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NOTE G. p. 23.

THE GREAT EARLDOMS DURING THE REIGN OF EADWARD.

It is not always easy to trace the succession of the men who ruled the different Earldoms of England during the reign of Eadward. In several cases the Chronicles give us notices of the death, deposition, or translation of one Earl and of the appointment of his successor. But these entries taken alone would not enable us to put together a perfect series of the Earls. For instance, Eadwine (1065), Gyrth (1066), Leofwine (1066), Waltheof (1066), are all spoken of as Earls without any account of their appointment, and, in the last three cases, without any hint as to the districts over which they ruled. To make out anything like a perfect list, we must go to various incidental notices in the royal writs and elsewhere. By their help we shall be able to recover, not indeed an absolutely complete account, but one much fuller than appears on the face of the history, and one which reveals to us a great number of anomalies which we should not have expected. The way in which several Earls held isolated shires detached from the main body of their Earldoms, and the way in which shires were transferred from the jurisdiction of one Earl to that of another, are both of them very remarkable.

For a complete view of these changes, indeed for any complete view of the general succession of the Earls, we must go back to the fourfold division of England by Cnut in 1017 (see vol. i. p. 273). Cnut then kept Wessex in his own hands, and appointed Eadric over Mercia, Thurkill over East-Anglia, Eric over Northumberland. In 1020 (see vol. i. p. 285), Wessex also became an Earldom under Godwine. Now in these four great governments we can trace the succession of Earls without difficulty, with the single exception of East-Anglia. We have no account of that Earldom from the banishment of Thurkill in 1021 (see vol. i. p. 287) to the appointment of Harold, seemingly in 1045 (see above, p. 23). As for Northumberland, I have already traced out the succession of its Earls (see vol. i. p. 351 et seqq.). There is no doubt that, at the accession of Eadward, Siward was in possession of both parts of the old Northern realm, and that he remained in possession of them till his death. The succession in Wessex is plainer still; Godwine was appointed in 1020, Harold succeeded him in 1053; there is no room for any question, except as to the disposal of the Earldom during the year of Godwine's banishment. And the mere succession in Mercia is equally plain. Leofwine succeeded Eadric in 1017; Leofric succeeded Leofwine some time between 1024 and 1032 (see vol. i. p. 487); Ælfgar succeeded Leofric in 1057; Eadwine, there can be no reasonable doubt, succeeded Ælfgar on his death, at some time between 1062 and 1065. Our difficulties are of other kinds. There is, first, the great uncertainty as to the meaning of the name Mercia. There is the fact that various shires, especially in Mercia, are found in the hands of others among the great Earls than those to whom the fourfold division would seem to have committed them. There is the fact that we find mention of Earls holding Earldoms other than the four great ones, and seemingly formed by dismemberments of the four. Lastly, we find,

THE GREAT EARLDOMS UNDER EADWARD.

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especially under Cnut, the names of several Earls whom it not easy to supply with Earldoms.

This last difficulty need not greatly trouble us. It does not follow that every Danish chief who signs a charter of Cnut with the title of Earl was actually established in an English Earldom. The main difficulty springs from what seem to have been the constantly fluctuating arrangements of the Mercian shires. The old chaotic state of central England seems to revive. First, it is not always clear what we are to understand by the name Mercia. The name at this stage sometimes takes in, sometimes excludes, those parts of old Mercia which were ceded by Ælfred to Guthrum. Secondly, we find various shires, Mercian in one or the other sense, which are not under the government of the person spoken of as the Earl of the Mercians.

Now when Wessex, Northumberland, East-Anglia, and Mercia are spoken of as an exhaustive division of England, as they are spoken of in the fourfold division made by Cnut, there can be no doubt Mercia is to be taken in the widest sense, as meaning the whole land from Bristol on the Avon to Barton on the Humber. With this great government Eadric was invested. But it is equally plain that, at a somewhat later time, either Mercia in this sense was dismembered in favour of independent Earls, or else subordinate Earls were appointed under a superior Earl of the Mercians. I will now put together the evidence which we find on these heads.

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The first hint which we come across of a dismemberment of this kind is in 1041, when we find Thuri or Thored, "Comes Mediterraneorum,' and Rani or Hranig, "Comes Magesetensium," distinguished from Leofric, "Comes Merciorum." Of Thored we also know that his Earldom took in Huntingdonshire. See vol. i. p. 348, where a writ of Harthacnut addressed to him is quoted. And one may suspect that we ought to substitute the same name for "Toli comes" who in a Huntingdon writ of Eadward (Cod. Dipl. iv. 243) is addressed along with Bishop Eadnoth, fixing the date of the writ to the years 1042-1050. (This Toli can hardly be Tolig who is elsewhere addressed in Suffolk, seemingly as Sheriff under the Earldom of Gyrth. Cod. Dipl. iv. 222, 223.) Of Ranig we know that he held the rank of Earl as early as 1023 (see vol. i. p. 348). We may therefore be inclined to suspect that Mercia was dismembered on the death of Eadric, and that, besides the Mercian Earldom held by Leofwine and Leofric, two fresh Earldoms, whether subordinate or independent, were formed within the limits of the old Mercian Kingdom. On the whole I am inclined to think that a certain superiority was always retained by Leofric, as chief Earl of the Mercians. He always fills a special place, alongside of Godwine and Siward, and we shall come across evidence to show that some of the dismembered shires did, in the end, revert to him or to his house.

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As to this Earldom of the "Mediterranei or Middle-Angles, held by Thored, we have no distinct account of its extent. But it is a probable guess that it took in the whole eastern part of Mercia, the part in which the Danish element was strongest. I am inclined to think that in this Earldom Thored was succeeded by Beorn. Our indications are certainly slight, but they look that way. We hear nothing of Thored in Eadward's time, except a signature of "Duri dux" in Cod. Dipl. iv. 131, which, as the deed is also signed by Mannig Abbot of Evesham, must be as late as

1044 (see p. 45). On the other hand it is plain (see p. 23) that Beorn held some Earldom from about the year 1045 till his murder. We know also that his Earldom took in Hertfordshire (Cod. Dipl. iv. 190). I infer then that in 1045 Beorn succeeded Thored as Earl of the Middle-Angles, of Eastern or Danish Mercia. I also infer that in that Earldom he had no one successor. No Earl is spoken of in the later days of Eadward who can show any claim to such a description, and several of the shires contained within the country which I conceive to have been held by Thored and Beorn seem to have remained in a sort of fluctuating state, ready to be attached to any of the great governments, as might be convenient.

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Thus Huntingdonshire was within the Earldom of Thored. But in 1051 (Flor. Wig. in anno) we find it, together with Cambridgeshire, a shire still so closely connected with it as to have a common Sheriff, altogether detached from Mercia, and forming part of the East-Anglian Earldom of Harold. "Men of Harold in Huntingdonshire accordingly occur in Domesday (p. 208). But Huntingdonshire was afterwards separated from East-Anglia, perhaps on Harold's translation to Wessex in 1053. It then became, strange to say, an outlying portion of the Earldom of Northumberland. It does not however appear that Cambridgeshire followed it in this last migration. That Huntingdonshire was held by Siward is shown by a writ (Cod. Dipl. iv. 239) coming between 1053 and 1055. It is certain that it was afterwards held by Waltheof. Domesday also (208) implies the succession of Siward, Tostig, and Waltheof, by speaking of "men" and of rights which belonged first to Tostig and afterwards to Waltheof. It might be worth considering whether some confused tradition of these transfers of the shire did not form an element in the legend of Tostig, Earl of Huntingdon, said to have been slain by Siward. See vol. i. p. 521.

Northamptonshire, like Huntingdonshire, was separated from Mercia and attached to Northumberland. This is distinctly shown by a royal writ addressed to Tostig as its Earl (Cod. Dipl. iv. 240). The only other Northamptonshire writ that I know (iv. 216) is addressed to Bishop Wulfwig without the name of any Earl. But as to Northamptonshire another question might arise. The singular description of the daughter of the Northumbrian Earl Elfhelm as Elfgifu of Northampton (see vol. i. pp. 276, 322) may possibly point to an earlier connexion between the two districts. This last is a mere guess, but the connexion between Northhumberland and Northamptonshire during part of the reign of Eadward is quite certain. But Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire were afterwards again detached from Northumberland, and were held as a separate Earldom by Waltheof. On this point the evidence seems quite plain; the only question is as to the exact date. Waltheof held some Earldom at the end of the year 1066, when he is spoken of as an Earl along with Eadwine and Morkere (Chron. Wig. 1066). Under William, besides his Northumbrian government, he was certainly Earl of Northamptonshire (Ord. Vit. 522 C) and of Huntingdonshire (Will. Gem. viii. 37).` We may therefore infer that these fragments of his father's government formed the Earldom which he had held under Harold. The false Ingulf (Gale, i. 66) makes him receive both these shires on his father's death when Tostig received Northumberland. The Chronicle of John of Peterborough, which, though not contemporary, has some authority as being a local record, distinctly makes Waltheof succeed to Northamptonshire on his father's death in

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