EADWARD'S PROMISE TO WILLIAM.

199 favour. The details of the Norman stories are indeed utterly incredible.1 The version which is least grotesquely absurd represents Eadward as promising the Crown to his dear cousin and companion William, when they were both boys or youths living together in Normandy. It is enough to upset this tale, taken literally, if we remember that Eadward, who is here represented as the familiar and equal companion of the boy William, was, when he left Normandy, nearly forty years old, some five and twenty years older than his cousin. He is moreover made to dispose of a Crown which was not yet his, and which he afterwards assumed with a good deal of unwillingness. Yet this story is distinctly less absurd than the other versions. It is even possible that William or his advisers may have begun to look on the succession to the English Crown as a matter within the scope of their policy, from the time when the English embassy came to bring the King-elect Eadward from Normandy to his own Kingdom. It is a far wilder story which describes Archbishop Robert as going over to announce to William the decree of the English Witan in his favour, a decree confirmed by the oaths of the Earls Leofric, Siward, and-Godwine! But even this story is less marvellous than that which represents Harold himself, at a time when he was the first man in England, and when his own designs on the Crown must have been perfectly well known, as sent by Eadward into Normandy to announce to the Duke the bequest which the King had made in his favour. All these stories are simply incredible; they are simply instances of that same daring power of invention by virtue of which Dudo of Saint Quintin describes William Longsword and Richard the Fearless as reigning over half the world, by virtue of which Guy of Amiens describes Robert the Devil as the actual conqueror of England. Yet some promise must be accepted, and some time and some place must be found for it." What time and place are so obvious as the time and place when Eadward and William, once and once only during their joint reigns, met together face to face? Every earlier and every later time seems utterly impossible; this time alone seems possible and probable. At the moment everything would tend to suggest the idea both to the King and to the Duke. The predominance of the Norman faction, the actual presence of the Norman Duke, the renown of his exploits sounding through all Europe, the lack of any acknowledged English heir, the absence of any acknowledged English leader, all suggested the scheme, all seemed to make it possible. Everything at that moment tended in favour of William's succession; every later event, every later change of circumstances, tended in 1 I shall deal with these stories in my 3 See vol. i. pp. 125, 149. third volume.

2 See Appendix A.

4 See vol. i. p. 313.

5 Cf. Rapin, Hist. d'Angl. i. 435.

1

favour of the succession of any one rather than of William. At that moment the Norman party were in the full swing of power. Before another year had passed, the cause of England had once more triumphed; Eadward again had Englishmen around him, and he gradually learned to attach himself to men of his own race, and to give to the sons of Godwine that confidence and affection which he had never given to Godwine himself. He either forgot his promise to William, or else he allowed himself to be convinced that such a promise was unlawful to make and impossible to fulfil. But William never forgot it. We may be sure that, from that time, the Crown of England was the great object of all his hopes, all his thoughts, all his policy. Even in his marriage it may not have been left quite out of sight. The marriage of William and Matilda was undoubtedly a marriage of the truest affection. But it was no less undoubtedly a marriage which was prompted by many considerations of policy. And, among other inducements, William may well have remembered that his intended bride sprang by direct, if only by female, descent from the stock of the great Ælfred. His children therefore would have the blood of ancient English royalty in their veins. Such a descent would of course give neither William, nor Matilda, nor their children, any real claim; but it was a pretension one degree less absurd than a pretension grounded on the fact that Eadward's mother was William's great-aunt. And William knew as well as any man that in politics a chain is not always of the strength only of its weakest link. He knew that a skilful combination of fallacious arguments often has more practical effect on men's minds than a single conclusive argument. He contrived, in the end, by skilfully weaving together a mass of assertions not one of which really proved his point, to persuade a large part of Europe that he was the true heir of Eadward, kept out of his inheritance by a perjured usurper. That all these schemes and pretensions date from the time of William's visit to Eadward, that the Norman Duke left the English court invested, in his own eyes and in those of his followers, with the lawful heirship of the English Crown, is a fact which seems to admit of as little doubt as any fact which cannot be proved by direct evidence.2

'I am indebted to Lord Lytton's romance of Harold for the suggestion of Matilda's descent from Ælfred as a possible element in William's calculations. It is highly probable in itself, though I do not remember to have seen it put forward by any ancient writer. Matilda was lineally descended from Elfthryth daughter of Ælfred, wife of Count Baldwin the Second, and mother, I am sorry to say, of the

wicked Arnulf.

2 I suppose that this would have occurred to every one as the obvious explanation of the difficulty, had not a passage of the false Ingulf been held to settle the question another way; "De successione autem regni spes adhuc aut mentio nulla facta inter eos fuit." (Gale, i. 65.) Now this strong negative assertion is undoubtedly one of those passages which suggest

IMPORTANCE OF WILLIAM'S VISIT.

"1

201

In short, it marks one of the most important stages of our history, when "William Earl came from beyond sea with mickle company of Frenchmen, and the King him received, and as many of his comrades as to him seemed good, and let him go again." From that day onwards, we feel that we have been brought nearer, by one of the longest stages of our journey, to the fight on Senlac and the coronation at Westminster.

William then visited England at the moment while Godwine was sheltered at the court of Bruges, while Harold was planning vengeance at the court of Dublin, while Eadgyth was musing on the vanity of earthly things in her cell at Wherwell. He therefore met none of the family who were most steadily hostile to all his projects. But we ask in vain, Did he meet the stout warrior Siward? Did he meet the mediator Leofric? Did he meet the Primate who was fifteen years later to place the Crown on his own brow, or the other Primate whom he was himself to pluck down from the throne whence England had driven the Norman Robert? And we cannot but ask, Did he meet the now aged Lady through whom came all his connexion with England or English royalty, the wife and mother of so many Kings, the victim of so many spoliations? With what grace could Eadward bring his kinsman into the presence of the parent through whom alone William could call him kinsman, but between whom and himself there had been so little love? At all events, if Eadward was now for a season set free from the presence of his wife, he was soon set free for ever from the presence of his mother. Early in the next year (March 6, 1052) died Ælfgifu-Emma, the Old Lady, the mother of Eadward King and of Harthacnut, and her body lay in the Old Minster by Cnut King.2

the idea that the forger had some materials before him which we have not. But so vague a possibility can hardly be set against the whole probability of the case. It is curious to see Lappenberg (ii. 251 Thorpe, 511 of the German) swaying to and fro between the obvious probability and the supposed authority of Ingulf. Before him, Prevost (Roman de Rou, ii. 100) had ventured, in the teeth of Ingulf, to connect William's visit with Eadward's alleged bequest.

1 Chron. Wig. 1052. "Da sone com Willelm Eorl fram geondan sæ, mid mycclum werode Frenciscra manna; and se cyning hine underfeng, and swa feola his geferan swa him to onhagode, and let hine eft ongean."

2 Chron. Ab. 1051. "On þys ylcan

The course of our story has thus brought us once more to the shores of our own island. In our next Chapter we shall have to begin the picture of the bright, if brief, regeneration of England. We shall have to listen to the spirit-stirring tale, how the champions of England came back from banishment, how the heart of England rose to welcome her friends and to take vengeance on her enemies, how for fourteen years England was England once again under the rule of the noblest of her own sons.

CHAPTER IX.

THE REIGN OF EADWARD FROM THE RETURN OF GODWINE TO THE DEATH OF EADWARD THE ETHELING.1

1052-1057.

THE two streams of English and Norman history were joined together for a moment in the year when the sovereigns of England and Normandy met face to face for the only time in the course of their joint reigns. Those streams will now again diverge. England shook off the Norman influence, and became once more, to all outward appearance, the England of Æthelstan and Eadgar. For several years the history of each country seems to have no direct influence upon. the history of the other. But this mutual independence is more apparent than real. England once more became free from Norman influence as regarded her general policy; but the effects of Eadward's Norman tendencies were by no means wholly wiped away. Normans still remained in the land, and some of the results of the deliverance of England were not without their effect as secondary causes of the expedition of William. Through the whole period we may be sure that the wise statesmen of both countries were diligently watching each other's actions. Harold and William, though not as yet open enemies or avowed rivals, must have found out during these years that each was called on by his own policy to do all that he could to thwart the policy of the other. But though there was this sort of undercurrent closely connecting the interests of the two countries, yet, in all the outward events of history, it was a period of remarkable separation between them. The events recorded by English historians

1 There is nothing specially to remark on the authorities for this period, which are substantially the same as those for the seventh Chapter. We have still to look, just in the same way as before, to the Chronicles, the Biographer, and Florence, to William of Malmesbury and the other subsidiary writers. Just as before, whenever Norman affairs are at all touched on, the Norman writers should be com

pared with the English. During these years we have little to do with Scandinavian affairs, so that the Sagas are of little moment. Welsh affairs, on the other hand, are of unusual importance, and the two Welsh Chronicles, the Annales Cambriæ and the Brut y Tywysogion, or Chronicle of the Princes, must be carefully compared with our own records.