The good fortune of Cnut had raised him up an Empire in Northern Europe to which there was no parallel before or after him. Setting aside descriptions of his power which are manifestly gross exaggerations, he united the kingdom of England and its dependencies with the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway. As to his intentions with regard to the disposition of these vast dominions after his death our information is unfortunately most |Comparison between the partition of the Empire of Cnut and that of Charles.| meagre. It seems clear that, like Charles the Great, he designed a partition among his children; it is not clear whether, like Charles, he designed to keep up any kind of connexion among his various kingdoms, by the investiture of one among his sons with any Imperial superiority over the others.^[1061] Like Charles, he had established his sons as kings during his lifetime in his subordinate |England the centre of Cnut’s Empire.| kingdoms. I say subordinate kingdoms, because nothing can be plainer than that, in Cnut’s eyes, Denmark and Norway were little more than dependencies of England. |The Scandinavian States ruled by Under-kings.| England was the seat of his own dominion, while the Scandinavian kingdoms were entrusted to viceroys or Under-kings. Swegen, with his mother Ælfgifu, had reigned in Norway; Denmark, it would seem, had been placed at one time under Harold and at another under Harthacnut. In both countries we see signs of disaffection towards Cnut’s government, while we see none such in England. The rule of Swegen and his mother is said to have been highly oppressive in Norway. In Denmark we even hear of an attempt, headed by Earl Ulf and said to be favoured by Queen Emma, to displace Cnut in favour of Harthacnut. The reason assigned is the preference shown |Impossibility of retaining the connexion between England and Scandinavia.| by Cnut to England and Englishmen. If then Cnut had any idea of permanently annexing his Scandinavian possessions to his English Empire, any idea, in short, of reducing Denmark and Norway to the condition of Wales and Scotland, such schemes had very little chance of any lasting success. Wales and Scotland were part of the same island with England, yet to keep them in any lasting subjection was always hard; to keep countries so remote as |Ephemeral nature of such| Denmark and Norway was hopelessly impossible. Empires like those of Alexander, Charles, and Cnut are in their own |Empires in general.| nature ephemeral. The process of their formation may, as in the cases of Alexander and Charles, leave results behind it which affect the whole later history of the world; but the Empires themselves are ephemeral. As united dominions, swayed by a single will, they last only as long as there is an Alexander or a Charles at their head; they fall to pieces as soon as the sceptre of the great conqueror passes into weaker hands. So it was with the Anglo-Scandinavian Empire of the great Cnut. With our scanty knowledge, we cannot positively either assert or deny that he dreamed of preserving any kind of union |Cnut’s designs not carried out.| among his vast and widely severed dominions. If he did entertain such thoughts, his designs were scattered to the winds immediately upon his own death. When he died, Swegen was in possession of Norway, and Harthacnut in possession of Denmark. It appears that England also was designed for the son of Emma, Cnut’s specially royal offspring, the one son who was the child of a crowned King and his Lady. What provision, if any, was made for Harold by his father’s last dispositions does not appear. But things turned out far otherwise than Cnut had |Swegen expelled from Norway. 1036.| intended. Swegen was almost immediately driven out of Norway, and Magnus, the son of Saint Olaf, was received as King. In Denmark Harthacnut kept possession, though the aspect of Magnus was threatening. In England, as usual, all attempts to influence the free choice of the Witan before the vacancy came to nothing. If Cnut tried to do more than exercise that vague power of recommending a successor which the law vested in him, his bequest went for as little as the older bequest of Æthelwulf had gone.^[1062]

The events which immediately followed the death of Cnut are told with much contradiction and confusion; but, by closely attending to the most trustworthy authorities, it is not very hard to make out the general order |The West-Saxons for Harthacnut.| of events.^[1063] It appears that the will of the late King in favour of Harthacnut was upheld by the West-Saxons with Godwine their Earl at their head. That the English were divided, some being for Harthacnut and some for one of the sons of Æthelred, is a statement which seems hardly to rest on sufficient authority.^[1064] On the other hand, Harold, the supposed son of Cnut and of Ælfgifu of Northampton, also appeared as a candidate. |Northumberland, Mercia, and London for Harold.| He seems to have been supported by Earl Leofric of Mercia, by the great body of the thegns north of the Thames, and by the “lithsmen,” the sea-faring folk, of London. It would even seem that he ventured on a daring act, whether we call it an act of sovereignty or |Harold spoils Emma.| of violence, before the election was held. He sent to Winchester and despoiled the Lady Ælfgifu-Emma of the treasures which had been left her by Cnut.^[1065] Personally, as the event proved, both candidates were equally worthless; but each had strong political motives on his side, and it is clear that men’s passions were deeply stirred by the struggle. As far as we can see, Harold was the candidate of the North, Harthacnut of the South; Harold was the candidate of the Danes, Harthacnut of |Apparent motives of the two parties.| the English. At first sight this division of parties seems exactly opposite to what might have been expected. Harthacnut, the son of a Danish father and a Norman mother, had not a drop of English blood in his veins. Harold, if he was what he professed to be, the son of Cnut by the other Ælfgifu, was English at least by the mother’s side; if he was what scandal asserted him to be, the son of a shoemaker by some nameless mother, he was doubtless English on both sides. The election of Harthacnut involved the continuation of the connexion with Denmark; the election of Harold would again make England an independent and isolated kingdom. Yet English feeling lay with Harthacnut, Danish feeling lay |Attachment of the West-Saxons to Harthacnut as the legatee of Cnut.| with Harold. The explanation is probably to be found in the personal position of Cnut towards his West-Saxon subjects. He had lived more habitually among them than among the people of any other part of his dominions; the greatest of living Englishmen had been his minister and representative; he had in every way made Wessex his home, and Wessex had flourished under his government as it had never flourished before. It was no wonder then if the wishes of Cnut with regard to the succession or to anything else were looked on by the West-Saxon people as a sacred law. Harthacnut too, if not the descendant of their ancient rulers, was at least a kingly bairn, the son of a crowned King and his Lady. Who was Harold the bastard, whose parents no one knew for certain, that he should rule over them? If Harthacnut was at this moment in Denmark, his earliest days had been spent in England, while we have seen reason to believe that the earliest days of Harold had been spent in |Aspect of the connexion with Denmark.| Denmark. The continued connexion with Denmark which was implied in the choice of Harthacnut might even appear to patriotic Englishmen as an argument in favour of the Danish King.^[1066] In the later days of Cnut the connexion with Denmark had taken a form which must have been distinctly gratifying to English, and above all to West-Saxon, national feeling. The lord of all Northern Europe had worn his Imperial crown in the old West-Saxon capital; he had thence sent forth his earls and his sons to govern his dependent realms of Denmark and Norway. As it had been in the days of Cnut, so men deemed that it would be in the days of Harthacnut. Denmark, like Mercia or Northumberland, would be only another earldom whence homage, and perhaps tribute, would be paid to the Imperial court and the Imperial treasure-house at Winchester. The sons of Æthelred were strangers; no man in England had seen them since their childhood; their claims had been made the pretext for a threatened foreign invasion; no sentiment attaching to their remoter ancestry could at all counterbalance the sentiment which attached to the undoubted, the royal, the chosen, son of the King who had given England eighteen years of peace, prosperity, and foreign dominion. West-Saxon feeling therefore took the shape of loyalty to the undoubted son of the late King, of obedience to his declared wishes as to the succession. Earl Godwine and all the men of his earldom were for Harthacnut.

On the other hand, it is not hard to see how Harold might appeal to a very intelligible line of feeling in the minds of the Danish and half-Danish inhabitants of Northern England. His bastardy would in their eyes be no objection. Whether we look on his mother as a mere concubine or as bound to Cnut by an irregular or uncanonical marriage, her children would, according to Danish notions, be as fit to reign as the children of the Norman Lady. Indeed a powerful vein of Northumbrian sentiment might not unnaturally attach to the grandson of the murdered Earl Ælfhelm. Harold’s election might seem to be the overthrow of the West-Saxon dominion over Danes and Angles; a day might seem to be coming in which Winchester would have to bow to York. And if the son of Ælfgifu thus had a local connexion with Northumberland, he had also a local connexion with Mercia. Whether by birth, by residence, or by maternal descent, the daughter of Ælfhelm was in some way Ælfgifu of Northampton, and her son might call on Mercian local feeling to support the claims of a countryman. Again, if Harold, after having been designed for the crown of Denmark and brought up in Denmark as a future Danish King, had been deprived by his father’s later arrangements of any share in either England or Denmark, Danish and Northumbrian feelings would centre round him still more strongly. He would become the embodiment of any jealousies which had been called forth by Cnut’s open preference of England to Denmark, by his preference of the Saxon part of England to the Anglian and Danish lands. It was better to have a King who should reign over England without Denmark, better to have a King who should reign over Northumberland and Mercia without Wessex, than for a West-Saxon King, of whatever ancestry, to hold both Northumberland and Denmark as dependencies. The old provincial feelings, often concealed but never completely stifled, ever ready to break out on any strong provocation, now broke out in their fulness. The Danish provinces sided with Harold. And with them we find a new element, the “lithsmen,” the nautic multitude |Danish settlement in London.| of London. The great city still kept her voice in the election of Kings, but that voice would almost seem to have been handed over to a new class among her population. We hear now, not of the citizens, but of the sea-faring men.^[1067] Every invasion, every foreign settlement of any kind within the kingdom, has in every age added a new element to the population of London. As a Norman colony settled in London later in the century, so a Danish colony settled there now. Some accounts tell us, doubtless with great exaggeration, that London had now almost become a Danish city.^[1068] But it is certain that the Danish element in the city was numerous and powerful, and that its voice strongly helped to swell the cry in favour of Harold. Northumberland, Mercia, and London thus demanded that the son of Ælfgifu of Northampton should, if possible, be King over all England; in the worst case they would have him, like Eadgar and like Cnut, for King over all Northumberland and Mercia.

There was perhaps no country except England in which such a question could have been settled in that age otherwise than at the cost of a civil war. But the firmly rooted principles of English law, the habit of constant meeting and discussion, had already produced some germs of the feeling to which the great English historian of Greece has |The controversy peacefully decided in the Witenagemót.| given the name of “constitutional morality.”^[1069] The controversy was a sharp one; but it was decided, not on the field of battle, but in the debates of the Witenagemót. The usual midwinter meeting may, or may not, have been |Gemót of Oxford. Christmas, 1035?| forestalled by a few weeks; certain it is that, soon after the death of Cnut, the Witan of all England met in full Gemót at Oxford. That town was, no doubt, on this as on other occasions, recommended for the purpose by its position on the frontiers of the two great divisions of the kingdom. The national council proceeded to debate |Godwine maintains the claims of Harthacnut.| the claims of the two candidates. The great Earl of the West-Saxons, supported by the whole force of his earldom, strove to play the same part which Dunstan had played in the last recorded debate of the kind in a full and free Assembly of the Wise.^[1070] His eloquent tongue set forth the claims of Harthacnut, the candidate recommended alike by undoubted kingly birth and by the wishes of the glorious sovereign whom they had lost. But this time the charmer charmed in vain. All that Godwine could gain for the son of the Lady was a portion of his father’s |The division of the kingdom proposed by Leofric,| kingdom. The proposal of a division seems to have come from Leofric, now Earl over all Mercia,^[1071] who on all occasions appears as a mediator between the extreme parties of the North and the South. To this course he was prompted alike by his personal temper and by the geographical position of his earldom. Godwine and his party withstood for a while even this proposal; but the majority |and voted by the assembly.| was against them; the assembly decreed the division of England between the two candidates.^[1072] Once more, but now for the last time in English history, the land had two |Harthacnut reigns in Wessex; Harold reigns north of Thames,| acknowledged Kings. Harold reigned to the north of the Thames and Harthacnut to the south. We are not distinctly told whether the two Kings were to be perfectly independent of each other, or whether, as in the case of Cnut and Eadmund, any Imperial supremacy was reserved |seemingly as superior lord.| to either of the half-brothers.^[1073] But several indications seem to show that such a supremacy was reserved to Harold, and this supposition may perhaps help to explain some of the difficulties in the narrative which follows. Nor are we told of any stipulations as to the succession. It would follow, almost as a matter of course, that, if either of the brothers died childless, the survivor would be elected to |Rumoured refusal of Archbishop Æthelnoth to crown Harold.| his share of the kingdom. According to one account, Archbishop Æthelnoth, the friend of Cnut, still refused to consecrate Harold as King. He placed the crown and sceptre on the altar; Harold might seize them if he dared; but while a son of Emma lived, he, Æthelnoth, would crown no King but a son of Emma, and every Bishop of his province was equally forbidden to perform the rite. If this tale be true, it was an assertion of independence on the part of the ecclesiastical power for which we might in vain seek a parallel in the English history of those times. Æthelnoth, as a member of the Gemót, might give his vote for whichever candidate he thought good; but when the election was once made, he had clearly no right as Archbishop to refuse to consecrate the King chosen by the majority. But the tale is most likely a fiction. There seems to be little doubt that Harold was regularly crowned at Oxford by Æthelnoth, either now or after his later election to the whole kingdom.^[1074] But, if the tale be true, and if it belongs to this time, it plainly implies the Imperial supremacy of Harold. With a mere King of the Mercians and Northumbrians, whether an Under-king or an altogether independent sovereign, the Archbishop of Canterbury, a West-Saxon subject, could have nothing to do.

The kingdom was thus divided. The King-elect of the West-Saxons was in no hurry—the affairs of his Northern kingdom did not allow him to be in a hurry—to take personal possession of the fragment of a realm which was |Regency of Emma and Godwine in Wessex. 1035–1037.| all that Godwine had been able to keep for him. Emma appears to have been invested with a kind of regency in her son’s name, while Godwine still held his office as Earl, and with it the administration of the West-Saxon kingdom. It is specially mentioned that Harthacnut’s housecarls remained with Emma.^[1075] The housecarls of Harthacnut had doubtless been the housecarls of Cnut; their loyalty was personal to their master, and it would naturally pass to his widow and her son. But that their presence was allowed in the West-Saxon kingdom and capital under the administration of Godwine clearly shows that they had not been employed during the late reign as instruments of oppression, and that they were not looked on with any general hatred by the people at large.

It was in the course of the next year that an event happened of which advantage has ever since been taken by hostile tongues and pens to stain the character of the great Earl of the West-Saxons with a charge of the blackest treachery. But even in the period on which we are now entering, a period in which we have at every step to weigh the conflicting statements of national and political partizanship, there is no event as to which the various versions of the tale are more utterly at variance with each other. The story is told with every conceivable variety of time, place, and person, and even our earliest and best authorities contain statements which cannot be reconciled |Attempt in favour of the Æthelings. 1036.| with one another. Thus much seems certain; first, that, about this time, one or both of the sons of Æthelred and Emma made an attempt to recover their father’s kingdom; secondly, that Ælfred, the younger of the two Æthelings, fell into the power of Harold and was cruelly put to death; thirdly, that Godwine was suspected of being an accomplice. |Conflicting versions of the story.| But beyond this, there is hardly a detail of the story which can be asserted with any confidence.^[1076] The first point, that the attempt, whatever was its nature, took place soon after the death of Cnut and the first election of Harold, is placed beyond all doubt by the complete agreement of the best authorities. But very respectable secondary authorities have altogether misplaced the date, and they have thus given occasion for a lower class of compilers to load the story with endless mythical and |Norman Version.| calumnious details. According to the Norman account, both the Æthelings had a share in the attempt. As soon as the death of Cnut was known in Normandy, Eadward |Invasion of England by Eadward.| set sail with forty ships and landed at Southampton. But the English, whether for love or for fear^[1077] of their Danish King Harold, met them as enemies. Eadward fought a battle and defeated the English with great slaughter. But, reflecting how great was the strength of England and how small was the force which he had brought with him, he presently sailed away, taking with him great plunder. Soon after Eadward’s return, Ælfred set sail from Wissant^[1078] and landed at Dover. As he went onwards into the country, Godwine met him, received him friendly, and seemingly did homage to him.^[1079] The Earl and the Ætheling supped together, and talked over their plans. But in the night Godwine seized Ælfred, tied his hands behind his back, and thus sent him and some of his companions to London to King Harold. Others he put in prison, others he embowelled.^[1080] Among those who were sent to London, Harold caused Ælfred’s chief companions to be beheaded, and the Ætheling himself to be blinded. In that state he was sent to Ely, naked and with his legs tied under his horse’s belly. He had not been long at Ely when he died, as the weapon with which his eyes had been cut out had wounded the brain.^[1081]

In this Norman version the coming of Ælfred is simply part of a Norman invasion. Eadward had come with a force large enough to fight a battle; Ælfred’s force, we |Version in two of the Chronicles.| are told, was still larger.^[1082] The oldest English version, which it must not be forgotten takes the form of a ballad, knows nothing of any warlike expedition, and speaks of |Ælfred’s companions slain [by Godwine].| Ælfred only. According to this account, Ælfred came to England, whence or under what circumstances we are not told, and wished to go to his mother at Winchester. In this purpose he was hindered by men who were powerful at the time, and who unjustly favoured Harold. In one version these men are nameless; in another Godwine is named as their chief.^[1083] Then the Ætheling and his companions are seized; some are killed outright, some are put in bonds, some sold as slaves, others blinded or put to various tortures and horrible deaths.^[1084] No worse deed had ever been done since the Danes came into the land.^[1085] All this was done, according to one version, by Godwine, according to the other, by Harold. The Ætheling still lived; so he was taken to Ely in a ship, blinded while still on board, given thus blinded to the monks, with whom he lived till he died soon after, and then was buried honourably in the minster.^[1086]

There is yet quite another version, that of the special panegyrist of Emma, according to whom, it must be remembered, Eadward and Ælfred are not sons of Æthelred, but younger sons of Cnut and Emma, sent over to Normandy |Harold forges a letter from Emma to the Æthelings.| for education.^[1087] Harold, anxious to destroy his half-brothers, forges a letter to them in the name of their mother. She tells them that she is Lady, only in name; Harold has usurped the kingdom and is daily strengthening himself; he is winning over the chief men by gifts, threats, and prayers. Yet the feeling of the nation is still in their favour rather than in that of Harold. Let one of her sons come over to her quickly and secretly; she can then consult with him what is to be done.^[1088] The Æthelings fell into the snare; Ælfred, the younger of the brothers, went with a few comrades into Flanders; there he stayed a short time with the Marquess Baldwin, and increased his company by some adventurers from Boulogne.^[1089] He then set sail, and came near to some point of the English coast which is not further described. But, as the inhabitants came down to the shore with evidently hostile intentions, he changed his course to another point equally undetermined. There he landed, and tried to go to his mother; on the way he was met by Godwine, who swore oaths to him and became his man.^[1090] By the Earl’s advice he turned |Ælfred received by Godwine,| aside from London,^[1091] and lodged at Guildford. There Godwine quartered Ælfred’s comrades in different houses in the town, leaving a few only to attend on the Ætheling himself. He feasted Ælfred and his companions, and withdrew to his own house, evidently in or near Guildford, promising to return in the morning to do his due service |but seized by the agents of Harold.| to his lord.^[1092] But in the night the emissaries of Harold suddenly appeared in the town, seized the comrades of Ælfred, and sold, slew, or tortured them according to the usual story. The Ætheling was taken to Ely; there he was first mocked by the soldiers, then loaded with heavy fetters, brought before some kind of tribunal, and, by its sentence, blinded and finally put to death.^[1093] The monks of Ely took his body and buried it, and miracles were of course wrought at his tomb.

These are the main versions of the tale, the details of which, as well as some other accounts, I shall discuss elsewhere. Now when we come to compare them with one another, what is the judgement to which we ought to come? That Ælfred landed, that he and his comrades were cruelly put to death, there can be no doubt; but had Godwine any share in the deed? Before we examine the evidence, we must first try and understand what the real state of the case was. The unhappy fate of Ælfred caused him, according to the universal English instinct, to be looked on as a martyr; his tale became a piece of hagiology, to which, as to other pieces of hagiology, ordinary ways of thinking were not to be applied. This way of looking at the matter began very early; but, in order really to get to the bottom of the question, we must try and understand how things must have looked at the moment of Ælfred’s landing.

First of all, whatever was the crime either of Godwine or of Harold, we must remember that, in any case, it was not the kind of crime which the exaggerated language of some of our narratives would lead us to think. Godwine might be a traitor in the sense of one who betrays any fellow-creature to his ruin; on the worst showing, he was not a traitor in the sense of one who betrays or rebels against his lawful sovereign. Ælfred was not, as the legends of his martyrdom might seem to imply, a lawful King driven from his throne. Harold was not an usurper, keeping the lawful heir out of his lawful possession. Godwine was not a rebel, conspiring to betray a prince to whom his allegiance was lawfully due. According to any version of the story, Ælfred appeared in England as the enemy of a settled government, established by a regular vote of the legislature. As such it was the part and duty of the King, of the Earl, and of the whole people, to resist him. He was a pretender to the crown entering the kingdom at the head of a foreign force, whether great or small. There has never been any time or place in which such a pretender would not have been at once arrested; there have been few times and places in which such a pretender would not have been speedily put to death. Against the arrest of Ælfred not a word can be said in any age; his execution was perhaps more deeply offensive to the public feeling of the eleventh century, a time when the shedding of blood by the sentence of law was singularly rare,^[1094] than it would have been to the public feeling of the fifteenth or the sixteenth century. The real question is whether either the arrest or the execution was accompanied with any circumstances of |Ælfred’s position analogous to that of the Stewart Pretenders.| treachery or needless cruelty. The sons of Æthelred were very much in the position of the elder and younger Pretenders in the reigns of George the First and Second. In both cases the power which had a right to dispose of the crown had disposed of it, and had not disposed of it in their favour. Now no man could have blamed any officer, civil or military, in the service of King George, for arresting either James or Charles Edward Stewart. In so doing he would simply have been doing his duty to his King and country. If either Pretender had been arrested, his execution would doubtless have been a very harsh measure; but it would have been a perfectly legal measure; he was attainted, and he might have been as regularly executed as Monmouth was. Nay, the letter of the law, as the law stood till the reign of George the Third, as it was actually enforced as late as the reign of Charles the Second, would have condemned the pretended Prince of Wales to indignities and torments quite as cruel as any that Harold Harefoot inflicted on the Ætheling and his companions.^[1095] To have put James or Charles Stewart to death in the horrible form which the law decreed for the traitor would doubtless have called forth as fierce a storm of righteous indignation as was called forth by the death of the Ætheling Ælfred. Still the act would have been legal; it might have inflicted undying shame on the King and his counsellors who ordered it, but it would have been no ground of blame whatever against the gaoler, the sheriff, or the executioner. So it was with the case of Ælfred. According to one account, first Eadward and then Ælfred entered the land at the head of a foreign army; they tried, in short, to repeat the exploit of Cnut, to forestall the exploit of William. In banished men, eager for a restoration to their country on any terms, such conduct may admit of many excuses. Still, on the face of it, they put themselves in the position of open enemies of their country. If Eadward really landed at the head of a Norman army, if he really fought a battle against an English force at Southampton, those who withstood him were as plainly doing their simple duty as the men who fought at Maldon or on Senlac. Even if we reject this version, if we believe that Ælfred entered the country, not with an army but with a mere escort of strangers, still he was coming, seemingly without any invitation from any party in the country, to disturb a settlement which the legislature of the kingdom had established, and which he was not likely to upset except by force of arms. Men who run such desperate risks must take the consequences. |The real question as to Godwine; Was he guilty of treachery or needless cruelty?| If Godwine, as a military commander, fought against Eadward, if, as a civil magistrate, he arrested Ælfred, he simply did his duty and nothing else. The only question would be, as I before put it, Was there any treachery or needless cruelty in the matter? Now cruelty is perhaps of all charges that which most needs to be looked at with reference to the habits and feelings of the age. What one age looks on as mildness another age looks on as barbarity. But it is clear that the cruelties which were wrought by Harold on his captives deeply revolted the public opinion of the time in which he lived. As for deliberate treachery, that is a crime in all ages alike. If then we set aside accusations which rest on mere misconception of the case, the question remains whether the evidence is enough to convict Godwine either of personal treachery towards the Ætheling or of any share in the savage cruelties of Harold.

Now in reading any version of the story one great difficulty at once presents itself. Godwine is always described as acting a part which, in his real position at the time, he cannot have acted. Not one of the versions of the tale takes any notice of the division of the kingdom. They all seem to look on Harold as sole King and to look on Godwine as his minister, or at least as his subject. Yet we know that, at this time, Godwine was neither Harold’s minister nor Harold’s subject. Harthacnut was still the acknowledged King, at all events King-elect, of the West-Saxons; Emma was still sitting at Winchester as regent in his name; Godwine, who had secured for them this remnant of dominion, was the chief minister and general of the Lady and her son. If Godwine acted in any way in the interest of Harold, it could only have been because Harold was, as I suggested above, the superior lord of his own sovereign—because the invasion, or attempt of whatever kind, made by the Æthelings threatened not only the rights of the King of the West-Saxons, but also the rights of the Emperor of Britain. This is certainly possible, but it is rather straining a point; nothing of the sort is at all implied in the language of any of the writers who tell the tale. They all, even the best informed, seem to know nothing of the kingship of Harthacnut and the regency of Emma. This seeming ignorance of writers, some of them contemporary, on such a point shows in the most remarkable way how soon and how completely the first ephemeral reign of Harthacnut was forgotten. But their forgetfulness certainly goes a good way to lessen the trustworthiness of their own tale. In fact the story as it stands cannot be made to agree with the known facts of the history. Godwine cannot have played the part attributed to him by his enemies while the arrangement decreed by the Witenagemót of Oxford was still in force. But the historical character of that arrangement is undoubted. That the kingdom really was divided, that Godwine really was at this time not the minister of Harold but the minister of Harthacnut, are facts which cannot be gain-sayed. The details of the story of Ælfred cannot have happened in the manner and at the time in which they are said to have happened. It was perhaps a feeling of this inconsistency which led several later writers to shift the story to a later time, to the time immediately following the death, not of Cnut, but of either Harold or Harthacnut. But the part played by Harold is the most essential part of the story; the tale cannot be fitted in to a later time except by a complete change of its circumstances. |The direct evidence against Godwine fails.| Altogether I think it must be allowed that the direct evidence brought to implicate Godwine in any guilty share in the business altogether breaks down.