Harold Part 31

[49] We give him that t.i.tle, which this Norman n.o.ble generally bears in the Chronicles, though Palgrave observes that he is rather to be styled Earl of the Magesetan (the Welch Marches).

[50] Eadigan.--S. TURNER, vol. i. p. 274.

[51] The comparative wealth of London was indeed considerable. When, in 1018, all the rest of England was taxed to an amount considered stupendous, viz., 71,000 Saxon pounds, London contributed 11,000 pounds besides.

[52] Complin. the second vespers.

[53] CAMDEN--A church was built out of the ruins of that temple by Sibert, King of the East Saxons; and Canute favoured much the small monastery attached to it (originally established by Dunstan for twelve Benedictines), on account of its Abbot Wulnoth, whose society pleased him. The old palace of Canute, in Thorney Isle, had been destroyed by fire.

[54] See note to PLUQUET's Roman de Rou, p. 285. N.B.--Whenever the Roman de Rou is quoted in these pages it is from the excellent edition of M. Pluquet.

[55] Pardex or Parde, corresponding to the modern French expletive, pardie.

[56] Quen, or rather Quens; synonymous with Count in the Norman Chronicles. Earl G.o.dwin is strangely styled by Wace, Quens Qwine.

[57] "Good, good, pleasant son,--the words of the poet sound gracefully on the lips of the knight."

[58] A sentiment variously a.s.signed to William and to his son Henry the Beau Clerc.

[59] Mallet is a genuine Scandinavian name to this day.

[60] Rou--the name given by the French to Rollo, or Rolf-ganger, the founder of the Norman settlement.

[61] Pious severity to the heterodox was a Norman virtue. William of Poictiers says of William, "One knows with what zeal he pursued and exterminated those who thought differently;" i.e., on transubstantiation. But the wise Norman, while flattering the tastes of the Roman Pontiff in such matters, took special care to preserve the independence of his Church from any undue dictation.

[62] A few generations later this comfortable and decent fas.h.i.+on of night-gear was abandoned; and our forefathers, Saxon and Norman, went to bed in puris naturalibus, like the Laplanders.

[63] Most of the chroniclers merely state the parentage within the forbidden degrees as the obstacle to William's marriage with Matilda; but the betrothal or rather nuptials of her mother Adele with Richard III. (though never consummated), appears to have been the true canonical objection.--See note to Wace, p. 27. Nevertheless, Matilda's mother, Adele, stood in the relation of aunt to William, as widow of his father's elder brother, "an affinity," as is observed by a writer in the "Archaeologia," "quite near enough to account for, if not to justify, the interference of the Church."--Arch. vol. x.x.xii. p. 109.

[64] It might be easy to show, were this the place, that though the Saxons never lost their love of liberty, yet that the victories which gradually regained the liberty from the gripe of the Anglo-Norman kings, were achieved by the Anglo-Norman aristocracy. And even to this day, the few rare descendants of that race (whatever their political faction), will generally exhibit that impatience of despotic influence, and that disdain of corruption, which characterise the homely bonders of Norway, in whom we may still recognise the st.u.r.dy likeness of their fathers; while it is also remarkable that the modern inhabitants of those portions of the kingdom originally peopled by their kindred Danes, are, irrespective of mere party divisions, noted for their intolerance of all oppression, and their resolute independence of character; to wit, Yorks.h.i.+re, Norfolk, c.u.mberland, and large districts in the Scottish Lowlands.

[65] Ex pervetusto codice, MS. Chron. Bec. in Vit. Lanfranc, quoted in the "Archaeologia," vol. x.x.xii. p. 109. The joke, which is very poor, seems to have turned upon pede and quadrupede; it is a little altered in the text.

[66] Ord. Vital. See Note on Lanfranc, at the end of the volume.

[67] Siward was almost a giant (pene gigas statures). There are some curious anecdotes of this hero, immortalised by Shakspere, in the Bromton Chronicle. His grandfather is said to have been a bear, who fell in love with a Danish lady; and his father, Beorn, retained some of the traces of the parental physiognomy in a pair of pointed ears. The origin of this fable seems evident. His grandfather was a Berserker; for whether that name be derived, as is more generally supposed, from bare-sark,--or rather from bear-sark, that is, whether this grisly specimen of the Viking genus fought in his s.h.i.+rt or his bearskin, the name equally lends itself to those mystifications from which half the old legends, whether of Greece or Norway, are derived.

[68] Wace.

[69] See Note (E), at the end of the volume (foot-note on the date of William's marriage).

[70] Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

[71] Some writers say fifty.

[72] Hovenden.

[73] Bodes, i.e. messengers.

[74] Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

[75] Or Fleur-de-lis, which seems to have been a common form of ornament with the Saxon kings.

[76] Bayeux Tapestry.

[77] See note (F), at the end of the volume.

[78] The York Chronicle, written by an Englishman, Stubbs, gives this eminent person an excellent character as peacemaker. "He could make the warmest friends of foes the most hostile." "De inimicissimis, amicissimos faceret." This gentle priest had yet the courage to curse the Norman Conqueror in the midst of his barons. That scene is not within the range of this work, but it is very strikingly told in the Chronicle.

[79] Heralds, though probably the word is Saxon, were not then known in the modern acceptation of the word. The name given to the messenger or envoy who fulfilled that office was bode or nuncius. See Note (G), at the end of the volume.

[80] When the chronicler praises the gift of speech, he unconsciously proves the existence of const.i.tutional freedom.

[81] Recent Danish historians have in vain endeavoured to detract from the reputation of Canute as an English monarch. The Danes are, doubtless, the best authorities for his character in Denmark. But our own English authorities are sufficiently decisive as to the personal popularity of Canute in this country, and the affection entertained for his laws.

[82] Some of our historians erroneously represent Harold as the eldest son. But Florence, the best authority we have, in the silence of the Saxon Chronicle, as well as Knyghton, distinctly states Sweyn to be the eldest; Harold was the second, and Tostig was the third. Sweyn's seniority seems corroborated by the greater importance of his earldom. The Norman chroniclers, in their spite to Harold, wish to make him junior to Tostig--for the reasons evident at the close of this work. And the Norwegian chronicler, Snorro Sturleson, says that Harold was the youngest of all the sons; so little was really known, or cared to be accurately known, of that great house which so nearly founded a new dynasty of English kings.

[83] Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A. D. 1043. "Stigand was deposed from his bishopric, and all that he possessed was seized into the King's hands, because he was received to his mother's counsel, and she went just as he advised her, as people thought." The saintly Confessor dealt with his bishops as summarily as Henry VIII. could have done, after his quarrel with the Pope.

[84] The t.i.tle of Basileus was retained by our kings so late as the time of John, who styled himself "Totius Insulae Britannicae Basileus."--AGARD: On the Antiquity of s.h.i.+res in England, op. Hearne, Cur. Disc.

[85] Sharon Turner.

[86] See the Introduction to PALGRAVE's History of the Anglo-Saxons, from which this description of the Witan is borrowed so largely, that I am left without other apology for the plagiarism, than the frank confession, that if I could have found in others, or conceived from my own resources, a description half as graphic and half as accurate, I would only have plagiarised to half the extent I have done.

[87] Girald. Gambrensis.

[88] Palgrave omits, I presume accidentally, these members of the Witan, but it is clear from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that the London "lithsmen" were represented in the great National Witans, and helped to decide the election even of kings.

[89] By Athelstan's law, every man was to have peace going to and from the Witan, unless he was a thief.--WILKINS, p. 187.

[90] G.o.da, Edward's sister, married first Rolf's father, Count of Nantes; secondly, the Count of Boulogne.

[91] More correctly of Oxford, Somerset, Berks.h.i.+re, Gloucester, and Hereford.

[92] Yet how little safe it is for the great to despise the low-born. This very Richard, son of Scrob, more euphoniously styled by the Normans Richard Fitz-Scrob, settled in Herefords.h.i.+re (he was probably among the retainers of Earl Rolf), and on William's landing, became the chief and most active supporter of the invader in those districts. The sentence of banishment seems to have been mainly confined to the foreigners about the Court--for it is clear that many Norman landowners and priests were still left scattered throughout the country.

[93] SENECA, Thyest. Act ii.--"He is a king who fears nothing; that kingdom every man gives to himself."

[94] Scin-laeca, literally a s.h.i.+ning corpse; a species of apparition invoked by the witch or wizard.--See SHARON TURNER on The Superst.i.tions of the Anglo-Saxons, b. ii. c. 14.

[95] Galdra, magic.

[96] Fylgia, tutelary divinity. See Note (H), at the end of the volume.

[97] Morthwyrtha, wors.h.i.+pper of the dead.

[98] It is a disputed question whether the saex of the earliest Saxon invaders was a long or short curved weapon,--nay, whether it was curved or straight; but the author sides with those who contend that it was a short, crooked weapon, easily concealed by a cloak, and similar to those depicted on the banner of the East Saxons.

[99] See Note (K), at the end of the volume.

[100] Saxon Chronicle, Florence Wigorn. Sir F. Palgrave says that the t.i.tle of Childe is equivalent to that of Atheling. With that remarkable appreciation of evidence which generally makes him so invaluable as a judicial authority where accounts are contradictory, Sir F. Palgrave discards with silent contempt the absurd romance of G.o.dwin's station of herdsman, to which, upon such very fallacious and flimsy authorities, Thierry and Sharon Turner have been betrayed into lending their distinguished names.

[101] This first wife Thyra, was of very unpopular repute with the Saxons. She was accused of sending young English persons as slaves into Denmark, and is said to have been killed by lightning.

[102] It is just, however, to G.o.dwin to say, that there is no proof of his share in this barbarous transaction; the presumptions, on the contrary, are in his favour; but the authorities are too contradictory, and the whole event too obscure, to enable us unhesitatingly to confirm the acquittal he received in his own age, and from his own national tribunal.

[103] Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

[104] William of Malmesbury.

[105] So Robert of Gloucester says pithily of William, "Kyng Wylliam was to mild men debonnere ynou."--HEARNE, v. ii. p. 309.

[106] This kiss of peace was held singularly sacred by the Normans, and all the more knightly races of the continent. Even the craftiest dissimulator, designing fraud, and stratagem, and murder to a foe, would not, to gain his ends, betray the pledge of the kiss of peace. When Henry II. consented to meet Becket after his return from Rome, and promised to remedy all of which his prelate complained, he struck prophetic dismay into Becket's heart by evading the kiss of peace.

[107] SNORRO STURLESON's Heimskringla.--Laing's Translation, p. 75- 77.

[108] The gre-hound was so called from hunting the gre or badger.

[109] The spear and the hawk were as the badges of Saxon n.o.bility; and a thegn was seldom seen abroad without the one on his left wrist, the other in his right hand.

[110] BED Epist. ad Egbert.

[111] TEGNER's Frithiof.

[112] Some of the chroniclers say that he married the daughter of Gryffyth, the king of North Wales, but Gryffyth certainly married Algar's daughter, and that double alliance could not have been permitted. It was probably, therefore, some more distant kinswoman of Gryffyth's that was united to Algar.

[113] The t.i.tle of queen is employed in these pages, as one which our historians have unhesitatingly given to the consorts of our Saxon kings; but the usual and correct designation of Edward's royal wife, in her own time, would be, Edith the Lady.

[114] ETHEL. De Gen. Reg. Ang.

[115] AILRED, De Vit. Edward Confess.

[116] Ingulfus.

[117] The clergy (says Malmesbury), contented with a very slight share of learning, could scarcely stammer out the words of the sacraments; and a person who understood grammar was an object of wonder and astonishment. Other authorities, likely to be impartial, speak quite as strongly as to the prevalent ignorance of the time.

[118] House-carles in the royal court were the body-guard, mostly, if not all, of Danish origin. They appear to have been first formed, or at least employed, in that capacity by Canute. With the great earls, the house-carles probably exercised the same functions; but in the ordinary acceptation of the word in families of lower rank, house- carle was a domestic servant.

[119] This was cheap. For Agelnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury, gave the Pope 6000 lb. weight of silver for the arm of St. Augustine.-- MALMESBURY.

[120] William of Malmesbury says, that the English, at the time of the Conquest, loaded their arms with gold bracelets, and adorned their skins with punctured designs, i.e., a sort of tattooing. He says, that they then wore short garments, reaching to the mid-knee; but that was a Norman fas.h.i.+on, and the loose robes a.s.signed in the text to Algar were the old Saxon fas.h.i.+on, which made but little distinction between the dress of women and that of men.

[121] And in England, to this day, the descendants of the Anglo- Danes, in c.u.mberland and Yorks.h.i.+re, are still a taller and bonier race than those of the Anglo-Saxons, as in Surrey and Suss.e.x.

[122] Very few of the greater Saxon n.o.bles could pretend to a lengthened succession in their demesnes. The wars with the Danes, the many revolutions which threw new families uppermost, the confiscations and banishments, and the invariable rule of rejecting the heir, if not of mature years at his father's death, caused rapid changes of dynasty in the several earldoms. But the family of Leofric had just claims to a very rare antiquity in their Mercian lords.h.i.+p. Leofric was the sixth Earl of Chester and Coventry, in lineal descent from his namesake, Leofric the First; he extended the supremacy of his hereditary lords.h.i.+p over all Mercia. See DUGDALE, Monast. vol. iii. p. 102; and PALGRAVE's Commonwealth, Proofs and Ill.u.s.trations, p. 291.

[123] AILRED de Vit. Edw.

[124] Dunwich, now swallowed up by the sea.--Hostile element to the house of G.o.dwin.

[125] Windsor.

[126] The chronicler, however, laments that the household ties, formerly so strong with the Anglo-Saxon, had been much weakened in the age prior to the Conquest.

[127] Some authorities state Winchester as the scene of these memorable festivities. Old Windsor Castle is supposed by Mr. Lysons to have occupied the site of a farm of Mr. Isherwood's surrounded by a moat, about two miles distant from New Windsor. He conjectures that it was still occasionally inhabited by the Norman kings till 1110. The ville surrounding it only contained ninety-five houses, paying gabel-tax, in the Norman survey.

[128] AILRED, de Vit. Edward. Confess.

[129] "Is it astonis.h.i.+ng," asked the people (referring to Edward's preference of the Normans), "that the author and support of Edward's reign should be indignant at seeing new men from a foreign nation raised above him, and yet never does he utter one harsh word to the man whom he himself created king?"--HAZLITT's THIERRY, vol. i. p. 126.

This is the English account (versus the Norman). There can be little doubt that it is the true one.

[130] Henry of Huntingdon, etc.

[131] Henry of Huntingdon; Bromt. Chron., etc.

[132] Hoveden.

[133] The origin of the word leach (physician), which has puzzled some inquirers, is from lids or leac, a body. Leich is the old Saxon word for surgeon.

[134] Sharon Turner, vol. i. p. 472.

[135] Fosbrooke.

[136] Aegir, the Scandinavian G.o.d of the ocean. Not one of the Aser, or Asas (the celestial race), but sprung from the giants. Ran or Rana, his wife, a more malignant character, who caused s.h.i.+pwrecks, and drew to herself, by a net, all that fell into the sea. The offspring of this marriage were nine daughters, who became the Billows, the Currents, and the Storms.

[137] Frilla, the Danish word for a lady who, often with the wife's consent, was added to the domestic circle by the husband. The word is here used by Hilda in a general sense of reproach. Both marriage and concubinage were common amongst the Anglo-Saxon priesthood, despite the unheeded canons; and so, indeed, they were with the French clergy.

[138] Hilda, not only as a heathen, but as a Dane, would be no favourer of monks; they were unknown in Denmark at that time, and the Danes held them in odium.--Ord Vital., lib. vii.

[139] Chron. Knyghton.

[140] Weyd-month. Meadow month, June.

[141] c.u.men-hus. Tavern.

[142] Fitzstephen.

[143] William of Malmesbury speaks with just indignation of the Anglo-Saxon custom of selling female servants, either to public prost.i.tution, or foreign slavery.

[144] It will be remembered that Algar governed Wess.e.x, which princ.i.p.ality included Kent, during the year of G.o.dwin's outlawry.

[145] Trulofa, from which comes our popular corruption "true lover's knot;" a vetere Danico trulofa, i.e., fidem do, to pledge faith.-- HICKE's Thesaur.

"A knot, among the ancient northern nations, seems to have been the emblem of love, faith, and friends.h.i.+p."--BRANDE's Pop. Antiq.

[146] The Saxon Chronicle contradicts itself as to Algar's outlawry, stating in one pa.s.sage that he was outlawed without any kind of guilt, and in another that he was outlawed as swike, or traitor, and that he made a confession of it before all the men there gathered. His treason, however, seems naturally occasioned by his close connection with Gryffyth, and proved by his share in that King's rebellion. Some of our historians have unfairly a.s.sumed that his outlawry was at Harold's instigation. Of this there is not only no proof, but one of the best authorities among the chroniclers says just the contrary-- that Harold did all he could to intercede for him; and it is certain that he was fairly tried and condemned by the Witan, and afterwards restored by the concurrent articles of agreement between Harold and Leofric. Harold's policy with his own countrymen stands out very markedly prominent in the annals of the time; it was invariably that of conciliation.