History of England, Part I For the use of Middle Forms of Schools
Tout, T. F. --Powell, F. York
1898
CHAPTER VIII: The Great Earls. Edward the Confessor and Harold II
1. [1] was chosen king, greatly by 's help (ere his brother was laid beside his father at ), and hallowed in the old English fashion on Easter Day , the archbishop making him swear to take care of the Church, put down all unrighteousness, and keep the peace. He was a quiet, pious man, loving the Normans, with whom he had been brought up, and their polished clerkly ways, and listening too much perhaps to their advice. But England was now really ruled by the three great earls-Siward the Stout of , the conqueror of Macbeth and dread of the Scots, a stern old warrior as Shakespere paints him, who refused to die in his bed like a cow when his last illness came upon him, but called for his mail-coat and helmet, and so, axe in hand, met death; Leofric of the , the peacemaker, wise in the things of God and the world also; and, greatest of all, of , the clever, persuasive statesman, whose sons Swegen and had the earldoms of Hereford and East England, and whose daughter Eadgyth King married. The king himself did little | |
49 | save in Church matters, which he and his Norman chaplains settled their own way, trying to bring in the French Church customs and greater strictness of life. England was now at rest and happy-in spite of a few bad seasons; some inroads of the Welsh and Northern wickings, quickly stopped; and the wickedness of Earl Swegen, who carried off the Abbess of Leominster, and killed his own cousin Biorn in cold blood, for which he was rightly outlawed--till . |
2. [2] In that year Earl Eustace of Boulogne, the king's brother-in-law, came over sea, and having been with for a while set out for home. However, would not go, being loath to harm his own people, and fearing the king's anger he gathered a large army to over-awe him. The king sent for Leofric and Siward, and it looked like the beginning of a civil war, when after several parleys and a delay which tired out 's men, the great earl and all his family were banished and the queen sent to a nunnery. | |
The Norman clerks, especially Robert the monk, whom the king made Archbishop of in remembrance of his kindness to him when in exile, now advised the king to send for , Duke of Normandy, his kinsman, and make him his heir; and he came with a great company of Frenchmen and paid a visit. William, the fifth from Hrolf, first Earl of Rouen, left (by his father Robert's untimely death abroad on a pilgrimage in ) a child in the midst of enemies, had nevertheless by his wisdom and bravery overcome them all, and was now, though still a young man, the most powerful prince in France. His tall stately form, dark hair, stern look, and reserved manners formed a complete contrast with the blithe ways, mild | |
50 | reverent face, and snow-white hair and beard of his cousin, though they had many tastes in common, hunting, love of learning, and deep interest in the welfare of the Church. took the duke round great part of his realm with him and entertained him and his men very generously, sending them away with splendid gifts, and no doubt some promise to do all he could to get the crown after his own death. |
3. [3] However in and his sons gathered men in Ireland and Flanders, and having ravaged the west of England, came to London, where the king and his men lay, with fifty ships, and sent to the king praying him to do them justice and inlaw them again. The king withstood their demands for some time, so long indeed that the earl's army were very greatly stirred against him, so that himself could hardly keep them still; while the king's men were very loath to fight against their own countrymen, nor did they wish the land to lie still more open to foreigners through their killing each other. Then Bishop Stigand and the Wise Men agreed to make peace, inlaw and his sons, and out-law the French and Normans for raising the trouble between the earl and king. Robert and his friends as soon as they heard this leaped on horseback and rode through the town to the shore, cutting down all in their path, and then taking a leaky ship they found there, set sail at once for Normandy. The queen was called back, Stigand was made archbishop in Robert's room, and the power of the family became stronger than ever. Next Easter Monday the Great Earl died suddenly, stricken with palsy, as he sat at meat with the king, which gave rise to many tales against him. Earl took his place (for Swegen, the elder brother, had died abroad on a pilgrimage) and filled it wisely and well, beating the Welsh so that they were never after a danger to England, taking care that the law was kept, and so winning the love of all save 's Norman priests, whose reforms he did not care for (though he was a pious man.himself, and had even made a pilgrimage to Rome), and his own brother , who was made Earl of when Siward died, and ruled so harshly that was driven to interfere. Gurth and Leofwine, 's younger sons, also got earldoms, East England and . So that though, when Leofric died, Ælfgar his son, a turbulent man and friend of the Welsh, succeeded to the , two-thirds of England were in the hands of the sons of . | |
About this time, as was on a cruise in the Channel, he was shipwrecked on the coast of Ponthieu, and imprisoned by the earl till he should pay ransom; but of Normandy had him set free, asked him to Rouen, and treated him with great friendliness, getting him, however, to swear to marry one of his daughters, and help him to be King of England when died, and to make the oath more binding he made him swear by a shrine which, unknown to , was full of the bones of the saints. | |
In the Northumbrians came together and outlawed their earl , and slew all his house-carles, and took all his weapons and gold and silver that were in , and sent for , Ælfgar's son, and chose him for their earl. They then marched south with the men of Nottingham, Derby, and , and of the (for Ælfgar his father was dead), and many Welsh. The king sent to them to try and make a settlement between them, for was a great favourite at court; was forced, much against his will, to grant their wishes and banish , who went south over sea with his wife to Earl Baldwin of Flanders, his father-in-law, and wintered at S. Omer. At midwinter King came to Westminster and hallowed the minster he had built there himself, to the glory of God and S. Peter and All Hallows, on Childermass Day, and on Twelfth Night 's holy life and he had, gained him the title of Confessor, and made him for many years the favourite saint of the south of England, as was in the north and S. Edmund in the east. It is told that on his deathbed he spoke earnestly of wars to come, but Stigand laughed at his words as a sick man's raving. There was also a | |
52 | comet seen soon after, which frightened people much, as they took it for a token of wars and troubles. |
4. [4] was crowned by the wish of the late king and the choice of the people on Twelfth Mass Day (6th January), the royal blood he had from his mother being enough to allow of his being taken as king, since he was so much the best man in England. Soon after he was crowned he married Ealdgyth, widow of Gryffydd, King of Wales, his old enemy, and daughter of Earl Ælfgar, that he might gain the goodwill of her two brothers, for his kingdom was threatened on all hands. As was going out to hunt one morning, a messenger reached him with the news of 's death and 's crowning. He turned home at once without a word, and after taking thought, and first sending to to bid him remember his oath and give up the kingdom, made up his mind to invade England, for the answer was that the choice of the people and Wise Men had been made and could not be altered. began his preparations at once, getting many promises of help from his own barons, and gathering men from all lands to join his army in the hopes of good pay and plunder and the blessing on the undertaking which the Pope had sent the duke with a consecrated banner. For he was angry with for his perjury and with Stigand for taking Robert's place, not having had any right explanation of their reasons. But while this huge host was fitting out on the French coast, had got together a force of Flemings, and was set upon winning back his earldom by force; and [stern of counsel], King of Norway, choosing the time as a fit one for carrying out his long-cherished plan of trying to gain the English crown, had started across the North Sea and reached the Orkneys, whence he was going to coast southwards. | |
To meet , his most dreaded foe, gathered the biggest army and fleet yet seen in England, and went to Sandwich to watch his enemies. , who lay off there with 60 ships, sailed away to the Humber and tried to land, but and drove him off with loss, his own sailors forsook him, and he fled with 12 smacks to Scotland, where he met Harold of Norway and the Orkney earls with 300 ships, and they agreed to go to England together. 's son meanwhile went with all his host and fleet to the Isle of , waiting for , till, on the 8th of September, the provisions having given out, the | |
53 | people could stay no longer away from home. Just as the ships had got to London, and the people reached their several shires, and sailed into the Humber and up the Ouse to , beat and at Fulford, and entered the city on Wednesday the 20th of September. The people made peace with them, and agreed to give them hostages of their faith and go with them southwards, whereupon the king and earl with their troops left the town. |
5. News of the Northmen's landing reached of England in London and he set off north, Stamford marching night and day, as soon as he could Bridge, Sept. 25. get the levies of the shires together. By the Sunday he reached Tadcaster and set his army in array, and next morning he passed through , hearing that of Norway and , with part of their men, were waiting for the hostages by Stamford Bridge beyond the city. There he came upon them unawares. It is said that wished to retreat, but would not give way, but sent to the ships for more men, and set his men in array. 's son now rode forward and offered his brother peace and a third of the kingdom. Said , answered, said the earl, | |
When , who stood by, knew who it was that had spoken to , he said, Then he set up his banner Landwaster, and went through the ranks of his men, forming them into a level line or shield-wall to resist the English attack. As he looked at the enemy advancing all in mail, and saw his own men armourless, for they had not thought of an attack, and the day was hot, he sung- The English fell on stoutly and broke the Northmen's shield-wall. But , seeing his men pressed, | |
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took his sword with both hands and dashed forward, scattering his enemies like smoke before him. As he fought ringed round with foes, an arrow struck him in the throat-vein and he fell. The English cheered, but went to the banner in the king's place, and though his brother again offered him peace, refused, saying that he and his men had made up their minds to win the day and avenge Harold or die there with him. But he too fell, and when the help came from the ships it was too late to change the fortunes of the day; still this last attack was the hottest part of the day's fight, and it was late ere the English drove the few unwounded survivors to flight. Even then one Northman kept the bridge, over which his comrades were escaping, single-handed with 'his axe for a long while, and is said to have stricken down forty Englishmen. They offered him quarter, but he laughed at their offers; at last a man crept under the bridge in a boat, and thrusting a spear up through the planks into his body, under his mail-coat, killed him. Only the darkness saved the rest of the Northmen. Next day made peace with the dead king's sons and the earls, and let them go away with 24 ships. The booty taken was very great, for had been in the Greek emperor's Waring-guard at Constantinople when he was a young man, and had gotten great riches there, and all his life after he had been warring in foreign lands and winning plunder, till he came home to rule with his nephew in Norway. This treasure he had taken to England to pay his men and buy over the English. 's son gave it all over to the care of Ealdred, the Archbishop of , for the time, which made some of his soldiers discontented. Harold Hardrede is a famous character in northern history, where his wonderful adventures and gallant end were long remembered. He was said to be the finest man of his age, taller and handsomer than either of his rivals or , besides being a ready speaker, a good general, and a crafty statesman. He was very fond of poetry, and no mean poet himself. His enemies called him grasping and cold-hearted. |
6. [5] On Michælmas Eve 's fleet of 9000 ships reached England, landing on the coast, where, at Hastings, a wooden castle they brought with them was set up. News came to at , and he set out at once for London with his guard, sadly lessened in number by the late battle, bidding and follow him with their men; but they hung back, thinking to | |
55 | make terms with if were slain. The king only stayed six days in London, and then with the levies of and Essex and some East English led by his two brothers, the men of London and his own guard, he marched south to meet , against the advice of Gurth and Leofwine, who wished him to stay at London till the levies from the rest of England could join him, letting them go forward with the men he had and lay waste the country to prevent moving inland. But he would not have the land wasted, nor let them lead the army in his stead, though they feared the saints' vengeance on him because of his broken oath. He chose his ground skilfully along the steep brow of a long hill at Senlake near Hastings, stockading the front of his line with hurdles on an earthwork, to keep off the horsemen, in which the strength of the duke's army lay. Several messages passed between the two camps; is said to have offered to settle their quarrel by a single combat or an appeal to the Pope, but said that God should judge between them. After a night passed by the English in watching and feasting round their fires, and by the Normans in resting and praying and confessing their sins to , Bishop of Bayeux, and his priests, who went through their camp, both captains drew out their men early on S. Calixtus' Day (14th October). set up his two banners, the Golden Dragon of and the Fighting Man (his own standard), by the hoar apple-tree on the hilltop, and round it put his best men, the guard, the men of London, and the levy of . They were all on foot, as was always the English way to fight, armed with large Danish axes, broadswords, and javelins, and clothed in helmets and coats-of-mail. The country-folk, ill armed with darts, clubs, and slings, were on either side. ordered his men to keep the palisade, and on no account to leave their ground. About eight o'clock the Norman army reached Senlake, and the duke made ready to attack the English. He put his footmen, mostly archers, in loose order in front of his army, and the horsemen behind them in three bodies; he and his brothers, Earl Robert and Bishop , leading the Norman knights in the centre, where Thurstain the White bore the holy banner the Pope had sent the duke with his blessing, while the French and Breton knights formed the wings to right and left, under Roger of Montgomery and Earl Alan of Brittany. All these horsemen, mailed and helmeted, bore large kite-shaped shields, long lances used overhand, and broadswords. |
A Norman minstrel named Taillefer (Hew-iron) began the battle; he rode up to the English line singing the Song of Roland, 's paladin, and tossing his sword and lance high in the air and catching them as they fell; he wounded two Englishmen before he was killed. The Norman knights, when they found the archers could make no impression, charged up the hill, calling, and tried to break the line. But the English kept the pale, cheering and shouting, cutting down horse and man with their two-handed axes and tumbling them backward down the slope. After two attacks the Normans faltered, and there was a cry that the duke was slain, but he threw back his helmet to show his face, and rallied his men for a third onslaught. The pale was now broken on the right, and in the centre fought his way by main strength to the standards, where Gurth killed his horse with a spear-cast and fell by the duke's sword. Leofwine also fell, but the guard and main body were still able to hold their own. Then, as a last hope, gave the signal for a feigned flight, and the English on the right broke their ranks, against 's orders, and, cheering loudly, rushed after the horsemen down the hill. On the flats the Normans turned and cut them to pieces. 's right wing being destroyed, the Normans could now get on the hill-top and fight him on level ground. But they could not break his guard till the duke, seeing that the English had slung their shields round their necks that they might use their axes more freely, brought up his archers and ordered them to shoot high so that the arrows might fall on the English from above. One struck in the right eye, and he fell at the foot of his standard. Eustace of Boulogne with a few knights, who had sworn to take the standards, now rushed forward, beat down the Fighting Man and the Golden Dragon, and slew the dying , one of them being brutal enough to mangle his body. The guards now gave way slowly, followed by the victorious Normans, till they came to a piece of swampy ground by a steep part of the hill, where the knights' horses being useless, the Englishmen turned to bay and killed a great number of their pursuers. But their leaders were gone, and no effort could now avail to retrieve the lost battle. checked the pursuit, and pitching his tent where 's standard had stood, halted his army for the night. Next day Eadgyth Swanneck, a lady whom the dead king had loved, coming with other Englishwomen to search for their dead, found 's | |
57 | disfigured corpse under a heap of dead. had it buried under a stone heap on the cliff at Hastings, saying that it was fit sepulchre for him who had guarded his land so well while he lived. But afterwards the canons of Waltham Holy Cross, the minster had endowed, took it home with then and buried it, but no man now knows where the last old English king lies. |
7. [6] The state of England on the eve of the Norman Conquest is known to us from Domesday Book (see p. 68), which shows us a little nation of two million souls, three-fourths of whom are living by the land they till, the rest being townsfolk, gentry, and churchmen. The eastern and southern shires, especially , are the best tilled, richest, and most thickly peopled. There the downs and wold gave fine pasturage for sheep, the hursts, shaws, and copses on the hill shoulders affording fattening grounds for swine, and the hollows at the downs' foot, the river flats, and low gravel hills were the best and easiest land to plough and crop. Far the largest part of the country isforest, that is, uncleared and undrained moor, wood, or fen. If we take one of the 9250 villages or manors which are scattered over the country, it will be found that three-fifths of the land of each is waste untilled common land, one-fifth pasture, and one-fifth (half fallow each year under their rude system of farming) under plough, so that there was ample room for population to increase. | |
8. [7] Ever since 's days the towns had been getting richer and more important as trading centres, fishing stations, and bulwarks against the Danes. And by the settlement of these energetic sailors they had grown still further. An English borough was nothing more than a walled group of villages or parishes, each with its village-moot and officers, while the borough court was a hundred-moot. A city or port was like a walled shire, its husting presided over by the port-reeve, being a folk-moot; while its wards, each with its own alderman and ward-moot, were hundreds, each of course including two or three parishes. The burghers (householders) held all power, and made their own bylaws in their hustings and ward-moots, but the towns were practically managed by the Merchant Gild, or Association of Traders, to which nearly every burgher belonged, for the purpose of protecting, furthering, and regulating the commerce and manufactures of the place. The principal towns (London, , , , , , , and ) were the exchanges, | |
58 | inlets and outlets of the country's trade, whence imports from abroad (wine, silk, oil, ivory, glass, sulphur, dyes, gold and silver) were distributed about the country, while slaves, metals, and wool were taken to foreign lands in return. A great deal of trade was done at the great annual fairs, especially , Stourbridge, and Abingdon. It should be noticed that from the days of London was bidding fair to become the capital of England, being more central, easier of access, and richer than . |
9. [8] The old village system of communal ownership, such as still holds in Russia, having long broken down in England, and a man's family having slight hold or right over him, it was necessary to devise some other way of making people responsible for crimes committed among them. This was done by the system of frank- or peace-pledge, or frith-borrow, by which the country freeholders were grouped into sets of ten [tithings] under a tenth-head, each man in the tithing being obliged to act as perpetual bailsman for the other nine, producing the offender to the hundred-elder if a crime was committed, or paying the fine or were-gild for him. Landless men were obliged to find a lord whose frith-borrow or peace-pledge they would be in. | |
Besides the merchant gilds in the towns, there was in nearly every big village a gild like our Benefit Societies or Farmers' Associations, formed for mutual help and protection, and for feeding the poor and providing burial and masses for dead members. Once a year, on the day of the patron saint of the gild, there was a gild-feast, when all the members, men and women, went to church in the morning in procession, passed the day in merry-making, and had a great dinner together, at which the fines, payable in ale, for the year were drunk. | |
10. [9] Not only were changes made in the speech of North England by the new words brought in by the Danes, but in other ways the English tongue altered greatly in the eleventh century, getting rid of many old forms and inflexions, breaking down the old endings a, u, i, and an, un, on into e and en (as in modern German), and thereby being forced to use a more modern syntax. Of course the Norman invasion helped this very much, as the gentry speaking French and the learned Latin, left English to be a mere people's speech, neither written nor used by cultivated men. The two following specimens, of the middle and end of the century, will show some of these changes:- | |
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a. b. (Of King 's Death, .) |
11. [10] The first six centuries of old English history is, as we have seen, full of cruel wars, with which our story has been mainly taken up, but it must be remembered that in the early rough times of a nation's life, unless it can fight well it has but a poor chance of living at all in the struggle going on around it. And we must also recollect that behind the fighting kings and earls of whom we hear, there were always the wise and gentle churchman and the sturdy hard-working yeoman, who go on with their work in silence, but whose labour is seen in the advances their country had made. A little knot of tribes colonizing a new land at the point of the sword has become a great nation, under the rule of a single king. Into this nation a second body of immigrants (the Danes) has been quietly absorbed. The whole island obeys the behests of the English king as Emperor of Britain; while by their belonging to the church system of Western Europe the English of this have entered upon their career as a family of the European State-group, and taken a place in the world's history. Six centuries hardly seem too long for such progress as this. | |
Footnotes: [1] Edward the Confessor, 1042-1066. [2] The Norman favorites get Godwine out-lawed, 1050-1052. [] [1052-1066.] [3] Godwine in-lawed. Harold's power, 1052-1066. [] [l066. [4] Harold, Godwine's son, 1066. [5] Hastings, Oct. 14, 1066. [6] State of England at the Conquest. The land. [7] The towns [] [900-1066.] [8] Police and gilds [9] Language. [10] Summary of old English history. |
