A few detached ecclesiastical events must be mentioned as happening in the course of these two years of war with Gruffydd. The see of Wiltshire or Ramsbury[1192] was, it will be remembered, now held by Hermann, one of the Lotharingian Prelates who were favoured by Godwine and Harold as a sort of middle term between Englishmen and Frenchmen.[1193] This preferment was not, at least in Hermann’s eyes, a very desirable one. The church of Ramsbury, unlike other cathedral churches, seems not to have been furnished with any company of either monks or canons,[1194] and the Bishop therefore found himself somewhat solitary. The revenues also of the see were small, an evil which seems to have pressed more heavily on a stranger than it would have done on a native. Other Bishops of Ramsbury, Hermann said, had been natives of the country, and the poverty of their ecclesiastical income had been eked out by the bounty of English friends and kinsfolk. He, a stranger, had no means of support to look to except the insufficient revenues of his Bishoprick.[1195] He had, it appears, been long looking forward to annexing, after the manner of the time, a second Bishoprick to his own. As Leofric had united Crediton and Saint German’s, Hermann hoped to unite Ramsbury and Sherborne, whenever a vacancy should occur in the latter see. Hermann, as the mission with which he had been entrusted shows,[1196] stood high in royal favour, and the Lady Eadgyth had long before promised to use her influence on his behalf, whenever the wished for opportunity should occur.[1197] But another means of increasing the episcopal wealth of Ramsbury now presented itself. The Abbot of Malmesbury was dead. Though the monasteries had not yet reached their full measure of exemption from episcopal control, we may be sure that the Bishops had already begun to look with jealousy on those heads of great monastic houses who had gradually grown up into rival Prelates within their own dioceses. Hermann at Ramsbury felt towards the Abbey of Malmesbury, as in after days his countryman Savaric at Wells felt towards the Abbey of Glastonbury.[1198] Here was a good opportunity at once for raising his Bishoprick to a proper standard of temporal income and for getting rid of a rival who was doubtless a thorn in his side. He would forsake Ramsbury, with its poor income and lack of clerks, and fix his episcopal throne in the rich and famous minster which boasted of the burying-place of Æthelstan.[1199] He laid his scheme before the King, who approved of it; he went away from the royal presence already in expectation Bishop of Malmesbury. But two parties interested in the matter had not been consulted, the monks of Malmesbury and the Earl of the West-Saxons. The monks were certain to feel |Relation of Bishops and Monks.| the utmost repugnance to any such union. They might reasonably fear that the Lotharingian Prelate might seek to reconstruct the foundation of his newly made cathedral church according to the canonical pattern of his own country. The rule of Chrodegang, which, to the Canons of Wells and Exeter,[1200] seemed to be an insufferable approach to monastic austerity, would seem to the monks of Malmesbury to be a no less insufferable approach to secular laxity. Or, even if the Bishop allowed the church to retain its ancient monastic constitution, the monks would have no desire for any such close connexion with the Bishoprick. They doubtless, as the monks of Glastonbury did afterwards, greatly preferred a separate Abbot of their own. The monks of Malmesbury therefore betook themselves to the common helper of the oppressed, and laid their grievances at the feet of Earl Harold.[1201] As the natural protector of all men, monks and otherwise, within his Earldom, Harold pleaded their cause before the King. Within three days after the original concession to Hermann,[1202] before any formal step had been taken to put him in possession of the Abbey,[1203] the grant was revoked, and the church of Malmesbury was allowed to retain its ancient constitution.[1204]
The speed with which this business was dispatched shows that it must have been transacted at a meeting of the Witan held at no great distance from Malmesbury. Such a change as the transfer of a Bishop’s see from one church to another could certainly not have been made or contemplated without the consent of the Witan. And for the monks to hear the news, to debate, to obtain Harold’s help, and for Harold to plead for them, within three days, shows that the whole took place while the Witan were actually in session. Of the places where Gemóts were usually held the nearest to Malmesbury is Gloucester, the usual scene of the Christmas Assembly. The monks, or enough of them to act in the name of the house, may perhaps themselves have been present there, and may have determined on their course without going home to Malmesbury. But the distance between Malmesbury and Gloucester is not too great to have allowed the business, in a moment of such emergency, to have been discussed within the three days, both in the Gemót at Gloucester and in the chapter-house at Malmesbury. One can hardly |Christmas, 1055.| doubt that this affair took place in the Christmas Gemót in which the Peace of Billingsley was confirmed and Ælfgar reinstated in his Earldom.
The part played by Harold in this matter should also be noticed. Harold was no special lover of monks; the chief objects of his own more discerning bounty were the secular clergy. But he was no enemy to the monastic orders; he had, as we have seen in more than one case, approved and suggested the favours shown to them by others; he had even, once at least, appeared as a monastic benefactor himself.[1205] And, at any rate, monks or no monks, the brethren of Malmesbury were a society of Englishmen, who were threatened with the violation of an ancient right through what clearly was a piece of somewhat hasty legislation. To step in on their behalf was an act in no way unworthy of the great Earl, and it was quite in harmony with his usual moderate and conciliatory policy.
The remainder of the story is curious. Hermann, displeased at being thus balked when he thought himself so near success, gave up, or at least forsook, his Bishoprick, crossed the sea, and assumed the monastic habit in the Abbey of Saint Bertin at Saint Omer.[1206] But the fire so suddenly kindled soon burned out; Hermann chafed under the fetters of monastic discipline, and wished to be again in the world.[1207] After three years, his earlier scheme once more presented itself to his mind, when the see of Sherborne became vacant by the death of Bishop Ælfwold. He returned to England, he pleaded his cause with the King, and found |Hermann returns and unites Ramsbury and Sherborne. 1058.| no opposition from the Earl.[1208] No appointment to Ramsbury had been made during Hermann’s absence; the administration of the diocese was entrusted to the indefatigable Bishop Ealdred, who thus had the care of three dioceses, Worcester, Hereford, and Ramsbury.[1209] Perhaps Hermann was looked on as still being Bishop, and the promise of the Lady with regard to the union of the sees of Ramsbury and Sherborne was held to be still binding. At all events, on Hermann’s return, Ealdred gave up Ramsbury, and Hermann became Bishop of the united Sees. He held |Died 1078.| them for twenty years longer; he survived the Conquest twelve years,[1210] and he lived to merge the old diocesan names of Ramsbuiy and Sherborne in one drawn from an altogether new seat of episcopal authority, the waterless hill of the elder Salisbury.[1211]
The year of Bishop Leofgar’s unlucky attempt to win fame as a warrior was marked by the death of Earl Odda, the King’s kinsman. He had been set over the western parts of Godwine’s Earldom during the year of his banishment,[1212] and since his return he had probably held, under the superiority of Leofric, the Earldom of the whole or part of the old land of the Hwiccas.[1213] His unpatriotic conduct in those times seems, even in the eyes of our most patriotic chroniclers, to have been fully atoned for by his personal virtues and by the favour which he showed to monasteries. He is accordingly sent out of the world with a splendid panegyric.[1214] Before his death he was admitted a monk by his diocesan Ealdred,[1215] who might thus, by bringing so goodly a sheep into the monastic fold, atone for having himself forsaken the cloister for the cares of government and warfare. He died at Deerhurst, under the shadow of the minster of his own building, but his own burial-place was at Pershore,[1216] another of the many Abbeys of a land which, next to the eastern fens, was the richest |Æthelric, Bishop of Durham 1042–1056, resigns his see.| district of England in monasteries of early date. In the course of the same year, Æthelric, Bishop of Durham, the successor of the simoniacal Eadred,[1217] resigned his see and became again a monk at Peterborough, in which |[Dies Oct. 15, 1072.]| monastery he had spent his youth.[1218] He was, through the influence of Tostig,[1219] succeeded in his Bishoprick by his brother alike in the flesh and in monastic profession, |Æthelwine succeeds. 1056–1071.| Æthelwine, another monk of the Golden Borough.[1220] Both brothers survived the Norman Conquest, and we shall see each of them, alike on the throne of Durham and in the cloister of Peterborough, become victims of the watchful jealousy of the Norman Conqueror.
The next year is conspicuously a year of deaths, and a year of deaths which affected the state of England far more sensibly than the deaths of Earl Odda and Bishop Æthelric. The first recorded event of the year is the arrival of the Ætheling Eadward from Hungary.[1221] The mission of Ealdred had not failed through the death of |[Death of the Emperor Henry. 1056.]| the great prince to whom he was sent,[1222] and, three years after the reception of the English Bishop at Köln, the English Ætheling, if English we may call him, set foot on the shores from which he had been sent into banishment as a helpless babe.[1223] He now, at the age of forty-one, came for the first time to his native country, and he came in a character as nearly approaching to that of heir presumptive to the English Crown as the laws of our |Prospects of his succession to the Crown.| elective monarchy allowed. He came with his foreign wife and his children of foreign birth. And it can hardly fail but that he was himself, in speech and habits, as foreign as the Norman favourites of Eadward, more foreign than the men of kindred tongue whom Godwine and Harold were glad to encourage in opposition to them.[1224] The succession of such a prince, even less of an Englishman than the reigning King, promised but little good to the Kingdom. Still the succession of the Ætheling would have had one great advantage. It was hardly possible that the claims of William could be successfully pressed against him. A supposed promise of King Eadward in William’s favour could hardly be maintained in the teeth of a bequest and an election in favour of an Englishman of royal birth and mature years, against whom William could have no personal complaint whatever. Incomparably inferior as Eadward doubtless was to Harold in every personal qualification, his succession could never have given William the opportunities which were afterwards given him by the accession of Harold. Eadward could not have been held up as an usurper, a perjurer, a man faithless to his lord, nor, had he been the opponent, could the superstitions of the time have been appealed to to avenge the fancied insult offered to the relics of the Norman saints. We can thus fully understand why an English poet, clearly writing by the light of later experience, laments the death of the Ætheling as the cause of all the woes which came upon this poor nation.[1225] Even at the time, when men’s eyes were not yet so fully opened, we may be sure that England rejoiced in his coming, and bitterly lamented his speedy removal. The son of the hero Ironside, the last adult male of the royal line, must, whatever were his personal qualities, have attracted to himself an interest which was not purely sentimental.
The Ætheling then came to England; but he never saw his namesake the King. He died almost immediately afterwards in London,[1226] and was buried with his grandfather Æthelred in Saint Paul’s minster. Why he was shut out from the royal presence was unknown then as well as now.[1227] |His exclusion from the royal presence,| The fact that his exclusion was commented on at the time might seem to forbid, and yet perhaps it does not wholly forbid, the simplest explanation of all, that he was ill at the time of his landing, and that the illness which caused his death also hindered his presentation to his uncle. If the exclusion had a political object, to what party ought |not likely to be due to Harold,| we to attribute it? A distinguished modern writer attributes it, though not very confidently, to the partizans of Harold.[1228] But it is not at all clear that Harold as yet aspired to the throne; it is far more probable that it was the death of the last adult Ætheling which first suggested to Harold and his friends the possibility of the succession of a King not of the royal house. Because Harold did in the end succeed Eadward, we must beware of supposing that his succession had been looked forward to during the whole reign of Eadward. There must have been some moment when the daring thought—for a daring thought it was—of aspiring to a royal crown first presented itself to the mind of Harold or of those to whom Harold hearkened. And no moment seems so clearly marked out for that purpose by all the circumstances of the case as the moment of the death of the Ætheling. If Harold had wished to thwart a design of King Eadward’s in favour of his nephew, he would hardly have waited for his landing in England to practise his devices. He would rather have laboured to hinder Ealdred’s mission in the first instance, or to render it abortive, in some way or other, during the long period over which the negotiation |but rather to the Norman courtiers,| was spread. If the exclusion of the Ætheling from his uncle’s presence was really owing to the machinations of any political party, there is another party on which the charge may fall with far greater probability. There was another possible successor who had far more to fear from the good will of the King towards the Ætheling than Harold had. Whether Harold had begun to aspire to the Crown or not, there can be little doubt that William had, and William was still by no means without influence at the English Court. There were still Normans about Eadward, Bishop William of London, Robert the son of Wymarc, Hugolin the Treasurer, and others whom Godwine or Harold had, perhaps unwisely, exempted from the general proscription. To exclude—by some underhand means, if at all—a prince of the blood from the presence of his uncle and sovereign, sounds much more like the act of a party of this kind, than the act of a man whom both office and character made the first man in the realm. The thing, if done at all, was clearly some wretched court intrigue, the fitting work of a foreign faction. The Earl of the West-Saxons, had his interests been concerned in the matter, would have set about hindering |but, more probably than either, the result of illness.| the Ætheling’s succession in quite another way. But after all, it is far more likely that the fact that the two Eadwards never met was not owing either to the partizans of Harold or to the partizans of William, but that it was simply the natural result of the illness of which the Ætheling presently died.
Another, and a far worse, insinuation against the great Earl hardly needs to be refuted. Among all the calumnies with which, for eight hundred years, the name of Harold has been loaded, there is one whose suggestion has been reserved for our own times. Norman enemies have distorted every action of his life; they have misrepresented every circumstance of his position; they have charged him with crimes which he never committed; they have looked at all his acts through such a mist of prejudice that the victory of Stamfordbridge is changed under their hands into a wicked fratricide.[1229] But no writer of his own time, or of any time before our own, has ever ventured to insinuate that Earl Harold had a hand in the death of the Ætheling Eadward. That uncharitable surmise was reserved for an illustrious writer of our own time, in whom depreciation of the whole House of Godwine had become a sort of passion.[1230] It is enough to say that, has there been the faintest ground for such an accusation, had the idea ever entered into the mind of any man of Harold’s own age,[1231] some Norman slanderer or other would have been delighted to seize upon it.[1232] Nothing is more easy than to charge any man with having secretly made away with another man by whose death he profits, and the charge is one which, as it is easy to bring, is sometimes very hard to disprove. For that very reason, it is a charge on which the historian always looks with great suspicion, even when it is known to have been brought at the time and to have been currently believed at the time. The general infamy of Eadric is fully established, but we need not believe in every one of the secret murders which rumour charged him with having committed or instigated. Still less need we believe the tales which charge the Great William with having more than once stooped to the trade of a secret poisoner.[1233] When we think how easy the charge is to bring, and how recklessly it has been brought at all times, the mere fact that no such charge was ever brought against Harold does in truth redound greatly to his honour. Calumny itself instinctively shrank from laying such a crime to the charge of such a man. William was, as I believe, as guiltless of any such baseness as Harold himself. But the charge did not seem wholly inconsistent with the crafty and tortuous policy of the Norman Duke. The West-Saxon Earl, ambitious no doubt and impetuous, but ever frank, generous, and conciliatory, was at once felt to be incapable of such a deed.
Three other deaths followed among the great men of the land, two of which were of no small political importance. |Æthelric succeeds. 1057.| It was not of any special moment, as far as we know, when Heaca, Bishop of Selsey or of the South-Saxons, died, and was succeeded by Æthelric, a monk of Christ Church.[1234] It |Death of Earl Leofric. August 31, 1057.| was quite another matter when the great Earl of the Mercians, so long the honoured mediator between opposing races and opposing interests, died in a good old age in his own house at Bromley in Staffordshire.[1235] Of all the churches and monasteries which had been enriched and adorned by the bounty of Leofric and Godgifu, none was dearer to them than the great minster of Coventry, the city with which their names are inseparably connected in one of those silly legends which have helped to displace our early history.[1236] There Leofric was buried in the church which he and his wife had raised from the foundations,[1237] and had enriched with gifts which made it wealthier and more magnificent than all the minsters of England.[1238] Godgifu survived her husband many years; she saw her son and grandsons rise and fall; she saw her granddaughter share first a vassal and then an Imperial Crown, and then vanish out of sight as a homeless widow. At last she herself died, still in the possession of some part at least of her vast estates, a subject of the Norman invader.[1239]
A few months after the death of Leofric came the death of the stranger who had seemingly held a subordinate Earldom under his authority. Ralph, Earl of the Magesætas, the French nephew of King Eadward, died near the end of the year, and was buried in the distant minster of Peterborough,[1240] to which he had been a benefactor.[1241] |His possible pretensions to the Crown.| I have already started the question whether the thoughts of Eadward had ever turned towards him as a possible successor.[1242] After the death of the Ætheling, the hopes of Ralph and his brother Walter, if they had any, might again revive. But if so, death soon cut short any such schemes. Walter, the reigning prince of a foreign state, would have no chance. If any such prince were to be chosen, it would be better at once to take the renowned Duke of the Normans than the insignificant Count of Mantes. But Ralph, whether he was ever actually thought of or not, was clearly a possible candidate; his death therefore, following so soon after the death of the Ætheling, removed another obstacle from the path of Harold.
The deaths of the two Earls involved a redistribution of the chief governments of England, which would naturally be carried out in the following Christmas Gemót. The Earldom of the Mercians, such parts of it at least as had been under the immediate authority of Leofric, was conferred |Ælfgar Earl of the Mercians.| on his son Ælfgar.[1243] It shows how vast must have been the hereditary influence of his house, when such a trust could not be refused to a man who had so lately trampled under foot every principle of loyalty and patriotism. But care was taken to make him as little dangerous as possible. Ælfgar may have hoped that, on the death of Ralph, the Earldom of the Magesætas would again be merged in Mercia, and that, excepting the shires attached to Northumberland, he might rule over the whole realm of Offa and Æthelflæd. But policy altogether forbade that the Herefordshire border should be again placed in the hands of one who had so lately acted as the |Marriage of Gruffydd and Ealdgyth.| ally of Gruffydd. We know not whether the Welsh King had already entered into a still closer relation with the English Earl by his marriage with Ælfgar’s beautiful daughter Ealdgyth. The date of that marriage is not recorded; it may have already taken place, or it may have happened on the next occasion, one distant only by a few months, when we shall find the names of Gruffydd and Ælfgar coupled together. But if the Welsh King was already the son-in-law of the Mercian Earl, there was a still further reason for placing some special safeguard on that border of the realm. In short, the government of Herefordshire was so important that it could not be safely placed in any hands but those of the foremost man in England. There is distinct evidence to show that, within two or three years after the death of |Herefordshire added to Harold’s Earldom.| Leofric, the Earldom of Herefordshire was in the hands of Harold.[1244] We can therefore hardly doubt that, on the resettlement which must have followed the deaths of Leofric and Ralph, the Earldom of the Magesætas was attached to the Earldom of the West-Saxons, and that Harold now became the immediate ruler of the district of which he had been the deliverer, and of the city of which he might |Harold the son of Ralph.| claim to be the second founder. Earl Ralph had left a son, a namesake, probably a godson, of the great Earl, and Harold the son of Ralph appears in Domesday as a landowner both before and after the Conquest. His name still survives within his father’s Earldom, where it cleaves to an existing parish and to a castle which has wholly vanished. But Earldoms were not hereditary, and the son of Ralph was so young that, eight years later, he was still under wardship.[1245] On this ground, if on no other, Harold, the great-nephew of Eadward, the great-grandson of Æthelred, was so far from appearing as a competitor for the Crown of his ancestors that he was not even thought of as a possible successor for his father’s Earldom. His name is altogether unknown to history, and but for his place in Domesday and in local tradition, his very existence might have been forgotten. His renowned namesake was now entrusted |Question as to Gloucestershire.| with the great border government. But it is by no means clear whether Harold held Herefordshire as a detached possession, as Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire were held by Siward and Tostig, or whether it was connected with his West-Saxon Earldom by the possession of Gloucestershire. If so, the rule of the Earl of the West-Saxons must now have been extended over nearly all that was West-Saxon land in the days of Ceawlin.[1246]
While the power of Harold was thus increased, the time seemed to have come for raising the younger sons of Godwine to a share in the honours of his house. The |Gyrth Earl of the East-Angles, [1057–1058],| East-Anglian Earldom, vacated by the translation of Ælfgar to Mercia, was now conferred on Gyrth. But the boundaries of the government were changed. Essex was detached from East-Anglia. The new Earl probably received only the two strictly East-Anglian shires, with the |and of Oxfordshire.| addition of Cambridgeshire, to which was afterwards added the detached shire of Oxford.[1247] The policy of attaching |Policy of these detached shires.| these detached shires to distant Earldoms is not very clear. It could not be the same policy which afterwards led the Conqueror to scatter the fiefs of his great vassals over distant portions of the Kingdom. There was certainly no intention of weakening any of the Earls whose governments were thus divided. The object was far more probably to bring the influence of the House of Godwine to bear upon all parts of the country. Some old connexion had attached Northamptonshire to Northumberland at an earlier time, and the example thus given was seized on as a means for planting the authority of the rising house in every convenient quarter. Oxfordshire, it will be remembered, had formed part of the Earldom of Swegen; it was now placed in the hands of Gyrth. For it was highly important that the great frontier town of Mercia and Wessex, the seat of so many important national meetings, should be in thoroughly trustworthy hands. Ælfgar’s loyalty was most doubtful; it was impossible altogether to oust him from command, but it was expedient to confine his powers of mischief within the smallest possible compass, and to hem him in, whenever it could be, by men who could be relied on. Unfortunately at Chester, the most dangerous point of all, the family interest of the House of Leofric was too strong to allow of that important shire being put into any hands but those of Ælfgar. We shall presently see the result.
Leofwine also was apparently provided for at the same time.[1248] His government, like that of Swegen at an earlier time, was carved out of several ancient Kingdoms and Earldoms, but it lay much more compactly on the map than the anomalous province which took in Oxford, Taunton, and Hereford. It consisted in fact of south-eastern England—of Kent, Essex, Hertford, Surrey, probably Buckinghamshire—that is of the shires round the |London exempt.| mouth of the Thames. London, as was natural, remained exempt from any jurisdiction but that of its Bishop and the chief officers of the city. The whole East of England was thus placed under the rule of the two younger sons of Godwine. But the evidence of the writs seems to show that Harold retained a general superintendence over their governments, whether simply as their elder brother or in any more exalted character.
The House of Godwine had thus reached the greatest height of power and dignity which a subject house could reach. Whatever was the origin of the family, they had won for themselves a position such as no English family ever won before or after. Four brothers, sons of a father who, whether Earl or churl by birth, had risen to greatness by his own valour and counsel, divided by far the greater part of England among them. The whole Kingdom, save a few shires in the centre, was in their hands. And three at least out of the four showed that they well deserved their greatness. To the eldest among the four there evidently belonged a more marked preeminence still. Two of his brothers, those most recently appointed to Earldoms, were clearly little more than Harold’s lieutenants. And a prospect of still higher greatness now lay open to him |State of the royal line.| and his house. The royal line was dying out. No adult male descendant of Æthelred remained; no adult descendant of any kind remained within the Kingdom. The only survivors of the true kingly stock were the son and daughters of the Ætheling, children born in a foreign land. If any hopes of royalty had ever flitted before the eyes of Ralph, such hopes could not extend to his son the young Harold or to his brother the Count of Mantes. |Harold’s prospect of the Crown.| The time was clearly coming when Englishmen might choose for themselves a King from among their brethren, unfettered by any traditional reverence for the blood of Ælfred, Cerdic, and Woden. And when that day should come, on whom should the choice of England fall save on the worthiest man of the worthiest house within the realm? We cannot doubt that, from the year when the three deaths of Eadward, Leofric, and Ralph seemed to sweep away all hindrances from his path, Harold looked forward to a day when he and his might rise to a rank yet loftier than that of Earl. It was no longer wholly beyond hope that he might himself ascend the Imperial throne of Britain, and that the Earldoms of England might be held by his brothers as Æthelings of the House of Godwine. The event proves that such were the hopes of Harold, that such, we may add, were the hopes of England. Such hopes may, even at an earlier time, have flashed across the mind of Harold himself or across the minds of zealous friends of his house or zealous admirers of his exploits. But this was the first moment when such hopes could have assumed anything like form and substance; it was the first moment when the chances seemed distinctly to be rather for than against their fulfilment. That Harold from this time doubtless aspired to the Crown, that he directed all his conduct by a hope of securing the Crown, cannot be doubted. And the unanimity with which he was raised to the throne when the great day came seems to show that men’s minds had long been prepared to look to him as their future sovereign. We cannot doubt that, after the death of the Ætheling Eadward, Wessex and East-Anglia at least were ready to transfer the English Crown from the line of Æthelred to the line of Godwine.
Two questions still remain. Did Harold, in thus looking forward to the Crown, know, as he came to know at last, how formidable a rival was making ready for him beyond the sea? And was the succession of Harold merely a probability, a moral certainty it may be, to which men learned to look forward as a matter of course, or were the hopes of the great Earl confirmed by any act of the Witan or any promise of the King? Both questions are hard to answer. Both are inseparably mixed up with the most difficult questions in our whole history, the alleged promise made to William by Eadward and the alleged oath made to him by Harold. I have already expressed my belief that Eadward’s alleged promise to the Norman Duke, which formed the main ground of William’s pretensions to the English Crown, though exaggerated and perverted in the Norman accounts, was not a mere Norman invention. I believe that some promise really was made, and that the time when it was made was when William visited Eadward during the banishment of Godwine.[1249] Of the nature and form of that promise it is difficult to say anything. We may indeed unhesitatingly dismiss the notion that a settlement was made in William’s favour by a decree |Effects of Eadward’s promise to William.| of the Witan. Still any promise of any kind could hardly have been kept so complete a secret but that it must have got blazed abroad, and have reached the ears of the Earl and his countrymen. The Norman party, during their short moment of complete triumph, would have no motive to keep the matter a secret. They would deem themselves to have reached the great accomplishment of all that they had been scheming for, when there seemed a prospect of the English Crown passing, without slash or blow, to the brow of the Norman. The fact of the promise would doubtless be known, and by statesmen it would be remembered. But it does not follow that it would make any deep impression on the mass of the nation. Men would hear of the promise in a vague sort of way, and would at the time be divided between wonder and indignation. But the idea of the succession of the Norman would be looked on as something which had passed away with other Norman ideas, when the English Earls came back to claim their own. Even after Harold’s election as King, the prospect of the Norman invasion is spoken of in a way which seems to show that, to the mass of Englishmen, the claim of William was even then something new and surprising.[1250] |Policy of the patriotic party;| But by a statesman like Harold, if the matter was once known, it would never be forgotten. It would hardly be a thing to talk much of openly; but to counteract any possible schemes of William must have been the main object of Harold’s policy from the day when he was first called to the head of affairs. We can understand how Eadward was led to deem his promise null, and to send for |candidature first of Eadward the Ætheling,| the Ætheling as his destined successor. This was, under the circumstances, a great triumph of the national policy. A competitor, accepted by the voice of the nation, was placed in William’s path, a competitor whom William himself would hardly dare to attack. The death of the Ætheling made matters more difficult. There was now no such unexceptionable rival to oppose to the Norman. |then of Harold.| Harold indeed, before his oath, was a far more formidable rival to William than Harold after his oath. He had not yet given his enemy that fatal advantage which the wily Duke knew so well how to employ. But Harold’s succession would have all the disadvantages of a novelty. If he could not yet be branded as a perjurer, yet he might be, in a way that the Ætheling never could be, branded as an usurper. Either of the Eadwards, in short, with Harold for his guide and counsellor, would be really stronger than Harold himself as King. But the risk had now to be run. The nation at large had most likely but vague notions as to the danger. But Harold, Stigand, and all the leaders of the nation must have known that any step that they took would bring on their country the enmity of a most active and dangerous foe. Harold’s main object during his whole administration clearly was to strengthen England at home and abroad, to make her powerful and united when the inevitable day should come.
It is a more difficult question whether Harold’s succession was at all guaranteed, at this or at any time before Eadward’s death, by any formal act either of the King or of the Witan. We know that Eadward did exercise in Harold’s favour whatever influence or authority an English King had in the nomination of his successor. That nomination appears to have been finally and formally made on Eadward’s death-bed.[1251] But such a death-bed nomination is in no way inconsistent with a promise to the same effect at an earlier time. Any one indeed to whom such a promise had been made would undoubtedly seek to have it confirmed with all the solemnity which attaches to the last act of a dying man. And there are several circumstances, none perhaps of any great weight singly, but having together a sort of cumulative force, which seem to |Quasi-royal position of Harold.| point to Harold from this time as being something more than an ordinary Earl, however powerful and popular, as being in some sort a sharer in the powers and honours of royalty.[1252] We find his name coupled in public documents with that of the King in a way which certainly is not usual with the name of any subject. We find vassal princes plighting their faith to the King and to the Earl, as if they were senior and junior colleagues in a common office. We find Harold appearing in the eyes of foreigners under the lofty guise of a Duke of the English. That sounding title cannot have been really borne by him at home, but it seems to show that, even among strangers, he was felt to hold the position of a prince rather than that of the most exalted private noble. Lastly, in our best Latin chronicler we find him distinctly called by a title which is nowhere else, to my knowledge, conferred on a subject, but which is the familiar designation of vassal princes.[1253] All these touches, coming from such different quarters, seem naturally to suggest the view that Earl Harold was, seemingly from the death of the Ætheling, publicly recognized as holding a quasi-royal position, as being, in fact, the designated successor to the Crown.