HAROLD'S HOUSE AT PORTSKEWET.

319 Harold.1 At any rate, the sight of the palace of the English King, rising in a district which had once been his father's, rankled in his soul. He gathered as large a band as he could, he came suddenly on the unfinished building, he slew nearly all the workmen, and carried off all the good things which had been provided for them and for the King2 (August 24). Such is the account in our own Chronicles, but an incidental notice in the Norman Survey might lead us to think that Caradoc was not satisfied with destroying the newly built house of the King, but that a considerable extent of the newly conquered country was harried by its banished prince.3 A raid even on this greater scale was common enough in the desolating borderwarfare which was ever going on between the English and Welsh, but it is clear that a special political importance attached to this act of Caradoc. One of the Chroniclers adds significantly, "We know not who this ill counsel first devised." These words, taken with a fact which we shall have presently to speak of, may perhaps suggest the idea that this lesser disturbance in South Wales was not without connexion with the more important events in England which presently followed it.

If Eadward or Harold made any preparations to avenge the insult offered by Caradoc to the Imperial authority, their attention was soon called off from that corner of the Empire to a far greater movement in the Earldom of Northumberland. However righteous may have been the intentions with which Tostig set out, however needful a wholesome severity may have been in the then state of his province, it is clear that his government had by this time degenerated into an insupportable tyranny. This is not uncommonly the case with men of his disposition, a disposition evidently harsh, obstinate, and impatient of opposition. Rigid justice, untempered by mercy, easily changes into oppression. The whole province rose against him (October 3, 1065). His apologist tries to represent the leaders of the movement as wrong-doers whom the Earl's strict justice had

chastised or offended.1 Such may well have been the case, but the long list of grievances put forth by the Northumbrians, though it may easily have been exaggerated, cannot have been wholly invented. First and foremost, Tostig had robbed God;2 elsewhere he bears a high reputation for piety, and, in any case, the charge must be taken with the same allowance as the like charges against his brother. But he had also robbed many men of land and of life,3 he had raised up unjust law,* and had laid on the Earldom a tax wholly beyond its means to bear. A list of particular crimes is added. Two Thegns, Gamel the son of Orm and Ulf the son of Dolfin, had, in the course of the last year, been received in the Earl's chamber under pretence of peace, and had been there treacherously slain by his order. That is to say, Tostig had repeated one of the worst deeds of Harthacnut,7 and of Cnut himself before his reformation. These men may have been criminals; Tostig may have persuaded himself that he was simply doing an act of irregular justice in thus destroying men who were perhaps too powerful to be reached by the ordinary course of law. But whatever were the crimes of Ulf and Gamel, Tostig, by this act, degraded himself to their level. If even the most guilty were to be cut off in such a way as this, even the most innocent could not feel themselves safe. Another charge aimed yet higher than the Earl himself. An accomplice of his misdeeds is spoken of, whom we should certainly never have been expected to find charged with bloodshed. A Thegn named Gospatric, not Tostig's companion on his Roman pilgrimage, had been, at the last Christmas Gemót (December 28, 1064), treacherously murdered in the King's The deed was said to have been done by order of the Lady at the instigation of her brother. To avenge these crimes, the chief men of both divisions of Northumberland, at the head of the whole force

court.

1 Vita Eadw. 421. "Interea quorumdam nobilium factione quos ob nequitias suas gravi presserat dominatûs sui jugo, conjurant in invicem in ejus præjudicio." 2 Chron. Ab. 1065. "Forpam pa he rypte God ærost."

3 Ib. "And ealle pa bestrypte pe he ofer mihte, æt life and æt lande."

4 Ib. "Ealle pa mid hym þe unlage rærdon." On the untranslatable phrase of unlaw, see above, p. 222.

5 Fl. Wig. 1065. "Pro immensitate tributi quod de totâ Northhymbriâ injuste acceperat."

6 Flor. Wig. 1065. "Pro exsecrandâ nece... Gamelis filii Orm ac Ulfi filii Dolfini quos anno præcedenti Eboraci in camerâ suâ, sub pacis foedere, per insidias, Comes Tostius occidere præcepit." Dolfin

OPPRESSION OF TOSTIG IN NORTHUMBERLAND.

321 of Bernicia and Deira,1 rose in arms.2 Soon after Michaelmas two hundred Thegns3 came to York, and there held (October 3, 1065) what they evidently intended to be a Gemót of the ancient Kingdom of Northumberland. They were headed by several of the greatest men of Northern England, by Gamel-bearn, doubtless a kinsman of the slain son of Orm, by Dunstan the son of Æthelnoth, and Glonieorn the son of Heardulf. These names seem to show that both English and Danish blood was represented in the Assembly. Tostig was now absent from his Earldom; he was engaged with the King in his constant diversion of hunting, in some of the forests of Wiltshire or Hampshire. But the rebels needed not his presence, and they began at once to pass decrees in utter defiance of the royal authority. Earls had hitherto always been appointed and removed by the King and his Witan, and any complaints of the Northumbrians against Tostig ought legally to have been brought before a Gemót of the whole realm. But nowhere was the feeling of provincial independence so strong as in the lands north of the Humber. The Northumbrians remembered that there had been a time when they had chosen and deposed Kings for themselves, without any reference to a West-Saxon over-lord. The West-Saxon King was now no longer an over-lord, but an immediate sovereign; Northumberland was no longer a dependency, but an integral part of the Kingdom; the men of Deira and Bernicia shared every right which was enjoyed by the men of Wessex and East-Anglia. Still the old feelings lingered on, and they were probably heightened by the constant absence of the King and even of his lieutenant. Eadward had never shown himself further north than Gloucester, or perhaps Shrewsbury; there is no record of any Gemót of his reign being held at York or

1 Chron. Wig. 1065. "And sona æfter pisan gegaderedon þa þegenas hi ealle on Eoforwicscire and on Norðhymbralande togædere." Here we have perhaps the earliest use of the name Yorkshire, and of the name Northumberland in its modern sense. Ste vol. i. p. 437. The Abingdon Chronicle has only "on Eoforwicscire," and Peterborough says "foron Norðhymbra togædere."

2 I have, as usual, made a comparison of the narratives in an Appendix (Note TT), referring here only to details.

3 Flor. Wig. 1065. "Cum cc. militibus." The names come from Florence. All three, especially Gamel, appear in Domesday as great landowners in King Eadward's time. In 1086 Gamel still holds in capite a small part of his vast estates in Yorkshire VOL. II.

Lincoln. And the frequent absences of Tostig, whom Eadward loved to have about him, are clearly reckoned among the grievances of his province.1 While he was busied in the frivolities of Eadward's court, the care of Northumberland was entrusted to a Thegn of the country, Copsige by name. He is described as a prudent man and a benefactor to the Church of Durham. It does not appear how far he now shared the unpopularity of his master, but it is certain that, at a later time, he incurred equal unpopularity by his own acts, when, for a moment under the reign of William, he held the Earldom of Northumberland in the narrower sense. This systematic government by proxy was no doubt highly offensive to local Northumbrian patriotism. It was, in a marked way, dealing with the land as a mere dependency. The Danes of the North were indignant that their ancient realm should be deemed unworthy of the presence, not only of the King but of its own Earl. They had no mind to be governed by orders sent forth from some West-Saxon town or hunting-seat. The Northumbrians therefore, without presence or licence of King or Earl, took upon them to hold a Gemót, doubtless an armed Gemót, of the revolted lands.

3

The Assembly which had thus irregularly come together did not indeed venture on the extreme step of renouncing all allegiance to the King of the English. But everything short of this extreme step was quickly done. The Merciless Parliament of later days could not surpass this Northumbrian Gemót in violent and blood-thirsty decrees. The rebels passed a vote of deposition against their Earl Tostig; they declared him an outlaw, and elected in his place Morkere, the younger son of Ælfgar of Mercia. Waltheof, the son of Siward, was passed by, and they may have felt the danger of the rivalries which were sure to arise if they chose one of the ordinary Thegns of the country. Still the election of Morkere, and the whole circumstances of the story, seem to show that, along with the real grievances of Northumberland, the intrigues of the Mercian brothers had a good deal to do with the stirring up of this revolt. The old rivalry between the houses of Godwine and Leofric had now taken the form of a special enmity between Tostig and the sons of Elfgar. Eadwine, in short, was now entering on that

1 See above, p. 251.

6

5

2 On Copsige see vol. iv. Appendix, Note L.

3 Chronn. Wig. Petrib. 1065. The Abingdon Chronicler leaves out this decree, which marks the gathering as intended to claim the character of a lawful Gemót.

5 See above, p. 252.

See above, p. 290.

REVOLT OF THE NORTHUMBRIANS.

323 series of treasons which he had, within a very few years, the opportunity of practising against four sovereigns in succession. Eadward, Harold, Eadgar, and William all found in turn that no trust was to be put in the allegiance' or the oaths of the Earl of the Mercians. The treasons of Eadwine were often passive rather than active; they never reached the height of personal betrayal; otherwise the last Mercian Earl was no unworthy representative of his predecessor Eadric. Still the policy of the sons of Elfgar was at any rate more intelligible than the policy of the arch-traitor. Their object evidently was to revive the old division of the Kingdom, as it had been divided between Cnut and Eadmund or between Harold and Harthacnut. Whenever the throne should be vacant by the death of Eadward, they were ready to leave Wessex, and probably East-Anglia, to any one who could hold them, but Mercia and Northumberland were to form a separate realm under the house of Leofric. This view of their policy explains all their later actions. They dreamed of dividing the Kingdom with Harold; they dreamed of dividing it with Eadgar; they even dreamed, one can hardly doubt, of dividing it with William himself. They were ready enough to welcome West-Saxon help in their own hour of trial, but they would not strike a blow on behalf of Wessex in her greatest need. The present movement in Northumberland, above all the election of Morkere to the Earldom, exactly suited their purposes. It was more than the mere exaltation of one of the brothers; it was more than the transfer of one of the great divisions of the Kingdom from the house of Godwine to the house of Leofric. The whole land from the Welland to the Tweed was now united under the rule of the two brothers. There was now a much fairer hope of changing the northern and central Earldoms into a separate Kingdom, as soon as a vacancy of the throne should occur. When therefore the Northumbrians sent for Morkere, offering him their Earldom, he gladly accepted the offer. He took into his own hands the government of Deira, or, as it is now beginning to be called, Yorkshire. But he entrusted the government of the Northern province, the old Bernicia, now beginning to be distinctively called Northumberland, to the young Oswulf, the son of Siward's victim Eadwulf. We have no account of the motives of this appointment. It may have been a condition of Morkere's election; it may have been a popular act done of his own accord. But in either case this appointment seems to show that the Northumbrians bore no special love to Siward or his house, but that they rather looked

1 See above, p. 321.

2 Sim. Dun. Gest. Regg. 1072 (X Scriptt. 204). "Morkarus vero, quoniam alias gravibus negotiis impeditus fuerat, comi

tatum ultra Tynam tradidit Osulfo adolescenti, filio præfati Comitis Eadulfi." We shall hear of him again.