This appointment of a West-Saxon to the great Northern Earldom was, as I have already implied, a distinct novelty. Ever since Northumberland had ceased to be ruled by Kings of her own, she had been ruled by Earls chosen from among her own people. The ancient Kingdom had sometimes been placed under one, sometimes under two, chiefs; but they had always been native chiefs. The rule of the stranger Eric had been short, and he seems to have allowed the line of the ancient princes to retain at least a subordinate authority.[1126] Siward, a stranger by birth, was connected with the ancient family by marriage.[1127] And both Eric and Siward were Danes; Tostig came of a line which most probably sprang from the most purely Saxon part of England. The experiment was a hazardous one, yet it was one which was not only dictated by sound policy, but which circumstances made almost unavoidable. The |Mode of appointment to the great Earldoms.| great Earldoms, I may again repeat, were neither strictly hereditary nor strictly elective. They were in the gift of the King and his Witan, but there was always a strong tendency, just as in the case of the Kingdom itself, to choose out of the family of the deceased Earl, whenever |Impossibility of appointing a native Earl on the death of Siward.| there was no obvious reason to do otherwise. But on the death of Siward there was such an obvious reason to do otherwise, just as there was in the case of the Kingdom when it became vacant by the death of Eadward. The eldest son of Siward had fallen in the Scottish war, and the one survivor of his house was still a child.[1128] Oswulf, seemingly the only male representative of the ancient Earls,[1129] was probably still a mere boy.[1130] There was therefore no available candidate of the old princely line. And, when we think of the state of the country, of the deadly feuds and jealousies which prevailed even between the reigning Earls and other powerful men,[1131] we shall see that the nomination of any private Northumbrian would have been a still more hazardous experiment than the nomination of a stranger. The Northumbrians themselves seem to have felt this, when, ten years later, the choice of their Earl was thrown into their own hands. They then chose, |Doubtful policy of the appointment of Tostig.| not a Northumbrian, but a Mercian. But it may well be doubted whether it was good policy to appoint a West-Saxon, and especially a member of the House of Godwine. This was perhaps going too far in the way of reminding the proud Danes of the North of their subjection to the Southern King. It could not fail to suggest the idea of an intention to monopolize all honours and all authority in a single family. And, as events showed, the personal character of Tostig proved unfitted successfully to grapple with the difficult task which was now thrown upon him.
In weighing the character of the third son of Godwine, we must be on our guard against several distinct sources of error. We are at first tempted to condemn without mercy one who became the antagonist of his nobler brother, who waged open war with his country, and whose invasion of England, by acting as a diversion in William’s favour, was one main cause of the success of William’s expedition. We read the account of his crimes as set forth by his Northumbrian enemies, and we think that no punishment could be too heavy for the man who wrought them. On the other hand, though Tostig, as an adversary of Harold, comes in for a certain slight amount of Norman favour, there was also a temptation, which for the most part was found irresistibly strong, to blacken both sons of the |Legends of Harold and Tostig.| Traitor equally. The opposition between Harold and Tostig during the last two years of their joint lives has thus supplied the materials for a heap of legends of revolting absurdity. The two brothers, who clearly acted together up to those two last years, are described as being full of the most bitter mutual rivalry and hatred, even from their childhood.[1132] The effect of these two different pictures is that both admirers and depreciators of Harold are alike led to look on the acts of Tostig in the most unfavourable light. The crimes of his later years cannot be denied. He died a traitor, in arms against his country, engaged in an act of treason compared to which Harold’s ravages at Porlock, and even Ælfgar’s alliance with Gruffydd, sink into insignificance. His Northumbrian government too was evidently stained with great errors, seemingly with great crimes. But it is remarkable that it is not till the last two years of his life that we hear of anything which puts him in an unfavourable light. And there is nothing in his few recorded earlier actions which is at all inconsistent with the generally high character |Witness of the Biographer of Eadward.| given of him by the biographer of Eadward. That writer compares him with Harold in an elaborate picture of the two which I have already made large use of in describing Harold. And it is clear that, whether from his own actual convictions or from a wish to please his patroness the Lady Eadgyth, it is Tostig rather than Harold whose partizan he is to be reckoned, and it is Tostig whose actions he is most anxious to put in a favourable light. But the two are the two noblest of mortals; no land, no age, ever brought forth two such men at the same time. He makes a comparison of virtues between the two, but he hardly ventures to make the balance decidedly weigh in |His description of Tostig.| favour of either. In person Tostig was of smaller stature than his elder brother, but in strength and daring he was his equal.[1133] But he seems to have lacked all Harold’s winning and popular qualities. He is set before us as a man of strong will, of stern and inflexible purpose, faithful to his promise, grave, reserved, admitting few or none to share his counsels, so that he often surprised men by the suddenness |His stern and unyielding character.| of his actions.[1134] His zeal against wrong-doers, the virtue of the ruler for which his father and brother are so loudly extolled, amounted in him to a passion which carried him beyond the bounds of justice and honour.[1135] The whole picture describes him as a man of honest and upright intentions, but of an unbending sternness which must have formed a marked contrast to the frank and conciliatory disposition of his brother. Such a man, placed as a ruler over a turbulent and refractory people, might, almost unconsciously, degenerate into a cruel tyrant. |Disturbed state of Northumberland.| Northumberland, we are told, was, at the time when he undertook its government, in a state to which it is impossible to believe that either Normandy or southern England afforded any likeness. Siward’s strong arm had done something to bring its turbulent inhabitants into order; yet thieves and murderers still had so completely the upper hand that travellers had to go in parties of |Tostig’s effort to restore order.| twenty and thirty, and even then were hardly safe.[1136] Tostig set himself vigorously, evidently too vigorously, to work to put an end to this state of things. His severity was merciless and impartial; death and mutilation were freely dispensed among all disturbers of public order. His efforts, we are told, were effectual; it is said, in a proverbial form of speech, that under his administration, any man could safely travel through the whole land with all his goods.[1137] Even powerful Thegns were not spared, and here comes the point in which Tostig most deeply erred. Putting our various accounts together, we shall find that, when offenders were too powerful to be reached by the arm of the law, Tostig did not scruple to rid the land of them |Explanation of his later crimes.| by treacherous assassination. We can well understand that a man of Tostig’s disposition, bent on bringing his province into order at any price, may have persuaded himself that the public good was superior to all other considerations, and may have blinded himself to the infamy of the means by which the public good was to be compassed. Very similar conduct in public men of our own day has been condoned by large bodies of men, and by some has even been warmly applauded. The unswerving dictate of justice is that he who, in any age, sheds blood without sentence of law, deserves the heaviest condemnation and the heaviest punishment. Still such conduct does not necessarily imply any original corruption of heart in the offender. Tostig richly deserved all that afterwards fell upon him. Like most sinners, he went on from bad to worse; but there is no reason to believe that he undertook the government of Northumberland with any less sincere intention of doing his duty there than Harold had when he undertook the government of Wessex. Tostig in the end became a great criminal; but he clearly was not a monster or a villain from the beginning of his career.
The strange thing is that a man of this disposition, whose virtues were all of the sterner sort, should have become a personal favourite with a feeble King like Eadward. One may perhaps explain it by the principle which often makes men, both in love and in friendship, prefer those who are most unlike themselves. A man like Eadward would cling to a man like Tostig as his natural protector, and, after all, weak as Eadward was, there were elements in his character to which the extreme severity of Tostig would not be unacceptable or even unlike. The King who had commanded Godwine to march against the untried citizens of Dover would not be likely to condemn the harshness of Tostig’s rule in |Tostig’s personal virtues.| Northumberland. And there were other points in Tostig’s character which would naturally and rightly commend him to the favour of the saintly King. Tostig, like William, practised some virtues which Harold neglected. While Harold’s affections seem to have dwelt wholly on an English mistress, Tostig set an example of strict fidelity to his foreign wife.[1138] The husband of Judith would thus on every ground be more acceptable to Eadward than the lover of Eadgyth. Tostig too was of a bountiful disposition, and Judith, who was a devout woman, directed a large share of his bounty to pious objects.[1139] Through all these causes Tostig easily won the highest place in the affection of his royal brother-in-law. With his sister the Lady he stood only too well. There is too much reason to fear that Eadgyth did not scruple to become something more than the accomplice of one of his worst deeds.[1140]
Such was the man to whom, probably at about the age of thirty-two,[1141] was entrusted the rule of the ancient realm beyond the Humber. The general picture of his government I have already given; but for nine years no domestic details are supplied. We shall find him, like his brother, making the fashionable pilgrimage to Rome, and aiding his brother in his wars with the Welsh. Notwithstanding Norman legends, there is, at this stage of their history, not the slightest sign of any dissension between them.
One fact however we learn quite incidentally which touches, not indeed the internal administration of his Earldom, but the measures taken at once for its external defence, and for the maintenance of the supremacy of the Imperial Crown over the great Northern dependency of England. At some time during the first six years of his government, Earl Tostig became the sworn brother of Malcolm, the restored King of Scots.[1142] This was a tie by which reconciled enemies often sought to bind one another to special friendship. It was the tie by which Cnut had been bound to Eadmund,[1143] and by which Tostig’s predecessor Ealdred had been bound to the faithless Carl.[1144] But there is nothing to show that the establishment of this tie between Tostig and Malcolm |Probable reference of the engagement to the war with Macbeth.| had been preceded by any hostilities between them. It is far more probable, considering the date of Tostig’s appointment to his Earldom, that the engagement took place early in Tostig’s government, and that it was made with a view to the joint prosecution of hostilities against a common enemy. When Tostig succeeded Siward, Malcolm was still struggling for his crown against Macbeth, and we cannot doubt that Tostig continued to support the man of King Eadward against the usurper.[1145] Then doubtless it was that the King of Scots and the Earl of the Northumbrians entered into this close mutual relation. But the tie of sworn brotherhood was one which was seldom found strong enough to bind the turbulent spirits of those times. It sat almost as lightly on the conscience of Malcolm as it had sat on the conscience of Carl. The engagement was observed as long as it happened to be convenient, and no longer. While Tostig was the guardian of the English border, Malcolm’s brotherhood with Tostig did not hinder him from violating the frontiers of Tostig’s Earldom. When Tostig was an exile in arms against his country, the tie was remembered, and it procured him a warm welcome at the Scottish Court.
The appointment of Tostig to the Earldom must have been made in the Gemót which was held in London in the Lent of this year.[1146] In the same Assembly, Ælfgar, Earl of the East-Angles, was banished. The accounts which we have of this transaction are not very intelligible. The fullest narrative that we have, that of the Chronicler who is most distinctly a partizan of Harold’s, tells us that he was charged with treason towards the King and all his people, and that he publicly confessed his guilt, though the confession escaped him unawares.[1147] The other accounts are satisfied with saying that he was guiltless or nearly guiltless.[1148] With such evidence as this, we are not in a position to determine on the guilt or innocence of Ælfgar. We do not even know what the treason was with which he was charged. But a charge to which the accused party, even in a moment of confusion, pleaded guilty, could hardly have been wholly frivolous on the part of the accuser. This point is important; for, though we have no direct statement who the accuser was, the probability is that a charge against one who stood so high in the rival family could have been brought only by Harold or by some one acting in his interest. At any rate, if Ælfgar was not a traitor before his condemnation, he became one speedily after it. In seeking a forcible restoration, he did but follow the least justifiable act in the career of his rival. But, if Harold had set a bad example, Ælfgar improved upon it. Harold had endeavoured to force his way into the country at the head of mercenaries hired in a foreign land. But he had not allied himself with the enemies of his country; he had not carried on a war against England in the interest of an ever restless foe of England. To this depth of infamy |Ælfgar hires ships in Ireland,| Ælfgar did not scruple to sink. He went over, as Harold had done, to Ireland, and gathered a force of eighteen ships, besides the one in which he had made his own voyage. These ships were doubtless manned by the Scandinavian settlers in that country.[1149] With this fleet he sailed to some haven in Wales, probably of North Wales, |and makes an alliance with Gruffydd.| where he met Gruffydd and made an alliance with him.[1150] The Welsh Prince was now at the height of his power. He had this very year overthrown and slain his South-Welsh rival, Gruffydd the son of Rhydderch.[1151] He seems now to have been master of the whole Cymrian territory, and, at the head of such a power, he was more dangerous, and probably more hostile, to England than ever. Nothing then could be more opportune for his purposes than the appearance of a banished English Earl at the head of a powerful force of Irish Danes. Ælfgar at once asked for Gruffydd’s help in a war to be waged against King Eadward.[1152] The plan of a campaign was speedily settled. Gruffydd summoned the whole force of the Cymry[1153] for a great expedition against the Saxons. Ælfgar, with his Irish or Danish following, was to meet the Welsh King at some point which is not mentioned, and the combined host was to march on a devastating inroad into Herefordshire. The plan was successfully carried out, and the forces of Gruffydd and Ælfgar entered the southern part of the shire, the district known as Archenfeld, and |Gruffydd and Ælfgar ravage Herefordshire,| there harried the country. The border land which they entered was one bound to special service against British enemies. The Priests of the district had the duty of carrying the King’s messages into Wales; its militia claimed the right, in any expedition against the same enemy, to form the van in the march and the rear in the retreat.[1154] To ravage this warlike district was no doubt a special object with the Welsh King, one which would be carried out with special delight. He did his work effectually. The effects of the harrying under Gruffydd were still to be seen at the time of the Norman survey.[1155]
The work of destruction thus begun seems to have been carried on by Gruffydd and his allies without opposition, till they came within two miles of the city of Hereford.[1156] |and meet Earl Ralph near Hereford. October 24, 1055.| There they were at last met by a large force under Ralph, the Earl of the country, consisting partly of the levies of the district, and partly of his own French and Norman following. Richard the son of Scrob, it will be remembered, was among the Normans who had been allowed to remain in England,[1157] and no doubt the forces of Richard’s Castle swelled the army of Ralph. The timid Earl[1158] thought himself called upon to be a military reformer. The English, light-armed and heavy-armed alike, were |Ralph requires the English to fight on horseback.| always accustomed to fight on foot. The Housecarl, the professional soldier, with his coat of mail and his battle-axe, and the churl who hastened to defend his field with nothing but his javelin and his leathern jerkin, alike looked on the horse only as a means to convey the warrior to and from the field of battle. The introduction of cavalry into the English armies might perhaps have been an improvement, but it was an improvement which could not be carried into effect with a sudden levy within sight of the enemy. But Ralph despised the English tactics, and would have his army arrayed according to the best and newest continental models. A French prince could not condescend to command a host who walked into action on their own feet, according to the barbarous English fashion. The men of Herefordshire were therefore required to meet the harassing attacks of the nimble Welsh, and the more fearful onslaught of Ælfgar’s Danes, while still |The battle is therefore lost.| mounted on their horses. The natural consequences followed; before a spear was hurled, the English took to flight.[1159] Nothing else could have been reasonably looked for; however strong may have been the hearts of their riders, horses which had not gone through the necessary training would naturally turn tail at the unaccustomed sights and sounds of an army in battle array.[1160] But in one account we find a statement which is far stranger and more disgraceful. If Ralph required his men to practise an unusual and foreign tactic, he and his immediate companions should at least have shown them in their own persons an example of its skilful and valiant carrying out. But we are told that Ralph, with his French and Normans, were the first to fly, and that the English in their flight did but follow the example of their leader.[1161] I suspect some exaggeration here. Whatever may have been the case with the timid Earl himself, mere cowardice was certainly not a common Norman, or even French, failing. For a party of French knights to take to flight on the field of battle without exchanging a single spear-thrust, is something almost unheard of. It is far more likely that we have here a little perversion arising from national dislike. It is far more likely that, whatever Ralph himself may have done, the Normans in his company were simply carried away by the inevitable, and therefore in no way disgraceful, flight of the English. Anyhow, the battle, before it had begun, was changed into a rout. The enemy pursued. The light-armed and nimble Welsh were probably well able to overtake the clumsily mounted English. Four or five hundred were killed, and many more wounded. On the side of Ælfgar and Gruffydd we are told that not a man was lost.[1162]
The Welsh King and the English Earl entered Hereford the same day[1163] without resistance. The chief object of their wrath seems to have been the cathedral church of the |Story of Æthelberht of East-Anglia. 792.| diocese, the minster of Saint Æthelberht. The holy King of the East-Angles, betrothed to the daughter of the famous Offa, had come to seek his bride at her father’s court. He was there murdered by the intrigues of Cynethryth, the wife of the Mercian King.[1164] He became the local saint of Hereford, and the minster of the city boasted |Æthelstan, Bishop of Hereford. 1012–1056.| of his relics as its choicest treasure. That church was now ruled by Æthelstan, an aged Prelate, who had already sat for forty-three years.[1165] But, for the last twelve years, blindness had caused him to retire from the active government of his diocese, which was administered by a Welsh Bishop named Tremerin.[1166] Æthelstan is spoken of as a man of eminent holiness, and he had, doubtless in his more active days, rebuilt the minster of Saint Æthelberht, and enriched it with many ornaments. The invaders attacked the church with the fury of heathens; indeed among the followers of Ælfgar there may still have been votaries of Thor and Odin. Seven of the Canons attempted to defend the great door of the church, but they were cut down without mercy.[1167] The church was burned, and all its relics and ornaments were lost. Of the citizens many were slain, and others were led into captivity.[1168] The whole town was sacked and set fire to, and the Welsh account specially adds that Gruffydd destroyed the fort or citadel.[1169] The history which follows seems to imply that the town itself was not fortified, but merely protected by this fortress. At its date or character we can only guess. Hereford is not spoken of among the fortresses raised by Eadward the Elder and his sister Æthelflæd. It is an obvious conjecture that the fortress destroyed by Gruffydd was a Norman castle raised by Ralph. A chief who was so anxious to make his people conform to Norman ways of fighting would hardly linger behind his neighbour at Richard’s Castle, in at once providing himself with a dwelling-place, and his capital with a defence, according to the latest continental patterns. If so, we may easily form a picture of the Hereford of those days. By the banks of the Wye rose the minster, low and massive, but crowned by one or more of those tall slender towers, in which the rude art of English masons strove to reproduce the campaniles of Northern Italy. Around the church were gathered the houses of the Bishop, the Canons, the citizens, the last at least mainly of wood. Over all rose the square mass of the Norman donjon, an ominous presage of the days which were soon to come. All, church, castle, houses, fell before the wasting arms of Ælfgar and Gruffydd. They went away rejoicing in their victory and in the rich booty which |Deaths of Tremerin, 1055, and Æthelstan, February 10, 1056.| they carried. The blow seems to have broken the hearts of the two Prelates whose flock suffered so terribly. Tremerin died before the end of the year, and Æthelstan early in the year following.[1170]
King Eadward was now in his usual winter-quarters at Gloucester. Either the time of the Christmas Gemót was hastened, or the King, in such an emergency, acted on his own responsibility. The defence of the country and the chastisement of the rebels could no longer be left in the hands of his incapable nephew. The occasion called for the wisest head and the strongest arm in the whole realm. |Harold sent against the Welsh.| Though his own government had not been touched, the Earl of the West-Saxons was bidden to gather a force from all England, and to attack the Welsh in their own land. It is not unlikely that his brother was, as in a later war with the same enemy, summoned from Northumberland to his help.[1171] Late as was the season of the year, |Comparison of his earlier and later Welsh campaigns.| Harold did not shrink from the task.[1172] This seems to have been his first experience of Welsh warfare, and we do not know whether he now adopted those special means of adapting his operations to the peculiar nature of the country, |1063.| which he tried so successfully in his later and more famous campaign. He then, as we shall see, caused his soldiers to adopt the light arms and loose array of the Welsh, and so proved more than a match for them at their own weapons. The story seems rather to imply that he did not do so on this occasion, and that the later stroke of his genius was the result of the lessons which he now learned. In neither case did a Welsh enemy dare to meet Harold in a pitched battle, but there is a marked difference between the two campaigns; in the earlier one, the Welsh successfully escaped Harold’s pursuit, while, in the later one, they were unable to do so. Harold gathered his army at Gloucester; he passed the Welsh border, and pitched his camp beyond the border district of Straddele.[1173] But the main point is that Gruffydd and Ælfgar, who had marched so boldly to the conflict with Ralph, altogether shrank from giving battle to Harold. They escaped into South Wales. Harold, finding it vain to pursue such an enemy, desisted from the attempt. He dismissed the greater part of his army, that is probably the militia of the shires, merely bidding them keep themselves in readiness to withstand the enemy in case of |Harold fortifies Hereford.| any sudden inroad.[1174] With the rest of his troops, that is probably with his own following, he proceeded to take measures for securing the important post of Hereford against future attacks. The castle had been levelled with the ground, the church was a ruin, the houses of the townsmen were burned. Harold set himself to repair the mischief, but his notions of defending a city were different from those of the Frenchman Ralph. The first object of the English Earl was to secure the town itself, not to provide a stronghold for its governor. It does not appear that he rebuilt the castle, but he at once supplied the city itself with the requisite defences. So important a border town was no longer to be left open to the incursions of every enemy or rebel. As a military measure, to meet a temporary emergency, he surrounded the town with a ditch and a strong wall. This wall, in its first estate, though strengthened by gates and bars, seems to have been itself merely a dyke of earth and rough stones. But, before the reign of Eadward was ended, Harold, then Earl of the shire, followed the example of Eadward at Towcester and Æthelstan at Exeter, and surrounded the town with a wall of masonry.[1175] The wooden houses of the citizens could soon be rebuilt. Hereford was soon again peopled with burghers, both within and without the wall, some of them the men of the King and others the men of Earl Harold.[1176] The minster had been burned, but we must remember how laxly that word is often taken. All its woodwork, all its fittings and ornaments, were of course destroyed, the walls would be blackened and damaged, but it was capable of at least temporary repair, as Bishop Æthelstan was buried in it next year.[1177] Under the care of Earl Harold, Hereford was again a city.
Meanwhile Ælfgar and Gruffydd sued for peace. Messages went to and fro, and at last a conference was held between them and Harold at Billingsley in Shropshire, a little west of the Severn. Harold was never disposed to press hardly on an enemy, and he may possibly have felt that he was himself in some sort the cause of all that had happened, if he had promoted any ill-considered charges |General mildness of English political warfare.| against his rival. In fact, rude and ferocious as those times were in many ways, the struggles of English political life were then carried on with much greater mildness than they were in many later generations. Blood was often lightly shed, but it was hardly ever shed by way of judicial sentence. A victorious party never sent the vanquished leaders either to a scaffold or to a dungeon. Banishment was the invariable sentence, and banishment in those days commonly supplied the means of return. Thus when Gruffydd and Ælfgar sought for peace, it was easily granted to them; Ælfgar was even restored to the Earldom which he had forfeited. It was probably thought that he was less dangerous as Earl of the East-Angles, than as a banished man who could at any time cause an invasion of the country from Wales or Ireland. His fleet sailed to Chester, and there awaited the pay which he had promised the crews.[1178] Whether the payment was defrayed out of the spoils of |Ælfgar restored to his Earldom. Christmas, 1055–1056.| Herefordshire we are not told. Ælfgar now came to the King, and was formally restored to his dignity.[1179] This was done in the Christmas Gemót, in which we may suppose that the terms of the peace of Billingsley were formally confirmed.
Peace with Gruffydd was easily decreed in words, but it was not so easily carried out in act. The restless Briton eagerly caught at any opportunity of carrying his ravages beyond the Saxon border. The Welsh Annals here fill up a gap in our own, and make the story more intelligible. With the help of a Scandinavian chief whom it is not easy to identify, but who is described as Magnus the son of Harold,[1180] Gruffydd make a new incursion into Herefordshire. We may well believe that the restoration and fortification of Hereford was felt as a thorn in his side. This time the defence of the city and shire was not left in the hands of any Earl, fearful or daring, but fell to one of the |Death of Bishop Æthelstan. February 10, 1056.| warlike Prelates in whom that age was so fertile. Bishop Æthelstan, as I have already said, died early in the year at Bosbury, an episcopal lordship lying under the western slope of the Malvern Hills.[1181] His burial in Saint Æthelberht’s minster must have been the first great public ceremony in the restored city. In the choice of a successor, Eadward, or rather Harold, was actuated at least as much |Leofgar, Bishop of Hereford. March 27, 1056.| by military as by ecclesiastical considerations. The see of the venerable and pious Æthelstan was filled by a Prelate of whom, during a very short career, we hear only in the character of a warrior. This was Leofgar, a chaplain of the Earl’s, whose warlike doings seem to have been commemorated in popular ballads. He laid aside his chrism and his rood, his ghostly weapons, and took to his spear and his sword and went forth to the war against Gruffydd the Welsh King.[1182] But the warfare of this valiant churchman |His death in battle. June 16, 1056.| was unfortunate. He had not been three months a Bishop before he was killed, and with him his priests, as also Ælfnoth the Sheriff[1183] and many other good men. The Chronicler goes on to complain bitterly of the heavy grievances attending on a Welsh war. It is clear that the way had not yet been found out how really to quell the active sons of the mountains, when their spirits were thoroughly aroused by an able and enterprising prince like Gruffydd. The complaint does not dwell on losses in actual fight, which were probably comparatively |Character of the war with Gruffydd.| small. The Welsh would seldom venture on an actual battle with the English, even when commanded by captains very inferior to Harold. They would not run such a risk, except when they were either supported by Scandinavian allies, or else when they were able to take the Saxons at some disadvantage. What the Chronicler paints is the wearing, cheerless, bootless kind of warfare which is carried on with a restless enemy who can never be brought to a regular battle. It is not ill success in fighting that he speaks of, but the wretchedness of endless marching and encamping, and the loss of men and horses, evidently by weariness rather than by the sword.[1184] The wisest heads in the nation agreed that a stop must, at any cost, be put |Ealdred holds the see of Hereford with that of Worcester.| to this state of things. On the death of Leofgar, the see of Hereford was committed to Bishop Ealdred, whose energy seems to have shrunk from no amount of burthens, ecclesiastical, military, or civil.[1185] By the counsel of this Prelate, and of the Earls Leofric and Harold, the Welsh |Gruffydd reconciled to Eadward. 1056.| King was reconciled to his English overlord.[1186] This expression may be only a decorous way of attributing to the King personally a measure which was really the act of the three able statesmen who are represented as intervening between him and his dangerous vassal. But Eadward did sometimes exert a will of his own, and when he did so, his will was often in favour of more violent courses than seemed wise or just in the eyes of his counsellors. It is quite possible then that Eadward was, as he well might be, strongly incensed against Gruffydd, and that it needed all the arguments of Leofric and Harold, and of Ealdred so renowned as a peacemaker,[1187] to persuade the King to come to any terms with one so stained with treason and sacrilege. And undoubtedly, at this distance of time, there does seem somewhat of national humiliation in the notion of making peace with Gruffydd, after so many invasions and so many breaches of faith, on any terms but those of his complete |His oath of homage.| submission. We must take the names of Harold, Leofric, and Ealdred as a guaranty that such a course was necessary. Gruffydd did indeed so far humble himself as to swear to be for the future a faithful under-King to Eadward.[1188] It would also seem that the rebellious vassal was |He loses his lands in Cheshire.| mulcted of a small portion of his territories. Eadward had, at some earlier time, granted to Gruffydd certain lands, seemingly that portion of the present shire of Chester which lies west of the Dee. These lands were now forfeited, and restored to the see of Lichfield and other English possessors from whom they had been originally taken.[1189] We know not whether the grant was an original act of Eadward, or whether it was a convenient legal confirmation of some irregular seizure made by the Welsh King. Gruffydd was perhaps bought off in this way after some of his former incursions, most likely at |1046.| the moment of his temporary cooperation with Swegen.[1190] If so, the restoration of the alienated lands was now required as a condition of peace. This homage of Gruffydd, and this surrender of lands, remind us of the homage |1277.| and surrender made, under the like circumstances, by the last successor of Gruffydd to a greater Edward.[1191] As for the Welsh King’s oath, it was kept after the usual fashion, that is, till another favourable opportunity occurred for breaking it.
One other point may be noted in connexion with this last transaction. That is the way in which Harold, Leofric, and Ealdred are described as acting together. If this implies no further cooperation, it at least implies that these three took the same side in a debate in the Witenagemót. Yet Leofric was the father of Harold’s rival Ælfgar, and the last time that the names of Harold and Ealdred were coupled was when Ealdred was sent to |1051.| follow after Harold on his journey to Bristol. But now all these old grudges seem to have been forgotten. In fact not one of the three men was likely to prolong a grudge needlessly. Harold’s policy was always a policy of conciliation; if—what we can by no means affirm—his conduct with regard to the outlawry of Ælfgar was at all of another character, it was the last example in his history. Ealdred was emphatically the peacemaker. He had no doubt long ago made his own peace with Harold, and he had probably used his influence to reconcile him with any with whom reconciliation was still needful. Leofric had often been opposed to Godwine, and must have looked with uncomfortable feelings on his wonderful rise. But he had never been a bitter or violent enemy; we have always found him playing the part of a mediator between extreme parties. There is no trace of any personal quarrel between him and Harold. He may have thought himself wronged in the outlawry of his son; but he could not fail to condemn Ælfgar’s later conduct and to approve that of Harold. He must have admired Harold’s energetic carriage in the Welsh campaign and in the restoration of Hereford. And Leofric doubtless felt, whether Ælfgar felt or not, some gratitude to Harold for his conciliatory behaviour at Billingsley, and for the restoration of Ælfgar to his Earldom. All that we know of the good old Earl of the Mercians leads us to look on him as a man who was quite capable of sacrificing the interests and passions of himself or his family to the general welfare of his country.