EADWARD'S CHURCH.

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the King found helpers among his subjects, Tostig in the days of his power having been among their number.1 But the building of the church seems to have been wholly Eadward's own personal work. At last the work of so many years was brought to perfection. The time employed on the building was indeed shorter than that bestowed on many other of our great churches, which their own Prelates had to rear out of their own resources. But here a King was pressing on the work with all his might, a King who, when he had once completed the great object of his life, was ready to depart in peace. After fourteen years from the receipt of the Papal dispensation the building was finished from the apse to the western front. By the time of the Midwinter festival of the year one thousand and sixty-five the new minster of Saint Peter stood ready for its hallowing.

So great a work, raised under such circumstances, could hardly fail to become surrounded by an atmosphere of legend. It was not every church that was founded either by a King or by a canonized saint. Fewer still among churches were founded by a King who was at once a canonized saint, the last of an ancient dynasty, and one whose memory was embalmed in the national recollection as the representative of the times before the evil days of foreign domination. In his life-time, or at most within a few years after his death, Eadward was already deemed to be a worker of miracles.2 For his dreams, visions, and prophecies he was renowned to his last moment. One story tells us how the holy King, with his pious friends Leofric and Godgifu, was hearing mass in the elder minster of Saint Peter; how the King was deep in devotion; how he and the Earl Godgifu is no longer spoken of-saw the form of the divine Child in the hands of the ministering priest; how Eadward bade his friend keep his secret till after his death; how Leofric confided it only to a holy monk at Worcester, who revealed it to no man till Leofric and Eadward were both no more. Another tale sets the King before us in all the Imperial pomp of the Easter feast at Winchester; he goes with crown and sceptre from the Old Minster to the royal banquetting-hall. Heedless of the feast, absorbed in his own meditations, the King is seen to smile. Soon afterwards he was in his private bower, accompanied by Earl Harold, a Bishop, and an Abbot. The Bishop was doubtless the Primate

and Somersetshire?); and Leofsige, "Dudde sunu," iv. 218. There is also Ulf the Portreeve in iv. 221. The writs about the King's own gifts are very numerous.

1 The Charter in Cod. Dipl. iv. 177 mentions Leofcild, Ethelric, Wulfwig, Guthmund, Ælfric, Atsere [or Azor] the Black (Swerte), Ingulf, Atsere, Tostig, Elfwine, Wulfstan, Siward, and Leofsige of London. The gifts of several of them are mentioned in various writs; Leofcild in iv. 214; Elfwine, iv. 217; Atsere Swerte, 3 Ethelred, 389. Was this holy man iv. 220; the other Atsere, iv. 191 (which the inclusus Wulfsige? of these was the Azor of Gloucestershire

2 See the Life, pp. 428 et seqq., and Appendix B.

Stigand, the Bishop of the diocese; the Abbot would most likely be Harold's uncle Elfwig, who presided over the neighbouring house of New Minster. These three chiefs of Church and State ventured to ask the King the reason of his serene and pious mirth. His thoughts had been far away from the royal hall of Winchester; he had seen the Seven Sleepers of Ephesos; they had turned from the right side to the left, an omen which presaged that some evil was coming upon the earth. The matter was deemed worthy of a special embassy to the Imperial Court of Constantinople, but the ambassadors took their commission, not from the King but from the three dignified subjects who had shared his confidence. The Earl sent a Thegn, the Bishop a clerk, the Abbot a monk. The three made their way to the New Rome and told the tale to the reigning Emperor.1 By his orders the tomb of the holy Sleepers at Ephesos was opened; the vision of the English King was proved to be true; and the prophetic powers of Eadward soon had ample witness borne to them in the general misfortunes of mankind, in the failure of the royal line of England and the conquests of the infidel Turks at the expense of Eastern Christendom. One more tale will bring us back directly to the current of our story. The King was present at the dedication of the church of Saint John at Clavering. A beggar asks alms of his sovereign in the name of the patron of the newly-hallowed temple, the Apostle whom Eadward reverenced next after his special patron Saint Peter. The King has neither silver nor gold about him; he cannot find his almoner for the press; he gives the poor man the only gift that he can give at the moment, the costly ring on his finger. The beggar returns thanks and vanishes. That very day two English pilgrims are benighted in a wilderness of the Holy Land. A band of bright youths appears, attending an old man before whom two tapers are borne as in the service of the Church. He asks the pilgrims from what land they come, and of what King they are subjects. They are Englishmen, subjects of the good King Eadward.

4

For the love of good King

p. 22; Æthelred, 397. The Waltham writer lets us incidentally into the fact that London, York, Winchester, and Lincoln were then reckoned as the four chief cities of England. In the great dispute over the quarters of Dafydd in 1283 (Ann. Waverley, 400, ed. Luard), the order was ruled to be London, Winchester, York, Bristol (others say Chester), with Northampton as the fifth.

Æthelred, writing in Yorkshire, mentions vaguely a church of Saint John; the East-Saxon writer fixes it at Clavering. See Professor Stubbs' note, p. 24.

THE MIDWINter gemÓT.

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Eadward he guides them to a city and an hostelry, where they find abundant entertainment. In the morning he reveals himself to them as John the Apostle and Evangelist; he gives them the ring to bear to the King of the English, with the message that, as the reward of his good and chaste life, he should within six months be with himself in Paradise. The message is miraculously delivered on the self-same day; the King's alms and prayers and fastings are redoubled; but one thing specially occupies his mind, the longing to see the new minster of Saint Peter hallowed before he dies.

The time was at last come. The great ceremony had been preceded by a lesser one of the same kind. The Lady Eadgyth—was it as an atonement for the blood of Gospatric?—had rebuilt the church of nuns at Wilton, the home of her sainted namesake the daughter of Eadgar. The fabric had hitherto been of wood, but the Lady now reared a minster of stone, pressing on the work with unusual haste, in pious rivalry with her husband. The new building was hallowed by Hermann, the Bishop of the Wiltshire diocese, just before the Northhumbrian revolt.5 That revolt was now over, and the land was once more quiet; the work of the King's life was finished; the time of the Christmas festival drew nigh. This year the midwinter Gemót (1065-1066) was not gathered, as in former years, at Gloucester, but the Witan of all England were specially called to the King's Court at Westminster, to be present at the hallowing of the new church of Saint Peter. The Assembly met; the King's strength was failing, but he assayed to appear in the usual kingly state. On the Festival of the Nativity and on the two following days, one of them the day of

1 So Roger of Howden, i. 109, ed. Stubbs, but this further miracle is unknown to Æthelred.

2 Vita Eadw. 418. "Ejus æquivoca sancta dgith, de cujus progenie idem Rex Edwardus descenderat.' As this virgin saint was Eadward's aunt, "progenies" must be taken in a wide sense.

On the power of Saint Eadgyth to rebuke blasphemers, see vol. i. p. 293. 3 Vita Eadw. u. s. 'Lignea tamen adhuc illic ecclesia stabat."

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4 Ib. 66 "Regio opere lapideum monasterium inchoat, ferventiusque instans operarios maturat. Contendunt hinc Rex, illinc Regina, contentione Deo gratâ, in invicem quoque non injocundâ." Eadward however was a benefactor to his wife's foundation, even during his last sickness. See Domesday 64 b, of Amesbury in Wiltshire; "De hujus manerii terrâ I hidas

dedit Rex E. in suâ infirmitate Abbatissæ Wiltuniensi, quas numquam antea habuerat, postea vero eas tenuit."

"Actâ ergo hujus ecclesiæ

...

5 Ib. 421. consecratione anno Domini millesimo sexagesimo quinto ad justitium totius patriæ, hæc regni subsequuta est perturbatio."

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6 Fl. Wig. 1065. "In nativitate Domini curiam suam, ut potuit, Lundoniæ tenuit." Æthel. 398. Appropinquabat dies in quo Anglorum tota nobilitas ad Regis curiam debuit convenire, et Regi more suo sceptris simul et coronâ decorando adsistere." So directly after (399), "Convenientibus in unum episcopis cunctisque regni proceribus, sacra dedicationis sollennitas inchoatur.' For an intended act of this Gemôt, hindered by the King's death, see Domesday, 252 b, and below, p. 550.

his patron Evangelist, he wore his Crown in public.1 But the exertion was too much for him. The fourth day, the Feast of the Holy Innocents (December 28, 1065), had been appointed for the great ceremony; but Eadward was no longer able to take any personal part in the rite which he had so long looked forward to as the crowning act of his life. The minster was hallowed with all the rites of the Church, but the Founder's share in the ceremony was discharged by deputy; Eadward, King, saint, and founder, was represented in that day's solemnity by his wife the Lady Eadgyth." Eadward's work on earth was now over; his church was finished and hallowed, and it was soon to be the scene of rites still more solemn, still more memorable. Before another year had passed, the West Minster was to be the scene of one royal burial, of two royal consecrations, and those consecrations the two most memorable that England ever saw. But it had not to wait for months, or even for weeks, before its special history began. The sound of the workman's hammer had hardly ceased, the voice of the consecrating Prelate was hardly hushed into silence, before the church of the Apostle was put to the lofty purposes for which it was designed. Before the Christmas Festival was over, it beheld the funeral rites of its founder, the coronation rites of his successor. The days of the holy season were not yet accomplished, the Witan of England had not yet departed to their homes, when the last royal son of Woden was borne to his grave, and his Imperial Crown was placed on the brow of one whose claim was not drawn only from the winding-sheet of his fathers. The most eventful year of our history had begun, but its first week had not yet fully passed away, when Eadward, the son of Æthelred and Emma, was gathered to his fathers, and Harold, the son of Godwine and of Gytha, was King of the English and Lord of the Isle of Britain.3

We have thus, through the three and twenty years of Eadward's reign, traced what we may fairly look upon as the first stage of the Norman Conquest. Under a King, English by birth, but Norman in

1 Æthel. 398, 399; Will. Malms. ii. 228. "In Natale Domini apud Lundoniam coronatus est."

2 The consecration 66 on Cyldamæsse dæg" is asserted by all three Chronicles, by Florence, and by William of Malmesbury. "Let halgian" is the phrase of Abingdon and Worcester; so Florence,

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cum magnâ gloriâ dedicari fecit," and William of Malmesbury, "dedicari præcepit." The action of Eadgyth comes from Æthelred, 399; "Rex, quantum valetudo permittebat, favebat officio, sed

Regina, omnia disponens, omnia procurans, sollicita de omnibus, intenta omnibus, utriusque vicem implevit."

3 I reserve the details of Eadward's death for my next Chapter. It is so essentially connected with the accession of Harold that the two events can hardly be separated in narration, and the different accounts of the death-bed scene at once lead us to the discussion of the question as to Eadward's dying recommendation with regard to his successor.

CONSECRATION OF THE MINSTER.

343 feelings and habits, England has been brought under a direct Norman influence, which seemed for one moment likely to bring with it the peaceful establishment of Norman dominion. We have seen the Court of England swarming with Norman favourites; we have seen the Church of England handed over to the government of Norman Prelates; we have seen Norman adventurers enriched with English estates, and covering the land with those frowning castles on which our fathers looked as the special badges of wrong and slavery. Above all, we have seen the Duke of the Normans, not only received with special honours at the English Court, but encouraged to look upon himself as the destined successor to the English Crown. A national reaction, almost rising to the rank of a revolution, has broken the yoke of the strangers, it has driven the most guilty from the land, and has placed England and her King once more under the rule of the noblest of her own sons. Still the effect of those days of Norman influence was not wiped out, and the wary and wily chief of the strangers had been armed with a pretext plausible enough to win him general support wherever the laws of England were unknown. The moment of struggle was now come; the English throne had become vacant, and the Norman Duke knew how to represent himself as its lawful heir, and to brand the King of the nation's choice as an usurper. We thus enter on the second, the decisive, stage of the great struggle. It is no longer a half concealed strife for influence, for office, for a peaceful succession to the Crown. It is an open warfare of nation against nation, of man against man. England and Normandy, Harold and William, are now brought face to face. days of debate and compromise are past; the sword alone can now judge between England and her enemy. The details of that memorable conflict, the events of that wonderful year which forms the turning-point of all English history, will form the third portion of my tale, the culminating point of the History of the Norman Conquest.

The