the law and of the facts of the case. The people chose Eadward, and without the choice of the people he would have had no right to reign. But they chose him because he was the one available descendant of the old kingly stock, because he was the one man at hand who enjoyed that preference by right of birth, which required that, in all ordinary cases, the choice of the electors should be confined to the descendants of former Kings. It might therefore be said with perfect truth that Eadward was chosen because the Kingdom was his by right of birth. But it is absolutely necessary, for the true understanding of the case, to remember that this right by birth does not imply that Eadward would have been, according to modern ideas, the next in succession to the Crown. Eadward's right by birth would have been no right by birth at all in the eyes of a modern lawyer. The younger son of Æthelred could, according to our present ideas, have no right to succeed while any representative of his elder brother survived. The heir, in our sense of the word, was not the Eadward who was close at hand in England or Normandy, but the Eadward who was far away in exile in Hungary or Russia. Modern writers constantly speak of this Eadward and of his son Eadgar as the lawful heirs of the Confessor. On the contrary, according to modern notions, the Confessor was their lawful heir, and, according to modern notions, the Confessor must be pronounced to have usurped a throne which of right belonged to his nephew. In his own time such subtleties were unknown. Any son of Æthelred, any descendant of the old stock, satisfied the sentiment of royal birth, which was all that was needed.1 To search over the world for the son of an elder brother, while the younger brother was close at hand, was an idea which would never have entered the mind of any Englishman of the eleventh century.

If any ceremony of coronation had gone before the meeting at Gillingham, it was deemed needful that, after that more solemn national acceptance of Eadward's claims, the rite should be repeated on the next great festival of the Church. Eadward was accordingly crowned on Easter Day at Winchester,2 the usual place for an Easter Gemót, by Archbishop Eadsige, assisted by Elfric of York and most of the other prelates of England. We are expressly told that the Metropolitan gave much good exhortation both to the newly-made King and to his people. The peculiar circumstances of the time might well 1 With the expressions used about the 3 Flor. Wig. succession of Eadward compare the still stronger expressions used by Florence about the succession of Eadred in 946; "Proximus hæres Edredus, fratri succedens, regnum naturale [gecynde] suscepit." Yet Eadmund left two sons, both of whom afterwards reigned.

2 Chron. Flor. Wig. See Appendix A.

So

4 Chronn. Ab. and Petrib. 66 Eadsige arcebisceop hine halgade, and toforan eallum þam folce wel lærde, and to his agenre neode and calles folces wel monude." Will. Malms. ii. 197; "Ab Edsio archiepiscopo sacra regnandi præcepta edoctus, quæ ille tunc memoriâ libenter recondidit, et postea sancte factis propalavit."

CORONATION OF EADWARD.

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suggest such a special admonition. There was a King, well-nigh the last of his race, a King chosen by the distinct expression of the will of the people, as the representative of English nationality in opposition to foreign rule. But the King so chosen as the embodiment of English feeling was himself an Englishman in little more than in the accident of being born on English ground1 as the son of a father who was a disgrace to the English name. There was a Kingdom to be guarded against foreign claimants, and there were the wounds inflicted by two unfortunate, though happily short, reigns to be healed at home. The duties which were laid upon the shoulders of the new King were neither few nor easy. He had indeed at hand the mightiest and wisest of guardians to help him in his task. But we can well understand that the feelings of Eadward towards the man to whom he owed his Crown were feelings of awe rather than of love. There could be little real sympathy between the stout Englishman and the nursling of the Norman court, between the chieftain great alike in battle and in council and the timid devotee who shrank from the toils and responsibilities of an earthly Kingdom. And we can well believe that, notwithstanding Godwine's solemn acquittal, some prejudice still lingered in the mind of Eadward against the man who had once been charged with his brother's death. And again, though it was to Godwine and his West-Saxons that Eadward mainly owed his Crown, yet Godwine and his West-Saxons did not make up the whole of England. Their counsels and interests had to be reconciled with the possibly opposing counsels and interests of the other Earldoms and of their rulers. Eadward could not afford to despise the strong arm of the mighty Dane who ruled his countrymen north of the Humber. He could not afford to despise the possible prejudices of the great Earl of central England, who, descendant of ancient Ealdormen, perhaps of ancient Kings, may well have looked with some degree of ill-will on the upstarts north and south of him. Eadward, called to the throne by the unanimous voice of the whole nation, was bound to be King of the English, and not merely King of the West-Saxons. He was bound yet more strongly to be King of the English in a still higher sense, to cast off the trammels of his Norman education, and to reign as became the heir of Alfred and Æthelstan. We have now

to see how far the good exhortations of Eadsige were effectual; how far the King chosen to the Crown which was his right by birth discharged the duties which were laid upon him alike by. his birth and by his election.

It was perhaps ominous of the character of Eadward's future reign that his coronation was attended by an apparently unusual assemblage of the Ambassadors of foreign princes. It was natural that Eadward 1 At Githslep, now Islip, in Oxfordshire. Cod. Dipl. iv. 215. 2 Vita Eadw. 395.

should be better known, and that his election should awaken a greater interest, in foreign lands than could usually be the case with an English King. He was connected by birth or marriage with several continental sovereigns, and his long residence in Normandy must have brought him more nearly within the circle of ordinary continental princeship than could commonly be the case with the Lord of the Island Empire, the Cæsar as it were of another world. The revolutions of England also, and the great career of Cnut, had evidently fixed the attention of Europe on English affairs to an unusual degree. Add to this that, when a King was chosen and crowned immediately on the death of his predecessor, the presence of congratulatory embassies from other princes was hardly possible. But the delay in Eadward's consecration allowed that great Easter-feast at Winchester to be adorned with the presence of the representatives of all the chief sovereigns of Western Christendom. Some there were whom England was, then as ever, bound to welcome as friends and brethren, and some whose presence, however friendly was the guise of the moment, might to an eye which could scan the future have seemed a foreboding of the evil to come. First came the ambassadors of the prince who at once held the highest place on earth and adorned it with the noblest display of every kingly virtue. King Henry of Germany, soon to appear before the world as the illustrious Emperor,1 the great reformer of a corrupted Church, sent an embassy to congratulate his brother-in-law 2 on the happy change in his fortunes, to exchange promises of peace and friendship, and to present gifts such as Imperial splendour and liberality might deem worthy of the one prince whom a future Emperor could look on as his peer.3 The King of the French too, a prince bearing the same name as the mighty Frank, but far indeed from being a partaker in his glory, sent his representatives to congratulate one whom he too claimed as a kinsman, and to exchange pledges of mutual good-will between the two realms. And, along with the representatives of Imperial and royal majesty, came the humbler envoys of the chief Dukes and princes of their two kingdoms, charged with the like professions of

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1 Vita Eadw. 395. "Primus ipse Romanorum Imperator Heinricus," &c. But Henry was not crowned Emperor till 1047. Hermannus Contractus in anno.

2 On the marriage of Henry and Gunhild, see vol. i. p. 304.

3 Vita Eadw. 395. "Munera imperiali liberalitate exhibenda mittit, et quæ tantos decebat terrarum dominos." Ethelred of Rievaux (X Scriptt. 375), who seems here to copy the Biographer, says the same.

Vita Eadw. 325. "Rex quoque Fran

corum item Heinricus nomine."

5 Ib. "Ejusdem Anglorum Regis vicinâ carnis propinquitate consanguineus." The Biographer throughout makes the most of his hero, but there is a marked difference in his tone towards the German King and towards any other prince. The expression "terrarum domini," reserved for the lords of the continental and the insular Empires, is most remarkable. I am at a loss to see what kindred there was between Eadward and Henry of Paris.

FOREIGN EMBASSIES.

II

friendship-our flattering historian would fain have us believe, of homage.1 Among these we can hardly doubt that a mission from the Court of Rouen held a distinguished place. It may be that, even then, the keen eye of the youthful Norman was beginning to look with more than a neighbour's interest upon the land to which he had in some sort given her newly-chosen King. We are even told that an embassy of a still humbler kind was received from a potentate who soon after appeared on the stage in a widely different character. Magnus of Norway had received the submission of Denmark on the death of Harthacnut, by virtue of the treaty by which each of those princes was to succeed to the other's dominions. He now, we are told, sent an embassy to Eadward, chose him as his father,3 promised to him the obedience of a son, and strengthened the promise with oaths and hostages. Now in the language used with regard both to Magnus and to the German and French princes, there is doubtless much of the exaggeration of a panegyrist, anxious to raise his hero's reputation to the highest point. But it is possible that Magnus might just now take some pains to conciliate Eadward, in order to hinder English help from being continued to his competitor Swegen. In the reception of the Imperial and the Danish envoys there is nothing which has any special meaning; but it is specially characteristic of this reign that the congratulations of the French princes were acknowledged by gifts from the King personally, and that some of them were continued in the form of annual pensions. These were undoubtedly,

1 Vita Eadw. 395. "Ceteri quoque eorumdem Regum tyranni [a very singular expression] et quique potentissimi duces et principes, legatis suis eum adeunt, amicum et dominum sibi suisque constituunt, eique fidelitatem et servitium suum in manus ponunt." Is this merely the flourish of an English Dudo (cf. the talk about Cnut, vol. i. p. 505), or did any foreign princes really plight a formal homage to Eadward in exchange for his gifts and favours? We shall see hereafter (see vol. iii. Appendix R) that the mightiest vassal of the French Crown probably did so at a later time.

2 See vol. i. p. 340. For the submission of Denmark to Magnus, see Adam of Bremen, ii. 74, 75; Snorro, Saga of Magnus, c. 19 (Laing, ii. 377). Adam however represents Magnus' first occupation of Denmark as the result of several battles with Swegen, while Snorro makes Magnus be peacefully elected in a Thing at Viborg, after which he makes Swegen an Earl and

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leaves him as his representative in Denmark. 3 Vita Eadw. 395. "Patrem eum sibi eligit, seque ut filium illi in omnibus subjicit." Compare the famous form of the Commendation of Wales and Scotland to a greater Eadward, vol. i. pp. 39, 80, 383. The monastic biographer of Eadward gives quite another picture, by way of preparation for his legendary account of the death of Magnus; "Sola tamen Dacia, adhuc spirans et anhelans cædes, Anglorum interitum minabatur, verum quis fuerit tanti conatûs finis sequentia declarabunt." Æthel. Riev. X Scriptt. 375.

4 Vita Eadw. 395. "Mittuntur singulis pro celsitudine suâ ab ipso Rege regalia munera, quæ ut nullius quamlibet multiplex Regis vel principis umquam æquaret munificentia, Regum pulcherrimus et nobilissimus Anglorum Rex Edwardus facit eisdem Francorum principibus vel annua vel continua.” The money seems all to go to France, none to Germany or Denmark.

even if the Norman Duke himself was among the pensioners, the gifts of a superior to inferiors; the point is that the connexion between England and the different French states, Normandy above them all, was constantly increasing in amount, and receiving new shapes at every turn.

Besides the gifts of foreign princes, the new King also received many splendid presents from his own nobles. First among them all shone forth the magnificent offering of the Earl of the West-Saxons.1 Godwine had given a ship to Harthacnut as the price of his acquittal on his memorable trial; he now made the like offering to Eadward as a token of the friendship which was to reign between the newlychosen King and his greatest subject. Two hundred rowers impelled the floating castle. A golden lion adorned the stern; at the prow the national ensign, the West-Saxon Dragon, shone also in gold, spreading his wings, the poet tells us, over the awe-struck waves. A rich piece of tapestry, wrought on a purple ground with the naval exploits of former English Kings, the sea-fights no doubt of Alfred, the peaceful triumphs of Eadgar, perhaps that noblest fight of all when the fleets of Denmark gave way before the sea-faring men of the merchant-city, formed an appropriate adornment of the offering of the English Earl to the first-men did not then deem that he was to be the last-prince of the newly-restored English dynasty.

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§ 2. Condition of England during the early years of Eadward.

Before we go on to the events of the reign of Eadward, it will be well to endeavour to gain a distinct idea of the King himself and of the men who were to be the chief actors in English affairs during his reign. In estimating the character of Eadward, we must never forget that we are dealing with a canonized saint. In such cases it is more