Events of the year 1098. The events of the year which followed the last revolution in Scotland amount to a general stirring of all the lands which could in ordinary times have any influence on the affairs of England. Their wide geographical range. We shall see in the next chapter that it was the busiest of times in the Gaulish mainland, where the designs of Rufus, now undisputed master of Normandy, spread far beyond anything that had been dreamed of by any earlier holder of the Norman duchy. For warfare or for alliance, the range of our story during this most stirring year stretches from the fiords of Norway to the gorges of the Pyrenees. In the present section we have to look to the northern side of this tangled drama, and to take the specially British aspect of it as our centre. A mighty undertaking, which moved the whole of north-western Europe, which touched England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and the smaller islands which lie between and around them, comes home to us mainly as it touches that one among those islands which might almost pass for a part of the mainland of southern Britain. Magnus of Norway. The great warfare of Magnus of Norway mainly concerns our story so far as it almost casually became a part of warfare in Wales, and specially of warfare in Anglesey. Anglesey the centre of the story. And, as regards England itself, the most important aspect of a movement which stirred every northern land was that it indirectly lifted one man who was already great beyond endurance in Normandy and its border lands into a place of greatness even less endurable in England and its border lands. The Earls of Shrewsbury. We have to tell a tale spreading over many lands and seas, a tale full of personal pictures and personal exploits. To Englishmen of the last years of the eleventh century and the first years of the twelfth, its most practical aspect was that it took away Earl Hugh of Shrewsbury and set his brother Robert in his place.
The winter of 1097. We must now look back to the moment, late in the last year, when the Welsh seemed to have completely won back their freedom, except in Glamorgan and at the single point covered by the unconquered fortress of Pembroke.[332] It is startling to find in our next notice that the Britons, without any mention of any fresh loss, are beginning to stand on the defensive, and to seek out as it were a last shelter. The war of Anglesey. 1098. The war is now shifted to a quarter of which we have hitherto heard less than of some other parts of Wales, and it becomes connected with movements in other parts of the world which carry us back a generation. The island off the north-west corner of Wales, that Mona or Mevania to which half-forgotten English conquests had given the name of Anglesey,[333] became now, as in the days of Roman invasion, the chief—at the time it may have seemed the last—stronghold of British resistance. The island, parted from the British mainland by the narrow strait—the Hellespont—of Menai, lying within sight of the fortress of Robert of Rhuddlan at Dwyganwy, seems for the last four years to have been left untouched by any Norman invader. Schemes of Cadwgan and Gruffydd. But now we read that the princes of Gwynedd, Cadwgan son of Bleddyn, their worthiest elder, and Gruffydd the slayer of Robert, with the general assent of the Britons of the north, agree in council, as one of their own chroniclers puts it, to save Mona.[334] This form of words seems to imply less trust in their own resources than we might have looked for in the elders of the Britons after their late successes. If Mona needed to be saved, one would think that they must already have found that there was little real chance of saving Gwynedd or Dyfed. And the way by which they sought to save Mona was hardly a wise one, though it was one which might have been defended by many precedents. The Welsh take wikings from Ireland into pay. Just as Gruffydd had done ten years before, they took into their pay a fleet of pirates from Ireland, wikings doubtless from the Scandinavian settlements, whom one Welsh writer, perhaps more from habit than as meaning his words to be taken in their full force, speaks of as heathens.[335] With these allies, and with the main body of their own forces, the British leaders withdrew into Anglesey.
The two Earls Hugh, of Chester and Shrewsbury. The news of this alliance was thought serious enough to call for vigorous action on the part of the two earls of the border. Both now bore the same name. Hugh of Avranches still ruled at Chester—we last heard of him as counselling the cruel punishment of William of Eu; Hugh of Montgomery was drawing near to the end of his short dominion over Shropshire. The Scandinavian writers couple the two Hughs together, and they distinguish the elder by the well-earned surname of Hugh the Fat, and the younger by that of Hugh the Proud.[336] They gathered their forces, Norman and English, and crossed over to Anglesey. The first step towards the occupation of the island was the usual Norman means, the building of a castle. In this case they had not to build for the first time, but to build up afresh what the Welsh had destroyed in the moment of victory. It will be remembered that, four years before, the Britons in their great revolt had won back Anglesey and broken down the castle.[337] Rebuilding of the castle of Aberlleiniog. There seems no reason to doubt that the site of the old work was the site of the new, and that that site marks at once the landing-place of the two earls and the scene of the fall of one of them. It lies on the eastern side of the island, quite free from the strait, and nearly due west from the scene of the Marquess Robert’s death at Dwyganwy.[338] It lies about half way between the priory of Penmon—the head of Mona—parts of whose simple and venerable church must be nearly contemporary with our times,[339] and the great fortress of later days at Beaumaris, the head of the island shire. A small expanse of flat and marshy ground marks the spot where the small stream of Lleiniog, mere brook as it is, makes its independent way into the sea. Traces of the castle. On its left bank the careful enquirer will find, what he will certainly not see at a glance, a castle-mound with its ditches, now, after the usual senseless and provoking fashion, masked with trees. But he who makes his way within will find, not only the mound, but the square tower crowning it, though he will hardly deem this last to be a work of the two earls. In front of the castle, immediately above the sea, a slight natural height seems to have been improved by art into a smaller mound. The earthworks at least the earls doubtless found ready to their hand, whether they had been thrown up in the earlier invasion of the island, or whether the invaders had then taken advantage of mounds thrown up by men of earlier times. Here we have beyond doubt the remains of the castle of Aberlleiniog, the castle which Hugh the Fat and Hugh the Proud designed to hold Anglesey in check.[340] But it was not only to the craft of the engineer that the two Hughs trusted. The earls bribe the wikings. The earls of the Red King’s day had learned to practise the special arts of their master. The wikings were bribed with the gold of England to betray the cause of their British allies, and they gave the earls valuable help in making good their entrance into Anglesey.[341]
Cadwgan and Gruffydd flee to Ireland. It was in strange contrast with the vigour which for several years had been shown by the Welsh leaders, and with the success which had commonly waited on their arms, but quite in harmony with their last action of all, when Cadwgan and Gruffydd, seeing the turn which things had taken, threw up the common cause altogether and fled to Ireland to secure their own safety.[342] Anglesey was now left to the mercy of the two earls. The character for gentleness which Hugh of Shrewsbury bears, and which he may have deserved in the government of his own earldom, brought no lessening of suffering to British enemies. Wherever the two Hughs marched, men were slaughtered, or were, in modern eyes at least, worse than slaughtered. Cruel treatment of the Welsh captives. They were blinded, deprived of hands and feet, or made to undergo the other mutilations usual at the time.[343] In some cases at least the earls trampled on every privilege of holy places and holy persons. Desecration of the church of Saint Tyfrydog. It may be deemed a lesser matter that one of them caused his hounds to pass a night in the church of Saint Tyfrydog, and found them all mad in the morning.[344] The privileges of the Church could not shelter even her human and priestly servants. One special victim was an aged priest, who is said to have taken a leading part in the war by the advice which he gave to the Welsh. Mutilation of Cenred. His name Cenred bespeaks English birth; the form of the name is Mercian; if he had passed from the earldom of either Hugh to the side of the Welsh, he would naturally be looked on as a traitor, and his treason would explain the excessive harshness with which he was treated. The old man was dragged out of a church; besides more shameful suffering, one eye was torn out, and his tongue was also cut out.[345] This last form of mutilation seems to have been confined to himself, and it may have been meant as specially befitting one who had used that dangerous member to give counsel to the enemy. Restoration of his speech. And now, according to our story, happened one of those signs and wonders which were at the time naturally deemed miraculous, but for which modern times have supplied, if not an explanation, at least a parallel. Cenred fared like the victims of Gelimer of old, like the victims of Djezzar in modern times; three days after the loss of his tongue, his speech came back to him.[346] Four days later again, so men deemed at Worcester, came vengeance on one at least of the two earls for the cruel deed which they had wrought on him.[347]
Expedition of Magnus Barefoot. If wikings from Ireland had betrayed the cause of the Britons, a far mightier wiking was now afloat, if not to give help to the Britons, at least to act as a minister of wrath upon their enemies. The tale of Stamfordbridge seems to come over again on the western, instead of the eastern, side of the British islands. For a grandson of Harold Hardrada shows himself at the head of a power almost equalling that of his grandfather; he brings a grandson of Godwine in his train, he overcomes two Mercian earls, and finds his own doom, not indeed in Yorkshire, but in Ireland. But the enterprise which recalls so many points in the enterprise of two-and-thirty years earlier was not in any strict sense an invasion of England. Character of his reign. 1093–1103. Magnus, the son of that peaceful Olaf of whom we have heard in the Conqueror’s day,[348] now reigned in Norway in the spirit of his grandfather rather than in that of his father. His surnames. He bore various surnames, as the Tall and the Lover-of-Strife; but his name has gone down in history with the special epithet of Magnus Barefoot—more strictly it would seem Bare-leg—a name which is said to have been given to him as one of the results of the enterprise of which we have now to speak. 1093–1098. After showing himself for five years as a mighty warrior in his own peninsula, Magnus set forth to bring more western lands under his obedience. He professes friendship for England. Against England he professed to have no designs, and the little that we casually hear of him in connexion with England seems to imply friendly relations. His son Sigurd, afterwards famous as the Crusader, was the child of an English captive. Her name of Thora witnesses to her Scandinavian descent;[349] but her captivity could not have been the work of the arms of Magnus. His treasure at Lincoln. Either now or at some later time, he entrusted a great treasure, twenty thousand pounds of silver, to the keeping of a rich citizen of Lincoln,[350] a sign of the high place which was still held by the city of the Danish Lawmen, and of the connexion which its citizens still kept up with the kingdoms of the North.[351]
Harold son of Harold in his fleet. But, peaceful as might be the professions of Magnus toward England, there was one in his fleet whose presence could not fail to call up thoughts of deeds which had been done, or which might again be done, on English ground. We learn from one of the most casual of notices that Magnus had with him a man who, if the course of things had gone otherwise a generation earlier, might then himself have been the wearer of the English crown, who would at least have stood nearer to it than either the Ætheling of the blood of Cerdic or the Ætheling of the blood of Rolf. It could hardly have been without an object that the grandson of Harold the son of Sigurd brought with him the son of Harold the son of Godwine. Strange indeed was the fate of the twin sons of the doubly widowed Ealdgyth.[352] Each flashes across our sight for a moment, and only for a moment. Ulf we have seen the prisoner of the Conqueror; we have seen him sent forth by the Conqueror’s son to go in freedom and honour, but to go we know not whither.[353] And now, for once in the course of a life which must have been a chequered one, we hear the name of his brother. Some ship in the fleet of Magnus bore, as its guest or as its captain, Harold the son of Harold King of the English.[354] Whence he came, whither he went, before and after that one voyage to the shores of Britain, we know not. Grandson of Godwine, grandson of Ælfgar, begotten, but not born, to the kingship of England, the child of the widow did not see the light in the City of the Legions till his father had found his cairn upon the rocks of Hastings, perhaps his tomb before the altar at Waltham. What friendly hand saved him, when his brother came into the Conqueror’s power, we know not, any more than we know the later fortunes of his mother. But now the younger Harold came, the guest of one whose grandfather had felt the might, as his father had felt the mild-heartedness, of the elder Harold.[355] His voyage brought him not near to either the most glorious or the most mournful memories of his father. The fleet of Magnus kept aloof alike from the shores of Yorkshire and from the shores of Sussex. But the younger Harold came to look for a moment on the land where his mother had dwelled as a queen, and which his father had filled with the trophies of his conquest.[356] He came to see the British shores lined with English warriors, but to see them under the rule of the Norman leaders who had divided between them so great a part of the earldom of his mother’s house, and the elder of whom reigned as all but a king in the city of his own birth. Son and nephew of the three who died on Senlac, he saw from the Norwegian ship the fall of the son of the man who led the charge which first broke down the English palisade upon that hill of doom.[357] And then, his name once spoken, he passes away into utter darkness. Of Ulf, the knight of the Norman duke, of Harold the comrade of the Norwegian king, we have no tale to tell save that they were such.
Magnus’ designs on Ireland. One version of our tale speaks of Ireland as the main object of the expedition of Magnus, as it certainly was the object of his last expedition some years later. His alleged Irish marriage. He had, it is said, married the daughter of an Irish king, but his father-in-law had failed to carry out the marriage-contract.[358] There is nothing of this in the Norwegian account, which speaks only of a later marriage between Sigurd son of Magnus Irish marriage of his son Sigurd. and a daughter of King Murtagh.[359] But it seems clear from a comparison of the various accounts that Magnus did, at some stage of the present voyage, make an attack on Ireland; it seems reasonable therefore to suppose that Irish enterprise formed part of his scheme from the beginning.[360] His voyage among the islands. Our own narrative is more concerned with his course along the shores of our own island, in which however he seems to have barely touched Britain itself, in either its Scottish or its English regions. His exploits lay among the smaller islands of the British seas, most of which had at that moment more to do with Ireland than with either England or Scotland. It is not easy to call up from among many conflicting statements an exact picture of the state of things at the time. Dominion of Godred Cronan. In the interval between the expedition of Harold Hardrada and the expedition of his grandson, Godred the son of Harold, surnamed Cronan, he whom we have heard of at Stamford bridge,[361] 1075–1091. had raised up a considerable dominion of which Man was the centre. 1078. He ruled over Dublin and the greater part of Leinster, and over the Sudereys or Hebrides; and, if the chronicle of his own island may be believed, he drove the Scots to a singular treaty, the object of which must have been to hinder Scotland from becoming a naval power.[362] We may guess that some of the piratical adventurers of whom we have heard once or twice in our Welsh notices, as for instance in the story of Robert of Rhuddlan and again in the tale which we have just told, were in truth subjects of Godred. But the dominion of Godred was one of those powers which seem as it were casually founded, and which seldom long outlive the reign of their founder. His Irish dominion did not last even so long as his own life. Godred driven out of Dublin. 1094. After seventeen years of possession, he was driven out of Dublin by Murtagh, and in the next year he died, leaving three sons, Lagman, Harold, and Olaf, of whom Lagman succeeded to his island dominion. His death. 1095. His sons, Lagman and Harold. In the Manx version of the tale, Lagman, disturbed by a rebellion of his brother Harold, took a frightful revenge by inflicting on him the usual cruel mutilations. Then, smitten with remorse, he made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and died there.[363] The chief men of the Sudereys, hearing of his death, asked King Murtagh for a ruler during the minority of Olaf. Donald sent by Murtagh to the Sudereys. This would almost look as if Murtagh had not only driven Godred out of Ireland, but had established some kind of supremacy over Man itself. But the ruler sent, Donald by name, proved a tyrant, and was driven out.[364] Ingemund sent by Magnus. Then we are told that Magnus himself sent one Ingemund to take the crown of the Isles, that the chief men came together in Lewis to make him king but that his outrages on their wives and daughters made them change their purpose. Instead of crowning him, they burned him in his house, and slew all his followers with fire and sword.[365] Civil war in Man. Directly after, we read of a civil war in the isle of Man itself, in which the leaders of both parties were killed.[366] The Norwegian story tells us nothing of all this; it conceives Godred as still living at the time of the expedition of Magnus, and Lagman as acting under his father.[367] The Manx version, though confused in its chronology and mixed up with some legendary details, gives the more intelligible story of the two. We see a time of confusion in Man, Ireland, and the Sudereys, which the Norwegian King tries to turn to his own advantage. The slaughter of his candidate for the island crown might have been looked on as ground for war by princes more scrupulous in such matters than Magnus Barefoot.
Signs and wonders. A King of the Northmen could hardly set out on a great enterprise without signs and wonders; but the signs and wonders which marked the expedition of Magnus are of a different kind from those which marked the expedition of Harold Hardrada. Or rather, one of the two elements which we see in the tale of Harold had, in the thirty years which had passed, waxed strong enough to drive out the other. In the days of Harold the omens and visions still savour of the old times of Scandinavian heathendom. Saint Olaf indeed appears in his character of a Christian martyr, to remind us that we are reading the deeds of baptized men; but the general tone is that of the worshippers of Thor and Odin.[368] But the tale which is now told of Magnus is a mere piece of every-day mediæval hagiology. It reminds us of some of the tales which are told of William the Great and of others.[369] Legend of Magnus and Saint Olaf. Magnus, great-nephew of Saint Olaf, is seized with an irreverent longing to test the truth of the boast that the body of his martyred kinsman had not seen corruption. The body, first buried in a sandhill near Nidaros or Trondhjem, was soon, like those of our own Harold and Waltheof, translated to a worthier place in the great church of Nidaros. Its incorruption had been already proved, and in their new place the holy remains wrought wonders of healing and deliverance.[370] But now, heedless of the remonstrances of the bishop and his clergy, Magnus bade that the shrine should be opened, that he might see whether it was even as the tale went. He saw and believed; and he not only believed but trembled. He rushed out of the church, smitten with sudden fear. In the night the martyr appeared to him and gave him his choice of two forms of punishment. He must either lose his kingdom and his life within thirty days, or else he must set forth from Norway and never see the land again. His fleet. Magnus gathered together his wise men; he told them the vision, and by their advice, he chose the second alternative, by far the less terrible to a king of the seas.[371] He set forth, but it was on an errand of conquest, at the head of a fleet of a hundred and sixty ships, a number far less than that of the mighty armada which had come together at the bidding of his grandfather.[372]
The teller of this tale has either misplaced the date of the real or supposed vision, or else he has mixed up the present voyage of Magnus with a later one. Magnus certainly saw Norway again after that one of his expeditions which alone directly touches English history. Magnus at Orkney. He first sailed to the Orkneys, where the brother earls, the sons of Thorfinn and Ingebiorg, the half-brothers of Duncan of Scotland, still reigned.[373] Their reign now ended. He seizes the earls. On what ground we are not told, Paul and Erling, the allies of his grandfather, were dealt with by Magnus as enemies. They were made prisoners, and were sent to Norway, where they afterwards died.[374] He gives the earldom to Sigurd. His own young son Sigurd was established in the rule of the earldom, with a council to advise him.[375] Magnus then sailed among the Sudereys, plundering, burning, and slaying. Magnus among the Sudereys; His minstrels and sagamen boast of his doings in this way in the islands of Lewis, Uist, Skye, Mull, and Islay. But he spared—the new faith of the Northmen prevailed thus far—the holy island of Saint Columba, all whose inhabitants were freely received to his peace.[376] in Cantire; The only part of the isle of Britain itself which he seems to have touched was the long peninsula of Cantire, which might pass rather for another island than for part of the mainland, and which in truth formed a part of the insular realm. Thence, we are told, he plundered such parts of the Irish and Scottish coasts as lay within reach.[377] his dealings with Galloway. We read also in other versions that he made the men of Galloway become hewers of wood for fortresses to be raised, perhaps along their own shores.[378] His fruitless design on Ireland. We read too that at this stage he designed a more deliberately planned attack on Ireland, but that he shrank from carrying it out when he saw how strongly the Irish coasts were guarded.[379] He occupies Man. His next point was Man, which one narrator of his exploits strangely describes him as finding forsaken, and as peopling with inhabitants, from what quarter we are not told.[380] The local chronicler tells us, doubtless with far greater truth, that he landed on the island of Saint Patrick,--Holm Peel, the place of the famous castle and cathedral church—that he was pleased with the land, and built fortresses therein, meaning—so at least it was believed in Man—to make the island his own dwelling-place.[381] His designs. Man, once established as the seat of a great Northern empire, would certainly have been a standing menace to all the regions and races of the British islands. But the dominion of Magnus over Man was not handed on to any successor of his own house, and during the few years which he still lived, he did not make Man the centre of his power.
Version of Orderic. We now come near to that point in the expedition which brings it immediately within the range of our present history. The writer who gives us most detail deems the exploits of Magnus so great that he lashes himself up to his highest flight of classical rhetoric. He paints the Norwegian king as the conqueror of the Kyklades—not those Kyklades of the Ægæan which his grandfather may well enough have visited, but the other Kyklades in the great sea, lying as it were outside the world.[382] To match this unlooked-for definition of the Western islands, the winds which filled the sails of Magnus are honoured with unusual names; and, by a sad relapse into paganism Amphitritê seems to be called up as a special guardian of the English shore.[383] Of the two islands which bore the name of Mevania, both of which had obeyed the Bretwalda Eadwine, Magnus was already master of one; he now drew near to the other. He approaches Anglesey. We are told that he sent a small part of his fleet, consisting of six ships, to some unnamed point of the more strictly English shore, bearing a red shield as a sign that their purposes were peaceful.[384] Preparations for resistance. But the people of Britain of all races seem to have put little faith in the peaceful purposes of the Northmen. A vast host, French and English, presently came together from all parts of the dominions of the two Mercian earls. The meeting-place is said to have been at Dwyganwy on the peninsula opposite Anglesey, the scene of the fall of Robert of Rhuddlan.[385] The fleet off Aberlleiniog. But there can be no doubt that the scene of the tale which we have to tell lies on the opposite shore of Anglesey, and seemingly hard by the newly restored castle of Aberlleiniog. Most likely the sea then came in further over the low and marshy ground, and nearer to the castle-mound, than it does now. Both the earls were on the spot; the younger Hugh of Shrewsbury had been the first to come, and he had had to wait some days for his allies. At last the Norwegian ships were seen at sea near the coast, and the inhabitants were running to and fro for fear. By this time the forces of Hugh of Chester must have come up; but it is Hugh of Shrewsbury, the younger and more active of the pair, who plays the chief part in the story. He mounted his horse, and rode backwards and forwards along the shore, bringing his followers together, lest the invaders should land and overcome them piecemeal.[386] In his zeal he rode so near to the water as to come within reach of the advancing tide and within bow-shot of the Norwegian ships. Two archers on the ship of King Magnus spied him out, and took aim. His body was so well guarded by his coat of mail that it was his face only that supplied a mark for the archers. Of these one was King Magnus himself; the other was a warrior from Halagoland, the most northern part of the strictly Norwegian shore. The arrow shot by the King’s comrade struck and turned aside from the nose-piece of the Earl’s helmet. The shaft sent by the King’s own hand went yet more truly to its mark; it pierced the eye of Hugh and went through his head. Hugh the Proud sank, and perished amid the advancing waves.[387] He died by a stroke like that by which the elder Harold fell on Senlac; and we could almost wish that it had been the hand of the younger Harold that sent the shaft.