beard of a singular milky whiteness; his face full; his skin rosy; his hands long and exceedingly white; his fingers long and transparent; the rest of his body without blemish; a truly kingly man." His temper was quick, but commonly under good control; he was gentle, affable, so courteous in manner that his refusal of a request was as pleasant as another man's granting it. He was devout with something, one cannot but believe, of genuine piety in his devotion. He wished well to his people; he was pure in his life. But he was weak, indolent, and, as has often been said, better fitted to be a monk than a king. As Professor Freeman pithily puts it, " So far as a really good man can reproduce the character of a thoroughly bad one, Edward reproduced the character of his father, Ethelred." What such a ruler may do for the country over which he is set will depend mainly upon the hands into which he falls. Kings mostly fall into bad hands; and Edward was not wholly an exception to this rule. Yet he was more fortunate in this respect than some have been. Godwin had great influence over him during the earlier years of his reign, and Harold, Godwin's son, a greater during the latter. Both were true English patriots; but the King's personal preferences were always for Norman advisers. Normans were promoted to offices in the state, and high dignities in the Church; and the way was paved for that forcible usurpation of them which was to follow not many years later.

In the year of his coronation, "fourteen nights before St. Andrew's Mass [St. Andrew's Day is Nov. 30th] the King was so advised that he and Earl

MAGNUS CLAIMS THE THRONE.

323

Leofric, and Earl Godwin, and Earl Siward, with their attendants, rode from Gloucester to Winchester unwares upon the lady [Queen Emma], and they bereaved her of all the treasures which she owned, which were not to be told; because before she had been very hard to the King, her son, inasmuch as she had done less for him than he would, both before he was King and after." The Queen Dowager's offence is not very clear. It is often, indeed, reckoned as an offence to be possessed of great treasures of which others stand in need. Doubtless Emma of Normandy had accumulated great wealth, and was unwilling to give up any of it. Possibly she had favoured the cause of her second husband's nephew, Sweyn of Denmark, whom we have already seen put in competition for the crown. If so, with her wealth she lost all power of becoming dangerous, for she was permitted to live quietly at Winchester for the rest of her days.

In the following year (1043) a new danger from the North seemed to threaten England. Magnus of Norway claimed the crown, his, he declared, by virtue of an agreement which he had made with Hardicanute, that whoever of the two should live longer should have the dominions of both. Edward flatly refused to acknowledge the claim, and got together a fleet to resist any attempt that might be made. Whether Magnus meditated any such effort we do not know. The Norse Chronicler tells us that he acknowledged the justice of Edward's answer; but it is certain that for some time he had enough to do to defend himself. Sweyn, aided by Harold Hardrada, of whom we

shall hear again, attacked him at home, and the invasion of England did not take place.

In January, 1045, one of the objects of Earl Godwin's ambition was reached, for the King married his daughter Edith. It was the first of many promotions in this family, a family whose rise and fall make one of the strangest stories in English annals. Godwin had six sons, whose names, arranged in the probable order of their birth, were Sweyn, Harold, Tostig, Gurth, Leofwine, and Wulfnoth. Sweyn had received his carldom, which comprised the counties of Hereford, Gloucester, Oxford, Berkshire, and Somersetshire, carly in Edward's reign. Harold was now advanced to the carldom of East Anglia.

Sweyn's was a troubled career, which it may be convenient briefly to relate in this place. In 1046, on his return from a campaign in Wales, he had carried off the Abbess of Leominster. He offered to marry her, but the offer was considered as being scarcely a less wrong than the original outrage. Sweyn resigned his earldom, and crossed the seas to find shelter with Baldwin of Flanders. His earldom was divided between Harold and his cousin, Beorn, nephew of Gytha, Earl Godwin's wife. Beorn already ruled the counties of Hertford, Bedford, Huntingden, and Buckingham, which had been assigned to him at the same time at which Harold received his earldom. Three years afterwards he returned to England, presented himself before the King, offered to renew his fealty to him, and begged that his earldom might

I See p. 356.

be given back to him. The request might have been granted, for Godwin was powerful with the King, and seems not to have had many scruples when the interests of his own family were concerned, but the two carls between whom Sweyn's own dominions had been divided strongly opposed the request. It was refused, and Sweyn went back to his ships which he had left at Bosham (a harbour in West Sussex). What followed is somewhat obscure, but the end is only too plain. Beorn consented to go with Sweyn to the King at Sandwich, probably to propose some compromise on which they had agreed. But it was not to Sandwich that they went. Sweyn persuaded his cousin to accompany him to his ships at Bosham, where his presence, he said, would help to keep his men from deserting. When the two reached Bosham a proposal was made that Beorn should go on board the ships. This he refused to do. Then Sweyn's men bound him, put him into a boat, and took him to the ships. These carried him to Dartmouth, where he was killed by Sweyn's orders. The body was put on shore and buried in a church, but immediately afterwards removed with much pomp to Winchester.

This pomp was a sign of the indignation that Sweyn's crime aroused throughout England. The King and the army declared the murderer to be mithing, worthless, the most emphatic condemnation which could be pronounced on any man. Sweyn's own ships, excepting two, deserted him. The criminal himself escaped to Baldwin of Flanders. Yet in spite of these misdeeds he was reinstated in his honours

in 1051, one of the chief English bishops interceding in his favour. But he did not long keep the earldom that was thus given back to him. The year of his return was the year of that temporary overthrow of his house which I shall soon have to relate. He was again outlawed, and though again restored, when his father regained his power, never came back to England. His crime, if overlooked by others, was never forgotten by himself. In the hope of ridding himself of remorse, he went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and died, as he was on his way back, in an obscure spot in Asia Minor. Such was the end of Godwin's eldest son. I now go back to the thread of my story.

The chief events in the narrative of English affairs are the request of Sweyn of Denmark for aid against Magnus and Harold Hardrada, and the ravages of various pirates' expeditions from the North. Sweyn was backed in his petition by Earl Godwin, but failed both in 1047 and the following year to obtain it. Between the two requests his position had greatly changed, for Magnus of Norway was dead, and had bequeathed to him the kingdom of Denmark. Peace was made on the second occasion with Harold Hardrada, Sweyn's great enemy, now king of Norway. The general voice of the kingdom seems to have approved this policy; but it is curious to find, as we shall, some twenty years later, this same Harold making a claim on the crown of England, and invading the country to establish it.

The first appearance of the pirates was in 1048, when two Danes, Lothan and Girling by name, ap

1 See p. 332.