We have thus far gone through the course of those events which acted as the more distant causes of the Norman Conquest; with the accession of Eadward we |The struggle between Normans and Englishmen begins with the accession of Eadward.| stand on the threshold of the Conquest itself. The actual subjugation of England by force of arms is still twenty-four years distant; but the struggle between Norman and Englishman for dominion in England has already begun. That such would be the result of Eadward’s accession was certainly not looked for by those who raised him to the throne. Never was any prince called to assume a crown by a more distinct expression of the national will. “All folk chose Eadward to King.” The |Import of Eadward’s election; resolve of the English people to have none but an English King.| choice expressed the full purpose of the English nation to endure no King but one who was their bone and their flesh. No attachment to the memory of the great Cnut could survive the utter misgovernment of his sons. The thought of another Danish King was now hateful. Yet the royal house of Denmark contained at least one prince who was in every way worthy to reign. Could the |Other possible candidates; Swend Estrithson;| national feeling have endured another Danish ruler, Swend Estrithson might have governed England as prudently and as prosperously as he afterwards governed Denmark. But the great qualities of Swend had as yet hardly shown themselves. He could have been known at this time only as a young adventurer, who had signally failed in the only great exploit which he had attempted.[2] And, above all things, the feeling of the moment called for an Englishman, for an Ætheling of the blood of Cerdic. One |Eadward the son of Eadmund.| such Ætheling only was at hand. One son of Eadmund Ironside was now grown up to manhood, but he had been from his infancy an exile in a distant land. Most likely no one thought of him as a possible candidate for the Crown; it may well be that his very existence was |Position of Eadward.| generally forgotten. In the eyes of Englishmen there was now only one representative of the ancient royal house. Eadward, the son of Æthelred and Emma, the brother of the murdered and half-canonized Ælfred, had long been familiar to English imaginations, and, since the accession of his half-brother Harthacnut, the English Court had been his usual dwelling-place. Eadward, and Eadward alone, stood forth as the heir of English royalty, the representative of English nationality. In his behalf the popular voice spoke out at once and unmistakeably. “Before the King buried were, all folk chose Eadward to King at London.”
The general course of events at this time is perfectly plain, but there is a good deal of difficulty as to some of the details.[3] The popular election of Eadward took place in June, immediately on the death of Harthacnut, and even before his burial; but it is very remarkable that |His coronation delayed till the next year.| the coronation of the new King did not take place till Easter in the next year.[4] This delay is singular, and needs explanation. The consecration of a King was then not |Importance of the coronation-rite.| a mere pageant, but a rite of the utmost moment, partaking almost of a sacramental character. Without it the King was not King at all, or King only in a very imperfect sense. We have seen how impossible it was for the uncrowned Harthacnut to retain his hold upon Wessex.[5] The election of the Witan gave to the person chosen the sole right to the Crown, but he was put into actual possession of the royal office only by the ecclesiastical consecration. Eadward then, for nearly ten months after his first election, could not be looked on as “full King,”[6] but as at most King-elect. What could be the cause of such a delay? The notion of a general war with the Danes in England, which might otherwise account for it, I have elsewhere shown to be without foundation.[7] The circumstances of the time would seem to have been singularly unsuited for any delay. We should have expected that the same burst of popular feeling which carried Eadward’s immediate and unanimous election would also have demanded the exclusion of any possible competitor by an immediate |Probable causes of the delay; Eadward most likely absent from England, and unwilling to accept the Crown.| coronation. But the fact was otherwise. The explanation of so singular a state of things is most likely to be found in certain hints which imply that it was caused, partly by Eadward’s absence from England, partly by an unwillingness on his part to accept the Crown. There is strong reason to believe that Eadward was not in England at the moment of his half-brother’s death. Harthacnut had indeed recalled him to England, and his court had become the English Ætheling’s ordinary dwelling-place. But this fact in no way shuts out the possibility that Eadward may have been absent on the Continent at any particular moment, on a visit to some of his French or Norman friends, or on a pilgrimage to some French or Norman sanctuary. Meanwhile the sudden death of Harthacnut left the throne vacant. As in other cases before and after,[8] the citizens of London, whose importance grows at every step, together with such of the other Witan as were at hand, met at once and chose Eadward King. As he was absent, and his consent was doubtful, an embassy |Embassy to Eadward.| had to be sent to him, as embassies had been sent to his father Æthelred[9] and to his brother Harthacnut,[10] inviting him to return and receive the Crown. That embassy, we are told, consisted of Bishops and Earls; we can hardly doubt that at the head of their several orders stood two men whom all accounts set before us as the leaders in the promotion of Eadward. These were Lyfing, Bishop of |Negotiations between Eadward and Godwine.| Worcester, and Godwine, Earl of the West-Saxons.[11] A remarkable negotiation now took place between the Earl and the King-elect. Details of private conversations are always suspicious, but the dialogue attributed to the Earl and the Ætheling contains nothing but what is thoroughly suited to the circumstances of the case. We can fully understand that Eadward, either from timidity or from his monastic turn, might shrink from the labour and responsibility of reigning at all, and that, with his Norman tastes, he might look forward with very little satisfaction to the prospect of reigning over Englishmen. Such scruples |Speech of Godwine.| were driven away by the arguments and eloquence of the great Earl. The actual speech put into his mouth may be the composition of the historian, but it contains the arguments which cannot fail to have been used in such a case. It was better to live gloriously as a King than to die ingloriously in exile. Eadward was the son of Æthelred, the grandson of Eadgar; the Crown was therefore his natural inheritance. His personal position and character would form a favourable contrast to those of the two worthless youths who had misgoverned England since the death of Cnut.[12] His years and experience fitted him to rule; he was of an age to act vigorously when severity was needed; he had known the ups and downs of life; he had been purified by poverty and exile, and would therefore know how to show mercy when mercy was called for.[13] If he had any doubts, he, Godwine, was ready to maintain his cause; his power was great enough both to procure the election of a candidate, and to secure |Eadward accepts the Crown.| his throne when elected.[14] Eadward was persuaded; he consented to accept the Crown; he plighted his friendship to the Earl, and it may be that he promised to confer honours on his sons and to take his daughter in marriage. But stories of private stipulations of this kind are always doubtful. It is enough that Godwine had, as all accounts agree, the chief hand in raising Eadward to the throne.
Eadward now seems to have returned to England, probably in company with Godwine and the other am|Witenagemót of Gillingham. 1042–3.| *bassadors. The Witan presently met at Gillingham in Wiltshire; and it would seem that the acceptance of Eadward’s claims was now somewhat less unanimous than it had been during the first burst of enthusiasm which followed the death of Harthacnut. Godwine brought forward Eadward as a candidate, he urged his claims with all his powers of speech, and himself set the example of |Opposition to Eadward’s election;| becoming his man on the spot. Still an opposition arose in the Assembly, which it needed all the eloquence of Godwine and Lyfing to overcome. They had even, as it would seem, to stoop to a judicious employment of the less noble arts of statesmanship. The majority indeed were won over by the authority of the man whom all England looked on as a father.[15] But the votes of some had to be gained by presents, or, in plain words, by bribes.[16] Others, it would seem, stood out against Eadward’s |apparently in the interest of Swend.| election to the last. This opposition, we cannot doubt, came from a Danish party which supported the claims of Swend Estrithson. That prince, on return from his first unsuccessful war with Magnus, had found his cousin Harthacnut dead, and Eadward already King as far as his first election could make him so.[17] But the delay of the coronation, the uncertainty of Eadward’s acceptance of the Crown, might well make the hopes of |Alleged negotiations between Eadward and Swend.| Swend and his partisans revive. We can hardly believe the tale, though it rests apparently on the assertion of Swend himself, that he demanded the Crown, and that Eadward made peace with him, making the usual compromise that Swend should succeed him on his death, even though he should leave sons.[18] Such an agreement would of course be of no force without the consent of the Witan. That consent may have been given in the Assembly at Gillingham; but such an arrangement seems hardly credible. The English nation no doubt fully intended that the Crown should remain in the House of Cerdic, and Godwine probably already hoped that in the next generation the blood of Cerdic would be united with the blood of Wulfnoth. But it is certain that Swend was in some way or other reconciled to Eadward and Godwine, for we shall presently find Swend acting as the friend of England, and Godwine acting as the special champion of the interests of Swend.[19] The son of Ulf was, it will be remembered, the nephew of Gytha, and this family connexion no doubt pleaded for him as far as was consistent with Godwine’s higher and nearer objects. One of Swend’s brothers, Beorn, remained in England, where he was soon raised to a great Earldom, and seems to have been counted in all respects as a member of the house of Godwine. But the friends of Swend in general were set down for future punishment.[20] In the end confiscation or banishment fell on the most eminent of them. Among them was Osbeorn, another brother of the Danish King, whom we shall hear of in later times as betraying the claims of his brother, and therewith the hopes of England, into the hand of the Norman Conqueror.
Eadward was thus raised to the throne mainly through the exertions of the two patriotic leaders, Godwine and Lyfing. It is vain to argue whether Godwine did wisely in pressing his election. There was in truth no other choice. The only other possible candidates were Swend, and Magnus of Norway, of whose claims we shall hear again presently. But English feeling called for an English King, and there was no English King but Eadward to be had. That Godwine could have procured his own election to the Crown, that the thought of such an election could have occurred to himself or to any one else, is an utterly wild surmise.[21] If Godwine met with some opposition when pressing the claims of Eadward, that opposition would have increased tenfold had he ventured to dream of the Crown for himself. The nomination of the West-Saxon Earl would have been withstood to the death, not only by a handful of Danes, but by Leofric and Siward, probably, in Siward’s case at least, at the head of the whole force of their Earldoms. The time was not yet come for the election of a King not of the royal house. There was no manifest objection to the election of Eadward, and, though Godwine was undoubtedly the most powerful man in England, he had not reached that marked and undisputed preeminence which was enjoyed by his son twenty-four years later. No English candidate but Eadward was possible. And men had not yet learned, Godwine himself probably had not fully learned, how little worthy Eadward was to be called an English candidate.[22] And when in after years they learned the unhappy truth, still there does not seem to have been at any time the least thought of displacing Eadward in favour of either of his Scandinavian competitors, or even of calling in Swend to succeed him. In raising Eadward to the throne, Godwine acted simply as the mouthpiece of the English people. The opposition, as far as we can see, came wholly from the Danes of what we may call the second importation, those who had come into England with Cnut and Harthacnut. There is nothing to show that the old-settled Danish population of Northumberland acted apart from the rest of the country.
Eadward then was King. He reigned, as every English King before him had reigned, by that union of popular election and royal descent which formed the essence of all ancient Teutonic kingship.[23] But it would seem that, even in those days, the two elements in his title, the two principles to whose union he and all other Kings owed their kingly rank, spoke with different degrees of force to different minds. Already, in the eleventh century, we may say that there were Whigs and Tories in England. At any rate there were men in whose eyes the choice of the people was the primary and legitimate source of kingship. There were also men who were inclined to rest the King’s claim to his Crown mainly on his descent from those who had been Kings before him. The difference is plainly shown in the different versions of the Chronicles. One contemporary winter, a devoted partisan of Godwine, grounds the King’s right solely on the popular choice—“All folk chose Eadward to King.” That the entry was made at the time is plain from the prayer which follows, “May he hold it while God grants it to him.”[24] Another version, the only one in any degree hostile to the great Earl, seems purposely to avoid the use of any word recognizing a distinct right of choice in the people. “All folk received Eadward to King, as was his right by birth.”[25] A third writer, distinctly, though less strongly, Godwinist, seems pointedly to combine both statements; “All folk chose Eadward, and received him to King, as was his right by birth.”[26] There can be no doubt that this last is the truest setting forth both of the law and of the facts of the case. The people chose Eadward, and without the choice of |Union of elective and hereditary right.| the people he would have had no right to reign. But they chose him because he was the one available descendant of the old kingly stock, because he was the one man at hand who enjoyed that preference by right of birth, which required that, in all ordinary cases, the choice of the electors should be confined to the descendants of former Kings. It might therefore be said with perfect truth that Eadward was chosen because the Kingdom was his by right |Eadward not next in succession according to modern notions.| of birth. But it must not be forgotten, what is absolutely necessary for the true understanding of the case, that this right by birth does not imply that Eadward would have been, according to modern ideas, the next in succession to the Crown. Eadward’s right by birth would have been no right by birth at all in the eyes of a modern lawyer. The younger son of Æthelred could, according to our present ideas, have no right to succeed while any representative of his elder brother survived. The heir, in our sense of the word, was not the Eadward who was close at hand in England or Normandy, but the Eadward who was far away in exile in Hungary or Russia. Modern writers constantly speak of this last Eadward and of his son Eadgar as the lawful heirs of the Confessor. On the contrary, according to modern notions, the Confessor was their lawful heir, and, according to modern notions, the Confessor must be pronounced to have usurped a throne |The right of the elder branch not thought of.| which of right belonged to his nephew. In his own time such subtleties were unknown. Any son of Æthelred, any descendant of the old stock, satisfied the sentiment of royal birth, which was all that was needed.[27] To search over the world for the son of an elder brother, while the younger brother was close at hand, was an idea which would never have entered the mind of any Englishman of the eleventh century.
The coronation ceremony probably followed soon after the meeting at Gillingham. It was performed on Easter Day at Winchester,[28] the usual place for an Easter Gemót, by Archbishop Eadsige, assisted by Ælfric of York and most of the other Prelates of England.[29] We are expressly |Exhortation of Eadsige; condition of the Kingdom.| told that the Metropolitan gave much good exhortation both to the newly made King and to his people.[30] The peculiar circumstances of the time might well suggest such a special admonition. There was a King, well nigh the last of his race, a King chosen by the distinct expression of the will of the people, as the representative of English nationality in opposition to foreign rule. But the King so chosen as the embodiment of English feeling was himself an Englishman in little more than in the accident of being born on English ground[31] as the son of a father who was a disgrace to the English name. There was a Kingdom to be guarded against foreign claimants, and there were the wounds inflicted by two unfortunate, though happily short, reigns to be healed at home. The duties which were laid upon the shoulders |Relations between Eadward and Godwine.| of the new King were neither few nor easy. He had indeed at hand the mightiest and wisest of guardians to help him in his task. But we can well understand that the feelings of Eadward towards the man to whom he owed his Crown were feelings of awe rather than of love. There could be little real sympathy between the stout Englishman and the nursling of the Norman court, between the chieftain great alike in battle and in council and the timid devotee who shrank from the toils and responsibilities of an earthly Kingdom. And we can well believe that, notwithstanding Godwine’s solemn acquittal, there still lingered in the mind of Eadward some prejudice against the man who had once been charged with his |Relations of the three great Earls.| brother’s death. And again, though it was to Godwine and his West-Saxons that Eadward mainly owed his Crown, yet Godwine and his West-Saxons did not make up the whole of England. Their counsels and interests had to be reconciled with the possibly opposing counsels and interests of the other Earldoms and of their rulers. Eadward could not afford to despise the strong arm of the mighty Dane who ruled his countrymen north of the Humber. He could not afford to despise the possible prejudices of the great Earl of central England, who, descendant of ancient Ealdormen, perhaps of ancient Kings, may well have looked with some degree of ill-will on the upstarts North and South of him. Eadward, called to the throne by the unanimous voice of the whole nation, was bound to be King of the English and not merely King of the West-Saxons. He was bound yet more strongly to be King of the English in a still higher sense, to cast off the trammels of his Norman education, and to reign as became the heir of Ælfred and Æthelstan. We have now to see how far the good exhortations of Eadsige were effectual; how far the King chosen to the Crown which was his right by birth discharged the duties which were laid upon him alike by his birth and by his election.
It was perhaps ominous of the character of Eadward’s future reign that his coronation was attended by an apparently unusual assemblage of the Ambassadors of foreign princes.[32] It was natural that Eadward should be better known, and that his election should awaken a greater interest, in other lands than could usually be the case with an English King. He was connected by birth or marriage with several continental sovereigns, and his long residence in Normandy must have brought him more nearly within |Eadward’s foreign connexions.| the circle of ordinary continental princeship than could commonly be the case with the Lord of the island Empire, the Cæsar as it were of another world. The revolutions of England also, and the great career of Cnut, had evidently fixed the attention of Europe on English affairs to an unusual degree. Add to this that, when a King was chosen and crowned immediately on the death of his predecessor, the presence of congratulatory embassies from other princes was hardly possible. But the delay in Eadward’s consecration allowed that great Easter-feast at Winchester to be adorned with the presence of the representatives of all the chief sovereigns of Western Christendom. Some there were whom England was, then as ever, bound to welcome as friends and brethren, and some whose presence, however friendly was the guise of the moment, might to an eye which could scan the future |Ambassadors from King Henry.| have seemed a foreboding of the evil to come. First came the ambassadors of the prince who at once held the highest place on earth and adorned it with the noblest display of every kingly virtue. King Henry of Germany, soon to appear before the world as the illustrious Emperor,[33] the great reformer of a corrupted Church, sent an embassy to congratulate his brother-in-law[34] on the happy change in his fortunes, to exchange promises of peace and friendship, and to present gifts such as Imperial splendour and liberality might deem worthy of the one prince whom |from the King of the French;| a future Emperor could look on as his peer.[35] The King of the French too, a prince bearing the same name as the mighty Frank,[36] but far indeed from being a partaker in his glory, sent his representatives to congratulate one whom he too claimed as a kinsman,[37] and to exchange pledges of mutual good-will between the two realms. |from other German and French princes;| And, along with the representatives of Imperial and royal majesty, came the humbler envoys of the chief Dukes and princes of their two kingdoms, charged with the like professions of friendship—our flattering historian would fain have us believe, of homage.[38] Among these we can hardly doubt that a mission from the Court of Rouen held a distinguished place. It may be that, even then, the keen eye of the youthful Norman was beginning to look with more than a neighbour’s interest upon the land to which he had in some sort given her newly-chosen King. We |from Magnus of Denmark.| are even told that an embassy of a still humbler kind was received from a potentate who soon after appeared on the stage in a widely different character. Magnus of Norway had received the submission of Denmark on the death of Harthacnut, by virtue of the treaty by which each of those princes was to succeed to the other’s dominions.[39] He now, we are told, sent an embassy to Eadward, chose him as his father,[40] promised to him the obedience of a son, and strengthened the promise with oaths and hostages. Now in the language used with regard both to Magnus and to the German and French princes, there is doubtless much of the exaggeration of a panegyrist, anxious to raise his hero’s reputation to the highest point. But it is possible that Magnus might just now take some pains to conciliate Eadward, in order to hinder English help from being continued to his competitor Swend. In the reception of the Imperial and the Danish envoys there is nothing which has any special meaning; but it is specially characteristic of this reign that the congratulations of the French princes |Eadward’s gifts to the French princes.| were acknowledged by gifts from the King personally, and that some of them were continued in the form of annual pensions.[41] These were undoubtedly, even if the Norman Duke himself was among the pensioners, the gifts of a superior to inferiors; the point is that the connexion between England and the different French states, Normandy above them all, was constantly increasing in amount, and receiving new shapes at every turn.
Besides the gifts of foreign princes, the new King also received many splendid presents from his own nobles. First among them all shone forth the magnificent offering |Godwine presents a ship to the King.| of the Earl of the West-Saxons.[42] Godwine had given a ship to Harthacnut as the price of his acquittal on his memorable trial;[43] he now made the like offering to Eadward as a token of the friendship which was to reign between the newly-chosen King and his greatest subject. Two hundred rowers impelled the floating castle. A golden lion adorned the stern; at the prow the national ensign, the West-Saxon Dragon, shone also in gold, spreading his wings, the poet tells us, over the awe-struck waves.[44] A rich piece of tapestry, wrought on a purple ground with the naval exploits of former English Kings,[45] the sea-fights, no doubt, of Ælfred, the peaceful triumphs of Eadgar, |[992.]| perhaps that noblest fight of all when the fleets of Denmark gave way before the sea-faring men of the merchant-city,[46] formed an appropriate adornment of the offering of the English Earl to the first—men did not then deem that he was to be the last—prince of the newly-restored English dynasty.
Before we go on to the events of the reign of Eadward, it will be well to endeavour to gain a distinct idea of the King himself and of the men who were to be the chief actors in English affairs during his reign. In estimating the character of Eadward, we must never forget that we |His position as a Saint.| are dealing with a canonized saint. In such cases it is more needful than ever to look closely to a man’s recorded acts, and to his character as described by those who wrote before his formal canonization. Otherwise we shall be in danger of mistaking hagiology for history. When a man is once canonized, his acts and character immediately pass out of the reach of ordinary criticism. Religious edification, and not historical truth, becomes the aim of all who speak or write of one who has been formally enrolled as an object of religious reverence.[47] We must also be on our guard even in dealing with authors who wrote before his formal canonization, but after that popular canonization which was so often the first step towards it. It was of course the general reverence in which a man was held, the general belief in his holiness and miraculous powers, which formed the grounds of the demand for his formal canonization. But, while we must be specially on our guard in weighing the character of particular acts and the value of particular panegyrics, we must remember that the popular esteem which thus led to canonization proves a great deal as to |Nature of his claims to sanctity.| a man’s general character. It proves still more when, as in the case of Eadward, there was no one special act, no one marked deed of Christian heroism or Christian endurance, which formed the holy man’s claim to popular reverence. Eadward was not like one of those who died for their faith or for their country, and who, on the strength of such death, were at once revered as martyrs, without much inquiry into their actions and characters in other respects. He was not even like one of those, his sainted uncle and namesake for instance,[48] who gained the honours of martyrdom on still easier terms, by simply dying an unjust death, even though no religious or political principle was at stake. The popular reverence in which Eadward was held could rest on no ground except the genuine popular estimate of his general character. There were indeed strong political reasons which attached men to his memory. He was the one prominent man of |Eadward’s memory acceptable both to Englishmen and to Normans on political grounds.| the days immediately before the Conquest whom Normans and Englishmen could agree to reverence. The English naturally cherished the memory of the last prince of the ancient stock. They dwelt on his real or supposed virtues as a bright contrast to the crimes and vices of his Norman successors. Under the yoke of foreign masters they looked back to the peace and happiness of the days of their native King. The King who reigned on the English throne without a spark of English feeling became the popular embodiment of English nationality, and men called for the Laws of King Eadward as in earlier times they had called for the Laws of Cnut or of Eadgar.[49] On the other hand, it suited the policy of the Normans to show all respect to the kinsman of their own Duke, the King by whose pretended bequest their Duke claimed the English Crown, and whose lawful successor he professed himself to be. In English eyes Eadward stood out in contrast to the invader William; in Norman eyes he stood out in contrast to the usurper Harold. A King whom two hostile races thus agreed in respecting could not fail to obtain both popular and formal canonization on somewhat easy |Popular reverence for him grounded also on personal qualities.| terms. Still he could hardly have obtained either the one or the other only on grounds like these. He must have displayed some personal qualities which really won him popular affection during life and maintained him in popular reverence after death. It is worth while to study a little more at length the character of a man who obtained in his own age a degree of respect which in our eyes seems justified neither by several of his particular actions nor by the general tenour of his government.
That Eadward was in any sense a great man, that he displayed any of the higher qualities of a ruler of those days, no one probably will assert. He was doubtless in some respects a better man than Cnut, than Harold, or than William; as a King of the eleventh century no one will venture to compare him with those three mighty ones. His wars were waged by deputy, and his civil government |Eadward’s personal character.| was carried on largely by deputy also. Of his many personal virtues, his earnest piety, his good intentions in every way, his sincere desire for the welfare of his people, there can be no doubt. Vice of every kind, injustice, wanton cruelty, were hateful to him. But in all kingly qualities he was utterly lacking. In fact, so far as a really good man can reproduce the character of a thoroughly bad one, Eadward reproduced the character of his father Æthelred. Writers who lived before his canonization, or who did not come within the magic halo of his sanctity, do not scruple to charge him, as his father is |Points of likeness to his father.| charged, with utter sloth and incapacity.[50] Like his father, he was quite incapable of any steady attention to the duties of royalty;[51] but, like his father, he had occasional fits of energy, which, like those of his father, often came at the wrong time.[52] His contemporary panegyrist allows that he gave way to occasional fits of wrath, but he pleads that his anger never hurried him into unbecoming language.[53] It hurried him however, more than once, into very unbecoming intentions. We shall find that, on two memorable occasions, it needed the intervention of his better genius, in the form first of Godwine and then of Harold, to keep back the saintly King from massacre and civil war.[54] Here we see the exact parallels to Æthelred’s mad expeditions against Normandy, Cumberland, and Saint David’s.[55] But Eadward was not only free from the personal vices and cruelties of his father; there can be no doubt that, except when carried away by ebullitions of this kind, he sincerely endeavoured, according to the measure of his ability, to establish a good administration of justice throughout his dominions. But the duties of secular government, although doubtless discharged conscientiously and to the best of his ability, were with Eadward always something which went against the |His virtues wholly monastic.| grain. His natural place was, not on the throne of England, but at the head of a Norman Abbey. Nothing, one would think, could have hindered him from entering on the religious life in the days of his exile, unless it were a vague kind of feeling that other duties were thrown upon him by his birth. For all his virtues were those of a monk; all the real man came out in his zeal for collecting relics, in his visions, in his religious exercises, in his gifts to churches and monasteries, in his desire to mark his reign, as its chief result, by the foundation of his great Abbey of Saint Peter at Westminster. In a prince of the manly piety of Ælfred things of this sort form only a part, a pleasing and harmonious part, of the general character. In Eadward they formed the whole man. His time was oddly divided between his prayers and the pastime which seems least suited to the character of |His love of hunting.| a saint. The devotion to the pleasures of the chase was so universal among the princes and nobles of that age that it is needless to speak of it as a feature in any man’s character, unless when some special circumstance forces it into special notice. We remark it in the two Williams, because it was their love of hunting which led them into their worst acts of oppression; we remark it in Eadward, because it seems so utterly incongruous with the other features of his character.[56] There were men even in those times who could feel pity for animal suffering and who |Contrast with the humanity of Anselm.| found no pleasure in the wanton infliction of pain. Tenderness for animals is no unusual feature in either the real or the legendary portraits of holy men. Anselm, the true saint, like Ceadda in earlier times, saved the life of the hunted beast which sought his protection, and made the incident the text of a religious exhortation to his companions. He saw a worthy object for prayer in the sufferings of a bird tortured by a thoughtless child, and his gentle heart found matter for pious rejoicing in the escape of the feathered captive.[57] Humanity like this met with very little response in the breast of the saintly monarch. The piercing cry, the look of mute agony, of the frightened, wearied, tortured beast awakened no more pity in the heart of the saintly King than in that of the rudest Danish Thegn who shared his savage pastime. The sufferings of the hart panting for the water-brooks, the pangs of the timid hare falling helpless into the jaws of her pursuers, the struggles of the helpless bird grasped in the talons of the resistless hawk, afforded as keen a delight to the prince who had never seen steel flash in earnest, as ever they did to men whom a life of constant warfare in a rude age had taught to look lightly on the sufferings and death even of their own kind.[58] Once, we are told, a churl, resisting, it well may be, some trespass of the King and his foreign courtiers on an Englishman’s freehold, put some hindrance in the way of the royal sport. An unsaintly oath and an unkingly threat at once rose to the lips of Eadward; “By God and his Mother, I will hurt you some day if I can.”[59] Had Anselm, in the might of his true holiness, thus crossed the path of his brother saint, he too, as the defender of the oppressed, might have become the object of a like outburst of impotent wrath. A delight in amusements of this kind is hardly a fair subject of blame in men of any age to whom the rights of the lower animals have perhaps never been presented as matter for serious thought. But in a man laying claim to special holiness, to special meekness and gentleness of character, we naturally look for a higher standard, a standard which a contemporary example shows not to have been unattainable even in that age.