Who killed William Rufus? is a question to which the answer becomes more doubtful in proportion to our knowledge of history. Suspicion attached of course to Tyrrel, but he never owned that the shaft, either by design or accident, came from his bow, and no one was there to bear witness. Some think Henry Beauclerc might be guilty of the murder, and he was both unscrupulous enough and prompt enough in taking advantage of the circumstance, to give rise to the belief. Anselm was in Auvergne when he heard of the King’s death, and he is said to have wept at the tidings. He soon received a message from Henry inviting him to return to England, where he was received with due respect, and found that, outwardly at least, order and regularity were restored in Church matters, and the clergy possessed their proper influence. Great promises were made to them and to the Saxons; and the hated favorite of William, Ralph Flambard, was in prison in the Tower. However, he contrived to make his escape by the help of two barrels, one containing wine, with which he intoxicated his keepers, the other a rope, by which he let himself down from the window. He went to Robert of Normandy, remained with him some time, but at last made his peace with Henry, and in his old age was a tolerably respectable Bishop of Durham.
Anselm was in favor at court, owing to the influence of the “good Queen Maude,” and he tried to bring about a reformation of the luxuries then prevalent especially long curls, which had come into fashion with the Normans of late. Like St. Wulstan, he carried a knife to clip them, but without making much impression on the gay youths, till one of them happened to dream that the devil was strangling him with his own long hair, waked in a fright, cut it all off, and made all his friends do so too.
As long as Henry was afraid of having his crown disputed by Robert, he took care to remain on excellent terms with the Church, and Anselm supported him with all his influence when Robert actually asserted his rights; but when the danger was over, the strife between Church and State began again. In 1103, Henry appointed four bishops, and required Anselm to consecrate them, but as they all had received the staff and ring from the King, and paid homage for their lands, he considered that he could not do so, conformably with the decree of the Lateran Council against lay investiture. Henry was much displeased, and ordered the Archbishop of York to consecrate them; but two of them, convinced by Anselm, returned the staff and ring, and would not be consecrated by any one but their true primate.
Henry said that one archbishop must consecrate all or none, and the whole Church was in confusion. Anselm, though now very old, offered to go and consult the Pope, Paschal II., and the King consented; but when Paschal decided that lay investiture was unlawful, Henry was so much displeased that he forbade the archbishop to return to England.
The old man returned to his former Abbey of Bec, and thus remained in exile till 1107, when a general adjustment of the whole question took place. The bishops were to take from the altar the ring and staff, emblems of spiritual power, and to pay homage to the king for their temporal possessions. The election was to belong to the cathedral clergy, subject to the King’s approval. The usual course became that the King should send to the chapter a congé d’élire, that is, permission to elect, but accompanied by a recommendation of some particular person; and this nominee of the crown was so constantly chosen, that the custom of sending a congé d’élire has become only a form, which, however, is an assertion of the rights of the Church.
A similar arrangement with regard to the presentation of bishops was accepted in 1122 by Henry V. of Germany, who married Matilda, the daughter of Henry I.
After the arrangement in 1107, Anselm returned to England, and good Queen Maude came to meet him and show him every honor. His last year was spent at Canterbury, in a state of weakness and infirmity, terminated by his death on the 21st of April, 1109.
A gentle, studious man was the pious Anselm, our second Italian archbishop, thrust into the rude combat of the world against his will, and maintaining his cause and the cause of the Church with untiring meekness and quiet resolution.
In the November of 1095 was seen such a sight as the world never afforded before nor since. The great plain of La Limagne, in Auvergne, shut in by lofty volcanic mountains of every fantastic and rugged form, with the mighty Puy de Dome rising royally above them, was scattered from one boundary to the other with white tents, and each little village was crowded with visitants. The town of Clermont, standing on an elevation commanding the whole extent of the plain, was filled to overflowing, and contained a guest before whom all bowed in reverence—the Pope himself—Urban II., whom the nations of the West were taught to call the Father of Christendom. Four hundred Bishops and Abbots had met him there, other clergy to the amount of 4,000, and princes, nobles, knights, and peasants, in numbers estimated at 30,000. Every one’s eye was, however, chiefly turned on a spare and sunburnt man, of small stature, and rude, mean appearance, wearing a plain, dark serge garment, girt by a cord round his waist, his head and feet bare, and a crucifix in his hand. All looked on his austere face with the veneration they would have shown to a saint, and with the curiosity with which those are regarded who have dared many strange perils. He was Peter the Hermit, of Picardy, who had travelled on pilgrimage to Jerusalem; had there witnessed the dreadful profanities of the infidels, and the sufferings they inflicted on the faithful; had conversed with the venerable Patriarch Simeon; nay, it was said, while worshipping at the Holy Sepulchre, had heard a voice calling on him to summon the nations to the rescue of these holy spots. It was the tenth day of the council at Clermont, and in spite of the severe cold, the clergy assembled in the open air on the wide space in front of the dark stone cathedral, then, as now, unfinished. There was need that all should hear, and no building could contain the multitudes gathered at their summons. A lofty seat had been raised for the Pope, and Peter the Hermit stood by his side.
All was silence as the Hermit stood forth, and, crucifix in hand, poured forth his description of the blasphemy of the infidels, the desolation of the sacred places, and the misery of the Christians. He had seen the very ministers of God insulted, beaten, even put to, death: he had seen sacrilege, profanation, cruelty; and as he described them, his voice became stifle, and his eyes streamed with tears.
When he ceased, Urban arose, and strengthened each word he had spoken, till the whole assembly were weeping bitterly. “Yes, brethren,” said the Pope, “let us weep for our sins, which have provoked the anger of heaven; let us weep for the captivity of Zion. But woe to us if our barren pity leaves the inheritance of the Lord any longer in the hands of his foes.”
Then he called on them to take up arms for the deliverance of the Holy Land. “If you live,” said he, “you will possess the kingdoms of the East; if you die, you will be owned in heaven as the soldiers of the Lord; Let no love of home detain you; behold only the shame and sufferings of the Christians, hear only the groans of Jerusalem, and remember that the Lord has said, ‘He that loveth his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. Whoso shall leave house, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, and all that he has, for My sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and in the world to come eternal life.’”
“Deus vult; Deus vult;”—It is God’s will—broke as with one voice from the assembly, echoing from the hills around, and pealing with a voice like thunder.
“Yes, it is God’s will,” again spoke Urban, “Let these words be your war-cry, and keep you ever in mind that the Lord of Hosts is with you.” Then holding on high the Cross—“Our Lord himself presents you His own Cross, the sign raised aloft to gather the dispersed of Israel. Bear it on your shoulders and your breast; let it shine on your weapons and your standards. It will be the pledge of victory or the palm of martyrdom, and remind you, that, as your Saviour died for you, so you ought to die for Him.” Outcries of different kinds broke out, but all were for the holy war. Adhemar de Monteil, Bishop of Puy, a neighboring See, first asked for the Cross, and thousands pressed after him, till the numbers of Crosses failed that had been provided, and the cardinals and other principal persons tore up their robes to furnish more.
The crusading spirit spread like circles from a stone thrown into the water, as the clergy of the council carried their own excitement to their homes, and the hosts who took the Cross were beyond all reckoning. On the right or wrong of the Crusades, it is useless as well as impossible to attempt to decide. It was doubtless a spirit of religion, and not of self-interest, that prompted them; they were positively the best way of checking the progress of Mahometanism and the incursions of its professors, and they were undertaken with far purer intentions than those with which they were carried on. That they afterward turned to great wickedness, is not to be denied; some of the degenerate Crusaders of the latter days were among the wickedest of mankind, and the misuse of the influence they gave the Popes became a source of some of the worst practices of the Papacy. Already Pope Urban was taking on him to declare that a man who perished in the Crusade was sure of salvation, and his doctrine was still further perverted and falsified till it occasioned endless evils.
Yet, in these early days, joined with many a germ of evil, was a grandeur of thought, a self-devotion, and truly religious spirit, which will hardly allow us to call the first Crusade other than a glorious and a Holy War.
It was time, politically speaking, to carry the war into the enemy’s quarters, and repress the second wave of Mahometan conquest. Islam [Footnote: Islam, meaning “the faith;” it is a barbarism to speak of the faith of Islam.] has often been called the religion of the sword, and Mahomet and his Arabic successors, under the first impulse, conquered Syria, Persia, Northern Africa, and Spain, and met their first check at Tours from Charles Martel. These, the Saracen Arabs, were a generous race, no persecutors, and almost friendly to the Christians, contenting themselves with placing them under restrictions, and exacting from them a small tribute. After the first great overflow, the tide had somewhat ebbed, and though a brave and cultivated people, they were everywhere somewhat giving way on their orders before the steady resistance of the Christians. Probably, if they had continued in Palestine, there would have been no Crusades.
But some little time before the eleventh century, a second flood began to rush from the East. A tribe of Tartars, called Turcomans, or Turks, embraced Mahometanism, and its precepts of aggression, joining with the warrior-spirit of the Tartar, impelled them forward.
They subdued and slaughtered the Saracens of Syria, made wide conquests in Asia Minor, winning towns of the Greek Empire beyond where the Saracens had ever penetrated, and began to threaten the borders of Christendom. They were very different masters from the Arabs. Active in body, but sluggish in mind, ignorant and cruel, they destroyed and overthrew what the Saracens had spared, disregarded law, and capriciously ill-treated and slaughtered their Christian subjects and the pilgrims who fell into their hands. It was against these savage Turks that the first Crusade was directed.
Peter the Hermit soon gathered together a confused multitude of peasants, women, and children, with whom he set out, together with a German knight named Walter, and called by his countrymen by the expressive name Habe Nichts, translated into French, Sans avoir, and less happily rendered in English, The Penniless. They were a poor, ignorant, half-armed set, who so little knew what they were undertaking, that at every town they came to they would ask if that was Jerusalem. Peter must either have been beyond measure thoughtless, or have expected a miracle to help him, for he set out to lead these poor creatures the whole length of Europe without provisions. They marauded on the inhabitants of the countries through which they passed; the inhabitants revenged themselves and killed them, and the whole wretched host were cut off, chiefly in Hungary and Bulgaria, and Peter himself seems to have been the only man who escaped.
A better-appointed army, consisting of the very flower of chivalry of Europe, had in the meantime assembled to follow the same path, though in a different manner.
First in name and honor was Godfrey de Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine, one of the most noble characters whom history records. He was pure in life, devotedly pious, merciful, gentle, and a perfect observer of his word, at the same time that his talents and wisdom were very considerable; he was a finished warrior, expert in every exercise of chivalry, of gigantic strength, and highly renowned as a leader. He had been loyal to the Emperor Henry IV. through the war which had taken place in consequence of his excommunication by Gregory VII. He had killed in battle the rebellious competitor for the imperial crown, who, when dying from a wound by which he had lost his right hand, exclaimed, “With this hand I swore fealty to Henry; cursed be they who led me to break my oath.” Godfrey had likewise been the first to scale the walls of Rome, when Henry IV. besieged Gregory there; but he, in common with many others of the besieging force, soon after suffered severely from malaria fever—the surest way in which modern Rome chastises her invaders; and thinking his illness a judgment for having taken part against the Pope, he vowed to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Soon after, the Crusade was preached, and Godfrey was glad to fulfil his vow with his good sword in his hand, while Pope and princes wisely agreed that such a chieftain was the best they could choose for their expedition.
Many another great name was there: Raymond, the wise Count of Toulouse; the crafty Boemond, one of the Normans of Sicily; his gallant cousin, Tancred, a mirror of chivalry, the Achilles of the Crusade; but our limits will only allow us to dwell on those through whom the Crusade is connected with English history.
The Anglo-Normans had not been so forward in the Crusade as their enterprising nature would have rendered probable, but the fact was, that, with such a master as William Rufus, no one felt that he could leave his home in anything like security. Helie de la Flèche, Count de Maine, [Footnote: Robert of Normandy had been betrothed in his childhood to the heiress of Maine, but she died before she was old enough for the marriage to take place. In right of this intended marriage, the Norman Kings claimed Maine, though Helie was the next heir.] took the Cross, and asked William for some guarantee that his lands should not be molested. “You may go where you like,” said William; “I mean to have your city. What my father had, I will have.”
“It is mine by right,” said Helie; “I will plead it with you.”
“I will plead, too.” said William; “but my lawyers will be spears and arrows.”
“I have taken the Cross; my land is under Christ’s own protection.”
“I only warn you,” said William, “that if you go, I shall pay the good town of Mans a visit, with a thousand lances at my heel.”
So Helie stayed at home, and in two years’ time was made a prisoner when in a wood with only seven knights. Mans was seized, and he was brought before the King. “I have you now, my master,” said William.
“By chance,” said Helie; “but if I were free, I know what I would do.”
“What would you do, you knave?” said William. “Hence, go, fly, I give you leave to do all you can; and if you catch me, I ask nothing in return.”
Helie was set at liberty, and the next year, while William was absent in England, managed to retake Mans. The Red King was hunting in the New Forest when he heard the tidings; he turned his horse’s head and galloped away, as his father had once done, with the words, “He who loves me, will follow.” He threw himself into a ship, and ordered the sails to be set, though the wind was so boisterous that the sailors begged him to wait. “Fools,” he said, “did you ever hear of a drowned king?” He cruelly ravaged Maine, but could not take the city, and, having been slightly wounded, returned to meet his fate in the New Forest.
After this story, no one could wonder that it required a great deal of enthusiasm to persuade a man to leave his inheritance exposed to the grasp of the Red King, who, unlike other princes, set at nought the anathemas by which the Pope guarded the lands of absent Crusaders. Stephen, Count de Blois, the husband of William’s sister Adela, took the Cross. He was wise in counsel, and learned, and a letter which he wrote to his wife is one of the chief authorities for the early part of the expedition; but his health was delicate, and it was also said that his personal courage was not unimpeachable; at any rate, he soon returned home.
One of the foremost of the Crusaders was, however, our own Norman Prince, Robert Courtheuse. Every one knows the deep stain of disobedience on Robert’s early life; and yet so superior was he to his brothers in every point of character, that it is impossible not to regard him with a sort of affection, though the motto of his whole career might be, “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.”
Never was man more completely the tool of every villain who gained his ready ear. It was the whisper of evil counsellors that fired his jealousy of his young brothers, and drove him into rebellion against his father; the evil counsel of William led him to persecute Henry, loving him all the time: and when in possession of his dukedom, his careless, profuse habits kept him in constant poverty, while his idle good-nature left unpunished the enormities of the barons who made his country miserable.
But in generosity he never failed; he heartily loved his brothers, while duped and injured by them again and again; he always meant to be true and faithful, and never failed, except from hastiness and weakness; and while William was infidel, and Henry hypocritical, he was devout and sincere in faith, though miserably defective in practice.
The Crusade was the happiest and most respectable period of his life, and no doubt he never was more light-hearted than when he delivered over to William the mortgage of his dukedom, with all its load of care, and received in return the sum of money squeezed by his brother from all the unfortunate convents in England, but which Robert used to equip his brave knights and men-at-arms, assisted by some of the treasures of his uncle, Bishop Odo, who had taken the Cross, but was too feeble and infirm to commence the expedition.
The Crusaders were not sufficiently advanced in the knowledge of navigation to attempt to enter Palestine by sea, and they therefore traversed Germany, Hungary, and the Greek Empire, trusting to the Emperor Alexis Comnenus to give them the means of crossing the Hellespont. Alexis was in great dread of his warlike guests; the schism between the Greek and Roman Churches caused continual heart-burnings; and at the same time he considered, very naturally, that all the lands in the East at present occupied by the Mahometans were his right. He would not, therefore, ferry over the Crusaders to Asia till they had sworn allegiance to him for all that they might conquer, and it was a long time before Godfrey would comply. At last, however, on condition that the Greeks would furnish them with guides and reinforcements, they took the oaths; but as Alexis did not fulfil his part of the engagement, they did not consider themselves bound to him.
At Nicea, the Crusading army, of nineteen different nations, of whom 100,000 were horse and 500,000 infantry, came in sight of the Turks, and, after a long siege and several hotly-contested battles, won the town. They continued their march, but with much suffering and difficulty; Raymond of Toulouse had an illness which almost brought him to the grave, and Godfrey himself was seriously injured by a bear, which he had attacked to save the life of a poor soldier who was in danger from its hug. He killed the bear, but his thigh was much torn, and he was a long time recovering from the effects of his encounter.
At the siege of Antioch were their chief disasters; they suffered from hunger, disease, inundations of the Orontes, attacks of the enemy, until the living were hardly enough to bury the dead. The courage of many gave way; Robert of Normandy retired to Laodicea, and did not return till he had been three times summoned in the name of the Christian Faith; and Peter the Hermit himself, a man of more enthusiasm than steadiness, began to despair, and secretly fled from the camp in the night. As his defection would have done infinite harm to the cause, Tancred pursued him and brought him back to the camp, and Godfrey obliged him to swear that he would not again leave them. In the spring of 1098 a great battle took place, in which Godfrey, Robert, and Tancred each performed feats of the highest prowess. In the midst of the battle, Tancred made his esquire swear never to reveal his exploits, probably as a mortification of his own vanity in hearing them extolled. After a siege of more than seven months, Boemond effected an entrance by means of an understanding with some of the Eastern Christians within the town. It was taken, with great slaughter, and became a principality ruled by the Sicilian Norman.
Another great victory opened the way to Palestine, and the Crusaders advanced, though still very slowly. During the march, one of the knights, named Geoffroi de la Tour, is said to have had a curious adventure. He was hunting in a forest, when he came upon a lion struggling in the folds of a huge serpent; he killed the serpent, and released the lion, which immediately fawned upon him and caressed him. It followed him affectionately throughout the Crusade, but when he embarked to return to Europe, the sailors refused to admit the lion into their vessel. The faithful creature plunged into the sea to follow its master, swam till its strength was exhausted, and then sank and was drowned. [Footnote: Michaud’s Histoire des Croisades gives this story from two authorities.]
It was on a glowing morning of June, 1098, that the Crusading host, Tancred first of all, came in sight of the object of all their toils—the City set upon a Hill.
There it stood, four-square, on the steep, solid, fortification-like rocks, rising from the rugged ravines, Kedron, Siloam, Jehoshaphat, Gehenna, that form, as it were, a deep moat round the walls, and natural defences, bulwarks planted by the Lord’s own hand around His own City, while He was still her Tower of Salvation, and had not left her to the spoiler. There stood the double walls, the low-built, flat-roofed, windowless houses, like so many great square blocks, here and there interspersed with a few cypresses and aloes, the mighty Tower of David, the Cross of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and far above it, alas! the dome of the Mosque of Omar, with its marble gates and porphyry pillars, on the flat space on Mount Moriah, where the Temple had once flashed back the sunlight from its golden roof.
Jerusalem, enslaved and profaned, but Jerusalem still; the Holy City, the mountain whither all nations should turn to worship, the sacred name that had been spoken with reverence in every holiest lesson, the term of all the toils they had undergone. “Jerusalem! Jerusalem!” cried the foremost ranks. Down fell on their knees—nay, even prostrate on their faces—each cross-bearing warrior, prince and knight, page and soldier. Some shouted for joy, some kissed the very ground as a sacred thing, some wept aloud at the thought of the sins they had brought with them, and the sight of the tokens of Zion’s captivity—the Dome and the Crescent. Then once more their war-cry rose as with one voice, and Mount Zion and Mount Olivet echoed it back to them, “Deus vult! Deus vult!” as to answer that the time was come.
But Jerusalem was only in sight—not yet won; and the Crusaders had much to suffer, encamped on the soil of iron, beneath the sky of brass, which is part of the doom of Judea. The vineyards, cornfields, and olive-trees of ancient times had given place to aridity and desolation; and the Christian host endured much from heat, thirst, and hunger, while their assaults on the walls were again and again repelled. They pressed forward their attacks as much as possible, since they could not long exist where they were.
Three great wooden towers were erected, consisting of different stages or stories, where the warriors stood, while they were wheeled up to the walls. Godfrey, Raymond, and Tancred each had the direction of one of these towers, and on the fourteenth of July the general assault began. The Turks, on their side, showered on them arrows, heavy stones, and Greek fire—an invention consisting of naphtha and other inflammable materials, which, when once ignited, could not be quenched by water, but only by vinegar. It was cast from hollow tubes, and penetrating the armor of the Christians, caused frightful agonies.
Raymond’s tower was broken down or burnt; Godfrey and Tancred fought on, almost overpowered, their warriors falling round them, the enemy shouting with joy and deriding them. At the moment when the Crusaders were all but giving way, a horseman was seen on the Mount of Olives, his radiant armor glittering in the sun, and raising on high a white shield marked with the red Cross. “St. George! St. George!” cried Godfrey’s soldiers; “the Saints fight for us! Deus vult! Deus vult!” and on they rushed again in an ecstasy of enthusiasm that nothing could resist. Some broke through a half-opened breach, some dashed from the wooden towers, some scaled the fortifications by their ladders, the crowd came over the walls like a flood, and swept all before them with the fury of that impulse.
There was a frightful slaughter; the Crusaders, brought up in a pitiless age, looked on the Saracens as devoted to the sword, like the Canaanite nations, and spared not woman or child. The streets streamed with blood, and the more merciful chieftains had not power to restrain the carnage. Raymond did indeed save those who had taken refuge in the Tower of David, and Tancred sent three hundred in the Mosque of Omar his own good pennon to protect them, but in vain; some of the other Crusaders massacred them, to his extreme indignation, as he declared his knightly word was compromised.
Godfrey had fought on as long as resistance lasted, then he threw himself from his horse, laid aside his helmet and gauntlets, bared his feet, and ascended the hill of Calvary. It was Friday, and the ninth hour of the day, when the Christian chief entered the circular-vaulted church, and descended, weeping at once for joy and for sorrow, into the subterranean crypt, lighted with silver lamps—the Holy Sepulchre itself, where his Lord had lain, and which he had delivered. Far from the sound of tumult and carnage, there he knelt in humility and thankfulness, and in time the rest of the chieftains gathered thither also—Tancred guided by the chant of the Greek Christians who had taken refuge in the church. Peter the Hermit sang mass at the altar, and thus night sunk down on Jerusalem and the victorious Christians.
The following days confirmed the conquest, and councils began to be held on the means of securing it. A King was to be elected, and it is said that the crown was offered to Robert of Normandy, and declined by him. Afterward, by universal consent, Godfrey de Bouillon was chosen to be King of Jerusalem.
He accepted the office, with all its toils and perils, but he would neither bear the title nor crown. He chose to leave the title of King of Jerusalem to Him to whom alone it belonged; he would not wear a crown of gold where that King had Worn a crown of thorns, and he kept only his knightly helmet, with the title of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre.
Well did he fulfil his trust, ever active, and meeting the infidels with increasing energy wherever they attacked him; but it was only for one year. The climate undermined his health; he fell sick of a fever, and died in July, 1100, just one year from the taking of Jerusalem. He lies buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, beneath a stone bearing these words: “Here lieth the victorious Duke Godfrey de Bouillon, who won all this land to the Christian faith. May whose soul reign with Christ.” His good sword is also still kept in the same church, and was long used to dub the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre.
When, in 1016, the stout-hearted Edmund Ironside was murdered by Edric Streona, he left two infant sons, Edmund and Edward, who fell into the power of Knute.
These children were placed, soon after, under the care of Olaf Scotkonung, King of Sweden, who had been an ally of their grandfather’s, and had sent to England to request that teachers of the Gospel might come to him. By these English clergy he had been baptized, and his country converted, so that they probably induced him to intercede with Knute for the orphan princes. Shortly after, a war broke out between Denmark and Sweden, and Olaf, believing, perhaps, that the boys were unsafe in the North, where Knute’s power was so great, transferred them to Buda, to the care of Stephen, King of Hungary.
It was a happy home for them. Stephen, the first king of Hungary, was a most noble character, a conqueror and founder of a kingdom, humble, devout, pious, and so charitable that he would go about in disguise, seeking for distressed persons. He was a great lawgiver, and drew up an admirable code, in which he was assisted by his equally excellent son Emeric, and was the first person who in any degree civilized the Magyar race. His son Emeric died before him, leaving no children; and, after three years of illness, Stephen himself expired in 1038. His name has ever since been held in high honor, and his arched crown, half-Roman, half-Byzantine, was to the Hungarians what St. Edward’s crown is to us. After Hungary was joined to the German Empire, there was still a separate coronation for it, and it was preserved in the castle of Buda, under a guard of sixty-four soldiers, until the rebellion of 1848, when it was stolen by the insurgents, and has never since been recovered.
After Stephen’s death, there was a civil war between the heathen Magyars and the Christians, ending in the victory of the latter, and the establishment of Andrew in the kingdom. This was in 1051, and it was probably the sister-in-law of this Andrew whom the Saxon prince Edward married. All we are told about her is, that her name was Agatha, and that she was learned and virtuous.
In 1058, Edward, the only survivor of the brothers, was invited by his cousin, the childless Confessor, to return to England, and there be owned as Etheling, or heir to the crown. He came, but after his forty years’ absence from his native country, his language, habits, and manners were so unlike those of the English, that he was always known by the name of Edward the Stranger.
After two years, both the Stranger and his wife Agatha died, leaving three young children, Christina, Margaret, and Edgar, of whom the boy was the youngest. His only inheritance, poor child, was his title of Etheling, declaring a claim which was likely to be his greatest peril. Edward the Confessor passed him entirely over in disposing of his kingdom; and as he was but six, or, as some say, ten years old, Harold seems to have feared no danger from him, but left him at liberty within the city of London.
There he remained while the battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings were fought, and there, when the tidings came that the Normans had conquered, the little child was led forth, while a proclamation was made before him that Edgar was King of England. But it was only a few faithful citizens that thus upheld the young descendant of Alfred. Some were faint-hearted, others were ambitious; Edwin and Morkar said they would support him if the bishops would; the bishops declared that the Pope favored the Normans. The Conqueror was advancing, and from the walls of London the glare of flame might be seen, as he burnt the villages of Hertfordshire and Surrey, and soon the camp was set up without the walls, and the Conqueror lodging in King Edward’s own palace of Westminster. The lame Alderman Ansgard was carried in his litter to hold secret conference with him, and returned with promises of security for lives and liberties, if the citizens would admit and acknowledge King William. They dreaded the dangers of a seige, and gladly accepted his proposal, threw open their gates, and came forth in procession to Westminster to present him with the keys, basely carrying with them the helpless boy whom they had a few weeks before owned as their king.
Edgar was a fair child, of the old Saxon stamp of beauty, with flaxen hair and blue eyes; and the Duke of Normandy, harsh as he usually was, received him affectionately. Perhaps he thought of his own orphanhood at the same age, and the many perils through which he had been preserved, and pitied the boy deprived of his kingdom, without one faithful hand raised to protect him, and betrayed to his enemies. He took him in his arms, kissed him, promised him favors and kindness, and never broke the promise.
For the next two years Edgar remained at the court of William, until the general spirit of hatred of the Normans began to incite the Saxons to rise against them. Cospatric, Earl of Durham, thought it best to secure the safety of the royal children, and, secretly withdrawing Edgar and his two sisters from the court, he embarked with them for the Continent, intending to take them to their mother’s home in Hungary.
Contrary winds drove the ship to Scotland, and there the orphans were brought to King Malcolm III. Never had an apparent misfortune been in truth a greater blessing. Malcolm had but seven years before been himself a wandering exile, sheltered in the court of Edward the Confessor, after his father, the gracious Duncan, was murdered, and the usurper Macbeth on the throne. He had venerated the saintly Confessor, and remembered the untimely death of the Stranger, which had left these children friendless in what was to them a foreign land; and he owed his restoration to his throne to the Saxon army under old Siward Bjorn. Glad to repay his obligations, he conducted the poor wanderers to his castle of Dumfermline, treated them according to their rank, and promised to assert Edgar’s claim to the crown.
He accordingly advanced into England, where, in many places, partial risings were being made on behalf of “England’s darling,” as the Saxon ballads called young Edgar, after his ancestor Alfred. It was, however, all in vain: Malcolm did not arrive till the English had been defeated on the banks of the Tyne, and the Normans avenging their insurrection by such cruel devastation, that nine years after the commissioners of Domesday Book found no inhabitants nor cultivation to record between York and Durham.
There is some confusion in both the English and Scottish histories respecting Malcom’s exertions in Edgar’s cause; indeed, the Border warfare was always going on, and now and then the King took part in it. At length William and Malcolm, each at the head of an army, met in Galloway, and after standing at bay for some days, entered into a treaty. Malcolm paid homage to the English King for the two Lothians and Cumberland, and at the same time secured the safety of Edgar Etheling. The boy solemnly renounced all claim to the English crown, engaging never to molest the Conqueror or his children in their possession of it; while, on the other hand, he was endowed with estates in England, and a pension of a mark of silver a day was settled upon him. He could not at this time have been more than fourteen—there is more reason to think he was but ten years old—but the oath that he then took he kept with the most unshaken fidelity, in the midst of temptations, and of examples of successful perjury.
He returned with his friend to Scotland, where, the next year, his beautiful sister Margaret consented to become the wife of their host, the King Malcolm; but Christina, the other sister, preferred a conventual life, though she seems for the present to have continued with Margaret at Dumfermline.
Gentle Margaret, bred in some quiet English convent; taught by her mother to remember the Greek cultivation and holy learning of good King Stephen’s court; perhaps blessed by the tender hand of pious Edward the Confessor, and trained by the sweet rose, Edith, sprung from the thorn, Godwin; she must have felt desolate and astray among the rude, savage Scots, wild chiefs of clans, owning no law, full of brawling crime and violence, too strong to be kept in order by force, and their wives almost as untamed and rude as themselves. Her husband was a rough, untutored warrior, ruling by the main force of a strong hand, and asking counsel of his own honest heart and ready wit, but perfectly ignorant, and probably uncouth in his appearance, as his appellation of Cean Mohr means Great-head.
But Margaret was a true daughter of Alfred, and the traditions of the Alfred of Hungary were fresh upon her, and, instead of sitting down to cower alarmed amid the turmoils round her, she set herself to conquer the evils in her own feminine way, by her performance of her queenly duties. She was happy in her husband: Malcolm revered her saintly purity even more than he loved her sweet, sunny, cheerful manner, or admired her surpassing loveliness of person. He looked on her as something too precious and tender for his wild, rugged court, and attended to her slightest bidding with reverence, kissing her holy books which he could not read, and interpreting her Saxon-spoken advice to his rude Celts. She even made him help her to wash the feet of the poor, and aid her in disgusting offices to the diseased, and his royal treasury was open to her to take all that she desired for alms. Sometimes she would pretend to take it by stealth, and Malcolm would catch her by the wrists and carry her to her confessor, to ask if she was not a little thief who deserved to be well punished. In his turn he would steal away her books, and bring them back after a time, gilt and adorned with beautiful illuminations.
The love and reverence with which so bold a warrior treated her, together with her own grace and dignity, had its effect on the unruly Scottish chieftains, and not one of them ventured to use a profane word, or make an unseemly jest before her. They had a rude, ungodly practice of starting away from table without waiting for grace, and this the gentle queen reformed by sending, as an especial gift from herself, a cup of wine to all who remained. In after times the last cup was called, after her, St. Margaret’s cup, or the grace-cup.
To improve the manners of the ladies, she gathered round her a number of young girls, whom she brought up under her own eye, and she used to sit in the midst of them, embroidering rich vestments for the service of the Church, and permitting cheerful talk with the nobles whom she admitted—all men of whose character she had a good opinion. She endeavored to reform the Scottish Church which had become very sluggish, and did little to contend with Highland savagery. There were only three Bishops and those not with fixed sees. Margaret and her husband convened a synod, when Margaret herself explained her views, and Malcolm interpreted. It was not a usual order of things, but to themselves quite satisfactory, and thenceforth the Scottish Church became assimilated to the rest of the Western communion. It was a Saxon immigration: the Lowlands became more English than England then was, and Scotch is still more like Saxon than the tongue we speak. But the Celts bitterly hated the change; and thenceforth the land was divided.
She was gay and playful; but her fasts and mortifications in secret were very great. She cut off unnecessary food and sleep, and spent half the night in prayer. She daily washed the feet of six poor people, and washed, clothed, and fed nine orphan babes, besides relieving all who came to ask her bounty, attending to the sick, and sending to ransom captives, especially her own countrymen the English, lodging her rescued prisoners in a hospital which she had founded, till they could be sent to their own homes.
Leading this happy and holy life, Edgar left his sister about two years after her marriage, upon an invitation from Philippe I. of France; but he was shipwrecked on the coast of Normandy, and coming to Rouen, was kindly received by William, and remained with him. A close friendship sprung up between the disinherited Etheling and Robert the heir of Normandy, who was only a year or two older. Both were brave, open-hearted, and generous, and their love for each other endured, on Edgar’s side, through many a trial and trouble. Happy would it have been for Robert had all his friends been like Edgar Adeling, as the Normans called him. A few years more made Edgar a fine young man, expert in the exercises of chivalry, and full of the spirit of enterprise: but he did not join his friend in rebellion against his father; and after Robert had quitted Rouen, never to return thither in his father’s lifetime, he obtained permission from William to go on pilgrimage, gave his pension for a fine horse, and set off for Italy with two hundred knights, fought there, or in Sicily, against the Saracens, for some time, and then continued his pilgrimage.
He returned through Constantinople, where many of the English fugitives were serving in the Varangian guard. The Emperor Alexius Comnenus was much pleased with him, and offered him high preferment if he would remain with him; but Edgar loved his own country too well, and proceeded homeward.
He found a changed state of affairs on his arrival in Normandy. William the Conqueror was dead, and Robert, with the aid of Henry Beauclerc, just preparing to assert his right to the English crown against Red William. Edgar Etheling offered his sword to assist his friend; but he was shamefully treated. William came to Normandy, sought a conference with Robert, cajoled or outwitted him into a treaty in which one of the conditions was that he should withdraw his protection from both Edgar and Henry, and deprive the former of all the lands in Normandy which their father had given him.
Edgar retired to Scotland to his sister Margaret, whom he found the mother of nine children, continuing the same peaceful, active life in which he had left her, and her holy influence telling more and more upon her court. Many Saxons had come to live in the lowlands of Scotland, and the habits and manners of the court of Dumfermline were being fast modelled on those of Westminster in the time of Edward and Edith.
Malcolm and William Rufus were at war, and Edgar accompanied his brother-in-law to the banks of the Tyne, where they were met by William and Robert. No battle took place; but Edgar and Robert, meeting on behalf of the two kings, arranged a treaty of peace. In return for this service, William permitted Edgar to return to England, being perhaps persuaded by Robert and Malcolm that the English prince was a man of his word, though to his own hindrance.
The peace, thus effected did not last long, most unhappily for Scotland. Malcolm, with his two eldest sons, Edward and Edmund, invaded England, and laid siege to Alnwick Castle, leaving the Queen at Edinburgh, seriously ill. At Alnwick the Scottish army was routed, and Malcolm and Edward were slain. The tradition is, that one of the garrison pretended to surrender the castle, by giving the keys, through a window, on the point of a lance; [Footnote: Curiously in accordance with this story we find, in the Bayeux tapestry, the surrender of Dinan represented by the delivery of the keys in this manner to William the Conqueror.] but that he treacherously thrust the weapon into the eye of Malcolm, and thus killed him. The story adds that thus the soldier acquired the name of Pierce-eye, or Percy; which is evidently incorrect, since the Percys of Alnwick trace their origin to William de Albini, who married Henry Beauclerc’s second queen, Alice of Louvain.
An instant disturbance prevailed on the King’s death. His army fled in dismay; his corpse was left on the ground, till a peasant carried it to Tynemouth; his men were dispersed, slain, or drowned in their flight; his young son Edmund, a stripling of eighteen or nineteen, just contrived to escape to Edinburgh Castle. The first tidings that met him there were, that his mother was dying; that she lay on her bed in great anxiety for her husband and sons, and finding no solace except in holding a fragment of the true Cross pressed to her lips, and repeating the fifty-first Psalm.
The poor youth, escaped from a lost battle, and bearing such dreadful tidings, was led to her presence at once.
“How fares it with your father and brother?” said she.
He feared to tell her all, and tried to answer, “Well;” but she perceived how it was too plainly, and holding out the Holy Cross, commanded him to speak the truth. “They are slain, mother—both slain!”
Margaret’s thoughts must have rushed back to the twenty-three years of uninterrupted affection she had enjoyed with her lord, to her gallant son, slain in his first battle, and onward to the unprotected state of the seven orphans she left in the wild kingdom. Agony indeed it was; but she blessed Him who sent it. “All praise be to Thee, everlasting God, who hast made me to suffer such anguish in my death.”
She lingered on a few hours longer, while storms raged around. The wild Celts hated Malcolm’s improvements and Saxon arts of peace, and his brother Donald was placing himself at their head to deprive his lawful brothers of their heritage. A troop of Highlanders were on their way to besiege Edinburgh Castle, even when the holy Queen drew her last breath; and her friends had barely time to admire the sweet peacefulness that had spread over her wasted features, before they were forced to carry her remains away in haste and secrecy, attended by her weeping, trembling children, to Dumfermline Abbey, where she was buried.
Her children, seven in number (for Ethelred, the eldest, had died in infancy), were left unprotected. Edmund was only eighteen, and timid and gentle. Donald seized the crown; and the orphans remained in great danger, till their brave uncle, Edgar Etheling, learnt the fatal tidings, and, coming from England, fetched them all home with him, giving the two girls, Edith and Mary, into the care of their aunt Christina, who was now Abbess of Wilton. It was at some danger to himself that he took the desolate children under his protection. A man named Orgar accused him to William Rufus of intending to raise his nephews to the English crown. A knight, named Goodwin, no doubt of Saxon blood, no sooner heard the aspersion, than he answered by avowing the honor and faithfulness of his Etheling, threw down his glove, and defied Orgar to single combat—“God show the right.” It was shown; Orgar fell, and Saxons and Normans both rejoiced, for the Etheling had made himself much beloved.
The Crusade was preached, and Robert invited Edgar to join in it; but he could not forsake the charge of his sister’s children, and was forced to remain at home. Revolutions, however, continued in Scotland. Donald was overthrown by Duncan, a son of Malcolm, born long before his marriage; and the Lowland Scots were impatient of the return to barbarism. Duncan was killed, and Donald restored. Edgar hoped that his nephews might be restored. Edmund had chosen to renounce the throne and embrace a religious life; but the next in age, Edgar and Alexander, were spirited princes, and eager to assert their right.
The Etheling had never shed blood to regain his own lost kingdom; but he was a true knight-errant and redresser of wrongs. He asked leave from William to raise a Saxon army to restore his nephew to the Scottish throne; and such was the reliance that even the scoffer William had learnt to place on his word, that it was granted. The English flocked with joy round their “darling,” wishing, without doubt, that it was for the restoration of the Saxon, instead of the Scottish Edgar, that they took up arms.
At Durham the monks of St. Cuthbert intrusted to the Etheling their sacred standard—a curious two-winged ensign, with a cross, that was carried on a car. It was believed always to bring victory, and at the first sight of it Donald’s men abandoned him, and went over to Edgar. Donald was made prisoner, and soon after died. Young Edgar assumed the crown, sent for the rest of his family, and had a happy and prosperous reign.
Had Edgar Etheling been selfish and ambitious, he might now, at the head of his victorious Saxons, have had a fair chance of dethroning the tyrant William; but instead of this, his thoughts were fixed on the Holy Land; and embarking with his willing army, he came up with the Crusaders just in time for the siege of Jerusalem, where the English, under “Edgar Adeling,” fought gallantly in the assault in the portion of the army assigned to Robert of Normandy.
Edgar and Robert returned together, and visited the Normans of Apulia, where Edgar had been some years before. Robert here fell in love with Sybilla, the beautiful daughter of the Count of Conversana, and soon after married her. It was in the midst of the wedding festivities that Ralph Flambard, lately the wicked minister of William Rufus, arrived from England, having escaped from prison, bringing the news that his master, the Red King, was slain, and Henry Beauclerc wore the crown. The hasty wrath of Duke Robert was quickly fanned by Ralph Flambard, and he set off at once to attack his brother, and gain the kingdom which Henry had sworn should be his.
However, on his arrival, he at first only amused himself with conducting his bride through his dukedom, and being feasted at every castle. When two knights of Maine came to tell him that Helie de la Flèche was besieging their castles, he carelessly thanked them for their fidelity, but told them he had rather gain a kingdom, than a county, and so that they should make the best terms they could.
Sybilla’s dowry enabled Robert to raise a considerable army, and he had likewise the support of most of the barons whose estates lay both in Normandy and England, and who therefore preferred that the two states should be united; whereas those who had only domains in England held with Henry, wishing to be free from the elder and more powerful nobility of Normandy. The Anglo-Saxons were for Henry, who had relieved them from some of their sufferings, and had won their favor by his marriage, which connected him with the Etheling. Edith, the eldest daughter of the good Queen Margaret, had remained with her aunt Christina in the Abbey of Wilton, after her brother had been made King of Scotland. She was like her mother in many respects; and her aunt wished to devote her to the cloister, and secure her from the cruel sorrows her mother had endured, under the black veil that she already wore, like the professed nuns, to shield her from the insults of the Norman knights, or their attempts to secure a princess as a bride. But Edith remembered that her father had once said that he destined her to be a queen, and not a nun. She recollected how her mother had moulded her court, and been loved and honored there, and her temper rebelled against the secluded life in the convent, so much that, in a girlish fit of impatience, she would, when her aunt was out of sight, tear off her veil and trample upon it.
At length the tidings came that Henry, the new King of England, wooed the Princess of Scotland for his bride.
A marriage of policy it evidently was; for, unlike the generous love that had caused Malcolm to espouse the friendless exile Margaret, Henry was a perjured usurper, and dark stories were told of his conduct in Normandy. Christina strongly and vehemently opposed the marriage, as the greatest calamity that could befall her niece: she predicted that, if Edith persisted in it, only misery could arise from it; and when she found her determined, tried to prove her to be already bound by the promises of a nun.
Here Christina went too far: a court was held by Archbishop Anselm, and it was fully proved that the Lady Edith was under no vows. She was declared free to marry, and in a short time became the wife of Henry, changing her own Saxon name to the Norman Matilda, or Maude. In the first year of her marriage, when Henry was anxious to win the favor of the English, he conformed so much to their ways that the scornful Normans used to call him and his young wife by the Saxon names of Godric and Godiva. The Saxons thus were willing to stand by King Henry, all excepting the sailors, who were won by Robert’s spirit of enterprise, and deserting, with their whole fleet, went to Normandy, and brought Robert and his army safe to Portsmouth.
This happened just as Edith Maude had given birth to her first child, at Winchester. Robert was urged to assault the city; but he refrained, declaring such would be an unknightly action toward his sister-in-law and her babe. Henry soon came up with his forces, the brothers held a conference, and, as usual, Robert was persuaded to give up his rights, and to make peace.
For the next four years Robert continued in Normandy, leading a gay and careless life at first with his beautiful Sybilla; but she soon died, leaving an infant son, and thenceforward his affairs grew worse and worse, as he followed only the impulse of the moment. From riot and drunkenness he fell into fits of devotion, fasting, weeping, and praying; his poverty so great that he was at one time obliged to lie in bed for want of garments to wear; and his dukedom entirely uncared for, fields left uncultivated, and castles which were dens of robbers.
The Normans begged that some measures might be taken for their relief, and King Henry came, and, with Robert’s consent, set things on a better footing; but meanwhile he was secretly making arrangements with the barons for the overthrow of his brother. In two years’ time he had tempted over almost every baron to desert the cause of their master, and in 1106 prepared to wrest the dukedom from him. The unfortunate Robert came to him at Northampton, almost alone, forced himself into his presence, and told him he would submit everything to him, if he would only leave him the state and honor due to his birth. Henry turned his back on him, muttering some answer which Robert could not hear, and which he would not repeat. In a passion, Robert reproached him with his ill faith and cruel, grasping temper, left him hastily, and returned to Rouen, to make a last sad struggle for his inheritance.
He placed his child in the Castle of Falaise, obtaining a promise from the garrison that they would give up their trust to no summons but his own, or that of a trusty knight called William de Ferrières. Hardly a vassal would rally round him in his dire distress; his only supporters were two outlawed barons, whom Henry had driven out of England for their violence, and besides these there were two faithful friends of his youth, whose swords had always been ready in his cause, except in the unhappy war against his father. One was Helie de St. Saen, the other was Edgar Etheling, who quitted his peaceful home, and all the favor he enjoyed in England as uncle to the Queen, to bear arms for his despoiled and injured friend.
Henry invaded Normandy, and all the nobles came over to his side. Robert met him before the Castle of Tenchebray, and the two armies prepared for battle the next day. In the evening a hermit came to the English camp; his head strewn with ashes, and a cord about his waist. He conjured Henry to cease from his unnatural war with a brother who had been a soldier of the Cross, “his brow still shining with traces of the crown of Jerusalem,” and prevailed so far as to gain permission to go and propose terms of peace to the Duke of Normandy. On coming into his presence, the hermit begged to kiss the feet which had trodden the pavement of the Holy Sepulchre, and then exhorted Robert to be contented with the kingdom reserved for him in heaven. He declared Henry’s terms very hard ones; but the Duke would have accepted them, but that he was required to own himself vanquished; and against this his haughty spirit revolted. He cast aside all offers of accommodation, and prepared for battle.
The fight of Tenchebray took place on St. Michael’s Eve, 1106, the day forty years since the Battle of Hastings; and when the Saxons in Henry’s army turned Robert’s Normans to flight, they rejoiced as if they were wiping out the memory of the defeat of Harold. Yet in the vanquished army was their own Etheling, the darling of England, who was made prisoner together with the unfortunate Robert, and led before Henry. It was the last battle in which the two friends fought side by side; the disinherited prince had fought for the son of the despoiler for the last time, and soon they were to part, to spend the many remaining years of their lives in a far different manner.
Robert was made to summon the surrender of Rouen, and Ferrières was sent to receive Falaise, and the little William, heir of Normandy; but the faithful garrison would not yield till Henry had conducted thither the Duke himself, who called on them to surrender, lest the castle should be taken by the wicked outlaw De Belesme. Little William was brought to the King, and his tears and caresses for a moment touched Henry’s heart so far that he gave the child into the charge of Helie de St. Saen, Robert’s faithful friend, and husband of his illegitimate daughter.
It was the last time Robert of Normandy saw the face of his only child. The boy went to Arques with the faithful Helie, while Robert was sent to England, and imprisoned in Cardiff Castle. At first he was honorably treated, and allowed to indulge in hunting and other amusements; but he made an attempt to escape, and was only recaptured in consequence of his horse having plunged into a bog, whence he could not extricate himself. After this he was more closely guarded, and it is said that his eyes were put out; but there is reason to hope that this may not be true. He was under the charge of Robert, an illegitimate son of Henry, who had married Amabel Fitzaymon, heiress of Gloucester, and who was a noble, high-minded, chivalrous person, likely to do all in his power to cheer his uncle’s captivity.
Here Robert from time to time heard of his son: first, how Henry had sent messengers to seize him when St. Saen was absent from Arques; but happily they came on a Sunday morning, when the child was at church, and the servants, warned in time, carried him off to meet their brave master. Then Helie chose to forfeit lands and castle rather than give up his trust, and conducted his little brother-in-law from court to court, wherever he could hope for security, till young William was grown up, and raised an army, with the aid of Louis of France and Foulques of Anjou, to recover his inheritance and rescue his father. But Foulques was detached from the alliance by the betrothal of his daughter to Henry’s son William, and the battle of Brenville ruined the hopes of William of Normandy. Next, Robert learnt that the male line of the Counts of Flanders had failed, and his son, as the representative of Matilda, the Conqueror’s wife, had been owned as the heir of that rich country. Shortly after, the captive Duke was one morning found weeping. He had had a dream, he said, in which he had seen his son dying of a wound in the hand. The tidings came in due time that William had been accidentally pierced by the point of a lance in the hand, the wound had mortified, and he expired at the end of a week. The prisoner still lived on, till, in the twenty-eighth year of his captivity, death at length released him. There is a story of his having starved himself to death in a fit of anger, because Henry had sent him a robe after wearing it once; but this is very improbable. Robert had reached a great age, and his was a character which was likely to be much improved when absent from temptation and with time for thought. He lies buried in Gloucester Cathedral, under an effigy carved in bog oak, with the legs crossed, in memory of his crusade, but unfortunately painted in such a manner as to entirely to spoil its effect.
Edgar Etheling was soon allowed to ransom himself, and retiring to his own estates, lived there in peace. His niece, the good Queen Maude, lived on in the English Court, trying to imitate her mother in her charities, and being, like her, much beloved by the poor, to whose wants she ministered with her own hands; while her youngest brother David, then a gay-tempered youth, used to laugh at her for such mean toils, as he called them. No help, such as her father had given St. Margaret, did Maude receive from her husband; she had only the pain of watching his harshness, cruelty, and hypocrisy, during the eighteen years of her marriage. She died in 1118, leaving three children—Maude, already married to the Emperor of Germany, and William and Richard. William Etheling is reported to have been as proud as his sister Maude, and to have talked of using the churl Saxons as beasts of burden. But there are stories more in his favor. He seemed generously disposed toward his cousin, the son of Robert; and he met his death in an attempt to save life, so that it may be hoped that he was not entirely unworthy of the good old name of Etheling, which he bore as heir to the throne.
Our Etheling Edgar lived on in peace through all the troublous times of Stephen, without again appearing in history, till his death is noted in 1159, ninety-three years after the Norman Conquest.
It has been the fashion to call him a fool and a coward; and no doubt the ambitious men who broke oath after oath, and scrupled at no violence, so esteemed one whose right was the inheritance over which they quarrelled. Whether he was a fool, may be answered by showing that, after he was fourteen, his name was never once brought forward by factious men for their own purposes; that he conducted a treaty with Scotland, and restored his nephew to the throne: and whether he was a coward, no one can ask who has heard of him hastening to attack the Saracens of Apulia, invading warlike Scotland, leading the English to scale the walls of Jerusalem, and, lastly, fighting in a cause that could only be desperate, in a battle that must be lost, where he had no personal interest, and only came to aid a distressed and injured friend. No one can inquire into the history of the last of the race of Alfred without acknowledging in him one of the most perfect examples of true chivalry, in inviolate adherence to his word, and in redressing of grievances, for which his good sword was ever ready, though for his own rights it was never drawn, nor was one drop of English blood shed that Edgar Etheling might reign.