Page images
PDF
EPUB

BANISHMENT OF SWEGEN'S PARTIZANS.

63

though she had no hand in actual conspiracies against the CHAP. VII. offspring of her first marriage, have very possibly preferred the nephew of Cnut to her own son by Ethelred. If so, her punishment was only the first act of a sort of persecution which during the next three or four years seems to have fallen upon all who had supported the claims of Swegen to the Crown. The whole party became marked men, and they were gradually sent out of the Kingdom as occasion served.1 A few of their names may probably be recovered. We have records of several cases of banishment and confiscation during the early years of Eadward, which are doubtless those of the partizans of Eadward's Danish opponent. First and foremost was a brother of Swegen himself, Osbeorn, who, like his brother Beorn, seems to have held the rank of Earl in England. The brothers must have Banishtaken different sides in the politics of the time, as Osbeorn Swegen's was banished, while Beorn retained his Earldom.2 The partizans. 1043-1046. banishment of Osbeorn did not stand alone. The great Danish Thegn Osgod Clapa was banished a few years later, and it was probably on the same account that Æthelstan the son of Tofig lost his estate at Waltham,1 and that Gunhild, the niece of Cnut and daughter of Wyrtgeorn, was banished together with her two sons Heming and Thurkill. She was then a widow for the second time through the death of her husband Earl

1 See above, p. 10.

2 Adam of Bremen, iii. 13.

3 Chron. and Flor. Wig. 1044, 1045, 1046, 1047. All dates are given. ♦ De Inv. 14. 66 ‘Adelstanus . . . degenerans a patris astutiâ et sapientiâ ... multa ex his perdidit, et inter cetera Waltham." This may however only mean that he squandered his estate. His son Esegar was Staller two years later. See Professor Stubbs' note, and vol. i. p. 524.

5 Chron. Wig. 1045; Flor. Wig. 1044. If Gunhild's sons were old enough to be dangerous, they must have been the children of Hakon who died in 1030. The names Heming and Thurkill have already appeared as those of a pair of brothers. See vol. i. pp. 342, 631. Cf. Knytlinga Saga, ap. Johnstone, Ant. Celt. Scand. 105.

ments of

1046.

1044.

2

CHAP. VII. Harold.1 He had gone on a pilgrimage to Rome, and was on his way back to Denmark, when he was treacherously murdered by Ordulf, the brother-in-law of Magnus of Norway. That Harold was bound for Denmark, and not for England, where his wife and children or stepchildren were, may perhaps tend to show that he was already an exile from England. It is not impossible that Godescale the Wend ought to be added to the list.3

Stigand

appointed

Elmham, and deposed. April-November, 1043.

Whether the fall of Emma was or was not connected with the penalties which thus fell on the relics of the Danish party, it certainly carried with it the momentary fall of one eminent Englishman. The disgrace of the Bishop of Lady was accompanied by the disgrace of the remarkable -we might almost say the great-churchman by whose counsels she was said to be governed. We have already seen Stigand, once the priest of Assandun, appointed to a Bishoprick and almost immediately deprived of it.5 The like fate now happened to him a second time. He was, it would seem, still unconsecrated; but, seemingly about the time of Eadward's coronation, he was named and consecrated to the East-Anglian Bishoprick of Elmham.7 But the spoliation of Emma was accompanied by the deposition of Stigand from the dignity to which he had just been raised. He was deprived of his Bishoprick, and his goods were seized into the King's hands, evidently by a

1 On this Harold see vol. i. p. 427. The signature to a charter of Bishop Lyfing in 1042 (Cod. Dipl. iv. 69), must be his.

2 Adam Brem. ii. 75.

"Caussa mortis ea fuit quod de regali stirpe

Danorum genitus, propior sceptro videbatur quam Magnus."

3 See vol. i. p. 726.

4 See vol. i. p. 424.

5 See vol. i. p. 501.

• A private document in Cod. Dipl. iv. 116 is signed by "Stigand p.” It is assigned to the year 1049, but this date must be wrong, as it is signed by Elfweard Bishop of London, who died in 1044. As it is signed by Eadward and Emma, it must belong to the early Gemót of 1043, that at which Stigand received his appointment as Bishop and Swegen as Earl, 7 Chron. Ab. 1043; Chronn. Petrib. and Cant. 1042.

TEMPORARY FALL OF STIGAND.

65

sentence of the same Gemót which decreed the proceedings CHAP. VII. against the Lady. Whatever Emma's fault was, Stigand was held to be a sharer in it. The ground assigned for his deposition was that he had been partaker of the counsels of the Lady, and that she had acted in all things by his advice.1 That Stigand should have supported the claims of Swegen is in itself not improbable. He had risen wholly through the favour of Cnut, his wife, and his sons. The strange thing is that so wary a statesman should not have seen how irresistibly the tide was setting in favour of Eadward. One thing is certain, that, if Stigand mistook his interest this time, he knew how in the long run to recover his lost place and to rise to places far higher.

ance of

During the whole of this period ecclesiastical appoint- Importments claim special notice. They are at all times important ecclesiaswitnesses to the state of things at any particular moment, tical ap and in a period of this kind they are the best indications of at this time. the direction in which popular and royal favour is setting. The patrons or electors of an ecclesiastical office can choose far more freely, they can set themselves much more free from the control of local and family influences, than those who are called on to appoint to temporal offices. For King Eadward to appoint a French Earl would prove much more than his appointment of a French Bishop. It would prove much more as to his own inclinations; it would prove much more again as to the temper of the people by whom such an appointment was endured. To appoint a French or German Earl as the successor of Godwine or Leofric would doubtless have been impossible. But Eadward found means to fill the sees of Canterbury, London, and Dorchester with French Prelates. In ecclesiastical appointments he had a freer choice, because, in the case of an ecclesiastical office, no

1 Chron. Ab. "And rade þæs man sette Stigant of his bisceoprice, and nam eal þæt he ahte pam cinge to handa; fordam he was nehst his modor ræde, and heo for swa swá he hire rædde; þæs de men wendon."

[blocks in formation]

CHAP. VII. hereditary claim or preference could possibly be put forward. The same freedom of choice still remains to the dispensers of church patronage in our own times. The Lord Lieutenant, the Sheriff, the ordinary magistrates, of any county are necessarily chosen from among men belonging to that county. But the Bishop, the Dean, the ordinary clergy, may never have set foot in the diocese till they are called on to exercise their functions within it. Then, as now, various influences limited the choice of temporal functionaries which did not limit the choice of spiritual functionaries. It is therefore of special moment to mark the course of ecclesiastical appointments at this time, as supplying our best means of tracing the growth of the foreign influence and the course of the resistance made to it.

Mode of appointing Bishops.

It is not very clear what the exact process of appointing a Bishop at this time was. It is clear that the royal will was the chief power in the appointment. It is clear that the official document which gave the Bishop-elect a claim to consecration was a royal writ, to which now, under the French influences of Eadward's court, a royal seal, in imitation of continental practice, was beginning to be attached. It is also clear that the appointment was regularly made in full Witenagemót. This of course implies that the Witan had at least the formal right of saying Yea or Nay to the King's nomination. But we hear at the same time of capitular elections, which clearly were not a mere form, though it rested with the King to accept or reject the selected candidate. In ordinary speech the appointment is always said to rest with the King, who is constantly described as giving a Bishoprick to such and such a man. The King too at this time exercised the right, which afterwards became the subject of so much controversy, of investing the Bishop-elect with the ring and staff. It is clear also, from the case of Stigand just recorded, that the

1 See Appendix I.

ECCLESIASTICAL APPOINTMENTS.

67

connexion with Rome.

King and his Witan had full power of deposing a Bishop. CHAP. VII. On the other hand, probably owing to the number of foreign Increased ecclesiastics now in the Kingdom, references to the Court of Rome become from this time far more frequent than before. For an Archbishop to go to Rome for his pallium was nothing new; but now we hear of Bishops going to Rome for consecration or confirmation, and of the Roman Court claiming at least a veto on the nomination of the English King.

of simony.

It is perhaps more startling to find that the court of Prevalence Saint Eadward was no more free from the suspicion of simony than the courts of ruffians like Harold and Harthacnut. It is clear however that it was neither on the King personally nor on the Earl of the West-Saxons that this disgraceful imputation rested. One can hardly help suspecting that it was the itching palms of the King's foreign favourites which proved the most frequent restingplace for the gold of those who sought for ecclesiastical dignities by corrupt means. In the year after Eadward's coronation we meet with a story which brings out all these points very strongly. Archbishop Eadsige found himself Siward appointed incapacitated by sickness from discharging his functions, coadjutor and wished either to resign his see or, as it would rather to Archseem, to appoint a coadjutor. But he feared lest, if his Eadsige. intentions were made publicly known, some man whom he did not approve of might beg or buy the office. therefore took into his counsels none but the two first men in the realm, Earl Godwine and King Eadward himself. Godwine would naturally be glad of the opportunity to put some check on the growing foreign influences, and Eadward, easily as he was led astray, would doubtless be anxious, when the case was fairly placed before him, to

1 See vol. i. pp. 501, 522.

He

2 Chronn. Ab. 1044; Petrib. 1043. "Fordam se arcebiscop wende þæt hit sum oðer man, abiddan wolde, oþþe gebicgan, þe he wyrs truwode and ude, gif hit ma manna wiste."

bishop

1044.

« PreviousContinue »