A.D. 1065. The Welsh, under Caradoc, son of Griffin, destroy a fort at Portskeweth, (Porth Iscoed, near Chepstow,) which Harold had erected, Aug. 24.

The people of Northumbria rise against Tostig's government, outlaw him, and kill his house-carles, and seize his treasures, in October. They choose Morcar, son of Elfgar, for their earl.

Morcar, being joined by his brother Edwin and many Britons, marches south as far as Northampton. Harold being sent against them, "they laid an errand upon him to King Edward, and also sent messengers with him, and begged that they might have Morcar for their earl. And the king granted it, and sent Harold again to them at Northampton, on the eve of St. Simon's and St. Jude's mass, (Oct. 27); and he made known the same to them, and delivered a pledge thereof unto them, and he there renewed Canute's law'. And the northern men did much harm about Northampton the while that he went on their errand, inasmuch as they slew men, and burned houses and corn, and took all the cattle which they might come at, that was many thousand; and many hundred men they took and led north with them; so that that shire, and the other shires which there are nigh, were for many years the worse."

i Tostig was then at Britford, in Wiltshire, with the king. k Harold is often blamed, as if he had acted in an unfriendly way by Tostig, but the following testimony from the Cottonian MS. of the Saxon Chronicle is strongly in his favour: "There was a great gemot at Oxford; and there was Harold the earl, and would work a reconciliation if he might, but he could not; but all Tostig's earldom him unanimously forsook and outlawed, and all who with hin lawlessness upreared, because he robbed God first, and all those bereaved over whom he had power of life and land."

1 See p. 156.

Tostig, with his wife, "and all those who would what he would," retires to Flanders, to Earl Baldwin.

"King Edward came to Westminster at midwinter, (Christmas,) and there caused to be hallowed the minster which himself had built to the glory of God and of St. Peter, and of all God's saints; and the church-hallowing was on Childermass-day," (Dec. 28.)

A.D. 1066. King Edward dies, Jan. 5; he is buried at Westminster the next day, "within the newly hallowed church."

HAROLD II.

HAROLD, the son of Godwin, immediately succeeded Edward, either chosen by a general assembly, or, as is with less probability asserted, named by him on his death-bedTM; the claims of Edgar Atheling being in either case passed over; but though at once hallowed king, "he with little quiet abode therein, the while that he wielded the realm." His brief reign of "forty weeks and one day" saw two formidable invasions of the country, and three great battles, the last of which swept away the Saxon rule, which, though undergoing many

m

Perhaps both statements are true, as one MS. of the Saxon Chronicle says, "Harold the earl succeeded to the kingdom of England, even as the king had granted it to him, and men also had him chosen thereto." The Heimskringla, or Chronicle of the Kings of Norway, in the saga of Harold Hardrada, gives this account of Harold's accession: "It is said that when the king was approaching his last hour, Harold and a few others were with him. Harold first leant down over the king, and then said, 'I take you all to witness that the king has now given me the kingdom, and all the realm of England,' and then the king was taken dead out of bed. The same day there was a meeting of the chiefs, at which there was some talk of choosing a king, and then Harold brought forward his witnesses that King Edward had given him the kingdom on his dying day."

modifications, and having received a much greater admixture of Northern or Danish institutions than is usually supposed, had endured for more than six centuries.

The crown of England was immediately claimed by William of Normandy, on the strength of an alleged bequest, which Edward was not entitled to make, and a promise which shipwreck had enabled him to extort from Harold. Compliance was not of course expected, and William collected a force not only from his own state, but from foreign countries; Tostig, Harold's brother, (but recently driven from England,) in conjunction with the king of Norway, invaded Yorkshire, and though defeated and killed, left the Anglo-Saxon state so weakened, that the success of the Norman adventurers was assured.

It may be regarded as certain, that Harold, as well as his brothers Gyrth and Leofwin, fell at Hastings, and as most probable that he was buried at Waltham, in the church of his own foundation; although William of Poitiers says that he was insultingly interred on the sea-shore, by the order of the conqueror, and a tradition met with in Giraldus Cambrensis, and repeated by later writers, asserts that he escaped from the field with the loss of his left eye, and lived as a hermit at Chester until the time of Henry I.n

Harold was twice married; his first wife's name is unknown, his second was Edith, (or Eddeva the Fair, as

Another tradition affirms that Gyrth also survived the battle, and lived till the time of Henry II., with whom he had an interview, and to whom he affirmed that Harold had not been buried at Waltham; but the tale is considered a mere fabrication intended to damage the renown of that abbey.

she is styled in the Domesday Survey,) the relict of Griffin, prince of North Wales, and sister of the earls Edwin and Morcar; she survived him, and lived in England until her death, which is believed to have happened in 1075. His sons, Godwin, Edmund, and Magnus, retired to Norway with their sister Githa, who married Waldemar, a prince of Holgard; Gunilda, another daughter, (who is said to have been cured of blindness by Wolstan, the bishop of Worcester,) fled to Flanders with Harold's mother Githa, and his sister Gunilda ; the latter became a nun at Bruges, and died (as appears by her monumental plate, still in existence,) Aug. 24, 1087. Alfgar, Harold's brother, and Wulfnoth, his son, who had long been imprisoned by William in Normandy, were at last allowed to secure their lives by assuming the tonsure, the one at Reims, the other at Salisbury.

Of all Harold's brothers, Tostig alone seems to have left issue. Skule, his son, married Gudrun, the niece of Harold Hardrada, and founded a powerful house in Norway; and Judith his widow re-married with Guelph of Bavaria, of the same stock as the House of Brunswick.

• "Harold, the son of King Harold," is mentioned by William of Malmesbury as accompanying Magnus III. in his expedition to the Hebrides and more southern islands in 1098.

P They appear to have been given as hostages, when Harold fell into his power by shipwreck, (about the year 1063,) and was obliged to swear to support William's claim to the crown; a less probable account represents them as sent prisoners to Normandy in 1051, when Godwin and his family were exiled, but the Saxon Chronicle does not mention this; on the contrary, it says expressly that "the king gave to the earl and his children his full friendship," (see p. 140,) in the following year; a declaration inconsistent with the imprisonment of two of their number in a foreign land.

9 Ketil, a second son of Tostig, is mentioned in the Sagas.

A.D. 1066. Harold is crowned at Westminster, by Archbishop Aldred, January 6.

The earldom of Oxford bestowed on Edgar Atheling. Harold visits the north, but returns to Westminster at Easter.

William of Normandy makes a formal claim of the crown of England; it is refused, and Harold raises a fleet and army to watch the sea-coast, whilst William prepares for an invasion.

Tostig arrives at the Isle of Wight, with a fleet, at the end of April; he attempts a landing on the Isle of Thanet, but is repulsed.

Harold repairs to his fleet at Sandwich, and Tostig retires to the Humber, where he ravages Lincolnshire, but is defeated by the earls Edwin and Morcar, and deserted by his sailors; he flees to Scotland.

Harold is obliged to dismiss his fleet for want of provisions, Sept. 8.

Harold Hardrada', king of Norway, arrives in the Tyne early in September; Tostig "submits to him, and

r Harold Hardrada, or the Stern, (a descendant of Harold Harfagar, and cousin of Olaf the Saint,) is the subject of the last saga of the Heimskringla. He had long served in the armies of the Eastern emperors, had made himself master of Norway, married the daughter of the Czar of Russia, and was esteemed one of the most renowned warriors of his time. He was in his fiftieth year when he invaded England. "He was," says his saga, "stern and severe to his enemies, bountiful to his friends," a patron of bards, and a bard himself. "He was a handsome man, of noble appearance; his hair and beard yellow. He had a short beard, and long moustachios; the one eye-brow was somewhat higher than the other; he had large hands and feet, but these were well made. His height was five ells," or more than eight English feet, and he appeared in his last field attired in "a blue kirtle which reached his knees, and a beautiful helmet."