ft
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
I
LAST OF THE SAXON KINGS.
VOL. I.
HAROLD,
LAST OF THE SAXON KINGS;
BY THE AUTHOR OF
" RIENZI ;" " THE LAST OF THE BARONS
ETC. ETC. ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
SECOXD EDITION.
LONDON :
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1848.
ION DON:
R. CLAY PKSXTER, BREAD 3THKET HILL
Stack
Annex
A
\
Y.)
THE Publication of this Work has
3n delayed some weeks, from respect to
domestic affliction of the distinguished
ithor.
IBW BURLINGTON STREET,
June 8, 1848.
VOL. I.
Scro
'5-JvC it .
RESERVE
DEDICATORY EPISTLE
RIGHT HON. C. T. D'EYNCOURT, M.P.
I DEDICATE to you, my dear friend, a work,
principally composed under your hospitable
roof; and to the materials of which your
library, rich in the authorities I most needed,
largely contributed.
The idea of founding an historical romance
on an event so important and so national as
the Norman Invasion, I had long entertained,
and the chronicles of that time had long been
familiar to me. But it is an old habit of
mine, to linger over the plan and subject of
a work, for years, perhaps, before the work
IV DEDICATORY EPISTLE.
has, in truth, advanced a sentence ; " busying
myself," as old Burton saith, " with this play-
ing labour otiosdque diligentid ut vitarem
torpor em feriandi"
The main consideration which long with-
held me from the task, was in my sense of the
unfamiliarity of the ordinary reader with the
characters, events, and, so to speak, with the
very physiognomy of a period ante Agam-
mennona ; before the brilliant age of matured
chivalry, which has given to song and romance
the deeds of the later knighthood, and the
glorious frenzy of the Crusades. The Norman
Conquest was our Trojan War; an epoch
beyond which our learning seldom induces our
imagination to ascend.
In venturing on ground so new to fiction, I
saw before me the option of apparent pedantry,
in the obtrusion of such research as might
carry the reader along with the Author, fairly
and truly into the real records of the time ; or
of throwing aside pretensions to accuracy alto-
DEDICATORY EPISTLE. IX
gether ; and so rest contented to turn history
into flagrant romance, rather than pursue
my own conception of extracting its natural
romance from the actual history. Finally, not
without some encouragement from you, (where-
of take your due share of blame !) I decided
to hazard the attempt, and to adopt that mode
of treatment which, if making larger demand
on the attention of the reader, seemed the
more complimentary to his judgment.
The age itself, once duly examined, is full
of those elements which should awaken interest,
and appeal to the imagination. Not untruly
has Sismondi said, that "the Eleventh Century
has a right to be considered a great age. It
was a period of life and of creation ; all that
there was of noble, heroic, and vigorous in the
Middle Ages commenced at that epoch." *
But to us Englishmen in especial, besides the
more animated interest in that spirit of adven-
ture, enterprise, and improvement, of which
* SISMOXDI'S History of France, vol. iv. p. 484.
VOL. I. c
X DEDICATORY EPISTLE.
the Norman chivalry was the noblest type,
there is an interest more touching and deep
in those last glimpses of the old Saxon mo-
narchy, which open upon us in the mournful
pages of our chroniclers.
I have sought in this work, less to portray
mere manners, which modern researches have
rendered familiar to ordinary students in our
history, than to bring forward the great
characters, so carelessly dismissed in the long
and loose record of centuries ; to shew more
clearly the motives and policy of the agents
in an event the most memorable in Europe ;
and to convey a definite, if general, notion of
the human beings, whose brains schemed, and
whose hearts beat, in that realm of shadows
which lies behind the Norman Conquest ;
" Spes hominum csecas, morbos, votumqi^, labores,
Et passim toto volitantes aethere curas."*
I have thus been faithful to the leading
* " Men's blieded hopes, diseases, toil, and prayer,
And winged troubles peopling daily air." ,
DEDICATORY EPISTLE. XI
historical incidents in the grand tragedy of
Harold, and as careful as contradictory evi-
dences will permit, both as to accuracy in the
delineation of character, and correctness in that
chronological chain of dates without which
there can be no historical philosophy ; that is,
no tangible link between the cause and the
effect. The fictitious part of my narrative is,
as in " Rienzi," and the " Last of the Barons,"
confined chiefly to the private life, with its
domain of incident and passion, which is the
legitimate appanage of novelist or poet. The
love story of Harold and Edith is told dif-
ferently from the well-known legend, which
implies a less pure connexion. But the whole
legend respecting the Edeva faira (Edith the
fair) whose name meets us in the " Domesday"
roll, rests upon very slight authority consider-
ing its popular acceptance ; and the reasons for
my alterations will be sufficiently obvious in a
work intended not only for general perusal,
but which on many accounts, I hope, may be
SU DEDICATORY EPISTLE.
entrusted fearlessly to the young ; while those
alterations are in strict accordance with the
spirit of the time, and tend to illustrate one of
its most marked peculiarities.
More apology is perhaps due for the liberal
use to which I have applied the superstitions
of the age. But with the age itself those
superstitions are so interwoven they meet us
so constantly, whether in the pages of our
own chroniclers, or the records of the kindred
Scandinavians they are so intruded into the
very laws, so blended with the very life, of our
Saxon forefathers, that without employing
them, in somewhat of the same credulous
spirit with which they were originally con-
ceived, no vivid impression of the People they
influenced can be conveyed. Not without
truth has an Italian writer remarked, "that
he who would depict philosophically an unphi-
losophical age, should remember that, to be
familiar with children, one must sometimes
think and feel as a child."
DEDICATORY EPISTLE. Xlll
Yet it has not been my main endeavour to
make these ghostly agencies conducive to the
ordinary poetical purposes of terror, and if that
effect be at all created by them, it will be, I
apprehend, rather subsidiary to the more histo-
rical sources of interest than, in itself, a leading
or popular characteristic of the work. My
object, indeed, in the introduction of the
Danish Vala especially, has been perhaps as
much addressed to the reason as to the fancy,
in shewing what large, if dim, remains of the
ancient ' heathenesse ' still kept their ground
on the Saxon soil, contending with and con-
trasting the monkish superstitions, by which
they were ultimately replaced. Hilda is not in
history ; but without the romantic impersona-
tion of that which Hilda represents, the history
of the time would be imperfectly understood.
In the character of Harold while I have
carefully examined and weighed the scanty
evidences of its distinguishing attributes which
are yet preserved to us and, in spite of no
DEDICATORY EPISTLE.
unnatural partiality, have not concealed what
appear to me its deficiencies, and still less the
great error of the life it illustrates, I have at-
tempted, somewhat and slightly, to shadow out
the ideal of the pure Saxon character, such as it
was then, with its large qualities undeveloped,
but marked already by patient endurance, love
of justice, and freedom the manly sense of
duty rather than the chivalric sentiment of
honour and that indestructible element of
practical purpose and courageous will, which,
defying all conquest, and steadfast in all peril,
was ordained to achieve so vast an influence
over the destinies of the world.
To the Norman Duke, I believe, I have been
as lenient as justice will permit, though it is as
impossible to deny his craft, as to dispute his
genius ; and, so far as the scope of my work
would allow, I trust that I have indicated fairly
the grand characteristics of his countrymen,
more truly chivalric than their lord. It has hap-
pened, unfortunately for that illustrious race of
DEDICATORY EPISTLE. XV
men, that they have seemed to us, in England,
represented by the Anglo-Norman kings. The
fierce and plotting William, the vain and
worthless Rufus, the cold-blooded and relentless
Henry, are no adequate representatives of the
far nobler Norman vavasours, whom even the
English Chronicler admits to have been " kind
masters," and to whom, in spite of their kings,
the after liberties of England were so largely
indebted. But this work closes on the Field
of Hastings ; and in that noble struggle for
national independence, the sympathies of every
true son of the land, even if tracing his lineage
back to the Norman victor, must be on the
side of the patriot Harold.*
In the notes, which I have thought necessary
aids to the better comprehension of these
volumes, my only wish has been to convey to
* If this tale meet with the same indulgent favour as the
" Last of the Barons," I may, perhaps, presume farther into
the wide field thus opened. A series of fictions genuinely
illustrating our earlier history through its romance might be
rendered no unprofitable accompaniment to the history itself.
XVI DEDICATORY EPISTLE.
the general reader such illustrative informa-
tion as may familiarize him more^ easily with
the subject-matter of the book, or refresh
his memory on incidental details not without
a national interest. In the mere references
to authorities I do not pretend to arrogate to
a fiction the proper character of a history;
the references are chiefly used either where
wishing pointedly to distinguish from invention
what was borrowed from a chronicle, or, when
differing from some popular historian to whom
the reader might be likely to refer, it seemed
well to state the authority upon which the
difference was founded.*
In fact, my main object has been one that
compelled me to admit graver matter than
is common in romance, but which I would
fain hope may be saved from the charge of
dulness by some national sympathy between
author and reader ; my object is attained, and
* Notes less immediately necessary to the context, or too
long not to interfere with the current of the narrative, are
thrown to the end of each volume.
DEDICATORY EPISTLE. XV11
attained only, if in closing the last page of this
work, the reader shall find, that in spite of the
fictitious materials admitted, he has formed a
clearer and more intimate acquaintance with a
time, heroic though remote, and characters
which ought to have a household interest to
Englishmen, than the succinct accounts of the
mere historian could possibly afford him.
Thus, my dear D'Eyncourt, under cover of
an address to yourself, have I made to the
Public those explanations which authors in
general, (and I not the least so,) are often over-
anxious to render.
This task done, my thoughts naturally fly
back to the associations I connected with your
name when I placed it at the head of this
epistle. Again I seem to find myself under
your friendly roof; again to greet my provi-
dent host entering that gothic chamber in
which I had been permitted to establish my
unsocial study, heralding the advent of ma-
jestic folios, and heaping libraries round the
XV111 DEDICATORY EPISTLE.
unworthy work. Again, pausing from my
labour, I look through that castle casement,
and beyond that feudal moat, over the broad
landscapes, which, if I err not, took their name
from the proud brother of the Conqueror him-
self : or when, in those winter nights, the grim
old tapestry waved in the dim recesses, I hear
again the Saxon thegn winding his horn at the
turret door, and demanding admittance to the
halls from which the prelate of Bayeux had so
unrighteously expelled him* what marvel,
that I lived in the times of which I wrote,
Saxon with the Saxon, Norman with the Nor-
man that I entered into no gossip less vene-
rable than that current at the Court of the
Confessor, or startled my fellow-guests (when
I deigned to meet them) with the last news
which Harold's spies had brought over from
the Camp at St. Valery ? With all those folios,
* There is a legend attached to my friend's house, that on
certain nights in the year, Eric the Saxon winds his horn
at the door, and, in forma spectri, serves his notice of eject-
ment.
DEDICATORY EPISTLE. XIX
giants of the gone world, rising around me
daily, more and more, higher and higher Ossa
upon Pelion on chair and table, hearth and
floor; invasive as Normans, indomitable as
Saxons, and tall as the tallest Danes (ruthless
host, I behold them still!) with all those
disburied spectres rampant in the chamber,
all the armour rusting in thy galleries, all those
mutilated statues of early English kings (in-
cluding St. Edward himself) niched into thy
grey, ivied walls say, in thy conscience, O
host, (if indeed that conscience be not wholly
callous !) shall I ever return to the nineteenth
century again ?
But far beyond these recent associations of
a single winter (for which heaven assoil thee !)
goes the memory of a friendship of many win-
ters, and proof to the storms of all. Often
have I come for advice to your wisdom, and
sympathy to your heart, bearing back with
me, in all such seasons, new increase to that
pleasurable gratitude which is, perhaps, the
XX DEDICATORY EPISTLE.
rarest, nor the least happy sentiment, that
experience leaves to man. Some differences,
it may be, whether on those public questions
which we see, every day, alienating friend-
ships that should have been beyond the reach
of laws and kings ; or on the more scholastic
controversies which as keenly interest the minds
of educated men, may at times deny to us the
idem velle, atque idem nolle ; but the vera ami-
citia needs not those common links : the sun-
shine does not leave the wave for the slight
ripple which the casual stone brings a moment
to the surface.
Accept, in this dedication of a work which
has lain so long on my mind, and been en-
deared to me from many causes, the token of an
affection for you and yours, strong as the ties
of kindred, and lasting as the belief in truth.
E. B. L.
March 1st, 1848.
CRITICAL OPINIONS OF THIS WORK.
THE ATLAS.
THE last struggle of the old Saxon monarchy is one of the most
affecting passages in our annals. History has given us but a
skeleton map of the time. The Saxon man in his sturdy in-
tegrity, standing between the dim superstitions of the north and
the spreading enlightenment of Christianity, the firm asserter of
liberty, with a tincture of the old sea-kings in his blood, and the
Teutonic gravity in his temperament, has never been brought out
with the distinctness which the speciality of his character, and the
influence which it exercises to this hour over the mixed races that
have succeeded him, demand and deserve. In the portrait Sir
Bulwer Lytton has drawn of Harold he has discharged one of the
highest functions of history, in a spirit of philosophy teaching
through the medium of romance. Hastily running over the most
prominent historical personages whose careers have been lighted up by
his genius, we cannot recall one in which he has been so completely
successful. Out of the slenderest materials, perplexed by con-
jectures and contradictions, he has created a figure which embodies
the features of the age, and realizes its contrasts of moral grandeur
and imperfect civilization with instinctive truth. The foundations
of the romance are sunk in extensive research, and every page
displays an intimate knowledge of the condition of the people, the
minutest facts of their progress and their modes of life, and the
distant genealogies through which they inherited their customs
and their glories. The strict fidelity with which the authorities
are sifted and followed is not less admirable than the entire absence
of pedantry in the treatment. The story, carrying a rich freight of
historic circumstances on its surface, flows on with the fascination
of a minstrel's lay of chivalry and love.
Sir Bulwer Lytton judiciously exercises the privilege of fiction in
B
2 CRITICAL OPINIONS.
giving to the loves of Harold and Edith a different colouring to that
which is darkly ascribed to them by contemporary annalists. The
pure love that grows up between them is of the most ennobling kind,
and maintains its chastening influence over the heart and intellect of
Harold throughout the stormy and chequered scenes in which his life
is passed. The nobility of his character is not that of the mere hero.
He has the faults of the man tendernesses and weaknesses which
sometimes make him hesitate, but which are always reconciled to
our admiration by his inflexible patriotism and his love of truth
and justice. His power grows upon the reader as it grew upon the
people in his own day ; and we see, amidst conflict and confusion,
how it was he rose without intrigue or the desires of a false ambition
to that height of authority, which at the death of the king placed
the crown upon his head with the unanimous accord of the nation.
The episode of the expedition in which Harold engages to punish
the insolent hordes of Welsh marauders on the English borders,
is so bold and picturesque that, although unable to present its
most striking features, we cannot resist the following view of the
stronghold of King Gryffyth, on the heights of Penmaen-mawr, to
the final pinnacle of which he has been hunted and reduced by the
victorious arms of Harold. . . . We have not attempted to follow the
progress of the story ; but the main thread of the interest may be
traced through the passages we have given. For the rest, and the
tragic conclusion of all on the battle-field, it is unnecessary to refer
the reader to a work which he will be eager enough to get into his
hands from what we have already said.
The portraiture of the times and the characterization of the
principal men who made its history, may be cited amongst the
noblest triumphs of this class of romance. With the enchantment
of romance it blends the dignity and weight of history. The
character of William is drawn with great truth and power, and
skilfully distinguished in its craftiness and treachery from the
franker bearing and more honourable nature of the Norman chivalry
whose gallantry helped him to the crown of England. But, as we
have already indicated, the character of Harold is the masterpiece
of the work.
THE BRITANNIA.
We are glad to meet Sir Edward again in the field of historical
romance. The same sense of justice which compelled us to condemn
his "Lucretia" prompts us to the much more pleasing office of
acknowledging the merit of his " Harold." He is too distinguished
a writer for his example to be overlooked, whether it be for good or
evil. In this romance the author has revived the age of the Con-
quest. Taking his facts, his characters, and his manners from the
CRITICAL OPINIONS. 3
most authentic sources of knowledge, he has combined them with
dramatic power into a splendid and effective narrative. It is indeed
a narrative of extraordinary interest as well as of extraordinary
ability ; and the greater part of it is written in a style of historic de-
scription, the broadest, the most picturesque, and the most glowing
that can be conceived. The opening is highly effective. . . . The in-
terest of the romance, so far as it depends on fiction, turns wholly on
the love between Edith and Harold. Motives of state policy require
Harold to sacrifice his inclination to the interest of his country ; but
in heart they are true to each other. After the defeat of Harold,
William resolves that the body of Harold, as dishonoured and
accursed, shall have no sepulchre. To alter his cruel determination
Edith has her second view of the Conqueror.
The narrative of the great battle which gave a Norman dynasty to
England is in the author's highest and most finished style. Were it
but for that chapter alone, this romance would command and deserve
the general perusal we do not doubt it will meet with, not from the
frequenters of circulating libraries alone, but from that higher class
of readers who love to see grand themes grandly treated, and who
believe the genius of the literary artist cannot be more worthily
employed than in illustrating the most memorable events of national
history.
Since the " Flodden " of Scott, we do not know that any finer picture
of strife has been produced than this description of Hastings. Both,
though in widely different styles, must be placed among the finest
examples of epic romance. . . . We are quite sure that in any future
estimate of Sir Edward Lytton's productions none will stand higher
for distinguished ability and matured powers of thought and com-
position.
THE MORNING CHEONICLE.
This brilliant work will unquestionably not detract from the
reputation of one of the most popular and successful cultivators of
historic fiction. The author of "Harold" has pitched his aim
high ; and in many important respects he has worthily achieved
what he has nobly designed. We have no hesitation in assigning
to "Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings," an honourable place
among those prose epics which have for their object to embody
the spirit of an heroic age, and to present a life-like and truthful
delineation of heroic events. The fundamental condition of his
enterprise a close and patient study of the times that he seeks
to reproduce Sir Bulwer Lytton has, beyond a question, faith-
fully performed. Nothing can be more powerfully told than the
history of that fatal oath by which, after long years of waiting
and scheming, the Norman entangled his rival in the meshes of
4 CRITICAL OPINIONS.
an engagement that could not be broken without rank sacrilege.
What, however, strikes us as the feature of this Work is the extreme
elicity of its portraitures of the general state of England during
the last years of the Saxon dynasty. The author completely
succeeds in placing his reader in the heart of that old time, when
even Druidism, though dead, was not quite buried when the Roman
stratum of British History was still conspicuous in a thousand
architectural monuments long since mouldered away, such as " the
ruins of the vast temple of Diana," surrounding "the humble and
barbarous church of St. Paul," when the Hall and Abbey of West-
minster were rising amid "the brakes and briars of the Isle of
Thorney," and on the site of the Temple of Apollo and when the
" English people " could hardly be said to be more than a geo-
graphical expression for an imperfectly-fused aggregate of Danes,
Saxons, and Celtic aborigines. There are large portions of these
volumes which might be not inaptly intitled, " Vestiges of the
natural history of the creation of the English people," so truthful
and suggestive are the allusions to that mixture of diverse and
antagonistic races out of which our English nationality has
gradually grown, and which, even to this day, has not reached the
point of absolute fusion
We have done but imperfect justice to the numberless excellences
of this really great work ; but must close our notice by offering him
our best thanks for the valuable production with which he has fur-
ther enriched a literature that is already deeply indebted to his
genius expressing, at the same time, our cordial satisfaction at
learning that he contemplates renewed labours in this field. There
will be Very few readers of '' Harold " who will not be gratified
at being able to anticipate, from the pen of its accomplished author,
" a series of fictions genuinely illustrating our early history through
its romance."
THE EXAMINER.
No grander subject of contemplation, either for tragic interest or
historic importance, can be conceived, than the last years of the
Saxon monarchy in England ; and there are few subjects which it
more behoves Englishmen to understand, or which, up to a very
recent time, they have had such imperfect means of understanding.
" Harold " is a most valuable and scholarlike contribution in aid of
that right understanding of our early history. It is due to the
writer so to speak of it, before we describe its qualities as a romance. .
In " Harold," as in " Rienzi," and " The Last of the Barons," we
have a subject of the highest order in history treated in a manner
worthy of the theme. If we think the latest of the three in some
historical respects the masterpiece, it is because its difficulties were
CRITICAL OPINIONS. O
greater. A successful effort to master them implied that wider and
deeper range of knowledge, which in its turn has brought a more
perfect facility in the use of the materials acquired. The ro-
mantic interest of the book, always in progress, becomes at the last
very strong and full, and serves to make more vivid the impression
which before every other would seem to have been intended by the
novelist, of the actual men and motives which governed this parti-
cular period of history. No one hitherto uninstructed in Saxon
story, will lay down " Harold" without the wish to travel farther in
the field it opens. We never saw the distinction better marked in
any book of its class, between history turned into romance, and the
romance of true history. The interest is at its full when " Harold "
closes. We never laid down a book more reluctantly. The fiction
has but created a healthy appetite for fact, the relish to ascertain and
understand yet more.
" Harold " is as finely done as any character we can remember in
the range of historic fiction. Into the grand, cold, still lines of
history, is breathed the breath of life, full, high-hearted, brave.
The great power of the book is its various and subtle characteriza-
tion of the rude elements of contending barbarism and civilization
in the midst of which its events are laid. The romantic brilliancy,
the gay wit, the daring adventure of the Norman knights, are
seen to have kindred alliance with the solid worth, the rough
good-fellowship, the broad frank humour of the Saxon thanes. NOT
do we lose this masterly discrimination, this fine dramatic genius,
even in the wild Welsh marches, or among the sea- washed hut-
palaces of Norway. Let us show this in two striking scenes. The
first exhibits the Welsh king Gryffyth, hunted by Harold to his
last lair of fortified retreat at the summit of Penmaenmawr, and
brooding over the doom which his last defeat had rendered certain.
Let us remark, that in all the scenes devoted to this fierce high-
hearted chieftain, Sir Edward Lytton has given free play to the
most powerful characteristics of his genius. We remember nothing
finer in all his writings. We cannot quote, as we could have wished,
from the minute and spirited narrative of the battle of Hastings,
where the interest rises and falls, and sways the reader's emotion,
as though the issues were not already known, or might yet by possi-
bility be averted.
DOUGLAS JERROLD'S NEWSPAPER.
It is with real pleasure that we introduce to our readers' notice
a new historical romance by an old master. . . . We presume there
can be but one answer to the question, " Is Bulwer an artist in
historical fiction 1 ?" If, however, there be sceptical critics, who
refuse so high a title to the author of " Rienzi," and " The Last of
6 CRITICAL OPINIONS.
he Barons," we do not hesitate to say that their critical faculty is at
fault if they do not award it to the author of " Harold."
" Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings," is a noble production of
a brilliant but matured intellect. The dramatic power throughout
is strong and vivid, but there is no straining after effect ; all the
striking positions arise naturally, and nearly all are historically true.
There is a thorough nationality a genuine English spirit prevalent
in the book. All the great historic characters, Harold, his father, his
brothers, the Confessor, William the Conqueror, Lanfranc, Harold
Hardrada, the erratic Norwegian monarch, are all flesh and blood
substantialities ; so, likewise, are the more indistinct and traditionary
or purely imaginary creations.
The story of " Harold " is in itself epic, drama, ode, and elegy ; and
it has lost nothing by a careful adherence to historic truth on the part
of the present author. This true story, illustrated by a powerful and
brilliant imagination, claims the attention of all Englishmen ; it is
a tale which throws light upon an age more important than almost
any other in the formation of our people, our language, laws, and
institutions ; an age which has until lately been hidden from
the gaze of any but the most persevering students of antiquity.
We cannot point out any portion of this brilliant and truthful
romance as deficient in interest ; it is all full of matter that comes
home to us all. The half-savage Welsh King Gryffyth in his fastness
of Penmaen Mawr is as fine a sketch of indomitable and uncivi-
lised royalty as ever emanated from pen or pencil ; and the fair
fierce Scandinavian Hardrada, the favourite of the Greek Empress and
the conqueror of Asian and African nations, is a wild and vivid por-
trait, which we recognise as true the moment it is fairly before us.
The author we hope will follow up this, his best historic romance,
with another, illustrative of this comparatively little known age,
which he has studied so diligently and to so good a purpose.
THE SUNDAY TIMES.
Sir Bulwer Lytton belongs to that class of men who estimate
learning at its proper value ; who know what it is to be wise, and
profit by the lessons of wisdom. He writes as a man conscious
of his power boldly, fearlessly, and splendidly. He has not sick-
ened us with hearing his name dinned into our ears, with every two
or three months a new novel. The sound sweeps by at distant
intervals. We feel then a certainty that he has achieved something
worthy of notice, of admiration, or he would not usher it into the
world. Whatever be his choice of subject, whatever the characters
he has to pourtray, he is never tame nor weak. He seems to embel-
lish the time and people of which he treats. Most persons appre-
CRITICAL OPINIONS. 7
bended that " The Last of the Barons " would have proved the last
of his novels ; but, though long absent from the literary arena, he
re-appeared upon it, if possible, better prepared than before. " Ha-
rold," as may be easily imagined from the name, is a tale pitched
far back in the history of England in, to use the words of our
author, the realm of shadows which lies behind the Norman Conquest.
The moment we open " Harold " we seem to be able to re-
animate those periods with life, to re-people the since home-built
fields and woods with a race in accordance with the times, and to
sympathise with their actions and feelings. Sir Bulwer Lytton has,
with a master hand, transported us into the midst of the feuds and
disturbances, the superstitions and bigotries, which belonged to
those '' dark ages." We forget that we are looking into the past, and
scrutinising the actions of men so far removed from our censure, but
enter into the feelings of the period, and look with their eyes upon
all around us. The author's object has certainly to a great extent
been accomplished. The reader who carefully peruses this work
cannot fail to obtain a correct idea of the history of a time, heroic
though remote, and characters which ought to have a household
interest to Englishmen. In Harold our author has produced a
very splendid hero. He continues to secure our sympathies to the
last; but there is so much gentleness blended with his bravery, so
much devotion and disinterestedness, that we hang over his fate with
regret. Edith is a noble girl ; with every attribute of the woman,
she is yet determined, and as firm as a rock when occasion demands
it. The generous sacrifice she makes raises her to the highest pitch
of womanly excellence. Few writers possess the power of delineating
the female character so well as Sir Bulwer Lytton. He has succeeded
beyond his hopes in Edith, who will be admired by every reader.
An air of classical elegance pervades the pages of the work, which
would stamp it as the production of a superior mind, were we uncon-
scious of the source whence it proceeded.
" Harold" is, undoubtedly, the most masterly production of the
season ; profoundly philosophical, it is yet to be appreciated and
understood by the most simple comprehension.
THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS.
The plot of this romance is, to a certain extent, marked out;
so that there is a comparatively narrow field for the author's imagi-
nation ; still, wherever this occurs, we have intense passion and
glowing beauty. The narrative is skilfully and powerfully wrought
up. The work indeed is full of varied entertainment, as well as
that which history teacheth, philosophy by example.
CRITICAL OPINIONS.
THE GUARDIAN.
The author, like the statesman, clings to the last to the field of
his fame. Both sometimes think they have worked their work and
earned their rest, and please themselves for a while with the fancied
enjoyment of an unbroken quiet. Probably no one put much faith
in the announcement, when Bulwer, some years ago, bade farewell
to the public in the " Last of the Barons." A writer so powerful and
so popular as Sir E. L. Bulwer, whom even the abstruse Germans
condescend to recognise and admire, was not likely to retire in hia
vigour from the arena.
Throughout " Harold" there breathes a wholesome, manly energy,
a calm and sober vigour. It combines considerable research and
study with a genuine effort to fall into the spirit of the age de-
lineated, and to scan it with the bold glance of an actor in the scene,
instead of viewing it through the prejudices, often narrow and un-
reasonable, of our distant time. In the present case, the materials
are rich and varied, the picture graphic and striking. The blunt and
simple Saxon, peace-loving, though plain-spoken, stands out in strong
contrast with the polished Norman, chivalric, astute, and grasping ;
while a dark Scandinavian background of fierce, half-heathen Danes
and Norsemen, throws its dark shadows over the nearer figures.
The character and working of the Saxon monarchy is brought out
with considerable skill. We are introduced into Court and Witan,
and become familiar with the great earldoms, which, ever since the
Heptarchy, divided this Island into petty principalities, scarce deign-
ing to recognise their common head in the King at London, except"
when the crown rested on a wiser brow, or the sceptre was swayed by
a stronger hand. Nor is there any lack of distinctive and sustained
character in the actors. The real piety of the Confessor is fairly
allowed, as some compensation for his indifference to the material
welfare of his state. The great Earl Godwin, crafty and impene-
trable, though with all the outward tokens of English heartiness and
simplicity, well sustains that mingled character of good and evil
which so often perplexes us in history. His seven sons have each
their separate portraits ; but it is on Harold that most labour has
been bestowed. His character is confessedly an ideal one ; there is
little by which to track it in history ; but, without this confession, it
would not be difficult to recognise it as a creation of Bulwer's. With
many variations, it is yet cast in his favourite mould. It is Ernest
Maltravers without his lofty scorn, Eugene Aram without his deadly
crime. There is the self-same reliance, the same aspirations after a
sort of stoical perfection, but tempered, in Harold, as the notion of
the Saxon character requires, with much more of simple human
affection and homely joy. In him too, as in Ernest Maltravers, the
philosophy proves insufficient for the man. The self-relying soul is
CRITICAL OPINIONS. 9
tempted by ambition, dimmed by superstition, falls in the moment
of trial, and its clear vision is overcast by the cloud of sin. But the
philosophy is replaced by faith, he rises again into the clear day, and
works his way, though in torture and anguish, like the Red Cross
Knight in the " House of Holinesse," to his destined goal. All earthly
prospects are closed for him ; his country becomes his only mistress
and his only motive ; the darkening shadows close round him till
they wrap him in perfect night on the field of Hastings. Grandeur
and strength are evident in this story, which is skilfully worked
together.
THE MORNING ADVERTISER.
The author has been in the present instance peculiarly happy in
an elaborate picture of an interesting and important epoch of our
national history. To Englishmen it must possess especial interest,
presenting as it does " those last glimpses of the old Saxon monarchy,
which open upon us in the mournful pages of our chroniclers."
It is from such promising and highly attractive materials that the
present delightful and elegant work .... To the admirers of
romance, the love story of Harold and Edith will possess great
and powerful attraction. It is exquisitely and touchingly told,
and is full of passages of beauty and pathos. We shall not attempt
to present even a slight sketch of the tale : it would be useless and
it would not be desirable ; because the entertainment to be derived
from perusal of the work would only be interfered with, and some-
what marred by any previous knowledge of the conclusion of the nar-
rative. Harold stands forth with noble dignity. He is pictured in
masterly style, and the different phases of his character are minutely
and truthfully drawn. The change which comes over his spirit
when ambition has once been kindled in his breast, is finely
sketched ; and its effect in corrupting the genuine simplicity of
his earlier nature is admirably exhibited. Indeed, the volumes
abound in these exquisite glimpses of human nature, and of the
operation of surrounding circumstances thereupon. They manifest
the observation of the author, and the success with which he has
studied men. The companion picture, of Edith, the heroine the
lovely and the loving, the pure, exalted, devoted, patriotic, and self-
sacrificing Edith is remarkably sweet, engaging, impressive, and
affecting. It is well worthy of one who has added so many exqui-
site female creations to the store of fiction. The whole work is
crowded with historical figures, all adding interest and richness to
this glowing romance of the Norman Conquest. The historical
details are narrated in eloquent and highly affecting language ; the
descriptive passages are singularly rich, picturesque, and beautiful.
10 CRITICAL OPINIONS.
By this masterly production Sir Bulwer Lytton has earned for
himself a further and powerful claim to the long-enduring and most
honourable fame among the great imaginative writers of our
country.
THE ATHENAEUM.
In this new romance we draw particular attention to the descrip-
tion of all that relates to the war of Harold against Gryffyth, in
Wales, which is unsurpassed in interest and power by anything
from the pen of Sir Bulwer Lytton. We know nothing much more
animating and inspiring than the whole that relates to Gryffyth, hia
struggles, his defeats, and his sufferings.
THE SUN.
In a work so remarkable as " Harold," perhaps the most in-
teresting feature is the power displayed by the author in his
portraiture of renowned characters. The epoch of Harold the
Dauntless and of William the Conqueror, is one of a very singular
and august character; it is one the mere remembrance of which,
after the lapse of nearly eight centuries, is fraught with so much
that is noble, grand, heroic, and unfortunate, on the part of our
Saxon ancestors, as well as with so much that is glorious, daring,
and successful, on the part of our Norman forefathers, that it
inflames the heart, and arouses the sympathies, and elevates the
patriotism of the most phlegmatic. " Harold," if not the greatest,
is assuredly one of the greatest works yet written by Sir Bulwer
Lytton. And already he has written with an eloquence, and a
versatility, and an erudition, and an inspiration the inspiration of
a scholarly and cultivated genius such as have placed his name
conspicuously in the foremost rank of modern English literature.
THE WEEKLY CHRONICLE.
To the last page we read " Harold" with interest. It has realised
and even surpassed our hopes we give it a hearty, unequivocal
welcome. It was natural to look for a skilful achievement at the
hands of the author of the " Last of the Barons." He had already
dealt with English history in a way to show that he comprehended
its spirit, and was able to fix and vivify its details. But the subject
CRITICAL OPINIONS. 11
now chosen was~peculiar full of difficulties, and made demands on
powers and capacities yet undisplayed. The time so remote!, the
features of the actors so gaunt and rigid in their grim proportions
above all, the epic interest of events, which lessen their pliability
for the purposes of fiction, are dealt with and mastered by
ingenious treatment. Attempting a task in which the chances of
failure were present in almost overwhelming proportion, not only
has the author not failed, but he has achieved a success which
to us is surprising. We look upon "Harold" as crowning his
labours, and completing the circle of his literary reputation.
Edith the fair, " that rose beneath the funeral cedar," whom Harold
sacrifices, with her own consent, either to his ambition or his love
of country, yet who hovers about his path like a guardian angel, and
recovers his corpse to die by his side, is a fine creation. Great
tact is shown in dealing with this legend, in purifying it of all
grosser taint, and yet in preserving its warmth of colouring. Edith
is an anticipation of the dames of chivalry, as stainless in her
honour as she is tender in her love. Perhaps, however, the finest
conception in the whole book is the character and attitude of Harold
Hardrada. That hero of the north, whose life was a romance, whose
adventures, as he ranged through Europe and Asia, were the theme
of the patriot songs of the Scald, is justly introduced in connexion
with Tostig. If Harold is received (and how can it be otherwise 1 ?)
with general favour by the English public, the author promises
that he will further illustrate English history.
THE CEITIC.
" Harold " differs materially from any other of Sir E. B. Lytton'a
fictions. It is in its design an epic, and in its composition a
chronicle. The author has successfully endeavoured to combine the
unity of the one with the individuality of the other. The period
chosen is peculiarly adapted for an epic, whether in prose or in
poetry. The catastrophe is a great historical event, gradually
evolved out of the incidents that occupy the narrative. The in-
terest rises with every chapter, and at the close becomes intense. But
Sir E, B. Lytton has, in this romance, attempted much more than
merely an attractive story ; he has sought to embody history, to
present an accurate as well as a vivid and life-like picture of the
times ; to realise them, as it were, to his readers' imagination and
to his own.
" Harold " is something more than a sofa-book. It is a work for
the study, and might worthily take its place upon the historical
shelf in the library. As it is a book which will be read by every
body, we will not attempt to anticipate their enjoyment by any
12 CRITICAL OPINIONS.
account of the plot; suffice it to observe that Britons, Saxons,
Normans, and Northmen, are introduced with their several distinc-
tive characteristics, giving immense variety to the picture ; and that
" Harold " is sketched with a mastery of minute traits of character,
gradually developed, which the author has not surpassed, if he has
equalled, in any former fiction.
THE SPECTATEUR DE LONDEES.
Si " Harold 1'Indomptable " n'est pas le plus important ouvrage
du genre, il est, sans contredit, 1'ceuvre la plus remarquable de Sir
Edward Bulwer. Nous regrettons que le defaut d'espace nous empeche
de citer quelques passages de cette production, dans laquelle on ne
peut surtout s'empficher d'admirer le talent que 1'auteur a deploye
dans les portraits des principaux personnages.
BOOK I.
THE NORMAN VISITOR, THE SAXON KING, AND
THE DANISH PKOPHETES3.
VOL. I.
HAROLD,
LAST OF THE SAXON KINGS.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
MERRY was the month of May in the year of our
Lord 1052. Few were the boys, and few the
lasses, who overslept themselves on the first of
that buxom month. Long ere the dawn, the
young crowds had sought mead and woodland, to
cut poles and wreathe flowers. Many a mead
then lay fair and green beyond the village of
Charing, and behind the isle of Thorney, (amidst
the brakes and briars of which were then rising
fast and fair the Hall and Abbey of Westminster ;)
many a wood lay dark in the starlight, along the
slopes, rising above the dank Strand, with its
B 2
4 HAROLD.
numerous canals or dykes, and on either side of
the great road into Kent : flutes and horns
sounded far and near through the green places,
and laughter and song, and the crash of breaking
boughs.
As the dawn came grey up the east, arch and
blooming faces bowed down to bathe in the May
dew. Patient oxen stood dozing by the hedge-
rows, all fragrant with blossoms, till the gay
spoilers of the May came forth from the woods
with lusty poles, followed by girls with laps
full of flowers,* which they had caught asleep.
The poles were pranked with nosegays, and a
chaplet was hung round the horns of every ox.
Then, towards day-break, the processions streamed
back into the city, through all its gates; boys,
with their May-gads (peeled willow wands twined
with cowslips) going before; and clear through
the lively din of the horns and flutes, and amidst
the moving grove of branches, choral voices,
singing eome early Saxon stave, precursor of the
later song
(f We have brought the summer home."
HAROLD. 5
Often in the good old days before the Monk-
kino- reigned, kings and ealdermen had thus
O O ' tJ
gone forth a-maying ; but these merriments,
savouring of heathenesse, that good prince mis-
liked: nevertheless the song was as blithe, and the
boughs were as green, as if king and ealderman
had walked in the train.
On the great Kent road, the fairest meads for
the cowslip, and the greenest woods for the bough,
surrounded a large building that once had be-
longed to some voluptuous Roman, now all defaced
and despoiled ; but the boys and the lasses shunned
those demesnes ; and even in their mirth, as they
passed homeward along the road, and saw near
the ruined walls, and timbered outbuildings, grey
Druid stones (that spoke of an age before either
Saxon or Roman invader,) gleaming through the
dawn the song was hushed the very youngest
crossed themselves; and the elder, in solemn
whispers, suggested the precaution of changing
the song into a psalm. For in that old building
dwelt Hilda, of famous and dark repute; Hilda,
who, despite all law and canon, was still believed
to practise the dismal arts of the Wicca and
6 HAROLD.
Morthwyrtha, (the witch and worshipper of the
dead.) But once out of sight of those fearful
precincts, the psalm was forgotten, and again
broke, loud, clear, and silvery, the joyous chorus.
So, entering London about sunrise, doors and
windows were duly wreathed with garlands ; and
every village in the suburbs had its May-pole,
which stood in its place all the year. On that
happy day labour rested; ceorl and theowe had alike
a holiday to dance, and tumble round the May-pole ;
and thus, on the first of May, Youth, and Mirth,
and Music, " brought the summer home."
The next day you might still see where the
buxom bands had been; you might track their
way by fallen flowers, and green leaves, and the
deep ruts made by oxen, (yoked often in teams
from twenty to forty, in the wains that carried
home the poles ;) and fair and frequent through-
out the land, from any eminence, you might
behold the hamlet swards still crowned with the
May trees, and air still seemed fragrant with
their garlands.
It is on that second day of May, 1052, that my
story opens, at the House of Hilda, the reputed
HAROLD. 7
Morthwyrtha. It stood upon a gentle and ver-
dant height ; and, even through all the barbarous
mutilation it had undergone from barbarian
hands, enough was left strikingly to contrast the
ordinary abodes of the Saxon.
The remains of Roman art were indeed still
numerous throughout England, but it happened
rarely that the Saxon had chosen his home amidst
the villas of those noble and primal conquerors.
Our first forefathers were more inclined to de-
stroy than to adapt.
By what chance this building became an
exception to the ordinary rule, it is now im-
possible to conjecture, but from a very remote
period it had sheltered successive races of Teuton
lords.
The changes wrought in the edifice were mourn-
ful and grotesque. What was now the Hall, had
evidently been the atrium ; the round shield,
with its pointed boss, the spear, sword, and
small curved saex of the early Teuton, were sus-
pended upon the columns on which once had been
wreathed the flowers ; in the centre of the floor,
where fragments of the old mosaic still glistened
8 HAROLD.
from the hard-pressed paving of clay and lime,
what now was the fire-place, had been the implu-
vium, and the smoke went sullenly through the
aperture in the roof, made of old to receive the
rains of heaven. Around the Hall were still left
the old cubicula or dormitories, (small, high, and
lighted but from the doors,) which now served
for the sleeping rooms of the humbler guest or
the household servant ; while, at the farther
end of the Hall, the wide space between the
columns, which had once given ample vista from
graceful awnings into tablinum and viridarium,
was filled up with rude rubble and Roman
bricks, leaving but a low, round, arched door,
that still led into the tablinum. But that
tablinum, formerly the gayest state-rooin of the
Roman lord, was now filled with various lum-
ber, piles of faggots, and farming utensils. On
either side this desecrated apartment, stretched,
to the right, the old lararium, stripped of its
ancient images of ancestor and god ; to the
left, what had been the gynosciura (women's
apartment.)
The lararium had been, however, converted
HAROLD.
into a chamber of state by some early Saxon
Thegn, or Ealder, evidently before the introduc-
tion of Christianity ; for, here and there, over the
smooth glaze, once richly painted with subjects
from classic mythology and song, had been daubed,
by some grim artist hand, sketches intended to
represent the white horse of Hengist, or the black
raven of Woden; Runic inscriptions, partially
obliterated, ran ruthlessly through the midst of a
faded entablature of Cupids at play ; and ghastly
wolves' heads, half destroyed by time and decay,
moth and worm, suspended over an ancient uncouth
chair of stone, had mouldered there in melancholy
pride since the day when those kindred animals
had been unnaturally exterminated by their Saxon
brotherhood. All these rooms formerly opening
by doors, first upon the open gallery, called
viridarium, next upon a peristyle, or colon-
nade, were now, with the exception of the central
tablinum (which still retained the door), closed
by windows ; that to the ancient lararium was
merely defended from the rains by lattice-work,
that to the gynoecium was glazed with a dull
grey glass. (Glass, introduced about the time of
B 3
10 HAROLD.
Bede, was more common then,* in the houses of
the wealthy, whether for vessels or windows, than
in the much later age of the gorgeous Plantaga-
nets, though to the wealthy its use was still con-
fined.) The ancient peristyle was of vast extent ;
one side of it was now converted into stabling,
sties for swine, and stalls for oxen. On the other
side was constructed a Christian chapel, made of
rough oak planks, fastened by plates at the top,
and with a roof of thatched reeds. The columns
and wall at the extreme end of the peristyle were a
mass of ruins, through the gigantic rents of which
loomed a grassy hillock, its sides partially covered
with clumps of furze. On this hillock were the
mutilated remains of an ancient Druidical crom-
mel, in the centre of which (near a funeral mound,
or barrow, with the bautastein, or gravestone, of
some early Saxon chief at one end) had been
sacrilegiously placed an altar to Thor, as was
* Alfred, in one of his poems, introduces glass as a familiar
illustration :
" So oft the mild sea
With south wind ,
As grey glass clear
Becomes grimly troubled." SHAR. TURNER.
HAROLD. 1 1
apparent both from the shape, from a rude,
half-obliterated, sculptured relief of the god,
with his lifted hammer, and a few Runic let-
ters. Amidst the temple of the Briton the
Saxon had reared the shrine of his triumphant
war god.
Now still, amidst the ruins of that extreme side
of the peristyle which opened to this hillock, were
left, first, an ancient Roman fountain, that now
served to water the swine, and next, a small
sacellum, or fane to Bacchus (as relief and frieze,
yet spared, betokened) : thus the eye, at one sur-
vey, beheld the shrines of four creeds ; the Druid,
mystical and symbolical ; the Roman, sensual, but
humane ; the Teutonic, ruthless and destroying ;
and, latest risen and surviving all, though as yet
with but little of its gentler influence over the
deeds of men, the edifice of the Faith of Peace.
Across the peristyle, theowes and swineherds
passed to and fro : in the atrium, men of a higher
class, half armed, were, some drinking, some at
dice, some playing with huge hounds, or caress-
ing the hawks that stood grave and solemn on
their perches.
12 HAROLD.
The lararium was deserted; the gyncecium
was still, as in the Roman time, the favoured
apartment of the female portion of the house-
hold, and indeed bore the same name,* and
with the groupe there assembled we have now
to do.
The appliances of the chamber showed the rank
and wealth of the owner. At that period the
domestic luxury of the rich was infinitely greater
than has been generally supposed. The indus-
try of the women decorated wall and furni-
ture with needlework and hangings : and as a
Thegn forfeited his rank if he lost his lands, so
the higher orders of an aristocracy rather of
wealth than birth, had, usually, a certain portion
of superfluous riches, which served to flow to-
wards the bazaars of the East, and the nearer
markets of Flanders and Saracenic Spain.
In this room the walls were draped with silken
hangings richly embroidered. On a beaufet were
ranged horns tipped with silver, and a few vessels
of pure gold. A small circular table in the centre
* " The apartment in which the Anglo-Saxon women lived,
was called Gynecium." FOSBROOKE, vol. ii. p. 570.
HAROLD. 13
was supported by symbolical monsters quaintly
carved. At one side of the wall, on a long settle,
some half-a-dozen handmaids were employed in
spinning ; remote from them, and near the win-
dow, sat a woman advanced in years, and of a
mien and aspect singularly majestic. Upon a
small tripod before her was a Runic manuscript,
and an inkstand of elegant form, with a silver
graphium, or pen. At her feet reclined a girl
somewhat about the age of sixteen, her long fair
hair parted across her forehead, and falling far
down her shoulders. Her dress was a linen under
tunic, with long sleeves, rising high to the throat,
and, without one of the modern artificial restraints
of the shape, the simple belt sufficed to show
the slender proportions and delicate outline of the
wearer. The colour of the dress was of the
purest white, but its hems, or borders, were richly
embroidered. This girl's beauty was something
marvellous. In a land proverbial for fair women.,
it had already obtained her the name of " the
fair." In that beauty were blended, not as yet
without a struggle for mastery, the two expres-
sions seldom united in one countenance, the soft
14 HAROLD.
and the noble ; indeed in the whole aspect there
was the evidence of some internal struggle ; the
intelligence was not yet complete ; the soul and
heart were not yet united : and Edith the
Christian maid dwelt in the home of Hilda the
heathen prophetess. The girl's blue eyes, rendered
dark by the shade of their long lashes, were fixed
intently upon the stern and troubled countenance
which was bent upon her own, but bent with that
abstract gaze which shows that the soul is absent
from the sight. So sate Hilda, and so reclined
her grandchild Edith.
" Grandam," said the girl in a low voice, and
after a long pause ; and the sound of her voice so
startled the handmaids, that every spindle stopped
for a moment, and then plied with renewed ac-
tivity ; " Grandam, what troubles you are you
not thinking of the great Earl and his fair sons,
now outlawed far over the wide seas?"
As the girl spoke, Hilda started slightly, like
one awakened from a dream ; and when Edith had
concluded her question, she rose slowly to the
height of a statue, unbowed by her years, and far
towering above even the ordinary standard of
HAROLD. 15
men ; and turning from the child, her eye fell
upon the row of silent maids, each at her rapid,
noiseless, stealthy work. " Ho ! " said she ; her
cold and haughty eye gleaming as she spoke ;
" yesterday, they brought home the summer to-
day, ye aid to bring home the winter. Weave
well heed well warf and woof; Skulda* is
amongst ye, and her pale fingers guide the web ! "
The maidens lifted not their eyes, though in
every cheek the colour paled at the words of the
mistress. The spindles revolved, the thread shot,
and again there was silence more freezing than
before.
" Askest thou," said Hilda at length, passing to
the child, as if the question so long addressed to
her ear had only just reached her mind ; " askest
thou if I thought of the Earl and his fair sons ?
yea, I heard the smith welding arms on the anvil,
and the hammer of the shipwright shaping strong
ribs for the horses of the sea. Ere the reaper
has bound his sheaves, Earl Godwin will scare
the Normans in the halls of the Monk King,
as the hawk scares the brood in the dovecot.
* Skulda, the Norna, or Fate, that presided over the future.
] 6 HAROLD.
Weave well, heed well warf and woof, nimble
maidens strong be the texture, for biting is the
worm."
"What weave they, then, good grandmother?"
asked the girl, with wonder and awe in her soft
mild eyes.
" The winding-sheet of the great !"
Hilda's lips closed, but her eyes, yet brighter
than before, gazed upon space, and her pale hand
seemed tracing letters, like runes, in the air.
Then slowly she turned, and looked forth
through the dull window. " Give me my cover-
chief and my staff," said she quickly.
Every one of the handmaids, blithe for excuse
to quit a task which seemed recently commenced,
and was certainly not endeared to them by the
knowledge of its purpose communicated to them
by the lady, rose to obey.
Unheeding the hands that vied with each
other, Hilda took the hood, and drew it partially
over her brow. Leaning lightly on a long staff,
the head of which formed a raven, carved from
some wood stained black, she passed into the hall,
and thence through the desecrated tablinum, into
HAROLD. 17
the mighty court formed by the shattered peri-
style ; there she stopped, mused a moment, and
called on Edith. The girl was soon by her side.
"Come with me. There is a face you shall
see but twice in life ; this day," and Hilda
paused, and the rigid and almost colossal beauty
of her countenance softened.
" And when again, my grandmother ?"
" Child, put thy warm hand in mine. So ! the
vision darkens from me. When again, saidst
thou, Edith ? alas, I know not."
While thus speaking, Hilda passed slowly by
the Roman fountain and the heathen fane, and
ascended the little hillock. There, on the opposite
side of the summit, backed by the Druid crom-
mell and the Teuton altar, she seated herself
deliberately on the sward.
A few daisies, primroses, and cowslips grew
around ; these Edith began to pluck. Singing,
as she wove, a simple song, that, not more by the
dialect than the sentiment, betrayed its origin in
the ballad of the Norse,* which had, in its more
* The historians of our literature have not done justice to the
great influence which the poetry of the Danes has had upon our
18 HAROLD.
careless composition, a character quite distinct
from the artificial poetry of the Saxons. The
song may be thus imperfectly rendered :
" Merrily the throstle sings
In the merry May ;
The throstle singeth to my ear :
My heart is far away.
Merrily with blossom boughs
Laugheth out the tree ;
Mine eyes upon the blossoms look :
My heart is on the sea.
My May is not the blossom bough
The music in the sky :
My May was in the winter frost,
When One was smiling by."
As she came to the last line, her soft low voice
seemed to awaken a chorus of sprightly horns and
trumpets, and certain other wind instruments pecu-
early national muse. I have little doubt but that to that source
may be traced the minstrelsy of our borders, and the Scottish
Lowlands ; while, even in the central counties, the example and
exertions of Canute must have had considerable effect on the
taste and spirit of our Scops. That great prince afforded the
amplest encouragement to Scandinavian poetry, and Olaus name?
eight Danish poets, who nourished at his court.
HAROLD. 19
liar to the music of that day. The hillock bor-
dered the high road to London which then
wound through wastes of forest land and now
emerging from the trees to the left, appeared
a goodly company. First came two riders
abreast, each holding a banner. On the one was
depicted the cross and five martlets, the device of
Edward, afterwards surnamed the Confessor : on
the other, a plain broad cross with a deep border
round it, and the streamer shaped into sharp
points.
The first was familiar to Edith, who dropped her
garland to gaze on the approaching pageant ; the
last was strange to her. She had been accustomed
to see the banner of the great Earl Godwin by
the side of the Saxon king ; and she said, almost
indignantly,
" Who dares, sweet grandame, to place banner
or pennon where Earl Godwin's ought to float ? "
" Peace," said Hilda, " peace and look."
Immediately behind the standard-bearers came
two figures strangely dissimilar indeed in mien,
in years, in bearing : each bore on his left wrist
a hawk. The one was mounted on a milk-white
20 HAROLD.
palfrey, with housings inlaid with gold and uncut
jewels. Though not really old for he was much
on this side of sixty both his countenance and
carriage evinced age. His complexion was ex-
tremely fair indeed, and his cheeks ruddy ; but
the visage was long and deeply furrowed, and
from beneath a bonnet not dissimilar to those in
use among the Scotch, streamed hair long and
white as snow, mingling with a large and forked
beard. White seemed his chosen colour. White
was the upper tunic clasped on his shoulder with
a broad ouche or brooch ; white the woollen leg-
gings fitted to somewhat emaciated limbs; and
white the mantle, though broidered with a broad
hem of gold and purple. The fashion of his dress
was that which well became a noble person, but
it suited ill the somewhat frail and graceless figure
of the rider. Nevertheless, as Edith saw him, she
rose, with an expression of deep reverence on her
countenance, and saying, "It is our lord the
King," advanced some steps down the hillock, and
there stood, her arms folded on her breast, and
quite forgetful, in her innocence and youth, that
she had left the house without the cloak and
HAROLD. 21
coverchief which were deemed indispensable to
the fitting appearance of maid and matron when
they were seen abroad.
"Fair sir, and brother mine," said the deep
voice of the younger rider, in the Romance or
Xorman tongue, "I have heard that the small
people of whom my neighbours, the Bretons, tell
us much,, abound greatly in this fair land of yours;
and if I were not by the side of one whom no
creature unassoilzed and unbaptized dare ap-
proach, by sweet St. Yalery I should say yonder
stands one of those same gentilles fees !"
King Edward's eye followed the direction of his
companion's outstretched hand, and his quiet brow
slightly contracted as he beheld the young form
of Edith standing motionless a few yards before
him, with the warm May wind lifting and playing
with her long golden locks. He checked his pal-
frey, and murmured some Latin words which the
knight beside him recognized as a prayer, and to
which, doffing his cap, he added an Amen, in a
tone of such unctuous gravity, that the royal saint
rewarded him with a faint approving smile, and
an affectionate " Bene, bene, Piosissime."
22 HAROLD.
Then inclining his palfrey's head towards the
knoll, he motioned to the girl to approach him.
Edith, with a heightened colour obeyed, and came
to the roadside. The standard-bearers halted, as
did the king and his comrade the procession be-
hind halted thirty knights, two bishops, eight
abbots, all on fiery steeds and in Norman garb
squires and attendants on foot a long and pom-
pous retinue they halted all. Only a stray hound
or two broke from the rest, and wandered into the
forest land with heads trailing.
" Edith, my child," said Edward, still in Nor-
man-French, for he spoke his own language with
hesitation, and the Romance tongue, which had
long been familiar to the higher classes in Eng-
land, had, since his accession, become the only
language in use at court, and as such every one of
' Eorl-kind' was supposed to speak it. " Edith,
my child, thou hast not forgotten my lessons, I
trow; thou singest the hymns I gave thee, and
neglectest not to wear the relic round thy neck."
The girl hung her head, and spoke not.
" How comes it, then," continued the King, with
a voice to which he in vain endeavoured to impart
HAROLD. 23
an accent of severity, " how comes it, O little one,
that thou, whose thoughts should be lifted already
above this carnal world, and eager for the service
of Mary the chaste and blessed, standest thus
hoodless and alone on the waysides, a mark for
the eyes of men ? go to, it is naught."
Thus reproved, and in presence of so large and
brilliant a company, the girl's colour went and
came, her breast heaved high, but with an effort
beyond her age she checked her tears, and said
meekly, " My grandmother, Hilda, bade me come
with her, and I came."
" Hilda !" said the King, backing his palfrey with
apparent perturbation, "but Hilda is not with
thee ; I see her not."
As he spoke, Hilda rose, and so suddenly did
her tall form appear on the brow of the hill, that
it seemed as if she had emerged from the earth.
With a light and rapid stride she gained the side
of her grandchild ; and after a slight and haughty
reverence, said, " Hilda is here ; what wants
Edward the King with his servant Hilda ? "
" Nought, nought," said the King, hastily ;
and something like fear passed over his placid
24 HAROLD.
countenance ; " save, indeed," he added, with a
reluctant tone, as of that of a man who obeys
his conscience against his inclination, " that I
would pray thee to keep this child pure to thresh-
hold and altar, as is meet for one whom our
Lady, the Virgin, in due time, will elect to her
service."
" Not so, son of Etheldred, son of Woden,
the last descendant of Penda should live, not to
glide a ghost amidst cloisters, but to rock children
for war in their father's shield. Few men are
there yet like the men of old ; and while the foot
of the foreigner is on the Saxon soil no branch
on the stem of Woden should be nipped in the
leaf."
" Per la resplendar De,* bold dame," cried the
knight by the side of Edward, while a lurid flush
passed over his cheek of bronze ; " but thou art
too glib of tongue for a subject, and pratest over-
much of Woden, the Paynim, for the lips of a
Christian matron."
Hilda met the flashing eye of the knight with a
* " By the splendour of God."
HAROLD. 25
brow of lofty scorn, on which still a certain terror
was visible.
" Child," she said, putting her hand upon
Edith's fair locks ; " this is the man thou shalt
see but twice in thy life; look up, and mark
well!"
Edith instinctively raised her eyes, and, once
fixed upon the knight, they seemed chained as by
a spell. His vest, of a cramoisay so dark, that it
seemed black beside the snowy garb of the Con-
fessor, was edged by a deep band of embroidered
gold ; leaving perfectly bare his firm, full throat
firm and full as a column of granite, a short
jacket or mantcline of fur, pendant from the
shoulders, left developed in all its breadth a
breast, that seemed meet to stay the march of an
army ; and on the left arm, curved to support the
falcon, the vast muscles rose, round and gnarled,
through the close sleeve.
In height, he was really but little above the
stature of many of those present;* nevertheless,
so did his port, his air, the nobility of his large
* See Note ( A.) at the end of this Volume.
VOL. I. C
26 HAROLD.
proportions, fill the eye, that he seemed to tower
immeasurably above the rest.
His countenance was yet more remarkable than
his form; still in the prime of youth, he seemed
at the first glance youngei', at the second older,
than he was. At the first glance younger; for
his face was perfectly shaven, without even the
moustache which the Saxon courtier, in imi-
tating the Norman, still declined to surrender ;
and the smooth visage and bare throat sufficed in
themselves to give the air of youth to that domi-
nant and imperious presence. His small skull-
cap left unconcealed his forehead, shaded with
short thick hair, uncurled, but black and glossy
as the wings of a raven. It was on that forehead
that time had set its trace; it was knit into a
frown over the eyebrows ; lines deep as furrows
crossed its broad, but not elevated expanse. That
frown spoke of hasty ire and the habit of stern
command ; those furrows spoke of deep thought
and plotting scheme: the one betrayed but tem-
per and circumstance; the other, more noble,
spake of the character and the intellect. The
face was square, and the regard lion-like; the
HAROLD. 27
mouth small, and even beautiful in outline had
a sinister expression in its exceeding firmness ;
and the jaw vast, solid, as if bound in iron
showed obstinate, ruthless, determined will ; such
a jaw as belongs to the tiger amongst beasts, and
the conqueror amongst men ; such as it is seen
in the effigies of Caesar, of Cortes, of Napoleon.
That presence was well calculated to command
the admiration of women, not less than the awe of
men. But no admiration mingled with the terror
that seized the girl as she gazed long and wistful
upon the knight. The fascination of the serpent
on the bird held her mute and frozen. Never
was that face forgotten; often in after-life it
haunted her in the noonday, it frowned upon her
dreams.
" Fair child," said the knight, fatigued at length
by the obstinacy of the gaze, while that smile
peculiar to those who have commanded men
relaxed his brow, and restored the native beauty
to his lip, " fair child, learn not from thy peevish
grandame so uncourteous a lesson as hate of the
foreigner. As thoit growest into womanhood,
know that Norman knight is sworn slave to lady
c 2
28 HAROLD.
fair ; " and, doffing his cap, he took from it an
uncut jewel, set in Byzantine filagree work.
" Hold out thy lap, my child ; and when thou
hearest the foreigner scoffed, set this bauble in
thy locks, and think kindly of William, Count of
the Normans."*
He dropped the jewel on the ground as he
spoke ; for Edith, shrinking and unsoftened to-
wards him, held no lap to receive it ; and Hilda,
to whom Edward had been speaking in a low
voice, advanced to the spot, and stnick the jewel
with her staff under the hoofs of the King's
palfrey.
" Son of Emma, the Norman woman, who sent
thy youth into exile, trample on the gifts of thy
Norman kinsman. And if, as men say, thou art of
such gifted holiness that Heaven grants thy hand
the power to heal, and thy voice the power to
curse, heal thy country, and curse the stranger ! "
* It is noticeable that the Norman dukes did not call them-
selves Counts or Dnkes of Normandy, but of the Normans ; and
the first Anglo-Norman kings, till Richard the First, styled
themselves Kings of the English, not of England. In both Saxon
and Norman chronicles, William usually bears the title of Count,
(Comes), but in this tale he will be generally called Duke, as
more familiar to us.
HAROLD. 29
She extended her right arm to William as she
spoke, and such was the dignity of her passion,
and such its force, that an awe fell upon all.
Then dropping her hood over her face, she slowly
turned away, regained the summit of the knoll,
and stood erect beside the altar of the Northern
god, her face invisible through the hood drawn
completely over it, and her form motionless as
a statue.
" Ride on," said Edward, crossing himself.
" Now by the bones of St. Valery," said
William, after a pause, in which his dark keen eye
noted the gloom upon the King's gentle face, " it
moves much my simple wonder how even pre-
sence so saintly can hear without wrath words so
unleal and foul. Gramercy, 'an the proudest dame
in Normandy (and I take her to be wife to my
stoutest baron, William Fitzosborne), had spoken
thus to me "
" Thou wouldst have done as I, my brother,"
interrupted Edward ; " prayed to our Lord to
pardon her, and rode on pitying."
William's lip quivered with ire, yet he curbed
the reply that sprang to it, and he looked witji
30 HAROLD.
affection, genuinely more akin to admiration than
scorn, upon his fellow prince. For, fierce and
relentless as the Duke's deeds were, his faith was
notably sincere ; and while this made, indeed, the
prince's chief attraction to the pious Edward, so,
on the other hand, this bowed the Duke in a kind
of involuntary and superstitious homage to the
man who sought to square deeds to faith. It is
ever the case with stern and stormy spirits, that the
meek ones which contrast them steal strangely into
their affections. This principle of human nature
can alone account for the enthusiastic devotion
which the mild sufferings of the Saviour awoke in
the fiercest exterminators of the North. In pro-
portion, often, to the warrior's ferocity, was his
love to that Divine model, at whose sufferings he
wept, to whose tomb he wandered barefoot, and
whose example of compassionate forgiveness he
would have thought himself the basest of men to
follow !
"Now, by my Halidame, I honour and love
thee, Edward," cried the Duke, with a heartiness
more frank than was usual to him ; " and were I
thy subject, woe to man or woman that wagged
HAROLD. 31
tongue to wound thee by a breath. But who and
what is this same Hilda? one of thy kith and
kin ? surely nought less than kingly blood runs
so bold?"
"William, lien aime,"* said the King, "it is
true that Hilda, whom the saints assoil, is of
kingly blood, though not of our kingly line. It is
feared," added Edward, in a timid whisper, as he
cast a hurried glance around him, " that this
unhappy woman has ever been more addicted to
the rites of her pagan ancestors than to those of
Holy Church; and men do say that she hath
thus acquired from fiend or charm secrets devoutly
to be eschewed by the righteous. Natheless let
us rather hope that her mind is somewhat dis-
traught with her misfortunes."
The King sighed, and the Duke sighed too, but
the Duke's sigh spoke impatience. He swept be-
hind him a stern and withering look towards the
proud figure of Hilda, still seen through the
* The few expressions borrowed occasionally from the Romance
tongue, to give individuality to the speaker, will generally be
translated into modern French ; for the same reason as Saxon
is rendered into modern English, viz., that the words may be
intelligible to the reader.
32 HAROLD.
glades, and said in a sinister voice : " Of kingly
blood ; but this witch of Woden hath no sons or
kinsmen, I trust, who pretend to the throne of
the Saxon?"
" She is sibbe to Githa, wife of Godwin," an-
swered the King, " and that is her most perilous
connexion ; for the banished Earl, as thou know-
est, did not pretend to fill the throne, but he was
content with nought less than governing our
people."
The king then proceeded to sketch an outline of
the history of Hilda, but his narrative was so de-
formed both by his superstitions and prejudices,
and his imperfect information in all the leading
events and characters in his own kingdom, that
we will venture to take upon ourselves his task ;
and while the train rides on through glade and
mead, we will briefly narrate, from our own special
sources of knowledge, the chronicle of Hilda, the
Scandinavian Vala.
CHAPTER II.
A MAGNIFICENT race of men were those war-
sons of the old North, whom our popular histories,
so superficial in their accounts of this age, include
in the common name of the " Danes." They re-
plunged the nations over which they swept into
barbarism ; but from that barbarism they repro-
duced the noblest elements of civilization. Swede
Norwegian, and Dane, differing in some minor
points, when closely examined had yet one com-
mon character viewed at a distance. They had
the same prodigious energy, the same passion for
freedom, individual and civil, the same splendid
errors in the thirst for fame and the "point of
honour ; " and above all, as a main cause of civil-
ization, they were wonderfully pliant and mal-
leable in their admixtures with the peoples they
c3
34 HAROLD.
overran. This is their true distinction from the
stubborn Celt, who refuses to mingle, and disdains
to improve.
" Frankes li Archeveske li Dus Ron bauptiza."*
Frankes, the archbishop, baptized Rolf-ganger ;
and within a little more than a century afterwards,
the descendants of those terrible heathens, who
had spared neither priest nor altar, were the most
redoubtable defenders of the Christian Church;
their old language forgotten, (save by a few in the
town of Bayeux), their ancestral names, f (save
among a few of the noblest), changed into French
titles, and little else but the indomitable valour
of the Scandinavian remained unaltered amongst
the arts and manners of the Frankish-Nor-
man.
In like manner their kindred tribes, who had
* ROMAN DE Rot;, Part I. verse 1914.
t The reason why the Normans lost their old names is to be
found in their conversion to Christianity. They were baptized ;
and Franks, as their godfathers, gave them new appellations.
Thus, Charles the Simple insists that Rolf-ganger shall change
his law (creed,) and his name, and Rolf or Rou is christened
Robert. A few of those who retained Scandinavian names at
he time of the Conquest will be cited in vol. iii.
HAROLD. 35
poured into Saxon England to ravage and lay
desolate, had no sooner obtained from Alfred the
Great permanent homes, than they became
perhaps the most powerful, and in a short time,
not the least patriotic, part of the Anglo Saxon
population.* At the time our story opens, these
Northmen, under the common name of Danes,
were peaceably settled in no less than fifteenf
* Thus, in 991, about a century after the first settlement, the
Danes of East Anglia gave the only efficient resistance to the
host of the Vikings under Justin and Gurthmund ; and Brithnoth,
celebrated by the Saxon poet, as a Saxon par excellence, the
heroic defender of his native soil, was, in all probability, of
Danish descent. Mr. Laing, in his preface to his translation
of the Heiinskringla, truly observes, " that the rebellions
against William the Conqueror, and his successors, appear to
have been almost always raised, or mainly supported, in the coun-
ties of recent Danish descent, not in those peopled by the old
Anglo-Saxon race."
The portion of Mercia consisting of the burghs of Lancaster,
Lincoln, Nottingham, Stamford, and Derby, became a Danish
State in A. D. 877; East Anglia, consisting of Cambridge,
Suffolk, Norfolk, and the Isle of Ely, in A.D. 87980 ; and the
vast territory of Northumbria, extending all north the Humbcr,
into all that part of Scotland south of the Frith, in A.D. 876.
See PALGRAVE'S Commonwealth, But, besides their more
allotted settlements, the Danes were interspersed as landowners
all over England.
f Bromton Chron. viz., Essex, Middlesex, Suffolk, Norfolk,
Herts, Cambridgeshire, Hants, Lincoln, Notts, Derby, Northamp-
ton, Leicestershire, Bucks, Beds, and the vast territory called
Northumbria.
36 HAROLD.
counties in England ; their nobles abounded in
towns and cities beyond the boundaries of those
counties which bore the distinct appellation of
Danelagh. They were numerous in London ; in
the precincts of which they had their own burial-
place, to the chief municipal court of which they
gave their own appellation the Hustings.* Their
power in the national assembly of the Witan
had decided the choice of kings. Thus, with
some differences of law and dialect, these once
turbulent invaders had amalgamated amicably
with the native race.f And to this day, the
gentry, traders, and farmers of more than
one third of England, and in those counties
most confessed to be in the van of improve-
ment, descend, from Saxon mothers indeed, but
from Viking fathers. There was in reality little
* PALGRAVE'S Ifiatory of England, p. 315.
f The laws collected by Edward the Confessor, and in later
times so often and so fondly referred to, contain many intro-
duced by the Danes, which had grown popular with the Saxon
people. Much which we ascribe to the Norman Conqueror, pre-
existed in the Anglo-Danish, and may be found both in Nor-
mandy, and parts of Scandinavia, to this day. See HAKEWILL'S
Treatise on the Antiquity of Laws in this Island, in HBARNE'S
Curious Discourses.
HAROLD. 37
difference in race between the Norman knight of
the time of Henry I. and the Saxon franklin of Nor-
folk and York. Both on the mother's side would
most probably have been Saxon, both on the
father's would have traced to the Scandinavian.
But though this character of adaptability was
general, exceptions in some points were necessarily
found, and these were obstinate in proportion to
the adherence to the old pagan faith, or the sincere
conversion to Christianity. The Norwegian chro-
nicles, and passages in our own history, show how
false and hollow was the assumed Christianity of
many of these fierce Odin-Avorshippers. They
willingly enougli accepted the outward sign of
baptism, but the holy water changed little of the
inner man. Even Harold, the son of Canute,
scarce seventeen years before the date we have
now entered, being unable to obtain from the
Archbishop of Canterbuiy who had espoused
the cause of his brother Hardicanute the con-
secrating benediction, lived and reigned as one
" who had abjured Christianity."*
PALGRAVE'S .History of England, p. 322.
38 HAROLD.
T&e priests, especially on the Scandinavian con-
tinent, were often forced to compound with their
grim converts, by indulgence to certain habits,
such as indiscriminate polygamy. To eat horse-
flesh in honour of Odin, and to marry wives ad
libitum, were the main stipulations of the neophytes.
And the puzzled monks, often driven to a choice,
yielded the point of the wives, but stood firm on
the graver article of the horse-flesh.
With their new religion, very imperfectly un-
derstood even when genuinely received, they
retained all that host of heathen superstition
which knits itself with the most obstinate instincts
in the human breast. Not many years before
the reign of the Confessor, the laws of the great
Canute against witchcraft and charms, the wor-
ship of stones, fountains, runes by ash and elm,
and the incantations that do homage to the dead,
were obviously rather intended to apply to the
recent Danish converts, than to the Anglo-
Saxons, already subjugated for centuries, body
and soul, to the domination of the Christian monks.
Hilda, a daughter of the royalty of Denmark,
and cousin to Githa, (niece to Canute, whom
H AHOLD. 39
that king had bestowed in second spousals upon
Godwin) had come over to England with a fierce
Jarl, her husband, a year after Canute's acces-
sion to the throne both converted nominally,
both secretly believers in Thor and Odin.
Hilda's husband had fallen in one of the actions
on the Northern seas, between Canute and St.
Olave, King of Norway, (that saint himself, by
the by, a most ruthless persecutor of his fore-
fathers' faith, and a most unqualified practical
asserter of his heathen privilege to extend his
domestic affections beyond the severe pale which
should have confined them to a single wife.
His natural son Magnus then sat on the Danish
throne.) The Jarl died as he had wished to die,
the last man on board his ship, with the soothing
conviction that the Valkyrs would bear him to
Valhalla.
Hilda was left with an only daughter, whom
Canute bestowed on Ethelwolf, a Saxon Earl
of large domains, and tracing his descent from
Penda, that old king of Mercia who refused to
be converted, but said so discreetly " that he had
no objection to his neighbours being Christians,
40 HAROLD.
if they would practise that peace and forgiveness
which the monks told him were the elements of
the faith."
Ethelwolf fell under the displeasure of Hardi-
canute, perhaps because he was more Saxon than
Danish; and though that savage king did not
dare openly to arraign him before the Witan, he
gave secret orders by which he was butchered on
his own hearthstone, in the arms of his wife, who
died shortly afterwards of grief and terror. The
only orphan of this unhappy pair, Edith, was thus
consigned to the charge of Hilda.
It was a necessary and invaluable characteristic
of that "adaptability" which distinguished the
Danes, that they transferred to the land in which
they settled all the love they had borne to that of
their ancestors ; and so far as attachment to soil
was concerned, Hilda had grown no less in
heart an Englishwoman, than if she had been
born and reared amidst the glades and knolls from
which the smoke of her hearth rose through the
old Roman compluvium.
But in all else she was a Dane. Dane in her
creed and her habits Dane in her intense and
HAROLD. 41
brooding imagination in the poetry that filled
her soul, peopled the air with spectres, and
covered the leaves of the trees with charms.
Living in austere seclusion after the death of her
O
lord, to whom she had borne a Scandinavian
woman's devoted but heroic love, sorrowing
indeed for his death, but rejoicing that he fell
amidst the feast of ravens, her mind settled more
and more, year by year, and day by day, upon
those visions of the unknown world, which, in
every faith, conjure up the companions of solitude
and grief.
Witchcraft in the Scandinavian North assumed
many forms, and was connected by many degrees.
There was the old and withered hag, on whom, in
our later mediaeval ages, the character was mainly
bestowed; there was the terrific witch-wife, or
wolf-witch, who seems wholly apart from human
birth and attributes, like the weird sisters of
Macbeth creatures who entered the house at
night, and seized warriors to devour them, who
might be seen gliding over the sea, with the
carcase of the wolf dripping blood from their
giant jaws; and there was the more serene,
42 HAROLD.
classical, and awful vala, or sibyll, who, honoured
by chiefs and revered by nations, foretold the
future, and advised the deeds of heroes. Of these
last, the Norse chronicles tell us much. They
were often of rank and wealth, they were accom-
panied by trains of handmaids and servants
kings led them, (when their counsel was sought)
to the place of honour in the hall and their heads
were sacred, as those of ministers to the gods.
This last state in the grisly realm of the Wig-
laer (wizard-lore) was the one naturally appertain-
ing to the high rank, and the soul lofty though
blind and perverted, of the daughter of warrior-
kings. All practice of the art to which now for
long years she had devoted herself, that touched
upon the humble destinies of the vulgar, the child
of Odin* haughtily disdained. Her reveries were
upon the fate of kings and kingdoms ; she aspired
to save or to rear the dynasties which should rule
the races yet unborn. In youth proud and ambi-
tious, common faults with her countrywomen,
* The name of thia god is spelt Odin, when referred to as the
object of Scandinavian worship ; Woden, when applied directly
to the deity of the Saxons.
HAROLD. 43
on her entrance into the darker world, she carried
with her the prejudices and passions that she had
known in that coloured by the external sun.
All her human affections were centered in her
grandchild Edith, the last of a race royal on
either side. Her researches into the future had
assured her, that the life and death of this fair
child were entwined with the fates of a king, and
the same oracles had intimated a mysterious and
inseparable connexion between her own shattered
house and the flourishing one of Earl Godwin,
the epouse of her bjnswoman Githa ; so that
with this great family she was as intimately
bound by the links of superstition as by the ties
of blood. The eldest born of Godwin, Sweyn,
had been at first especially her care and her
favourite; and he, of more poetic temperament
than his brothers, had willingly submitted to her
influence. But of all the brethren, as will be
seen hereafter, the career of Sweyn had been
most noxious and ill-omened, and at that moment,
while the rest of the house carried with it into
exile the deep and indignant sympathy of Eng-
land, no man said of Sweyn, " God bless him ! "
44 HAROLD.
But as the second son, Harold, had grown from
childhood into youth, Hilda had singled him out
with a preference even more marked than that she
had bestowed upon Sweyn. The stars and the
runes assured her of his future greatness, and
the qualities and talents of the young earl had,
at the very onset of his career, confirmed the
accuracy of their predictions. Her interest in
Harold became the more intense, partly because
whenever she consulted the future for the lot of
her grandchild Edith, she invariably found it
associated with the fate of Harold partly be-
cause all her arts had failed to penetrate beyond
a certain point in their joint destinies, and left
her mind agitated and perplexed between hope
and terror. As yet, however, she had wholly
failed in gaining any ascendancy over the young
Earl's vigorous and healthful mind; and though
before his exile, he came more often than any of
Godwin's sons to the old Koman house, he had
smiled with proud incredulity at her vague pro-
phecies, and rejected all her offers of aid from
invisible agencies with the calm reply " The
brave man wants no charms to encourage him to
HAROLD. 45
his duty, and the good man scorns all warnings
that would deter him from fulfilling it."
Indeed, though Hilda's magic was not of the
malevolent kind, and sought the source of its
oracles not in fiends but gods, (at least the gods
in whom she believed,) it was noticeable that all
over whom her influence had prevailed had come
to miserable and untimely ends; not alone her
husband and her son-in-law, (both of whom had
been as wax to her counsel,) but such other chiefs
as rank or ambition permitted to appeal to her
lore. Nevertheless, such was the ascendancy she
had gained over the popular mind, that it would
have been dangerous in the highest degree to put
into execution against her the laws condemnatory
of witchcraft. In her, all the more powerful
Danish families reverenced, and would have pro-
tected, the blood of their ancient kings, and the
widow of one of their most renowned heroe?.
Hospitable, liberal, and beneficent to the poor,
and an easy mistress over numerous ceorls, while
the vulgar dreaded, they would yet have defended
her. Proofs of her art it would have been hard
to establish; hosts of compurgators to attest her
46 HAROLD.
innocence would have sprung up. Even if sub-
jected to the ordeal, her gold could easily have
bribed the priests with whom the power of evad-
ing its dangers rested. And with that worldly
wisdom which persons of genius in their wildest
chimeras rarely lack, she had already freed herself
from the chance of active persecution from the
Church, by ample donations to all the neigh-
bouring monasteries.
Hilda, in fine, was a woman of sublime desires
and extraordinary gifts ; terrible, indeed, but as
the passive agent of the Fates she invoked, and
rather commanding for herself a certain troubled
admiration, and mysterious pity ; no fiend-hag,
beyond humanity, in malice and in power, but
essentially human, even when aspiring most to the
secrets of a god. Assuming, for the moment,
that by the aid of intense imagination, persons of
a peculiar idiosyncrasy of nerves and temperament
might attain to such dim affinities with a world
beyond our ordinary senses, as forbid entire rejec-
tion of the magnetism and magic of old times it
was on no foul and mephitic pool, overhung willi
the poisonous nightshade, and excluded from the
HAROLD. 47
beams of heaven, but on the living stream on
which the star trembled, and beside whose banks
the green herbage waved, that the demon shadows
fell dark and dread.
Thus safe and thus awful, lived Hilda ; and
under her care, a rose beneath the funeral cedar,
bloomed her grandchild Edith, goddaughter of
the Lady of England.
It was the anxious wish, both of Edward and
his virgin wife, pious as himself, to save this
orphan from the contamination of a house more
than suspected of heathen faith, and give to her
youth the refuge of the convent. But this,
Avithout her guardian's consent or her own ex-
pressed will, could not be legally done ; and Edith
as yet had expressed no desire to disobey her
grandmother, who treated the idea of the convent
with lofty scorn.
This beautiful child grew up under the in-
fluence, as it were, of two contending creeds ; all
her notions on both were necessarily confused and
vague. But her heart was so genuinely mild,
simple, tender, and devoted, there was in her so
much of the inborn excellence of the sex, that
48 HAIIOLD.
in every impulse of that heart struggled for
clearer light and for purer air the unquiet soul.
In manner, in thought, and in person, as yet
almost an infant, deep in her heart lay yet one
woman's secret, known scarcely to herself, but
which taught her, more powerfully than Hilda's
proud and scoffing tongue, to shudder at the
thought of the barren cloister and the eternal vow.
CHAPTER III.
WHILE King Edward was narrating to the Nor-
man Duke all that he knew, and all that he knew
not, of Hilda's history and secret arts, the road
wound through lands as wild and wold-like as if
the metropolis of England lay a hundred miles
distant. Even to this day, patches of such land
in the neighbourhood of Norwood, may betray
what the country was in the old time : when a
mighty forest, * abounding with wild beasts'
* the bull and the boar ' skirted the suburbs
of London, and afforded pastime to king and
thegn. For the Norman kings have been
maligned by the popular notion, that assigns to
them all the odium of the forest laws. Harsh
and severe were those laws in the reign of the
Anglo-Saxon; as harsh and severe, perhaps,
against the ceorl and the poor man, as in the days
VOL. I. D
50 HAROLD.
of Rufus, though more mild unquestionably to the
nobles. To all beneath the rank of abbot and
thegn, the king's woods were made, even by the
mild Confessor, as sacred as the groves of the
Druids : and no less penalty than that of life was
incurred by the low-born huntsman who violated
their recesses.*
Edward's only mundane passion was the chase ;
and a day rarely passed, but what after mass he
went forth with hawk or hound. So that, though
the regular season for hawking did not commence
till October, he had ever on his wrist some young
falcon to essay, or some old favourite to exercise.
And now, just as William was beginning to grow
weary of his good cousin's prolix recitals, the
hounds suddenly gave tongue, and from a sedge-
grown pool by the way-side, with solemn wing
and harsh boom, rose a bittern.
" Holy St. Peter!" exclaimed the Saint-king,
spurring his palfrey, and loosing his famous Pere-
grine falcon.f William was not slow in following
* See Note (B), at the end of the Volume.
t The Peregrine hawk built on the rocks of Llandudno, and
this breed was celebrated, even to the days of Elizabeth. Bur-
leigh thanks one of the Mostyns for a cast of hawks from
Llandudno.
HAROLD. 51
that animated example, and the whole company
rode at half speed across the rough forest-land,
straining their eyes upon the soaring, quarry, and
the large wheels of the falcons. Riding thus,
with his eyes in the air, Edward was nearly pitched
over his palfrey's head, as the animal stopped
suddenly, checked by a high gate, set deep in a
half embattled wall of brick and rubble. Upon
this gate sate, quite unmoved and apathetic,
a tall ceorl, or labourer, while behind it was a
gazing curious group of men of the same rank,
clad in those blue tunics of which our peasant's
smock is the successor, and leaning on scythes
and flails. Sour and ominous were the looks they
bent upon that Norman cavalcade. The men were
at least as well clad as those of the same condition
are now ; and their robust limbs and ruddy cheeks
showed no lack of the fare that supports labour.
Indeed, the working man of that day, if not one
of the absolute theowes, or slaves, was, physically
speaking, better off, perhaps, than he has ever
since been in England, more especially if he
appertained to some wealthy thegn of pure Saxon
lineage, whose very title of lord came to him in
D2
52 HAROLD.
his quality of dispenser of bread ; * and these meu
had been ceorls under Harold, son of Godwin,
now banished from the land.
" Open the gate, open quick, my merry men,"
said the gentle Edward, (speaking in Saxon,
though with a strong foreign accent,) after he
had recovered his seat, murmured a benediction,
and crossed himself three times. The men stirred
not.
" No horse tramps the seeds we have sown for
Harold the Earl to reap ;" said the ceorl doggedly,
still seated on the gate. And the group behind
him gave a shout of applause.
Moved more than ever he had been known to be
before, Edward spurred his steed up to the boor,
and lifted his hand. At that signal twenty swords
flashed in the air behind, as the Norman nobles
spurred to the place. Putting back with one
hand his fierce attendants, Edward shook the
other at the Saxon. " Knave, knave," he cried,
" I would hurt you, if I could ! "
There was something in these words, fated to
* Hlaf, loaf; Hlaford, lord, giver of bread; Hleafdian, lady,
erver of bread. VERSTEQAN.
HAROLD. 53
drift down into history, at once ludicrous and
touching. The Normans saw them only in the
former light, and turned aside to conceal their
laughter ; the Saxon felt them in the latter, and
truer sense, and stood rebuked. That great
king, whom he noAV recognised, with all those
drawn swords at his back, could not do him hurt ;
that king had not the heart to hurt him. The
ceorl sprang from the gate, and opened it,
bending low.
"Ride first, Count William my cousin," said the
King, calmly.
The Saxon ceorl's eyes glared as he heard the
Norman's name uttered in the Norman tongue,
but he kept open the gate, and the train passed
through, Edward lingering last. Then said the
King, in a low voice,
" Bold man, thou spokest of Harold the Earl
and his harvests ; knowest thou not that his lands
have passed from him, that he is outlawed, and
his harvests are not for the scythes of his ceorls
to reap ? " ,
" May it please you, dread Lord and King,"
replied the Saxon, simply, "these lands that were
54 HAROLD.
Harold the Earl's, are now Clapa's, the sixhoend-
man's."
" How is that ? " quoth Edward, hastily ; " we
gave them neither to sixhjendman nor to Saxon.
All the lands of Harold hereabout were divided
amongst sacred abbots and noble chevaliers
Normans all."
" Fulke the Norman had these fair fields, yon
orchards and tynen; Fulke sold them to Clapa,
the Earl's sixhamdman, and what in mancuses and
pence Clapa lacked of the price, we, the ceorls of
the Earl, made up from our own earnings in the
Earl's noble service. And this very day, in token
thereof, have we quaffed the bedden-ale.* Where-
fore, please God and our Lady, we hold these
lands part and parcel with Clapa ; and when Earl
Harold comes again, as come he will, here at least
he will have his own."
Edward, who, despite a singular simplicity of
character which at times seemed to border on
imbecility, was by no means wanting in pene-
* Bedden-ale. W,hen any man was set up in his estate by
the contributions of his friends, those friends were bid to a feast,
and the ale so drunk was called the bedden-ale, from bedden, to
pray, or to bid." (See BRAND'S Pop. Antiq.)
HAROLD. 55
tration when his attention was fairly roused,
changed countenance at this proof of rough and
comely affection on the part of these men to
his banished earl and brother-in-law. He mused
a little while in grave thought, and then said,
kindly,
" Well, man, I think not the worse of you for
loyal love to your thegn, but there are those who
would do so, and I avise you, brotherlike, that ears
and nose are in peril if thou talkest thus indis-
creetly."
" Steel to steel, and hand to hand," said the
Saxon, bluntly, touching the long knife in his
leathern belt, "and he who sets gripe on Sex-
wolf son of Elfhelm, shall pay his weregeld twice
over."
" Forewarned, foolish man, thou art fore-
warned. Peace," said the King ; and, shaking
his head, he rode on to join the Normans, who
now, in a broad field, where the corn sprang
green, and which they seemed to delight in wan-
tonly trampling, as they curvetted their steeds to
and fro, watched the movements of the bittern
and the pursuit of the two falcons.
56 HAROLD.
" A wager, Lord King ! " said a prelate, whose
strong family likeness to William proclaimed him
to be the duke's bold and haughty brother, Odo,*
Bishop of Bayeux ; " a wager. My steed to
your palfrey that the Duke's falcon first fixes the
bittern."
"Holy father," answered Edward, in that slight
change of voice which alone showed his displea-
sure, " these wagers all savour of heathenesse, and
our canons forbid them to mone f and priest. Go
to, it is naught."
The bishop, who brooked no rebuke, even from
his terrible brother, knit his brows, and was
about to make no gentle rejoinder, when William,
whose profound craft or sagacity was always at
watch, lest his followers should displease the
King, interposed, and, taking the word out of the
prelate's mouth, said,
" Thou reprovest us well, Sir and King ; we
Normans are too inclined to such levities. And
* Herleve (Arlotta), William's mother, married Herluin do
Conteville, after the death of Duke Eobert, and had by him two
sons, Robert, Count of Mortain, and Odo, Bishop of Bayeux.
ORD. VITAL, lib. vii.
f Mone, monk.
HAROLD. 57
see, your falcon is first in pride of place. By
the bones of St. Valery, how nobly he towers !
See him cover the bittern ! see him rest on the
wing ! Down he swoops ! Gallant bird ! "
" With his heart split in two on the bittern's
bill," said the bishop ; and down, rolling one over
the other, fell bittern and hawk, while William's
Norway falcon, smaller of size than the King's,
descended rapidly, and hovered over the two.
Both were dead.
" I accept the omen," muttered the gazing
Duke, in Latin ; " let the natives destroy each,
other! 1 ' He placed his whistle to his lips, and his
falcon flew back to his wrist.
" Now home," said King Edward.
D3
CHAPTER IV.
THE royal party entered London by the great
bridge which divided South wark from the capital ;
and we must pause to gaze a moment on the
animated scene which the immemorial thorough-
fare presented.
The whole suburb before entering South-
wark was rich in orchards and gardens, lying
round the detached houses of the wealthier mer-
chants and citizens. Approaching the river-side,
to the left, the eye might see the two circular
spaces set apart, the one for bear, the other for
bull-baiting. To the right, upon a green mound
of waste, within sight of the populous bridge,
the gleemen were exercising their art. Here one
dexterous juggler threw three balls and three
knives alternately in the air, catching them one
HAROLD. 59
by one as they fell.* There, another was gravely
leading a great bear to dance on its hind legs,
while his coadjutor kept time with a sort of flute,
or flageolet. The lazy bystanders, in great con-
course, stared and laughed; but the laugh was
hushed at the tramp of the Norman steeds ; and
the famous Count by the King's side, as, with a
smiling lip, but observant eye, he rode along,
drew all attention from the bear.
On now approaching that bridge which, not
many years before, had been the scene of terrible
contest between the invading Danes and Ethelred's
ally, Olave of Norway, f you mi'ght still see, though
neglected and already in decay, the double fortifi-
cations that had wisely guarded that vista into the
* STRUTT'S Horda.
f There is an animated description of this " Battle of London
Bridge," which gave ample theme to the Scandinavian scalds,
in Snorro Sturleson :
" London bridge is broken down ;
Gold is won and bright renown ;
Shields resounding,
War horns sounding,
Hildur shouting in the din,
Arrows singing,
Mail-coats ringing,
Odin makes our Olaf win."
LAINQ'S Heimskringla, vol. ii. p. 10.
60 HAROLD.
city. On both sides of the bridge, which was of
wood, were forts, partly of timber, partly of stone,
and breastworks, and by the forts a little chapel.
The bridge, broad enough to admit two vehicles
abreast,* was crowded with passengers, and lively
with stalls and booths. Here was the favourite
spot of the popular ballad-singer, f Here too
might be seen the swarthy Saracen, with wares
from Spain and Afric.J Here, the German mer-
chant from the Steel-yard swept along on his way
to his suburban home. Here, on some holy office,
went quick the muffled monk. Here the city
gallant paused to laugh with the country girl, her
basket full of May-boughs and cowslips. In
* SHARON TURNER. f HAWKINS, vol. ii. p. 94.
J Doomsday makes mention of the Moors, and the Germans
(the Emperor's merchants) that were sojourners, or settlers, in
London. The Saracens at that time were among the great mer-
chants of the world ; Marseilles, Aries, Avignon, Montpel-
lier, Toulouse, were the wonted etapes of their active traders.
What civilizers, what teachers they were those same Saracens I
How much in arms and in arts we owe them ! Fathers of the
Provencal poetry, they, far more than even the Scandinavian
scalds, have influenced the literature of Christian Europe. The
most ancient chronicle of the Cid was written in Arabic, a little
before the Cid's death, by two of his pages, who were Mussul-
men. The medical science of the Moors for six centuries enlight-
ened Europe, and their metaphysics were adopted in nearly all
the Christian universities.
HAROLD. 61
short, all bespoke that activity, whether in busi-
ness or pastime, which was destined to render that
city the mart of the world, and which had already
knit the trade of the Anglo-Saxon to the remoter
corners of commercial Europe. The deep dark
eye of William dwelt admiringly on the bustling
groupes, on the broad river, and the forest of masts
which rose by the indented marge near Belin's
gate.* And he to whom whatever his faults,
or rather crimes, to the unfortunate people he not
only oppressed but deceived London, at least,
may yet be grateful, not only for chartered fran-
chise,f but for advancing, in one short vigorous
* Billingsgate. Yerstegan combats the Welsh antiquaries
who would appropriate this gate to the British deity, Bal, or
Beli ; and says, if so, it would not have been called by a name
half Saxon, half British, gate, (geat) being Saxon ; but rather
Belinsport, than Belinsgate. This is no very strong argument ;
for^ in the Norman time, many compound words were half
Norman, half Saxon. But, in truth, Belin was a Teuton deity,
whose worship pervaded all Gaul ; and the Saxon might either
have continued, therefore, the name they found, or given it
themselves, from their own god. I am not inclined, however,
to contend that any deity, Saxon or British, gave the name, or
that Billing is not, after all, the right orthography. Billing,
like all words ending in ing, has something very Danish in its
sound ; and the name is quite as likely to have been given by
the Danes as by the Saxons.
\- London received a charter from William at the instigation
of the Norman Bishop of London ; but it probably only con-
-
62 HAROLD.
reign, her commerce and wealth, beyond what
centuries of Anglo-Saxon domination, with its
inherent feebleness, had effected, exclaimed aloud :
" By rood and mass, O dear king, thy lot hath
fallen on a goodly heritage !"
" Hem !" said Edward, lazily ; " thou knowest
not how troublesome these Saxons are. And
while thou speakest, lo, in yon shattered walls,
built first, they say, by Alfred of holy memory,
are the evidences of the Danes. Bethink thee
how often they have sailed up this river. How
know I but what the next year the raven flag
may stream over these waters ? Magnus of Den-
mark hath already claimed my crown as heir to
the royalties of Canute, and" (here Edward hesi-
tated), " Godwin and Harold, whom, alone of my
thegns, Dane and Northman fear, are far away."
" Miss not them, Edward, my cousin," cried the
Duke, in haste. " Send for me if danger threat
thee. Ships enow await thy hest in my new port
firmed the previous municipal constitution, since it says briefly,
" I grant you all to be as law-worthy as ye were in the days of
King Edward." The rapid increase, however, of the commercial
prosperity, and political importance of London after the Con-
quest, is attested in many chronicles, and becomes strikingly
evident even on the surface of history.
HAROLD. 63
of Cherburg. And I tell thee this for thy
comfort, that were I king of the English, and
lord of this river, the citizens of London might
sleep from vespers to prime, without fear of the
Dane. Never again should the raven flag be seen
by this bridge ! Never, I swear, by the Splen-
dour Divine !"
Not without purpose spoke "William thus
stoutly ; and he turned on the King those glitter-
ing eyes (micantes oculos), which the chroniclers
have praised and noted. For it was his hope and
his aim in this visit, that his cousin Edward should
formally promise him that goodly heritage of
England. But the King made no rejoinder, and
they now neared the end of the bridge.
"What old ruin looms yonder ?"* asked William,
* There seems good reason for believing that a keep did stand
where the Tower stands, before the Conquest, and that William's
edifice spared some of its remains. In the very interesting
letter from John Bayford relating to the City of London, (Lei.
Collect. Iviii.), the writer, a thorough master of his subject, states,
that " the Romans made a public military way, that of Watling-
street, from the Tower to Ludgate, in a straight line, at the end
of which they built stations or citadels, one of which was where
the White Tower now stands." Bayford adds that " when the
White Tower was fitted up for the reception of records, there
remained many Saxon inscriptions."
64 HAROLD.
hiding his disappointment at Edward's silence ;
" it seemeth the remains of some stately keape,
which, by its fashion, I should pronounce Ro-
man."
" Ay !" said Edward, " it is said to have been
built by the Romans ; and one of the old Lom-
bard freemasons employed on my new palace of
Westminster, giveth that, and some others in my
domain, the name of the Juillet Tower."
" Those Romans were our masters in all things
gallant and wise," said William ; " and I predict
that, some day or other, on that site, a King of
England will re-erect palace and tower. And yon
castle towards the west ?"
"Is the Tower Palatine, where our predeces-
sors have lodged, and ourself sometimes ; but the
sweet loneliness of Thorney Isle pleaseth me
more now."
Thus talking, they entered London, a rude,
dark city, built mainly of timbered houses ; streets
narrow and winding ; windows rarely glazed, but
protected chiefly by linen blinds ; vistas opening,
however, at times into broad spaces, round the
various convents, where green trees grew up
HAROLD. 65
behind low palisades. Tall roods, and holy
images, to which we owe the names of exist-
ing thoroughfares, (Rood-lane and Lady-lane,*)
where the ways crossed, attracted the curious,
and detained the pious. Spires there were not
then, but blunt cone-headed turrets, pyramidal,
denoting the Houses of God, rose often from
the low, thatched, and reeded roofs. But every
now and then, a scholar's, if not an ordinary,
eye could behold the relics of Roman splendour,
traces of that elder city which now lies buried
under our thoroughfares, and of which, year by
year, are dug up the stately skeletons.
Along the Thames still rose, though much mu-
tilated, the wall of Constantino, f Round the
humble and barbarous Church of St. Paul's,
(wherein lay the dust of Sebba, that king of the
East Saxons who quitted his throne for the sake
of Christ, and of Edward's feeble and luckless
father, Ethelred,) might be seen, still gigantic in
decay, the ruins of the vast temple of Diana.*
Many a church, and many a convent, pieced their
* Rude-lane. Lad-lane. BAYFORD.
f FmsTEPHEN. J CAMDEN.
66 HAROLD.
mingled brick and timber work with Roman
o
capital and shaft. Still by the tower, to which
was afterwards given the Saracen name of Bar-
bican, were the wrecks of the Roman station,
where cohorts watched night and day, in case of
fire within or foe without.*
In a niche, near the Aldersgate, stood the head-
less statue of Fortitude, which monks and pil-
grims deemed some unknown saint in the old
time, and halted to honour. And in the midst of
Bishopsgate-street, sate on his desecrated throne
a mangled Jupiter, his eagle at his feet. Many
a half-converted Dane there lingered, and mistook
the Thunderer and the bird for Odin and his
hawk. By Leod-gate (the People's gatef) still
too were seen the arches of one of those mighty
aqueducts which the Roman learned from the
Etrurian. And close by the Still-yard, occupied
by "the Emperor's cheap men" (the German
merchants), stood, almost entire, the Roman
temple, extant in the time of Geoffrey of Mon-
mouth. Without the walls, the old Roman vine-
* BATFORD, Leland's Collectanea, p. Iviii.
t Ludgate (Leod-gate). VERSTEGAX.
HAROLD. 67
yards* still put forth their green leaves and crude
clusters, in the plains of East Smithfield, in the
fields of St. Giles's, and on the site where now
stands Hatton Garden. Still masseref and cheap-
men chaffered and bargained, at booth and stall,
in Mart-lane, where the Romans had bartered
before them. With every encroachment on new
soil, within the walls and without, urn, vase,
weapon, human bones, were shovelled out, and
lay disregarded amidst heaps of rubbish.
Not on such evidences of the past civilization
looked the practical eye of the Norman Count ;
not on things, but on men, looked he ; and as
silently he rode on from street to street, out of
those men, stalwart and tall, busy, active, toiling,
* The question whether or not real vineyards were grown, or
real wine made from them in England, has been a very vexed
question among the antiquaries. But it is scarcely possible to
read Pegge's dispute with Daines Barrington in the Archceologia
Avithout deciding both questions in the affirmative. See Arcliaol.
vol. iii. p. 53. An engraving of the Saxon wine-press is given
in STRUTT'S Horda. Vineyards fell into disuse, either by treaty
with France, or Gascony falling into the hands of the English.
But vineyards were cultivated by private gentlemen as late as
1621. Our first wines from Bordeaux the true country of Bac-
chus appear to have been imported about 1154, by the marriage
of Henry II. with Eleanor of Aquitaine.
f Massere, merchant, mercer.
68 HAROLD.
the Man-Ruler saw the Civilization that was to
come.
So, gravely through the small city, and over the
bridge that spanned the little river of the Fleet,
rode the train along the Strand; to the left,
smooth sands ; to the right, fair pastures below
green holts, thinly studded with houses ; over
numerous cuts and inlets running into the river,
rode they on. The hour and the season were those
in which youth enjoyed its holiday, and gay groups
resorted to the then* fashionable haunts of the
Fountain of Holy well, " streaming forth amongst
glistening pebbles."
So they gained at length the village of Charing,
which Edward had lately bestowed on his Abbey
of Westminster, and which was now filled with
workmen, native and foreign, employed on that
edifice and the contiguous palace. Here they
loitered awhile at the Mewsf (where the hawks
were kept), passed by the rude palace of stone
* FlTZSTEPHEN.
f Meuae. Apparently rather a hawk hospital, from Muta
(Camden). Du Fresne, in his Glossary, says, Muta is in French
LaMeue, and a disease to which the hawk wassubjecton chang-
ing its feathers.
HAROLD. 69
and rubble, appropriated to the tributary kings of
Scotland* a gift from Edgar to Kenneth and
finally, reaching the inlet of the river, which,
winding round the Isle of Thorney (now West-
minster), separated the rising church, abbey, and
palace, of the Saint-king from the main land, dis-
mounted and were ferried acrossf the narrow
stream to the broad space round the royal resi-
dence.
* Scotland Yard. STRYPE.
f The first bridge that connected Thorney Isle with the main-
land is said to have been built by Matilda, wife of Henry I.
CHAPTER V/"
THE new palace of Edward the Confessor, the
palace of Westminster, opened its gates to receive
the Saxon King and the Norman Duke, remount-
ing on the margin of the isle, and now riding side
by side. And as the Duke glanced from brows, ha-
bitually knit, first over the pile, stately though not
yet completed, with its long rows of round arched
windows, cased by indented fringes and frtet (or
tooth) work, its sweep of solid columns with cir-
cling cloisters, and its ponderous towers of simple
grandeur ; then over the groups of courtiers,
with close vests, and short mantles and beardless
cheeks, that filled up the wide space, to gaze in
homage on the renowned guest, his heart swelled
within him, and, checking his rein, he drew near
to his brother of Bayeux, and whispered :
HAROLD. 71
" Is not this .already the court of the Norman ?
Behold yon nobles and earls, how they mimic
our garb ! behold the very stones in yon gate,
how they range themselves, as if carved by the
hand of the Norman mason ! Verily and indeed,
brother, the shadow of the rising sun rests already
in these halls."
" Had England no people," said the bishop,
" England were yours already. But saw you not,
as we rode along, the lowering brows ? and heard
you not the angry murmurs ? The villeins are
many, and their hate is strong."
" Strong is the roan I bestride," said the Duke ;
' but a bold rider curbs it with the steel of the
bit, and guides it with the goad of the heel."
And noAV, as they neared the gate, a band of
minstrels in the pay of the Norman touched their
instruments, and woke their song the household
song of the Norman the battle hymn of Roland,
the Paladin of Charles the Great. At the first
word of the song, the Norman knights and youths,
profusely scattered amongst the Normanized Sax-
ons, caught up the lay, and with sparkling eyes,
and choral voices, they welcomed the mighty
72 HAROLD.
Duke into the palace of the last meek successor
of Woden.
By the porch of the inner court the Duke flung
himself from his saddle, and held the stirrup for
Edward to dismount. The King placed his hand
gently on his guest's broad shoulder, and, having
somewhat slowly reached the ground, embraced
and kissed him in the sight of the gorgeous assem-
blage ; then led him by the hand towards the fail-
chamber which was set apart for the Duke, and
so left him to his attendants.
William, lost in thought, suffered himself to
be disrobed in silence; but when Fitzosborne,
his favourite confidant and haughtiest baron, who
yet deemed himself but honoured by personal
attendance on his chief, conducted him towards
the bath, which adjoined the chamber, he drew
back, and wrapping round him more closely the
gown of fur that had been thrown over his shoul-
ders, he muttered low, " Nay, if there be on
me yet one speck of English dust, let it rest there !
seizin, Fitzosborne, seizin, of the English
laud." Then, waving his hand, he dismissed all
his attendants except Fitzosborne, and Rolf,
HAROLD. 73
Earl of Hereford,* nephew to Edward, but
French on the father's side, and thoroughly in
the Duke's councils. Twice the Duke paced the
chamber without vouchsafing a word to either,
then paused by the round window that overlooked
the Thames. The scene was fair ; the sun, towards
its decline, glittered on numerous small plea-
sure-boats, w r hich shot to and fro between West-
minster and London, or towards the opposite
shores of Lambeth. His eye sought eagerly,
along the curves of the river, the grey remains
of the fabled Tower of Julius, and the walls,
gates, and turrets, that rose by the stream, or
above the dense mass of silent roofs ; then it
strained hard to descry the tops of the more dis-
tant masts of that infant navy, fostered under
Alfred, the far-seeing, for the future civiliza-
tion of wastes unknown, and the empire of seas
untracked.
The Duke breathed hard, and opened and closed
the hand which he stretched forth into space, as
* We give him that title, which this Norman noble generally
bears in the Chronicles, though Palgrave observes that he is
rather to be styled Earl of the Magesetan (the Welch Marches).
VOL. I. E
74 HAROLD.
if to grasp the city he beheld. " Rolf," said he,
abruptly, " thou knowest, no doubt, the wealth
of the London traders, one and all ; for, foi de
Guillaume, my gentil chevalier, thou art a true
Norman, and scentest the smell of gold as a
hound the boar !"
Rolf smiled, as if pleased with a compliment
which simpler men might have deemed, at the
best, equivocal, and replied,
" It is true, my liege ; and gramercy, the air
of England sharpens the scent ; for in this vil-
lein and motley country, made up of all races,
Saxon and Fin, Dane and Fleming, Pict and
Walloon, it is not as with us, where the brave
man and the pure descent are held chief in
honour : here, gold and land are, in truth, name
and lordship; even their popular name for their
national assembly of the Witan is, ' The Weal-
thy.'* He who is but a ceorl to-day, let him be
rich, and he may be earl to-morrow, marry in
king's blood, and rule armies under a gonfanon
statelier than a king's ; while he whose fathers
were ealdormen and princes, if, by force or by
* Eacligan. S. TURNER, vol. i. p. 274.
HAROLD. 75
fraud, by waste or by largess, he become poor,
falls at once into contempt, and out of his state,
sinks into a class they call e six-hundred men,'
in their barbarous tongue, and his children will
probably sink still lower, into ceorls. Wherefore
gold is the thing here most coveted; and, by
St. Michael, the sin is infectious."
William listened to the speech with close
attention :
"Good," said he, rubbing slowly the palm of
his right hand over the back of the left ; " a land
all compact with the power of one race, a race
of conquering men, as our fathers were, whom
nought but cowardice or treason can degrade,
such a land, O Rolf of Hereford, it were hard
indeed to subjugate, or decoy, or tame ; "
" So has my lord the Duke found the Bretons;
and so also do I find the Welch upon my marches
of Hereford."
" But," continued William, not heeding the in-
terruption, " where wealth is more than blood and
race, chiefs may be bribed or menaced ; and the
multitude by'r Lady, the multitude are the
same in all lands, mighty under valiant and faith-
E 2
76 HAROLD.
ful leaders, powerless as sheep without them.
But to my question, my gentle Rolf; this London
must be rich ? "*
" Rich enow," answered Rolf, " to coin into
armed men, that should stretch from Rouen to
Flanders on the one hand, and Paris on the
other."
" In the veins of Matilda, whom thou wooest
for wife," said Fitzosborne, abruptly, " flows the
blood of Charlemagne. God grant his empire to
the children she shall bear thee ! "
The Duke bowed his head, and kissed a relic
suspended from his throat. Farther sign of ap-
proval of his counsellor's words he gave not, but,
after a pause, he said,
" When I depart, Rolf, thou wendest back to
thy marches. These Welch are brave and fierce,
and shape work enow for thy hands."
" Ay, by my halidame ! poor sleep by the side
of the beehive you have stricken down."
* 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 con-
tributed 11,000 pounds besides.
HAROLD. 77
" Marry, then," said William, " let the Welch
prey on Saxon, Saxon on Welch ; let neither
win too easily. Remember our omens to-day,
Welch hawk and Saxon bittern, and over their
corpses, Duke William's Nonvay falcon ! Now
dress we for the complin* and the banquet."
* Complin, the second vespers.
BOOK II,
LANFRANC THE SCHOLAR.
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
FOUR meals a day, nor those sparing, were not
deemed too extravagant an interpretation of the
daily bread for which the Saxon prayed. Four
meals a day, from earl to ceorl ! " Happy times !' '
may sigh the descendant of the last, if he read
these pages; partly so they were for the ceorl,
but not in all things, for never sweet is the food,
and never gladdening is the drink, of servitude.
Inebriety, the vice of the warlike nations of the
North, had not, perhaps, been the pre-eminent
excess of the earlier Saxons, while yet the active
and fiery Britons, and the subsequent petty wars
between the kings of the Heptarchy, enforced on
hardy warriors the safety of temperance; but
the example of the Danes had been fatal. Those
giants of the sea, like all who pass from
E 3
82 HAROLD.
great vicissitudes of toil and repose, from the
tempest to the haven, snatched with full hands
every pleasure in their reach. With much that
tended permanently to elevate the character of
the Saxon, they imparted much for a time to
degrade it. The Anglian learned to feast to re-
pletion, and drink to delirium. But such were not
the vices of the court of the Confessor. Brought
up from his youth in the cloister-camp of the
Normans, what he loved in their manners was the
abstemious sobriety, and the ceremonial religion,
which distinguished those sons of the Scandi-
navian from all other kindred tribes.
The Norman position in France, indeed, in
much resembled that of the Spartan in Greece.
He had forced a settlement with scanty numbers
in the midst of a subjugated and sullen popula-
tion, surrounded by jealous and formidable foes.
Hence sobriety was a condition of his being,
ancl the policy of the chief lent a willing ear to
the lessons of the preacher. Like the Spartan,
every Norman of pure race was free and noble ;
and this consciousness inspired not only that re-
markable dignity of mien which Spartan and
HAROLD. 83
Norman alike possessed, but also that fastidious
self-respect which would have revolted from ex-
hibiting a spectacle of debasement to inferiors.
And, lastly, as the paucity of their original num-
bers, the perils that beset, and the good fortune
that attended them, served to render the Spartans
the most religious of all the Greeks in their de-
pendence on the Divine aid ; so, perhaps, to the
same causes may be traced the proverbial piety of
the ceremonial Normans ; they carried into their
new creed something of feudal loyalty to their
spiritual protectors ; did homage to the Virgin
for the lands that she vouchsafed to bestow, and
recognised in St. Michael the chief who conducted
their armies.
After hearing the complin vespers in the
temporary chapel fitted up in that unfinished
abbey of Westminster, which occupied the site
of the temple of Apollo,* the King and his
* CAMDEN. A church was built out of the ruins of that tem-
ple 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.
84 HAROLD.
guests repaired to their evening meal in the great
hall of the palace. Below the dais were ranged
three long tables for the knights in William's
train, and that flower of the Saxon nobility who,
fond, like all youth, of change and imitation,
thronged the court of their Normanized saint,
and scorned the rude patriotism of their fathers.
But hearts truly English were not there. Yea,
many of Godwin's noblest foes sighed for the
English-hearted Earl, banished by Norman guile
on behalf of English law.
At the oval table on the dais the guests were
select and chosen. At the right hand of the
Bang sat William; at the left, Odo of Bayeux.
Over these three stretched a canopy of cloth of gold;
the chairs on which each sate were of metal, richly
gilded over, and the arms carved in elaborate
arabesques. At this table, too, was the King's
nephew, the Earl of Hereford, and, in right of
kinsmanship to the Duke, the Norman's beloved
baron and grand seneschal, William Fitzosborne,
who, though in Normandy even he sate not at the
Duke's table, was, as related to his lord, invited by
Edward to his own. No other guests were admitted
HAROLD. 85
to this board, so that, save Edward, all were Nor-
man. The dishes were of gold and silver, the
cups inlaid with jewels. Before each guest was a
knife, with hilt adorned by precious stones, and a
napkin fringed with silver. The meats were not
placed on the table, but served upon small spits,
and between every course a basin of perfumed
water was borne round by high-born pages. No
dame graced the festival; for she who should have
presided she, matchless for beauty without pride,
piety without asceticism, and learning without
pedantry she, the pale rose of England, loved
daughter of Godwin, and loathed wife of Edward,
had shared in the fall of her kindred, and had
been sent by the meek King, or his fierce
counsellors, to an abbey in Hampshire, with
the taunt "that it was not meet that the child and
sister should enjoy state and pomp, while the sire
and brethren ate the bread of the stranger in
banishment and disgrace."
But, hungry as were the guests, it was not the
custom of that holy court to fall to without due
religious ceremonial. The rage for psalm- singing
Avas then at its height in England ; psalmody had
86 HAROLD.
excluded almost every other description of vocal
music ; and it is even said that great festivals
on certain occasions were preluded by no less
an effort of lungs and memory than the entire
songs bequeathed to us by King David! This
day, however, Hugoline, Edward's Norman cham-
berlain, had been pleased to abridge the length of
the prolix grace, and the company were let off, to
Edward's surprise and displeasure, with the curt
and unseemly preparation of only nine psalms and
one special hymn in honour of some obscure
saint to whom the day was dedicated. This
performed, the guests resumed their seats,
Edward murmuring an apology to William for
the strange omission of his chamberlain, and
saying thrice to himself, " Naught, naught
very naught."
The mirth languished at the royal table,
despite some gay efforts from Rolf, and some
hollow attempts at lighthearted cheerfulness from
the great Duke, whose eyes, wandering down the
table, were endeavouring to distinguish Saxon
from Norman, and count how many of the first
might already be reckoned in the train of his
HAROLD. 87
friends. But at the long tables below, as the
feast thickened, and ale, mead, pigment, morat,
and wine circled round, the tongue of the Saxon
was loosed, and the Norman knight lost some-
what of his superb gravity. It was just as what
a Danish poet called the " sun of the night,"
(in other words, the fierce warmth of the wine,)
had attained its meridian glow, that some slight
disturbance at the doors of the hall, without
which waited a dense crowd of the poor, on whom
the fragments of the feast Avere afterwards to be
bestowed, was followed by the entrance of two
strangers, for whom the officers appointed to
marshal the entertainment made room at the foot
of one of the tables. Both these new comers
were clad with extreme plainness ; one in a dress,
though not quite monastic, that of an ecclesiastic
of low degree ; the other in a long grey mantle
and loose gonna, the train of which last was tucked
into a broad leathern belt, leaving bare the
leggings, which showed limbs of great bulk and
sinew, and which were stained by the dust and
mire of travel. The first mentioned was slight
and small of person ; the last was of the height
88 HAROLD.
and port of the sons of Anak. The countenance
of neither could be perceived, for both had let fall
the hood, worn by civilians as by priests out of
doors, more than half way over their faces.
A murmur of great surprise, disdain, and resent-
ment, at the intrusion of strangers so attired,
circulated round the neighbourhood in which
they had been placed, checked for a moment by
a certain air of respect which the officer had
shewn towards both, but especially the taller;
but breaking out with greater vivacity from the
faint restraint, as the tall man unceremoniously
stretched across the board, drew towards himself
an immense flagon, which (agreeably to the custom
of arranging the feast in " messes " of four,) had
been specially appropriated to Ulf the Dane, God-
rith the Saxon, and two young Norman knights
akin to the puissant Lord of Grantmesnil, and
having offered it to his comrade, who shook his
head, drained it with a gusto that seemed to
bespeak him at least no Norman, and wiped
his lips boorishly with the sleeve of his huge
arm.
"Dainty sir," said one of those Norman knights,
HAROLD. 89
William Mallet, of the house of Mallet de Gra-
ville,* as he moved as far from the gigantic in-
truder as the space on the settle would permit,
" forgive the observation, that you have damaged
my mantle, you have grazed my foot, and you
have drunk my wine. And vouchsafe, if it so
please you, the face of the man who hath done
this triple wrong to William Mallet de Gra-
ville."
A kind of laugh for laugh absolute it was
not rattled under the cowl of the tall stranger,
as he drew it still closer over his face, with a
hand that might have spanned the breast of his
interrogator, and he made a gesture as if he did
not understand the question addressed to him.
Therewith the Norman knight, bending with
demure courtesy across the board to Godrith the
Saxon, said,
" Pardex,^ but this fair guest and seigneur
seemeth to me, noble Godree (whose name I fear
* See Note to PLTJQUET'S Roman deRou, p. 285.
N.B. Whenever the Roman de Rou is quoted in these pages,
it is from the excellent edition of M. Pluquet.
t Pardex, or Parde, corresponding to the modern French ex-
pletive, par die.
90 HAROLD.
my lips do but rudely enounce), of Saxon line
and language ; our Romance tongue he knoweth
not. Pray you, is it the Saxon custom to enter
a king's hall so garbed, and drink a knight's wine
so mutely ?"
Godrith, a young Saxon of considerable rank,
but one of the most sedulous of the imitators of
the foreign fashions, coloured high at the irony
in the knight's speech, and turning rudely to the
huge guest, who was now causing immense frag-
ments of pasty to vanish under the cavernous
cowl, he said in his native tongue, though with
a lisp as if unfamiliar to him,
" If thou beest Saxon, shame us not with thy
ceorlish manners; crave pardon of this Norman
thegn, who will doubtless yield it to thee in pity.
Uncover thy face and "
Here the Saxon's rebuke was interrupted ; for,
one of the servitors, just then approaching God-
rith's side with a spit, elegantly caparisoned with
some score of plump larks, the unmannerly
giant stretched out his arm within an inch of the
Saxon's startled nose, and possessed himself of
larks, broche, and all. He drew off two, which
HAROLD. 9 1
he placed on his friend's platter, despite all dis-
suasive gesticulations, and deposited the rest upon
his own. The young banqueters gazed upon the
spectacle in wrath too full for words.
At last spoke Mallet de Graville, with an en-
vious eye upon the larks for though a Norman
was not gluttonous, he was epicurean " Certes,
and foi de chevalier ! a man must go into strange
parts if he wish to see monsters; but we are
fortunate people," (and he tumed to his Norman
friend Aymer, Quen* or Count, D'Evreux,)
" that we have discovered Polyphemus without
going so far as Ulysses ;" and, pointing to the
hooded giant, he quoted, appropriately enough,
" Monstrum, horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptnm."
* Quen, or rather Quens : synonymous with Count in the
Norman Chronicles. Earl Godwin is strangely styled by Wace,
Quens Gwine. Those old French writers were as inhuman muti-
lators of our English names and titles as their modern descend-
ants. I apprehend that our distinguished countrywoman, Miss
Strickland (Life of Matilda of Flanders) is wrong in supposing
that the Norman Quen has the slightest affinity to the Saxon
word from which we derive the title of Queen : and I am quite
sure that Miss Strickland has been led by a distinguished French
historian into a mistake, when she says that Matilda was the first
92 HAROLD.
The giant continued to devour his larks, as com-
placently as the ogre to whom he was likened
might have devoured the Greeks in his cave.
But his fellow-intruder seemed agitated by the
sound of the Latin; he lifted up his head sud-
denly, and showed lips glistening with white
even teeth, and curved into an approving
smile, while he said: " Bene, mi fili ! bene, lepi-
dissime, poetce verba, in militis ore, non indecora
sonant." *
The young Norman stared at the speaker, and
replied, in the same tone of grave affectation,
" Courteous Sir ! the approbation of an ecclesiastic
so eminent as I take you to be, from the modesty
with which you conceal your greatness, cannot
fail to draw upon me the envy of my English
friends; who are accustomed to swear in verba
magistri, only for verba they learnedly substitute
vina"
" You are pleasant, Sire Mallet," said Godrith,
consort of a king of England styled Regina. In the Charter of
Edward j(ap. Ingulf,) Edith is called Regina " testibns Regina mea,
Edfio, Alfrico," &c.
* " Good, good, pleasant son, the words of the poet sound
gracefully on the lips of the knight."
HAROLD. 93
reddening ; " but I know well that Latin is only
fit for monks and shavelings; and little enow
even they have to boast of."
The Norman's lip curled in disdain. " Latin !
O, Godree, lien aimc \ Latin is the tongue of
Caesars and senators, fortes conquerors and preux
chevaliers. Knowest thou not that Duke William
the dauntless at eight years old had the Com-
ments of Julius Csesar by heart ? and that it is
his saying, that ( a king without letters is a
crowned ass?'* When the king is an ass, asi-
nine are his subjects. Wherefore go to school,
speak respectfully of thy betters, the monks and
shavelings, who with us are often brave captains
and sage councillors, and learn that a full head
makes a weighty hand."
" Thy name, young knight ?" said the eccle-
siastic, in Norman French, though with a slight
foreign accent.
" I can give it thee," said the giant, speak-
ing aloud for the first time, in the same lan-
guage, and in a rough voice, which a quick
* A sentiment variously assigned to William and to his son
Henry the Beau Clerc.
94 HAROLD.
ear might have detected as disguised, " I can
describe to thee name, birth, and quality. By
name, this youth is Guillaume Mallet, some-
times styled De Graville, because our Norman
gentilhommes, forsooth, must always now have a
' de ' tacked to their names ; nevertheless he hath
no other right to the seigneurie of Graville,
which appertains to the head of his house, than
may be conferred by an old tower on one corner
of the demesnes so designated, with lands that
would feed one horse and two villeins if they were
not in pawn to a Jew for moneys to buy velvet
mantelines and a chain of gold. By birth, he
comes from Mallet,* a bold Norwegian in the
fleet of Rou the Sea-king ; his mother was a
Frank woman, from whom he inherits his best
possessions videlicet, a shrewd wit and a railing
tongue. His qualities are abstinence, for he
eateth nowhere save at the cost of another some
Latin, for he was meant for a monk, because he
seemed too slight of frame for a warrior some
courage, for in spite of his frame he slew three
Burgundians with his own hand ; and Duke
* Mallet is a genuine Scandinavian name to this day.
HAROLD. 95
William, among other foolish acts, spoilt a friar
sans tacke, by making a knight sans terre ; and
for the rest "
" And for the rest," interrupted the Sire de
Graville, turning white with wrath, but speaking
in a low repressed voice, " were it not that Duke
William sate yonder, thou shouldst have six inches
of cold steel in thy huge carcase to digest thy stolen
dinner, and silence thy unmannerly tongue. "
" For the rest," continued the giant indif-
ferently, and as if he had not heard the interrup-
tion ; " for the rest, he only resembles Achilles,
in being improper, iracundus. Big men can quote
Latin as well as little ones, Messire Mallet the
beau clerc ! "
Mallet's hand was on his dagger; and his eye
dilated like that of the panther before he springs;
but fortunately, at that moment, the deep sono-
rous voice of William, accustomed to send its
sounds down the ranks of an army, rolled clear
through the assemblage, though pitched little
above its ordinary key :
" Fair is your feast, and bright your wine,
Sir King and brother mine! But I miss here
96 HAROLD.
what king and knight hold as the salt of the feast
and the perfume to the wine: the lay of the
minstrel. Beshrew me, but both Saxon and Nor-
man are of kindred stock, and love to hear
in hall and bower the deeds of their northern
fathers. Crave I therefore from your gleemen,
or harpers, some song of the olden time I "
A murmur of applause went through the Nor-
man part of the assembly ; the Saxons looked up ;
and some of the more practised courtiers sighed
wearily, for they knew well what ditties alone
were in favour with the saintly Edward.
The low voice of the King in reply was not
heard, but those habituated to read his counte-
nance in its very faint varieties of expression,
might have seen that it conveyed reproof ; and its
purport soon became practically known, when a
lugubrious prelude was heard from a quarter of
the hall, in which sate certain ghostlike musicians
in white robes white as winding-sheets; and
forthwith a dolorous and dirgelike voice chaunted
a long, and most tedious recital of the mira-
cles and martyrdom of some early saint. So
monotonous was the chaunt, that its effect soon
HAROLD. 97
became visible in a general drowsiness. And when
Edward, who alone listened with attentive delight,
turned towards the close to gather sympathizing
admiration from his distinguished guests, he saw his
nephew yawning as if his jaw were dislocated
the Bishop of Bayeux, with his well-ringed fingers
interlaced and resting on his stomach, fast asleep
Fitzosborne's small half-shaven head balancing
to and fro with many an uneasy start and Wil-
liam, wide awake indeed, but with eyes fixed on
vacant space, and his soul far away from the
gridiron to which (all other saints be praised !) the
saint of the ballad had at last happily arrived.
"A comforting and salutary recital, Count
William," said the King.
The Duke started from his reverie, and bowed
his head : then said rather abruptly, " Is not yon
blazon that of King Alfred ?"
"Yea. Wherefore?"
" Hem ! Matilda of Flanders is in direct descent
from Alfred : it is a name and a line the Saxons
yet honour!"
" Surely, yes ; Alfred was a great man, and re-
formed the Psalmster," replied Edward,
VOL. i. F
98 HAROLD.
The dirge ceased, but so benumbing had been
its effect, that the torpor it created, did not sub-
side with the cause. There was a dead and funereal
silence throughout the spacious hall, when sud-
denly, loudly, mightily, as the blast of the trum-
pet upon the hush of the grave, rose a single voice.
All started all turned all looked to one direc-
tion ; and they saw, that the great voice pealed from
the farthest end of the hall. From under his gown
the gigantic stranger had drawn a small three-
stringed instrument somewhat resembling the
modern lute and thus he sang,
THE BALLAD OF ROIL*
I.
From Blois to Senlis, wave by wave, roll'd on the
Norman flood,
And Frank on Frank went drifting down the
welter-tide of blood ;
There was not left in all the land a castle wall to
fire,
And not a wife but wailed a lord, a child but
mourned a sire.
* Rou the name given by the French to Rollo, or Rolf-ganger,
the founder of the Norman settlement.
HAROLD. 99
To Charles the king, the mitred monks, the
mailed barons flew,
While, .shaking earth, behind them strode the
thunder march of Rou.
ii.
" O King," then cried those barons bold, " in vain
are mace and mail,
We fall before the Norman axe, as corn before
the hail."
" And vainly," cried the pious monks, " by Mary's
shrine we kneel,
For prayers, like arrows, glance aside, against
the Norman steel."
The barons groaned, the shavelings wept, while
near and nearer drew,
As death-birds round their scented feast, the
raven flags of Rou.
in.
Then said King Charles, " Where thousands fail,
what king can stand alone ?
The strength of kings is in the men that gather
round the throne.
When war dismays my barons bold, 'tis time for
war to cease ;
When Heaven forsakes my pious monks, the will
of Heaven is peace.
F 2
100 HAROLD.
Go forth, my monks, with mass and rood the
Norman camp unto,
And to the fold, with shepherd crook, entice this
grisly Rou.
IV.
" I '11 give him all the ocean coast, from Michael
Mount to Eure,
And Gille, my child, shall be his bride, to bind
him fast and sure ;
Let him but kiss the Christian cross, and sheathe
the heathen sword,
And hold the lands I cannot keep, a fief from
Charles his lord."
Forth went the Pastors of the Church, the Shep-
herd's work to do,
And wrap the golden fleece around the tiger loins
of Rou.
v.
Psalm-chanting came the shaven monks, within
the camp of dread ;
Amidst his warriors, Norman Rou stood taller by
the head.
Out spoke the Frank Archbishop then, a priest
devout and sage,
" When peace and plenty wait thy word, what
need of war and rage ?
HAROLD. 101
Why waste a land as fair as aught beneath the
arch of blue,
Which might be thine to sow and reap ? Thus
saith the King to Rou :
VI.
' " I '11 give thee all the ocean coast, from Michael
Mount to Eure,
And Gille, my fairest child, as bride, to bind thee
fast and sure ;
If thou but kneel to Christ our God, and sheathe
thy paynim sword,
And hold thy land, the Church's son, a fief from
Charles thy lord."'
The Norman on his warriors looked to counsel
they withdrew ;
The saints took pity on the Franks, and moved
the soul of Rou.
VII.
So back he strode and thus he spoke, to that
Archbishop meek :
" I take the land thy king bestows from Eure to
Michael-peak,
I take the maid, or foul or fair, a bargain with
the coast,
And for thy creed, a sea-king's gods are those that
give the most.
102 HAROLD.
*
So liie thee back, and tell thy chief to make his
proffer true,
And he shall find a docile son, and ye a saint in
Rou."
VIII.
So o'er the border stream of Epte came Rou the
Norman, where,
Begirt with barons, sat the King, enthroned at
green St. Clair;
He placed his hand in Charles's hand, loud
shouted all the throng,
But tears were in King Charles's eyes the grip
of Rou was strong.
" Now kiss the foot," the Bishop said, " that
homage still is due ;"
Then dark the frown and stern the smile of that
grim convert, Rou.
IX.
He takes the foot, as if the foot to slavish lips to
bring :
The Normans scowl; he tilts the throne, and
backward falls the King.
Loud laugh the joyous Norman men pale stare
the Franks aghast ;
And Rou lifts up his head as from the wind
springs up the mast :
HAROLD. 103
I
" I said I would adore a God, but not a mortal
too ;
The foot that fled before a foe let cowards kiss ! "
said Rou.
No words can express the excitement which
this rough minstrelsy marred as it is by our
poor translation from the Romance-tongue in
which it was chantedproduced amongst the
Norman guests; less perhaps, indeed, the song
itself, than the recognition of the minstrel; and
as he closed, from more than a hundred voices
came the loud murmur, only subdued from a
shout by the royal presence, " Taillefer, our
Norman Taillefer!"
" By our joint saint, Peter, my cousin the King,"
exclaimed William, after a frank cordial laugh;
" well I wot, no tongue less free than my war-
rior minstrel's could have so shocked our ears.
Excuse his bold theme, for the sake of his bold
heart, I pray thee ; and since I knoAV well" (here
the Duke's face grew grave and anxious) "that
nought save urgent and weighty news from my
104 HAROLD.
stormy realm could have brought over this rhym-
ing petronel, permit the officer behind me to lead
hither a bird, I fear, of omen as well as of song."
" Whatever pleases thee, pleases me," said
Edward, drily; and he gave the order to the
attendant. In a few moments, up the space in
the hall, between either table, came the large
stride of the famous minstrel, preceded by the
officer, and followed by the ecclesiastic. The
hoods of both were now thrown back, and dis-
covered countenances in strange contrast, but
each equally worthy of the attention it provoked.
The face of the minstrel was open and sunny as
the day ; that of the priest, dark and close as
night. Thick curls of deep auburn (the most
common colour for the locks of the Norman)
wreathed in careless disorder round Taillefer's
massive unwrinkled brow. His eye, of light
hazel, was bold and joyous ; mirth, though sar-
castic and sly, mantled round his lips. His whole
presence was at once engaging and heroic.
On the other hand, the priest's cheek was dark
and sallow; his features singularly delicate and
refined ; his forehead high, but somewhat narrow,
HAROLD. 105
and crossed with the lines of thought ; his mien
composed, modest, but not without calm self-confi-
dence. Amongst that assembly of soldiers, noise-
less, self-collected, and conscious of his surpassing
power over swords and mail, moved the SCHOLAR.
William's keen eye rested on the priest with some
surprise, not unmixed with pride and ire ; but
first addressing Taillefer, who now gained the foot
of the dais, he said, with a familiarity almost fond,
" Now, by're Lady, if thou bringest not ill
news, thy gay face, man, is pleasanter to mine
eyes than thy rough song to my ears. Kneel,
Taillefer, kneel to King Edward, and with more
address, rogue, than our unlucky countryman to
King Charles."
But Edward, as ill-liking the form of the giant
as the subject of his lay, said, pushing back his
seat as far as he could,
" Nay, nay, we excuse thee, we excuse thee,
tall man." Nevertheless, the minstrel knelt, and
so, with a look of profound humility, did the
priest. Then both slowly rose, and at a sign
from the Duke, passed to the other side of the
table, standing behind Fitzosborne's chair.
F 3
106 HAROLD.
" Clerk," said William, eyeing deliberately the
sallow face of the ecclesiastic ; " I know thee
of old ; and if the Church have sent me an envoy,
per la resplendar De, it should have sent me at
least an abbot."
" Hein, Hein ! " said Taillefer, bluntly ; " vex
not my bon camarade, Count of the Normans.
Gramercy, thou wilt welcome him, peradventure,
better than me ; for the singer tells but of discord,
and the sage may restore the harmony."
" Ha !" said the Duke, and the frown fell so
dark over his eyes that the last seemed only
visible by two sparks of fire. " I guess, my proud
Vavasours are mutinous. Retire, thou and thy
comrade. Await me in my chamber. The feast
shall not flag in London because the wind blows
a gale in Rouen."
The two envoys, since so they seemed, bowed
in silence and withdrew.
" Nought of ill-tidings, I trust," said Edward,
who had not listened to the whispered com-
munications that had passed between the Duke
and his subjects. " No schism in thy Church?
The clerk seemed a peaceful man, and a humble."
HAROLD. 107
" An there were schism in my Church," said
the fiery Duke, " my brother of Bayeux would
settle it by arguments as close as the gap between
cord and throttle."
" Ah ! thou art, doubtless, well read in the
canons, holy Odo ?" said the King, turning to the
Bishop with more respect than he had yet evinced
towards that gentle prelate.
" Canons, yes, Seigneur, I draw them up myself
for my flock, conformably with such interpreta-
tions of the Roman Church as suit best with the
Norman realm ; and woe to deacon, monk, or
abbot, who chooses to misconstrue them." *
The Bishop looked so truculent and menacing,
while his fancy thus conjured up the possibility of
heretical dissent, that Edward shrank from him
as he had done from Taillefer ; and, in a few
minutes after, on exchange of signals between
himself and the Duke, who, impatient to escape,
* Pious severity to the heterodox was a Norman virtue. Wil-
liam 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.
108 HAROLD.
was too stately to testify that desire, the retire-
ment of the royal party broke up the banquet ;
save, indeed, that a few of the elder Saxons, and
more incorrigible Danes, still steadily kept their
seats, and were finally dislodged from their later
settlements on the stone floors, to find themselves,
at dawn, carefully propped in a row against the
outer walls of the palace, with their patient at-
tendants, holding links, and gazing on their
masters with stolid envy, if not of the repose,
at least of the drugs that had caused it.
CHAPTER II.
" AND now," said William, reclining on a long
and narrow couch, with raised carved work all
round it like a box, (the approved fashion of a
bed in those days,) "Now, Sire Taillefer thy
news."
There were then in the Duke's chamber, the
Count Fitzosborne, Lord of Breteul, surnamed
" the Proud Spirit" who, with great dignity,
was holding before the brazier, the ample tunic
of linen (called dormitorium in the Latin of that
time, and night-rail in the Saxon tongue,) in
which his lord was to robe his formidable limbs
for repose,"* Taillefer, who stood erect before the
* A few generations later this comfortable and decent fashion
of night-gear was abandoned ; and our forefathers, Saxon and
Norman, went to bed in puris naturcdibus, like the Laplanders.
110 HAROLD.
Duke as a Roman sentry at his post, and the
ecclesiastic, a little apart, with arms gathered
under his gown, and his bright dark eyes fixed on
the ground.
" High and puissant my liege," then said
Taillefer, gravely, and with a shade of sympathy
on his large face, "my news is such as is best
told briefly : Bunaz, Count d'Eu and descendant
of Richard Sanspeur, hath raised the standard
of revolt."
" Go on," said the Duke, clenching his hand.
" Henry, King of the French, is treating with
the rebel, and stirring up mutiny in thy realm,
and pretenders to thy throne."
"Ha!" said the Duke, and his lip quivered;
" this is not all."
" No, my liege ! and the worst is to come. Thy
uncle Manger, knowing that thy heart is bent on
thy speedy nuptials with the high and noble
damsel, Matilda of Flanders, has broken out
again in thine absence is preaching against
thee in hall and from pulpit. He declares that
such espousals are incestuous, both as within the
forbidden degrees, and inasmuch as Adele, the
HAROLD. Ill
lady's mother, was betrothed to thine uncle
Richard ; and Mauger menaces excommunication
if my liege pursues his suit !* So troubled is the
realm, that I, waiting not for debate in Council,
and fearing sinister ambassage if I did so, took
ship from thy port of Cherburg, and have not
flagged rein, and scarce broken bread, till I could
say to the heir of Rolf the Founder Save thy
realm from the men of mail, and thy bride from
the knaves in serge."
" Ho, ho !" cried William ; then bursting forth
in full wrath, as he sprang from the couch.
" Hearest thou this, Lord Seneschal ? Seven
years, the probation of the patriarch, have I wooed
and waited ; and lo, in the seventh, does a proud
priest say to me, * Wrench the love from thy heart-
strings !' Excommunicate me ME William, the
* 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 WAGE,
vol. ii. p 60. 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 Archas-
ologia, "quite near enough to account for, if not to justify, the
interference of the Church." Arch. vol. xxxii. p. 109.
112 HAROLD.
son of Robert the Devil ! Ha, by God's splen-
dour, Mauger sliall live to wish the father stood,
in the foul fiend's true likeness, by his side, rather
than brave the bent brow of the son ! "
"Dread my lord," said Fitzosborne, desisting
from his employ, and rising to his feet ; " thou
knowest that I am thy true friend and leal
knight ; thou knowest how I have aided thee in
this marriage with the lady of Flanders, and
how gravely I think that what pleases thy fancy
will guard thy realm ; but rather than brave the
order of the Church, and the ban of the Pope,
I would see thee wed to the poorest virgin in
Normandy."
William, who had been pacing the room, like
an enraged lion in his den, halted in amaze at this
bold speech.
" This from thee, William Fitzosborne ! from
thee ! I tell thee, that if all the priests in
Christendom, and all the barons in France, stood
between me and my bride, I would hew my way
through the midst. Foes invade my realm let
them ; princes conspire against me I smile in
scorn ; subjects mutiny this stroug hand can
HAROLD. 113
punish, or this large heart can forgive. All these
are the dangers he who governs men should
prepare to meet ; but man has a right to his
love, as the stag to his hind. And he who
wrongs me here, is foe and traitor to me, not as
Norman Duke but as human being. Look to it
thou and thy proud barons, look to it ! "
" Proud may thy barons be," said Fitzosborne,
reddening, and with a brow that quailed not
before his lord's ; " for they are the sons of
those who carved out the realm of the Norman,
and owned in Rou but the feudal chief of free
warriors ; vassals are not villeins. And that which
we hold our duty whether to Church or chief
that, Duke William, thy proud barons will
doubtless do ; nor less, believe me, for threats
which, braved in discharge of duty and defence of
freedom, we hold as air."
The Duke gazed on his haughty subject with
an eye in which a meaner spirit might have seen
his doom. The veins in his broad temples swelled
like cords, and a light foam gathered round his
quivering lips. But fiery and .fearless as William
was, not less was he sagacious and profound.
1 14 HAROLD.
In that one man he saw the representative of that
superb and matchless chivalry that race of races
those men of men, in whom the brave acknow-
ledge the highest 'example of valiant deeds, and
the free the manliest assertion of noble thoughts,*
since the day when the last Athenian covered
his head with his mantle, and mutely died ; and
far from being the most stubborn against his will,
it was to Fitzosborne's paramount influence with
the council, that he had often owed their sub-
mission to his wishes, and their contributions to
his wars. In the very tempest of his wrath, he
felt that the blow he longed to strike on that bold
* 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 dis-
dain of corruption, which characterize the homely bonders
of Norway, in whom we may still recognise the sturdy likeness
of their fathers ; while it is also remarkable that the modern
inhabitants of those portions of the kingdom originally peo-
pled 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, Yorkshire,
Norfolk, Cumberland, and large districts in the Scottish low-
lands.
HAROLD. 115
head would shiver his ducal throne to the dust.
He felt too, that awful indeed was that power of
the Church, which could thus turn against him
the heart of his truest knight ; and he began (for
with all his outward frankness his temper was
suspicious,) to wrong the great- souled noble by
the thought that he might already be won over
by the enemies whom Mauger had arrayed
against his nuptials. Therefore, with one of
those rare and mighty efforts of that dissimula-
tion which debased his character, but achieved his
fortunes, he cleared his brow of its dark cloud,
and said in a low voice, that was not without its
pathos,
" Had an angel from heaven forewarned me
that William Fitzosborne would speak thus to his
kinsman and brother in arms, in the hour of need
and the agony of passion, I would have disbe-
lieved. Let it pass "
But ere the last word was out of his lips, Fitz-
osborne had fallen on his knees before the Duke,
and, clasping his hand, exclaimed, while the tears
rolled down his swarthy cheek, " Pardon, pardon,
my liege ! when thou speakest thus my heart
116 HAROLD.
melts. What them wiliest, that will I ! Church
or Pope, no matter. Send me to Flanders ; I will
bring back thy bride."
The slight smile that curved William's lip,
showed that he was scarce worthy of that sublime
weakness in his friend. But he cordially pressed the
hand that grasped his own, and said, " Rise ; thus
should brother speak to brother." Then for his
wrath was only concealed, not stifled, and yearned
for its vent his eye fell upon the delicate and
thoughtful face of the priest, who had watched
this short and stormy conference in profound
silence, despite Taillefer's whispers to him to in-
terrupt the dispute. " So, priest," he said, " I re-
member me that when Mauger before let loose his
rebellious tongue thou didst lend thy pedant
learning to eke out his brainless treason. Me-
thought that I then banished thee my realm ? "
" Not so, Count and Seigneur," answered the
ecclesiastic, with a grave but arch smile on his
lip ; " let me remind thee, that to speed me back
to my native land thou didst graciously send me
a horse, halting on three legs, and all lame on
the fourth. Thus mounted, I met thee on my
HAROLD. 117
road. I saluted thee ; so did the beast, for his
head well nigh touched the ground. Whereon
I did ask thee, in a Latin play of words, to give me
at least a quadruped, not a tripod, for my journey.*
Gracious, even in ire, and with relenting laugh,
was thine answer. My liege, thy words implied
banishment thy laughter, pardon. So I stayed."
Despite his wrath, William could scarcely re-
press a smile; but recollecting himself, he re-
plied, more gravely, "Peace with this levity,
priest. Doubtless, thou art the envoy from this
scrupulous Mauger, or some other of my gentle
clergy ; and thou comest, as doubtless, with soft
words, and whining homilies. It is in vain. I
hold the Church in holy reverence ; the pontiff
knows it. But Matilda of Flanders I have
wooed ; and Matilda of Flanders shall sit by my
side in the halls of Rouen, or on the deck of my
war-ship, till it anchors on a land worthy to yield
a new domain to the son of the Sea-king.' 1
" In the halls of Rouen and it may be on the
* Ex pervetusto codice, MS. Chron Bee. in Vit. Lanfranc.
quoted in the Archaeologia, vol. xxxii. p. 109. The joke, which
is very poor, seems to have turned upon pede and quadrupede ;
it is a little altered in the text.
118 HAROLD.
throne of England shall Matilda reign by the
side of William," said the priest, in a clear, low,
and emphatic voice ; " and it was to tell my lord
the Duke that I repent me of my first unconsidered
obeisance to Mauger as my spiritual superior ;
that since then I have myself examined canon and
precedent ; and though the letter of the law be
against thy spousals, it comes precisely under the
category of those alliances to which the fathers of
the Church accord dispensation ; it is to tell thee
this, that I, plain Doctor of Laws and priest of
Pavia, have crossed the seas."
" Ha Rou ! Ha Rou ! " cried Taillefer, with
his usual bluffness, and laughing with great glee,
"why wouldst thou not listen to me, mon-
seigneur ? "
" If thou deceivest me not," said William, in
surprise, " and thou canst make good thy words,
no prelate in Neustria, save Odo of Bayeux, shall
lift his head high as thine." And here William,
deeply versed in the science of men, bent his eyes
keenly upon the unchanging and earnest face of
the speaker. " Ah," he burst out, as if satisfied
with the survey, " and my mind tells me that thou
HAROLD. 119
speakest not thus boldly and calmly without ground
sufficient. Man, I like thee. Thy name? I
forget it."
" Lanfranc of Pavia, please you my lord ;
called sometimes * Lanfranc the Scholar' in thy
cloister of Bee. Nor misdeem me, that I, hum-
ble, unmitred priest, should be thus bold. In
birth I am noble, and my kindred stand near to
the grace of our ghostly pontiff; to the pontiff I
myself am not unknown. Did I desire honours,
in Italy I might seek them ; it is not so. I crave
no guerdon for the service I proffer ; none but
this leisure and books in the Convent of
Bee."
" Sit down nay, sit, man," said William,
greatly interested, but still suspicious. "One
riddle only I ask thee to solve, before I give thee
all my trust, and place my very heart in thy
hands. Why, if thou desirest not rewards,
shouldst thou thus care to serve me thou, a
foreigner ? "
A light, brilliant and calm, shone in the eyes
of the scholar, and a blush spread over his pale
cheeks.
1 20 HAROLD.
" My Lord Prince, I will answer in plain
words. But first permit me to be the ques-
tioner."
The priest turned towards Fitzosborne, who
had seated himself on a stool at William's feet,
and, leaning his chin on his hand, listened to the
ecclesiastic, not more with devotion to his calling,
than wonder at the influence one so obscure was
irresistibly gaining over his own martial spirit,
and William's iron craft.
" Lovest thou not, William Lord of Breteul,
lovest thou not fame for the sake of fame ?"
" Sur mon ame yes !" said the Baron.
" And thou, Taillefer the minstrel, lovest thou
not song for the sake of song ?''
" For song alone," replied the mighty minstrel.
" More gold in one ringing rhyme than in all the
coffers of Christendom."
" And marvellest thou, reader of men's hearts,"
said the scholar, turning once more to William,
" that the student loves knowledge for the sake of
knowledge ? Born of high race, poor in purse,
and slight of thews, betimes I found wealth in
books, and drew strength from lore. I heard of
HAROLD. 121
the Count of Rouen and the Normans, as a prince
of small domain, with a measureless spirit, a lover
of letters, and a captain in war. I came to thy
duchy, I noted its subjects and its prince, and the
words of Themistocles rang in my ear : ' I can-
not play the lute, but I can make a small state
great.' I felt an interest in thy strenuous and
troubled career. I believe that knowledge, to spread
amongst the nations, must first find a nursery in
the brain of kings ; and I saw in the deed-doer,
the agent of the thinker. In those espousals, on
which with untiring obstinacy thy heart is set, I
might sympathize with thee ; perchance" (here a
melancholy smile flitted over the student's pale
lips), " perchance even as a lover : priest though I
be now, and dead to human love, once I loved,
and I know what it is to strive in hope, and to
waste in despair. But my sympathy, I own, was
more given to the prince than to the lover. It
was natural that I, priest and foreigner, should
obey at first the orders of Mauger, archprelate
and spiritual chief, and the more so as the law
\vas with him ; but when I resolved to stay,
despite thy sentence which banished me, I re-
VOL. I. Q
122 HAROLD.
solved to aid thee ; for if with Mauger was the
dead law, with thee was the living cause of man.
Duke William, on thy nuptials with Matilda of
Flanders rests thy duchy rest, perchance, the
mightier sceptres that are yet to come. Thy title
disputed, thy principality new and unestablished,
thou, above all men, must link thy new race with
the ancient line of kings and kaisars. Matilda is
the descendant of Charlemagne and Alfred. Thy
realm is insecure as long as France undermines it
with plots, and threatens it with arms. Marry the
daughter of Baldwin and thy wife is the niece of
Henry of France thine enemy becomes thy kins-
man, and must, perforce, be thine ally. This is
not all ; it were strange, looking round this dis-
ordered royalty of England a childless king, who
loves thee better than his own blood ; a divided
nobility, already adopting the fashions of the
stranger, and accustomed to shift their faith
from Saxon to Dane, and Dane to Saxon ; a
people that has respect indeed for brave chiefs, but,
seeing new men rise daily from new houses, has
no reverence for ancient lines and hereditary
names ; with a vast mass of villeins or slaves that
HAROLD. 123
have no interest in the land or its rulers ; strange,
seeing all this, if thy day-dreams have not also
beheld a Norman sovereign on the throne of
Saxon England. And thy marriage with the
descendant of the best and most beloved prince
that ever ruled these realms, if it does not give
thee a title to the land, may help to conciliate its
affections, and to fix thy posterity in the halls of
their mother's kin. Have I said eno' to prove
why, for the sake of nations, it were wise for the
Pontiff to stretch the harsh girths of the law?
why I might be enabled to prove to the Court of
Rome the policy of conciliating the love, and
strengthening the hands, of the Norman Count,
who may so become the main prop of Christen-
dom ? Yea, have I said eno' to prove that the hum-
ble clerk can look on mundane matters with the
eye of a man who can make small states great ?"
William remained speechless his hot blood
thrilled with a half superstitious awe; so tho-
roughly had this obscure Lombard divined, de-
tailed all the intricate meshes of that policy with
which he himself had interwoven his pertinacious
affection for the Flemish princess, that it seemed
o 2
124 HAROLD.
to him as if he listened to the echo of his own
heart, or heard from a soothsayer the voice of his
most secret thoughts.
The priest continued:
" Wherefore, thus considering, I said to myself,
Now has the time come, Lanfranc the Lombard, to
prove to thee whether thy self-boastings have been
a vain deceit, or whether, in this age of iron and
amidst this lust of gold, thou, the penniless and
the feeble, canst make knowledge and wit of
more avail to the destinies of kings than armed
men and filled treasuries. I believe in that power.
I am ready for the test. Pause, judge from what
the Lord of Breteul hath said to thee, what will
be the defection of thy lords if the Pope confirm
the threatened excommunication of thine uncle?
Thine armies will rot from thee ; thy treasures will
be like dry leaves in thy coffers ; the Duke of
Bretagne will claim thy duchy as the legitimate
heir of thy forefathers ; the Duke of Burgundy
will league with the King of France, and march
on thy faithless legions under the banner of the
Church. The handwriting is on the walls, and
thy sceptre and thy crown will pass away."
HAROLD. 125
William set his teeth firmly, and breathed hard.
" But send me to Rome, thy delegate, and the
thunder of Mauger shall fall powerless. Marry
Matilda, bring her to thy halls, place her on thy
throne, laugh to scorn the interdict of thy traitor
uncle, and rest assured that the Pope shall send
thee his dispensation to thy spousals, and his
benison on thy marriage -bed. And when this be
done, Duke William, give me not abbacies and
prelacies ; multiply books, and stablish schools,
and bid thy servant found the royalty of know-
ledge, as thou shalt found the sovereignty of war."
The Duke, transported from himself, leaped up
and embraced the priest with his vast arms ; he
kissed his cheeks, he kissed his forehead, as, in
those days, king kissed king with " the kiss of
peace."
" Lanfranc of Pavia," he cried, " whether thou
succeed or fail, thou hast my love and gratitude
evermore. As thou speakest, would I have
spoken, had I been born, framed, and reared as
thou. And, verily, when I hear thee, I blush for
the boasts of my barbarous pride, that no man
can wield my mace, or bend my bow. Poor is the
126 HAROLD.
strength of body a web of law can entangle it,
and a word from a priest's mouth can palsy. But
thou ! let me look at thee."
William gazed on the pale face ; from head to
foot he scanned the delicate, slender form, and
then turning away, he said to Fitzosborne,
" Thou, whose mailed hand hath fell'd a war-
steed, art thou not ashamed of thyself? The day
is coming, I see it afar, when these slight men
shall set their feet upon our corslets."
He paused as if in thought, again paced the
room, and stopped before the crucifix and image
of the Virgin, which stood in a niche near the bed
head.
" Right, noble prince," said the priest's low
voice. " Pause there for a solution to all enigmas ;
there, view the symbol of all-enduring power;
there, learn its ends below comprehend the
account it must yield above. To your thoughts
and your prayers we leave you."
He took the stalwart arm of Taillefer, as he
spoke, and, with a grave obeisance to Fitzosborne,
left the chamber.
CHAPTER III.
THE next morning William was long closeted
alone with Lanfranc, that man, among the most
remarkable of his age, of whom it was said, that
" to comprehend the extent of his talents, one must
be Herodian in grammar, Aristotle in dialectics,
Cicero in rhetoric, Augustine and Jerome in
Scriptural lore,"* and ere the noon Hs gallant
and princely train were ordered to be in readiness
for return home.
The crowd in the broad space, and the citizens
from their boats in the river, gazed on the knights
and steeds of that gorgeous company, already
drawn up and awaiting without the open gates the
sound of the trumpets that should announce the
* ORD. VITAL. See Note on Lanfranc, at the end of the
Volume.
128 HAROLD.
Duke's departure. Before the hall-door in the inner
court were his own men. The snow-white steed
of Odo ; the alezan of Fitzosborne ; and, to the
marvel of all, a small palfrey plainly caparisoned.
What did that palfrey amid those steeds? the
steeds themselves seemed to chafe at the compa-
nionship ; the Duke's charger pricked up his ears
and snorted ; the Lord of Breteul's alezan kicked
out, as the poor nag humbly drew near to make
acquaintance ; and the prelate's white barb, with
red vicious eye, and ears laid down, ran fiercely
at the low-bred intruder, with difficulty reined in
by the squires, who shared the beast's amaze and
resentment.
Meanwhile the Duke thoughtfully took his
way to Edward's apartments. In the anteroom
were many monks and many knights ; but con-
spicuous amongst them all was a tall and stately
veteran, leaning on a great two-handed sword,
and whose dress and fashion of beard were those
of the last generation, the men who had fought
with Canute the Great or Edmund Ironsides. So
grand was the old man's aspect, and so did he con-
trast, in appearance, the narrow garb and shaven
HAROLD. 129
chins of those around, that the Duke was roused
from his reverie at the sight, and marvelling why
one, evidently a chief of high rank, had neither
graced the banquet in his honour, nor been pre-
sented to his notice, he turned to the Earl of
Hereford, who approached him with gay saluta-
tion, and inquired the name and title of the
bearded man in the loose flowing robe.
" Know you not, in truth ?" said the lively Earl,
in some wonder. " In him you see the great
rival of Godwin. He is the hero of the Danes,
as Godwin is of the Saxons, a true son of Odin,
Siward Earl of the Northumbrians.*
" Notre Dame be my aid ! his fame hath oft
filled my ears, and I should have lost the most
* Siward was almost a giant (pene gigas statura). There are
some curious anecdotes of this hero, immortalized 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 paternal 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 shirt or his bearskin, the name equally lends
itself to those mystifications from which half the old legends,
whether of Greece or Norway, are derived.
G 3
130 HAROLD.
welcome sight in merrie England had I not now
beheld him."
Therewith, the Duke approached courteously,
and, doffing the cap he had hitherto retained, he
greeted the old hero with those compliments
which the Norman had already learned in the
courts of the Frank.
The stout Earl received them coldly, and replying
in Danish to William's Romance-tongue, he said,
" Pardon, Count of the Normans, if these old
lips cling to their old words. Both of us, methinks,
date our lineage from the lands of the Norse.
Suffer Siward to speak the language the sea-kings
spoke. The oak transplants not, and the old man
keeps the ground where his youth took root."
The Duke, who with some difficulty compre-
hended the general meaning of Siward's speech,
bit his lip, but replied courteously,
" The youths of all nations may learn from
renowned age. Much doth it shame me that I
cannot commune with thee in the ancestral tongue ;
but the angels at least know the language of the
Norman Christian, and I pray them and the saints
for a calm end to thy brave career."
HARiOLD. 131
" Pray not to angel or saint for Siward son
of Beorn," said the old man hastily : " let me not
have a cow's death, but a warrior's ; die in my
mail of proof, axe in hand, and helm on head.
And such may be my death, if Edward the King
reads my rede and grants my prayer."
" I have influence with the King," said William ;
" name thy wish, that I may back it."
" The fiend forfend," said the grim Earl,
" that a foreign prince should sway England's
King, or that thegn and earl should ask other
backing than leal service and just cause. If
Edward be the saint men call him, he will loose
me on the hell-wolf, without other cry than his
own conscience."
The Duke turned inquiringly to Rolf; who
thus appealed to, said,
" Siward urges my uncle to espouse the cause
of Malcolm of Cumbria against the bloody tyrant
Macbeth; and but for the disputes with the
traitor Godwin, the King had long since turned
his arms to Scotland."
" Call not traitors, young man," said the Earl,
in high disdain, " those who, with all their faults
1 32 HAROLD.
and crimes, have placed thy kinsman on the
throne of Canute."
" Hush, Rolf," said the Duke, observing the
fierce young Norman about to reply hastily.
" But methought, though my knowledge of
English troubles is but scant, that Siward was
the sworn foe to Godwin?"
" Foe to him in his power, friend to him in his
wrongs;*' answered Siward. "And if England
needs defenders when I and Godwin are in our
shrouds, there is but one man worthy of the days
of old, and his name is Harold, the outlaw."
William's face changed remarkably, despite all
his dissimulation ; and, with a slight inclination of
his head, he strode on, moody and irritated.
" This Harold ! this Harold I" he muttered to
himself, " all brave men speak to me of this
Harold! Even my Norman knights name him
with reluctant reverence, and even his foes do
him honour; verily his shadow is cast from
exile over all the land."
Thus murmuring, he passed the throng with
less than his wonted affable grace, and pushing
back the officers who wished to precede him,
HAROLD. 133
entered, without ceremony, Edward's private
chamber.
The king was alone, but talking loudly to
himself, gesticulating vehemently, and altogether
so changed from his ordinary placid apathy of
mien, that William drew back in alarm and awe.
Often had he heard indirectly, that of late years
Edward was said to see visions, and be rapt from
himself into the world of spirit and shadow ; and
such, he now doubted not, was the strange
paroxysm of which he was made the witness.
Edward's eyes were fixed on him, but evidently
without recognising his presence; the King's
hands were outstretched, and he cried aloud in
a voice of sharp anguish,
" Sanguelac, Sanguelac ! the Lake of Blood !
the waves spread, the waves redden ! Mother of
mercy where is the ark ? where the Ararat ?
Fly fly this way this " and he caught con-
vulsive hold of William's arm. " No ! there the
corpses are piled high and higher there the
horse of the Apocalypse tramples the dead in
their gore."
In great horror, William took the King, now
134 HAROLD.
gasping on his breast, in his arms, and laid him
on his bed, beneath its canopy of state, all
blazoned with the martlets and cross of his
insignia. Slowly Edward came to himself, with
heavy sighs ; and when at length he sate up and
looked round, it was with evident unconsciousness
of what had passed across his haggard and wan-
dering spirit, for he said with his usual drowsy
calmness,
" Thanks, Guillaume, bien aime, for rousing me
from unseasoned sleep. How fares it with thee?"
" Nay, how with thee, dear friend and king ?
thy dreams have been troubled."
" Not so ; I slept so heavily, methinks I could
not have dreamed at all. But thou art clad as
for a journey spur on thy heel, staff in thy
hand?"
"Long since, O dear host, I sent Odo to tell
thee of the ill news from Normandy that com-
pelled me to depart."
"I remember I remember me now," said
Edward, passing his pale womanly fingers over
his forehead. " The heathen rage against thee.
Ah ! my poor brother, a crown is an awful head-
HAROLD. 135
gear. While yet time, why not both seek some
quiet convent, and put away these earthly cares?"
William smiled and shook his head. " Nay,
holy Edward, from all I have seen of convents,
it is a dream to think that the monk's serge
hides a calmer breast than the warrior's mail,
or the king's ermine. Now give me thy benison,
for I go."
He knelt as he spoke, and Edward bent his
hands over his head, and blessed him. Then,
taking from his own neck a collar of zimmes,
(jewels and uncut gems) of great price, the King
threw it over the broad throat bent before him,
and rising, clapped his hands. A small door
opened, giving a glimpse of the oratory within,
and a monk appeared.
"Father, have my hests been fulfilled? hath
Hugoline, my treasurer, dispensed the gifts that
I spoke of?"
" Verily yes ; vault, coffer, and garde-robe
stall and meuse are well nigh drained,"
answered the monk, with a sour look at the
Norman, whose native avarice gleamed in his
dark eyes as he heard the answer.
136 HAROLD.
" Thy train go not hence empty-handed,"
said Edward fondly. " Thy father's halls shel-
tered the exile, and the exile forgets not the sole
pleasure of a king the power to requite. We
may never meet again, William, age creeps
over me, and who will succeed to my thorny
throne?"
William longed to answer, to tell the hope
that consumed him, to remind his cousin of
the vague promise in their youth, that the
Norman Count should succeed to that 'thorny
throne;' but the presence of the Saxon monk
repelled him, nor was there in Edward's uneasy
look much to allure him on.
" But peace," continued the King, " be between
thine and mine, as between thee and me ! "
"Amen," said the Duke, "and I leave thee at
least free from the proud rebels who so long
disturbed thy reign. This House of Godwin,
thou wilt not again let it tower above thy
palace ? "
" Nay, the future is with God and his saints ; "
answered Edward feebly. "But Godwin is old
older than I, and bowed by many storms."
HAROLD. 137
" Ay, his sons are more to be dreaded and
kept aloof mostly Harold ! "
" Harold, he was ever obedient, he alone of
his kith ; truly my soul mourns for Harold," said
the King, sighing.
" The serpent's egg hatches but the ser-
pent. Keep thy heel on it," said William,
sternly.
" Thou speakest well," said the irresolute prince,
who never seemed three days or three minutes
together in the same mind. "Harold is in Ire-
land there let him rest : better for all."
" For all," said the Duke ; " so the saints keep
thee, O royal saint ! "
He kissed the King's hand, and strode away to
the hall where Odo, Fitzosborne, and the priest
Lanfranc awaited him. And so that day, half-way
towards the fair town of Dover, rode Duke
William, and by the side of his roan barb ambled
the priest's palfrey.
Behind came his gallant train, with tumbrils
and sumpter-mules laden with baggage, and en-
riched by Edward's gifts; while Welch hawks,
and steeds of great price from the pastures of
138 HAROLD.
Surrey and the plains of Cambridge and York,
attested no less acceptably than zimme, and
golden chain, and broidered robe, the munificence
of the grateful King.*
As they journeyed on, and the fame of the
Duke's coming was sent abroad by the bodes
or messengers, despatched to prepare the towns
through which he was to pass for an arrival
sooner than expected, the more highborn youths
of England, especially those of the party counter
to that of the banished Godwin, came round the
ways to gaze upon that famous chief, who, from
the age of fifteen, had wielded the most redoubt-
able sword of Christendom. And those youths
wore the Norman garb ; and in the towns, Norman
counts held his stirrup to dismount, and Norman
hosts spread the fastidious board; and when, at
the eve of the next day, William saw the pennon
of one of his own favourite chiefs waving in the van
of armed men, that sallied forth from the towers
of Dover (the key of the coast), he turned to the
Lombard, still by his side, and said :
" Is not England part of Normandy already ?"
* WAOE.
HAROLD. 139
And the Lombard answered :
" The fruit is well nigh ripe, and the first
breeze will shake it to thy feet. Put not out thy
hand too soon. Let the wind do its work."
And the Duke made reply,
"As thou thinkest, so think I. And there is
but one wind in the halls of heaven that can waft
the fruit to the feet of another."
" And that ?" asked the Lombard.
" Is the wind that blows from the shores of Ire-
land, when it fills the sails of Harold, son of
Godwin."
" Thou fearest that man, and why ?" asked the
Lombard with interest.
And the Duke answered :
" Because in the breast of Harold beats the
heart of England."
BOOK III.
THE HOUSE OF GODWIN.
BOOK III.
CHAPTER I.
AND all went to the desire of Duke William
the Norman. With one hand he curbed his
proud vassals, and drove back his fierce foes.
With the other, he led to the altar Matilda,
the maid of Flanders ; and all happened as
Lanfranc had foretold. William's most formid-
able enemy, the King of France, ceased to
conspire against his new kinsman ; and the
neighbouring princes said, " The Bastard hath
become one of us since he placed by his
side the descendant of Charlemagne." And
Mauger, Archbishop of Rouen, excommunicated
the Duke and his bride, and the ban fell idle ;
for Lanfranc sent from Eome the Pope's dis-
144 HAROLD.
pensation and blessing,* conditionally only that
bride and bridegroom founded each a church.
And Mauger was summoned before the synod,
and accused of unclerical crimes ; and they de-
posed him from his state, and took from him
abbacies and sees. And England, every day,
waxed more and more Norman ; and Edward
grew more feeble and infirm, and there seemed
not a barrier between the Norman Duke and the
English throne, when suddenly the wind blew in
the halls of heaven, and filled the sails of Harold
the Earl.
And his ships came to the mouth of the Severn.
And the people of Somerset and Devdn, a mixed
and mainly a Celtic race, who bore small love to
the Saxons, drew together against him, and he
put them to flight, f
Meanwhile, Godwin and* his sons Sweyn, Tostig,
and Gurth, who had taken refuge in that very
Flanders from which William the Duke had
won his bride, (for Tostig had wed, previously,
* See Note C. at the end of the volume, (foot-note on the date
of William's marriage).
f Anylo-Saxon Chronicle.,
HAROLD.
the sister of Matilda, the rose of Flanders; and
Count Baldwin had, for his sons-in-law, both
Tostig and "William,) meanwhile, I say, these,
not holpen by the Count Baldwin, but helping
themselves, lay at Bruges, ready to join Harold
the Earl. And Edward, avised of this from
the anxious Norman, caused forty ships* to be
equipped, and put them under command of Rolf,
Earl of Hereford. The ships lay at Sandwich in
wait for Godwin. But the old Earl got from
them, and landed quietly on the southern coast.
And the fort of Hastings opened to his coming
with a shout from its armed men.
All the boatmen, all the mariners, far and
near, thronged to him, with sail and with shield,
with sword and with oar. All Kent, (the foster-
mother of the Saxons,) sent forth the cry, " Life
or death with Earl Godwin."f Fast over the
length and breadth of the land, went the bodes J
and riders of the Earl ; and hosts, with one voice,
answered the cry of the children of Horsa, " Life
or death with Earl Godwin." And the ships of
* Some writers say fifty. f HOVEXDEN.
I Bodes, i.e. Messengers.
VOL. I. H
146 HAROLD.
King Edward, in dismay, turned flag and prow
to London, and the fleet of Harold sailed on. So
the old Earl met his young son on the deck of a
warship, that had once borne the Raven of the
Dane.
Swelled and gathering sailed the armament of
the English men. Slow up the Thames it sailed,
and on either shore marched tumultuous the
swarming multitudes. And King Edward sent
after more help, but it came up very late. So
the fleet of the Earl nearly faced the Juillet Keape
of London, and abode at Southwark till the flood-
tide came up. When he had mustered his host,
then came the flood-tide.*
* A nylo Saxon Chronicle.
CHAPTER II.
KING EDWARD sate, not on his throne, but on a
chair of state, in the presence chamber of his
palace of Westminster. His diadem, with the
three zimmes shaped into a triple trefoil* on
his brow, his sceptre in his right hand. His
royal robe, tight to the throat, with a broad
band of gold, flowed to his feet ; and at the
fold gathered round the left knee, where now the
kings of England wear the badge of St. George,
was embroidered a simple cross, t In that chamber
met the thegns and proceres of his realm ; but not
they alone. No national Witan there assembled,
but a council of war, composed at least one third
part of Normans counts, knights, prelates, and
abbots of high degree.
And King Edward looked a king! The
* Or Fleur-de-lis, which seems to have been a common, form of
ornament with the Saxon kings.
f Bayeux Tapestry.
H2
148 HAROLD.
habitual lethargic meekness had vanished from
his face, and the large crown threw a shadow,
like a frown, over his brow. His spirit seemed
to have risen from the weight it took from
the sluggish blood of his father, Ethelred the
Unready, and to have remounted to the brighter
and earlier source of ancestral heroes. Worthy
in that hour he seemed to boast the blood and
wield the sceptre of Athelstan and Alfred.*
Thus spoke the King.
" Right worthy and beloved, my ealdermen,
earls, and thegns of England ; noble and familiar,
my friends and guests, counts and chevaliers of
Normandy, my mother's land; and you, our spiritual
chiefs, above all ties of birth and country, Christen-
dom your common appanage, and from Heaven your
seignories and fiefs, hear the words of Edward,
the King of England, under grace of the Most
High. The rebels are in our river ; open yonder
lattice, and you will see the piled shields glitter-
ing from their barks, and hear the hum of their
hosts. Not a bow has yet been drawn, not a
sword left its sheath ; yet on the opposite side of
* See Note (D) at the end of the volume.
HAROLD. 149
the river are our fleets of forty sail along tlie
strand, between our palace and the gates of Lon-
don, are arrayed our armies. And this pause
because Godwin the traitor hath demanded truce,
and his nuncius waits without. Are ye willing
that we should hear the message ? or would ye
rather that we dismiss the messenger unheard,
and pass at once, to rank and to sail, the war-
cry of a Christian king, ' Holy Crosse and our
Lady!'"
The King ceased, his left hand grasping firm
the leopard head carved on his throne, and his
sceptre untrembling in his lifted hand.
A murmur of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, the
war-cry of the Normans, was heard amongst
the stranger-knights of the audience; but haughty
and arrogant as those strangers were, no one pre-
sumed to take precedence, in England's danger,
of men English born.
Slowly then rose Aired, Bishop of Winchester,
the worthiest prelate in all the land.*
* The York Chronicle, written by an Englishman, Stubhs,
gives this eminent person an excellent character as peacemaker.
" He could make the warmest Mends of foes the most hostile."
150 HAROLD.
" Kingly son," said the bishop, "evil is the strife
between men of the same blood and lineage, nor
justified but by extremes, which have not yet
been made clear to us. And ill would it sound
throughout England were it said that the King's
council gave, perchance, his city of London
to sword and fire, and rent his land in twain,
when a word in season might have disbanded yon
armies, and given to your throne a submissive
subject, where now you are menaced by a formid-
able rebel. Wherefore, I say, admit the nuncius."
Scarcely had Aired resumed his seat, before
Robert the Norman prelate of Canterbury started
up, a man, it was said, of worldly learning
.and exclaimed,
ft To admit the messenger is to approve the
treason. I do beseech the King to consult only
his own royal heart and royal honour. Reflect
each moment of delay swells the rebel hosts,
strengthens their cause ; of each moment they avail
vthfimselves, to allure to their side the misguided
a De inimicissimis, amiciasimos 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.
HAROLD. 151
citizens. Delay but proves our own weakness ; a
king's name is a tower of strength, but only when
fortified by a king's authority. Give the signal
for tvar I call it not no for chastisement and
justice."
" As speaks my brother of Canterbury, speak
J," said William, Bishop of London, another
Norman.
But then there rose up a form at whose rising
all murmurs were hushed.
Grey and vast, as some image of a gone and
mightier age, towered over all Siward, the son of
Beorn, the great Earl of Northumbria.
" We have nought to do with the Normans.
Were they on the river, and our countrymen,
Dane or Saxon, alone in this hall, small doubt of
the King's choice, and niddering were the man
who spoke of peace; but when Norman advises
the dwellers of England to go forth and slay each
other, no sword of mine shall be drawn at his
hest. Who shall say that Siward of the Strong
Arm, the grandson of the Berserker, ever turned
from a foe ? The foe, son of Ethelred, sits in
these halls ; I fight thy battles when I say Nay
152 HAROLD.
to the Norman ! Brothers-in-arms of the kindred
race and common tongue, Dane and Saxon long
intermingled, proud alike of Canute the glorious
and Alfred the wise, ye will hear the man whom
Godwin, our countryman, sends to us ; he at least
will speak our tongue, and he knows our laws. If
the demand he delivers be just, such as a King
should grant, and our Witan should hear, woe
to him who refuses ; if unjust be the demand,
shame to him who accedes. Warrior sends to
warrior, countryman to countryman ; hear we
as countrymen, and judge as warriors. I have
said."
The utmost excitement and agitation followed
the speech of Siward, unanimous applause from
the Saxons, even those who in times of peace
were most under the Norman contagion ; but no
words can paint the wrath and scorn of the
Normans. They spoke loud and many at a time ;
the greatest disorder prevailed. But the majority
being English, there could be doubt as to the
decision, and Edward, to whom the emergence
gave both a dignity and presence of mind rare
to him, resolved to terminate the dispute at once.
HAROLD, 153
lie stretched forth his sceptre, and motioning to
his chamberlain, bade him introduce the nuncius.*
A blank disappointment, not unmixed with
apprehensive terror, succeeded the turbulent ex-
citement of the Normans ; for well they kneAV
that the consequence, if not condition, of negoti-
ations, would be their own downfall and banish-
ment at the least ; happy, it might be, to escape
massacre at the hands of the exasperated mul-
titude.
The door at the end of the room opened, and
the nuncius appeared. He was a sturdy, broad-
shouldered man, of middle age, and in the long
loose garb originally national with the Saxon,
though then little in vogue ; his beard thick and
fair, his eyes grey and calm a chief of Kent,
where all the prejudices of his race were strong-
est, and whose yeomanry claimed in war the
hereditary right to be placed in the front of
battle.
He made his manly but deferential salutation
* Heralds, though probably the word is Saxon, -were not then
known in the modern acceptation of the word. The name of
the messenger or envoy who fulfilled that office was bode or
nuncius. See Note (E) at the end of the volume.
H 3
154 HAROLD.
to the august council as he approached; and
pausing midway between the throne and door, he
fell on his knees without thought of shame, for
the King to whom he knelt was the descendant of
Woden, and the heir of Hengist. At a sign and
a brief word from the King, still on his knee?.
Vebba, the Kentman, spoke.
" To Edward, son of Ethelred, his most gra-
cious king and lord, Godwin, son of "Wolnoth,
sends faithful and humble greeting, by Vebba,
the thegn-born. He prays the King to hear
him in kindness, and judge of him with mercy.
Not against the King comes he hither with ships
and arms; but against those only who would
stand between the King's heart and the subject's :
those Avho have divided a house against itself,
find parted son and father, man and wife. "
At those last words Edward's sceptre trembled
in his hand, and his face grew almost stern.
"Of the King, Godwin but prays with all
submiss and earnest prayer, to reverse the un-
righteous outlawry against him and his; to
restore to him and his sons their just possessions
and Avell-won honours ; and, more than all, to
HAROLD. 155
replace them where they have sought by loving
service not unworthily to stand, in the grace of
their born lord, and in the van of those who would
iiphold the laws and liberties of England. This
done the ships sail back to their haven; the
thegn seeks his homestead, and the ceorl returns
to the plough ; for with Godwin are no strangers ;
and his force is but the love of his countrymen."
" Hast thou said ? " quoth the King.
" I have said."
" Retire, and await our answer."
The Thegn of Kent was then led back
into an ante-room, in which, armed from head
to heel in ring-mail, were several Normans
whose youth or station did not admit them into
the council, but still of no mean interest in the
discussion, from the lands and possessions they
had already contrived to gripe out of the de-
mesnes of the exiles; burning for battle and
eager for the word. Amongst these was Mallet
de Graville.
The Norman valour of this young knight was,
as we have seen, guided by Norman intelligence ;
and he had not disdained, since "William's de-
156 HAROLD.
parture, to study the tongue of the country in
which he hoped to exchange his mortgaged tower
on the Seine, for some fair barony on the
Humbcr or the Thames.
While the rest of his proud countrymen stood
aloof, with eyes of silent scorn, from the homely
nuncius, Mallet approached him with courteous
bearing, and said in Saxon
" May I crave to know the issue of thy mes-
sage from the reb that is, from the doughty
Earl?"
" I wait to learn it," said Vebba, bluffly.
" They heard thee throughout, then ?"
" Throughout."
" Friendly Sir," said the Sire de Graville, seek-
ing to subdue the tone of irony habitual to him,
and acquired, perhaps, from his maternal ancestry,
the Franks. "Friendly and peace -making Sir,
dare I so far venture to intrude on the secrets
of thy mission as to ask if Godwin demands,
among other reasonable items, the head of thy
humble servant not by name indeed, for my
name is as yet unknown to him but as one of
the unhappy class called Normans ? "
HAROLD. 157
"Had Earl Godwin," returned the nuncius,
"thought fit to treat for peace by asking ven-
geance, he would have chosen another spokesman.
The Earl asks but his own ; and thy head is
not, I trow, a part of his goods and chattels."
"That is comforting," said Mallet. "Marry,
I thank thee, Sir Saxon ; and thou speakest like
a brave man and an honest. And if we fall to
blows, as I suspect we shall, I should deem it a
favour of oar Lady the Virgin if she send thce
across my Avay. Next to a fair friend, I love a
bold foe."
Vebba smiled, for he liked the sentiment, and
the tone and air of the young knight pleased his
rough mind, despite his prejudices against the
stranger.
Encouraged by the smile, Mallet seated himself
on the corner of the long table that skirted the
room, and with a debonnair gesture invited Vebba
to do the same ; then looking at him gravely he
resumed
" So frank and courteous thou art, Sir Envoy,
that I yet intrude on thee my ignorant and
curious questions."
158 HAROLD.
" Speak out, Norman."
" How comes it, then, that you English so
love this Earl Godwin ? Still more, why think
you it right and proper that King Edward should
love him too? It is a question I have often
asked, and to which I am not likely in these halls
to get answer satisfactory. If I know aught of
your troublous history, this same Earl has
changed sides oft eno' ; first for the Saxon,
then for Canute the Dane Canute dies, and
your friend takes up arms for the Saxon again.
He yields to the advice of your Witan and sides
with Hardicanute and Harold, the Danes a
letter, natheless, is written as from Emma, the
mother to the young Saxon princes, Edward and
Alfred, inviting them over to England, and
promising aid ; the saints protect Edward, who.
continues to say ates in Normandy Alfrecf
comes over, Earl Godwin meets him, and, unless
belied, does him homage, and swears to him faith.
Nay, listen yet. This Godwin, whom ye love so,
then leads Alfred and his train into the ville of
Guildford, I think ye call it, fair quarters enow.
At the dead of the night rush in King Harold's men,
HAROLD. 159
seize prince and follower, six hundred men in all;
and next morning, saving only every tenth man,
they are tortured and put to death. The prince
is borne off to London, and shortly afterwards
his eyes are torn out in the Islet of Ely, and he
dies of the anguish! That ye should love Earl
Godwin withal may be strange, but yet possible.
But is it possible, clier Envoy, for the King to
love the man who thus betrayed his brother to
the shambles?"
" All this is a Norman fable," said the Thegn of
Kent, with a disturbed visage ; " and Godwin
cleared himself on oath of all share in the foul
murder of Alfred."
" The oath, I have heard, was backed," said the
knight drily, " by a present to Hardicanute, who
after the death of King Harold resolved to
avenge the black butchery ; a present, I say, of
a gilt ship manned by fourscore warriors with gold
hilted swords, and gilt helms. But let this pass."
" Let it pass," echoed Vebba with a sigh.
" Bloody were those times, and unholy their
secrets."
" Yet answer me still, why love you Earl
1 60 HAROLD.
Godwin? He hath changed sides from party to
party, and in each change won lordships and
lands. He is ambitious and grasping, ye all
allow ; for the ballads sung in your streets liken
him to the thorn and the bramble; at which the
sheep leaves his wool. He is haughty and over-
bearing. Teli me, O Saxon, frank Saxon, why
you love Godwin the Earl ! Fain would I know ;
for, please the saints (and you and your Earl so
permitting), I mean to live and die in this merric
England ; and it would be pleasant to learn that
I have but to do as Earl Godwin, in order to win
love from the English."
The stout Yebba looked perplexed; but after
stroking his beard thoughtfully, he answered
thus
" Though of Kent, and therefore in his earldom,
I am not one of Godwin's especial party ; for that
reason was I chosen his bode. Those who are
under him doubtless love a chief liberal to give
and strong to protect. The old age of a great
leader gathers reverence, as an oak gathers moss.
But to me, and those like me, living peaceful at
home, shunning courts, and tempting not broils,
HAROLD. 161
Godwin the man is not dear it is Godwin the
thing"
" Though I do my best to know your language,"
said the knight, "ye have phrases that might
puzzle King Solomon. What meanest thou by
'Godwin the thing?'"
" That which to us Godwin only seems to
uphold. "We love justice ; whatever his offences,
Godwin was banished unjustly. We love our
laws ; Godwin was dishonoured by maintaining
them. We love England, and are devoured by
strangers ; Godwin's cause is England's, and
stranger, forgive me for not concluding."
Then examining the young Norman with a
look of rough compassion, he laid his large hand
upon the knight's shoulder and whispered,
" Take my advice and fly."
"Fly!" said De Graville, reddening. "Is it
to fly, think you, that I have put on my mail,
and girded my sword ? "
l< Vain vain ! Wasps are fierce, but the
swarm is doomed when the straw is kindled.
I tell you this fly in time, and you are safe ;
but let the King be so misguided as to count
162 HAROLD.
on arms, and strire against yon multitude, and
verily before nightfall not one Norman will be
found alive within ten miles of the city. Look
to it, youth! Perhaps thou hast a mother let
her not mourn a son !"
Before the Norman could shape into Saxon
sufficiently polite and courtly his profound and
indignant disdain of the counsel, his sense of the
impertinence with which his shoulder had been
profaned, and his mother's son had been warned,
the nuncius was again summoned into the pre-
sence-chamber. Nor did he return into the ante-
room, but conducted forthwith from the council
his brief answer received to the stairs of the
palace, he reached the boat in which he had come,
and was rowed back to the ship that held the
Earl and his sons.
Now this was the manoeuvre of Godwin's array.
His vessels having passed London Bridge, had
rested awhile on the banks of the Southward
suburb (Suth-weorde) since called Southwark
and the King's ships lay to the north; but the
fleet of the Earl's, after a brief halt, veered majes-
tically round, and coming close to the palace of
HAROLD. 163
Westminster, inclined northward, as if to hem
the King's ships. Meanwhile the land forces
drew up close to the Strand, almost within bow-
shot of the King's troops, that kept the ground
inland ; thus Vebba saw before him, so near as
scarcely to be distinguished from each other, on
the river the rival fleets, on the shore the rival
armaments.
High above all the vessels towered the majestic
bark, or assca, that had borne Harold from the
Irish shores. Its fashion was that of the ancient
sea-kings, to one of whom it had belonged. Its
curved and mighty prow, richly gilded, stood out
far above the waves : the prow, the head of the
sea-snake ; the stern its spire ; head and spire
alike glittering in the sun.
The boat drew up to the lofty side of the vessel,
a ladder was lowered, the nuncius ascended
lightly and stood on deck. At the farther end
grouped the sailors, few in number, and at re-
spectful distance from the Earl and his sons.
Godwin himself was but half armed. His head
was bare, nor had he other weapon of offence
than the gilt battle-axe of the Danes weapon
164 HAROLD.
as much of office as of war ; but his broad breast
was covered with the ring mail of the time. His
stature was lower than that of any of his sons;
nor did his form exhibit greater physical strength
than that of a man, well shaped, robust, and deep
of chest, who still preserved in age the pith and
einew of mature manhood. Neither, indeed, did
legend or fame ascribe to that eminent personage
those romantic achievements, those feats of
purely animal prowess, which distinguished his
rival Siward. Brave he was, but brave as a
leader; those faculties in which he appears to
have excelled all his contemporaries, were more
analogous to the requisites of success in civilized
times, than those which won renown of old. And
perhaps England was the only country then in
Europe which could have given to those faculties
their fitting career. He possessed essentially the
arts of party ; he knew how to deal with vast
masses of mankind; he could carry along with
his interests the fervid heart of the multitude ;
he had in the highest degree that gift, useless in
most other lands in all lands where popular assem-
blies do not exist the gift of popular eloquence.
HAROLD. 165
Ages elapsed, after the Norman conquest, ere
eloquence again became a power in England.*
But like all men renowned for eloquence, lie
went with the popular feeling of his times ; he
embodied its passions, its prejudices but also
that keen sense of self-interest, which is the
invariable characteristic of a multitude. He was
the sense of the commonalty carried to its highest
degree. Whatever the faults, it may be the
crimes, of a career singularly prosperous and
splendid, amidst events the darkest and most
terrible, shining with a steady light across the
thunder-clouds, he was never accused of cruelty
or outrage to the mass of the people. English,
emphatically, the English deemed him ; and this
not the less that in his youth he had sided with
Canute, and owed his fortunes to that king ; for
so intermixed were Danes and Saxons in England,
that the agreement which had given to Canute
one half the kingdom had been received with
general applause ; and the earlier severities of
that great prince had been so redeemed in his"
* When the chronicler praises the gift of speech, he uncon-
sciously proves the existence of constitutional freedom.
166 HAROLD.
later years by wisdom and mildness so, even in the
worst period of his reign, relieved by extraordinary
personal affability, and so lost now in men's memo-
ries by pride in his power and fame, that Canute
had left behind him a beloved and honoured
name,* and Godwin was the more esteemed as
the chosen counsellor of that popular prince. At
his death, Godwin was known to have wished, and
even armed, for the restoration of the Saxon line ;
and only yielded to the determination of the
Witan, no doubt acted upon by the popular
opinion. Of one dark crime he was suspected,
and, despite his oath to the contrary, and the
formal acquittal of the national council, doubt of
his guilt rested then, as it rests still, upon his
name; viz. the perfidious surrender of Alfred,
Edward's murdered brother.
But time had passed over the dismal tragedy ;
and there was an instinctive and prophetic feeling
* Recent Danish historians have in vain endeavoured to de-
tract 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 de-
cisive as to the personal popularity of Canute in this country,
and the affection entertained for his laws.
HAROLD. 167
throughout the English nation, that with the House
of Godwin was identified the cause of the English
people. Everything in this man's aspect served
to plead in his favour. His ample brows were
calm with benignity and thought ; his large dark
blue eyes were serene and mild, though their
expression, when examined, was close and in-
scrutable. His mien was singularly noble, but
wholly without formality or affected state; and
though haughtiness and arrogance were largely
attributed to him, they could be found only in his
deeds, not manner plain, familiar, kindly to all
men, his heart seemed as open to the service of
his countrymen as his hospitable door to their
wants.
Behind him stood the stateliest group of sons
that ever filled with pride a father's eye. Each
strikingly distinguished from the other, all re-
markable for beauty of countenance and strength
of frame.
Sweyn, the eldest,"* had the dark hues of his
* 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, dis-
tinctly states Sweyn to be the eldest ; Harold was the second,
168 IIAROLD.
mother the Dane : a wild and mournful majesty
sat upon features aquiline and regular, but wasted
by grief or passion ; raven locks, glossy even in
neglect, fell half over eyes hollow in their sockets,
but bright, though with troubled fire. Over his
shoulder he bore his mighty axe. His form spare,
but of immense power, was sheathed in mail, and
he leant on his great pointed Danish shield. At
his feet sate his young son Haco, a boy with a
countenance preternaturally thoughtful for Jus
years, which were yet those of childhood.
Next to him stood the most dreaded and ruthless
of the sons of Godwin he, fated to become to
the Saxon what Julian was to the Goth. With
his arms folded on his breast stood Tostig; his
face was beautiful as a Greek's, in all save the
forehead, which was low and lowering. Sleek
and trim were his bright chestnut locks ; and his
and Tostig was the third. Sweyn's seniority seems corrobo-
rated 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.
HAROLD. 169
arms were damascened with silver, for he was
one who loved the pomp and luxury of war.
\Yolnoth, the mother's favourite, seemed yet in
the first flower of youth, but he alone of all the
sons had something irresolute and effeminate in
his aspect and bearing; his form, though tall,
seemed not yet to have come to its full height
and strength ; and, as if the weight of mail were
unusual to him, he leant with both hands upon
the wood of his long spear. Leofwine, who stood
next to "Wolnoth, contrasted him notably ; his
sunny locks wreathed carelessly over a white
unclouded brow, and the silken hair on the upper
lip quivered over arch lips, smiling, even in that
serious hour.
At Godwin's right hand, but not immediately
near him, stood the last of the group, Gurth
and Harold. Gurth had passed his arm over the
shoulder of his brother, and not watching the
nuncius while he spoke, watched only the effect
his words produced on the face of Harold. For
Gurth loved Harold as Jonathan loved David.
And Harold was the only one of the group
not armed, and had a veteran skilled in war been
VOL. I. I
170 HAROLD.
asked, who of that group was born to lead
armed men, he would have pointed to the man
unarmed.
" So what says the King?" asked Earl Godwin.
" This ; he refuses to restore thee and thy sons,
or to hear thee, till thou hast disbanded thine
army, dismissed thy ships, and consented to clear
thyself and thy house before the Witana-gernot."
A fierce laugh broke from Tostig ; Sweyn's
mournful brow grew darker ; Leofwine placed his
right hand on his ateghar ; Wolnoth rose erect ;
Gurth kept his eyes on Harold, and Harold's face
was unmoved.
"The King received thee in his council of
war," said Godwin, thoughtfully, " and doubtless
the Normans were there. Who were the English-
men most of mark ?"
" SJward of Northumbria, thy foe."
"My sons," said the Earl, turning to his
children, and breathing loud as if a load were
off his heart ; " there will be no need of axe
or armour to-day. Harold alone was wise,"
and he pointed to the linen tunic of the son thus
cited.
HAROLD. 171
"What mean you, Sir Father?" said Tostig
imperiously. " Think you to "
"Peace, son, peace;" said Godwin, without
asperity, but with conscious command. " Return,
brave and dear friend," he said to Vebba, "find
out Siward the Earl ; tell him that I, Godwin,
his foe in the old time, place honour and life in
his hands, and what he counsels that will we
do. Go."
The Kent man nodded, and regained his boat.
Then spoke Harold.
" Father, yonder are the forces of Edward ; as
yet without leaders, since the chiefs must be still
in the halls of the King. Some fiery Norman
amongst them may provoke an encounter; and
this city of London is not won, as it behoves us to
win it, if one drop of English blood dye the sword
of one English man. Wherefore, with your leave,
I will take boat, and land. And unless I have
lost in my absence all right lere in the hearts
of our countrymen, at the first shout from our
troops which proclaims that Harold, son of Godwin,
is on the soil of our fathers, half yon array of
spears and helms pass at once to our side."
i 2
172 HAROLD.
" And if not, my vain brother ? " said Tostig,
gnawing his lip with envy.
" And if not, I will ride alone into the midst of
them, and ask what Englishmen are there who
will aim shaft or spear at this breast, never
mailed against England ! "
Godwin placed his hand on Harold's head, and
the tears came to those close cold eyes.
" Thou knowest by nature what I have learned
by art. Go, and prosper. Be it as thou wilt."
"He takes thy post, Sweyn thou art the
elder," said Tostig, to the wild form by his side.
" There is guilt on my soul, and woe in my
heart," answered Sweyn, moodily. " Shall Esau
lose his birthright, and Cain retain it ? " So say-
ing, he withdrew, and, reclining against the stern
of the vessel, leant his face upon the edge of his
shield.
Harold watched him with deep compassion in
his eyes, passed to his side with a quick step,
pressed his hand, and whispered, " Peace to the
past, O my brother ! "
The boy Haco, who had noiselessly followed his
father, lifted his sombre, serious looks to Harold
HAROLD. 173
as tie thus spoke ; and when Harold turned
away, he said to Sweyn, timidly, " He, at least, is
ever good to thee and to me."
" And thou, when I am no more, shalt cling to
him as thy father, Haco," answered Sweyn,
tenderly smoothing back the child's dark locks.
The boy shivered; and, bending his head,
murmured to himself, " When thou art no more !
No more! Has the Vala doomed Mm, too?
Father and son, both ? "
Meanwhile, Harold had entered the boat
lowered from the sides of the cesca to receive
him ; and Gurth, looking appealingly to his father,
and seeing no sign of dissent, sprang down after
the young Earl, and seated himself by his side.
Godwin followed the boat with musing eyes.
"Small need," said he, aloud, but to himself,
" to believe in soothsayers, or to credit Hilda the
saga, when she prophesied, ere we left our shores,
that Harold " He stopped short, for Tostig's
wrathful exclamation broke on his reverie.
" Father, father ! My blood surges in my
ears, and boils in my heart, when I hear thee
name the prophecies of Hilda in favour of thy
174 HAROLD.
darling. Dissension and strife in our house have
they wrought already ; and if the feuds between
Harold and me have sown grey in thy locks,
thank thyself when, flushed with vain sooth-
sayings for thy favoured Harold, thou saidst,
in the hour of our first childish broil, ' Strive
not with Harold; for his brothers will be his
men.' "
" Falsify the prediction," said Godwin, calmly ;
" wise men may always make their own future,
and seize their own fates. Prudence, patience,
labour, valour; these are the stars that rule
the career of mortals."
Tostig made no answer ; for the splash of oars
was near, and two ships, containing the principal
chiefs that had joined Godwin's cause, came along
side the Runic sesca to hear the result of the mes-
sage sent to the King. Tostig sprang to the
vessel's side, and exclaimed, " The King, girt by
his false counsellors, will hear us not, and arms
must decide between us."
" Hold, hold ! malignant, unhappy boy !" cried
Godwin, between his grinded teeth, as a shout
of indignant, yet joyous ferocity, broke from
HAROLD. 175
the crowded ships thus hailed. " The curse of all
time be on him who draws the first native blood
in sight of the altars and hearths of London !
Hear me, thou with the vulture's blood-lust, and
the peacock's vain joy in the gaudy plume ! Hear
me, Tostig, and tremble. If but by one word
thou widen the breach between me and the king,
outlaw thou enterest England, outlaw shalt thou
depart for earldom and broad lands, choose the
bread of the stranger, and the weregeld of the
wolf!"
The young Saxon, haughty as he was, quailed
at his father's thrilling voice, bowed his head,
and retreated sullenly. Godwin sprang on the
deck of the nearest vessel, and all the passions
that Tostig had aroused, he exerted his eloquence
to appease.
In the midst of his arguments, there rose from
the ranks on the strand, the shout of " Harold !
Harold the Earl ! Harold and Holy Crosse !"
And Godwin, turning his eye to the King's
ranks, saw them agitated, swayed, and moving ;
till suddenly from the very heart of the hostile
array, came, as by irresistible impulse, the cry
176 HAROLD.
" Harold, our Harold ! All hail, the good
Earl!"
While this chanced without, within the palace,
Edward had quitted the presence chamber, and
was closeted with Stigand, the bishop. This
prelate had the more influence with Edward, inas-
much as though Saxon, he was held to be no enemy
to the Normans, and had, indeed, on a former
occasion, been deposed from his bishopric on the
charge of too great an attachment to the Norman
Queen-mother Emma.* Never in his whole life
had Edward been so stubborn as on this occasion.
For here, more than his realm was concerned ; he
was threatened in the peace of his household, and
the comfort of his tepid friendships. With the
recall of his powerful father-in-law, he foresaw
the necessary reintrusion of his wife upon the
charm of his chaste solitude. His favourite Nor-
mans would be banished, he should be surrounded
* 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.
HAROLD. 177
with faces he abhorred. All the representations
of Stigand fell upon a stern and unyielding spirit,
when Siward entered the King's closet.
" Sir, my King," said the great son of Beorn,
" I yielded to your kingly will in the council, that,
before we listened to Godwin, he should disband
his men, and submit to the judgment of the
Witan. The Earl hath sent to me to say, that he
will put honour and life in my keeping, and abide
by my counsel. And I have answered as became
the man who will never snare a foe, or betray
a trust."
" How hast thou answered ?" asked the King.
" That he abide by the laws of England, as
Dane and Saxon agreed to abide in the days of
Canute ; that he and his sons shall make no
claim for land or lordship, but submit all to the
Witan."
" Good," said the King ; " and the Witan will
condemn him now, as it would have condemned
when he shunned to meet it ?"
" And the Witan now" returned the Earl em-
phatically, " will be free, and fair, and just."
" And meanwhile, the troops "
i3
178 HAROLD.
" Will wait on either side ; and if reason fail,
then the sword," said Siward.
" This I will not hear/' exclaimed Edward ;
when the tramp of many feet thundered along the
passage; the door was flung open, and several
captains (Norman as well as Saxon) of the
King's troops rushed in, wild, rude, and tumul-
tuous.
" The troops desert ! half the ranks have thrown
down their arms at the very name of Harold !"
exclaimed the Earl of Hereford. " Curses on the
knaves !"
" And the lithsmen of London," cried a Saxon
thegn, "are all on his side, and marching already
through the gates."
" Pause yet," whispered Stigand ; " and who
shall say, this hour to-morrow, if Edward or
Godwin reign on the throne of Alfred ?"
His stern heart moved by the distress of his
King, and not the less for the unwonted firmness
which Edward displayed, Siward here approached,
knelt, and took the King's hand.
" Siward can give no niddering counsel to his
King ; to save the blood of his subjects is never a
HAROLD. 179
King's disgrace. Yield thou to mercy Godwin
to the law !"
" Oh for the cowl and cell !" exclaimed the
Prince, wringing his hands. " Oh Norman home,
why did I leave thee !"
He took the cross from his breast, contemplated
it fixedly, prayed silently but with fervour, and
his face again became tranquil.
" Go," he said, flinging himself on his seat in
the exhaustion that follows passion, " go, Siward,
go Stigand, deal with things mundane as ye will."
The Bishop, satisfied with this reluctant acqui-
escence, seized Siward by the arm and withdrew
him from the closet. The captains remained a
few moments behind, the Saxons silently gazing
on the King, the Normans whispering each other,
in great doubt and trouble, and darting looks of
the bitterest scorn at their feeble benefactor.
Then, as with one accord, these last rushed along
the corridor, gained the hall where their country-
men yet assembled, and exclaimed, " A toute bride !
Franc 6trier ! All is lost but life ! God for the
first man, knife and cord for the last !"
Then, as the cry of fire, or as the first crash of
180 HAROLD.
an earthquake, dissolves all union, and reduces all
emotion into one thought of self-saving, the whole
conclave, crowding pell mell on each other,
bustled, jostled, clamoured to the door happy he
who could find horse palfrey, even monk's mule !
This way, that way, fled those lordly Normans,
those martial abbots, those mitred bishops some
singly, some in pairs ; some by tens, and some by
scores ; but all prudently shunning association
with those chiefs whom they had most courted the
day before, and who, they now knew, would be
the main mark for revenge ; save only two, who
yet, from that awe of the spiritual power which
characterized the Norman, who was already half
monk, half soldier (Crusader and Templar before
Crusades were yet preached, or the Templars yet
dreamed of) } even in that hour of selfish panic
rallied round them the prowest chivalry of
their countrymen, viz., the Bishop of London
and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Both these
dignitaries, armed cap-a-pi6 } and spear in hand,
headed the flight; and good service that day,
both as guide and champion, did Mallet de
Graville. He led them in a circuit behind both
HAROLD. 181
armies, but being intercepted by a new body,
coming from the pastures of Hertfordshire to
the help of Godwin, he was compelled to take
the bold and desperate resort of entering the
city gates. These were wide open ; whether to
admit the Saxon Earls, or vomit forth their allies,
the Londoners. Through these, up the narrow
streets, riding three a-breast, dashed the slaughter-
ing fugitives ; worthy in flight of their national re-
nown, they trampled down every obstacle. Bodies
of men drew up against them at every angle,
with the Saxon cry of " Out ! Out !" " Down
with the outland men !" Through each, spear
pierced, and sword clove, the way. Red with gore
was the spear of the prelate of London ; broken
to the hilt was the sword militant in the terrible
hand of the Archbishop of Canterbury. So on
they rode, so on they slaughtered gained the
Eastern Gate, and passed with but two of their
number lost.
The fields once gained, for better precaution
they separated. Some few, not quite ignorant
of the Saxon tongue, doffed their mail, and
crept through forest and fell towards the sea
182 HAROLD.
shore ; others retained steed and arms, but
shunned equally the high roads. The two pre-
lates were among the last; they gained, in
safety, Ness, in Essex, threw themselves into
an open, crazy, fishing-boat, committed them-
selves to the waves, and, half drowned and half
famished, drifted over the Channel to the French
shores. Of the rest of the courtly foreigners,
some took refuge in the forts yet held by their
countrymen ; some lay concealed in creeks and
caves till they could find or steal boats for their
passage. And thus, in the year of our Lord
1052, occurred the notable dispersion and igno-
minious flight of the counts and vavasours of
great William the Duke !
CHAPTER III.
THE Witana-gemot was assembled in the Great
Hall of Westminster in all its imperial pomp.
It was on his throne that the King sate now
and it was the sword that was in his right hand.
Some seated below, and some standing beside,
the throne, were the officers of the Basileus*
of Britain. There, were to be seen camararius
and pincerna, chamberlain and cupbearer; disc
thegn and hors thegn; f the thegn of the dishes, and
the thegn of the stud ; with many more, whose
state offices may not impossibly have been bor-
rowed from the ceremonial pomp of the Byzan-
tine court ; for Edgar, King of England, had in
* The title of Basileus -was retained by our kings so late as
the time of John, who styled himself " Totius Insulse Britan-
nicre Basileus." AGARD; On the Antiquity of Shires in England,
ap Hearne, Cur. Disc.
f SHARON TURNER.
184 HAROLD.
the old time styled himself the Heir of Constan-
tine. Next to these sat the clerks of the chapel,
with the King's confessor at their head. Officers
were they of higher note than their name be-
speaks, and wielders, in the trust of the Great
Seal, of a power unknown of old, and now ob-
noxious to the Saxon. For tedious is the suit
which lingers for the king's writ and the king's
seal ; and from those clerks shall arise hereafter
a thing of torture and of might, which shall
grind out the hearts of men, and be called
CHANCERY 1*
Below the scribes, a space was left on the floor,
and farther down sat the chiefs of the Witan. Of
these, first in order, both from their spiritual rank
and their vast temporal possessions, sat the lords of
the Church ; the chairs of the prelates of London
and Canterbury were void. But still goodly was
the array of Saxon mitres, with the harsh, hungry,
* 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 gra-
phic and half as accurate, I would only have plagiarized to half
the extent I have done.
HAROLD. 185
but intelligent face of Stigand, Stigand the
stout and the covetous ; and the benign but firm
features of Aired, true priest and true patriot,
distinguished amidst all. Around each prelate, as
stars round a sun, were his own special priestly
retainers, selected from his diocese. Farther still
down the hall are the great civil lords and vice-
king vassals of the e Lord Paramount.' Vacant
the chair of the King of the Scots, for Siward
hath not yet had his wish; Macbeth is in his
fastnesses, or listening to the weird sisters in the
wold ; and Malcolm is a fugitive in the halls of the
Northumbrian earl. Vacant the chair of the
hero Gryffyth, son of Llewelyn, the dread of the
marches, Prince of Gwyned, whose arms had sub-
jugated all Cymry. But there, are the lesser
sub-kings of Wales, true to the immemorial
schisms amongst themselves, which destroyed the
realm of Ambrosius, and rendered vain the arm
of Arthur. With their torques of gold, and wild
eyes, and hair cut round ears and brow,* they
stare on the scene.
On the same bench with these sub-kings, dis-
* GIKALD. CAMBRENSIS.
186 HAROLD.
tinguished from them by height of stature, and
calm collectedness of mien, no less than by their
caps of maintenance and furred robes, are those
props of strong thrones and terrors of weak the
earls to whom shires and counties fall, as hyde
and carricate to the lesser thegns. But three of
these were then present, and all three the foes of
Godwin. Siward, Earl of Northumbria ; Leofric
of Mercia, (that Leofric whose wife Godiva yet
lives in ballad and song) ; and Rolf, Earl of
Hereford and Worcestershire, who, strong in his
claim of " king's blood," left not the court with
his Norman friends. And on the same benches,
though a little apart, are the lesser earls, and that
higher order of thegns, called king's thegns.
Not far from these sate the chosen citizens
from the free burgh of London, already of great
weight in the senate,* sufficing often to turn
its counsels ; all friends were they of the English
Earl and his house. In the same division of the
* 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 had helped to decide the election even of kings.
HAROLD. 187
hall were found the bulk and true popular part
of the meeting popular indeed as representing
not the people, but the things the people most
prized valour and wealth ; the thegn land-
owners, called in the old deeds the " Ministers :"
they sate with swords by their side, all of varying
birth, fortune, and connexion whether with king,
earl, or ceorl. For in the different districts of
the old Heptarchy, the qualification varied ; high
in East Anglia, low in Wessex ; so that what
was wealth in the one shire was poverty in the
other. There sate, half a yeoman, the Saxon
thegn of Berkshire or Dorset, proud of his five
hydes of land; there, half an earldoman, the Danish
thegn of Norfolk or Ely, discontented with his
forty ; some were there in right of smaller offices
under the crown ; some traders, and sons of traders,
for having crossed the high seas three times at
their own risk; some could boast the blood of
Offa and Egbert ; and some traced but three
generations back to neat-herd and ploughman;
and some were Saxons and some were Danes ;
and some from the western shires were by origin
Britons, though little cognizant of their race.
188 HAROLD.
Farther down still, at the extreme end of the
hall, crowding by the open doors, filling up the
space without, were the ceorls themselves, a vast
and not powerless body; in these high courts
(distinct from the shire gemots, or local senates)
never called upon to vote or to speak or to act,
or even to sign names to the doom, but only to
shout " Yea, yea," when the proceres pronounced
their sentence. Yet not powerless were they,
but rather to the Witan, what public opinion is to
the Witan's successor, our modern parliament:
they were opinion ! And according to their
numbers and their sentiments, easily known and
boldly murmured, often and often must that
august court of basileus and prelate, vassal-king
and mighty earl, have shaped the council and
adjudged the doom.
And the forms of the meeting had been duly
said and done ; and the King had spoken words,
no doubt wary and peaceful, gracious and exhor-
tatory ; but those words for his voice that day
was weak travelled not beyond the small circle
of his clerks and his officers ; and a murmur
buzzed through the hall, when Earl Godwin stood
HAROLD. 189
on the floor \vith his six sons at his back ; and
you might have heard the hum of the gnat that
vexed the smooth cheek of Earl Rolf, or the click
of the spider from the web on the vaulted roof,
the moment before Earl Godwin spoke.
" If," said he, with the modest look and down-
cast eye of practised eloquence, " If I rejoice
once more to breathe the air of England, in whose
service, often perhaps with faulty deeds, but at
all times with honest thoughts, I have, both in
war and council, devoted so much of my life that
little now remains but, (should you, my king,
and you, prelates, proceres, and ministers so vouch-
safe,) to look round and select that spot of my native
soil which shall receive my bones; if I rejoice
to stand once more in that assembly which has
often listened to my voice when our common
country was in peril, who here will blame that
joy ? Who among my foes, if foes now I have,
will not respect the old man's gladness? Who
amongst you, earls and thegns, would not grieve,
if his duty bade him say to the grey-haired exile,
' In this English air you shall not breathe your
last sigh on this English soil you shall not find
190 HAROLD*
a grave!' Who amongst you would not grieve
to say it?" (Suddenly he drew up his head and
faced his audience.) "Who amongst you hath
the courage and the heart to say it ? Yes, I
rejoice that I am at last in an assembly fit to
judge my cause, and pronounce my innocence.
For what offence was I outlawed ? For what
offence were I, and the six sons I have given to
my land, to bear the wolf's penalty, and be chased
and slain as the wild beasts? Hear me, and
answer I
" Eustace, Count of Boulogne, returning to his
domains from a visit to our lord the King, entered
the town of Dover in mail and on his war steed ;
his train did the same. Unknowing our laws and
customs (for I desire to press light upon all old
grievances, and will impute ill designs to none,)
these foreigners invade by force the private dwell-
ings of citizens, and there select their quarters.
Ye all know that this was the strongest violation
of Saxon right ; ye know that the meanest ceorl
hath the proverb on his lip, * Every man's house
is his castle.' One of the townsmen acting on
that belief, which I have yet to learn was a false
HAROLD. 191
one, expelled from his threshold a retainer of
the French Earl's. The stranger drew his sword
and wounded him ; blows followed the stranger
fell by the arm he had provoked. The news
arrives to Earl Eustace; he and his kinsmen
spur to the spot ; they murder the Englishman
on his hearth-stone. "
Here a groan, half-stifled and wrathful, broke
from the ceorls at the end of the hall. Godwin
held up his hand in rebuke of the interruption,
and resumed.
" This deed done, the outlanders rode through
the streets with their drawn swords ; they
butchered those who came in their way; they
trampled even children under their horses' feet.
The burghers armed. I thank the Divine Father,
who gave me for my countrymen those gallant
burghers ! They fought, as we English know
how to fight ; they slew some nineteen or score
of these mailed intruders ; they chased them from
the town. Earl Eustace fled fast. Earl Eustace
we know is a wise man : small rest took he,
little bread broke he, till he pulled rein at the
gate of Gloucester, where my lord the King then
192 HAROLD.
held court. He made his complaint. My lord
the King, naturally hearing but one side, thought
the burghers in the wrong ; and, scandalized that
such high persons of his own kith should be so
aggrieved, he sent for me, in whose government
the burgh of Dover is, and bade me chastise, by
military execution, those who had attacked the
foreign Count. I appeal to the great Earls whom
I see before me to you, illustrious Leofric ; to
you, renowned SiAvard what value would ye set
on your earldoms, if ye had not the heart and the
power to see right done to the dwellers therein ?
" What was the course I proposed ? Instead
of martial execution, which would involve the
whole burgh in one sentence, I submitted that
the reeve and gerefas? of the burgh should be
cited to appear before the King, and account
for the broil. My lord, though ever most
clement and loving to his good people, either
unhappily moved against me, or overswayed by
the foreigners, was counselled to reject this mode
of doing justice, which our laws, as settled under
Edgar and Canute, enjoin. And because I would
not, and I say in the presence of all, because I,
HAROLD. 193
Godwin son of Wolnoth, durst not, if I would,
have entered the free burgh of Dover with mail
on my back and the doomsman at my right hand,
these outlanders induced my lord the King to
summon me to attend in person (as for a sin of
my own,) the council of the Witan, convened at
Gloucester, then filled with the foreigners, not,
as I humbly opined, to do justice to me and my
folk of Dover, but to secure to this Count of
Boulogne a triumph over English liberties, and
sanction his scorn for the value of English lives.
" I hesitated, and was menaced with outlawry ;
I armed in self-defence, and in defence of the
laws of England ; I armed, that men might not
be murdered on their hearth-stones, nor children
trampled under the hoofs of a stranger's war-
steed. My lord the King gathered his troops
round * the cross and the martlets.' Yon
noble earls, Siward and Leofric, came to that
standard, as (knowing not then my cause,) was
their duty to the Basileus of Britain. But
when they knew my cause, and saw with me
the dwellers of the land, against me the outland
aliens, they righteously interposed. An armistice
VOL. I. K
194 HAROLD.
was concluded ; I agreed to refer all matters to a
Witan held where it is held this day. My troops
were disbanded; but the foreigners induced my
lord not only to retain his own, but to issue his
Herr-bann for the gathering of hosts far and near,
even allies beyond the seas. When I looked
to London for the peaceful Witan, what saw I ?
The largest armament that had been collected in
this reign that armament headed by Norman
knights. Was this the meeting where justice
could be done mine and me ? Nevertheless, what
was my offer ? That I and my six sons would
attend, provided the usual sureties, agreeable to
our laws, from which only thieves* are excluded,
were given that we should come and go life-free
and safe. Twice this offer was made, twice
refused; and so I and my sons were banished.
We went ; we have returned ! "
"And in arms," murmured Earl Rolf, son-in-
law to that Count Eustace of Boulogne, whose
violence had been temperately and tru'y narrated, f
* By Athelstan's law, every man was to have peace going to
and from the Witan, unless he was a thief. WILKINS, p. 137.
f Goda, Edward's sister, married first Eolf 's father, Count of
Mantes ; secondly, the Count of Boulogne.
HAROLD. 195
" And in arms," repeated Godwin : " true ; in
arms against the foreigners who had thus poisoned
the ear of our gracious King; in arms, Earl Rolf;
and at the first clash of those arms, Franks and
foreigners have fled. We have no need of arms
now. We are amongst our countrymen, and no
Frenchman interposes between us and the ever
gentle, ever generous nature of our born King.
" Peers and proceres, chiefs of this Witan,
perhaps the largest ever yet assembled in man's
memory, it is for you to decide whether I and
mine, or the foreign fugitives, caused the dissen-
sion in these realms; whether our banishment
was just or not ; whether in our return w r e have
abused the power we possessed. Ministers, on
those swords by your sides there is not one drop
of blood ! At all events, in submitting to you our
fate, we submit to our own laws and our own
race. I am here to clear myself, on my oath, of
deed and thought of treason. There are amongst
my peers as king's thegns, those who will
attest the same on my behalf, and prove the facts
I have stated, if they are not sufficiently noto-
rious. As for my sons, no crime can be alleged
K 2
196 HAROLD.
ao-ainst them, unless it be a crime to have in
O p
their veins that blood which flows in mine
blood which they have learned from me to shed
in defence of that beloved land to which they
now ask to be recalled."
The Earl ceased and receded behind his chil-
dren, having artfully, by his very abstinence from
the more heated eloquence imputed to him often
as a fault and a wile, produced a powerful effect
upon an audience already prepared for his ac-
quittal.
But now as from the sons, Sweyn the eldest
stepped forth, with a wandering eye and uncer-
tain foot, there was a movement like a shudder
amongst the large majority of the audience, and a
murmur of hate or of horror.
The young Earl marked the sensation his pre-
sence produced, and stopped short. His breath
came thick; he raised his right hand, but spoke
not. His voice died on his lips; his eyes roved
wildly round with a haggard stare more im-
ploring than defying. Then rose, in his episcopal
stole, Aired the bishop, and his clear sweet voice
trembled as he spoke.
HAROLD. 197
" Comes Sweyn, son of Godwin here, to prove
his innocence of treason against the King ? if so,
let him hold his peace ; for if the Witan acquit
Godwin son of Wolnoth of that charge, the
acquittal includes his House. But in the name of
the holy Church here represented by its fathers,
will Sweyn say, and fasten his word by oath,
that he is guiltless of treason to the King of Kings
guiltless of sacrilege that my lips shrink to
name? Alas, that the duty falls on me, for I
loved thee once, and love thy kindred now. But
I am God's servant before all things" the prelate
paused, and gathering up new energy, added in
unfaltering accents, " I charge thee here, Sweyn
the outlaw, that, moved by the fiend, thou didst
bear off from God's house and violate a daughter of
the Church Algive, Abbess of Leominster !"
" And I," cried Siward, rising to the full
height of his stature, " I, in the presence of these
proceres, whose proudest title is milites or war-
riors I charge Sweyn, son of Godwin, that, not
in open field and hand to hand, but by felony and
guile, he wrought the foul and abhorrent murder
of his cousin, Beorn the Earl !"
198 HAROLD.
At these two charges from men so eminent, the
effect upon the audience was startling. While
those not influenced by Godwin raised their eyes,
sparkling with wrath and scorn, upon the wasted, yet
still noble face of the eldest born, even those most
zealous on behalf of that popular House evinced
no sympathy for its heir. Some looked down
abashed and mournful some regarded the accused
with a cold unpitying look. Only perhaps among
the ceorls, at the end of the hall, might be seen
some compassion on anxious faces ; for before
those deeds of crime had been bruited abroad,
none among the sons of Godwin more blithe of
mien and bold of hand, more honoured and
beloved, than Sweyn the outlaw. But the hush
that succeeded the charges was appalling in its
depth. Godwin himself shaded his face with his
mantle, and only those close by could see that
his breast heaved and his limbs trembled. The
brothers had shrunk from the side of the accused,
outlawed even amongst his kin all save Harold,
who, strong in his blameless name and beloved
repute, advanced three strides amidst the silence,
and, standing by his brother's side, lifted his com-
HAROLD 199
manding brow above the seated judges, but lie
did not speak.
Then said Svveyn the Earl, strengthened by
such solitary companionship in that hostile assem-
blage, "I might answer that for these charges
in the past, for deeds alleged as done eight long
years ago, I have the King's grace, and the in-
law's right ; and that in the Witans over which I
as earl presided, no man was twice judged for the
same offence. That I hold to be the law, in the
great councils as the small."
" It is ! it is !" exclaimed Godwin; -his paternal
feelings conquering his prudence and his decorous
dignity. " Hold to it, my son !"
" I hold to it not," resumed the young earl,
casting a haughty glance over the somewhat
blank and disappointed faces of his foes, " for my
law is kere n a,nA he smote his heart " and that
condemns me not once alone, but evermore !
Aired, O holy father, at whose knees I once
confessed my every sin, I blame thee not that
thou first, in the Witan, liftest thy voice against
me, though thou knowest that I loved Algive
from youth upward; she, with her heart yet
200 HAROLD.
mine, was given in the last year of Hardicanute,
when might was right, to the Church. I met her
again, flushed with my victories over the Wal-
loon kings, with power in my hand and passion
in my veins. Deadly was my sin! But what
asked I ? that vows compelled should be annulled ;
that the love of my youth might yet be the wife
of my manhood. Pardon, that I knew not then
how eternal are the bonds ye of the Church have
woven round those of whom, if ye fail of saints,
ye may at least make martyrs!"
He paused, and his lip curled, and his eye shot
wild-fire; for in that moment his mother's blood
was high within him, and he looked and thought,
perhaps, as some heathen Dane, but the flash
of the former man was momentary, and humbly
smiting his breast, he murmured, " A vaunt,
Satan ! yea, deadly was my sin ! And the sin
was mine alone ; Algive, if stained, was blame-
less ; she escaped and and died !
" The King was wroth ; and first to strive
against my pardon was Harold my brother, who
now alone in my penitence stands by my side:
he strove manfully and openly ; I blamed him not :
HAROLD. 201
but Beorn, my cousin, desired my earldom, and
he strove against me, wilily and in secret, to my
face kind, behind my back despiteful. I detected
his falsehood, and meant to detain, but not to slay
him. He lay bound in my ship ; he reviled and
he taunted me in the hour of my gloom : and
when the blood of the sea-kings flowed in fire
through my veins. And I lifted my axe in ire ;
and my men lifted theirs, and so, and so!
Again I say Deadly was my sin!
" Think not that I seek now to make less my
guilt, as I sought when I deemed that life was
yet long, and power was yet sweet. Since then
I have known worldly evil, and worldly good,
the storm and the shine of life ; I have swept the
seas, a sea-king ; I have battled with the Dane in
his native land; I have almost grasped in my
right hand, as I grasped in my dreams, the crown
of my kinsman, Canute ; again, I have been a
fugitive and an exile; again, I have been in-
lawed, and Earl of all the lands from Isis to the
And whether in state or in penury,
* More correctly of Oxford, Somerset, Berkshire, Gloucester,
and Hereford.
K 3
202 HAROLD.
whether in war or in peace, I have seen the pale
face of the nun betrayed, and the gory wounds of
the murdered man. Wherefore I come not here
to plead for a pardon, which would console me
not, but formally to dissever rny kinsmen's cause
from mine, which alone sullies and degrades it ;
I come here to say, that, coveting not your ac-
quittal, fearing not your judgment, I pronounce
mine own doom. Cap of noble, and axe of war-
rior, I lay aside for ever ; barefooted, and alone, I
go hence to the Holy Sepulchre; there to assoil
my soul, and implore that grace which cannot
come from man ! Harold, step forth in the place
of Sweyn the first-born ! And ye prelates and
peers, milites and ministers, proceed to adjudge
the living ! To you, and to England, he who now
quits you is the dead ! "
He gathered his robe of state over his breast
as a monk his gown, and looking neither to right
nor to left, passed slowly down the hall, through
the crowd, which made way for him in awe and
silence ; and it seemed to the assembly as if a
cloud had gone from the face of day.
And Godwin still stood with his face covered
by his robe.
HAROLD. 203
And Harold anxiously watched the faces of
the assembly, and saw no relenting !
And Gurth crept to Harold's side.
And the gay Leofwine looked sad.
And the young Wolnoth turned pale and
trembled.
And the fierce Tostig played with his golden
chain.
And one low sob was heard, and it came from
the breast of Aired the meek accuser, God's
true but gentle priest.
CHAPTER IV.
THIS memorable trial ended, as the reader will
have foreseen, in the formal renewal of Sweyn's
outlawry, and the formal restitution of the Earl
Godwin and his other sons to their lands and
honours, with declarations imputing all the blame
of the late dissensions to the foreign favourites,
and sentence of banishment against them, except
only, by way of a bitter mockery, some varlets
of low degree, such as Humphrey Cock's-foot, and
Richard son of Scrob.*
The return to power of this able and vigorous
* 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 Herefordshire (he
was probably among the retainers of Earl Rolf), and, on Wil-
liam'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.
HAROLD. 205
family was attended with an instantaneous effect
upon the long-relaxed strings of the imperial
government. Macbeth heard, and trembled in
his moors ; Gryifyth of Wales lit the fire-beacon
on moel andcraig. Earl Rolf was banished, but
merely as a nominal concession to public opinion ;
his kinship to Edward sufficed to restore him
soon, not only to England, but to the lordship of
the Marches, and thither was he sent, with ade-
quate force, against the Welch, who had half-repos-
sessed themselves of the borders they harried.
Saxon prelates and abbots replaced the Norman
fugitives ; and all were contented with the revolu-
tion, save the King, for the King lost his Norman
friends, and regained his English wife.
In conformity with the usages of the time,
hostages of the loyalty and faith of Godwin were
required and conceded. They were selected from
his own family ; and the choice fell on Wolnoth,
his son, and Haco, the son of Sweyn. As, when
nearly all England may be said to have repassed
to the hands of Godwin, it would have been an
idle precaution to consign these hostages to the
keeping of Edward, it was settled, after some
206 HAROLD.
discussion, that they should be placed in the Court
of the Norman Duke until such time as the King,
satisfied with the good faith of the family, should
authorise their recall: Fatal hostage, fatal ward
and host !
It was some days after this national crisis, and
order and peace were again established in city and
land, forest and shire, when, at the setting of the
sun, Hilda stood alone by the altar stone of Thor.
The orb was sinking red and lurid, amidst long
cloud-wracks of vermeil and purple, and not one
human form was seen in the landscape, save that
tall and majestic figure by the Runic shrine and
the Druid crommell. She was leaning both
hands on her wand, or seid-staff, as it was called
in the language of Scandinavian superstition, and
bending slightly forward, as in the attitude of
listening or expectation. Long before any form
appeared on the road below she seemed to be
aware of coming footsteps, and probably her
habits of life had sharpened her senses ; for she
smiled, muttered to herself, " Ere it sets ! " and,
changing her posture, leant her arm on the
altar, and rested her face upon her hand.
HAROLD. 207
At length, two figures came up the road ; they
n eared the hill ; they saw her, and slowly as-
cended the knoll. The one was dressed in the
serge of a pilgrim, and his cowl thrown back,
showed the face where human beauty and human
power lay ravaged and ruined by human passions.
He upon whom the pilgrim lightly leaned was
attired simply, without the brooch or bracelet
common to thegns of high degree, yet his port
was that of majesty, and his brow that of mild
command. A greater contrast could not be con-
ceived than that between these two men, yet
united by a family likeness. For the countenance
of the last described was, though sorrowful at
that moment, and indeed habitually not without
a certain melancholy, wonderfully imposing from
its calm and sweetness. There, no devouring
passions had left the cloud or ploughed the line ;
but all the smooth loveliness of youth took dig-
nity from the conscious resolve of man. The
long hair, of a fair brown, with a slight tinge of
gold, as the last sunbeams shot through its luxu-
riance, was parted from the temples, and fell in
large waves half way to the shoulder. The eye-
208 HAROLD.
brows, darker in hue, arched and finely traced ;
the straight features not less manly than the Nor-
man, but less strongly marked ; the cheek, hardy
with exercise and exposure, yet still retaining
somewhat of youthful bloom under the pale bronze
of its sunburnt surface ; the form tall, not gigantic,
and vigorous rather from perfect proportion and
athletic habits than from breadth and bulk were
all singularly characteristic of the Saxon beauty
in its highest and purest type. But what chiefly
distinguished this personage, was that peculiar
dignity, so simple, so sedate, which no pomp
seems to dazzle, no danger to disturb ; and which,
perhaps, arises from a strong sense of self-depend-
ence, and is connected with self-respect a dignity
common to the Indian and the Arab, and rare ex-
cept in that state of society in which each man is a
power in himself. The Latin tragic poet touches
close upon that sentiment in the fine lines
" Rex est qui metuit nihil
Hoc regnum sibi quisque dat." *
So stood the brothers, Sweyn the outlaw and
* SENECA, Thyest. Act ii. " He is a king who fears nothing;
that kingdom every man gives to himself."
HAROLD. 209
Harold the Earl, before the reputed prophetess.
She looked on both with a steady eye, which
gradually softened almost into tenderness, as it
finally rested upon the pilgrim.
" And is it thus," she said at last, " that I see
the first-born of Godwin the fortunate, for whom
so often I have tasked the thunder, and watched
the setting sun ? for whom my runes have been
graven on the bark of the elm, and the Scin-lasca*
been called in pale splendour from the graves of
the dead ?"
" Hilda," said Sweyn, " not now will I accuse
thee of the seeds thou hast sown : the harvest is
gathered and the sickle is broken. Abjure thy
dark Galdra,t and turn as I to the sole light in the
future, which shines from the tomb of the Son
Divine."
The Prophetess bowed her head and replied :
" Belief cometh as the wind. Can the tree say
to the wind, ' Rest thou on my boughs ?' or Man. to
Belief, 'Fold thy wings on my heart !' Go where thy
* Scin-laeca, literally a shining corpse ; a species of appari-
tion, invoked by the witch or wizard. See SHARON TUKNEE, on
the Superstitions of the Anglo-Saxons, b. ii. c. 14.
f Oaldra, magic.
210 HAROLD.
soul can find comfort, for thy life hath passed from
its uses on earth. And when I would read thy
fate, the runes are as blanks, and the wave sleeps
unstirred on the fountain. Go where the Fylgia,*
whom Alfader gives to each at his birth, leads
thee. Thou didst desire love that seemed shut
from thee, and I predicted that thy love should
awake from the charnel in which the creed that
succeeds to the faith of our sires inters life in its
bloom. And thou didst covet the fame of the
Jarl and the Viking, and I blessed thine axe to thy
hand, and wove the sail for thy masts. So long
as man knows desire, can Hilda have power over his
doom. But when the heart lies in ashes, I raise
but a corpse, that at the hush of the charm falls
again into its grave. Yet, come to me nearer, O
Sweyn, whose cradle I rocked to the chaunt
of my rhyme."
The outlaw turned aside his face, and obeyed.
She sighed as she took his passive hand in her
own, and examined the lines on the palm. Then,
as if by an involuntary impulse of fondness and
* Fylgia, tutelary divinity. See Note (F), at the end of the
volume.
HAROLD. 2 I i
pity, she put aside bis cowl and kissed his
brow.
" Thy skein is spun, and happier than the
many who scorn, and the few who lament thee,
thou shalt win where they lose. The steel shall
not smite thee, the storm shall forbear thee, the
goal that thou yearnest for thy steps shall attain.
Night hallows the ruin, and peace to the shattered
wrecks of the brave !"
The outlaw heard as if unmoved. But when
he turned to Harold, who covered his face with
his hand, but could not restrain the tears that
flowed through the clasped fingers, a moisture
came into his own wild, bright eyes, and he
said, " Now, my brother, farewell, for no farther
step shalt thou wend with me."
Harold started, opened his arms, and the out-
law fell upon his breast.
No sound was heard save a single sob, and
so close was breast to breast, you could not say
from whose heart it came. Then the outlaw
wrenched himself from the embrace, and mur-
mured, " And Haco my son motherless, father-
less hostage in the land of the stranger ! Thou
212 HAROLD.
wilt remember tliou wilt shield him ; thou be to
him mother, father, in the days to come ! So
may the saints bless thee ! " With these words,
he sprang down the hillock.
Harold bounded after him ; but Sweyn, halting,
said, mournfully, "Is this thy promise? Am I
so lost that faith should be broken even with thy
father's son?"
At that touching rebuke, Harold paused, and
the outlaw passed his way alone. As the last
glimpse of his figure vanished at the turn of the
road, whence, on the second of May, the Norman
Duke and the Saxon King had emerged side by
side, the short twilight closed abruptly, and up
from the far forest-land rose the moon.
Harold stood rooted to the spot, and still gazing
on the space, when the Valalaid her hand on his arm.
"Behold, as the moon rises on the troubled
gloaming, so rises the fate of Harold, as yon
brief, human shadow, halting between light and
darkness, passes away to night. Thou art now
the first-born of a House that unites the hopes of
the Saxon with the foi'tunes of the Dane."
"Thinkest thou," said Harold, with a stern
HAROLD. 213
composure, " that I can have joy and triumph in
a brother's exile and woe ? "
" Not now, and not yet, will the voice of thy
true nature be heard ; but the warmth of the sun
brings the thunder, and the glory of fortune
wakes the storm of the soul."
" Kinswoman," said Harold, with a slight curl
of his lip, " by me, at least, have thy prophecies
ever passed as the sough of the air ; neither in
horror nor with faith do I think of thy incanta-
tions and charms; and I smile alike at the ex-
orcism of the shaveling and the spells of the Saga.
I have asked thee not to bless mine axe, nor
weave my sail. No runic rhyme is on the sword-
blade of Harold. I leave my fortunes to the
chance of mine own cool brain and strong arm.
Vala, between thee and me there is no bond."
The Prophetess smiled loftily.
" And what thinkest thou, O self-dependent !
what thinkest thou is the fate which thy brain
and thine arm shall win ? "
" The fate they have won already. I see no Be-
yond. The fate of a man sworn to guard his
country, love justice, and do right."
214 HAROLD.
The moon shone full on the heroic face of the
young Earl as he spoke ; and on its surface there
seemed nought to belie the noble words. Yet
the Prophetess, gazing earnestly on that fair
countenance, said, in a whisper, that, despite a
reason singularly sceptical for the age in which it
had been cultured, thrilled to the Saxon's heart,
" Under that calm eye sleeps the soul of thy
sire, and beneath that brow, so haught and so
pure, works the genius that placed the kings of
the north in the lineage of thy mother the Dane."
" Peace ! " said Harold, almost fiercely ; then,
as if ashamed of the weakness of his momentary
irritation, he added, with a faint smile, " Let us
not talk of these matters while my heart is still
sad and away from the thoughts of the world,
with my brother the lonely outlaw. Night is on
us, and the ways are yet unsafe ; for the king's
troops, disbanded in haste, were made up of many
who turn to robbers in peace. Alone, and un-
armed, save my ateghar, I would crave a night's
rest under thy roof; and," he hesitated, and a
slight blush came over his cheek " and I would
fain see if your grandchild is as fair as when I last
HAROLD. 215
looked on her blue eyes, that then wept for
Harold ere he went into exile."
" Her tears are not at her command, nor her
smiles," said the Vala, solemnly ; " her tears flow
from the fount of thy sorrows, and her smiles are
the beams from thy joys. For know, O Harold !
that Edith is thine earthly Fylgia ; thy fate and
her fate are as one. And vainly as man would
escape from his shadow, would soul wrench itself
from the soul that Skulda hath linked to its
doom."
Harold made no reply ; but his step, habitually
slow, grew more quick and light, and this time
his reason found no fault with the oracles of the
Vala.
CHAPTER V.
As Hilda entered the hall, the various idlers ac-
customed to feed at her cost were about retiring,
some to their homes in the vicinity, some, apper-
taining to the household, to the dormitories in the
old Roman villa.
It was not the habit of the Saxon noble, as it was
of the Norman, to put hospitality to profit, by re-
garding his guests in the light of armed retainers.
Liberal as the Briton, the cheer of the board and
the shelter of the roof were afforded with a hand
equally unselfish and indiscriminate ; and the
doors of the more wealthy and munificent might
be almost literally said to stand open from morn
to eve.
As Harold followed the Vala across the vast
atrium, his face was recognised, and a shout of
enthusiastic welcome greeted the popular Earl.
HAROLD. 217
The only voices that did not swell that cry, were
those of three monks from a neighbouring convent,
who chose to wink at the supposed practices of the
Morthwyrtha,* from the affection they bore to
her ale and mead, and the gratitude they felt for
her ample gifts to their convent.
" One of the wicked House, brother," whis-
pered the monk.
" Yea ; mockers and scorners are Godwin and
his lewd sons," answered the monk.
And all three sighed and scowled, as the door
closed on the hostess and her stately guest.
Two tall and not ungraceful lamps lighted the
same chamber in which Hilda was first presented
to the reader. The handmaids were still at their
spindles, and nimbly shot the white web as the
mistress entered. She paused, and her brow knit,
as she eyed the work.
" But three parts done ?" she said, " weave fast,
and weave strong."
Harold, not heeding the maids or their task,
gazed inquiringly round, and from a nook near
the window, Edith sprang forward with a joyous
* Morthwyrtha, worshipper of the dead.
VOL. I. L
218 HAROLD.
cry, and a face all glowing with delight sprang
forward, as if to the arms of a brother ; but,
within a step or so of that noble guest, she
stopped shortj and her eyes fell to the ground.
Harold held his breath in admiring silence. The
child he had loved from her cradle stood before
him as a woman. Even since we last saw her, in
the interval between the spring and the autumn,
the year had ripened the youth of the maiden,
as it had mellowed the fruits of the earth; and
her cheek was rosy with the celestial blush, and
her form rounded to the nameless grace, which
say that infancy is no more.
He advanced and took her hand, but for the
first time in his life in their greetings, he neither
gave nor received the kiss.
" You are no child now, Edith," said he, invo-
luntarily ; " but still set apart, I pray you, some
remains of the old childish love for Harold."
Edith's charming lips smiled softly ; she raised
her eyes to his, and their innocent fondness spoke
through happy tears.
But few words passed in the short interval
between Harold's entrance and his retirement to
HAROLD. 219
the chamber prepared for him in haste, Hilda
herself led him to a rude ladder which admitted
to a room above, evidently added, by some Saxon
lord, to the old Roman pile. The ladder itself
showed the precaution of one accustomed to sleep
in the midst of peril ; for by a kind of windlass in
the room, it could be drawn up at the inmate's will,
and, so drawn, left below a dark and deep chasm,
delving down to the foundations of the house ;
nevertheless the room itself had all the luxury
of the time ; the bedstead was quaintly carved,
and of some rare wood ; a trophy of arms though
very ancient, sedulously polished hung on the
wall. There, were the small round shield and
spear of the earlier Saxon, with his vizorless helm,
and the short curved knife or saex,* from which
some antiquarians deem that the Saxish men take
their renowned name.
Edith, following Hilda, proffered to the guest,
on a salver of gold, spiced wines and confections ;
* It is a disputed question whether the saex of the earliest Saxon
invaders was a long or a 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.
L 2
220 HAROLD.
while Hilda, silently and unperceived, waved her
seid staff over the bed, and rested her pale hand
on the pillow.
" Nay, sweet cousin," said Harold, smiling,
" this is not one of the fashions of old, but rather,
methinks, borrowed from the Frankish manners
in the court of King Edward."
" Not so, Harold," answered Hilda, quickly
turning; "such was ever the ceremony due to
Saxon king, when he slept in a subject's house,
ere our kinsmen the Danes introduced that un-
royal wassail, which left subject and king unable
to hold or to quaff cup, when the board was left
for the bed."
" Thou rebukest, O Hilda, too tauntingly, the
pride of Godwin's House, when thou givest to his
homely son the ceremonial of a king. But, so
served, I envy not kings, fair Edith."
He took the cup, raised it to his lips, and when
he placed it on the small table by his side, the
women had left the chamber, and he was alone.
He stood for some minutes absorbed in reverie,
and his soliloquy ran somewhat thus :
" Why said the Vala that Edith's fate was in-
HAROLD. 221
woven with mine ? And why did 1 believe and
bless the Vala, when she so said? Can Edith
ever be my wife ? The monk-king designs her
for the cloister Woe, and well-a-day! Sweyn,
Sweyn, let thy doom forewarn me ! And if I
stand up in my place and say, ' Give age and
grief to the cloister youth and delight to man's
hearth,' what will answer the monks ? * Edith
cannot be thy wife, son of Godwin, for faint and
scarce traced though your affinity of blood, ye are
within the banned degrees of the Church. Edith
may be wife to another, if thou wilt, barren
spouse to the Church, or mother of children who
lisp not Harold's name as their father.' Out on
these priests with their mummeries, and out on
their war upon human hearts !"
His fair brow grew stern and fierce as the
Norman Duke's in his ire ; and had you seen hin?
at that moment you would have seen the true
brother of Sweyn. He broke from his thoughts
with the strong effort of a man habituated to self-
control, and advanced to the narrow window,
opened the lattice, and looked out.
The moon was in all her splendour. The long
222 HAROLD.
deep shadows of the breathless forest chequered
the silvery whiteness of open sward and inter-
vening glade. Ghostly arose on the knoll before
him the grey columns of the mystic Druid, dark
and indistinct the bloody altar of the Warrior god.
But there his eye was arrested ; for whatever
is least distinct and defined in a landscape has the
charm that is the strongest ; and, while he gazed,
he thought that a pale phosphoric light broke from
the mound with the bautastein, that rose by the
Teuton altar. He thought, for he was not sure
that it was not some cheat of the fancy. Gazing
still, in the centre of that light there appeared
to gleam forth for one moment, a form of super-
human height. It was the form of a man,
that seemed clad in arms like those on the wall,
leaning on a spear, whose point was lost be-
hind the shafts of the crommell. And the face
grew in that moment distinct from the light
which shimmered around it, a face large as some
early god's, but stamped with unutterable and
solemn woe. He drew back a step, passed his
hand over his eyes, and looked again. Light and
figure alike had vanished ; nought was seen save
HAROLD. 223
the grey columns and the dim fane. The Earl's
lip curved in derision of his weakness. He
closed the lattice, undressed, knelt for a moment
or so by the bed-side, and his prayer was brief
and simple, nor accompanied with the crossings
and signs customary in his age. He rose, ex-
tinguished the lamp, and threw himself on the
bed.
The moon, thus relieved of the lamp-light, came
clear and bright through the room, shone on the
trophied arms, and fell upon Harold's face, casting
its brightness on the pillow on which the Vala
had breathed her charm. And Harold slept
slept long, his face calm, his breathing regular ;
but ere the moon sunk and the dawn rose, the
features were dark and troubled, the breath came
by gasps, the brow was knit, and the teeth
clenched.
BOOK IV.
THE HEATHEN ALTAR AND THE SAXON CHUKCH.
L 3
BOOK IV.
CHAPTER I.
WHILE Harold sleeps, let us here pause to
survey for the first time the greatness of that
House to which Sweyn's exile had left him the
heir. The fortunes of Godwin had been those
which no man not eminently versed in the science
of his kind can achieve. Though the fable which
some modern historians of great name have re-
peated and detailed, as to his early condition as the
son of a cow-herd, is utterly groundless,* and he
belonged certainly to a house all-powerful at the
time of his youth, he was unquestionably the
builder of his own greatness. That he should
rise so high in the early part of his career was
* See Note (G), at the end of the volume.
228 HAROLD.
less remarkable than that he should have so long
continued the possessor of a power and state in
reality more than regal.
But, as has been before implied, Godwin's civil
capacities were more prominent than his warlike.
And this it is which invests him with that peculiar
interest which attracts us to those who knit our
modern intelligence with the past. In that dim
world before the Norman deluge, we are startled
to recognise the gifts that ordinarily distinguish a
man of peace in a civilized age.
His father, Wolnoth, had been "Childe"* of
the South Saxons, or thegn of Sussex, a nephew
of Edric Streone, Earl of Mercia, the unprincipled
but able minister of Ethelred, who betrayed his
master to Canute, by whom, according to most
authorities, he was righteously, though not very
legally, slain as a reward for the treason.
* SAXON CHHON. : FLORENCE WIGORN. Sir F. Palgrave says
that the title 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 con-
tradictory, Sir F. Palgrave discards with eilent contempt the absurd
romance of Godwin'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.
HAROLD. 229
" I promised," said the Dane king, " to set thy
head higher than other men's, and I keep my
word." The trunkless head was set on the gates
of London.
Wolnoth had quarrelled with his uncle
Brightric, Edric's brother, and before the arrival
of Canute, had betaken himself to the piracy of
a sea chief, seduced twenty of the king's ships,
plundered the southern coasts, burnt the royal
navy, and then his history disappears from the
chronicles; but immediately afterwards the great
Danish army, called Thurkell's Host, invaded the
coast, and kept their chief station on the Thames.
Their victorious arms soon placed the country
almost at their command. The traitor Edric
joined them with a power of more than 10,000
men ; and it is probable enough that the ships of
Wolnoth had before this time melted amicably
into the armament of the Danes. If this, which
seems the most likely conjecture, be received,
Godwin, then a mere youth, would naturally have
commenced his career in the cause of Canute ; and
as the son of a formidable chief of thegn's rank,
and even as kinsman to Edric, who, whatever his
230 HAROLD.
crimes, must have retained a party it was wise
to conciliate, Godwin's favour with Canute, whose
policy would lead him to shew marked distinction
to any able Saxon follower, ceases to be surprising.
The son of "Wolnoth accompanied Canute in
his military expedition to the Scandinavian conti-
nent, and here a signal victory, planned by God-
win, and executed solely by himself and the Saxon
band under his command, without aid from
Canute's Danes, made the most memorable mili-
tary exploit of his life, and confirmed his rising
fortunes.
Edric, though he is said to have been low born,
had married the sister of King Ethelred ; and as
Godwin advanced in fame, Canute did not disdain
to bestow his own sister in marriage on the elo-
quent favourite, who probably kept no small por-
tion of the Saxon population to their allegiance.
On the death of this, his first wife, who bore him
but one son* (who died by accident), he found a
* 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.
HAROLD. 231
second spouse in the same royal house ; and the
mother of his six living sons and two daughters
was the niece of his king, and sister of Sweyn, who
subsequently filled the throne of Denmark. After
the death of Canute, the Saxon's predilections in
favour of the Saxon line became apparent ; but it
was either his policy or his principles always to
defer to the popular will as expressed in the
national council ; and on the preference given by
the Witan to Harold the son of Canute over the
heirs of Ethelred, he yielded his own inclinations.
The great power of the Danes, and the amicable
fusion of their race with the Saxon which had now
taken place, are apparent in this decision ; for not
only did Earl Leofric, of Mercia, though himself a
Saxon, (as well as the Earl of Northumbria, with
the thegns north of the Thames,) declare for
Harold the Dane, but the citizens of London
were of the same party ; and Godwin represented
little more than the feeling of his own principality
of Wessex.
From that time, Godwin, however, became
identified with the English cause; and even
232 HAROLD.
many who believed him guilty of some share in
the murder, or at least the betrayal of Alfred,
Edward's brother, sought excuses in the disgust
with which Godwin had regarded the foreign
retinue that Alfred had brought with him, as if
to owe his throne* to Norman swords, rather
than to English hearts.
Hardicanute, who succeeded Harold, whose
memory he abhorred, whose corpse he disinterred
and flung into a fen,t had been chosen by the
unanimous council both of English and Danish
thegns ; and despite Hardicanute's first vehement
accusations of Godwin, the Earl still remained
throughout that reign as powerful as in the two
preceding it. When Hardicanute dropped down
dead at a marriage banquet, it was Godwin who
placed Edward upon the throne ; and that great
Earl must either have been conscious of his inno-
* It is just however to Godwin 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 con-
tradictory, and the whole event too obscure, to enable us un-
hesitatingly to confirm the acquittal he received in his own age,
and from his own national tribunal.
t Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
HAROLD. 233
cence of the murder of Edward's brother, or
assured of his own irresponsible power, when he
said to the prince who knelt at his feet, and, fear-
ful of the difficulties in his way, implored the
Earl to aid his abdication of the throne and
return to Normandy
" You are the son of Ethelred, grandson of
Edgar. Reign, it is your duty ; better to live in
glory than die in exile. You are of mature years,
and having known sorrow and need, can better
feel for your people. Rely on me, and there will
be none of the difficulties you dread; whom
I favour, England favours."
And shortly afterwards, in the national assem-
bly, Godwin won Edward his throne. " Powerful
in speech, powerful in bringing over people to
what he desired, some yielded to his words, some
to bribes." * Verily, Godwin was a man to have
risen as high had he lived later !
So Edward reigned, and agreeably, it is said,
with previous stipulations, married the daughter
of his king-maker. Beautiful as Edith the Queen
was in mind and in person, Edward apparently
* WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY.
234 HAROLD.
loved her not. She dwelt in his palace, his wife
only in name.
Tostig (as we have seen) had married the
daughter of Baldwin, Count of Flanders, sister
to Matilda, wife to the Norman Duke ; and thus
the House of Godwin was triply allied to princely
lineage the Danish, the Saxon, the Flemish.
And Tostig might have said, as in his heart
William the Norman said, " My children shall
descend from Charlemagne and Alfred."
Godwin's life, though thus outwardly brilliant,
was too incessantly passed in public affairs and
politic schemes to allow the worldly man much
leisure to watch over the nurture and rearing of the
bold spirits of his sons. Githa his wife, the Dane,
a woman with a haughty but noble spirit, imper-
fect education, and some of the wild and lawless
blood derived from her race of heathen sea-kings,
was more fitted to stir their ambition, and inflame
their fancies, than curb their tempers and mould
their hearts.
We have seen the career of Sweyn ; but Sweyn
was an angel of light compared to his brother
Tostig. He who can be penitent has ever some-
HAROLD. 235
thing lofty in his original nature ; but Tostig was
remorseless \ as the tiger, as treacherous and as
fierce. With less intellectual capacities than any
of his brothers, he had more personal ambition
than all put together. A kind of effeminate
vanity, not uncommon with daring natures (for
the bravest races and the bravest soldiers are
usually the vainest; the desire to shine is as
visible in the fop as in the hero), made him rest-
less both for command and notoriety. " May
I ever be in the mouths of men," was his favourite
prayer. Like his maternal ancestry, the Danes,
he curled his long hair, and went as a bridegroom
to the feast of the ravens.
Two only of that house had studied the Humane
Letters, which were no longer disregarded by the
princes of the Continent; they were the sweet
sister, the eldest of the family, fading fast in her
loveless home, and Harold.
But Harold's mind, in which what we call
common sense was carried to genius, a mind
singularly practical and sagacious, like his father's,
cared little for theological learning and priestly
legend for all that poesy of religion in which
236 HAROLD.
the Woman was wafted from the sorrows of
earth.
Godwin himself was no favourite of the Church,
and had seen too much of the abuses of the Saxon
priesthood (perhaps, with few exceptions, the
most corrupt and illiterate in all Europe, which
is saying much,) to instill into his children that
reverence for the spiritual authority which existed
abroad ; and the enlightenment, wfyich in him was
experience in life, was in Harold, betimes, the
result of study and reflection. The books of the
classical world opened to the young Saxon views
of human duties and human responsibilities utterly
distinct from the unmeaning ceremonials and fleshly
mortifications in which even the higher theology
of that day placed the elements of virtue. He
smiled in scorn when some Dane, whose life had
been passed in the alternate drunkenness of wine
and of blood, thought he had opened the gates
of heaven by bequeathing lands gained by a
robber's sword, to pamper the lazy sloth of some
fifty monks. If those monks had presumed to
question his own actions, his disdain would have
been mixed with simple wonder that men so
HAROLD. 237
besotted in ignorance, and who could not construe
the Latin of the very prayers they pattered,
should presume to be the judges of educated men.
It is possible for his nature was earnest that
a pure and enlightened clergy, that even a
clergy, though defective in life, zealous in duty
and cultivated in mind, such a clergy as Alfred
sought to found, and as Lanfranc endeavoured
(not without some success) to teach would have
bowed his strong sense to that grand and subtle
truth which dwells in spiritual authority. But as
it was, he stood aloof from the rude superstition
of his age, and early in life made himself the
arbiter of his own conscience. Reducing his reli-
gion to the simplest elements of our creed, he
found rather in the books of Heathen authors
than in the lives of the saints, his notions of the
larger morality which relates to the citizen and
the man. The love of country ; the sense of
justice; fortitude in adverse, and temperance in
prosperous fortune, became portions of his very
mind. Unlike his father, he played no actor's
part in those qualities which had won him the
popular heart. He was gentle and affable ; above
238 IIAROLD.
all, he was fair-dealing and just, not because it
was politic to seem, but his nature to be, so.
Nevertheless, Harold's character, beautiful and
sublime in many respects as it was, had its strong
leaven of human imperfection in that very self-
dependence which was born of his reason and his
pride. In resting so solely on man's perceptions
of the right, he lost one attribute of the true
hero -faith. We do not mean that word in the
religious sense alone, but in the more compre-
hensive. He did not rely on the Celestial Some-
thing pervading all nature, never seen, only felt
when duly courted, stronger and lovelier than
what eye could behold and mere reason could
embrace. Believing, it is true, in God, he lost
those fine links that unite God to man's secret
heart, and which are woven alike from the sim-
plicity of the child and the wisdom of the poet.
To use a modern illustration, his large mind
was " a cupola lighted from below."
His bravery, though inflexible as the fiercest sea-
king's, when need arose for its exercise, was not his
prominent characteristic. He despised the brute
valour of Tostig, his bravery was a necessary
HAROLD. 239
part of a firm and balanced manhood the bravery
of Hector, not Achilles. Constitutionally averse to
bloodshed, he could seem timid where daring only
gratified a wanton vanity, or aimed at a selfish
object. On the other hand, if c?wty demanded daring,
no danger could deter, no policy warp him ; he
could seem rash; he could even seem merciless.
In the what ought to be, he understood a must be.
And it was natural to this peculiar, yet tho-
roughly English temperament, to be, in action,
rather steadfast and patient than quick and ready.
Placed in perils familiar to him, nothing could
exceed his vigour and address ; but if taken
unawares, and before his judgment could come to
his aid, he was liable to be surprised into error.
Large minds are rarely quick, unless they have
been corrupted into unnatural vigilance by the
necessities of suspicion. But a nature more
thoroughly unsuspecting, more frank, trustful,
and genuinely loyal than that young Earl's, it
was impossible to conceive. All these attributes
considered, we have the key to much of Harold's
character and conduct in the later events of his
fated and tragic life.
240 HAROLD.
But with this temperament, so manly and
simple, we are not to suppose that Harold, while
rejecting the superstitions of one class, was so far
beyond his time as to reject those of another.
No son of fortune, no man placing himself and
the world in antagonism, can ever escape from
some belief in the Invisible. Caesar could ridicule
and profane the mystic rites of Roman mythology,
but he must still believe in his fortune, as in a
god. And Harold, in his very studies, seeing
the freest and boldest minds of antiquity subjected
to influences akin to those of his Saxon fore-
fathers, felt less shame in yielding to them, vain
as they might be, than in monkish impostures
so easily detected. Though hitherto he had
rejected all direct appeal to the magic devices of
Hilda, the sound of her dark sayings, heard in
childhood, still vibrated on his soul as man.
Belief in omens, in days lucky or unlucky, in the
stars, was universal in every class of the Saxon.
Harold had his own fortunate day, the day of his
nativity, the 14th of October. All enterprises
undertaken on that day had hitherto been suc-
cessful. He believed in the virtue of that day,
HAROLD. 241
as Cromwell believed in his 3d of September.
For the rest, we have described him as he was
in that part of his career in which he is now
presented. Whether altered by fate and circum-
stances, time will show. As yet, no selfish
ambition leagued with the natural desire of youth
and intellect, for their fair share of fame and
power. His patriotism, fed by the example of
Greek and Roman worthies, was genuine, pure,
and ardent ; he could have stood in the pass with
Leonidas, or leaped into the gulf with Curtius.
VOL. I. M
CHAPTER II.
AT dawn, Harold woke from uneasy and broken
slumbers, and his eyes fell upon the face of Hilda
large, and fair, and unutterably calm, as the face
of Egyptian sphinx.
" Have thy dreams been prophetic, son of God-
win ?" said the Vala.
" Our Lord forfend," replied the Earl, with
unusual devoutness.
" Tell them, and let me read the rede ; sense
dwells in the voices of the night."
Harold mused, and after a short pause, he said :
" Methinks, Hilda, I can myself explain how
those dreams came to haunt me."
Then raising himself on his elbow, he continued,
while he fixed his clear penetrating eyes upon his
hostess :
" Tell me frankly, Hilda, didst thou not cause
HAROLD. 243
some liglit to shine on yonder knoll, by the mound
and stone, within the temple of the Druids?"
But if Harold had suspected himself to be the
dupe of some imposture, the thought vanished
when he saw the look of keen interest, even of
awe, which Hilda's face instantly assumed.
" Didst thou see a light, son of Godwin, by the
altar of Thor, and over the bautastein of the
mighty dead? a flame, lambent and livid, like
moonbeams collected over snow ?"
" So seemed to me the light."
" No human hand ever kindled that flame,
which announces the presence of the Dead," said
Hilda, with a tremulous voice ; "though seldom,
uncompelled by the seid and the rune, does the
spectre itself warn the eyes of the living."
" What shape, or what shadow of shape, does
that spectre assume ? "
" It rises in the midst of the flame, pale as the
mist on the mountain, and vast as the giants of
old ; with the ssex, and the spear, and the shield,
of the sons of Woden. Thou hast seen the
Scin-laeca!" continued Hilda, looking full on the
face of the Earl.
M 2
244 HAROLD.
" If tliou deceives! me not," began Harold,
doubting still.
" Deceive thee ! not to save the crown of the
Saxon dare I mock the might of the dead. Know
est thou not or hath thy vain lore stood in place
of the lore of thy fathers that where a hero of
old is buried, his treasures lie in his grave ; that
over that grave is at times seen at night the flame
that thou sawest, and the dead in his image of air ?
Oft seen in the days that are gone, when the dead
and the living had one faith were one race ; now
never marked, but for portent, and prophecy, and
doom : glory or woe to the eyes that see ! On yon
knoll, JEsc, (the first-born of Cerdic, that Father-
King of the Saxons,) has his grave where the mound
rises green, and the stone gleams wan, by the altar
of Thor. He smote the Britons in their temple, and
he fell smiting. They buried him in his arms, and
with the treasures his right hand had won. Fate
hangs on the house of Cerdic, or the realm of the
Saxon, when Woden calls the Iccca of his son from
the grave."
Hilda, much troubled, bent her face over her
clasped hands, and, rocking to and fro, muttered
HAROLD. 245
some rimes unintelligible to the ear of her
listener. Then she turned to him, command*
ingly, and said :
" Thy dreams now, indeed, are oracles, more
true than living Vala could charm with the wand,
and the rune : Unfold them."
Thus adjured, Harold resumed :
" Methought, then, that I was on a broad,
level plain, in the noon of day ; all \ras clear to
my eye, and glad to my heart. I was alone, and
went on my way rejoicing. Suddenly the earth
opened under my feet, and I fell deep, fathom-
deep ; deep, as if to that central pit, which our
heathen sires called Niffelheim the Home of
Vapour the hell of the dead who die without
glory. Stunned by the fall, I lay long, locked as
in a dream in the midst of a dream. When I
opened my eyes, behold I was girt round with
dead men's bones ; and the bones moved round me,
undulating, as the dry leaves that wirble round in
the winds of the winter. And from the midst of
them peered a trunkless skull, and on the skull was
a mitre, and from the yawning jaws a voice came
hissing, as a serpent's hiss, ( Harold, the scorner,
246 HAROLD.
thou art ours !' Then, as from the buzz of an army,
came voices multitudinous, ' Thou art ours !' I
sought to rise, and behold my limbs were bound,
and the gyves were fine and frail, as the web of the
gossamer, and they weighed on me like chains of
iron. And I felt an anguish of soul that no
words can speak an anguish both of horror and
shame ; and my manhood seemed to ooze from me,
and I was weak as a child new born. Then sud-
denly there rushed forth a freezing wind, as from
an air of ice, and the bones from their whirl stood
still, and the buzz ceased, and the mitred skull
grinned on me still and voiceless ; and serpents
darted their arrowy tongues from the eyeless
sockets. And lo, before me stood, (O Hilda, I see
it now !) the form of the spectre that had risen from
yonder knoll. With his spear, and sagx, and his
shield, he stood before me ; and his face, though
pale as that of one long dead, was stern as the face of
a warrior in the van of armed men ; he stretched his
hand, and he smote his saix on his shield, and the
clang sounded hollow ; the gyves broke at the clash
I sprang to my feet, and I stood side by side with
the phantom, dauntless. Then, suddenly, the mitre
HAROLD. 247
on the skull changed to a helm ; and where the
skull had grinned, trunkless and harmless, stood a
shape like War made incarnate ; a Thing above
giants, with its crest to the stars, and its form an
eclipse between the sun and the day. The earth
changed to ocean, and the ocean was blood, and the
ocean seemed deep as the seas where the whales
sport in the North, but the surge rose not to the
knee of that measureless image. And the ravens
came round it from all parts of the heaven, and the
vultures with dead eyes and dull scream. And all
the bones, before scattered and shapeless, sprung to
life and to form, some monks, and some warriors ;
and there was a hoot, and a hiss, and a roar, and
the storm of arms. And a broad pennon rose out
of the sea of blood, and from the clouds came a
pale hand, and it wrote on the pennon, * Harold
the Accursed ! ' Then said the stern shape by
my side, f Harold, fearest thou the dead men's
bones?' and its voice was as a trumpet that
gives strength to the craven, and I answered,
'Niddering, indeed, were Harold, to fear the
bones of the dead ! '
" As I spoke, as if hell had burst loose,
2 -IS HAROLD.
came a gibber of scorn, and all vanished at once,
save the ocean of blood. Slowly came from the
north, over the sea, a bird like a raven, save that
it was blood-red, like the ocean ; and there came
from the south, swimming towards me, a lion. And
I looked to the spectre ; and the pride of war had
gone from its face, which was so sad that me-
thought I forgot raven and lion, and wept to see
it. Then the spectre took me in its vast arms,
and its breath froze my veins, and it kissed my
brow and my lips, and said, gently and fondly, as
my mother in some childish sickness, " Harold,
my best beloved, mourn not. Thou hast all
which the sons of Woden dreamed in their dreams
of Valhalla ! ' Thus saying, the form' receded
slowly, slowly, still gazing on me with its sad
eyes. I stretched forth my hand to detain it,
and in my grasp was a shadowy sceptre. And,
lo ! round me, as if from the earth, sprang up
thegns and chiefs, in their armour ; and a board
was spread, and wassail was blithe around me.
So my heart felt cheered and light, and in my
hand was still the sceptre. And we feasted long
and merrily ; but over the feast flapped the wings
HAROLD. 249
of the blood-red raven, and, over the blood-red
sea beyond, swam the lion, near and near. And in
the heavens there were two stars, one pale and
steadfast, the other rushing and luminous ; and
a shadowy hand pointed from the cloud to the
pale star, and a voice said, ' Lo, Harold ! the star
that shone on thy birth.' And another hand
pointed to the luminous star, and another voice
said, ' Lo ! the star that shone on the birth of the
victor.' Then, lo ! the bright star grew fiercer
and larger; and, rolling on with a hissing sound,
as when iron is dipped into water, it rushed
over the disk of the mournful planet, and the
whole heavens seemed on fire. So methought
the dream faded away, and in fading, I heard a
full swell of music, as the swell of an anthem in an
aisle ', a music like that which but once in my life
I heard ; when I stood in the train of Edward, in
the halls of Winchester, the day they crowned
him king."
Harold ceased, and the Vala slowly lifted her
head from her bosom, and surveyed him in pro-
found silence, and with a gaze that seemed vacant
and meaningless.
M 3
250 HAROLD.
" Why dost thou look on me thus, and why art
thou so silent ? " asked the Earl.
" The cloud is on my sight, and the burthen is
on my soul, and I cannot read thy rede," mur-
mured the Vala. "But morn, the ghost-chaser, that
waketh life, the action, charms into slumber life,
the thought. As the stars pale at the rising of the
sun, so fade the lights of the soul when the buds
revive in the dews, and the lark sings to the day.
In thy dream lies thy future, as the wing of the
moth in the web of the changing worm ; but, whe-
ther for weal or for woe, thou shalt burst through
thy mesh, and spread thy plumes in the air. Of
myself I know nought. Await the hour when
Skulda shall pass into the soul of her servant, and
thy fate shall rush from my lips as the rush of
the waters from the heart of the cave."
tf I am content to abide," said Harold, with his
wonted smile, so calm and so lofty ; " but I can-
not promise thee that I shall heed thy rede, or
obey thy warning, when my reason hath awoke,
as while I speak it awakens, from the fumes of
the fancy and the mists of the night."
The Vala sighed heavily, but made no answer.
CHAPTER III.
GITHA, Earl Godwin's wife, sate in her chamber,
and her heart was sad. In the room was one of her
sons, the one dearer to her than all, Wolnoth, her
darling. For the rest of her sons were stalwart
and strong of frame, and in their infancy she had
known not a mother's fears. But Wolnoth had
come into the world before his time, and sharp
had been the travail of the mother, and long
between life and death the struggle of the new-
born babe. And his cradle had been rocked with
a trembling knee, and his pillow been bathed with
hot tears, l^rail had been his childhood a thing
that hung on her care ; and now, as the boy
grew, blooming and strong, into youth, the mother
felt that she had given life twice to her child.
252 HAROLD.
Therefore was he more dear to her than the rest ;
and, therefore, as she gazed upon him now, fair
and smiling, and hopeful, she mourned for him
more than for Sweyn, the outcast and crimi-
nal, on his pilgrimage of woe, to the waters of
Jordan, and the tomb of our Lord. For Wol-
noth, selected as the hostage for the faith of his
house, was to be sent from her arms to the Court
of William the Norman. And the youth smiled
and Avas gay, choosing vestment, and mantle, and
ateghars of gold, that he might be flaunting and
brave in. the halls of knighthood and beauty, the
school of the proudest chivalry of the Christian
world. Too young, and too thoughtless, to share
the wise hate of his elders for the manners and
forms of the foreigners, their gaiety and splendour,
as his boyhood had seen them, relieving the
gloom of the cloister court, and contrasting the
spleen and the rudeness of the Saxon tempera-
ment, had dazzled his fancy and half Normanized
his mind. A proud and happy boy was he, to go
as hostage for the faith, and representative of the
rank, of his mighty kinsmen ; and step into man-
hood in the eyes of the dames of Rouen.
HAROLD. 253
By Wolnoth's side stood his young sister,
Thyra, a mere infant ; and her innocent sympathy
with her brother's pleasure in gaud and toy sad-
dened Githa yet more.
" O my son ! " said the troubled mother,
" why, of all my children have they chosen tliee ?
Harold is wise against danger, and Tostig is fierce
against foes, and Gurth is too loving to wake
hate in the sternest, and from the mirth of sunny
Leofwine sorrow glints aside, as the shaft from
the sheen of a shield. But thou, thou, O beloved !
cursed be the king that chose thee, and cruel was
the father that forgot the light of the mother's eyes!"
"Tut, mother the dearest," said Wolnoth,
pausing from the contemplation of a silk robe, all
covered with broidered peacocks, which had been
sent him as a gift from his sister the Queen, and
wrought with her own fair hands ; for a notable
needlewoman, despite her sage lere, was the wife
of the Saint King, as sorrowful women mostly are,
" Tut ! the bird must leave the nest when the
wings are fledged. Harold the eagle, Tostig the
kite, Gurth the ring-dove, and Leofwine the stare.
See, my wings are the richest of all, mother
254 HAROLD.
and bright is the sun in which thy peacock shall
spread his pranked plumes."
Then, observing that his liveliness provoked no
smile from his mother, he approached, and said
more seriously,
" Bethink thee, mother mine. No other choice
was left to king or to father. Harold, and Tostig,
and Leofwine, have their lordships and offices.
Their posts are fixed, and they stand as the
columns of our house. And Gurth is so young,
and so Saxish, and so the shadow of Harold, that
his hate to the Norman is a bye-word already
among our youths ; for hate is the more marked
in a temper of love, as the blue of this border
seems black against the white of the woof. But
/, the good king knows that I shall be welcome,
for the Norman knights love Wolnoth, and I have
spent hours by the knees of Montgommeri and
Grantmesnil, listening to the feats of Rolfganger,
and playing with their gold chains of knighthood.
And the stout Count himself shall knight me, and
I shall come back with the spurs of gold which thy
ancestors, the brave Kings of Norway and Dane-
land, wore ere knighthood was known. Come,
HAROLD. 255
kiss me, my mother, and come see the brave
falcons Harold has sent me ; true Welch !"
Githa rested her face on her son's shoulder, and
her tears blinded her. The door opened gently,
and Harold entered; and with the Earl, a pale
dark haired boy, Haco, the son of Sweyn.
But Githa, absorbed in her darling Wolnoth,
scarce saw the grandchild reared afar from her
knees, and hurried at once to Harold. In his pre-
sence she felt comfort and safety; for Wolnoth
leant on her heart, and her heart leant on Harold.
" O son, son !" she cried, " firmest of hand, surest
of faith, and wisest of brain, in the house of God-
win, tell me that he yonder, he thy young brother,
risks no danger in the halls of the Normans ! "
" Not more than in these, mother," answered
Harold, soothing her, with caressing lip and gentle
tone. " Fierce and ruthlesss, men say, is William
the Duke against foes with their swords in their
hands, but debonnair and mild to the gentle,*
frank host and kind lord. And these Normans
* So Kobert of Gloucester says pithily of "\VilHam, "Kyng
Wylliam was to mild men debonnere ynou." HEARNE, v. ii.
p. 309.
2. 5 6 HAROLD.
have a code of their own, more grave than all
morals, more binding than even their fanatic
religion. Thou knowest it well, mother, for it
comes from thy race of the North, and this code
of honour, they call it, makes Wolnoth's head as
sacred as the relics of a saint set in zinimes.
Ask only, my brother, when thou comest in sight
of the Norman Duke, ask only 'the kiss of peace,'
and, that kiss on thy brow, thou wilt sleep more
safely than if all the banners of England waved
over thy couch. "*
" -But how long shall the exile be ? " asked
Githa, comforted.
Harold's brow fell,
" Mother, not even to cheer thee will I deceive.
The time of the hostageship rests with the King
and the Duke. As long as the one affects fear
from the race of Godwin, as long as the other
* This kiss of peace was held singularly sacred by the Nor-
mans, 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 Home, and promised to remedy all
of which his prelate complained, he struck prophetic dismay into
Bccket's heart by evading the kiss of peace.
HAROLD. 257
feigns care for such priests or such knights as
were not banished from the realm, being not
courtiers, but scattered wide and far in convent
and homestead, so long will Wolnoth and Haco
be guests in the Norman halls."
Githa wrung her hands.
" But comfort, my mother ; Wolnoth is young,
his eye is keen, and his spirit prompt and
quick. He will mark these Norman captains,
he -will learn their strength and their weakness,
their manner of war, and he will come back, not
as Edward the Kins; came, a lover of things uri-
O * O
Saxon, but able to warn and to guide us against
the plots of the camp-court, which threatens
more, year- by year, the peace of the world. And
he will see there arts we may worthily borrow ;
not the cut of a tunic, and the fold of a gonna,
but the arts of men who found states and build
nations. William the Duke is splendid and wise ;
merchants tell us how crafts thrive under his
iron hand, and warmen say that his forts are con-
structed with skill, and his battle-schemes planned
as the mason plans key-stone and arch, with
weight portioned out to the prop, and the force of
258 HAROLD.
the hand made tenfold by the science of the brain-
So that the boy will return to us a man round
and complete, a teacher of greybeards, and the
sage of his kin ; fit for earldom and rule, fit for
glory and England. Grieve not, daughter of
the Dane kings, that thy son, the best loved,
hath nobler school and wider field than his
brothers."
This appeal touched the proud heart of the
niece of Canute the Great, and she almost
forgot the grief of her love in the hope of her
ambition.
She dried her tears and smiled upon "Wolnoth,
and already, in the dreams of a mother's vanity,
saw him great as Godwin in council, and pros-
perous as Harold in the field. Nor, half Norman
as he was, did the young man seem insensible of
the manly and elevated patriotism of his brother's
hinted lessons, though he felt they implied re-
proof. He came to the Earl, whose arm was round
his mother, and said with a frank heartiness
not usual to a nature somewhat frivolous and
irresolute,
" Harold, thy tongue could kindle stones into
HAROLD. 259
men, and warm those men into Saxons. Thy
"\Volnoth shall not hang his head with shame
when he comes back to our merrie land with
shaven locks and spurs of gold. For if thou
doubtest his race from his look, thou shalt put thy
right hand on his heart, and feel England beat
there in every pulse."
" Brave words, and well spoken," cried the Earl,
and he placed his hand on the boy's head as in
benison.
Till then, Haco had stood apart, conversing
with the infant Thyra, whom his dark, mournful
face awed and yet touched, for she nestled close
to him, and put her little hand in his ; but now,
inspired no less than his cousin by Harold's
noble speech, he came proudly forward by
Wolnoth's side, and said,
" I, too, am English, and I have the name of
Englishman to redeem."
Ere Harold could reply, Githa exclaimed,
" Leave there thy right hand on my child's
head, and say, simply, 'By my troth and my
plight, if the Duke detain Wolnoth, son of
Githa, against just plea, and King's assent to
260 HAROLD.
his return, I, Harold, will, failing letter and
nuncius, cross the seas, to restore the child to the
mother.' "
Harold hesitated.
A sharp cry of reproach that went to his heart
broke from Githa's lips.
" Ah ! cold and self-heeding, wilt thou send
him to bear a peril from which thou shrinkest
thyself?"
" By ray troth and my plight, then," said the
Earl, "if, fair time elapsed, peace in England,
without plea of justice, and against my king's fiat,
Duke William of Normandy detain the hostages,
thy son, and this dear boy, more sacred and more
dear to me for his father's woes, I will cross the
seas, to restore the child to the mother, the father-
less to his fatherland. So help me, all-seeing One,
Amen and Amen ! "
CHAPTER IV.
WE have seen, in an earlier part of this record,
that Harold possessed, amongst his numerous and
more stately possessions, a house, not far from the
old Roman dwelling-place of Hilda. And in
this residence he now (save when with the king)
made his chief abode. He gave as the reasons
for his selection, the charm it took, in his eyes,
from that signal mark of affection which his ceorls
had rendered him, in purchasing the house and
tilling the ground in his absence ; and more espe-
cially the convenience of its vicinity to the new
palace at Westminster ; for by Edward's special
desire, while the other brothers repaired to their
different domains, Harold remained near his royal
person. To use the words of the great Norwe-
gian chronicler, "Harold was always with the
262 HAROLD.
Court itself, and nearest to the king in all service."
" The king loved him very much, and kept him as
his own son, for he had no children." * This attend-
ance on Edward was naturally most close at the
restoration to power of the Earl's family. For
Harold, mild and conciliating, was, like Aired,
a great peacemaker, and Edward had never cause
to complain of him, as he believed he had of the
rest of that haughty house. But the true spell
which made dear to Harold the rude building of
timber, with its doors open all day to his lithsmen,
when with a light heart he escaped from the
halls of Westminster, was the fair face of Edith
his neighbour. The impression which this young
girl had made upon Harold seemed to par-
take of the strength of a fatality. For Harold
had loved her before the marvellous beauty of her
womanhood began ; and, occupied from his earliest
youth in grave and earnest affairs, his heart had
never been frittered away on the mean and frivo-
lous affections of the idle. Now, in that compa-
rative leisure of his stormy life, he was naturally
* SNORRO STURLESON'S ffeimskrinyla. Laing's Translation,
p. 7577.
HAROLD. 263
most open to the influence of a charm more potent
than all the glamoury of Hilda.
The autumn sun shone through the golden
glades of the forest-land, when Edith sate alone
on the knoll that faced forest-land and road, and
watched afar.
And the birds sung cheerily ; but that was not
the sound for which Edith listened : and the
squirrel darted from tree to tree on the sward
beyond ; but not to see the games of the squirrel
sate Edith by the grave of the Teuton. By-and-
by came the cry of the dogs, and the tall gre-
hound* of Wales emerged from the bosky dells.
Then Edith's heart heaved, and her eyes
brightened. And now, with his hawk on his
wrist, and his spear f in his hand, came, through
the yellowing boughs, Harold the Earl.
And well may ye ween, that his heart beat as
loud and his eye shone as bright, as Edith's, when
he saw who had watched for his footsteps on the
* The gre-hound was so called from hunting the gre or
badger.
f The spear and the hawk were as the badges of Saxon no-
bility ; and a thegn was seldom seen abroad without the one on
his left wrist, the other in his right-hand.
' -
I
204 HAROLD.
sepulchral knoll ; Love, forgetful of the presence
of Death ; so has it ever been, so ever shall it be !
He hastened his stride, and bounded up the gentle
hillock, and his dogs, with a joyous bark, came
round the knees of Edith. Then Harold shook
the bird from his wrist, and it fell, with its light
wing, on the altar-stone of Thor.
" Thou art late, but thou art welcome, Harold
my kinsman," said Edith, simply, as she bent her
face over the hounds, whose gaunt heads she
caressed.
" Call me not kinsman," said Harold, shrinking,
and with a dark cloud on his broad brow.
" And why, Harold ? "
"Oh, Edith, why?" murmured Harold; and
his thought added, "she knows not, poor child,
that in that mockery of kinship the Church sets
its ban on our bridals."
He turned, and chid his dogs fiercely as they
gambolled in rough glee round their fair friend.
The hounds crouched at the feet of Edith; and
Edith looked in mild wonder at the troubled face
of the Earl.
" Thine eyes rebuke me, Edith, more than my
HAROLD. 265
words the hounds ! " said Harold, gently. " But
there is quick blood in my veins ; and the mind
must be calm when it would control the humour.
Calm was my mind, sweet Edith, in the old time,
when thou wert an infant on my knee, and
wreathing, with these rude hands, flower-chains
for thy neck like the swan's down, I said ' The
flowers fade, but the chain lasts when love
weaves it.' "
Edith again bent her face over the crouching
hounds. Harold gazed on her with mournful
fondness: and the bird still sung, and the squirrel
swung himself again from bough to bough. Edith
spoke first :
" My godmother, thy sister, hath sent for me,
Harold, and I am to go to the court to-morrow.
Shalt thou be there?"
" Surely," said Harold, in an anxious voice,
" surely, I will be there ! So my sister hath sent
for thee: wittest thou wherefore?"
Edith grew very pale, and her tone trembled as
she answered
" Well-a-day, yes."
" It is as I feared, then!" exclaimed Harold, in
VOL. I. N
266 HAROLD.
great agitation ; " and my sister, whom these
monks have demented, leagues herself with the
King against the law of the wide welkin and the
O O
grand religion of the human heart. Oh! "con-
tinued the Earl, kindling into an enthusiasm, rare
to his even moods, but wrung as much from his
broad sense as from his strong affection, " when
I compare the Saxon of our land and day, all
enervated and decrepit by priestly superstition, with
his forefathers in the first Christian era, yielding
to the religion they adopted in its simple truths,
but not to that rot of social happiness and free
manhood which this cold and lifeless monachism
making virtue the absence of human ties spreads
around which the great Bede,* though himself a
monk, vainly but bitterly denounced ; yea, verily,
when I see the Saxon already the theowe of the
priest, I shudder to ask how long he will be
folk-free of the tyrant."
He paused, breathed hard, and seizing, almost
sternly, the girl's trembling arm, he resumed,
between his set teeth, " So they would have
* BED. Epist. ad Egbert.
HAROLD. 267
thee be a nun? Thou wilt not, thou durst not,
thy heart would perjure thy vows!"
" Ah, Harold ! " answered Edith, moved out of
all bashfulness by his emotion and her own terror
of the convent, and answering, if with the love of a
woman, still with all the unconsciousness of a child:
" Better, oh better the grate of the body than
that of the heart ! In the grave I could still live
for those I love ; behind the Grate, love itself must
be dead. Yes, thou pitiest me, Harold ; thy sister,
the Queen, is gentle and kind ; I will fling myself
at her feet, and say * Youth is fond, and the
world is fair: let me live my youth, and bless
God in the world that he saw was good ! ' "
" My own, own dear Edith ! " exclaimed Harold,
overjoyed. " Say this. Be firm; they cannot,
and they dare not force thee ! The law cannot
wrench thee against thy will from the ward of thy
guardian Hilda ; and, where the law is, there
Harold at least is strong, and there, at least, our
kinship, if my bane, is thy blessing."
" Why, Harold, sayest thou that our kin-
ship is thy bane ? It is so sweet to me to whisper
to myself, ' Harold is of thy kith, though distant ;
N 2
268 HAROLD.
and it is natural to thee to have pride in his fame,
and joy in his presence ! ' Why is that sweetness
to me, to thee so bitter?"
" Because," answered Harold, dropping the
hand he had clasped, and folding his arms in deep
dejection, " because but for that I should say
' Edith, I love thee more than a brother : Edith,
be Harold's wife!' And were I to say it, and
were we to wed, all the priests of the Saxons
would lift up their hands in horror, and curse our
nuptials; and I should be the bann'd of that
spectre, the Church ; and my House would shake
to its foundations ; and my father, and my brothers,
and the thegns and the proceres, and the abbots
and prelates, whose aid makes our force, would
gather round me with threats and with prayers,
that I might put thee aside. And mighty as I am
now, so mighty once was Sweyn my brother;
and outlaw as Sweyn is now, might Harold be,
and outlaw if Harold were, what breast so broad
as his could fill up the gap left in the defence of
England ? And the passions that I curb, as a
rider his steed, might break their rein; and,
strong in justice, and child of Nature, I might
HAROLD. 269
come, with banner and mail, against Church, and
House, and Fatherland; and the blood of my
countrymen might be poured like water: and,
therefore, slave to the lying thraldom he despises,
Harold dare not say to the maid of his love
' Give me thy right hand, and be my bride ! ' "
Edith had listened in bewilderment and despair,
her eyes fixed on his, and her face locked and rigid,
as if turned to stone. But when he had ceased,
and, moving some steps away, turned aside his
manly countenance, that Edith might not perceive
its anguish, the noble and sublime spirit of that sex
which ever, when lowliest, most comprehends the
lofty, rose superior both to love and to grief; and,
rising, she advanced, and placing her slight hand
on his stalwart shoulder, she said, half in pity half
in reverence,
" Never before, O Harold, did I feel so proud
of thee ; for Edith could not love thee as she doth,
and will till the grave clasp her, if thou didst not
love England more than Edith. Harold, till this
hour I was a child, and I knew not my own heart :
I look now into that heart, and I see that I am
woman. Harold, of the cloister I have now no fear :
270 HAROLD.
and all life does not shrink no, it enlarges, and
it soars into one desire to be worthy to pray for
thee !"
"Maid, maid!" exclaimed Harold, abruptly,
and pale as the dead, " do not say thou hast no
fear of the cloister. I adjure, I command thee,
build not up between us that dismal everlasting
wall. While thou art free Hope yet survives
a phantom, haply, but Hope still."
" As thou wilt, I will," said Edith, hum-
bly : " order my fate so as pleases thee the
best."
Then, not daring to trust herself longer, for she
felt the tears rushing to her eyes, she turned away
hastily, and left him alone beside the altar -stone
and the tomb.
CHAPTER V.
THE next day, as Harold was entering the pa-
lace of Westminster, with intent to seek the King's
lady, his father met him in one of the corridors,
and taking him gravely by the hand, said,
" My son, I have much on my mind regarding
thee and our House ; come with me.
" Nay," said the Earl, " by your leave let it be
later. For I have it on hand to see my sister,
ere confessor, or monk, or schoolman, claim her
hours ! "
" Not so, Harold," said the Earl, briefly. " My
daughter is now in her oratory, and we shall have
time enow to treat of things mundane ere she
is free to receive thee, and to preach to thee of
things ghostly, the last miracle at St. Alban's, or
the last dream of the King, who would be a great
272 HAROLD.
man and a stirring, if as restless when awake as he
is in his sleep. Come."
Harold, in that filial obedience which belonged,
as of course, to his antique cast of character,
made no farther effort to escape, but with a
sigh followed Godwin into one of the contiguous
chambers.
" Harold," then said Earl Godwin, after closing
the door carefully, " thou must not let the King
keep thee longer in dalliance and idleness : thine
earldom needs thee without delay. Thou knowest
that these East Angles, as we Saxons still call
them, are in truth mostly Danes and Norsemen ; a
people jealous, and fierce, and free, and more akin
to the Normans than to the Saxons. My whole
power in England hath been founded, not less on
my common birth with the freefolk of Wessex
Saxons like myself, and therefore easy for me, a
Saxon, to conciliate and control than on the hold
I have ever sought to establish, whether by arms
or by arts, over the Danes in the realm. And I tell
and I warn thee, Harold, as the natural heir of my
greatness, that he who cannot command the stout
hearts of the Anglo-Danes, will never maintain
HAROLD. 273
the race of Godwin in the post they have won
in the vanguard of Saxon England."
" This I wot well, my father," answered Harold ;
" and I see with joy, that while those descendants
of heroes and freemen are blended indissolubly
with the meeker Saxon, their freer laws and har-
dier manners are gradually supplanting, or rather
regenerating, our own."
Godwin smiled approvingly on his son, and then
his brow becoming serious, and the dark pupil of
his blue eye dilating, he resumed :
" This is well, my son ; and hast thou thought
also, that while thou art loitering in these galleries,
amidst the ghosts of men in monk cowls, Siward
is shadowing our House with his glory, and all
north the Humber rings with his name? Hast
thou thought that all Mercia is in the hands of
Leofric our rival, and that Algar his son, who ruled
Wessex in my absence, left there a name so be-
loved, that had I stayed a year longer, the cry had
been ' Algar' not * Godwin ?' for so is the multi-
tude ever ! Now aid me, Harold, for my soul is
troubled, and I cannot work alone ; and though I
say nought to others, my heart received a death-
N3
274 HAROLD.
blow when tears fell from its blood- springs on
the brow of Sweyn, my first-born." The old man
paused, and his lip quivered.
" Thou, thou alone, Harold, noble boy, thou
alone didst stand by his side in the hall ; alone,
alone, and I bless'd thee in that hour over all the
rest of my sons. "Well, well ! now to earth again.
Aid me, Harold. I open to thee my web : com-
plete the woof when this hand is cold. The new
tree that stands alone in the plain, is soon nipped
by the winter; fenced round with the forest, its
youth takes shelter from its fellows.* So is it as
with a House newly founded ; it must win strength
from the allies that it sets round its slender stem.
What had been Godwin, son of Wolnoth, had he
not married into the kingly house of great Canute?
It is this that gives my sons now the right to the
loyal love of the Danes. The throne passed from
Canute and his race, and the Saxons again had
their hour ; and I gave, as Jeptha gave his
daughter, my blooming Edith, to the cold bed
of the Saxon King. Had sons sprung from
that union, the grandson of Godwin, royal alike
* TEGNER'S Frithiof.
HAROLD. 275
from Saxon and Dane, would reign on the throne
of the isle. Fate ordered otherwise, and the spider
must weave web anew. Thy brother, Tostig, has
added more splendour than solid strength to our
line, in his marriage with the daughter of Bald-
win the Count. The foreigner helps us little in
England. Thou, O Harold, must bring new props
to the House. I would rather see thee wed to the
child of one of our great rivals, than to the daugh-
ter of kaisar, or outland king. Siward hath no
daughter undisposed of. Algar, son of Leofric,
hath a daughter fair as the fairest ; make her thy
bride, that Algar may cease to be a foe. This
alliance will render Mercia, in truth, subject to
our principalities, since the stronger must quell
the weaker. It doth more. Algar himself has
married into the royalty of Wales.* Thou wilt
win all those fierce tribes to thy side. Their forces
will gain thee the marches, now held so feebly
under Rolf the Norman, and in case of brief
* 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.
276 HAROLD.
reverse, or sharp danger, their mountains will
give refuge from all foes. This day, greeting
Algar, he told me he meditated bestowing his
daughter on Gryffyth, the rebel under-King of
North Wales. Therefore, 1 ' continued the old
Earl, with a smile, "thou must speak in time,
and win and woo in the same breath. No hard
task, methinks, for Harold of the golden tongue."
" Sir, and father," replied the young Earl, whom
the long speech addressed to him had prepared for
its close, and whose habitual self-control saved
him from disclosing his emotion, "I thank you,
duteously, for your care for my future, and
hope to profit by your wisdom. I will ask the
King's leave to go to my East Anglians, and hold
there a folkmuth, administer justice, redress griev-
ances, and make thegn and ceorl content with
Harold, their Earl. But vain is peace in the
realm, if there is strife in the house. And Aldyth,
the daughter of Algar, cannot be house- wife to me."
" Why ?" asked the old Earl, calmly, and sur-
veying his son's face, with those eyes so clear,
yet so unfathomable.
" Because, though I grant her fair, she pleases
HAROLD. 277
not my fancy, nor would give warmth to my
hearth. Because, as thou knowest well, Algar
and I have ever been opposed, both in camp and
in council ; and I am not the man who can sell
my love., though I may stifle my anger. No
bride wants Earl Harold to bring spearmen to
his back at his need; and his lordships he will
guard with the shield of a man, not the spindle of
a woman."
" Said in spite and in error," replied the old
Earl, coolly. " Small pain had it given thee
to forgive Algar old quarrels, and clasp his hand
as a father-in-law if thou hadst had for his
daughter what the great are forbidden to regard
save as a folly.
" Is love a folly, my father ?"
" Surely, yes," said the Earl, with some sad-
ness " surely, yes, for those who know that life
is made up of business and care, spun out in long
years, not counted by the joys of an hour. Surely,
yes ; thinkest thou that I loved my first wife, the
proud sister of Canute, or that Edith, thy sister,
loved Edward, when he placed the crown on her
head?"
278 HAROLD.
" My father, in Edith, my sister, our House
hath sacrificed enow to selfish power."
" I grant it, to selfish power," answered the
eloquent old man, " but not enow for England's
safety. Look to it, Harold ; thy years, and thy
fame, and thy state, place thee free from my con-
trol as a father, but not till thou sleepest in thy
cerements art thou free from that father thy
land ! Ponder it in thine own wise mind wiser
already than that which speaks to it under the
hood of grey hairs. Ponder it, and ask thyself
if thy power, when I am dead, is not necessary
to the weal of England? and if aught that thy
schemes can suggest would so strengthen that
power, as to find in the heart of the kingdom a
host of friends like the Mercians; or if there
could be a trouble and a bar to thy greatness, a
wall in thy path, or a thorn in thy side, like the
hate or the jealousy of Algar, son of Leofric ?"
Thus addressed, Harold's face, before serene
and calm, grew overcast; and he felt the force
of his father's words when appealing to his reason
not to his affections. The old man saw the ad-
vantage he had gained, and prudently forbore to
HAROLD. 279
press it. Rising, he drew round him his sweeping
gonna lined with furs, and only when he reached
the door, he added :
" The old see afar ; they stand on the height
of experience, as a warder on the crown of a
tower ; and I tell, thee, Harold, that if thou
lett'st slip this golden occasion, years hence long
and many thou wilt rue the loss of the hour.
And that, unless Mercia, as the centre of the
kingdom, be reconciled to thy power, thou wilt
stand high indeed but on the shelf of a pre-
cipice. And if, as I suspect, thou lovest some
other, who now clouds thy perception, and will
then check thy ambition, thou wilt break her
heart with thy desertion, or gnaw thine own with
regret. For love dies in possession ambition
has no fruition, and so lives for ever."
" That ambition is not mine, my father,"
exclaimed Harold, earnestly ; " I have not thy
love of power, glorious in thee, even in its ex-
tremes. I have not thy "
" Seventy years !" interrupted the old man, con-
cluding the sentence. " At seventy all men who
have been great will speak as I do ; yet all will have
280 HAROLD.
known love. Thou not ambitious, Harold ! Thou
knowest not thyself, nor knowest thou yet what
ambition is. That which I see far before me as
thy natural prize, I dare not, or I will not say.
When time sets that prize within reach of thy
spear's point, say then, ' I am not ambitious !'
Ponder and decide."
And Harold pondered long, and decided not
as Godwin could have wished. For he had not
the seventy years of his father, and the prize lay
yet in the womb of the mountains ; though the
dwarf and the gnome were already fashioning the
ore to the shape of a crown.
CHAPTER VI.
WHILE Harold mused over his father's words,
Edith, seated on a low stool beside the Lady of
England, listened with earnest but mournful
reverence to her royal namesake.
The Queen's* closet opened, like the King's, on
one hand to an oratory, on the other to a spacious
anteroom ; the lower part of the walls was co-
vered with arras, leaving space for a niche that
contained an image of the Virgin. Near the door-
way to the oratory, was the stoupe or aspersoriurn
for holy -water ; and in various cysts and crypts, in
either room, were caskets containing the relics of
saints. The purple light from the stained glass of
* The title of Queen is employed in these pages, as one
which our historians have unhesitatingly given to the consorts
of our Saxon kings ; hut the usual and correct designation
of Edward's royal wife, in her own time, would he, Edith the
Lady.
282 HAROLD.
a high narrow window, shaped in the Saxon
arch, streamed rich and full over the Queen's bended
head like a glory, and tinged her pale cheek, as with
a maiden blush ; and she might have furnished a
sweet model for early artist, in his dreams of
St. Mary the Mother, not when, young and blest,
she held the divine Infant in her arms, but when
sorrow had reached even the immaculate bosom,
and the stone had been rolled over the Holy
Sepulchre. For beautiful the face still was, and
mild beyond all words ; but, beyond all words also,
sad in its tender resignation.
And thus said the Queen to her godchild.
<c Why dost thou hesitate and turn away ?
Thinkest thou, poor child, in thine ignorance of
life, that the world ever can give thee a bliss
greater than the calm of the cloister? Pause,
and ask thyself, young as thou art, if all the true
happiness thou hast known, is not bounded to hope.
As long as thou hopest, thou art happy."
Edith sighed deeply, and moved her young head
in involuntary acquiescence.
" And what is life to the nun, but hope ! In
that hope, she knows not the present, she lives in
HAROLD. 283
the future; she hears ever singing the chorus of
the angels, as St. Dunstan heard them sing at the
birth of Edgar.* That hope unfolds to her the
heiligthum of the future. On earth her body, in
heaven her soul ! "
" And her heart, O Lady of England ? " cried
Edith, with a sharp pang."
The Queen paused a moment, and laid her pale
hand kindly on Edith's bosom.
" Not beating, child, as thine does now, with
vain thoughts, and worldly desires; but calm,
calm as mine. It is in our power," resumed the
Queen, after a second pause, " it is in our power
to make the life within us all soul; so that the
heart is not, or is felt not ; so that grief and joy have
no power over us : so that we look tranquil on the
stormy earth, as yon image of the Virgin, whom
we make our example, looks from the silent niche.
Listen, my godchild and darling.
" I have known human state, and human debase-
ment. In these halls I woke Lady of England,
and, ere sunset, my lord banished me, without one
mark of honour, without one word of comfort, to
* ETHEL, de Gen. Rey. Ang.
284 HAROLD.
the convent of Wherwell ; my father, my mother,
my kin, all in exile ; and my tears falling fast for
them, but not on a husband's bosom."
" Ah then, noble Edith," said the girl, colouring
with anger at the remembered wrong for her
Queen, " ah then, surely at least, thy heart made
itself heard."
" Heard, yea verily," said the Queen, looking
up, and pressing her hands ; " heard, but the soul
rebuked it. And the soul said, ' Blessed are they
that mourn ; ' and I rejoiced at the new trial which
brought me nearer to Him who chastens those He
loves."
" But thy banished kin the valiant, the wise,
they who placed the lord on the throne ?"
"Was it no comfort," answered the Queen
simply, "to think that in the House of God my
prayers for them would be more accepted than in
the hall of kings? Yes, my child, I have known
the world's honour, and the world's disgrace, and I
have schooled my heart to be calm in both."
"Ah, thou art above human strength, Queen
and Saint," exclaimed Edith ; " and I have heard it
said of thee, that as thou art now, thou wert from
HAROLD. 285
thine earliest years;* ever the sweet, the calm,
the holy ever less on earth than in heaven."
Something there was in the Queen's eyes, as
she raised them towards Edith at this burst of en-
thusiasm, that gave for a moment, to a face other-
wise so dissimilar, the likeness to her father ;
something, in that large pupil, of the impenetrable
unrevealing depth of a nature close and secret in
self control. And a more acute observer than
Edith might long have been perplexed and haunted
ith that look, wondering, if indeed, under the
divine and spiritual composure, lurked the mystery
of human passion.
"My child," said the Queen, with the faintest
smile upon her lips, and drawing Edith towards her,
"there are moments, when all that breathe the
breath of life feel, or have felt, alike. In my vain
youth, I read, I mused, I pondered, but over
worldly lore. And what men called the sanctity
of virtue, was perhaps but the silence of thought.
Now I have put aside those early and childish
dreams and shadows, remembering them not,
save (here the smile grew more pronounced,)
* AILKED, De Vit. Edward. Confess.
286 HAROLD.
to puzzle some poor schoolboy with the knots
and riddles of the sharp grammarian.* But not
to speak of myself have I sent for thee. Edith,
again and again, solemnly and sincerely, I pray
thee to obey the wish of my lord the King.
And now, while yet in all the bloom of thought,
as of youth, while thou hast no memory save the
child's, enter on the Realm of Peace."
" I cannot, I dare not, I cannot ah, ask me
not," said poor Edith, covering her face with her
hands.
Those hands the Queen gently withdrew ; and
looking steadfastly in the changeful and half
averted face, she said mournfully, "Is it so, my
godchild? and is thy heart set on the hopes of
earth thy dreams on the love of man ?"
" Nay," answered Edith, equivocating ; " but I
have promised not to take the veil."
"Promised to Hilda? 1 '
" Hilda," exclaimed Edith readily, " would
never consent to it. Thou knowest her strong
nature, her distaste to to
" The laws of our holy Church I do; and for that
* INOULFUS.
HAROLD. 287
reason it is, mainly, that I join with the King in
seeking to abstract thee from her influence. But
it is not Hilda that thou hast promised ?"
Edith hung her head.
" Is it to woman, or to man ? "
Before Edith could answer, the door from the
anteroom opened, gently, but without the usual
ceremony, and Harold entered. His quick quiet
eye embraced both forms, and curbed Edith's
young impulse, which made her start from her
seat, and advance joyously towards him as a pro-
tector.
" Fair day to thee, my sister," said the Earl,
advancing; "and pardon, if I break thus rudely
on thy leisure ; for few are the moments when
beggar and Benedictine leave thee free to receive
thy brother."
" Dost thou reproach me, Harold ? "
" No, Heaven forfend ! " replied the Earl, cor-
dially, and with a look at once of pity and admira-
tion ; " for thou art one of the few, in this court of
simulators, sincere and true ; and it pleases thee to
serve the Divine Power in thy way, as it pleases
me to serve Him in mine."
288 HAROLD.
" Thine, Harold ? " said the Queen, shaking her
head, but with a look of some human pride and
fondness in her fair face.
" Mine ; as I learned it from thee when I was
thy pupil, Edith ; when to those studies in which
thou didst precede me, thou first didst lure me
from sport and pastime ; and from thee I learned
to glow over the deeds of Greek and Roman, and
say, ' They lived and died as men ; like them may
I live and die!'"
" Oh, true too true ! " said the Queen, with a
sigh ; " and I am to blame grievously that I did so
pervert to earth a mind that might otherwise have
learned holier examples ; nay, smile not with that
haughty lip, my brother ; for believe me yea, be-
lieve me there is more true valour in the life of
one patient martyr than in the victories of Caesar,
or even the defeat of Brutus."
" It may be so," replied the Earl, " but out of
the same oak we carve the spear and the cross ;
and those not worthy to hold the one, may yet not
guiltily wield the other. Each to his path of life
and mine is chosen." Then, changing his voice,
with some abruptness, he said, "But what hast
HAROLD. 289
them been saying to thy fair godchild, that her
cheek is pale, and her eyelids seem so heavy?
Edith, Edith, my sister, beware how thou shapest
the lot of the martyr without the peace of the
saint. Had Algive the nun been wedded to
Sweyn our brother, Sweyn were not wending,
bare-footed and forlorn, to lay the wrecks of deso-
lated life at the Holy Tomb."
" Harold, Harold ! " faltered the Queen, much
struck with his words.
" But," the Earl continued and something of
the pathos which belongs to deep emotion vibrated
in the eloquent voice, accustomed to command and
persuade " we strip not the green leaves for our
yule-hearths we gather them up when dry and
sere. Leave youth on the bough let the bird
sing to it let it play free in the airs of heaven.
Smoke comes from the branch which, cut in the
sap, is cast upon the fire, and regret from the
heart which is severed from the world while the
world is in its May."
The Queen paced slowly, but in evident agita-
tion, to and fro the room, and her hands clasped
convulsively the rosary round her neck; then,
VOL, i. o
20 HAROLD.
after a pause of thought, she motioned to Edith,
and, pointing to the oratory, said with forced com-
posure, " Enter there, and there kneel ; commune
with thyself, and be still. Ask for a sign from
above pray for the grace within. Go ; I would
speak alone with Harold."
Edith crossed her arms on her bosom meekly,
and passed into the oratory. The Queen watched
her for a few moments, tenderly, as the slight,
child-like form bent before the sacred symbol.
Then she closed the door gently, and coming with
a quick step to Harold, said, in a low but clear
voice, " Dost thou love the maiden ? "
" Sister," answered the Earl, sadly, " I love her
as man should love woman more than my life,
but less than the ends life lives for."
" Oh, world, world, world ! " cried the Queen,
passionately, " not even to thine own objects art
thou true. O world ! O world ! thou desirest
happiness below, and at every turn, with every
vanity, thou tramplest happiness under foot ! Yes,
yes ; they said to me, * For the sake of our great-
ness, thou shalt wed King Edward.' And I live
in the eyes that loath me and and " The
HAROLD, 291
Queen, as if conscience-stricken, paused aghast,
kissed devoutly the relic suspended to her rosary,
and continued, with such calmness that it seemed
as if two women were blent in one, so startling
was the contrast, " And I have had my reward,
but not from the world! Even so, Harold the
Earl, and Earl's son, thou lovest yon fair child,
and she thee ; and ye might be happy, if happiness
were earth's end; but, though high-born, and of
fair temporal possessions, she brings thee not lands
broad enough for her dowry, nor troops of kindred
to swell thy lithsmen, and she is not a mark-stone
in thy march to ambition: and so thou lovest
her as man loves woman 'less than the ends life
lives for!'"
" Sister," said Harold, " thou speakest as I love
to hear thee speak as my bright-eyed, rose-lipped
sister spoke in the days of old ; thou speakest as a
woman with warm heart, and not as the mummy
in the stiff cerements of priestly form ; and if
thou art with me, and thou Avilt give me counte-
nance, I will marry thy godchild, and save her
alike from the dire superstitions of Hilda, and the
grave of the abhorrent convent."
o2
292 HAROLD.
" But my father my father ! " cried the Queen ;
" who ever bended that soul of steel ? "
" It is not my father I fear ; it is thee and thy
monks. Forgettest thou that Edith and I are
within the six banned degrees of the Church ? "
" True, most true," said the Queen, with a look
of great terror ; " I had forgotten. A vaunt, the
very thought ! Pray fast banish it my poor,
poor brother ! " and she kissed his brow.
" So, there fades the woman, and the mummy
speaks again ! " said Harold, bitterly. " Be it so ;
I bow to my doom. Well, there may be a time
when Nature on the throne of England shall pre-
vail over Priestcraft ; and, in guerdon for all my
services, I will then ask a king who hath blood in
his veins to win me the Pope's pardon and
benison. Leave me that hope, my sister, and
leave thy godchild on the shores of the living
world."
The Queen made no answer; and Harold,
auguring ill from her silence, moved on and opened
the door of the oratory. But the image that there
met him, that figure still kneeling, those eyes, so
earnest in the tears that streamed from them fast
HAROLD. 293
and unheeded, fixed on the holy rood awed his
step and checked his voice. Nor till the girl had
risen, did he break silence ; then he said, gently,
" My sister will press thee no more, Edith "
" I say not that ! " exclaimed the Queen.
" Or if she doth, remember thy plighted promise
under the wide cope of blue heaven, the old nor
least holy temple of our common Father!"
With these words he left the room.
CHAPTER VII.
HAROLD passed into the Queen's antechamber.
Here the attendance was small and select com-
pared with the crowds which we shall see
presently in the anteroom to the Bang's closet:
for here came chiefly the more learned ecclesi-
astics, attracted instinctively by the Queen's own
mental culture, and few indeed were they at that
day (perhaps the most illiterate known in England
since the death of Alfred*;) and here came not
the tribe of impostors, and the relic-venders, whom
the infantine simplicity and lavish waste of the
Confessor attracted. Some four or five priests
* 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 igno-
rance of the time.
HAROLD. 295
and monks, some lonely widow, some orphan
child, humble worth, or unprotected sorrow, made
the noiseless levee of the sweet sad Queen.
The groups turned, with patient eyes, towards
the Earl as he emerged from that chamber, which
it was rare indeed to quit unconsoled, and mar-
velled at the flush in his cheek, and the disquiet
on his brow ; but Harold was dear to the clients
of his sister ; for, despite his supposed indifference
to the mere priestly virtues (if virtues we call
them) of the decrepit time, his intellect was re-
spected by yon learned ecclesiastics ; and his cha-
racter, as the foe of all injustice, and the fosterer
of all that were desolate, was known to yon pale-
eyed widow, and yon trembling orphan.
In the atmosphere of that quiet assembly, the
Earl seemed to recover his kindly temperament,
and he paused to address a friendly or a soothing
word to each ; so that when he vanished, the hearts
there felt more light; and the silence, hushed
before his entrance, was broken by many whispers
in praise of the good Earl.
Descending a staircase without the walls as
even in royal halls the principal staircases were
296 HAROLD.
then Harold gained a wide court, in which
loitered several house carles,* and attendants,
whether of the King or the visitors ; and, reaching
the entrance of the palace, took his way towards
the King's rooms, which lay near, and round, what
is now called " The Painted Chamber," t then used
as a bedroom by Edward on state occasions.
And now he entered the antechamber of his
royal brother-in-law. Crowded it was, but rather
seemed it the hall of a convent than the ante-
room of a king. Monks, pilgrims, priests, met
his eye in every nook; and not there did the
Earl pause to practise the arts of popular favour.
Passing erect through the midst, he beckoned
forth the officer, in attendance at the extreme end,
who, after an interchange of whispers, ushered him
into the royal presence. The monks and the
priests, gazing towards the door which had closed
on his stately form, said to each other:
* House aarles 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 func-
tions, but in the ordinary acceptation of the word in families of
lower rank, house carle was a domestic servant.
HAROLD. 297
" The King's Norman favourites at least honoured
the Church."
" That is true," said an abbot ; " and, an it were
not for two things, I should love the Norman
better than the Saxon."
" What are they, my father ? " asked an aspiring
young monk.
" Inprinis" quoth the abbot, proud of the one
Latin word he thought he knew, but that, as we
see, was an error ; " they cannot speak so as to be
understood, and I fear me much they incline to
mere carnal learning."
Here there was a sanctified groan :
" Count William himself spoke to me in Latin !"
continued the abbot, raising his eyebrows.
" Did he ? Wonderful ! " exclaimed several
voices. " And what did you answer, holy
father?"
" Marry," said the abbot solemnly, " I replied,
' Inprinis." 1 "
" Good!" said the young monk, with a look of
profound admiration.
" Whereat the good Count looked puzzled
as I meant him to be: a heinous fault, and one
o 3
298 HAIIOLD.
intolerant to the clergy, that love of profane
tongues ! And the next thing against your Nor-
man is," (added the abbot, with a sly wink,) " that
he is a close man, who loves not his stoup ; now,
I say, that a priest never has more hold over a
sinner than when he makes the sinner open his
heart to him."
" That's clear ! " said a fat priest, with a lubricate
and shining nose.
" And how," pursued the abbot triumphantly,
" can a sinner open his heavy heart until you have
given him something to lighten it? Oh, many
jand many a wretched man have I comforted spi-
ritually over a flagon of stout ale ! and many a
good legacy to the Church hath come out of a
friendly wassail between watchful shepherd and
strayed sheep ! But what hast thou there ?" re-
sumed the abbot, turning to a man, clad in the lay
garb of a burgess of London, who had just entered
the room, followed by a youth bearing what seemed
a coffer, covered with a fine linen cloth.
"Holy father!" said the burgess, wiping his
forehead, " it is a treasure so great, that I trow
Hugoline, the King's treasurer, will scowl at me
HAROLD. 299
for a year to come, for he likes to keep liis own
grip on the King's gold!"
At this indiscreet observation, the abbot, the
monks, and all the priestly bystanders looked grim
and gloomy, for each had his own special design
upon the peace of poor Hugoline, the treasurer,
and liked not to see him the prey of a layman.
" Inprinis I " quoth the abbot, puffing out the
word with great scorn; "thinkest thou, son of
Mammon, that our good King sets his pious heart
on gew-gaws, and gems, and such vanities ? Thou
shouldst take the goods to Count Baldwin of
Flanders ; or Tostig, the proud Earl's proud son."
" Marry !" said the cheapman, with a smile ;
" my treasure will find small price with Bald-
win the scoffer, and Tostig the vain I Nor need ye
look at me so sternly, my fathers ; but rather vie
with each other who shall win this wonder of
wonders for his own convent ; know, in a word,
that it is the right thumb of St. Jude, which a
worthy man bought at Rome for me, for 3000 Ibs.
weight of silver; and I ask but 500 Ibs. over the
purchase for my pains and my fee."*
* This was cheap. For Agelnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury,
300 HAROLD.
" Humph !" said the abbot.
" Humph !" said the aspiring young monk ; .the
rest gathered wistfully round the linen cloth.
A fiery exclamation of wrath and disdain was
here heard; and all turning, saw a tall, fierce-
looking thegn, who had found his way into that
group, like a hawk in a rookery.
" Dost thou tell me, knave," quoth the thegn,
in a dialect that bespoke him a Dane by origin,
with the broad burr still retained in the north;
" Dost thou tell me that the King will waste his
gold on such fooleries, while the fort built by
Canute at the flood of the Humber is all fallen into
ruin, without a man in steel jacket to keep watch
on the war fleets of Swede and Norwegian?"
" Worshipful minister," replied the cheapman,
with some slight irony in his tone ; " these
reverend fathers will tell thee that the thumb of
St. Jude is far better aid against Swede and
Norwegian than forts of stone and jackets of steel ;
natheless, if thou wantest jackets of steel, I have
some to sell at fair price, of the last fashion, and
gave the Pope 6000 Ibs. weight of silver for the arm of St. Augus-
tine. MAIMESBURT.
HAROLD. 301
helms with long nose-pieces, as are worn by the
Normans."
" The thumb of a withered old saint," cried
the Dane, not heeding the last words, " more
defence at the mouth of the Humber than crenel-
lated castles, and mailed men ! "
" Surely, naught son," said the Abbot, looking
shocked, and taking part with the cheapman.
et Dost thou not remember that, in the pious and
famous council of 1014, it was decreed to put aside
all weapons of flesh against thy heathen country-
men, and depend alone on St. Michael to fight for
us? Tliinkest thou that the saint would ever
suffer his holy thumb to fall into the hands of the
Gentiles ? never ! Go to, thou art not fit to
have conduct of the King's wars. Go to, and
repent, my son, or the King shall hear of it."
" Ah, wolf in sheep's clothing!' muttered the
Dane, turning on his heel ; " if thy monastery
were but built on the other side the Humber !"
The cheapman heard him, and smiled. While
such the scene in the anteroom, we follow Harold
into the King's presence.
On entering, he found there a man in the prime
302 HAROLD.
of life, and, though richly clad, in embroidered
gonna, and with gilt ateghar at his side,
still with the loose robe, the long moustache,
and the skin of the throat and right hand punc-
tured with characters and devices, which proved
his adherence to the fashions of the Saxon.* And
Harold's eye sparkled, for in this guest he recog-
nised the father of Aldyth, Earl Algar, son of
Leofric. The two nobles exchanged grave salu-
tations, and each eyed the other wistfully.
The contrast between the two was striking.
The Danish race were men generally of larger
frame, and grander mould than the Saxon ;f and
though in all else, as to exterior, Harold was
eminently Saxon, yet, in common with his bro-
thers, he took from the mother's side the lofty air
* 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 fashion, and the loose robes
assigned in the text to Algar were the old Saxon fashion, which
made but little distinction between the dress of women and that
of men.
t And in England, to this day, the descendants of the Anglo-
Danes, in Cumberland and Yorkshire, are still a taller and bonier
race than those of the Anglo-Saxons, as in Surrey and Sussex.
HAROLD. 303
and iron frame of the old kings of the sea. But
Algar, below the middle height, though well set,
was slight in comparison with Harold. His
strength was that which men often take rather from
the nerve than the muscle ; a strength that belongs
to quick tempers and restless energies. His
light blue eye singularly vivid and glittering ; his
quivering lip ; the veins swelling, at each emotion,
on the fair white temples ; the long yellow hair,
bright as gold, and resisting, in its easy curls, all
attempts to curb it into the smooth flow most in
fashion ; the nervous movements of the gesture ;
the somewhat sharp and hasty tones of the voice ;
all opposed, as much as if the two men were of dif-
ferent races ; the steady deep eye of Harold, his
composed mien, sweet and majestic, his decorous
locks parted on the king-like front, with their large
single curl, where they touched the shoulder.
Intelligence and will were apparent in both the
men; but the intelligence of one was acute and
rapid, that of the other profound and steadfast ;
the will of one broke in flashes of lightning,
that of the other was calm as the summer sun
at noon.
304 HAROLD.
" Thou art welcome, Harold," said the King,
with less than his usual listlessness, and with a
look of relief, as the Earl approached him.
" Our good Algar comes to us with a suit well
worthy consideration, though pressed somewhat
hotly, and evincing too great a desire for goods
worldly; contrasting in this his most laudable
father, our well-beloved Leofric, who spends his
substance in endowing monasteries, and dispens-
ing alms; where-for he shall receive a hundred
fold in the treasure-house above."
" A good interest, doubtless, my lord the
King," said Algar, quickly, " but one that is not
paid to his heirs ; and the more need, if my father
(whom I blame not for doing as he lists with his
own) gives all he hath to the monks the more
need, I say, to take care that his son shall be
enabled to follow his example. As it is, most
noble King, I fear me that Algar, son of Leofric,
will have nothing to give. In brief, Earl Harold,"
continued Algar, turning to his fellow thegn
" in brief, thus stands the matter. "When our
lord the King was first graciously pleased to
consent to rule in England, the two chiefs who
HAROLD. 305
most assured his throne were thy father and mine :
often foes, they laid aside feud and jealousy for
the sake of the Saxon line. Now, since then,
thy father hath strung earldom to earldom, like
links in a coat-mail. And, save JSTorthumbria
and Mercia, well nigh all England falls to him
and his sons ; whereas my father remains what
he was, and my father's son stands landless and
penceless. In thine absence the King was gra-
ciously pleased to bestow on me thy father's earl-
dom ; men say that I ruled it well. Thy father
returns, and though (here Algar's eyes shot fire,
and his hand involuntarily rested on his ateghar,)
I could have held it, methinks, by the strong
hand, I gave it up at my father's prayer, and the
King's hest, with a free heart. Now, therefore,
I come to my lord, and I ask, ' What lands and
what lordships canst thou spare in broad England
to Algar, once Earl of Wessex, and son to the
Leofric whose hand smoothed the way to thy
throne ?' My lord the King is pleased to preach
to me contempt of the world; thou dost not
despise the world, Earl of the East Angles, what
sayest thou to the heir of Leofric ?"
306 HAROLD.
" That thy suit is just," answered Harold,
calmly, " but urged with small reverence."
Earl Algar bounded like a stag that the arrow
hath startled.
" It becomes thee, who hast backed thy suits
with warships and mail, to talk of reverence, and
rebuke one whose fathers reigned over earldoms,*
when thine were, no doubt, ceorls at the plough.
But for Edric Streone, the traitor and low-born,
what had been Wolnoth, thy grandsire ?"
So rude and home an assault in the presence
of the King, who, though personally he loved
Harold in his lukewarm way, yet, like all weak
men, was not displeased to see the strong split
their strength against each other, brought the
* Very few of the greater Saxon nobles could pretend to a
lengthened succession in their demesnes. The wars with the
Danes, the many revolutions which threw new families upper-
most, 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 anti-
quity in their Mercian lordship. 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
lordship over allMercia. SeeDcoDALE, Monast. vol. iii. p. 102 ;
and PALORAVE'S Commonwealth, Proofs and Illustrations, p. 291 .
HAROLD. 307
blood into Harold's cheek ; but he answered
calmly :
" We live in a land, son of Leofric, in which
birth, though not disesteemed, gives of itself no
power in council or camp. We belong to a land
where men are valued for what they are, not for
what their dead ancestors might have been. So
has it been for ages in Saxon England, where my
fathers, through Godwin, as thou sayest, might
have been ceorls ; and so, I have heard, it is in the
land of the martial Danes, where my fathers,
through Githa, reigned on the thrones of the
o * o
North."
" Thou dost well," said Algar, gnawing his lip,
" to shelter thyself on the spindle side, but we
Saxons of pure descent think little of your kings
of the North, pirates and idolators, and eaters
of horseflesh ; but enjoy what thou hast, and let
Algar have his due."
" It is for the King, not his servant, to answer
the prayer of Algar," said Harold, withdrawing
to the farther end of the room.
Algar's eye followed him, and observing that
the King was fast sinking into one of the fits of
308 HAROLD.
religious reverie in which he sought to be in-
spired with a decision, whenever his mind Avas
perplexed, he moved with a light step to Harold,
put his hand on his shoulder, and whispered,
" We do ill to quarrel with each other I repent
me of hot words : enough. Thy father is a wise
man, and sees far thy father would have us
friends. Be it so. Hearken : my daughter Aldyth
is esteemed not the least fair of the maidens in
England ; I will give her to thee as thy wife, and
as thy morgen gift, thou shalt win for me from
the King the earldom forfeited by thy brother
Sweyn, now parcelled out amongst sub-earls and
thegns easy enow to control. By the shrine of
St. Alban, dost thou hesitate, man ? "
"No, not an instant," said Harold, stung to
the quick. " Not, couldst thou offer me all
Mercia as her dower, would I wed the daughter
of Algar, and bend my knee, as a son to a wife's
father, to the man who despises my lineage, while
he truckles to my power."
Algar's face grew convulsed with rage; but
without saying a word to the Earl he strode back
to Edward, who now with vacant eyes looked
HAROLD. 309
tip from the rosary over which he had been
bending, and said abruptly
" My lord the King, I have spoken as I think
it becomes a man who knows his own claims, and
believes in the gratitude of princes. Three days
will I tarry in London for your gracious answer;
on the fourth I depart. May the saints guard
your throne, and bring round it its best defence,
the thegn-born satraps whose fathers fought with
Alfred and Athelstan. All went well with
merrie England till the hoof of the Dane King
broke the soil, and mushrooms sprung up where
the oak-trees fell."
When the son of Leofric had left the chamber,
the King rose Avearily, and said in Norman
French, to which language he always yearningly
returned when with those who could speak it,
" Beau fr^re and bien aime, in what trifles must
a king pass his life ! And, all this while, matters
grave and urgent demand me. Know that Eadmcr,
the cheapman, waits without, and hath brought
me, dear and good man, the thumb of St. Jude !
What thought of delight ! And this unmannerly
son of strife, with his jay's voice and wolf's eyes,
310 HAROLD.
screaming at me for earldoms! oh the folly of
man ! Naught, naught, very naught !"
" Sir and King," said Harold, " it ill becomes
me to arraign your pious desires, but these relics
are of vast cost; our coasts are ill defended, and
the Dane yet lays claim to your kingdom. Three
thousand pounds of silver and more does it need
to repair even the old wall of London and Soutli-
weorc."
"Three thousand pounds!" cried the King;
" thou art mad, Harold ! I have scarce twice that
sum in the treasury ; and besides the thumb of St.
Jude, I daily expect the tooth of St. Remigius
the tooth of St. Remigius ! "
Harold sighed. "Vex not yourself, my lord,
I will see to the defences of London. For, thanks
to your grace, my revenues are large, while my
wants are simple. I seek you now to pray your
leave to visit my earldom. My lithsmen murmur
at my absence, and grievances, many and sore,
have arisen in my exile."
The King stared in terror; and his look was
that of a child when about to be left in the dark.
" Nay, nay ; I cannot spare thee, bean frere.
HAROLD. 311
Thou curbest all these stiff thegns thou leavest
me time for the devout ; moreover thy father, thy
father, I will not be left to thy father! I love
him not!"
" My father " said Harold mournfully, " returns
to his own earldom ; and of all our House you will
have but the mild face of your queen by your
side!"
The King's lip writhed at that hinted rebuke,
or implied consolation.
"Edith the Queen," he said, after a slight
pause, "is pious and good; and she hath never
gainsaid my will, and she hath set before her as a
model the chaste Susannah, as I, unworthy man,
from youth upward, have walked in the pure steps
of Joseph.* But," added the King, with a touch
of human feeling in his voice, "canst thou not
conceive, Harold, thou who art a warrior, what
it would be to see ever before thee the face of
thy deadliest foe the one against whom all thy
struggles of life and death had turned into memories
of hyssop and gall ?"
"My sister!" exclaimed Harold, in indignant
* AILRED de Vit. Edw.
312 HAROLD.
amaze, "My sister thy deadliest foe! She who
never once murmured at neglect, disgrace she
whose youth hath been consumed in prayers for
thee and thy realm my sister! O King, I
dream ! "
"Thou dreamest not, carnal man," said the
King, peevishly. "Dreams are the gifts of the
saints, and are not granted to such as thou ! Dost
thou think that, in the prime of my manhood,
I could have youth and beauty forced on my sight,
and hear man's law and man's voice say, ' They
are thine, and thine only,' and not feel that war
was brought to my hearth, and a snare set on my
bed, and that the fiend had set watch on my soul ?
Verily, I tell thee, man of battle, that thou hast
known no strife as awful as mine, and achieved no
victory as hard and as holy. And now, when my
beard is silver, and the Adam of old is expelled at
the precincts of death; now, thinkest thou, that
I can be reminded of the strife and temptation of
yore, without bitterness and shame; when days
were spent in fasting, and nights in fierce prayer ;
and in the face of woman I saw the devices of
Satan?"
HAROLD. 313
Edward coloured as he spoke, and his voice
trembled with the accents of what seemed hate.
Harold gazed on him mutely, and felt that at last
he had won the secret that had ever perplexed
him, and that in seeking to be above the humanity
of love, the would-be saint had indeed turned love
into the hues of hate a thought of anguish, and a
memory of pain.
The King recovered himself in a few moments,
and said, with some dignity, " But God and his
saints alone should know the secrets of the house-
hold. What I have said was wrung from me.
Bury it in thy heart. Leave me, then, Harold,
sith so it must be. Put thine earldom in order,
attend to the monasteries and the poor, and return
soon. As for Algar, what sayest thou ? "
" I fear me," answered the large-souled Harold,
with a victorious effort of justice over resentment,
" that if you reject his suit you will drive him into
some perilous extremes. Despite his rash and
proud spirit, he is brave against foes, and beloved
by the ceorls, who oft like best the frank and hasty
spirit. Wherefore some power and lordship it
were wise to give, without dispossessing others,
VOL. i. p
314 HAROLD.
and not more wise than due, for his father served
you well."
" And hath endowed more houses of God than
any earl in the kingdom. But Algar is no Leofric.
We will consider your words and heed them.
Bless you, beaufrbre! and send in the cheapman.
The thumb of St. Jude ! What a gift to my new
church of St. Peter ! The thumb of St. Jude !
Non nobis gloria ! Sancta Maria ! The thumb
of St. Jude!"
NOTES.
NOTES.
NOTE (A), page 25.
THERE are various accounts in the Chroniclers as to the
stature of William the First ; some represent him as a
giant, others as of just or middle height. Considering
the vulgar inclination to attribute to a hero's stature the
qualities of the mind (and putting out of all question the
arguments that rest on the pretended size of the disburied
bones for which the authorities are really less respectable
than those on which we are called upon to believe that the
skeleton of the mythical Gawaine measured eight feet),
we prefer that supposition, as to the physical proportions,
which is most in harmony with the usual laws of Nature.
It is rare, indeed, that a great intellect is found in the form
of a giant.
318 NOTES.
NOTE (B), page 52.
GAME LAWS BEFORE THE CONQUEST.
UNDER the Saxon kings a man might, it is true, hunt in
his own grounds, but that was a privilege that could
benefit few but thegns ; and over cultivated ground or
shire-land there was not the same sport to be found as in the
vast wastes called forest-land, and which mainly belonged
to the kings.
Edward declares, in a law recorded in a volume of the
Exchequer, " I will that all men do abstain from hunting
in my woods, and that my will shall be obeyed under
penalty of life."*
Edgar, the darling monarch of the monks, and, indeed,
one of the most popular of the Anglo-Saxon kings, was so
rigorous in his forest-laws that the thegus murmured as
well as the lower husbandmen, who had been accustomed
to use the woods for pasturage and boscage. Canute's
forest-laws were meant as a liberal concession to public
feeling on the subject ; they are more definite than Edgar's,
but terribly stringent ; if a freeman killed one of the king's
deer, or struck his forester, he lost his freedom and became
a penal serf, (wite theowe) that is, he ranked with felons.
Nevertheless, Canute allowed bishops, abbots, and thegns,
to hunt in his woods a privilege restored by Henry III.
The nobility, after the Conquest, being excluded from the
royal chases, petitioned to enclose parks, as early even as
the reign of William I. ; and by the time of his son,
Henry I., parks became so common as to be at once a
ridicule and a grievance.
* THOMSON'S Essay on Magna Cfiarta.
NOTES. 319
NOTE (C), pages 127, 144.
LANFRANC, THE FIRST ANGLO-NORMAN ARCHBISHOP OF
CANTERBURY.
LANFRANC was, in all respects, one of the most remark-
able men of the eleventh century. He was born in Pavia,
about 1105. His family was noble his father ranked
amongst the magistrature of Pavia, the Lombard capital.
From his earliest youth he gave himself up, with all a
scholar's zeal, to the liberal arts, and the special knowledge
of law, civil and ecclesiastical. He studied at Cologne, and
afterwards taught and practised law in his own country.
" While yet extremely young," says one of the lively
chroniclers, " he triumphed over the ablest advocates, and
the torrents of his eloquence confounded the subtlest
rhetorician." His decisions were received as authorities
by the Italian jurisconsults and tribunals. His mind, to
judge both by his history and his peculiar reputation (for
probably few, if any, students of our day can pretend to
more than a partial or superficial acquaintance with his
writings), was one that delighted in subtleties and casu-
istical refinements ; but a sense too large and commanding
for those studies which amuse but never satisfy the higher
intellect, became disgusted betimes with mere legal dia-
lectics. Those grand and absorbing mysteries connected
with the Christian faith and the Roman Church (grand and
absorbing in proportion as their premises are taken by
religious belief as mathematical axioms already proven)
seized hold of his imagination, and tasked, to the depth,
his inquisitive reason. The Chronicle of Knyghton cites
320 fiOTES.
an interesting anecdote of his life at this, its important,
crisis. He had retired to a solitary spot, beside the Seine,
to meditate on the mysterious essence of the Trinity, when
he saw a boy ladling out the waters of the river that ran
before him into a little well. His curiosity arrested, he
asked " what the boy proposed to do ?" The boy replied,
"to empty yon deep into this well." "That canst thou
never do," said the scholar. " Nor canst thou," answered
the boy, " exhaust the deep on which thou dost meditate
into the well of thy reason." Therewith the speaker
vanished, and Lanfranc, resigning the hope to achieve the
mighty mystery, threw himself at once into the arms of
faith, and took his refuge in the monastery of Bee.
The tale may be a legend, but not an idle one. Perhaps
he related it himself as a parable, and by the fiction
explained the process of thought that decided his career.
In the prime of his manhood, about 1042, when he was
thirty-seven years old, and in the zenith of his scholarly
fame, he professed. The Convent of Bee had been lately
founded, under Herluin, the first abbot ; there Lanfranc
opened a school, which became one of the most famous
throughout the west of Europe. Indeed, under the Lom-
bard's influence, the then obscure Convent of Bee, to which
the solitude of the site, and the poverty of the endowment,
allured his choice, grew the Academe of the age. " It was,"
says Orderic, in his charming chronicle, "it was under
such a master that the Normans received their first notions
of literature ; from that school emerged the multitude of
eloquent philosophers who adorned alike divinity and
science. From France, Gascony, Bretagne, Flanders,
scholars thronged to receive his lessons."*
ORDERIC, VITAL, lib. 4.
NOTES. 321
At first, as superficially stated in the tale, Lanfranc had
taken part against the marriage of William with Matilda
of Flanders a marriage clearly contrary to the formal
canons of the Roman Church, and was banished by
the fiery Duke ; though William's displeasure gave way
at " the decent joke " (jocus decens), recorded in the
text. At Rome, however, his influence, arguments, and
eloquence, were all enlisted on the side of William ; and
it was to the scholar of Pavia that the great Norman
owed the ultimate sanction of his marriage, and the repeal
of the interdict that excommunicated his realm.*
At Rome he assisted in the council held 1059 (the year
wherein the ban of the Church was finally and formally
taken from Normandy) at which the famous Berenger,
Archdeacon of Angers, (against whom he had waged a
polemical controversy that did more than all else to
secure his repute at the Pontifical Court,) abjured "his
heresies" as to the Real Presence in the sacrament of the
Eucharist.
In 1062, or 1063, Duke William, against the Lombard's
own will, (for Lanfranc genuinely loved the liberty of letters,
more than vulgar power,) raised him to the abbacy of St.
Stephen of Caen. From that time, his ascendancy over his
haughty lord was absolute. The contemporary historian,
(William of Poitiers,) says that " William respected him as
a father, venerated him as a preceptor, and cherished him
as a brother or son." He confided to him his own designs ;
* The date of William's marriage has been variously stated in English
and Norman history, but is usually fixed in 1051 2. M. Pluquet, however,
in a note to his edition of the Roman de Sou, says that the only authority
for the date of that marriage is in the Chronicle of Tours ; and it is there
referred to 1053. It would seem that the Papal excommunication was not
actually taken off till 1059 j nor the formal dispensation for the marriage
granted till 1063.
p 3
322 NOTES.
and committed to him the entire superintendence of the
ecclesiastical orders throughout Normandy. Eminent no
less for his practical genius in affairs, than for his rare
piety and theological learning, Lanfranc attained indeed to
the true ideal of the Scholar ; to whom, of all men, nothing
that is human should be foreign ; whose closet is but a
hermit's cell, unless it is the microcosm that embraces the
mart and the forum ; who by the reflective part of his
nature seizes the higher region of philosophy by the
energetic, is attracted to the central focus of action. For
scholarship is but the parent of ideas ; and ideas are the
parents of action.
After the conquest, as prelate of Canterbury, Lanfranc
became the second man in the kingdom happy, perhaps,
for England had he been the first ; for all the anecdotes
recorded of him show a deep and genuine sympathy with
the oppressed population. But William the King of the
English, escaped from the control which Lanfranc had im-
posed on the Duke of the Normans. The scholar had
strengthened the aspirer ; he could only imperfectly in-
fluence the conqueror.
Lanfranc was not, it is true, a faultless character. He
was a priest, a lawyer, and a man of the world three
characters hard to amalgamate into perfection, especially
in the eleventh century. But he stands in gigantic and bril-
liant contrast to the rest of our priesthood in his own day,
both in the superiority of his virtues, and in his exemption
from the ordinary vices. He regarded the cruelties of Odo
of Bayeux with detestation, opposed him with firmness,
and ultimately, to the joy of all England, ruined his
power. He gave a great impetus to learning ; he set a
high example to his monks, in his freedom from the mer-
NOTES. . 323
cenary sins of their order ; he laid the foundations of a
powerful and splendid Church, which, only because it failed
in future Lanfrancs, failed in effecting the civilization of
which he designed it to be the instrument. He refused
to crown William Rufus, until that king had sworn to
govern according to law and to right ; and died, though a
Norman usurper, honoured and beloved by the Saxon
people.
Scholar, and morning star of light in the dark age of
force and fraud, it is easier to praise thy life, than to track
through the length of centuries all the measureless and in-
visible benefits which the life of one scholar bequeathes to
the world in the souls it awakens in the thoughts it
suggests.*
NOTE (D), page 148.
EDWARD THE CONFESSOR'S REPLY TO MAGNUS OF DENMARK,
WHO CLAIMED HIS CROWN.
ON rare occasions Edward was not without touches of
a brave kingly nature.
Snorro Sturleson gives us a noble and spirited reply of
the Confessor to Magnus, who, as heir of Canute, claimed
the English crown; it concludes thus, " Now, he (Hardi-
canute) died, and then it was the resolution of all the
people of the country to take me for the king here in
* For authorities for the above sketch, and for many interesting details
of Lanfranc's character, see ORDEHTC. VITAL. HEN. DE KNYGHTON, lib. ii.
GERVASIUS; and tlie LIFE OF LANFRANC, to be found in the collection of
his Works, &c.
324 NOTES.
England. So long as I had no kingly title, I served my
superiors in all respects, like those who had no claims by
birth to land or kingdom. Now, however, I have received
the kingly title, and am consecrated king ; I have estab-
lished my royal dignity and authority, as my father before
me ; and while I live, I will not renounce my title. If
King Magnus comes here with an army, I will gather no
army against him ; but he shall only get the opportunity
of taking England when he has taken my life. Tell him
these words of mine." If we may consider this reply as
authentic, it is significant, as proof that Edward rests his
title on the resolution of the people to take him for king ;
and counts as nothing, in comparison, his hereditary
claims. This, together with the general tone of the reply
particularly the passage in which he implies that he trusts
his defence not to his army but his people makes it
probable that Godwin dictated the answer; and, indeed,
Edward himself could not have couched it, either in Saxon
or Danish. But the King is equally entitled to the credit
of it, whether he composed it, or whether he merely ap-
proved and sanctioned its gallant tone and its princely
sentiment.
NOTE (E), page 153.
HERALDS.
So much of the " pride, pomp, and circumstance " which
invest the Age of Chivalry is borrowed from these com-
panions of princes, and blazoners of noble deeds, that i\
NOTES. 325
may interest the reader, if I set briefly before him what
our best antiquaries have said as to their first appearance
in our own history.
Camden (somewhat, I fear, too rashly) says, that " their
reputation, honour, and name began in the time of Charle-
magne." The first mention of heralds in England occurs
in the reign of Edward III., a reign in which chivalry was
at its dazzling zenith. Whitlock says, " that some derive
the name of Herald from Hereauld," a Saxon word, (old
soldier, or old master,) " because anciently they were
chosen from veteran soldiers." Joseph Holland says, " I
find that Malcolm, King of Scots, sent a herald unto
William the Conqueror, to treat of a peace, when both
armies were in order of battle." Agard affirms, that " at
the Conquest there was no practice of heraldry;" and ob-
serves truly, " that the Conqueror used a monk for his
messenger to King Harold."
To this I may add, that monks or priests also fulfil the
office of heralds in the old French and Norman Chronicles.
Thus Charles the Simple sends an archbishop to treat
with Rolfganger ; Louis the Debonnair sends to Mormon,
chief of the Bretons, " a sage and prudent abbot." But in
the Saxon times, the nuncius (a word still used in heraldic
Latin) was in the regular service both of the King and the
great Earls. The Saxon name for such a messenger was
bode, and when employed in hostile negociations, he was
styled war-bode. The messengers between Godwin and the
King would seem, by the general sense of the chronicles,
to have been certain thegns acting as mediators.
326 NOTES.
NOTE (F), page 210.
THE FXLGIA, OR TUTELARY SPIRIT.
THIS lovely superstition in the Scandinavian belief is the
more remarkable because it does not appear in the creed
of the Germanic Teutons, and is closely allied ;with the
good angel, or guardian genius, of the Persians. It forms,
therefore, one of the arguments that favour the Asiatic
origin of the Norsemen.
The Fylgia (following, or attendant, spirit) was always
represented as a female. Her influence was not uniformly
favourable, though such was its general characteristic.
She was capable of revenge if neglected, but had the devo-
tion of her sex when properly treated. Mr. Grenville
Pigott, in his recent and popular work, entitled " A Manual
of Scandinavian Mythology," relates an interesting legend
with respect to one of these supernatural ladies :
A Scandinavian warrior, Halfred Vandraedakald, having
embraced Christianity, and being attacked by a disease
which he thought mortal, was naturally anxious that a
spirit who had accompanied him through his pagan career
should not attend him into that other world, where her
society might involve him in disagreeable consequences.
The persevering Fylgia, however, in the shape of a fair
maiden, walked on the waves of the sea after her viking's
ship. She came thus in sight of all the crew ; and Halfred,
recognising his Fylgia, told her point blank that their
connexion was at an end for ever. The forsaken Fylgia
had a high spirit of her own, and she then asked Thorold
" if he would take her." Thorold ungallantly refused ;
NOTES. 327
but Halfred the younger said, " Maiden, I will take
thee."*
In the various Norse Saga there are many anecdotes of
these spirits, who are always charming, because, with their
less earthly attributes, they always blend something of the
woman. The poetry embodied in their existence is of a
softer and more humane character than that common with
the stern and vast demons of the Scandinavian mythology.
NOTE (G), page 227.
THE ORIGIN OF EARL GODWIN.
SHARON TURNER quotes from the Knytlinga Saga what
he calls " an explanation of Godwin's career or parentage,
which no other document affords;" viz. "that Ulf, a
Danish chief, after the battle of Skorstein between Canute
and Edmund Ironsides, pursued the English fugitives into
a wood, lost his way, met, on the morning, a Saxon youth
driving cattle to their pasture, asked him to direct him in
safety to Canute's ships, and offered him the bribe of a
gold ring for his guidance ; the young herdsman refused
the bribe, but sheltered the Dane in the cottage of his
father, (who is represented as a mere peasant,) and con-
ducted him the next morning to the Danish camp ; pre-
viously to which, the youth's father represented to Ulf,
that his son, Godwin, could never, after aiding a Dane to
escape, rest in safety with his countrymen, and besought
him to befriend his son's fortunes with Canute." The
Dane promised, and kept his word : hence Godwin's rise.
* PIGOTT'S Scand. Mythol. p. 360. HALF. VAND. SAGA.
328 NOTES.
Thierry, in his " History of the Norman Conquest," tells
the same story, on the authority of Torfaeus, Hist. Rer.
Norweg. Now I need not say to any scholar in our early
history, that the Norse Chronicles, abounding with romance
and legend, are never to be received as authorities counter
to our own records, though occasionally valuable to supply
omissions in the latter ; and, unfortunately for this pretty
story, we have against it the direct statements of the
very best authorities we possess, viz. the Saxon Chron-
icle and Florence of Worcester. The Saxon Chronicle
expressly tells us that Godwin's father was Childe of
Sussex, (Florence calls him minister or thegn of Sussex,*)
and that Wulnoth was nephew to Edric, the all-powerful
Earl or Duke of Mercia. Florence confirms this state-
ment, and gives the pedigree, which may be deduced as
follows :
I I
Edric married Egehic, surnamed Leofwine.
Edgith, daughter of
King Ethelred II. Egelmar.
Wolnoth.
Godwin.
Thus this " old peasant," as the North Chronicles call
Wolnoth, was, according to our most unquestionable autho-
rities, a thegn of one of the most important divisions in
England, and a member of the most powerful family in the
kingdom. Now, if our Saxon authorities needed any aid
from probabilities, it is scarcely worth asking, which is the
more probable, that the son of a Saxon herdsman should
in a few years rise to such power as to marry the sister of
the royal Danish Conqueror or that that honour should
* " Suthsaxonum Ministrum Wolfnothem." FtoR. WIG.
NOTES. 329
be conferred on the most able member of a house already
allied to Saxon royalty, and which evidently retained its
power after the fall of its head, the treacherous Edric
Streone ? Even after the Conquest, one of Streone's
nephews, Edricus Sylvaticus, is mentioned (Simon. Du-
nelm.) as " a very powerful thegn." Upon the whole, the
account given of Godwin's rise in the text of the work
appears the most correct that conjectures, based on our
scanty historical information, will allow.
In 1009 A.D., Wolnoth, the Childe or Thegn of Sussex,
defeats the fleets of Ethelred, under his uncle Brightric,
and goes therefore into rebellion. Thus when, in 1014,
(five years afterwards) Canute is chosen king by all the
fleet, it is probable that Wolnoth, and Godwin his son,
espoused his cause ; and that Godwin, subsequently pre-
sented to Canute as a young noble of great promise, was
favoured by that sagacious king, and ultimately honoured
with the hand, first of his sister, secondly of his niece, as a
mode of conciliating the Saxon thegns.
END OF VOL. I.
R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.
*
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