Chapter IX (3)

In the course of this year, seemingly at a Gemót held at Midsummer, possibly that in which the expedition [Sidenote: State of the succession. 1054.] against Macbeth was decreed,[1090] a most important step was taken with regard to the succession to the Crown. It was a step which proved altogether fruitless, but it is most important as showing what men’s feelings and wishes were at the time. It proves incontestably that now, two years after the return of Godwine, the idea of the succession of William had quite passed away, and that the idea of the succession of Harold had not yet occurred to men’s minds. The state of the royal house was such as to cause the deepest anxiety. The English people, though they cared little for any strict law of succession, still reverenced the blood of their ancient princes, and had ever been wont, save under the irresistible pressure of foreign conquest, to choose their Kings only from among the descendants of former Kings. But now the line of their former Kings seemed to be altogether dying out. Eadward was without children or hopes of children. There was no man in the land sprung from the male line of Æthelred and Eadgar. It is quite possible that there may have been men descended from earlier Kings; but, if so, they could only have been distant kinsmen, whose royal descent was well nigh forgotten, and who were no longer allowed to count as Æthelings. There was indeed a grandson of Æthelred dwelling in the Kingdom in the person of Ralph of Hereford. [Sidenote: Position of Ralph.] Ralph would very likely have been the successor to whom Eadward’s personal inclinations would have led him. He shared with William of Normandy the merit of being a stranger speaking the French tongue, and he had the advantage over William of being really a descendant of English royalty. And the tie which bound Ralph to Eadward was a very close one. Old Teutonic feelings held the son of a sister to be hardly less near and dear than a son of one’s own loins,[1091] and we have seen some indications that this feeling was not wholly forgotten in England in the eleventh century. The sister’s son of Brihtnoth and the sister’s son of Siward[1092] are mentioned in a special way among the chosen companions of their uncles, around whose banners they fought and died. Eadward, in his heart of hearts, would naturally fall back upon Ralph, his own nephew, the son of the daughter of Æthelred and Emma, as a candidate whom the English people might perhaps be persuaded to accept, when the cause of the Norman became hopeless after Godwine’s revolution. [Sidenote: No preference given by female descent.] But however sacred was the relation between a man and his sister’s son, it was not one which by the Law of England conferred any right to the royal succession. The preference attaching to kingly blood was confined to those who were of kingly blood by direct male descent; it does not appear that the son of a King’s daughter had any sort of claim in a royal election beyond any other man in the realm. And, as for Ralph himself, his foreign origin and his personal conduct were, either of them, quite enough to make him thoroughly distasteful to the English people. Men had had quite enough of him as Earl, and they certainly had no wish to have any further experience of him as King. In the present lack of heirs, men’s thoughts turned to a branch of the royal family whose very existence [Sidenote: The sons of Eadmund Ironside.] was perhaps well nigh forgotten. Seven and thirty years before, the infant sons of Eadmund Ironside, Eadmund and [Sidenote: 1017.] Eadward, had found a shelter from the fears of Cnut under the protection of the sainted Hungarian King Stephen.[1093] [Sidenote: Eadward the Ætheling; his marriage and children.] Eadmund died, seemingly while still young. Eadward was still living. He had, seemingly through the influence of Stephen’s Queen Gisela, sister of the Emperor Henry the Second, obtained in marriage a lady of royal descent named Agatha, who seems most probably to have been a niece of the Hungarian Queen and of the sainted Emperor.[1094] This marriage would seem to show that, in those distant lands, Eadward was acknowledged as a prince, perhaps looked to as one who might some day reign in his native island. And the fact that the son of Eadward and Agatha bore the renowned English name of Eadgar, shows that the Ætheling himself cannot have wholly forgotten his native land. Yet, banished, as he was, in his cradle, he could have retained hardly anything of the feelings of an Englishman, and it is hardly possible that he could have spoken the English tongue. Eadward must have been even less of an Englishman than his royal namesake and uncle. Eadward the King had left England when he was many years older than Eadward the Ætheling, and he had lived in a land which had a much closer connexion with England. Still Normandy was dangerous, and Hungary was not. Whatever the Ætheling was, at least he was not a Frenchman; his connexions, though foreign, were in every way honourable and in no way formidable. Hungary was too distant a land to do England either good or harm, but the fame of the youngest Christian Kingdom, and of its renowned and sainted King, was doubtless great throughout Europe. And the connexion with the Imperial House, the distant kindred of the Ætheling’s children with the illustrious Cæsar, the friend and brother-in-law of King Eadward, was, of all foreign ties, that which it most became Englishmen to strengthen. In default therefore of any member of the royal house brought up and dwelling in the land, it was determined to recall the banished Ætheling with his wife and family.[1095] Besides his son Eadgar, he had two daughters, who bore the foreign names of Margaret and Christina. We shall hear of all [Sidenote: Eadgar.] three again. Eadgar lived to be in an especial manner the sport of fortune; a King twice chosen, but never crowned, the last male descendant of Cerdic dragged on a sluggish and contented life as the friend and pensioner [Sidenote: Margaret.] of Norman patrons. One of his sisters won a worthier fame. Margaret obtained the honours alike of royalty and of saintship; she became one of the brightest patterns of every virtue in her own time, and she became the source through which the blood and the rights of the Imperial House of Wessex have passed to the Angevin, the Scottish, and the German sovereigns of England.[1096]

It is impossible to doubt that the resolution to invite the Ætheling was regularly passed by the authority of the King and his Witan. No lighter authority could have justified such a step, or could have carried any weight with [Sidenote: The Ætheling invited to England: the invitation equivalent to succession to the Crown.] foreign courts. Such an invitation was equivalent to declaring the Ætheling to be successor to the Crown, so far as English Law allowed any man to be successor before the Crown was actually vacant. It is possible that, as in some other cases, an election before the vacancy may have been attempted;[1097] but it is perhaps more likely that all that was done was to guarantee to Eadward that same strong preference which naturally belonged only to a son of a reigning King. Such a preference, in favour of one who was the last remaining member of the royal family, would in practice hardly differ from an exclusive right. The resolution in short placed the Ætheling in the same position as if his father and not his uncle had been on the throne. His position would thus be the same as that of Eadwig and Eadgar during the reign of Eadred.[1098] But, when we consider what followed, it is important to remember that the preference which undoubtedly belonged to Eadward would not belong to his son. Eadward, though so long an exile, was an Englishman born, the son of a crowned King and his Lady.[1099] The young Eadgar was a native of a foreign land, and was not the son of [Sidenote: Import of the selection of Eadward.] royal parents. This _quasi_ designation of Eadward to the Crown involves, as I before said, two things. It implies that the King had learned that the succession of William was a thing which he never could bring about.[1100] It implies also that neither Harold himself nor the English people had as yet formed any serious idea of the possible succession of one not of royal descent. Indeed one can hardly doubt that the resolution to send for the Ætheling, if it was not made at Harold’s own motion, must at any rate have had his full approval. No proposal could be more contrary to the wishes and interests of the Norman courtiers, who must either have unsuccessfully opposed it or else have found it their best wisdom to hold their peace. It was therefore, seemingly at the Whitsun Gemót, resolved to send an embassy to obtain the return of the Ætheling. And about the time that Earl Siward was warring in Scotland, the English ambassadors set forth on their errand.

[Sidenote: Embassy to the Emperor Henry. July, 1054.]

A direct communication with the court of Hungary seems to have been an achievement beyond the diplomatic powers of Englishmen in that age. The immediate commission of the embassy was addressed to the Emperor Henry, with a request that he would himself send a further [Sidenote: Ealdred and Ælfwine ambassadors.] embassy into Hungary. At the head of the English legation was the indefatigable Bishop Ealdred, and with him seems to have been coupled Abbot Ælfwine of Ramsey.[1101] Both these Prelates had already had some experience of foreign courts. Ealdred had gone on the King’s errand to the Apostolic throne,[1102] and Ælfwine had been one of the representatives of the English Church at the famous Council of Rheims.[1103] The Bishop of Worcester clearly reckoned on a long absence, and we get some details of the arrangements which he made for the discharge of his ecclesiastical duties during his absence. The Abbey of Winchcombe, which he had annexed to his Bishoprick the year before, he now resigned,[1104] and the general government of the see of Worcester he entrusted to a monk of Evesham named Æthelwig.[1105] The church of that famous monastery, raised by the skill of its Abbot Mannig,[1106] was now awaiting consecration. For that ceremony he deputed his neighbour Bishop Leofwine of Lichfield.[1107] He then set forth for the court of Augustus. The Emperor was then at Köln, on his return from the consecration of his young son Henry as West-Frankish or Roman King in the Great Charles’s minster at Aachen.[1108] The immediate tie between Eadward and Henry had been broken by the death of Queen Gunhild; the King who was now to be crowned was the child of Henry’s second wife, the Empress Agnes of Poitiers.[1109] But the interchange of gifts and honours between the Roman and the insular [Sidenote: Splendid reception given to Ealdred.] Basileus was none the less cordial and magnificent. English writers dwell with evident pleasure on the splendid reception which the English Bishop met with both from the Emperor and from Hermann, the Archbishop of the [Sidenote: His long stay at Köln. 1054–1055.] city where Ealdred had been presented to Henry.[1110] But the immediate business of his embassy advanced but slowly. The time was ill chosen for an Imperial intervention with the Hungarian court. Andrew, the reigning King of Hungary, was about this time abetting the rebellious Duke Conrad of Bavaria against the Emperor.[1111] We have no details of the further course of the negotiation. Ealdred abode a whole year at Köln, probably waiting for a favourable opportunity. His embassy was in the end successful; for the Ætheling did in the end return to England. But we have no further details, and Eadward did not return to England till long after Ealdred had gone back, and till at least a year after the death of the Emperor.

[Sidenote: Death of Osgod Clapa. 1054.]

The year of Ealdred’s mission was marked also by the sudden death of a somewhat remarkable person, namely Osgod Clapa, whose movements by sea had been watched with such care five years before.[1112] The Chronicler remarks, seemingly with some little astonishment, that he died in [Sidenote: Death of Earl Siward. 1055.] his bed.[1113] Early in the next year death carried off a far more famous man, no other than the great Earl of the Northumbrians.[1114] The victory of the last year, glorious as it was, had been bought by the bitterest domestic losses, which may not have been without their effect even on the iron spirit and frame of the old Earl. His nephew and his elder son had fallen in the war with Macbeth, and [Sidenote: His son WALTHEOF.] his only surviving son, afterwards the famous Waltheof, was still a child.[1115] Siward’s first wife Æthelflæd was dead, and he had in his old age married, and survived, a widow named Godgifu.[1116] We might have fancied that Waltheof was her son, but we know for certain that he was the son of the daughter of the old Northumbrian Earls, and that he unhappily inherited all the deadly feuds of his mother’s house.[1117] Siward died at York, the capital of his Earldom. [Sidenote: Story of Siward’s death.] A tale, characteristic at least, whether historically true or not, told how the stern Danish warrior, when he felt death approaching, deemed it a disgrace that he should die, not on the field of battle, but of disease, “like a cow.” If he could not actually die amid the clash of arms, he would at least die in warrior’s garb. He called for his armour, and, harnessed as if again to march against Macbeth, the stout [Sidenote: His foundation and burial at Galmanho.] Earl Siward breathed his last.[1118] But this fierce spirit was not inconsistent with the piety of the time. Saint Olaf, the martyred King of the Northmen, had by this time become a favourite object of reverence, especially among men of Scandinavian descent. In his honour Earl Siward had reared a church in a suburb of his capital called Galmanho,[1119] a church which, after the Norman Conquest, developed into that great Abbey of Saint Mary, whose ruins form the most truly beautiful ornament of the Northern metropolis. In his own church of Galmanho Siward the Strong, the true relic of old Scandinavian times, was buried with all honour.

The death of Siward led to most important political consequences. The direct authority of the House of Godwine was now, for the first time, extended to the land beyond the Humber. This fact marks very forcibly how fully the royal authority was now acknowledged throughout the whole realm. The King and his Witan could now venture to appoint as the successor of Siward an Earl who had absolutely no connexion with any of the great families of Northumberland. Cnut, in the moment of victory, had given the Northumbrians the Dane Eric as their Earl.[1120] But this was the act of a conqueror, and such was the strength of the Danish element in Northumberland that the appointment of a Dane from Denmark probably seemed less irksome than the appointment of an Englishman from any [Sidenote: TOSTIG appointed Earl of the Northumbrians. 1055.] other part of the Kingdom. This last was the act, one wholly without a parallel, on which Eadward now ventured. The vacant Earldom of Northumberland, including also the detached shires of Northampton and Huntingdon,[1121] was [Sidenote: Influences on behalf of Tostig.] conferred on Tostig the son of Godwine. The novelty of the step is perhaps marked by the elaborate description of the influences which were brought to bear on the mind of Eadward to induce him to make the appointment. We hear, not only of Tostig’s own merits, but of the influence employed by his many friends, especially by his sister the Lady Eadgyth and by his brother Earl Harold, whom Norman calumny has represented as depriving Tostig of his hereditary rights.[1122] We may suspect that we have here an account of influences which it was more necessary to bring to bear on the minds of the Witan than on that of the King.[1123] For there is no appointment of Eadward’s reign which is more likely to have been the King’s personal act. Tostig, rather than Harold, was Eadward’s personal [Sidenote: Eadward’s personal affection for Tostig.] favourite. He was the Hêphaistiôn, the friend of Eadward, while Harold was rather the Krateros, the friend of the King.[1124] He also stood higher in the good will of their common sister the Lady Eadgyth. Cut off in a great measure from his Norman favourites, the affections of Eadward had settled themselves on the third son of Godwine. He would therefore naturally desire to raise Tostig to the highest dignities in his gift, or, if he felt hesitation in doing so, it could only be from the wish to keep his favourite always about his own person. In fact we shall find that Eadward could not bring himself to give up the society of Tostig to the degree which the interests of his distant Earldom called for. And this frequent absence of the Earl from his government seems to have been among the causes of the misfortunes which afterwards followed.[1125]

[Sidenote: Novelty of a West-Saxon Earl in Northumberland.]

This appointment of a West-Saxon to the great Northern Earldom was, as I have already implied, a distinct novelty. Ever since Northumberland had ceased to be ruled by Kings of her own, she had been ruled by Earls chosen from among her own people. The ancient Kingdom had sometimes been placed under one, sometimes under two, chiefs; but they had always been native chiefs. The rule of the stranger Eric had been short, and he seems to have allowed the line of the ancient princes to retain at least a subordinate authority.[1126] Siward, a stranger by birth, was connected with the ancient family by marriage.[1127] And both Eric and Siward were Danes; Tostig came of a line which most probably sprang from the most purely Saxon part of England. The experiment was a hazardous one, yet it was one which was not only dictated by sound policy, but which circumstances made almost unavoidable. The [Sidenote: Mode of appointment to the great Earldoms.] great Earldoms, I may again repeat, were neither strictly hereditary nor strictly elective. They were in the gift of the King and his Witan, but there was always a strong tendency, just as in the case of the Kingdom itself, to choose out of the family of the deceased Earl, whenever [Sidenote: Impossibility of appointing a native Earl on the death of Siward.] there was no obvious reason to do otherwise. But on the death of Siward there was such an obvious reason to do otherwise, just as there was in the case of the Kingdom when it became vacant by the death of Eadward. The eldest son of Siward had fallen in the Scottish war, and the one survivor of his house was still a child.[1128] Oswulf, seemingly the only male representative of the ancient Earls,[1129] was probably still a mere boy.[1130] There was therefore no available candidate of the old princely line. And, when we think of the state of the country, of the deadly feuds and jealousies which prevailed even between the reigning Earls and other powerful men,[1131] we shall see that the nomination of any private Northumbrian would have been a still more hazardous experiment than the nomination of a stranger. The Northumbrians themselves seem to have felt this, when, ten years later, the choice of their Earl was thrown into their own hands. They then chose, [Sidenote: Doubtful policy of the appointment of Tostig.] not a Northumbrian, but a Mercian. But it may well be doubted whether it was good policy to appoint a West-Saxon, and especially a member of the House of Godwine. This was perhaps going too far in the way of reminding the proud Danes of the North of their subjection to the Southern King. It could not fail to suggest the idea of an intention to monopolize all honours and all authority in a single family. And, as events showed, the personal character of Tostig proved unfitted successfully to grapple with the difficult task which was now thrown upon him.

[Sidenote: Character of Tostig.]

In weighing the character of the third son of Godwine, we must be on our guard against several distinct sources of error. We are at first tempted to condemn without mercy one who became the antagonist of his nobler brother, who waged open war with his country, and whose invasion of England, by acting as a diversion in William’s favour, was one main cause of the success of William’s expedition. We read the account of his crimes as set forth by his Northumbrian enemies, and we think that no punishment could be too heavy for the man who wrought them. On the other hand, though Tostig, as an adversary of Harold, comes in for a certain slight amount of Norman favour, there was also a temptation, which for the most part was found irresistibly strong, to blacken both sons of the [Sidenote: Legends of Harold and Tostig.] Traitor equally. The opposition between Harold and Tostig during the last two years of their joint lives has thus supplied the materials for a heap of legends of revolting absurdity. The two brothers, who clearly acted together up to those two last years, are described as being full of the most bitter mutual rivalry and hatred, even from their childhood.[1132] The effect of these two different pictures is that both admirers and depreciators of Harold are alike led to look on the acts of Tostig in the most unfavourable light. The crimes of his later years cannot be denied. He died a traitor, in arms against his country, engaged in an act of treason compared to which Harold’s ravages at Porlock, and even Ælfgar’s alliance with Gruffydd, sink into insignificance. His Northumbrian government too was evidently stained with great errors, seemingly with great crimes. But it is remarkable that it is not till the last two years of his life that we hear of anything which puts him in an unfavourable light. And there is nothing in his few recorded earlier actions which is at all inconsistent with the generally high character [Sidenote: Witness of the Biographer of Eadward.] given of him by the biographer of Eadward. That writer compares him with Harold in an elaborate picture of the two which I have already made large use of in describing Harold. And it is clear that, whether from his own actual convictions or from a wish to please his patroness the Lady Eadgyth, it is Tostig rather than Harold whose partizan he is to be reckoned, and it is Tostig whose actions he is most anxious to put in a favourable light. But the two are the two noblest of mortals; no land, no age, ever brought forth two such men at the same time. He makes a comparison of virtues between the two, but he hardly ventures to make the balance decidedly weigh in [Sidenote: His description of Tostig.] favour of either. In person Tostig was of smaller stature than his elder brother, but in strength and daring he was his equal.[1133] But he seems to have lacked all Harold’s winning and popular qualities. He is set before us as a man of strong will, of stern and inflexible purpose, faithful to his promise, grave, reserved, admitting few or none to share his counsels, so that he often surprised men by the suddenness [Sidenote: His stern and unyielding character.] of his actions.[1134] His zeal against wrong-doers, the virtue of the ruler for which his father and brother are so loudly extolled, amounted in him to a passion which carried him beyond the bounds of justice and honour.[1135] The whole picture describes him as a man of honest and upright intentions, but of an unbending sternness which must have formed a marked contrast to the frank and conciliatory disposition of his brother. Such a man, placed as a ruler over a turbulent and refractory people, might, almost unconsciously, degenerate into a cruel tyrant. [Sidenote: Disturbed state of Northumberland.] Northumberland, we are told, was, at the time when he undertook its government, in a state to which it is impossible to believe that either Normandy or southern England afforded any likeness. Siward’s strong arm had done something to bring its turbulent inhabitants into order; yet thieves and murderers still had so completely the upper hand that travellers had to go in parties of [Sidenote: Tostig’s effort to restore order.] twenty and thirty, and even then were hardly safe.[1136] Tostig set himself vigorously, evidently too vigorously, to work to put an end to this state of things. His severity was merciless and impartial; death and mutilation were freely dispensed among all disturbers of public order. His efforts, we are told, were effectual; it is said, in a proverbial form of speech, that under his administration, any man could safely travel through the whole land with all his goods.[1137] Even powerful Thegns were not spared, and here comes the point in which Tostig most deeply erred. Putting our various accounts together, we shall find that, when offenders were too powerful to be reached by the arm of the law, Tostig did not scruple to rid the land of them [Sidenote: Explanation of his later crimes.] by treacherous assassination. We can well understand that a man of Tostig’s disposition, bent on bringing his province into order at any price, may have persuaded himself that the public good was superior to all other considerations, and may have blinded himself to the infamy of the means by which the public good was to be compassed. Very similar conduct in public men of our own day has been condoned by large bodies of men, and by some has even been warmly applauded. The unswerving dictate of justice is that he who, in any age, sheds blood without sentence of law, deserves the heaviest condemnation and the heaviest punishment. Still such conduct does not necessarily imply any original corruption of heart in the offender. Tostig richly deserved all that afterwards fell upon him. Like most sinners, he went on from bad to worse; but there is no reason to believe that he undertook the government of Northumberland with any less sincere intention of doing his duty there than Harold had when he undertook the government of Wessex. Tostig in the end became a great criminal; but he clearly was not a monster or a villain from the beginning of his career.

[Sidenote: His personal favour with Eadward.]

The strange thing is that a man of this disposition, whose virtues were all of the sterner sort, should have become a personal favourite with a feeble King like Eadward. One may perhaps explain it by the principle which often makes men, both in love and in friendship, prefer those who are most unlike themselves. A man like Eadward would cling to a man like Tostig as his natural protector, and, after all, weak as Eadward was, there were elements in his character to which the extreme severity of Tostig would not be unacceptable or even unlike. The King who had commanded Godwine to march against the untried citizens of Dover would not be likely to condemn the harshness of Tostig’s rule in [Sidenote: Tostig’s personal virtues.] Northumberland. And there were other points in Tostig’s character which would naturally and rightly commend him to the favour of the saintly King. Tostig, like William, practised some virtues which Harold neglected. While Harold’s affections seem to have dwelt wholly on an English mistress, Tostig set an example of strict fidelity to his foreign wife.[1138] The husband of Judith would thus on every ground be more acceptable to Eadward than the lover of Eadgyth. Tostig too was of a bountiful disposition, and Judith, who was a devout woman, directed a large share of his bounty to pious objects.[1139] Through all these causes Tostig easily won the highest place in the affection of his royal brother-in-law. With his sister the Lady he stood only too well. There is too much reason to fear that Eadgyth did not scruple to become something more than the accomplice of one of his worst deeds.[1140]

Such was the man to whom, probably at about the age of thirty-two,[1141] was entrusted the rule of the ancient realm beyond the Humber. The general picture of his government I have already given; but for nine years no domestic details are supplied. We shall find him, like his brother, making the fashionable pilgrimage to Rome, and aiding his brother in his wars with the Welsh. Notwithstanding Norman legends, there is, at this stage of their history, not the slightest sign of any dissension between them.

[Sidenote: Tostig becomes the sworn brother of Malcolm. 1055–1061.]

One fact however we learn quite incidentally which touches, not indeed the internal administration of his Earldom, but the measures taken at once for its external defence, and for the maintenance of the supremacy of the Imperial Crown over the great Northern dependency of England. At some time during the first six years of his government, Earl Tostig became the sworn brother of Malcolm, the restored King of Scots.[1142] This was a tie by which reconciled enemies often sought to bind one another to special friendship. It was the tie by which Cnut had been bound to Eadmund,[1143] and by which Tostig’s predecessor Ealdred had been bound to the faithless Carl.[1144] But there is nothing to show that the establishment of this tie between Tostig and Malcolm [Sidenote: Probable reference of the engagement to the war with Macbeth.] had been preceded by any hostilities between them. It is far more probable, considering the date of Tostig’s appointment to his Earldom, that the engagement took place early in Tostig’s government, and that it was made with a view to the joint prosecution of hostilities against a common enemy. When Tostig succeeded Siward, Malcolm was still struggling for his crown against Macbeth, and we cannot doubt that Tostig continued to support the man of King Eadward against the usurper.[1145] Then doubtless it was that the King of Scots and the Earl of the Northumbrians entered into this close mutual relation. But the tie of sworn brotherhood was one which was seldom found strong enough to bind the turbulent spirits of those times. It sat almost as lightly on the conscience of Malcolm as it had sat on the conscience of Carl. The engagement was observed as long as it happened to be convenient, and no longer. While Tostig was the guardian of the English border, Malcolm’s brotherhood with Tostig did not hinder him from violating the frontiers of Tostig’s Earldom. When Tostig was an exile in arms against his country, the tie was remembered, and it procured him a warm welcome at the Scottish Court.

[Sidenote: Ælfgar banished. March 20, 1055.]

The appointment of Tostig to the Earldom must have been made in the Gemót which was held in London in the Lent of this year.[1146] In the same Assembly, Ælfgar, Earl of the East-Angles, was banished. The accounts which we have of this transaction are not very intelligible. The fullest narrative that we have, that of the Chronicler who is most distinctly a partizan of Harold’s, tells us that he was charged with treason towards the King and all his people, and that he publicly confessed his guilt, though the confession escaped him unawares.[1147] The other accounts are satisfied with saying that he was guiltless or nearly guiltless.[1148] With such evidence as this, we are not in a position to determine on the guilt or innocence of Ælfgar. We do not even know what the treason was with which he was charged. But a charge to which the accused party, even in a moment of confusion, pleaded guilty, could hardly have been wholly frivolous on the part of the accuser. This point is important; for, though we have no direct statement who the accuser was, the probability is that a charge against one who stood so high in the rival family could have been brought only by Harold or by some one acting in his interest. At any rate, if Ælfgar was not a traitor before his condemnation, he became one speedily after it. In seeking a forcible restoration, he did but follow the least justifiable act in the career of his rival. But, if Harold had set a bad example, Ælfgar improved upon it. Harold had endeavoured to force his way into the country at the head of mercenaries hired in a foreign land. But he had not allied himself with the enemies of his country; he had not carried on a war against England in the interest of an ever restless foe of England. To this depth of infamy [Sidenote: Ælfgar hires ships in Ireland,] Ælfgar did not scruple to sink. He went over, as Harold had done, to Ireland, and gathered a force of eighteen ships, besides the one in which he had made his own voyage. These ships were doubtless manned by the Scandinavian settlers in that country.[1149] With this fleet he sailed to some haven in Wales, probably of North Wales, [Sidenote: and makes an alliance with Gruffydd.] where he met Gruffydd and made an alliance with him.[1150] The Welsh Prince was now at the height of his power. He had this very year overthrown and slain his South-Welsh rival, Gruffydd the son of Rhydderch.[1151] He seems now to have been master of the whole Cymrian territory, and, at the head of such a power, he was more dangerous, and probably more hostile, to England than ever. Nothing then could be more opportune for his purposes than the appearance of a banished English Earl at the head of a powerful force of Irish Danes. Ælfgar at once asked for Gruffydd’s help in a war to be waged against King Eadward.[1152] The plan of a campaign was speedily settled. Gruffydd summoned the whole force of the Cymry[1153] for a great expedition against the Saxons. Ælfgar, with his Irish or Danish following, was to meet the Welsh King at some point which is not mentioned, and the combined host was to march on a devastating inroad into Herefordshire. The plan was successfully carried out, and the forces of Gruffydd and Ælfgar entered the southern part of the shire, the district known as Archenfeld, and [Sidenote: Gruffydd and Ælfgar ravage Herefordshire,] there harried the country. The border land which they entered was one bound to special service against British enemies. The Priests of the district had the duty of carrying the King’s messages into Wales; its militia claimed the right, in any expedition against the same enemy, to form the van in the march and the rear in the retreat.[1154] To ravage this warlike district was no doubt a special object with the Welsh King, one which would be carried out with special delight. He did his work effectually. The effects of the harrying under Gruffydd were still to be seen at the time of the Norman survey.[1155]

The work of destruction thus begun seems to have been carried on by Gruffydd and his allies without opposition, till they came within two miles of the city of Hereford.[1156] [Sidenote: and meet Earl Ralph near Hereford. October 24, 1055.] There they were at last met by a large force under Ralph, the Earl of the country, consisting partly of the levies of the district, and partly of his own French and Norman following. Richard the son of Scrob, it will be remembered, was among the Normans who had been allowed to remain in England,[1157] and no doubt the forces of Richard’s Castle swelled the army of Ralph. The timid Earl[1158] thought himself called upon to be a military reformer. The English, light-armed and heavy-armed alike, were [Sidenote: Ralph requires the English to fight on horseback.] always accustomed to fight on foot. The Housecarl, the professional soldier, with his coat of mail and his battle-axe, and the churl who hastened to defend his field with nothing but his javelin and his leathern jerkin, alike looked on the horse only as a means to convey the warrior to and from the field of battle. The introduction of cavalry into the English armies might perhaps have been an improvement, but it was an improvement which could not be carried into effect with a sudden levy within sight of the enemy. But Ralph despised the English tactics, and would have his army arrayed according to the best and newest continental models. A French prince could not condescend to command a host who walked into action on their own feet, according to the barbarous English fashion. The men of Herefordshire were therefore required to meet the harassing attacks of the nimble Welsh, and the more fearful onslaught of Ælfgar’s Danes, while still [Sidenote: The battle is therefore lost.] mounted on their horses. The natural consequences followed; before a spear was hurled, the English took to flight.[1159] Nothing else could have been reasonably looked for; however strong may have been the hearts of their riders, horses which had not gone through the necessary training would naturally turn tail at the unaccustomed sights and sounds of an army in battle array.[1160] But in one account we find a statement which is far stranger and more disgraceful. If Ralph required his men to practise an unusual and foreign tactic, he and his immediate companions should at least have shown them in their own persons an example of its skilful and valiant carrying out. But we are told that Ralph, with his French and Normans, were the first to fly, and that the English in their flight did but follow the example of their leader.[1161] I suspect some exaggeration here. Whatever may have been the case with the timid Earl himself, mere cowardice was certainly not a common Norman, or even French, failing. For a party of French knights to take to flight on the field of battle without exchanging a single spear-thrust, is something almost unheard of. It is far more likely that we have here a little perversion arising from national dislike. It is far more likely that, whatever Ralph himself may have done, the Normans in his company were simply carried away by the inevitable, and therefore in no way disgraceful, flight of the English. Anyhow, the battle, before it had begun, was changed into a rout. The enemy pursued. The light-armed and nimble Welsh were probably well able to overtake the clumsily mounted English. Four or five hundred were killed, and many more wounded. On the side of Ælfgar and Gruffydd we are told that not a man was lost.[1162]

[Sidenote: Ælfgar and Gruffydd sack and burn Hereford.]

The Welsh King and the English Earl entered Hereford the same day[1163] without resistance. The chief object of their wrath seems to have been the cathedral church of the [Sidenote: Story of Æthelberht of East-Anglia. 792.] diocese, the minster of Saint Æthelberht. The holy King of the East-Angles, betrothed to the daughter of the famous Offa, had come to seek his bride at her father’s court. He was there murdered by the intrigues of Cynethryth, the wife of the Mercian King.[1164] He became the local saint of Hereford, and the minster of the city boasted [Sidenote: Æthelstan, Bishop of Hereford. 1012–1056.] of his relics as its choicest treasure. That church was now ruled by Æthelstan, an aged Prelate, who had already sat for forty-three years.[1165] But, for the last twelve years, blindness had caused him to retire from the active government of his diocese, which was administered by a Welsh Bishop named Tremerin.[1166] Æthelstan is spoken of as a man of eminent holiness, and he had, doubtless in his more active days, rebuilt the minster of Saint Æthelberht, and enriched it with many ornaments. The invaders attacked the church with the fury of heathens; indeed among the followers of Ælfgar there may still have been votaries of Thor and Odin. Seven of the Canons attempted to defend the great door of the church, but they were cut down without mercy.[1167] The church was burned, and all its relics and ornaments were lost. Of the citizens many were slain, and others were led into captivity.[1168] The whole town was sacked and set fire to, and the Welsh account specially adds that Gruffydd destroyed the fort or citadel.[1169] The history which follows seems to imply that the town itself was not fortified, but merely protected by this fortress. At its date or character we can only guess. Hereford is not spoken of among the fortresses raised by Eadward the Elder and his sister Æthelflæd. It is an obvious conjecture that the fortress destroyed by Gruffydd was a Norman castle raised by Ralph. A chief who was so anxious to make his people conform to Norman ways of fighting would hardly linger behind his neighbour at Richard’s Castle, in at once providing himself with a dwelling-place, and his capital with a defence, according to the latest continental patterns. If so, we may easily form a picture of the Hereford of those days. By the banks of the Wye rose the minster, low and massive, but crowned by one or more of those tall slender towers, in which the rude art of English masons strove to reproduce the campaniles of Northern Italy. Around the church were gathered the houses of the Bishop, the Canons, the citizens, the last at least mainly of wood. Over all rose the square mass of the Norman donjon, an ominous presage of the days which were soon to come. All, church, castle, houses, fell before the wasting arms of Ælfgar and Gruffydd. They went away rejoicing in their victory and in the rich booty which [Sidenote: Deaths of Tremerin, 1055, and Æthelstan, February 10, 1056.] they carried. The blow seems to have broken the hearts of the two Prelates whose flock suffered so terribly. Tremerin died before the end of the year, and Æthelstan early in the year following.[1170]

King Eadward was now in his usual winter-quarters at Gloucester. Either the time of the Christmas Gemót was hastened, or the King, in such an emergency, acted on his own responsibility. The defence of the country and the chastisement of the rebels could no longer be left in the hands of his incapable nephew. The occasion called for the wisest head and the strongest arm in the whole realm. [Sidenote: Harold sent against the Welsh.] Though his own government had not been touched, the Earl of the West-Saxons was bidden to gather a force from all England, and to attack the Welsh in their own land. It is not unlikely that his brother was, as in a later war with the same enemy, summoned from Northumberland to his help.[1171] Late as was the season of the year, [Sidenote: Comparison of his earlier and later Welsh campaigns.] Harold did not shrink from the task.[1172] This seems to have been his first experience of Welsh warfare, and we do not know whether he now adopted those special means of adapting his operations to the peculiar nature of the country, [Sidenote: 1063.] which he tried so successfully in his later and more famous campaign. He then, as we shall see, caused his soldiers to adopt the light arms and loose array of the Welsh, and so proved more than a match for them at their own weapons. The story seems rather to imply that he did not do so on this occasion, and that the later stroke of his genius was the result of the lessons which he now learned. In neither case did a Welsh enemy dare to meet Harold in a pitched battle, but there is a marked difference between the two campaigns; in the earlier one, the Welsh successfully escaped Harold’s pursuit, while, in the later one, they were unable to do so. Harold gathered his army at Gloucester; he passed the Welsh border, and pitched his camp beyond the border district of Straddele.[1173] But the main point is that Gruffydd and Ælfgar, who had marched so boldly to the conflict with Ralph, altogether shrank from giving battle to Harold. They escaped into South Wales. Harold, finding it vain to pursue such an enemy, desisted from the attempt. He dismissed the greater part of his army, that is probably the militia of the shires, merely bidding them keep themselves in readiness to withstand the enemy in case of [Sidenote: Harold fortifies Hereford.] any sudden inroad.[1174] With the rest of his troops, that is probably with his own following, he proceeded to take measures for securing the important post of Hereford against future attacks. The castle had been levelled with the ground, the church was a ruin, the houses of the townsmen were burned. Harold set himself to repair the mischief, but his notions of defending a city were different from those of the Frenchman Ralph. The first object of the English Earl was to secure the town itself, not to provide a stronghold for its governor. It does not appear that he rebuilt the castle, but he at once supplied the city itself with the requisite defences. So important a border town was no longer to be left open to the incursions of every enemy or rebel. As a military measure, to meet a temporary emergency, he surrounded the town with a ditch and a strong wall. This wall, in its first estate, though strengthened by gates and bars, seems to have been itself merely a dyke of earth and rough stones. But, before the reign of Eadward was ended, Harold, then Earl of the shire, followed the example of Eadward at Towcester and Æthelstan at Exeter, and surrounded the town with a wall of masonry.[1175] The wooden houses of the citizens could soon be rebuilt. Hereford was soon again peopled with burghers, both within and without the wall, some of them the men of the King and others the men of Earl Harold.[1176] The minster had been burned, but we must remember how laxly that word is often taken. All its woodwork, all its fittings and ornaments, were of course destroyed, the walls would be blackened and damaged, but it was capable of at least temporary repair, as Bishop Æthelstan was buried in it next year.[1177] Under the care of Earl Harold, Hereford was again a city.

[Sidenote: Peace of Billingsley. 1055.]

Meanwhile Ælfgar and Gruffydd sued for peace. Messages went to and fro, and at last a conference was held between them and Harold at Billingsley in Shropshire, a little west of the Severn. Harold was never disposed to press hardly on an enemy, and he may possibly have felt that he was himself in some sort the cause of all that had happened, if he had promoted any ill-considered charges [Sidenote: General mildness of English political warfare.] against his rival. In fact, rude and ferocious as those times were in many ways, the struggles of English political life were then carried on with much greater mildness than they were in many later generations. Blood was often lightly shed, but it was hardly ever shed by way of judicial sentence. A victorious party never sent the vanquished leaders either to a scaffold or to a dungeon. Banishment was the invariable sentence, and banishment in those days commonly supplied the means of return. Thus when Gruffydd and Ælfgar sought for peace, it was easily granted to them; Ælfgar was even restored to the Earldom which he had forfeited. It was probably thought that he was less dangerous as Earl of the East-Angles, than as a banished man who could at any time cause an invasion of the country from Wales or Ireland. His fleet sailed to Chester, and there awaited the pay which he had promised the crews.[1178] Whether the payment was defrayed out of the spoils of [Sidenote: Ælfgar restored to his Earldom. Christmas, 1055–1056.] Herefordshire we are not told. Ælfgar now came to the King, and was formally restored to his dignity.[1179] This was done in the Christmas Gemót, in which we may suppose that the terms of the peace of Billingsley were formally confirmed.

[Sidenote: Invasion of England by Gruffydd and Magnus. 1056.]