We here seem to be reading over again the history of the events which led to the first hostile relations between England and Normandy.[291] The Northmen are again plundering England, and a continental power again gives them so much of help and comfort as is implied in letting them sell their plunder in his havens. This time the offending power was not Normandy but Flanders, and Eadward, unlike his father, had no lack of powerful friends on the |Alliance with the Emperor Henry.| continent. The great prince who had, a year before,[292] been raised to the throne of the world was, as we have seen,[293] on the most intimate terms with his English brother, and it is plain that close alliance with the Empire formed part of the policy of the patriotic party. The illustrious Cæsar had filled the Papal chair with a Pontiff like-minded |The German Popes.| with himself. A series of German Popes of Imperial nomination had followed one another in a quick succession of short reigns, but they had had time to show forth in their virtues a marked contrast to the utter degradation of the Italian Pontiffs who had gone |Leo the Ninth. 1048–1054.| immediately before them. The throne of Peter was now filled, at the Imperial bidding, by Bruno, Bishop of Toul, a native of Elsass and kinsman of the Emperor, who had taken the name of Leo the Ninth.[294] He was now in his second year of office, having· been appointed in the year of the peace between England and Norway. It was perhaps only a later legend which told how, on his way to Rome, he fell in with the famous Hildebrand, then in exile, how he listened to his rebukes for the crime of accepting a spiritual office from an earthly lord, how he entered Rome as a pilgrim, and did not venture to ascend the Pontifical throne till he was again more regularly chosen thereto by the voice of the Roman clergy and people.[295] But, in any case, this concession to ecclesiastical rule or prejudice had abated nothing of Leo’s loyalty to his Teutonic sovereign, nothing of his zeal for the welfare, both spiritual and temporal, of lands which the Italian Pontiffs so seldom visited. The Pope was now at Aachen, |Rebellion of Godfrey and Baldwin against the Emperor. 1047.| ready with his spiritual weapons to help the Emperor against a league of his rebellious vassals. They had waged war against their suzerain; they had burned the city and church of Verdun; they had destroyed the noble palace of the Emperor at Nimwegen. Foremost among the offenders were Theodoric of Holland, Baldwin of Flanders, and Godfrey of Lotharingia. Godfrey was specially guilty. After a former rebellion he had been imprisoned and released, and now he was foremost in the new insurrection, especially in the deed of sacrilege at Verdun.[296] The Pope therefore did not hesitate to issue |Leo excommunicates Godfrey. 1049.| his excommunication against him. Godfrey yielded; the ban of the father of Christendom bent his soul; he submitted to scourging, he redeemed his hair at a great sum, he contributed largely to the rebuilding of the cathedral which he had burned, and himself laboured at the work |Continued ravages of Baldwin.| like a common mason. But Baldwin of Flanders, possibly trusting to his ambiguous position as a vassal both of the Empire and of the French Crown, was more obstinate, and still continued his ravages. The Emperor accordingly called on his vassals and allies for help against a prince whose power might well seem dangerous even to Kings |Swend and Eadward join the Emperor against Baldwin.| and Cæsars. King Swend of Denmark—so low had Denmark fallen since the days of Cnut—obeyed the summons as a vassal.[297] King Eadward of England contributed his help as an ally, and as one who was himself an injured party. The reception of English exiles at Baldwin’s court, the licence allowed to Scandinavian pirates of selling the spoils of England in Baldwin’s havens, caused every Englishman to look on the Count of Flanders as an enemy. The help which had been refused to Swend was therefore readily granted to Henry. The King of the English was not indeed asked to take any share in continental warfare by land. The share of the enterprise assigned to him was to keep the coast with his ships, in case the rebellious prince should attempt to escape by sea.[298] Again, as in the days of Æthelstan and Eadmund, an English fleet appeared in the Channel, ready, if need be, to take a part in continental warfare. But now, as in the days of |Baldwin defeated without actual English help.| Æthelstan and Eadmund,[299] nothing happened which called for its active service. Eadward and his fleet watched at Sandwich, while the Emperor marched against Baldwin by land. But the Count of Flanders, instead of betaking himself to the sea, submitted in all things to the will of the mighty overlord whom he had provoked.[300]
The immediate object for the assembling of the fleet had been attained; but the events which immediately followed showed that the fleet was just as likely to be needed for protection at home, as for a share in even just and necessary warfare abroad. The submission of Baldwin to the Emperor seems to have let loose the English exiles who had been flitting backwards and forwards between Flanders and Denmark,[301] and who had possibly taken a part on Baldwin’s side in the last campaign. Both Osgod Clapa and Swegen the son of |Swegen and Osgod return.| Godwine now appeared at sea. Swegen had only eight ships; but Osgod had—we are not told how—gathered a force of thirty-nine. While the King was still at Sandwich, Swegen returned to England. He sailed first to Bosham, a favourite lordship of his father’s, and one whose name we shall again meet with in connexion with events of still greater moment to the house of Godwine. He there left his ships, and went to the King at Sandwich, |Swegen’s reconciliation with Eadward. 1049.| and offered to become his man.[302] His natural allegiance as an English subject was perhaps held to be cancelled by his outlawry or by his having become the man of Swend of Denmark or of some other foreign prince. A new personal commendation was seemingly needed for his reconciliation with his natural sovereign. He seems to have asked for his Earldom again; at any rate, he was tired of the life of a sea-rover, and asked that his lands which had been confiscated might be given back to him for his maintenance. He seems to have found favour, either with the King personally or with some of those who were about him, for it was proposed, if not actually resolved, that Swegen should be restored to all his former possessions.[303] But the strongest opponents of such a course |Harold and Beorn oppose his reconciliation.| were found in the kinsmen to whom his confiscated lands had been granted, his cousin Beorn and his brother Harold. They both refused to give up any part of what the King had given them.[304] Swegen’s petition was accordingly refused; |Swegen’s outlawry is renewed.| his outlawry was confirmed; only, as seems to have been usual in such cases, he was allowed four days to get him out of the country. How far Harold and Beorn were actuated in this matter by mere regard to their own interests, how far by a regard to the public good, how far by that mixture of motives which commonly determines men’s actions, we have no means of judging. This is not the only act of Harold’s early life which may be taken to show that he had not yet acquired those wonderful gifts of conciliation and self-restraint which mark his more mature career. Of the character of Beorn we know nothing except from this story; what we hear of him directly afterwards certainly sets him before us in a generous and amiable light. The tale is told us in a perfectly colourless way, without any hint how the conduct of the two cousins was judged of in the eyes of contemporaries in general or in those of Earl Godwine. At all events, Swegen went away from Sandwich disappointed. He thence went to Bosham, where his ships were lying in the land-locked haven of that place. This was just at the moment when the fleet, no longer needed for service against Baldwin, was beginning to disperse. We see that this fleet also had been gathered in the ancient way by the contingents or contributions of the shires,[305] and that only a small number of the ships were in the King’s permanent service. Those of the crews who had come from distant, especially inland, districts were naturally weary of tarrying when there was no prospect of active service, and the contingent of Mercia was accordingly allowed to return home.[306] The King remained at Sandwich with a few ships only. Meanwhile a rumour came that hostile ships had been seen ravaging |Godwine at Pevensey.| to the west. The Earl of the West-Saxons accordingly sailed forth to the rescue, with forty-two ships belonging to the men of his Earldom.[307] He took also two ships of the King’s, commanded respectively by Harold and by his third son Tostig, of whom we now hear for the first time.[308] Stress of weather however hindered them from getting further west than Pevensey. While they lay there, a change, of the motive of which we are not told, was made in the command of the two royal ships which had accompanied Godwine. Harold gave up the ship which he had commanded to his cousin Beorn.[309] This accidental change possibly saved Harold’s life.[310] For Swegen now came from Bosham to Pevensey, and there found his father and cousin. He there spoke with both of them. The result of their discourse was that Beorn |Beorn entrapped and slain by Swegen.| was persuaded to undertake the office of intercessor with the King on Swegen’s behalf. What arrangement was to be proposed—whether Beorn brought himself to consent to the sacrifice which he had before refused—whether Swegen was to be again invested with his Earldom or only with his private lordships—whether Harold, Beorn, or Swegen was to be compensated in any other way for the surrenders which one or more of them would have to make—of all this nothing is explained to us. We hear however that Beorn, trusting to his kindred with Swegen,[311] did not hesitate to set out to ride with him to the King at Sandwich. He even agreed to a proposal of Swegen’s, according to which they left the road from Pevensey to Sandwich, and went westward to Bosham. For this deviation from his original scheme Swegen made an excuse, which was doubtless more intelligible then than it is now, namely a fear lest the crews of his ships should forsake him, if they were not confirmed in their faith to him by the presence of Beorn. The young Earl fell into the snare, and accompanied his cousin to the haven of Bosham. But when Swegen pressed him to go on board one of his ships, Beorn’s suspicions were at last aroused, and he vehemently refused. At last Swegen’s sailors bound him, put him in a boat, rowed him to the ships, and there kept him a prisoner. They then hoisted their sails and steered for Dartmouth.[312] There Beorn was killed by Swegen’s orders, but his body was taken on shore and buried in a church. As soon as the murder became known, Earl Harold,[313] with others of Beorn’s friends, and the sailors from London—a clear mark of Beorn’s popularity—came and took up the body, carried it to Winchester, and there buried it in the Old Minster by the side of Beorn’s uncle King Cnut.
The general indignation at the crime of Swegen was intense. The King and the army publicly declared the murderer to be Nithing.[314] This was the vilest epithet in the English language, implying utter worthlessness. It was evidently used as a formal term of dishonour. We shall find |1087.| it at a later time resorted to by a Norman King as a means of appeal to his English subjects. William Rufus, when he needed English support, proclaimed in the like sort that all who failed to come to his standard should be declared to be Nithing. But this proclamation has a deeper importance than the mere use of this curious expression of public |Functions of the Witan discharged by the army.| contempt. It is to be noted that the proclamation is described as the act of the King and his army. Here is clearly a case of a military Gemót.[315] The army, as representing the nation, assumes to itself in time of war the functions which belonged to the regular Gemót in time of peace. The army declares Swend to be Nithing, and it was doubtless the army, in the same sense, which had just before hearkened to, and finally rejected, his petition for restoration to his estates. So it was the army, Cnut’s |1014.| Danish army, which assumed to itself the functions of the English Witan by disposing of the English Crown on the death of King Swend.[316] In the ancient Teutonic constitution the army was the nation and the nation was the army. In the primitive Gemóts described by Tacitus,[317] to which all men came armed, no distinction could be |Nature of the military Gemót.| drawn between the two. But it should be noticed that the word used is not that which denotes the armed levy of the Kingdom, but that which expresses the army in its special relation to the King.[318] This fact exactly falls in with the practical, though not formal, change which had taken place in the constitution of the ordinary Gemóts.[319] The military Gemót which passed this sentence on Swegen was not the whole force of England, for we were just before told that the contingents both of Mercia and Wessex had left Sandwich. This assembly must have consisted of the King’s Comitatus of both kinds, of the Thegns bound to him by the older and more honourable tie, and also of the standing force of the Housecarls, or at any rate of their officers.[320] Setting churchmen aside—though we have seen that even churchmen often bore arms both by land and by sea—such a body would probably contain a large proportion of the men who were likely to attend an ordinary Witenagemót. By an assembly of this kind, acting, whether constitutionally or not, in the character of a National Assembly, the outlawry and disgrace of Swegen were decreed.
It would seem that this decree preceded the translation of Beorn’s body to Winchester, a ceremony which may not improbably have been ordered by the Assembly. For it was before that translation[321] that the men of Hastings, most probably by some commission from the King or his military council, sailed forth to take vengeance on the murderer. Swegen was already forsaken by the greater part of his following. Of his eight ships six had left him. Their crews were probably rough Wikings from the North, men familiar with all the horrors of ordinary pirate warfare, not troubled with scruples about harrying a land whose people had never wronged them, but who nevertheless shrank from the fouler wickedness of slaying a kinsman by guile. Two ships only remained with Swegen, those doubtless whose crews had been the actual perpetrators of the deed. The men of Hastings chased and overtook these ships, slew their crews, and brought the ships to the King.[322] How Swegen himself escaped it is not easy to see; possibly the men of Hastings still scrupled personally to lay hands upon a son of Godwine. At any rate the murderer baffled pursuit, and again took shelter in his old quarters. Baldwin, so lately restored to his dominions, again began his old practice of receiving English exiles, and Swegen spent the whole winter at the court of Flanders under the full protection of its sovereign.[323]
The story of the murder of Beorn is told in so minute and graphic a way that it seems impossible to throw doubt on any part of the tale. And every account represents the deed as a deed of deliberate treachery.[324] An act of mere violence would not have greatly offended the morality of that age. Had Swegen killed even a kinsman in a moment of provocation or in a fair fight to decide a quarrel, his guilt would not have seemed very black. Had he even used craft in carrying out an ancestral deadly feud, he might have quoted many precedents in Northumbrian history, and, among them, an act in the life of the reigning Earl of the North hardly inferior in guilt to the worst |Universal indignation against Swegen.| aspect of his own.[325] But to kill a kinsman, a confiding kinsman, one who had just granted a somewhat unreasonable prayer, was something which offended the natural instincts not only of contemporary Englishmen but of Scandinavian pirates. At the moment Swegen seems to have found no friends; the voice of all England was against him; there is no sign that any of his family stood by him; the sympathies of Harold clearly lay with his murdered cousin. It is hardly possible to conceive a blacker or more unpardonable crime. One would have thought that Swegen would have failed to find patrons or protectors in any |His reception by Baldwin.| corner of Christendom. Yet, strange to say, the murderer, forsaken by all, was at once received with favour by Baldwin, even though Baldwin must have known that by receiving him he was running the risk of again offending the King of the English and even the Emperor himself. |His outlawry is reversed and he returns to England. Midlent, 1050.| And what followed is stranger still. In the next year, in a Witenagemót held in London in Midlent, Swegen’s outlawry was reversed, and he was restored to his Earldom.[326] And, strangest of all, his restoration is attributed, not to the influence of Godwine or his family, not to any revulsion of feeling on the part of the King or the nation, but |Swegen reconciled to Eadward by Bishop Ealdred.| to the personal agency of Bishop Ealdred the Peacemaker. He it was who, it would seem, crossed over to Flanders, brought Swegen to England, and procured his restoration at the hands of the King and his Witan.[327] There is nothing to show that Ealdred was specially under the influence of Godwine. We shall before long find him acting in a manner which, to say the least, shows that he was not one of Godwine’s special followers. His episcopal city and the greater part of his diocese lay within the Earldom of Leofric; no part of it lay within the Earldom of Godwine.[328] And, if part of his diocese lay within the Earldom of the man whom he sought to restore, that only makes him the more responsible for the act which was so directly to affect a portion of his own flock. In the restoration of Swegen, Ealdred seems to have acted purely in his capacity of peacemaker.[329] At first sight it might seem that Ealdred strove to win the blessing promised to his class by labouring on behalf of a sinner whom the most enlarged charity could hardly excuse. The very strangeness of the act suggests that there must have been some explaining cause, intelligible at the time, but which our authorities have not recorded. The later history of Swegen shows that, if he was a great sinner, he was also a great penitent. We can only guess that Ealdred already marked in him some signs of remorse and amendment, that he had received from him some confession of his crime, to which we possibly owe the full and graphic accounts of the murder of Beorn which have been handed down to us.[330] If so, it was doubtless wise and charitable not to break a bruised reed; still again to entrust the government of five English shires to the seducer of Eadgifu and murderer of Beorn was, to say the least, a perilous experiment.
We must now go back to the time when King Eadward had just dismissed the Mercian contingent after the reconciliation |Various military operations of the year 1049.| between Baldwin and the Emperor. While the unhappy events which I have just narrated were going on, Englishmen had cause to be alert in more than one quarter of the island against assaults of various kinds. In the comparatively peaceful reign of Eadward this year stands forth as marked by warlike operations of every sort. England had to resist the assaults of foreign enemies, of faithless vassals, and of banished men seeking their restoration. |Movements of Osgod Clapa.| Besides the small force of Swegen, Osgod Clapa was, as has been already said,[331] at sea with a much larger number of ships. He first appeared at Wulpe near Sluys on the coast of Flanders, and the news of his arrival there was brought to Eadward at the moment when the King was left at Sandwich at the head of a very small force. The Mercian contingent had just been dismissed, and Godwine, with the force of Wessex, had sailed westward. Eadward was therefore nearly defenceless. He therefore countermanded the orders for the dismissal of the Mercian vessels, and as many of them as was possible were brought |He returns to Denmark.| back. Osgod however did not act personally as the enemy of England. He merely took his wife from Bruges, where she had been left, and sailed back to Denmark with |Piracy and destruction of his fleet.| six ships. The remainder of his fleet took to piracy off Eadulfsness in Essex, and there did much harm. But a violent storm arose and destroyed all the vessels except four.[332] These were chased and captured, and the crews slain, whether by Eadward’s own fleet in pursuit or by some of the foreign allies of England is not very clear.[333]
The rumour which had called Godwine westward from Sandwich was not wholly a false one. The ships which were then said to be ravaging the south coast, were doubtless Danish pirate vessels from Ireland, the same which, in the course of July, sailed up the Bristol Channel as far as the mouth of the Usk.[334] There they were welcomed by the South-Welsh King Gruffydd,[335] who was doubtless rejoiced at the prospect of such allies, alike against the English and against his Northern namesake, the momentary confederate of England. After a certain amount of harrying along the coast of the Channel, the combined forces of Gruffydd and the pirates crossed the Wye, and slew and |They invade Gloucestershire, and defeat Bishop Ealdred.| plundered within the diocese of Worcester. It is not clear who was the Earl responsible for the safety of the country since the banishment of Swegen. It was probably the King’s nephew, Ralph the Timid, whose name begins about this time to appear in the Charters with the title of Earl.[336] If this be so, this was the first appointment of a foreigner to a great temporal office, a further step in the downward course, still more marked than that of appointing foreign Prelates. Under such a chief as Ralph no vigorous resistance was to be looked for, and the person who really took upon himself the defence of the country was Bishop Ealdred. He gathered a force from among the inhabitants of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire; but part of his army consisted of Welshmen, whether mere mercenaries hired for the occasion, or Welshmen living as immediate subjects of England. But whoever these Welshmen were, their sympathies lay wholly with Gruffydd and not with Ealdred. They sent a secret message to the Welsh King, suggesting an immediate attack on the English army. Gruffydd willingly answered to the call. With his twofold |July 29, 1049.| force, Welsh and Danish, he fell on the English camp early in the morning, slew many good men, and put the rest, together with the Bishop, to flight.[337] Of the further results of this singular and perplexing campaign, especially when and how the retreat of the invaders was brought about, we hear nothing.
Everything which happened about this time sets before us the great and increasing intercourse which now prevailed between England and the continent. Our fathers |English attendance at Synods.| were now brought into a nearer connexion with both the spiritual and the temporal chiefs of Christendom than they had ever known before. We have already seen England in close alliance with the Empire; we have now to contemplate her relations with the Papacy. The active and saintly Pontiff who now presided over the Church held at this time a series of Councils in various places, at most of which English Prelates attended. Leo, after receiving the submission of Godfrey at Aachen, entered France, at the request of Heremar, Abbot of Saint Remigius at Rheims, to hallow the newly built church of his monastery.[338] |Synod of Rheims.| He then held a synod, which sat for six days, and passed several canons of the usual sort, against the marriage of priests and against their bearing arms.[339] The days of Otto the Great seemed to have returned, when the Pope and the Emperor,[340] seemingly without reference to the Parisian King, held a Council on French ground, attended by a vast multitude of Prelates, clergy, and laity from the Imperial Kingdoms and from other parts of Europe. There, besides the Metropolitan of the city in which the synod was held, was the Archbishop of Burgundy, as our Chronicles call him,[341] that is, the Archbishop of the great see of Lyons, Primate of all the Gauls, but no subject or vassal of the upstart dynasty of Paris. There were the Archbishops of Trier and Besançon; and from England came Duduc, the Saxon Bishop of Wells, and the Abbots Wulfric of Saint Augustine’s and Ælfwine of Ramsey, whom King Eadward had sent to bring him word of all that should be done for the good of Christendom.[342] |Synod of Mainz.| It does not appear that any English Prelates were present at the synod which Leo held soon after at Mainz;[343] but the two Italian synods which were held soon after were, as we shall see, connected in a singular manner with English affairs. There seems to have been about |Deaths of Bishops and Abbots.| this time a kind of mortality among the English Prelates. Among those who died was the Abbot of Westminster or Thorney, the humbler foundation which was soon to give way to the great creation of the reigning King. He bore the name of Wulfnoth, a name which suggests the likelihood of kindred with the house of Godwine. Another was Oswiu, the Abbot of the other Thorney in the fen land, the neighbour of Peterborough and Crowland. This |Siward dies, and Eadsige resumes the Primacy. 1049.| year too died Siward the Coadjutor-Archbishop, and Eadsige again resumed his functions for the short remainder |Eadnoth of Dorchester dies; Ulf succeeds. 1049.| of his life.[344] Eadnoth too, the good Bishop of Dorchester,[345] the builder of Stow in Lindesey, died this year, and his death offered a magnificent bait to Norman ambition and greediness. The great Bishoprick stretching from the Thames to the Humber, was conferred by the King on one of his Norman chaplains, who however bore the Scandinavian name of Ulf. As to the utter unfitness of this man for such an office there is an universal consent among our authorities. The King, even the holy Eadward, did evil in appointing him; the new Prelate did nought bishoplike; it were shame to tell more of his deeds.[346]
The year which followed was one of great note in ecclesiastical history. In England the first event recorded is |Witenagemót of London. Midlent, 1050.| the usual meeting of the Witan in London at Midlent. The proceedings of this Gemót, like those of many others about this time, give us a glimpse of that real, though very imperfect, parliamentary life which was then growing up in England, and which the Norman Conquest threw back for many generations. Then, as now, there were economists pressing for the reduction of the public expenditure, and what we should now call the Navy Estimates were chosen as being no doubt a popular subject for attack. The narrative of the naval events of the last year shows that, on special occasions, naval contingents were called for, according to the old law,[347] from various parts of the Kingdom, but that the King still kept a small naval force |Reduction of the Fleet.| in constant pay. This force had, under Cnut and Harold, consisted of sixteen ships;[348] it seems now to have consisted only of fourteen. The experience of the last year showed that England was still open to attack from the West; but the great fear, fear of invasion from the North, had now quite passed away. It seemed therefore to be a favourable moment for further reductions. By the authority of this Gemót nine ships were accordingly paid off, the crews receiving a year’s pay, and the standing force was cut down to six.[349] It was in this same assembly that Swegen |Swegen inlawed.| was inlawed,[350] that is, his outlawry was reversed, by the intercession of Bishop Ealdred. That Prelate, as we have seen, seems to have gone over to Flanders, and to have brought Swegen back with him.[351]
But Ealdred had soon to set forth on a longer journey. He and the Lotharingian Bishop Hermann were now sent to Rome on the King’s errand.[352] What that errand was we learn only from legendary writers and doubtful charters, but, as their accounts completely fit in with the authentic history, we need not scruple to |The King’s vow of pilgrimage to Rome.| accept their general outline.[353] The King had in his youth vowed a pilgrimage to Rome, and the non-fulfilment of this vow lay heavy on his conscience. It probably lay heavier still when he saw so many of his subjects of all ranks, led by the fashionable enthusiasm of the time, making both the pilgrimage to Rome and also the more distant pilgrimage to Jerusalem.[354] A broken vow was a crime; still Eadward had enough of political sense and right feeling left to see that his absence from his Kingdom at such a time as the present would be a criminal forsaking of his kingly duty. The Great Cnut might venture on such a journey; his eye could see and his hand could act from Rome or Norway or any other part of the world. But the personal presence of Eadward was the only check by which peace could be for a moment preserved between the true sons of the soil, and the strangers |Eadward sends the Bishops to obtain a dispensation. 1050.| who were eating into its vitals. The King laid his case before his Witan; the unanimous voice of the Assembly forbade him to forsake his post; the legend adds that the Witan farther counselled him to satisfy his conscience by obtaining a Papal dispensation from his vow. This was the King’s errand on which Ealdred and Hermann were sent to attend the great synod[355] held this year at Rome. They made good speed with their journey; starting at |The Synod of Rome.| Midlent, they reached the Holy City on Easter Eve.[356] In that synod they stood face to face with a man then known |Lanfranc.| only as a profound scholar and theologian, the bulwark of orthodoxy and the pattern of every monastic virtue, but who was, in years to come, to hold a higher place in the English hierarchy, and to leave behind him a far greater name in English history, than either of the English Prelates whose blessing he may now have humbly craved. In that synod of Rome the doctrines of Berengar of Tours were debated by the assembled Fathers, and the foremost champion of the faith to which Rome still cleaves was Lanfranc of Pavia. Suspected of complicity with the heretic, he produced the famous letter in which Berengar had maintained the Eucharist to be a mere figure of the Body of Christ.[357] How far Ealdred or Hermann took part in these theological debates we know not; but they are said to have successfully accomplished their own errand. The King’s vow of pilgrimage was dispensed with, on condition of the rebuilding and endowment on a grander scale of that renowned West Minster whose name was to be inseparably bound together with that of the sainted King.[358] Before the year was out the unwearied Leo held |Synod of Vercelli.| another synod at Vercelli. Here the theological controversy was again raised, and Lanfranc again shone forth as the irresistible smiter of heresy. Berengar was finally condemned, notwithstanding his appeals to the elder teaching of John Scotus, and his protests that those who rejected John Scotus rejected Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, and all the Fathers of the Church.[359] These disputes, renowned in the Church at large, are wholly passed over by our insular Chroniclers. To them the famous Synod of Vercelli seems to have been memorable only as showing the Roman Court in what was apparently a new relation towards the Prelacy of England. Before the assembled Fathers came |Confirmation of Ulf of Dorchester.| the newly appointed Bishop of Dorchester, Ulf the Norman, seeking, it would seem, for consecration or confirmation. His unfitness for his post was manifest; he was found incapable of going through the ordinary service of the Church. The Synod was on the point of deposing him, of breaking the staff which, according to the ceremonial of those times, he had already received from the King. But the influence which was already all-powerful at Rome saved him. He retained his Bishoprick; but only at the cost of a lavish expenditure of treasure, of which we may be sure that no portion found its way into the private |Possible pilgrimage of Macbeth.| coffers of Leo.[360] It was in this same year that Macbeth made that mysterious bestowal of alms or bribes at Rome from which some have inferred a personal pilgrimage on the part of the Scottish usurper.[361] It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that one who seems to us hardly more real than the creations of Grecian tragedy may have personally appeared at Rome or at Vercelli, that he may have shown his pious indignation at the heresies of the Canon of Tours, or have felt his soul moved within him at the incapacity of the Bishop of Dorchester. A personal meeting between Leo, Lanfranc, Ealdred, and Macbeth would form no unimpressive scene in the hands of those who may venture on liberties with the men of far-gone times which to the historian are forbidden.
Ealdred and Hermann thus came back from Rome with the wished for dispensation from the King, and Ulf came back from Vercelli to hold the great see of Mid-England, and to rule it in his unbishoplike fashion for a little time. |Death of Archbishop Eadsige. October 9, 1050.| But before long a still greater ecclesiastical preferment became vacant. Eadsige, who had so lately resumed his archiepiscopal functions, died before the end of the year.[362] The day of complete triumph for the Norman monks and chaplains who surrounded Eadward now seemed to have come. A Frenchman might now sit on the throne of Augustine. Patriotic Englishmen were of course proportionably alarmed, and among them none more so than those who were most immediately concerned, the Chapter of the metropolitan church. The monks of Christ Church met, and made what is called a canonical election.[363] In the eye of English law such a process was little more than a petition to the King and his Witan for the appointment of the man of their choice. That choice fell on a member of their own body, their selection of whom showed that seclusion from the world had not made them incapable of a happy union of the dove |The monks of Christ Church elect Ælfric.| and the serpent. There was in their house a monk, Ælfric by name, who had been brought up in the monastery from his childhood, and who enjoyed the love of the whole society. Notwithstanding his monastic education, he was held to be specially skilled in the affairs of the world. And he had a further merit as likely as any of the others to weigh either with an English Chapter or with an English Witenagemót; he was a near kinsman of Earl Godwine.[364] The monks petitioned the Earl, the natural patron of a corporation within his government, to use his influence to obtain the King’s confirmation of their choice.[365] Godwine was doubtless nothing loth to avail himself of so honourable an opportunity to promote an Englishman and a kinsman. But his influence was crumbling away. Four years before he had been able to obtain the confirmation of Siward as Eadsige’s coadjutor; he was now unable to obtain the confirmation of Ælfric, or of any other man of native birth, |Ælfric rejected by the King, and Robert Bishop of London appointed to the see of Canterbury. Midlent, 1051.| as Eadsige’s successor. The saintly King paid no regard to the canonical election of the Convent, and in the Midlent Witenagemót of the next year, the Archbishoprick of Canterbury was bestowed on the King’s French favourite, Robert, Bishop of London.[366] The national party however prevailed so far as to secure an English successor |Spearhafoc appointed to London, and Rudolf to the Abbey of Abingdon.| to the see which Robert vacated. Spearhafoc, Abbot of Abingdon, a man famous for his skill in the goldsmith’s craft,[367] was named to the see of London by the King’s writ under his seal.[368] The Abbacy of Abingdon was given to a man whose description raises our curiosity; he was one Rudolf, described as a kinsman of King Eadward and as a Bishop in Norway.[369] For a native Northman to have been a kinsman of the son of Æthelred and Emma is hardly possible, unless the common ancestor was to be looked for so far back as the days before the settlement of Rolf. A Norman is hardly likely to have desired or obtained preferment in so unpromising a land; but it is highly probable that Cnut, who appointed several Englishmen to Bishopricks in Denmark, may have made use of a see in Norway either to reward or to remove some remote and unrecorded member of the English royal family. It is therefore very probable that Rudolf may have been an Englishman.[370] He was an aged man and weary of his office. The hand of Harold Hardrada pressed heavily on the Church. Pilgrim of the Holy Sepulchre as he was, he is charged with destroying ecclesiastical buildings, and even with sending Christian men to martyrdom.[371] Rudolf sought and found a place of more quiet, if of somewhat less honour, in the dominions of his kinsman. The monks of Abingdon received him, not very willingly, it would seem, but they were won over by the prospect that the old man would not live very long, and by the King’s promise that at the next vacancy free election should be allowed.[372] Presently the new Archbishop |Robert returns from Rome. July 27, 1051.| Robert came back from Rome with his pallium; he was enthroned in the metropolitan church, and soon hastened to the royal presence.[373] Spearhafoc, the Bishop-elect of London, came with the royal writ, and demanded |He refuses to consecrate Spearhafoc.| consecration of his Metropolitan. Robert refused, saying that the Pope had forbidden him to consecrate Spearhafoc.[374] Things had come to such a pass, that an Englishman, appointed to an English office by the King and his Witan, was to be kept out of its full possession by one foreigner acting at the alleged bidding of another. There were times when the Roman see showed itself a real refuge for the oppressed, and, as far as good intentions went, so it doubtless was in the days of good Pope Leo. But Englishmen now needed protection against no one except against the foreign favourites of their own King, and it was on behalf of those foreign favourites, and against Englishmen, that these stretches of Papal authority were now made. The unworthy Ulf was allowed, by the power of bribes, to retain his see—for he was a stranger. Spearhafoc, on what ground we know not—except so far as his English birth was doubtless a crime in the eyes of Robert—was refused the rite which alone could put him into full possession of his office. A second demand was again made by the Bishop-elect, and consecration was again refused |Spearhafoc occupies the Bishoprick without consecration.| by the Norman Archbishop.[375] Spearhafoc, rejected, unconsecrated, nevertheless went to Saint Paul’s, and took possession of the see which he held by the King’s full and regular grant.[376] No doubt he did not pretend to discharge any purely episcopal functions, but he kept possession of the see and its revenues, and probably exercised at least its temporal authority. This he did, the Chronicler significantly adds, all that summer and autumn.[377] Before the year was out, the crisis had come, and had brought with it the momentary triumph of the strangers.
One act more must be recorded before we come to the end of this portion of Eadward’s reign. In a meeting of the Witan, seemingly that in which Robert, Spearhafoc, |The remaining ships paid off and the Heregyld remitted.| and Rudolf received their several appointments, the remaining five ships of the standing or mercenary naval force were paid off.[378] The war-contribution or Heregyld was therefore no longer exacted. This tax had now been |1012.| paid for thirty-eight years, ever since Thurkill and his fleet entered the service of Æthelred.[379] This impost had all along been felt to be a great burthen; we are told that it was paid before all other taxes, the other taxes themselves, it would seem, being looked upon as heavy.[380] The glimpse which is thus given us of the financial system of the time is just enough to make us wish for fuller knowledge. We must remember that in a rude state of society any kind of taxation is apt to be looked on as a grievance. It requires a very considerable political developement for a nation to feel that the power of the purse is the surest safeguard of freedom. But there must have been something specially hateful about this tax to account for the way in which it is spoken of by the contemporary chroniclers, and for the hold which, as the legends show,[381] it kept on the popular imagination. The holy King, we are told, in company with Earl Leofric, one day entered the treasury in which the money raised by the tax was collected; he there saw the Devil sitting and playing with the coin; warned by the sight, he at once |Distinction between Danegeld and Heregyld.| remitted the tax. In this story the tax is called Danegeld, and as many of the sailors in the English service were likely to be Danes, the Heregyld seems to have been confounded with the Danegeld, and to have been popularly called by that name.[382] The Danegeld was in strictness a payment made to buy off the ravages of Danish invaders, a practice of which we have seen instances enough and to spare in the days of Æthelred. But the tax now taken off was simply a war-tax for the maintenance of a fleet, a fleet whose crews may have been to a great extent Danes, but Danes who were not the enemies of England, but engaged in her service. The two ideas however easily ran into one another; it might be difficult to say under which head we ought to place some of the payments made both under Cnut and under Harthacnut. But the Heregyld, in its more innocent shape, would, according to modern ideas, be an impost absolutely necessary for the defence of the country. If the tax were remitted, no naval force would be retained, except the contingents of the shires, which could not in any case be very readily forthcoming. But, besides the general dislike to taxation |Import of the remission.| of any kind, this particular tax was a painful and hateful badge of national disgrace. It was a memory of times when England could find no defence against strangers except by taking other strangers into her pay. Its remission was doubtless looked on as a declaration that England no longer needed the services of strangers, or of hired troops of any kind, but that she could trust to the ready patriotism and valour of her own sons. The Law required every Englishman to join the royal standard at the royal summons.[383] The effectual execution of that law was doubtless held to be a truer safeguard than the employment of men, whether natives or strangers, who served only for their pay. Such reasonings had their weak side even in those days, but they were eminently in the spirit of the time. The measure was undoubtedly a popular one, and we are hardly in a position to say that, under the circumstances of the time, it may not have been a wise one.