doubly sure, William loaded Harold with pre- | men," said they, "and were brought up in freesents, and permitted him to depart. Liberty dom; a proud chief is to us unbearable-for we was restored to young Haco, who returned to have learned from our ancestors to live free, or England with his uncle, but the politic duke re- die." tained the other hostage, Wulnot, as a further security for the faith of his brother the earl. than a matter of form, and granted immediately. The Northumbrians then withdrew with their new earl, Morcar, from Northampton; but during Harold's short absence at court, to complete the treaty of pacification, and at their departure, they plundered and burned the neighbouring towns and villages, and carried off some hundreds of the inhabitants, whom they kept for the sake of ransom. As for the expelled Tostig, he fled to Bruges, the court of Baldwin, Earl of Flanders, whose daughter he had married, and, burning with rage and revenge, and considering himself betrayed or unjustly abandoned by his brother Harold, he opened a correspondence, and sought friendship and support, with William of Normandy. The crimes of Tostig were proved, and IIarold, giving up his brother's cause as lost, agreed to Harold had scarcely set foot in England when the demands of the Northumbrians, that the aphe was called to the field by circumstances which, pointment of Morcar as earl should be confirmed. for the present, gave him an opportunity of show-A truce being concluded, he hastened to obtain ing his justice and impartiality, or his wise the consent of the king, which was little more policy, but which soon afterwards tended to complicate the difficulties of his situation. His brother Toɛtig, who had been intrusted with the government of Northumbria on good Siward's death, behaved with so much rapacity, tyranny, and cruelty, as to provoke a general rising against his authority and person. The insurgents-the hardiest and most warlike men of the landmarched upon York, where their obnoxious governor resided. Tostig fled; his treasury and armoury were pillaged, and 200 of his bodyguard were massacred on the banks of the Ouse. The Northumbrians then, despising the weak authority of the king, determined to choose an earl for themselves; and their chcice fell on Morcar, one of the sons of Earl Algar, the old enemy of Harold and his family. Morcar, whose power and influence were extensive in Lincoln, Nottingham, and Derbyshire, readily accepted the authority offered him, and gathering together an armed host, and securing the services of a body of Welsh auxiliaries, he not only took possession of the great northern earldom, but ad-round the royal deathbed. The writers who go vanced to Northampton, with an evident intention of extending his power towards the south of England; but here he was met by the active and intrepid Harold, who had never yet returned vanquished from a field of battle. Before drawing the sword against his own countrymen, the son of Godwin proposed a conference. This was accepted by the Northumbrians, who, at the meeting, exposed the wrongs they had suffered from Tostig, and the motives of their insurrection. Harold endeavoured to palliate the faults of his brother, and promised, in his name, better conduct for the future, if they would receive him back as their earl lawfully appointed by the king. But the Northumbrians unanimously protested against any reconciliation with the chief who had tyrannized over them. "We were born free R. Catholic faith, but was rather, if not entirely produced, at manship, and thought to conquer in battle with the aid of the The childless and now childish Edward was dying. Harold arrived in London on the last day of November; the king grew worse and worse; and in the first days of January it was evident that the hand of death was upon him. The veil of mystery and doubt again thickens upon the authority of those who were in the interest of the Norman, positively affirm that Edward repeated the clauses of his will, and named William his successor; and that when Harold and his kinsmen forced their way into his chamber to obtain a different decision, he said to them with his dying voice, "Ye know right well, my lords, that I have bequeathed my kingdom to the Duke of Normandy; and are there not those here who have plighted oaths to secure William's succession?" On the other side it is maintained, with equal confidence, that he named Harold his successor, and told the chiefs and churchmen that no one was so worthy of the crown as the great son of Godwin. The Norman duke, whose best right (if good or right can be in it) was the sword of conquest, always insisted on the intentions and last will of Edward. But although the will of a popular king was occasionally allowed much weight in the decision, it was not imperative or binding to the Saxon people without the consent and concurrence of the witenagemot-the parliament or great council of the nation-to which source of right the Norman, very naturally, never thought of applying. The English crown was in great 17 measure an elective crown. This fact is sufficiently proved by the irregularity in the succession, which is not reconcilable with any laws of heirship and primogeniture, for we frequently see the brother of a deceased king preferred to all the sons of that king, or a younger son put over the head of the eldest. As the royal race ended in Edward, or only survived in an imbecile boy, it became imperative to look elsewhere for a successor, and upon whom could the eyes of the nation so naturally fall as upon the experienced, skilful, and brave Harold, the defender of the Saxon cause, and the near relation by marriage of their last king? Harold, therefore, derived his authority from what ought always to be considered its most legitimate source, and which was actually acknowledged to be so in the age and country in which he lived. William, a foreigner of an obnoxious race, rested his claim on Edward's dying declaration, and on a will that the king had no faculty to make or enforce without the consent and ratification of the states of the kingdom; and, strange to say, this will, which was held by some to give a plausible, or even a just title (which it did not), was never produced, whence people concluded it had never existed. The chroniclers agree in stating that Edward was visited by frightful visionsthat he repeated the most menacing passages of the Bible, which came to his memory involuntarily, and in a confused manner-and that the day before his death he pronounced a fearful prophecy of woe and judgment to the Saxon people. At these words there was "dole and sorrow enough;" but Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, could not refrain from laughing at the general alarm, and said the old man was only dreaming and raving, as sick old men are wont to do. During these his last days, however, the anxious mind of the king was in good part absorbed by the care for his own sepulture, and his earnest wish that Westminster Abbey, which he had rebuilt from the foundation, should be completed and consecrated before he departed this life. The works, to which he had devoted a tenth part of his revenue, were pressed-they were finished; but on the festival of the Innocents, the day fixed for the consecration, he could not leave his chamber; and the grand ceremony was performed in presence of Queen Editha, who represented her dying husband, and of a great concourse of nobles and priests, who had been bidden in unusual numbers to the Christmas festival, that they might partake in this solemn celebration. He expired on the 5th of January, 1066; and, on the very next day, the festival of the Epiphany, all that remained of the last Saxon king of the CHAPEL, AND SHRINE OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR. race of Cerdic and Alfred was interred, with great pomp and solemnity, within the walls of the sacred edifice he had just lived time enough to complete. He was in his sixty-fifth or sixtysixth year, and had reigned over England nearly twenty-four years. The body of laws he compiled, and which were so fondly remembered in after times, when the Saxons were ground to the dust by Norman tyranny, were selected from the codes or collections of his predecessors, Ethelbert, Ina, and Alfred, few or none of them originating in himself, although the gratitude of the nation long continued to attribute them all to him. In his personal character pious, humane, and temperate, but infirm and easily persuaded, his whole life showed that he was better fitted to be a monk than a king. HAROLD was proclaimed king in a vast assembly of the chiefs and nobles, and of the citizens of London, almost as soon as the body of Edward was deposited in the tomb, and the same evening witnessed his solemn coronation, only a few hours intervening between the two ceremonies. The common account is that Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, in right of his office, should have crowned the king, having quarrelled with The chapel in Westminster Abbey, and the shrine which contains the ashes of the Confessor, were erected by direction of Henry III., the latter being the work of the Italian artist Ca vallini. The coffin containing the king's remains is suspended by iron rods firmly inserted in the stone-work, at about half the depth of the shrine. the court of Rome, and then lying under a sen- | moment of excitement the strong mind of the tence of suspension, the ecclesiastic next in dignity, Aldred, Archbishop of York, officiated in his stead; other authorities affirm that Harold put the crown on his head with his own hands; but both William of Poitiers, a contemporary writer, and Ordericus Vitalis, who lived in the next century, assert that the act was performed by Stigand. This account seems to be confirmed by the representation of the ceremony on the Bayeux Tapestry, where Harold appears seated on the throne, with Stigand standing on his left. In this Saxon, though not destitute of superstition, may have risen superior to the terrors of the dead men's bones, and the oaths that had been extorted from him most foully and by force in Normandy; but the circumstances, no doubt, made an unfavourable impression on the minds of most of such of his countrymen as were acquainted with them. Still all the southern counties of England hailed his accession with joy; nor was he wanting to himself in exertions to increase his well-established popularity. "He studied by all means which way THE CROWN OFFERED TO HAROLD, AND THE CORONATION OF HAROLD.-From the Bayeux Tapestry. to win the people's favour, and omitted no occasion | on to his palace of Rouen, without saying a word whereby he might show any token of bounteous to any one. He stopped in the great hall, and liberality, gentleness, and courteous behaviour towards them. The grievous customs, also, and taxes which his predecessors had raised, he either abolished or diminished; the ordinary wages of his servants and men-of-war he increased, and further showed himself very well bent to all virtue and goodness." A writer who lived near the time adds that, from the moment of his accession, he showed himself pious, humble, and affable, and that he spared himself no fatigue, either by land or by sea, for the defence of his country.2 The court was effectually cleared of the unpopular foreign favourites, but their property was respected; they were left in the enjoyment of their civil rights, and not a few retained their employments. Some of these Normans were the first to announce the death of Edward and the coronation of Harold to Duke William. At the moment when he received this great news he was in his hunting-grounds near Rouen, holding a bow in his hand, with some new arrows that he was trying. On a sudden he was observed to be very pensive; and giving his bow to one of his people, he threw himself into a skiff, crossed the river Seine, and then hurried strode up and down that apartment, now sit- 3 Thierry, Hist. de la Conquête de l'Angleterre; Chron. de Norm. exact all that was due to him, and pursue the perjured Harold even unto the places where he believed his footing the most sure and firm, pressed those preparations for war which he had begun almost as soon as he learned the course events had taken in England. ance. On the Continent the opinion of most men was in favour of William, and Harold was regarded in the light of a sacrilegious oath-breaker, with whom no terms were to be kept. The habitual love of war, and the hopes of obtaining copious plunder and rich settlements in England, were not without their effect. In the cabinet council which the duke assembled, there was not one dissentient voice; all the great Norman lords were of opinion that the island ought to be invaded; and knowing the magnitude of the enterprise, they engaged to serve him with their body and goods, even to the selling or mortgaging their inheritSome subscribed for ships, others to furnish men-at-arms, others engaged to march in person; the priests, gave their gold and silver, the merchants their stuffs, and the farmers their corn and provender. A clerk stood near the duke, with a large book open before him; and as the vassals made their promises, he wrote them all down in his register. The ambitious William looked far beyond the confines of Normandy for soldiers of fortune to assist him in his enterprise. He had his ban of war published in all the neighbouring countries; he offered good pay to every tall, robust man who would serve him with the lance, the sword, or the cross-bow. A multitude flocked to him from all parts-from far and near-from the north and the south. They came from Maine and Anjou; from Poitou and Bretagne; from the country of the French king and from Flanders; from Aquitaine and from Burgundy; from Piedmont beyond the Alps and from the banks of the Rhine. Adventurers by profession, the idle, the dissipated, the profligate, the enfans perdus of Europe hurried at the summons. Of these some were knights and chiefs in war, others simple foot-soldiers; some demanded regular pay in money, others merely their passage across the Channel, and all the booty they might make. Some demanded territory in Englanda domain, a castle, a town; while others, again, simply wished to secure some rich Saxon lady in marriage. All the wild wishes, all the pretensions of human avarice were wakened into activity. "William," says the Norman Chronicie, "repulsed no one; but promised and pleased all as much as he could." He even sold, beforehand, a bishopric in England to a certain Remi of Fescamp (afterwards canonized as St. Remigius), for a ship and twenty men-at-arms. Thierry, Chron. de Normandie. When the pope's bull arrived, justifying the expedition, and with it the consecrated banner that was to float over it, the matrons of Normandy sent their sons to enrol themselves for the health of their souls; and the national eagerness for war was increased twofold. Three churchmen-the celebrated Lanfranc, Robert of Jumièges (Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been expelled by Earl Godwin and his sons), and a deacon of Lisieux-had been sent on an embassy to Rome, where they urged the cause of William with entire success, and obtained from Alexander III. a holy license to invade England, on the condition, however, that the Norman duke, when he had conquered our island, should hold it as a fief of the church. This measure was not carried through the consistory without opposition. The man who combated most warmly in its favour was the fiery Hildebrand, then archdeacon of the Church of Rome, and afterwards the celebrated Pope Gregory VII. The most valid reasons William or his ambassadors could present to the pope were--the will of King Edward the Confessor (which was never produced), the perjury and sacrilege of Harold, the forcible expulsion from England of the Norman prelates, and the old massacre of the Danes on St. Brice's Day by King Ethelred. But if there was any want of plausibility in the argumentative statement of his case, William, as already intimated, was most liberal and convincing in his promises to the pope. 2 A pontifical diploma, signed with the cross, and sealed, according to the Roman usage, with a seal in lead, of a round form, was sent to the Norman duke; and, in order to give him still more confidence and security in his invasion, a consecrated banner, and a ring of great price, containing one of the hairs of St. Peter, were added to the bull. William repaired in person to St. Germain, in order to solicit the aid of Philip I., King of the French. This sovereign, though tempted by flattering promises, thought fit to refuse any direct assistance; but he permitted (what he probably could not prevent) that many hundreds of his subjects should join the expedition. William's father-in-law, Baldwin of Flanders, gave some assistance in men, ships, and stores; and the other continental princes pretty generally encouraged William, in the politic hope that a formidable neighbour might be kept at a distance for the rest of his life if the expedition succeeded, or so weakened as to be no longer formidable if it failed. But there was one state, whose history in old times had been singularly mixed and interwoven with that of Britain, which might have proved an impediment. Armorica, 2 Called in Latin bulla; hence the common name, "bull," for the pope's letters, &c. now called Bretagne or Brittany, had become a sort of fief to Normandy; but Conan, the reigning chief or Duke of the Bretons, sent a message to William, requiring that, since he was going to be King of England, he should deliver up his Norman duchy to the legitimate descendants of Rollo the Ganger,' from whom the Breton said he issued by the female line. Conan did not long survive this indiscreet demand; and his sudden death, by poison, was generally, and above all in Brittany, imputed to William the Bastard. Eudes or Eudo, the successor of Conan, raised no pretensions; but voluntarily yielding to the influence of William, sent him two of his sons (which he was not bound to do) to serve him in his wars against the English. These two young Bretons, named Brian and Allan,2 came to the rendezvous, accompanied by a troop of men of their own country, who gave them the title of Mac Tierns (the sons of the chief), while the Normans styled them Counts. Other rich Bretons-powerful chiefs were now living in friendship as Robert de Vitry, Bertrand de Dinan, and Raoul de Gael-flocked to William's standard, to offer their services as volunteers or as soldiers of fortune. expelled from Northumbria, fled with treacherous intentions to the court of the Earl of Flanders, and opened communications with the Duke of Normandy. Soon after Harold's coronation Tostig repaired in person to Rouen, where he boasted to William that he had more credit and real power in England than his brother, and promised him the sure possession of that country if he would only unite with him for its conquest. William was no doubt too well informed to credit this assertion; but he saw the advantage which might be derived from this fraternal hate; and gave Tostig a few ships, with which that miscreant ravaged the Isle of Wight and the country about Sandwich. Retreating before the naval force of his brother, Tostig then went to the coast of Lincolnshire, where he did great harm. He next sailed up the Humber, but was presently driven thence by the advance of Morcar, Earl of Northumbria, and his brother Edwin, which two From early spring all through the summer months the most active preparations had been carried on in all the seaports of Normandy. Workmen of all classes were employed in building and equipping ships; smiths and armourers with Harold, who had espoused their sister, Algitha, and made her Queen of England. From the Humber, Tostig fled with only twelve small vessels to the north of Scotland, whence, forgetful of his alliance with the Norman duke, he sailed to the Baltic, to invite Sweyn, the king of Denmark, to the conquest of our island. Sweyn wisely declined the dangerous invitation; and then, caring little what rival he raised to his brother, he went to Norway, and pressed Harold Hardrada, the king of that country, to invade England. Hardrada could not resist the temptation; and, early in autumn, he set sail with a formidable fleet, consisting of 200 war-ships, and 300 storeships and vessels of smaller size. Having touched at the Orkneys, where he left his queen, and procured a large reinforcement of pirates and adventurers, Hardrada made for England, and sailed up the Tyne, taking and plundering several towns. He then continued his course southwards, and, being joined by Tostig, sailed up the Humber and the Ouse. The Norwegian king and the Saxon traitor landed their united forces at Riccall or Richale, not far from the city of York. Notwithstanding his former infamous conduct, Tostig had still some friends and retainers in that country; these now rallied round his standard, and many others were won over or reduced to an unpatriotic neutrality by the imposing display of force on the part of the invaders. The Earls Morcar and Edwin, true to Harold and their trust, marched boldly out NORMAN SHIP.-Restored from the Bayeux Tapestry, by C. Jal, Archæologie Navale. forged lances, and made coats of mail; and porters passed incessantly to and fro, carrying the arms from the workshops to the ships. These notes of preparation soon sounded across the Channel, and gave warning of the coming invasion. The first storm of war that burst upon England did not, however, proceed from Normandy, but from Harold's own unnatural brother. It will be remembered how this brother, Tostig, 1 The founder of the duchy of Normandy. This Allan is supposed by some to have been the original stock of the royal house of Stuart. |