place of burial need hardly be mentioned. The man who was greater than a King, the maker and the father of Kings, found his last resting-place among Kings. His corpse was laid by that of the King under whom he had risen to greatness, by that of the Lady whose rights he had so stoutly defended, by that of the first King whom he had placed on the West-Saxon throne, by that of the murdered nephew whose death had cast the first shade of gloom upon his house. The Earl of the West-Saxons, dying in the West-Saxon capital, was buried with all pomp in the greatest of West-Saxon sanctuaries, in the Old Minster of Winchester.1 That renowned church was enriched with lands and ornaments in memory of the dead. But the noblest offering of all was the grief of the nation which he had saved. His real faults, his imaginary crimes, were all forgotten. Men remembered only that the greatest man of their blood and speech was taken from them. They thought of the long years of peace and righteous government which they had enjoyed under his rule; they thought of the last and greatest of his great deeds, how he had chased the stranger from the land, and had made England England once again. Around the bier of Godwine men wept as for a father; they wept for the man whose hand had guided England and her people through all the storms of so many years of doubt and danger. They deemed not that, ages after his death, calumnies would still be heaped upon his name. They deemed not that the lies of the stranger would take such root that the deliverer for whom they mourned would live in the pages of pretended history as Godwine the traitor. The time is now come to redress the wrong, and to do tardy justice to the fair fame of one of the greatest of England's worthies. To know what Godwine was, we have but to cast away the fables of later days, to turn to the records of his own time, to see how he looked in the eyes of men who had seen and heard him, of men who had felt the blessings of his rule and whose hearts had been stirred by the voice of his mighty eloquence. No man ever deserved a higher or a more lasting place in national gratitude than the first man who, being neither King nor Priest, stands forth in English history as endowed with all the highest attributes of the statesman. In him, in those distant times, we can revere the great

a later date (1057-1065), and shows that her pious anxiety still continued. Of Gytha's religious scruples a specimen will be found in Appendix E. She is also said (Tanner, Notitia Monastica, Devon. xxv.; New Monasticon, iv. 435) to have founded a College at Hartland in Devon. A secular establishment founded by Harold's mother should be r.oted.

binnan ealdan mynstre." Vita Eadw. 408. "Tumulatur ergo condigno honore in monasterio quod nuncupant veteri Wintoniæ, additis in eâdem ecclesiâ multis ornamentorum muneribus et terrarum reditibus pro redemptione ipsius animæ.”

2 Vita Eadw. 408. "Exsequiis suis in luctum decidit populus, hunc patrem, hunc nutricium suum regnique, memorabant sus1 Chron. Ab. 1053. "And he lið þær piriis et assiduis fletibus."

TRUE CHARACTER OF GODWINE.

235 minister, the unrivalled parliamentary leader, the man who could sway councils and assemblies at his will, and whose voice, during five and thirty years of political strife, was never raised in any cause but that of the welfare of England. Side by side with all that is worthiest in our later history-side by side with his own counterpart two ages afterwards, the second deliverer from the yoke of the stranger, the victor of Lewes, the martyr of Evesham-side by side with all who, from his day to ours, have, in the field or in the senate, struggled or suffered in the cause of English freedom-side by side with the worthies of the thirteenth and the worthies of the seventeenth century-will the voice of truthful history, rising above the calumnies of ages, place the name of the great deliverer of the eleventh, the Earl of happy memory,1 whose greatness was ever the greatness of England, whose life was one long offering to her welfare, and whose death came fittingly as the crown of that glorious life, when he had once more given peace and freedom to the land which he loved so well.

§ 2. From the Accession of Harold to the Earldom of the WestSaxons to his first War with Gruffydd.

1053-1056.

1

The great Earl was dead, and the office which he had held, an office which no man had ever held before him,2 was again at the disposal of the King and his Witan. As Godwine's death had happened at the Easter festival, the Great Council of the nation was doubtless still in session. We may therefore assume, with perfect safety, that the appointments which the Earl's death rendered needful were made at once, before the Assembly dispersed. The nature of the succession to these great governments must by this time be perfectly well understood. The King and his Witan might nominate whom they would to a vacant Earldom; but there was a strong feeling, whenever there was no special reason to the contrary, in favour of appointing the son of a deceased Earl. In Earldoms, like those of Mercia and Northumberland, where an ancient house had been in possession for several generations, this sort of preference had grown into the same kind of imperfect hereditary right which existed in the case of the Crown itself. It would have required a very strong case indeed for King and Witan to feel themselves justified in appointing any one but a son of Leofric to succeed Leofric in the head government of Mercia. But in the case of Wessex and East-Anglia no such inchoate right could be put forward by any man. The old East-Anglian house had doubtless

1 Vita Eadw. 408. "Dux felicis memoriæ."

2 See vol. i. pp. 285, 482.

become extinct, either through the slaughter of Assandun, or through the executions in the early days of Cnut.' If not extinct, it had, at all events, sunk into insignificance, and had become lost to history. The Danish Thurkill had founded no dynasty in his Earldom. We cannot even make out with certainty the succession of East-Anglian Earls between him and Harold.2 The Earldom of the West-Saxons was a mere creation of Cnut himself. It would have broken in upon no feeling of ancient tradition, if the office had been abolished, and if the King had taken into his own hands the immediate government of the old cradle of his house. But such a step would have been in every way a step backward. The King of the English was now King in every part of his realm alike. Certain parts of his realm might enjoy more of his personal presence than others; certain parts might even be practically more amenable to his authority than others; each great division of the Kingdom might still retain its local laws and customs; but there was now only one English Kingdom; no part of that Kingdom was a dependency of any other part; the King was King of the West-Saxons in no other sense than that in which he was King of the Northumbrians. But, if the local West-Saxon Earldom had been abolished, instead of a King of the English, reigning over one united Kingdom, there would again have been a King of the West-Saxons, holding East-Anglia, Mercia, and Northhumberland as dependent provinces. Here then were good political reasons for retaining the institution of Cnut, and for again appointing an Earl of the West-Saxons. Reverence also for the memory of the great man who was gone pleaded equally for the same course. An Earl of the West-Saxons had done more for England than any other subject had ever done. With Godwine and his great deeds still living in the minds and on the tongues of men, there could be little doubt as to giving him a successor; there could be hardly more of doubt as to who that successor should be.

The choice of the King and his Witan fell upon the eldest surviving son of the late Earl. Harold was translated from the government of the East-Angles to the greater government of the WestSaxons. This was, under such a King as Eadward, equivalent to investing him with the practical management of the King and his Kingdom. Harold then, when he could not have passed the age of thirty-two, became the first man in England. His career up to this time had been stained by what in our eyes seems to be more than one great fault, but it is clear that, in the eyes of his contemporaries, his merits far outweighed his errors. He had

HAROLD EARL OF THE WEST-SAXONS.

237 perhaps been guilty of selfishness in the matter of his brother Swegen; he had certainly been guilty of needless violence in the affair at Porlock. But the universal joy of the nation at his new promotion2 shows that the general character of his East-Anglian government must have given the brightest hopes for the future. Grief for the loss of Godwine was tempered by rejoicing at the elevation of one who at once began to walk in his father's steps. From henceforth, as Earl and as King, the career of Harold is one of vigorous and just government, of skill and valour in the field, of unvarying moderation towards political foes. He won and he kept the devoted love of the English people. And, what was a harder task, he won and kept, though in a less degree than another member of his house, the personal confidence and affection of the weak and wayward prince with whom he had to deal.

The translation of Harold to the greater government of Wessex made a vacancy in his former Earldom of the East-Angles. It would probably have been difficult to refuse the post to the man who had already held it for a short space, Ælfgar, the son of Leofric of Mercia. His appointment left only one of the great Earldoms in the House of Godwine, while the House of Leofric now again ruled from the North-Welsh border to the German Ocean. But it quite fell in with Harold's conciliatory policy to acquiesce in an arrangement which seemed to reverse the positions of the two families. The possession of Wessex was an object paramount to all others, and all the chances of the future were in favour of the rising House. Elfgar accordingly became Earl of the East-Angles. His career was turbulent and unhappy. The virtues of Leofric and Godgifu seem not to have been inherited by their descendants. We hear of Elfgar and of his sons mainly as rebels in whom no trust could be placed, as traitors to every King and to every cause, as men who never scrupled to call in the aid of any foreign enemy in order to promote their personal objects. Rivalry towards Harold and his house was doubtless one great mainspring of their actions, but the Norman Conqueror and the last male descendant of Cerdic found it as vain as ever Harold had found it to put trust in the grandsons of Leofric.

5

I have already suggested that it was probably in consequence of

66

1 See above, p. 65. 2 Vita Eadw. 408. Subrogatur autem regio favore in ejus [Godwini] ducatu filius ejus major natu et sapientiâ Haroldus, unde in consolationem respirat universus Anglorum exercitus." Then follows the panegyric quoted in Appendix D. 3 See Appendix G.

↑ Chronn. Ab. Wig. Petrib. Cant. in anno. 5 We have one panegyric on Ælfgar in Orderic (511 A), but it is a panegyric by misadventure. Orderic clearly confounded Ælfgar with his father. William of Malmesbury however (see above, p. 104) speaks well of his government of EastAnglia during Harold's banishment.

2

the death of Godwine and the succession of Harold that the restoration of some of the King's Norman favourites, especially of William Bishop of London, was allowed.1 This may have taken place at this same Easter festival; but it is more natural to refer it to some later Gemót of the same year. It is certain that, during this second portion of the reign of Eadward, a considerable number of Normans, or others bearing Norman or French names, were established in England. It is equally certain that their position differed somewhat from what it had been before the outlawry of Godwine. The attempts to put them in possession of the great offices of the Kingdom were not renewed. Ralph retained his Earldom, William was allowed to return to his Bishoprick. The royal blood of the one, the excellent character of the other, procured for them this exceptional favour, which, in the case of Ralph the Timid, proved eminently unlucky. But we hear of no other Norman or French Earls or Bishops, and we have only one certain notice of a Norman or French Abbot, in the person of Baldwin of Saint Eadmund's, a native of Gaul, who seems to have owed his promotion to his skill in medicine. Otherwise, excepting a few of the favoured natives of Lotharingia, none but Englishmen are now preferred to the great posts of Church and State. No local office higher than that of Sheriff, and that only in one or two exceptional cases,* was now allowed to be held by a stranger. But mere Court preferment, offices about the King's person, seem to have been freely held by foreigners to whom there was no manifest personal objection. The King was allowed to have about him his Norman Stallers, his Norman chaplains, and, an officer now first beginning to creep into a little importance, his Norman Chancellor.5 And those Normans who were tolerated at all seem to have been looked on with less suspicion than they had been during the former period. They are

4

Domesday, 180 b, by the description of "Reinbaldus canceler," as holding lands in Herefordshire T. R. E., which before the Survey he had exchanged with Earl William Fitz-Osbern. He still held lands in Berkshire (56 b, 60, 63), Gloucestershire (166 b), and Wiltshire (68 b), if he is, as he doubtless is, the same as "Reinbaldus de Cirencestre" and "Renbaldus Presbyter." He was Dean of Cirencester (see Ellis, i. 398), and besides his lay fees he held several churches in Wiltshire (Domesday, 65 b). It should be noticed that all his Gloucestershire property had other owners T. R. E., one of whom was a tenant of

Regenbald the Chancellor appears in Earl Tostig.