CHAPTER VI--ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD HAREFOOT, HARDICANUTE, AND EDWARD THECONFESSOR
Canute left three sons, by name SWEYN, HAROLD, and HARDICANUTE; but hisQueen, Emma, once the Flower of Normandy, was the mother of onlyHardicanute. Canute had wished his dominions to be divided between thethree, and had wished Harold to have England; but the Saxon people in theSouth of England, headed by a nobleman with great possessions, called thepowerful EARL GODWIN (who is said to have been originally a poorcow-boy), opposed this, and desired to have, instead, either Hardicanute,or one of the two exiled Princes who were over in Normandy. It seemed socertain that there would be more bloodshed to settle this dispute, thatmany people left their homes, and took refuge in the woods and swamps.Happily, however, it was agreed to refer the whole question to a greatmeeting at Oxford, which decided that Harold should have all the countrynorth of the Thames, with London for his capital city, and thatHardicanute should have all the south. The quarrel was so arranged; and,as Hardicanute was in Denmark troubling himself very little aboutanything but eating and getting drunk, his mother and Earl Godwingoverned the south for him.
They had hardly begun to do so, and the trembling people who had hiddenthemselves were scarcely at home again, when Edward, the elder of the twoexiled Princes, came over from Normandy with a few followers, to claimthe English Crown. His mother Emma, however, who only cared for her lastson Hardicanute, instead of assisting him, as he expected, opposed him sostrongly with all her influence that he was very soon glad to get safelyback. His brother Alfred was not so fortunate. Believing in anaffectionate letter, written some time afterwards to him and his brother,in his mother's name (but whether really with or without his mother'sknowledge is now uncertain), he allowed himself to be tempted over toEngland, with a good force of soldiers, and landing on the Kentish coast,and being met and welcomed by Earl Godwin, proceeded into Surrey, as faras the town of Guildford. Here, he and his men halted in the evening torest, having still the Earl in their company; who had ordered lodgingsand good cheer for them. But, in the dead of the night, when they wereoff their guard, being divided into small parties sleeping soundly aftera long march and a plentiful supper in different houses, they were setupon by the King's troops, and taken prisoners. Next morning they weredrawn out in a line, to the number of six hundred men, and werebarbarously tortured and killed; with the exception of every tenth man,who was sold into slavery. As to the wretched Prince Alfred, he wasstripped naked, tied to a horse and sent away into the Isle of Ely, wherehis eyes were torn out of his head, and where in a few days he miserablydied. I am not sure that the Earl had wilfully entrapped him, but Isuspect it strongly.
Harold was now King all over England, though it is doubtful whether theArchbishop of Canterbury (the greater part of the priests were Saxons,and not friendly to the Danes) ever consented to crown him. Crowned oruncrowned, with the Archbishop's leave or without it, he was King forfour years: after which short reign he died, and was buried; having neverdone much in life but go a hunting. He was such a fast runner at this,his favourite sport, that the people called him Harold Harefoot.
Hardicanute was then at Bruges, in Flanders, plotting, with his mother(who had gone over there after the cruel murder of Prince Alfred), forthe invasion of England. The Danes and Saxons, finding themselveswithout a King, and dreading new disputes, made common cause, and joinedin inviting him to occupy the Throne. He consented, and soon troubledthem enough; for he brought over numbers of Danes, and taxed the peopleso insupportably to enrich those greedy favourites that there were manyinsurrections, especially one at Worcester, where the citizens rose andkilled his tax-collectors; in revenge for which he burned their city. Hewas a brutal King, whose first public act was to order the dead body ofpoor Harold Harefoot to be dug up, beheaded, and thrown into the river.His end was worthy of such a beginning. He fell down drunk, with agoblet of wine in his hand, at a wedding-feast at Lambeth, given inhonour of the marriage of his standard-bearer, a Dane named TOWED THEPROUD. And he never spoke again.
EDWARD, afterwards called by the monks THE CONFESSOR, succeeded; and hisfirst act was to oblige his mother Emma, who had favoured him so little,to retire into the country; where she died some ten years afterwards. Hewas the exiled prince whose brother Alfred had been so foully killed. Hehad been invited over from Normandy by Hardicanute, in the course of hisshort reign of two years, and had been handsomely treated at court. Hiscause was now favoured by the powerful Earl Godwin, and he was soon madeKing. This Earl had been suspected by the people, ever since PrinceAlfred's cruel death; he had even been tried in the last reign for thePrince's murder, but had been pronounced not guilty; chiefly, as it wassupposed, because of a present he had made to the swinish King, of agilded ship with a figure-head of solid gold, and a crew of eightysplendidly armed men. It was his interest to help the new King with hispower, if the new King would help him against the popular distrust andhatred. So they made a bargain. Edward the Confessor got the Throne.The Earl got more power and more land, and his daughter Editha was madequeen; for it was a part of their compact that the King should take herfor his wife.
But, although she was a gentle lady, in all things worthy to bebeloved--good, beautiful, sensible, and kind--the King from the firstneglected her. Her father and her six proud brothers, resenting thiscold treatment, harassed the King greatly by exerting all their power tomake him unpopular. Having lived so long in Normandy, he preferred theNormans to the English. He made a Norman Archbishop, and Norman Bishops;his great officers and favourites were all Normans; he introduced theNorman fashions and the Norman language; in imitation of the state customof Normandy, he attached a great seal to his state documents, instead ofmerely marking them, as the Saxon Kings had done, with the sign of thecross--just as poor people who have never been taught to write, now makethe same mark for their names. All this, the powerful Earl Godwin andhis six proud sons represented to the people as disfavour shown towardsthe English; and thus they daily increased their own power, and dailydiminished the power of the King.
They were greatly helped by an event that occurred when he had reignedeight years. Eustace, Earl of Bologne, who had married the King'ssister, came to England on a visit. After staying at the court sometime, he set forth, with his numerous train of attendants, to returnhome. They were to embark at Dover. Entering that peaceful town inarmour, they took possession of the best houses, and noisily demanded tobe lodged and entertained without payment. One of the bold men of Dover,who would not endure to have these domineering strangers jingling theirheavy swords and iron corselets up and down his house, eating his meatand drinking his strong liquor, stood in his doorway and refusedadmission to the first armed man who came there. The armed man drew, andwounded him. The man of Dover struck the armed man dead. Intelligenceof what he had done, spreading through the streets to where the CountEustace and his men were standing by their horses, bridle in hand, theypassionately mounted, galloped to the house, surrounded it, forced theirway in (the doors and windows being closed when they came up), and killedthe man of Dover at his own fireside. They then clattered through thestreets, cutting down and riding over men, women, and children. This didnot last long, you may believe. The men of Dover set upon them withgreat fury, killed nineteen of the foreigners, wounded many more, and,blockading the road to the port so that they should not embark, beat themout of the town by the way they had come. Hereupon, Count Eustace ridesas hard as man can ride to Gloucester, where Edward is, surrounded byNorman monks and Norman lords. 'Justice!' cries the Count, 'upon the menof Dover, who have set upon and slain my people!' The King sendsimmediately for the powerful Earl Godwin, who happens to be near; remindshim that Dover is under his government; and orders him to repair to Doverand do military execution on the inhabitants. 'It does not become you,'says the proud Earl in reply, 'to condemn without a hearing those whomyou have sworn to protect. I will not do it.'
The King, therefore, summoned the Earl, on pain of banishment and loss ofhis titles and property, to appear before the court to answer thisdisobedience. The Earl refused to appear. He, his eldest son Harold,and his second son Sweyn, hastily raised as many fighting men as theirutmost power could collect, and demanded to have Count Eustace and hisfollowers surrendered to the justice of the country. The King, in histurn, refused to give them up, and raised a strong force. After sometreaty and delay, the troops of the great Earl and his sons began to falloff. The Earl, with a part of his family and abundance of treasure,sailed to Flanders; Harold escaped to Ireland; and the power of the greatfamily was for that time gone in England. But, the people did not forgetthem.
Then, Edward the Confessor, with the true meanness of a mean spirit,visited his dislike of the once powerful father and sons upon thehelpless daughter and sister, his unoffending wife, whom all who saw her(her husband and his monks excepted) loved. He seized rapaciously uponher fortune and her jewels, and allowing her only one attendant, confinedher in a gloomy convent, of which a sister of his--no doubt an unpleasantlady after his own heart--was abbess or jailer.
Having got Earl Godwin and his six sons well out of his way, the Kingfavoured the Normans more than ever. He invited over WILLIAM, DUKE OFNORMANDY, the son of that Duke who had received him and his murderedbrother long ago, and of a peasant girl, a tanner's daughter, with whomthat Duke had fallen in love for her beauty as he saw her washing clothesin a brook. William, who was a great warrior, with a passion for finehorses, dogs, and arms, accepted the invitation; and the Normans inEngland, finding themselves more numerous than ever when he arrived withhis retinue, and held in still greater honour at court than before,became more and more haughty towards the people, and were more and moredisliked by them.
The old Earl Godwin, though he was abroad, knew well how the people felt;for, with part of the treasure he had carried away with him, he keptspies and agents in his pay all over England.
Accordingly, he thought the time was come for fitting out a greatexpedition against the Norman-loving King. With it, he sailed to theIsle of Wight, where he was joined by his son Harold, the most gallantand brave of all his family. And so the father and son came sailing upthe Thames to Southwark; great numbers of the people declaring for them,and shouting for the English Earl and the English Harold, against theNorman favourites!
The King was at first as blind and stubborn as kings usually have beenwhensoever they have been in the hands of monks. But the people ralliedso thickly round the old Earl and his son, and the old Earl was so steadyin demanding without bloodshed the restoration of himself and his familyto their rights, that at last the court took the alarm. The NormanArchbishop of Canterbury, and the Norman Bishop of London, surrounded bytheir retainers, fought their way out of London, and escaped from Essexto France in a fishing-boat. The other Norman favourites dispersed inall directions. The old Earl and his sons (except Sweyn, who hadcommitted crimes against the law) were restored to their possessions anddignities. Editha, the virtuous and lovely Queen of the insensible King,was triumphantly released from her prison, the convent, and once more satin her chair of state, arrayed in the jewels of which, when she had nochampion to support her rights, her cold-blooded husband had deprivedher.
The old Earl Godwin did not long enjoy his restored fortune. He felldown in a fit at the King's table, and died upon the third dayafterwards. Harold succeeded to his power, and to a far higher place inthe attachment of the people than his father had ever held. By hisvalour he subdued the King's enemies in many bloody fights. He wasvigorous against rebels in Scotland--this was the time when Macbeth slewDuncan, upon which event our English Shakespeare, hundreds of yearsafterwards, wrote his great tragedy; and he killed the restless WelshKing GRIFFITH, and brought his head to England.
What Harold was doing at sea, when he was driven on the French coast by atempest, is not at all certain; nor does it at all matter. That his shipwas forced by a storm on that shore, and that he was taken prisoner,there is no doubt. In those barbarous days, all shipwrecked strangerswere taken prisoners, and obliged to pay ransom. So, a certain CountGuy, who was the Lord of Ponthieu where Harold's disaster happened,seized him, instead of relieving him like a hospitable and Christian lordas he ought to have done, and expected to make a very good thing of it.
But Harold sent off immediately to Duke William of Normandy, complainingof this treatment; and the Duke no sooner heard of it than he orderedHarold to be escorted to the ancient town of Rouen, where he then was,and where he received him as an honoured guest. Now, some writers tellus that Edward the Confessor, who was by this time old and had nochildren, had made a will, appointing Duke William of Normandy hissuccessor, and had informed the Duke of his having done so. There is nodoubt that he was anxious about his successor; because he had eveninvited over, from abroad, EDWARD THE OUTLAW, a son of Ironside, who hadcome to England with his wife and three children, but whom the King hadstrangely refused to see when he did come, and who had died in Londonsuddenly (princes were terribly liable to sudden death in those days),and had been buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. The King might possiblyhave made such a will; or, having always been fond of the Normans, hemight have encouraged Norman William to aspire to the English crown, bysomething that he said to him when he was staying at the English court.But, certainly William did now aspire to it; and knowing that Haroldwould be a powerful rival, he called together a great assembly of hisnobles, offered Harold his daughter ADELE in marriage, informed him thathe meant on King Edward's death to claim the English crown as his owninheritance, and required Harold then and there to swear to aid him.Harold, being in the Duke's power, took this oath upon the Missal, orPrayer-book. It is a good example of the superstitions of the monks,that this Missal, instead of being placed upon a table, was placed upon atub; which, when Harold had sworn, was uncovered, and shown to be full ofdead men's bones--bones, as the monks pretended, of saints. This wassupposed to make Harold's oath a great deal more impressive and binding.As if the great name of the Creator of Heaven and earth could be mademore solemn by a knuckle-bone, or a double-tooth, or a finger-nail, ofDunstan!
Within a week or two after Harold's return to England, the dreary oldConfessor was found to be dying. After wandering in his mind like a veryweak old man, he died. As he had put himself entirely in the hands ofthe monks when he was alive, they praised him lustily when he was dead.They had gone so far, already, as to persuade him that he could workmiracles; and had brought people afflicted with a bad disorder of theskin, to him, to be touched and cured. This was called 'touching for theKing's Evil,' which afterwards became a royal custom. You know, however,Who really touched the sick, and healed them; and you know His sacredname is not among the dusty line of human kings.