's own age, some Norman slanderer or other would have been delighted to seize upon it.3 Nothing is more easy than to charge any man with having secretly made away with another man by whose death he profits, and the charge is one which, as it is easy to bring, is sometimes very hard to disprove. For that very reason, it is a charge on which the historian always looks with great suspicion, even when it is known to have been brought at the time and to have been currently believed at the time. The general infamy of Eadric is fully established, but we need not believe in every one of the secret murders which rumour charged him with having committed or instigated. Still less need we believe the tales which charge the Great William with having more than once stooped to the trade of a secret poisoner. When we think how easy the charge is to bring, and how recklessly it has been brought at all times, the mere fact that no such 1 Unless indeed some tradition of the sort had found its way into the confused mind of Saxo (p. 203), when he made Harold murder King Eadward. He may have been thinking of Eadward the Ætheling, or he may have been writing purely at random. 2 Palgrave, Hist. Ang. Sax. 352. "He was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral; and sad and ruthful [rueful?] were the forebodings of the English, when they saw him borne to his grave. . . . Harold gained exceedingly by this event. Did the Atheling die a natural death? ... The lamentations of the chroniclers seem to imply more than meets the ear." Mr. C. H. Pearson (Hist. of Eng. in the Early and Middle Ages, i. 244) does not scruple to repeat the insinuation. 3 This is well put by Lappenberg in the passage quoted above, p. 411. * See vol. iii. pp. 207, 316. CHAP. IX. charge was ever brought against Harold does in truth Heaca, Bishop of the South Saxons, dies. succeeds. 1057. Death of Earl Leofric. redound greatly to his honour. Calumny itself instinctively shrank from laying such a crime to the charge of such a man. William was, as I believe, as guiltless of any such baseness as Harold himself. But the charge did not seem wholly inconsistent with the crafty and tortuous policy of the Norman Duke. The West-Saxon Earl, ambitious no doubt and impetuous, but ever frank, generous, and conciliatory, was at once felt to be incapable of such a deed. Three other deaths followed among the great men of the land, two of which were of no small political importance. It was not of any special moment, as far as we know, when Heaca, Bishop of the South-Saxons, died, and was succeeded in the chair of Selsey by Ethelric, a monk of Ethelric Christ Church, of whom we shall hear in the days of the Conqueror. It was quite another matter when the great Earl of the Mercians, so long the honoured mediator between opposing races and opposing interests, died in August 31, a good old age in his own house at Bromley in Staffordshire.2 Of all the churches and monasteries which had been enriched and adorned by the bounty of Leofric and Godgifu, none was dearer to them than the great minster of Coventry, the city with which their names are inseparably connected in one of those silly legends which have helped to displace our early history. There Leofric was buried in the church which he and his wife had raised from the foundations, and had enriched with gifts which 1057. 3 1 Chronn. Wig. 1057, Petrib. and Cant. 1058; Fl. Wig. 1057. 2 Fl. Wig. 1057. "Laudabilis Comes Leofricus, Ducis Leofwini filius [Earl Leofric, son of Ealdorman Leofwine, see vol. i. p. 719], in propriâ villâ quæ dicitur Bromleage, in bonâ decessit senectute, ii. Kal. Sept." He had been Earl at least twenty-five years, perhaps thirty-three. 3 See above, p. 48. * Florence (u. s.) distinctly says that Leofric and Godgifu built the DEATHS OF LEOFRIC AND RALPH. 415 made it wealthier and more magnificent than all the CHAP. IX. minsters of England.1 Godgifu survived her husband many years; she saw her son and grandsons rise and fall; she saw her granddaughter share first a vassal and then an Imperial Crown, and then vanish out of sight as a homeless widow. At last she herself died, still in the possession of some part at least of her vast estates, a subject of the Norman invader.2 5 sible pre A few months after the death of Leofric came the death Death of Earl Ralph. of the stranger who had seemingly held a subordinate December Earldom under his authority. Ralph, Earl of the Mage- 21, 1057. sætas, the French nephew of King Eadward, died near the end of the year, and was buried in the distant minster of Peterborough,3 to which he had been a benefactor.4 I have already started the question whether the thoughts His posof Eadward had ever turned towards him as a possible tensions to successor. After the death of the Etheling, the hopes the Crown. of Ralph and his brother Walter, if they had any, might again revive. But if so, death soon cut short any such schemes. Walter, the reigning prince of a foreign state, would have no chance. If any such prince were to be chosen, it would be better at once to take the renowned Duke of the Normans than the insignificant Count of Mantes. But Ralph, whether he was ever actually thought of or not, was clearly a possible candidate; his church; 1 Fl. Wig. 1057. terio, quanta tunc temporis habebatur in illo." in Cod. Dipl. iv. 253 can hardly be genuine as was not reigning in 1043. Chron. Wig. and Flor. Wig. in anno. * See Appendix II. See above, p. 367. CHAP. IX. death therefore, following so soon after the death of the Ætheling, removed another obstacle from the path of Harold. Redistri bution of Elfgar Earl of the The deaths of the two Earls involved a redistribution of Earldoms. the chief governments of England, which would naturally Christmas, be carried out in the following Christmas Gemót. The 1057-1058? Earldom of the Mercians, such parts of it at least as had been under the immediate authority of Leofric, was conferred on his son Elfgar.1 It shows how vast must have been the hereditary influence of his house, when such a trust could not be refused to a man who had so lately trampled on every principle of loyalty and patriotism. But care was taken to make him as little dangerous as possible. Elfgar may have hoped that, on the death of Ralph, the Earldom of the Magesætas would again be merged in Mercia, and that, excepting the shires attached to Northumberland, he might rule over the whole realm of Offa and Ethelflæd. But policy altogether forbade that the Herefordshire border should be again placed in the hands of one who had so lately acted as the ally of Gruffydd. We know not whether the Welsh King had already entered into a still closer relation with the English Earl by his marriage with Elfgar's beautiful daughter Ealdgyth. The date of that marriage is not recorded; it may have already taken place, or it may have happened on the next occasion, one distant only by a few months, when we shall find the names of Gruffydd and Elfgar coupled together. But if the Welsh King was already the son-in-law of the Mercian Earl, there was a still further reason for placing some special safeguard on that border of the realm. In short, the government of Herefordshire was so important that it could not be safely placed in any hands but those of the foremost man in England. There is distinct evidence to show that, 2 See Appendix II. Marriage of Gruffydd and Eaid gyth. 1 See Appendix G. |