temporary repair, as Bishop Æthelstan was buried in it next year.1 Under the care of Earl Harold, Hereford was again a city.

Meanwhile Elfgar and Gruffydd sued for peace. Messages went to and fro, and at last a conference was held between them and Harold at Billingsley in Shropshire, a little west of the Severn. Harold was never disposed to press hardly on an enemy, and he may possibly have felt that he was himself in some sort the cause of all that had happened, if he had promoted any ill-considered charges against his rival. In fact, rude and ferocious as those times were in many ways, the struggles of English political life were then carried on with much greater mildness than they were in many later generations. Blood was often lightly shed, but it was hardly ever shed by way of judicial sentence.2 A victorious party never sent the vanquished leaders either to a scaffold or to a dungeon. Banishment was the invariable sentence, and banishment in those days commonly supplied the means of return. Thus when Gruffydd and Ælfgar sought for peace, it was easily granted to them; Elfgar was even restored to the Earldom which he had forfeited. It was probably thought that he was less dangerous as Earl of the East-Angles than as a banished man who could at any time cause an invasion of the country from Wales or Ireland. His fleet sailed to Chester, and there awaited the pay which he had promised the crews.3 Whether the payment was defrayed out of the spoils of Herefordshire we are not told. Ælfgar now came to the King, and was formally restored to his dignity.* This was done in the Christmas Gemót (1055-1056), in which we may suppose that the terms of the peace of Billingsley were formally confirmed.

Peace with Gruffydd was easily decreed in words, but it was not so easily carried out in act. The restless Briton eagerly caught at any opportunity of carrying his ravages beyond the Saxon border. The Welsh Annals here fill up a gap in our own, and make the story more intelligible. With the help of a Scandinavian chief who is described as Magnus the son of Harold, Gruffydd made a new incursion into

1 Chronn. Ab. and Wig. and Flor. Wig. 1056. "Cujus corpus Herefordam delatum, in ecclesiâ quam ipse a fundamentis construxerat, est tumulatum." Yet he had the year before said, "monasterio quod . . Æthelstanus construxerat . . . combusto."

2 See vol. i. p. 331, and above, p. 175. 3 Chron. Ab. 1055. "And þæt sciplið gewende to Legeceastre, and þær abiden heora males be Ælfgar heom behêt." So Florence.

The Worcester Chronicle, which, as well as (still more strangely) that of Peter

ÆLFGAR RESTORED TO HIS EARLDOM.

265

Herefordshire (1056). We may well believe that the restoration and fortification of Hereford was felt as a thorn in his side. This time the defence of the city and shire was not left in the hands of any Earl, fearful or daring, but fell to one of the warlike Prelates in whom that age was so fertile. Bishop Ethelstan, as I have already said, died early in the year at Bosbury, an episcopal lordship lying under the western slope of the Malvern Hills.1 His burial in Saint Ethelberht's minster must have been the first great public ceremony in the restored city. In the choice of a successor, Eadward, or rather Harold, was guided at least as much by military as by ecclesiastical considerations. The see of the venerable and pious Ethelstan was filled by a Prelate of whom, during a very short career, we hear only in the character of a warrior. This was Leofgar, a chaplain of the Earl, whose warlike doings seem to have been commemorated in popular ballads. He laid aside his chrism and his rood, his ghostly weapons, and took to his spear and his sword and went forth to the war against Gruffydd the Welsh King.2 But the warfare of this valiant churchman was unlucky. He had not been three months a Bishop before he was killed (June 16, 1056), and with him his priests, as also Elfnoth the Sheriff and many other good men. The Chronicler goes on to complain bitterly of the heavy grievances attending on a Welsh war. It is clear that no way had yet been found out of really quelling the active sons of the mountains, when their spirits were thoroughly aroused by an able and enterprising prince like Gruffydd. The complaint does not dwell on losses in actual fight, which were most likely comparatively small. The Welsh would seldom venture on an actual battle with the English, even when commanded by captains very inferior to Harold. They would not run such a risk, except when they were either supported by Scandinavian allies, or else when they

3

gar's Irish ally, defrauded of his pay? The entry the year before, about waiting at Chester, looks like it. But it is just possible that Magnus the son of Harold may mean the son of Harold Hardrada.

1 Fl. Wig. 1056. "In episcopali villâ quæ vocatur Bosanbyrig decessit." A fine thirteenth century church and some remains of the episcopal manor still exist.

2 The Abingdon and Worcester Chronicles here get poetical; Peterborough is, just here, strangely meagre; "And man sette Leofgar to biscupe; se was Haroldes Eorles mæsse-preost; se werede his kenepas on his preosthade, oððæt he wæs bis

66

and swa for to fyrde ongean Griffin bone Wyliscan cing." Yet a fighting Bishop was not so wonderful a thing in those times. See vol. i. p. 264. William of Malmesbury, Gest. Pont. 300, makes some confusion, when he says, Leovegar. Hunc tempore Regis Edwardi Grifin Rex Walensium, urbe crematâ, expulit sede et vitâ." And Roger of Wendover makes some further confusion or other when he writes (i. 495), "Ethelstanus Herefordensis præsul obiit, et Levegarus, Ducis Haroldi capellanus, successit; hunc præsulem, in omni religione perfectum, Griffinus Rex Walensium, Herefordensi civitate crematâ, peremit."

3 Was Elfnoth succeeded by Osbern? See p. 345.

were able to take the Saxons at some disadvantage. What the Chronicler paints is the wearing, cheerless, bootless kind of. warfare which is carried on with a restless enemy who can never be brought to a regular battle. It is not ill success in fighting that he speaks of, but the wretchedness of endless marching and encamping, and the loss of men and horses, evidently by weariness rather than by the sword. The wisest heads in the nation agreed that a stop must, at any cost, be put to this state of things. On the death of Leofgar, the see of Hereford was committed to Bishop Ealdred, whose energy seems to have shrunk from no amount of burthens, ecclesiastical, military, or civil.2 By the counsel of this Prelate and of the Earls Leofric and Harold, the Welsh King was reconciled to his English over-lord. This expression may be only a decorous way of attributing to the King personally a measure which was really the act of the three able statesmen who were represented as intervening between him and his dangerous vassal. But Eadward did sometimes exert a will of his own, and when he did so, his will was often in favour of more violent courses than seemed wise or just in the eyes of his counsellors. It is quite possible then that Eadward was, as he well might be, strongly incensed against Gruffydd, and that it needed all the arguments of Leofric and Harold, and of Ealdred so renowned as a peacemaker,* to persuade the King to come to any terms with one so stained with treason and sacrilege. And undoubtedly, at this distance of time, there does seem somewhat of national humiliation in the notion of making peace with Gruffydd, after so many invasions and so many breaches of faith, on any terms but those of his unreserved submission. We must take the names of Harold, Leofric, and Ealdred as a guaranty that such a course was necessary. Gruffydd did indeed so far humble himself as to swear to be for the future a faithful Under-king to Eadward. It would also seem that the rebellious vassal was mulcted of a small portion of his territories. Eadward had, at some earlier time, granted to Gruffydd certain lands, seemingly that portion of the present shire of Chester which lies west of the Dee. These lands were now forfeited, and they were restored to the see of Lichfield and to other English possessors from whom they had been

COOPERATION OF HAROLD, LEOFRIC, AND EALDRED. 267

originally taken.1 We know not whether the grant was an original act of Eadward, or whether it was a convenient legal confirmation of some irregular seizure made by the Welsh King. Gruffydd was perhaps bought off in this way after some of his former incursions, most likely at the moment of his temporary cooperation with Swegen.2 If so, the restoration of the alienated lands was now required as a condition of peace. This homage of Gruffydd, and this surrender of lands, remind us of the homage and surrender made, under the like circumstances, by the last successor of Gruffydd to a greater Edward.3 As for the Welsh King's oath, it was kept after the usual fashion, that is, till another favourable opportunity occurred for breaking it.

One other point may be noted in connexion with this last transaction. That is the way in which Harold, Leofric, and Ealdred are described as acting together. If this implies no further cooperation, it at least implies that these three took the same side in a debate in the Witenagemót. Yet Leofric was the father of Harold's rival Elfgar, and the last time that the names of Harold and Ealdred were coupled together was when Ealdred was sent to follow after Harold on his journey to Bristol. But now all these old grudges seem to have been forgotten. In fact not one of the three men was likely to prolong a grudge needlessly. Harold's policy was always a policy of conciliation; if what we can by no means affirm-his conduct with regard to the outlawry of Ælfgar was at all of another character, it was the last example in his history. Ealdred was emphatically the peacemaker. He had no doubt long ago made his own peace with Harold, and he had probably used his influence to reconcile him with any with whom reconciliation was still needful. Leofric had often been opposed to Godwine, and he must have looked with uncomfortable feelings on his wonderful rise. or violent enemy; we have always mediator between extreme parties. quarrel between him and Harold. wronged in the outlawry of his son;

But he had never been a bitter found him playing the part of a There is no trace of any personal He may have thought himself but he could not fail to condemn

Elfgar's later conduct and to approve that of Harold. He must

have admired Harold's energetic carriage in the Welsh campaign and in the restoration of Hereford. And Leofric doubtless felt, whether Elfgar felt or not, some gratitude to Harold for his conciliatory behaviour at Billingsley, and for the restoration of Elfgar to his Earldom. All that we know of the good old Earl of the Mercians leads us to look on him as a man who was quite capable of sacrificing the interests and passions of himself or his family to the general welfare of his country.

§3. From Harold's first Campaign against Gruffydd to the Deaths of Leofric and Ralph. 1055-1057.

2

A few detached ecclesiastical events must be mentioned as happening in the course of these two years of war with Gruffydd. The Bishoprick of Wiltshire was, it will be remembered, now held by Hermann, one of the Lotharingian Prelates who were favoured by Godwine and Harold as a sort of middle term between Englishmen and Frenchmen.1 This preferment was not, at least in Hermann's eyes, a very desirable one. The church of Ramsbury, the cathedral church of his diocese, unlike other churches of its own rank, seems not to have been furnished with any company of either monks or canons, and the Bishop therefore found himself somewhat lonely. The revenues also of the see were small, an evil which seems to have pressed more heavily on a stranger than it would have done on a native. The Bishops before him, Hermann said, had been natives of the country, and the poverty of their ecclesiastical income had been eked out by the bounty of English friends and kinsfolk. He, a stranger, had no means of support to look to except the insufficient revenues of his Bishoprick. He had, it appears, been long looking forward to annexing, after the manner of the time, a second Bishoprick to his own. As Leofric had united the Bishopricks of Cornwall and Devonshire, so Hermann hoped to unite those of Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, whenever the episcopal chair of Sherborne should become vacant. Hermann, as the mission with which he had been entrusted shows, stood high in royal favour, and the Lady Eadgyth had long

4

1 See above, pp. 79-81, and 357.

2 Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 182. "Ejus animi magnitudini, vel potius cupiditati, quum non sufficeret rerum angustia, quoniam apud Ramesberiam nec clericorum conventus nec quo sustentaretur erat." 3 Ib. 182. "Antecessores suos indigenas fuisse; se alienigenam nullo parentum compendio vitam quo sustentet habere." Hermann however had a nephew, who, as he is

described as an Englishman, was doubtless a sister's son, who was made a knight by William, and held lands of his uncle's church. This comes from Domesday 66, where of two Englishmen (" duo Angli") who held certain lands of the church of Salisbury, we read that "unus ex eis est miles jussu Regis, et nepos fuit Hermanni episcopi."

4 See above, p. 114.