rumour came that hostile ships had been seen ravaging to the west. The Earl of the West-Saxons accordingly sailed forth to the rescue, with forty-two ships belonging to the men of his Earldom.1 He took also two ships of the King, commanded respectively by Harold and by his third son Tostig, of whom we now hear for the first time.2 Stress of weather however hindered them from getting further west than Pevensey. While they lay there, a change, of the motive of which we are not told, was made in the command of the two royal ships which had accompanied Godwine. Harold gave up the ship which he had commanded to his cousin Beorn.3 This accidental change possibly saved Harold's life. For Swegen now came from Bosham to Pevensey, and there found his father and cousin. He there spoke with both of them. The result of their discourse was that Beorn was persuaded to undertake the office of intercessor with the King on Swegen's behalf. What arrangement was to be proposed --whether Beorn brought himself to consent to the sacrifice which he had before refused-whether Swegen was to be again invested with his Earldom or only with his private lordships-whether Harold, Beorn, or Swegen was to be compensated in any other way for the surrenders which one or more of them would have to make-of all this nothing is explained to us. We hear however that Beorn, trusting to his kindred with Swegen," did not hesitate to set out to ride with him to the King at Sandwich. He even agreed to a proposal of Swegen, according to which they left the road from Pevensey to Sandwich, and went westward to Bosham. For this deviation from his original scheme Swegen made an excuse, which was doubtless more intelligible then than it is now, namely a fear lest the crews of his ships should forsake him, if they were not confirmed in their faith towards him by the presence of Beorn. The young Earl fell into the snare, and accompanied his cousin to the haven of Bosham. But when Swegen pressed him to go on board one of his ships, Beorn's suspicions were at last aroused, and he vehemently refused. At last 1 Abingdon and Worcester mention Godwine's going with forty-two ships, but Peterborough says more distinctly, "Da ge[wende] Godwine eorl west onbuton mid þæs cynges ii. scipum þan anan steorde Harold corl and pan ooran Tostig his brodor, and landesmanna scipa xlii." 2 The first certainly authentic signature of Tostig seems to be in this year. Cod. Dipl. iv. 115. The charter, after the signatures of Godwine, Leofric and Siward, has those of Harold Dux," " Beorn Dux," "Tosti nobilis," "Leowine nobilis." Leofwine must have been very young. 3 Chron Petrib. "Da scyfte man Harold eorl up þæs cynges scipe pe Harold eorl ær Was it some feeling that a brother's life had been at least in jeopardy that led William of Malmesbury, or those whom he followed, into the strange statement (ii. 200) that Swegen's penance was undertaken " pro conscientiâ Brunonis cognati interempti, et, ut quidam dicunt, fratris"? 5 Chron. Ab. 'pa wende Beorn for þære sibbe þæt he him swican nolde." So Wig. 66 BEORN MURDERED BY SWEGEN. 67 Swegen's sailors bound him, put him in a boat, rowed him to the ships, and there kept him a prisoner. They then hoisted their sails and steered for Dartmouth.1 There Beorn was killed by Swegen's orders, but his body was taken on shore and buried in a church. As soon as the murder became known, Earl Harold,2 with others of Beorn's friends, and the sailors from London-a clear mark of Beorn's popularity-came and took up the body, carried it to Winchester, and there buried it in the Old Minster by the side of Beorn's uncle King Cnut. The general indignation at the crime of Swegen was intense. The King and the army publicly declared the murderer to be Nithing.3 This was the vilest epithet in the English language, implying utter worthlessness. It was evidently used as a formal term of dishonour. We shall find it at a later time resorted to by a Norman King as a means of appeal to his English subjects. William Rufus, when he needed English support, proclaimed in the like sort that all who failed to come to his standard should be declared to be Nithing. But this proclamation has a deeper importance than the mere use of this curious expression of public contempt. It is to be noted that the proclamation is described as the act of the King and his army. Here is clearly a case of a military Gemót. The army, as representing the nation, assumes to itself in time of war the functions which belonged to the regular Gemót in time of peace. The army declares Swegen to be Nithing, and it was doubtless the army, in the same sense, which had just before hearkened to, and finally rejected, his petition for restoration to his estates. So it was the army, Cnut's Danish army, which assumed to itself the functions of the English Witan by disposing of the English Crown on the death of the elder Swegen.5 In the ancient Teutonic constitution the army was the nation and the nation was the army. In the primitive Gemóts described by Tacitus, to which all men came armed, no distinction could be drawn between the two. But it should be noticed that the word used is not that which denotes the armed levy of the Kingdom, nire, nisi si qui velint sub nomine Niðing, quod nequam sonat, remanere." Matt. Paris. p. 15 (Wats); "Absque morâ ut ad obsidionem veniant jubet; nisi velint sub nomine Nithing, quod Latine nequam sonat, recenseri. Angli, qui nihil contumeliosius et vilius æstimant quam hujusmodi ignominioso vocabulo notari, catervatim ad Regem confluentes," &c. On military Assemblies, Macedonian, Ætolian, and even Achaian, see Hist. Fed. Gov. i. pp. 413, 511, 549. 5 See vol. i. p. 247. but that which expresses the army in its special relation to the King.1 This fact exactly falls in with the practical, though not formal, change which had taken place in the constitution of the ordinary Gemóts.2 The military Gemót which passed this sentence on Swegen was not the whole force of England, for we were just before told that the contingents both of Mercia and Wessex had left Sandwich. This assembly must have consisted of the King's Comitatus of both kinds, of the Thegns bound to him by the older and more honourable tie, and also of the standing force of the Housecarls, or at any rate of their officers.3 Setting churchmen aside-though we have seen that even churchmen often bore arms both by land and by sea-such a body would probably contain a large proportion of the men who were likely to attend an ordinary Witenagemót. By an assembly of this kind, acting, whether constitutionally or not, in the character of a National Assembly, the outlawry and disgrace of Swegen were decreed. It would seem that this decree preceded the translation of Beorn's body to Winchester, a ceremony which may not improbably have been ordered by the Assembly. For it was before that translation * that the men of Hastings, most probably by some commission from the King or his military council, sailed forth to take vengeance on the murderer. Swegen was already forsaken by the greater part of his following. Of his eight ships six had left him. Their crews were probably rough Wikings from the North, men familiar with all the horrors of ordinary pirate warfare, not troubled with scruples about harrying a land whose people had never wronged them, but who nevertheless shrank from the fouler wickedness of slaying a kinsman by guile. Two ships only remained with Swegen, those doubtless whose crews had been the actual perpetrators of the deed. The men of Hastings chased and overtook these ships, slew their crews, and brought the ships to the King. How Swegen himself escaped it is 5 writer adds, "ehta scypa he hæfde ær he Beorn beswice; syððan hine forleton ealle buton twam." The only meaning of these words seems to be that which I have given, though it involves the difficulty as to the personal escape of Swegen. But it is clear that Florence took them differently; "Dimiserunt illum sex naves, quarum duas paullo post coeperunt Hastingenses Swanus vero ad Flandriam duabus fugiens navibus ibi mansit." This accounts for his escape, but I cannot see how his twa scypa can mean two of the ships which had left him. The Abingdon Chronicle also mentions the desertion of the six ships, but not the exploit of the Hastings men. OUTLAWRY AND PARDON OF SWEGEN. 69 not easy to see; possibly the men of Hastings still scrupled personally to lay hands upon a son of Godwine. At any rate the murderer baffled pursuit, and again took shelter in his old quarters. Baldwin, so lately restored to his dominions, again began his old practice of receiving English exiles, and Swegen spent the whole winter at the court of Flanders under the full protection of its sovereign.1 2 The story of the murder of Beorn is told in so minute and graphic a way that it seems impossible to throw doubt on any part of the tale. And every account represents the deed as a deed of deliberate treachery. An act of mere violence would not have greatly offended the morality of that age. Had Swegen killed even a kinsman in a moment of provocation or in a fair fight to decide a quarrel, his guilt would not have seemed very black. Had he even used craft in carrying out an ancestral deadly feud, he might have quoted many precedents in Northumbrian history, and, among them, an act in the life of the reigning Earl of the North hardly inferior in guilt to the worst aspect of his own.3 But to kill a kinsman, a confiding kinsman, one who had just granted a somewhat unreasonable prayer, was a deed which offended the natural instincts not only of contemporary Englishmen but of Scandinavian pirates. At the moment Swegen seems to have found no friends; the voice of all England was against him; there is no sign that any of his family stood by him; the sympathies of Harold clearly lay with his murdered cousin. It is hardly possible to conceive a blacker or more unpardonable crime. One would have thought that Swegen would have failed to find patrons or protectors in any corner of Christendom. Yet, strange to say, the murderer, forsaken by all, was at once received with favour by Baldwin, even though Baldwin must have known that by receiving him he was running the risk of again offending the King of the English and even the Emperor himself. And what followed is stranger still. In the next year, in a Witenagemót held in London in Midlent, Swegen's outlawry was reversed, and he was restored to his Earldom. And, strangest of all, his restoration is attributed, not to the influence of Godwine or his family, not to any revulsion of feeling on the part of the King or the nation, but to the personal agency of Bishop Ealdred the Peacemaker. He it was who, it would 4 seem, crossed over to Flanders, brought Swegen to England, and procured his restoration at the hands of the King and his Witan.1 There is nothing to show that Ealdred was specially under the influence of Godwine. We shall before long find him acting in a manner which, to say the least, shows that he was not one of Godwine's special followers. No part of his diocese lay within the Earldom of Godwine. And if part of it lay within the Earldom of the man whom he sought to restore, that only makes him the more responsible for the act which was so directly to affect a portion of his own flock. In the restoration of Swegen, Ealdred seems to have acted purely in his capacity of peacemaker. At first sight it might seem that Ealdred strove to win the blessing promised to his class by labouring on behalf of a sinner for whom the most enlarged charity could hardly plead. The very strangeness of the act suggests that there must have been some explaining cause, intelligible at the time, but which our authorities have not recorded. The later history of Swegen shows that, if he was a great sinner, he was also a great penitent. We can only guess that Ealdred had already marked in him some signs of remorse and amendment, that he had received from him some confession of his crime, to which we possibly owe the full and graphic account of the murder of Beorn which has been handed down to us. If so, it was doubtless wise and charitable not to break a bruised reed; still again to entrust the government of five English shires to the seducer of Eadgifu and murderer of Beorn was, to say the least, a perilous experiment. We must now go back to the time when King Eadward had just dismissed the Mercian contingent after the reconciliation between Baldwin and the Emperor. While the unhappy events which I have just narrated were going on, Englishmen had cause to be alert in more than one quarter of the island against assaults of various kinds. In the comparatively peaceful reign of Eadward this year stands forth as marked by warlike operations of every sort. England had to resist the assaults of foreign enemies, of faithless vassals, and of banished men seeking their restoration. Besides the small force of Swegen, 1 Flor. Wig. "Swanus . . . ibi mansit, quoad Wigornensis episcopus Aldredus illum reduceret, et cum Rege pacificaret." This seems to imply that Ealdred brought him over in person. 2 The old diocese of Worcester took in the shires of Worcester and Gloucester and part of Warwick. Of these Gloucestershire was in Swegen's Earldom, the rest most probably in Ralph's. See above, p. 30, and Appendix G. 3 The reconciliation of Swegen with Eadward is mentioned by Thomas Stubbs (see above, p. 57) as an instance of the peacemaking powers of Ealdred, along with that of Gruffydd. It is clear that the details of the murder could come only from Swegen himself, as his accomplices were killed by the Hastings men. Ealdred would be the obvious person for Swegen to relate them to. |