The two streams of English and Norman history were joined together for a moment in the year when the sovereigns of England and Normandy met face to face for the only time in the course of their joint reigns. Those streams will now again diverge. England shook off the Norman influence, and became once more, to all outward appearance, the England of Æthelstan and Eadgar. For |Little direct connexion between English and Norman affairs.| several years the history of each country seems to have no direct influence upon the history of the other. But this mutual independence is more apparent than real. England once more became free from Norman influence as regarded her general policy; but the effects of Eadward’s Norman tendencies were by no means wholly wiped away. Normans still remained in the land, and the circumstances of the deliverance of England were not without their effect as secondary causes of the expedition of William. Through the whole period we may be sure that the wise statesmen of both countries were diligently watching each other’s actions. Harold and William, though not as yet open enemies or avowed rivals, must have found out during these years that each was called on by his own policy to do all that he could to thwart the policy of the other. But though there was this sort of undercurrent closely connecting the interests of the two countries, yet, in all the outward events of history, it was a period of remarkable separation between them. The events recorded by English historians within this period belong almost exclusively to the affairs of our own island. It is a period in which the relations between the vassal Kingdoms of Britain and the Imperial power again assume special importance. But it is still more emphatically marked by the death of the greatest of living Englishmen, and the transmission of his power, and more than his power, to a |Growth of the power of Harold.| worthy successor. We left Godwine and Harold banished men. We have now to record their triumphant return to a rejoicing nation. We have then to record the death of Godwine, the accession of Harold to his father’s formal rank, and the steps by which he gradually rose to be the virtual ruler of the Kingdom, perhaps the designated successor to the Crown.
If the minds of Englishmen had been at all divided in their estimate of Godwine during his long tenure of power, it only needed his exile to bring every patriotic heart to one opinion with regard to him. Godwine doubtless had his enemies; no man ever stood for thirty years and more at the head of affairs without making many enemies; and there were points in his character which may have given reasonable offence to many. Even if the whole of his enormous wealth was fairly and legally acquired, its mere accumulation in the hands of one man[922] must have excited envy in many breasts. His eagerness to advance his family may well have offended others, and the crimes and the restoration of Swegen, even under the guaranty of Bishop Ealdred, cannot fail to have given general scandal. It is possible then that there were Englishmen, not devoid of love and loyalty to England, who were short-sighted enough to rejoice over the fall of the great Earl. But, when Godwine was gone, men soon learned that, whatever had been his faults, they were far outweighed by his merits. Men now knew that the Earl of the West-Saxons had been the one man who stood between them and the dominion of strangers. During that gloomy winter England felt as a conquered land, as a land too conquered by foes who had not overcome her in open battle, but who had, by craft and surprise, deprived her of her champions and guardians. The common voice of England soon began to call for the return of Godwine. The banished Earl was looked to by all men as the Father of his Country; England now knew that in his fall a fatal blow had been dealt to her own welfare and freedom.[923] Men began openly to declare that it was better to share the banishment of Godwine than to live in the land from which Godwine was banished.[924] |Godwine invited to return.| Messages were sent to the court of Flanders, praying the Earl to return. If he chose to make his way back into the land by force, he would find many Englishmen ready to take up arms in his cause. Others crossed the sea in person, and pledged themselves to fight for him, and, if need were, to die in his behalf.[925] These invitations, we are told, were no secret intrigue of a few men. The common voice of England, openly expressed and all but unanimous, demanded the return of the great confessor of English freedom.[926]
These open manifestations on behalf of the exiles could not escape the knowledge of the King and his counsellors. It was thought necessary to put the south-eastern coast into a state of defence against any possible attack from the side of Flanders. The King and his Witan[927]—one would like to have fuller details of a Gemót held under such influences—decreed that ships should be sent forth to |The fleet at Sandwich.| watch at the old watching-place of Sandwich.[928] Forty ships were accordingly made ready, and they took their place at the appointed station under the command of the King’s nephew Earl Ralph, of Odda, the newly appointed Earl of the Western shires.[929]
Precautions of this kind against the return of one for whose return the mass of the nation was longing must have been unpopular in the highest degree. And, if anything could still further heighten the general discontent |Ravages of Gruffydd of North Wales. 1052.| with the existing state of things, it would be the events which were, just at this time, going on along the Welsh border. The Norman lords whom Eadward had settled in Herefordshire proved but poor defenders of their adopted country. The last continental improvements in the art of fortification proved vain to secure the land in the absence of chiefs of her own people. Gruffydd of North Wales marked his opportunity; he broke through his short-lived alliance with England, and the year of the absence of Godwine and his sons was marked by an extensive and successful invasion of the land of the Magesætas.[930] Gruffydd doubtless took also into his reckoning the absence of the local chief at Sandwich. He crossed the border, he harried far and wide, and he seems not to have met with any resistance till |His victory near Leominster.| he had reached the neighbourhood of Leominster.[931] There he was at last met by the levies of the country, together with the Norman garrison of Richard’s Castle.[932] Perhaps, as in a later conflict with the same enemy in the same neighbourhood, English and foreign troops failed to act well together; at all events the Welsh King had the victory, and, after slaying many men of both nations, he went away with a large booty.[933] Men remarked that this heavy blow took place exactly thirteen years after Gruffydd’s |1039.| first great victory at Rhyd-y-Groes.[934] Though the coincidence is thus marked, we are not told, what day of what month was thus auspicious to the Welsh prince; but the dates of the events which follow show that it must have been early in the summer.
Godwine must by this time have seen that the path for his return was now open, and it was seemingly this last misfortune which determined him to delay no longer.[935] It was not till all peaceful means had been tried and failed, that the banished Earl made up his mind to attempt a restoration by force. He sent many messages to the King, praying for a reconciliation. He offered now to Eadward, as he had before offered both to Harthacnut and to Eadward himself, to come into the royal presence and make a compurgation in legal form in answer to all the charges which had been brought against him.[936] But all such petitions were in vain. It marks the increasing intercourse between England and the continent, that Godwine, when his own messages were not listened to, sought, as a last resource, to obtain his object through the intercession of foreign princes.[937] Embassies on his behalf were sent by his host |Embassies from foreign princes on his behalf.| Count Baldwin and by the King of the French. Baldwin, who had so lately been at war with England, might seem an ill-chosen intercessor; but his choice for that purpose may have been influenced by his close connexion with the Court of Normandy. William was just now earnestly pressing his suit for Matilda. The ally of the great Duke might be expected to have some influence, if not with Eadward, at least with Eadward’s Norman favourites. King Henry, it will be remembered, claimed some sort of kindred with Eadward, though it is not easy to trace the two princes to a common ancestor.[938] But King and Marquess alike pleaded in vain. Eadward was surrounded by his foreign priests and courtiers, and no intercessions on behalf of the champion of England were allowed to have any weight with the royal mind, even if they were ever allowed to reach the royal ear.[939]
The Earl was now satisfied that nothing more was to be hoped from any attempts at a peaceful reconciliation. He was also satisfied that, if he attempted to return by force, the great majority of Englishmen would be less likely to resist him than to join his banners. He therefore, towards the middle of the summer,[940] finally determined to attempt his restoration by force of arms, and |Estimate of his conduct.| he began to make preparations for that purpose. His conduct in so doing hardly needs any formal justification. It is simply the old question of resistance or non-resistance. If any man ever was justified in resistance to established authority, or in irregular enterprises of any kind, undoubtedly Godwine was justified in his design of making his way back into England in arms. So to do was indeed simply to follow the usual course of every banished man of those times who could gather together the needful force. The enterprises of Osgod Clapa[941] at an earlier time, and of Ælfgar at a later time, are not spoken of with any special condemnation by the historians of the time. And the enterprise of Godwine was of a very different kind from the enterprises of Ælfgar and of Osgod Clapa. Ælfgar and Osgod may have been banished unjustly, and they may, according to the morality of those times, have been guilty of no very great crime by seeking restoration with weapons in their hands. Still the question of their banishment or restoration was almost wholly a personal question. The existence or the welfare of England in no way depended on their presence or absence. But the rebellion or invasion of Godwine was a rebellion or an invasion in form only. His personal restoration meant nothing short of the deliverance of England from misgovernment and foreign influence. He had been driven out by a faction; |Comparison of Godwine with Henry of Bolingbroke (1399) and William of Orange (1688).| he was invited to return by the nation. The enterprise of Godwine in short should be classed, not with the ordinary forcible return of an exile, but with enterprises like those of Henry of Bolingbroke in the fourteenth century and of William of Orange in the seventeenth. In all three cases the deliverer undoubtedly sought the deliverance of the country; in all three he also undoubtedly sought his own restoration or advancement. But Godwine had one great advantage over both his successors. They had to deal with wicked Kings; he had only to deal with a weak King. They had to deal with evil counsellors, who, however evil, were still Englishmen. Godwine had simply to deliver King and people from the influence and thraldom of foreigners. He was thus able, while they were not able, to deliver England without resorting to the death, deposition, or exile of the reigning King, and, as far as he himself was personally concerned, without shedding a drop of English blood.
The narrative of this great deliverance forms one of the most glorious and spirit-stirring tales to be found in any age of our history. It is a tale which may be read with unmixed delight, save for one event, which, whether we count it for a crime or for a misfortune, throws a shadow on the renown, not of Godwine himself, but of his nobler son. Harold and Leofwine, we have seen, had made up their minds from the beginning to resort to force, whenever the opportunity should come. They had spent the winter in Ireland in making preparations for an expedition.[942] They were by this time ready for action, and, now that their father had found all attempts at a peaceful reconciliation to be vain, the time for action seemed clearly to have come. |Harold and Leofwine sail from Dublin.| It was doubtless in concert with Godwine that Harold and Leofwine[943] now set sail from Dublin with nine ships. Their crews probably consisted mainly of adventurers from the Danish havens of Ireland, ready for any enterprise which promised excitement and plunder. But it is quite possible that Englishmen, whether vehement partisans or simply desperate men, may have also taken service under the returning exiles. The part of England which they chose for their enterprise would have been well chosen, if |They enter the Bristol Channel.| they had been attacking a hostile country. They made for the debateable land forming the southern shore of the Bristol Channel, where no doubt large traces of the ancient British blood and language still remained.[944] The country was left, through the absence of its Earl Odda with the fleet, without any single responsible chief. |The people of Somersetshire and Devonshire ill disposed towards them.| But it soon appeared that, from whatever cause, the wishes of the people of this part of the kingdom were not favourable to the enterprise of Harold and Leofwine. Possibly the prevalence of Celtic blood in the district may have made its inhabitants less zealous in the cause |Possible grounds for their hostility.| of the English deliverer than the inhabitants of the purely English shires. Possibly the evil deeds of Swegen, whose government had included Somersetshire, may have made men who had lived under his rule less attached to the whole House of Godwine than those who had lived under the rule of Harold or of Godwine himself. And we must remember that, up to this time, Harold had done nothing to win for himself any special renown or affection beyond the bounds of his own East-Anglian Earldom. As yet he shone simply with a glory reflected from that of his father. And his enterprise bore in some points an ill look. He had not shared the place of exile of his father, nor had he taken any part in his father’s attempts to bring about a peaceful restoration. He had gone, determined from the first on an armed return, to a land which might almost be looked on as an enemy’s country. He now came back at the head of a force whose character could not fail to strike Englishmen with suspicion and dread. We are therefore not surprised to hear that the men of Somerset and Devon met him in arms. |Harold’s landing at Porlock;| He landed on the borders of those two shires, in a wild and hilly region, which to this day remains thinly peopled, cut off from the chief centres even of local life, the last |description of the country.| place within the borders of South Britain where the wild stag still finds a shelter. The high ground of Exmoor, and the whole neighbouring hilly region, reaches its highest point in the Beacon of Dunkery, a height whose Celtic name has an appropriate sound among the remains of primæval times with which it is crowned. It is the highest point in its own shire, and it is overtopped by no point in Southern England, except by some of the Tors of Dartmoor in the still further west. A descent, remarkably gradual for so great a height, leads down to the small haven of Porlock, placed on a bay of no great depth, but well defined by two bold headlands guarding it to the east and west. The coast has been subject to many changes. A submarine forest,[945] reaching along the whole shore, shows that the sea must have made advances in earlier times. And there is as little doubt that it has again retreated, and that what is now an alluvial flat was, eight hundred years back, a shallow and muddy inlet, accessible to the light craft of those days. Harold therefore landed at a spot nearer than the present small harbour to the small |Object of the enterprise.| town, or rather village, of Porlock.[946] A landing in this remote region could contribute but little to the advancement of the general scheme of Godwine; the object of Harold must have been merely to obtain provisions for his crews. He came doubtless, as we shall find his father did also, ready for peaceable supplies if a friendly country afforded them, but ready also to provide for his followers |Harold’s victory at Porlock; he plunders the country, and sails to join his father.| by force, if force was needed for his purpose.[947] But the whole neighbourhood was hostile; a large force was gathered together from both the border shires, and Harold, whether by his fault or by his misfortune, had to begin his enterprise of restoration and deliverance by fighting a battle with the countrymen whom he came to deliver. The exiles had the victory, but it is clear that they had to contend with a stout resistance on the part of a considerable body of men. More than thirty good Thegns and much other folk were slain.[948] So large a number of Thegns collected at such a point shows that the force which they headed must have been gathered together, not merely from the immediate neighbourhood of Porlock, but from a considerable portion of the two shires.[949] We may conceive that the system of beacons, which has been traced out over a long range of the hill-tops in the West of England, had done good service over the whole country long before the fleet of Harold had actually entered the haven of Porlock. But the crews of Harold’s ships were doubtless picked men, and their success, over even a much larger force of irregular levies, would have been in no way wonderful. Harold now plundered without opposition, and carried off what he would in the way of goods, cattle, and men.[950] He then sailed to the south-west, he doubled the Land’s End,[951] and sailed along the English Channel to meet his father.
This event is the chief stain which mars the renown of Harold, and which dims the otherwise glorious picture of the return of Godwine and his house. Harold’s own age perhaps easily forgave the deed. No contemporary writer speaks of it with any marked condemnation; one contemporary writer even seems distinctly to look upon it as a worthy exploit.[952] It was in truth nothing more than the ordinary course of a banished man. Harold acted hardly worse than Osgod Clapa; he did not act by any means so badly as Ælfgar. But a man who towers above his own generation must pay, in more than one way, the penalty of his greatness. We instinctively judge Harold by a stricter standard than that by which we judge Ælfgar and Osgod Clapa. On such a character as his it is distinctly a stain to have resorted for one moment to needless violence, or to have shed one drop of English blood without good cause. The ravage and slaughter at Porlock distinctly throws a shade over the return of Godwine and over the fair fame of his son. It is a stain rather to be regretted than harshly to be condemned; but it is a stain nevertheless. It is a stain which was fully wiped out by later labours and triumphs in the cause of England. Still we may well believe that the blood of those thirty good Thegns and of those other folk was paid for in after years by prayers and watchings and fastings before the Holy Rood of Waltham; we may well believe that it still lay heavy on the hero’s soul as he marched forth to victory at Stamfordbridge and to more glorious overthrow at Senlac.
Harold and Leofwine were thus on their way to meet their father. Meanwhile the revolution was going on rapidly on the other side of England.[953] Godwine had gathered together a fleet in the Yser,[954] the river of Flanders which flows by Dixmuyden and Nieuport, and falls into the sea some way south-west of Bruges. He thence set |His first appearance off the English coast.| sail, one day before Midsummer eve, and sailed straight to Dungeness, south of Romney.[955] At Sandwich the Earls Ralph and Odda were waiting for him, and a land force had also been called out for the defence of the coast.[956] Some friendly messenger warned the Earl of his danger, and he sailed westward to Pevensey. In Sussex he was in his own country, among his immediate possessions and his immediate followers, and he seems to have designed a landing on the very spot where a landing so fatal to his house was made fourteen years later. The King’s ships followed after him, but a violent storm hindered either party from carrying out its designs. Neither side knew the whereabouts of the other;[957] the King’s fleet |He returns to Bruges.| put back to Sandwich, while Godwine retired to his old quarters in Flanders.[958] Great discontent seems to have followed this mishap on the King’s side. The blame was clearly laid on the Earls and on the force which they commanded. Eadward may not have learned the lesson of Cnut, and he perhaps thought that the elements were bound to submit to his will. The fleet was ordered to return to London, where the King would put at its head other Earls, and would supply them with other rowers.[959] To London accordingly the fleet returned, but it was found easier to get rid of the old force than to provide a new one; everything lagged behind; probably nobody was zealous in the cause; even if any were zealous, their zeal would, as ever happened in that age, give way beneath the irksomeness of being kept under arms without any hope of immediate action. At last the whole naval force, which was to guard the coast and keep out the returning traitor, gradually dispersed, and each man went to his own home.[960]
The coast was now clear for Godwine’s return, and his friends in England were doubtless not slow to apprize him that his path was now open. He might now, it would seem, have sailed, without fear of any hindrance, from the mouth of the Yser to London Bridge. But, with characteristic wariness, he preferred not to make his great venture till he had strengthened his force by the addition of the ships of Harold and Leofwine, and till he had tried and made himself sure of the friendly feeling of a large part of England. In the first district however where he landed, he found the mass of the people either unfriendly to him or kept in check by fear of the ruling powers. From Flanders he sailed straight for the Isle of Wight, as a convenient central spot in which to await the coming of his sons from Ireland. He seems to have cruised along the coast between Wight and Portland, and to have harried the country without scruple wherever supplies were refused to him.[961] But of armed resistance, such as Harold had met with at Porlock, we hear nothing, and there is nothing which implies that a single life was lost on either |Meeting of Godwine and Harold: they sail eastward.| side. At last the nine ships of Harold, rich with the plunder of Devon and Somerset, joined the fleet of his father at Portland. We need hardly stop to dwell on the mutual joy of father, sons, and brothers, meeting again after so many toils and dangers, and with so fair a hope of restoration for themselves and of deliverance for their country.[962] It is more important to note that, from this time, we are expressly told that all systematic ravaging ceased; provisions however were freely taken wherever need demanded. But as the united fleet steered its course eastward towards Sandwich, the true feeling of the nation showed itself more and more plainly. As the deliverer sailed along the South-Saxon coast, the |Zeal in their cause shown by the men of Sussex, Kent, and Essex.| sea-faring men of every haven hastened to join his banners. From Kent, from Hastings,[963] even from comparatively distant Essex,[964] from those purely Saxon lands, whence the Briton had vanished, and where the Dane had never settled, came up the voice of England to welcome the men who had come to set her free. At every step men pressed to the shore, eager to swell the force of the patriots, with one voice pledging themselves to the national cause, and raising the spirit-stirring cry, “We will live and die with Earl Godwine.”[965] At Pevensey, at Hythe, at Folkestone, at Dover, at Sandwich, provisions were freely supplied, hostages were freely given,[966] every ship in their havens was freely placed at the bidding of their lawful Earl. The great body of the fleet |They enter the Thames and sail towards London.| sailed round the Forelands, entered the mouth of the Thames, and advanced right upon London. A detachment, |Unexplained ravages in Sheppey.| we are told, lagged behind, and did great damage in the Isle of Sheppey, burning the town of King’s Middleton. They then sailed after the Earls towards London.[967] The language of our story seems to imply that neither Godwine nor Harold had any hand in this seemingly quite wanton outrage. Needlessly to harm the house or estate of any Englishman at such a moment was quite contrary to Godwine’s policy, quite contrary to the course which both he and Harold had followed since they met at Portland. The deed was probably done by some unruly portion of the fleet, by some Englishman who seized the opportunity to gratify some local jealousy, by some Dane who, consciously or unconsciously, looked with a pirate’s eye on the corner of Britain where his race had first found a winter’s shelter.[968]
The fleet was now in the Thames. Strengthened by the whole naval force of south-eastern England, the Earl had now a following which was formidable indeed. The river was covered with ships; their decks were thick with warriors harnessed for the battle.[969] In such guise the Earl advanced to Southwark, and paused there, in sight doubtless of his own house, of the house whence he and his sons had fled for their lives a year before.[970] He had to wait for the tide, and he employed the interval in sending messages to the citizens of London.[971] The townsfolk of the great city were not a whit behind their brethren of Kent and Sussex in zeal for the national cause. |London declares for Godwine.| The spirit which had beaten back Swend and Cnut, the spirit which was in after times to make London ever the stronghold of English freedom, the spirit which made its citizens foremost in the patriot armies alike of the thirteenth and of the seventeenth centuries, was now as warm in the hearts of those gallant burghers as in any earlier or later age. With a voice all but unanimous, the citizens declared in favour of the great Earl; a few votes only, the votes, it may be, of strangers or of courtiers, were given against the emphatic resolution that what the Earl would the city would.[972]
But meanwhile where was King Eadward? At a later crisis of hardly inferior moment we shall find him taking his pleasure among the forests of Wiltshire, and needing no little persuasion to make him leave his sport and give a moment’s thought to the affairs of his Kingdom. He must have been engaged at this time in some such absorbing pursuit, as he appears to have heard nothing of Godwine’s triumphant progress along the southern coast till the Earl had actually reached Sandwich. The news awakened him to a fit of unusual energy. The interests at stake were indeed not small; the return of Godwine might cut him off from every face that reminded him of his beloved Normandy; he might be forced again to surround himself with Englishmen, and to recall his wife from her cloister to his palace. In such a cause King Eadward did not delay. He came with speed to London, accompanied by the Earls Ralph and Odda, and surrounded by a train of Norman knights and priests, and sent out orders for the immediate gathering in arms of such of his subjects as still remained loyal to him.[973] But men had no heart in the cause; the summons was slowly and imperfectly obeyed. The King contrived however, before the fleet of Godwine actually reached the city, to get together fifty ships,[974] those no doubt whose crews had forsaken them a few weeks earlier. And he contrived, out of his own housecarls, strengthened, it would seem, by the levies of some of the northern shires, to gather a force strong enough to line the northern shore of the Thames with armed men.[975]
The day on which Godwine and his fleet reached Southwark was an auspicious one. It was the Feast of the |Monday, September 14, 1052.| Exaltation of the Holy Cross.[976] It was the day kept in memory of the triumphant return and the devout humility of that renowned Emperor who restored the glory of the Roman arms, who rivalled the great Macedonian in a second overthrow of the Persian power, and who brought with him, as the choicest trophy of his victories, that holiest |628.| of Christian relics which his sword had won back from heathen bondage. Harold, like Heraclius, was returning to his own, perhaps already the sworn votary of that revered relic whose name he chose as his war-cry, and in whose honour he was perhaps already planning that great foundation which was of itself enough to make his name immortal. The day of the Holy Cross must indeed have been a day of the brightest omen to the future founder of Waltham. And a memorable and a happy day it was. Events were thickly crowded into its short hours, events which, even after so many ages, may well make every English heart swell with pride. It is something indeed to feel ourselves of the blood and speech of the actors of that day and of its morrow. The tide for which the fleet had waited came soon after the Earls had received the promise of support from the burghers of London. The anchors were weighed; the fleet sailed on with all confidence. The bridge was passed without hindrance, and the Earls found themselves, as they had found themselves a year before, face to face with the armies of their sovereign. But men’s minds had indeed changed since the Witan of England had passed a decree of outlawry against Godwine and his house. Besides his fleet, Godwine now found himself at the head of a |Zeal of Godwine’s followers.| land force which might seem to have sprung out of the earth at his bidding. The King’s troops lined the north bank of the Thames, but its southern bank was lined, at least as thickly, with men who had come together, like their brethren of the southern coasts, ready to live and die with the great Earl. The whole force of the neighbourhood, instead of obeying the King’s summons, had come unsummoned to the support of Godwine, and stood ready in battle array awaiting his orders.[977] And different indeed was the spirit of the two hosts. The Earl’s men were eager for action; it needed all his eloquence, all his authority, to keep them back from jeoparding or disgracing his cause by too hasty an attack on their sovereign |Lukewarmness of the King’s troops.| or on their countrymen.[978] But the Englishmen who had obeyed Eadward’s call were thoroughly disheartened and lukewarm in his cause. The King’s own housecarls shrank from the horrors of a civil war, a war in which Englishmen would be called on to slaughter one another, for no object but to rivet the yoke of outlandish men about their necks.[979] With the two armies in this temper, the success of Godwine was certain; all that was needed was for the Earl to insure that it should be a bloodless success. The |Godwine demands his restoration;| object of Godwine was to secure his own restoration and the deliverance of his country without striking a blow. He sent a message to the King, praying that he and his might be restored to all that had been unjustly taken from |Eadward hesitates; increased indignation of Godwine’s men;| them.[980] The King, with his Norman favourites around him, hesitated for a while. The indignation of the Earl’s men grew deeper and louder; fierce cries were heard against the King and against all who took part with him; no power less than that of Godwine could have checked the demand for instant battle.[981] The result of a battle could hardly have been doubtful. Ralph the Timid and Richard the son of Scrob, even the pious Earl Odda himself, would hardly, even at the head of more willing soldiers, have found themselves a match for the warrior who had fleshed his sword at Sherstone and Assandun, and who had made the name of Englishman a name of terror among the stoutest |Godwine restrains their eagerness.| warriors of the shores of the Baltic.[982] But it was not with axe and javelin that that day’s victory was to be won. The mighty voice, the speaking look and gesture, of that old man eloquent could again sway assemblies of Englishmen at his will.[983] His irresistible tongue now pleaded with all earnestness against any hasty act of violence or disloyalty. His own conscience was clear from any lack of faithfulness; he would willingly die rather than do, or allow to be done on his behalf, any act of wrong or irreverence towards his Lord the King.[984] The appeal was successful in every way. The eagerness of his own men was checked, and time was given for wiser counsels to |Embassy of Stigand; hostages exchanged and matters referred to a Gemót.| resume their sway on the other side. Bishop Stigand and other wise men, both from within and from without the city, appeared on board the Earl’s ship in the character of mediators. It was soon agreed to give hostages on both sides, and to defer the decision of all matters to a solemn Gemót to be holden the next morning.[985] Godwine, Harold, and such of their followers as thought good, now left their |Godwine and Harold land.| ships, and once more set foot in peace on the soil of their native island.[986] The Earl and his sons no doubt betook themselves to his own house in Southwark, and there waited for the gathering of the next day with widely different feelings from those with which they had last waited in that house for the decisions of an Assembly of the Wise.
But there were those about Eadward who could not with the like calmness await the sentence of the great tribunal which was to give judgement on the morrow. |Fears of the King’s Norman favourites.| There were those high in Church and State who knew too well what would be the inevitable vote of a free assembly of Englishmen. There were Thegns and Prelates in Eadward’s court who saw in the promised meeting of the Witan of the land only a gathering of men eager to inflict on them the righteous punishment of their evil deeds. First and foremost among them was the Norman monk whom the blind partiality of Eadward had thrust into the highest place in the English Church. Robert of Jumièges, the man who, more than any other one man, had stirred up strife between the King and his people, the man who, more than any other one man, had driven the noblest sons of England into banishment, now felt that his hour was come. He dared not face the assembled nation which he had outraged; he dared not take his place in that great Council of which his office made him the highest member. The like fear fell on Ulf of Dorchester, the Bishop who had done nought bishoplike, on William of London, and on all the Frenchmen, priests and knights alike, who had sunned themselves in the smiles of the court, but who shrank from meeting the assembly of the people. Flight |General flight of the foreigners.| was their only hope. As soon as the news came that peace was made, and that all matters were referred to a lawful Gemót, the whole company of the strangers who had been the curse of England mounted their horses and rode for their lives. Eastward, westward, northward, Norman knights and priests were seen hurrying. Godwine and Harold, in the like case, had been treacherously pursued;[987] but these men, criminals as they were fleeing from the vengeance of an offended nation, were allowed to go whither they would unmolested. Whatever violence was done was wholly the act of the strangers. Some rode west to the castle in Herefordshire, Pentecost’s castle, the original cause of so much mischief; some rode towards a castle in the north, belonging to the Norman Staller, Robert the son of Wymarc.[988] The Bishops, perhaps the objects of a still fiercer popular indignation than even the lay favourites, undertook a still more perilous journey by themselves. What became of William of London is not quite plain,[989] but we have |Flight of Archbishop Robert and Bishop Ulf.| a graphic description of the escape of the Prelates of Canterbury and Dorchester. Robert and Ulf, mounted and sword in hand, cut their way through the streets, wounding and slaying as they went;[990] they burst through the east gate of London; they rode straight for the haven of Eadwulfsness;[991] there they found an old crazy ship;[992] they went on board of her and so gat them over sea. Never again did those evil Prelates trouble England with their personal presence; but the tongue of Robert was still busy in other lands to do hurt to England and her people. The patriotic chronicler raises an emphatic note of triumph over the ignominious flight of the stranger Primate. “He left behind his pall and all Christendom here in the land, even as God it willed; for that he had before taken upon him that worship, as God willed it not.”[993]