CHAP. X. outlawry of Tostig, and the election of Morkere, were both utterly illegal. The massacre and plunder at York, above all the ravages in Northamptonshire, were still more thoroughly unjustifiable. All these were doings which, in one man or in a few men, would have called for exemplary punishment. But in a case like this, where the guilty parties were the great bulk of the people of Northumberland and of several shires of Mercia, it was absurd to talk of punishment. The question was not a question of punishment, but one of peace or war. Was it either right or expedient, in the general interest of the Kingdom of England, for Wessex and East-Anglia to make war upon Northumberland and Mercia? The object of such a war would have been simply to force on Northumberland an Earl whom the Northumbrian people had rejected, and who had shown himself utterly unfit for his post. The royal authority would undoubtedly suffer some humiliation by yielding to demands which had been backed by an armed force; still such humiliation would be a less evil than a civil war, the issue of which would be very doubtful, and whose results, in any case, would prove most baneful, if not ruinous, to the country. As a brother, Harold had done all for his brother that could be asked of him, in his proposal made in the first conference at Northhampton. It could not be his duty-I quote the judgement of a writer of the next age not specially favourable to Harold1-to bring such untold evils on his country merely for the chance of restoring his brother to the authority which he had so deeply abused. Harold therefore, as a statesman and a patriot, made up his mind to yield to the demands of the insurgents.

His private

interest.

It is equally plain that exactly the same course was dictated to him by his own interests as a candidate for the

1 Will. Malms. ii. 200. "Haroldus . . . qui magis quietem patriæ quam fratris commodum attenderet."

POSITION OF HAROLD.

493

agreement

Crown. He had lost in every way by the revolt. Hitherto CHAP. X. all England, except Eadwine's share of Mercia, had been Complete under the government of himself and his brothers. The of the two. House of Godwine held four out of the five great Earldoms; the House of Leofric held only one. Now things were turned about. The House of Godwine still held three Earldoms, while the House of Leofric held but two; but the two which were held by the House of Leofric formed a larger, and a far more compact and united, territory than the three which were held by the House of Godwine. The opposition of a candidate from the rival family, or a proposal for the division of the Kingdom, was incomparably more likely, now that the vast region between the Welland and the Tweed was practically under the control of a single will, and that a will which Harold had small means of influencing. But deeply as Harold had lost by the Northhumbrian revolution, he would have lost still more by an attempt to bring about a counter-revolution by force. Whether such an attempt succeeded or failed, the result would be much the same. In either case the sons of Elfgar, and the vast district over which they ruled, would become, not merely indifferent or unfriendly to his claims, but avowedly and bitterly hostile. In the face of their open enmity, his succession to the whole Kingdom would be hopeless; he might possibly become King of the West-Saxons; he could never become King of the English. With men like Eadwine and Morkere the tie of gratitude was likely to be but weak. Still it was the wisest course to make the best even of so weak a tie. It was wise to do the rival Earls a good turn, and so to take his chance of winning their good will, rather than at once to turn them into deadly foes. It was true that every step by which he conciliated Eadwine and Morkere would make a bitterer enemy of his own brother. But Harold's mere hesitation and moderation were already in the eyes of Tostig an unpardon

CHAP. X. able offence. His brother's enmity he had won already, and he could hardly foresee that that enmity would one day be still more dangerous to him than any opposition that was to be dreaded from Mercia or Northumberland.

Gemót of
Oxford.

1065.

2

On these grounds then, public and private, Harold, October 28, armed, it would now seem, with the full royal authority, determined to yield to the insurgents. While their answer was under discussion in the King's Gemót,' they had been ravaging Northamptonshire, and they had since entered the Earldom of Gyrth and had advanced as far as Oxford. There, in the frontier town of Mercia and Wessex, the town where the common affairs of the two great divisions of the Kingdom had been so often discussed, the Earl of the West-Saxons summoned a general Witenagemót of the whole realm. The Assembly met on the Feast of Saint Simon and Saint Jude. After one more attempt to bring about a reconciliation between Tostig and the NorthumThe Acts brians, Harold yielded every point. The irregular acts of the Northumbrian Gemót were confirmed by lawful authority. The deposition and outlawry of Tostig, the election of Morkere to the Northern Earldom, were legalized. But the outlying parts of the government of Siward and Tostig, the shires of Northampton and Huntingdon, Waltheof were now detached from Northumberland, and were beof North- stowed on Siward's young son Waltheof. He thus received hampton- an ample provision, while he was cut off from the exercise Hunting of any influence which he might possess in Morkere's

of the

York
Gemót

confirmed.

made Earl

shire and

donshire.

3

1 That the ravages took place during this interval appears from the words of the Peterborough and Worcester Chronicles, that they happened

'ba hwile be he [Harold] for heora ærende."

2 Both this and the Northampton Assembly are called “Mycel Gemót.” See Appendix TT.

3 This is, I think, implied in the words of the Abingdon writer and of Florence (see Appendix TT). Harold tries to reconcile them "ibi ”—at Northampton-"et post apud Oxnefordam."

* See above, p. 374, and Appendix G.

GEMÓT OF OXFORD.

495

Earldom, whether as the son of Siward or as a descendant CHAP. X. of the elder line of Earls. And another solemn decree was Renewal of Cnut's passed, which shows that this Gemót was meant to be a Law. wiping out of old scores and the beginning of a new æra. Northern and Southern England were again to be solemnly reconciled, as they had been reconciled forty-seven years before in another Assembly held on the same spot.1 Then, under the presidency of a Danish conqueror, Englishmen and Danes agreed to decree the renewal of the Laws of Eadgar. The sway of law and justice was then held to be impersonated in the peaceful Basileus, the hero of the triumph of Chester. In the space of those forty-seven years, the foreign conqueror who had presided in that earlier Gemót of Oxford had supplanted Eadgar himself as the hero of the national affections. In the North above all, where in life he had been perhaps less valued, the rule of the great Dane was now looked back to as the golden age, the happy time before the tyranny of Tostig and the stern government of Siward. The South too, which, under the rule of Godwine and Harold, had no such complaints to make, might still look back with regret to the days of the King under whom Wessex had been, what she never was before or after, the Imperial state of all Northern Europe. Cnut now, as Eadgar then, was the one prince whose name North and South, Dane and Englishman, united in reverencing. He was the one prince whom all could agree in holding up to future Kings and Earls as the faultless model of a ruler. In this case, as in the earlier one, the reconciliation of the two parts of the realm took the form of a decree for the restoration of an earlier and better state of things. The Witenagemót of Oxford, with Earl Harold at its head, decreed with all solemnity the renewal of the Laws of Cnut.2

1 See vol. i. p. 416.

2 Chronn. Wig. Petrib. "And he [Harold] niwade þær Cnutes lage."

CHAP. X.

Banishment of Tostig. November 1, 1065.

One step more remained to be taken. The deposed Earl had to leave the Kingdom. According to one account, it would seem that a violent expulsion was still needed, in which Earl Eadwine appears as the chief actor.1 But this account seems to be a misconception. It would rather seem that, while all these messages and debates were going on, Tostig had never quitted the King. After this last decree, Eadward saw that he had no longer any power to protect him, and he therefore, though with deep sorrow, required his favourite's departure.2 The Earl bade farewell to his mother and his friends, and with his wife and his children, and some partizans who shared his exile, he set forth for the same friendly refuge which had sheltered He takes him when a guiltless exile fourteen years before. He left refuge in Flanders. England on the Feast of All Saints.5 The means of communication in those days must, as we have already seen more than once,6 have been much speedier than we are generally inclined to think. This whole revolution, with its gatherings, its meetings, its marches, its messages to and fro between distant places, took up less than one Kalendar month, from the first assemblage of the Thegns at York to the departure of Tostig from England. The banished

3

1 Fl. Wig. "Cum adjutorio Comitis Eadwini de Angliâ Tostium expu. lerunt."

2 Vita Eadw. 423. "At Deo dilectus Rex, quum Ducem suum tutare non posset, gratiâ suâ multipliciter donatum, morens nimium quod in hanc impotentiam deciderit, a se dimisit." The Chronicles, by simply saying "főr ofer sæ," or something to that effect, distinctly favour the Biographer's account.

3 The Chronicles mention the departure of Tostig and his wife; the Biographer says, "cum conjuge et lactentibus liberis." Yet they had been married fourteen years.

With him went, say the Worcester and Peterborough Chronicles, "ealle ba be woldon þat he wolde." So the Biographer (u. s.), “ plurimâque nobilium suorum manu."

Fl. Wig. There is an allusion to Tostig's ii. 200 b, "postquam Tostius exiit de Angliâ." easy to understand.

banishment in Domesday, The reference is not very • See above, pp. 404, 462.