In 1039, in the first year of Griffith’s reign, he won a great victory over the Mercians at “the Ford of the Cross” by the river Severn, slaying Leofric’s brother, Edwin, “and many good men besides,” as the Saxon chronicler admits. Then there was a check to Griffith’s career of victory. In 1042 he was taken prisoner by the pagans of Dublin, but two years later we find him at the head of his forces, defeating the Danish invaders with great slaughter. A namesake and rival, Griffith, son of Rhyddarch, whose father had reigned in South Wales, stirred up rebellion against him in 1046, but he was defeated by a joint expedition of Griffith, son of Llewelyn, and Earl Sweyn, son of Godwine. This co-operation of Wales and Mercia is memorable for more reasons than one, since it was on his return from this expedition that Sweyn Godwineson sinned that great sin with the Abbess of Leominster which ruined his career and, for a time at least, blighted the fortunes of his father.
There were some smaller skirmishes between Welshmen and Englishmen, but, omitting these, we pass on to the year 1055, when a war broke out which was partly caused by the discords and rivalries of English nobles. Godwine was now dead, and Harold was all-powerful. Leofric of Mercia, Godiva’s husband, still lived, but must have been an old man, since we find his grandsons, only ten years later, men in the vigour of manhood. For some reason or other—it is difficult not to see the hand of the great rival family in the affair—a charge of treason was brought against Leofric’s son, Elfgar, who had, we may remember, received the earldom of East Anglia when it was resigned by Harold on succeeding to Wessex. A general Witenagemot was now summoned to London, before which “Earl Elfgar was charged with being a traitor to the king and to all the people of the land, and he confessed this before all who were gathered there, though the words shot forth from him against his will”. So says the Peterborough chronicler, a strong partisan of the Godwine family. The Abingdon chronicler, who disliked them, says that “The Witenagemot in London outlawed Earl Elfgar without any guilt on his part”. The Worcester chronicler vacillates and says, “almost without guilt of his”. It is hopeless now, after the lapse of eight centuries and a half, to retry a cause which excited such differences of opinion among contemporaries. What is undoubted is that Elfgar’s earldom was given to Tostig Godwineson, who had just received the great earldom of Northumberland, and that the outlawed Elfgar betook himself to Ireland, raised there a fleet of eighteen ships and sailed across to Wales, where he threw himself on the hospitality and help of Griffith ap Llewelyn. With a great force of Irishmen and Welshmen Griffith marched against Ralph, the timid Earl of Hereford. This man, the king’s nephew, had collected a large number of the militia, but, in order probably that he might follow the French fashion of fighting, had mounted them on horses, the consequence of which was that “ere a single spear had been thrown, the English people fled, forasmuch as they had horses, and a good lot of them were slain, about four or five hundred, and not one on the other side”. Thus was Hereford laid at the mercy of the invaders, among whom there were probably some of the “pagans”. They carried the city by storm, burned both it and the minster, thereby breaking the heart of the good Bishop Athelstan, its builder; slew the priests in the minster and many others besides, and carried off all the treasures.
A proclamation went throughout almost the whole of England for the gathering of a fyrd at Gloucester, and Harold took the command. But then “people began to speak about peace”: a conference was held at Billingsley in Shropshire; and, as the Worcester chronicler sarcastically remarks, “when the enemy had done all the harm that was possible, then people took counsel that Earl Elfgar should be inlawed again and receive once more his earldom”. But though peace and friendship were supposed to have been “fastened” at Billingsley, war with Wales broke out again next year (1056), apparently in part owing to the martial ardour of Harold’s mass-priest, Leofgar, who succeeded the good old Athelstan as Bishop of Hereford. This extraordinary person, to the amazement of the chronicler, had worn his moustaches all through his priesthood until he was bishop;[246] and now “he abandoned his chrism and his rood, his ghostly weapons, and took to his spear and his sword after he had become bishop and so joined the army against the Welsh king, and was there slain and his priests with him; Elfnoth the sheriff also and many other good men; and the others fled away” (June 13, 1056). A dreary campaign followed, with much waste of horses and men, but at last old Leofric, with Harold and the universal pacificator, Bishop Ealdred, succeeded in making a peace, one of the conditions of which was Griffith’s oath that he would be King Edward’s loving and loyal under-king. Two years after, however, Elfgar, now Earl of Mercia and the head of his family (old Leofric having died the year before), was again expelled and again restored by the help of his Welsh friend, co-operating apparently with a certain Magnus, who brought ships from Norway, but about whom our information is very unsatisfactory.
It was probably about this time that the union between Wales and Mercia was made yet closer by the marriage of Griffith to Aldgyth, the beautiful daughter of Elfgar. His career, however, was drawing to a close. Successful as his expeditions had generally been, his people seem to have grown tired of the constant fever of strife with their neighbours. In 1063 war again broke out, and this time Harold was determined to deal a crushing blow. A sudden march to Griffith’s castle at Rhuddlan, on the north coast of Wales, failed to accomplish the arrest of the king, but was marked by the burning of the town and all the ships in the harbour with their tackle. In May, Harold sailed from Bristol all round Wales, receiving hostages and promises of obedience from the people; and Tostig meanwhile operated with a land force in the interior of the country. On August 5 Griffith was slain by some of his own followers, “because of the war which he waged against Earl Harold,” and his head, with the prow of his ship and the ornament thereon, was brought as a trophy to the conqueror. Thus, as a Welsh chronicler says, “The man who had been hitherto invincible was now left in the glens of desolation, after taking immense spoils and after innumerable victories and taking countless treasures of gold and silver and jewels and purple vestures”.
The kingdom was handed over to two brothers of Griffith on the usual conditions of oaths of fealty, hostages and tribute: but how little such promises availed in the disordered condition of the country, was seen two years after when a hunting lodge, which Harold, hoping to have the king there as his guest, began to build at Portskewet in Monmouthshire, was destroyed (August 24, 1065) by Caradoc, son of another Griffith, who was ruling in South Wales. Nearly all the men who were engaged on the work were slain, and the ample stores there collected were carried away. “We do not know who first counselled this piece of folly” (the building of a hunting-lodge in an enemy’s country) is the dry remark of the Worcester Chronicle.
* * * * *
From these border wars we must now return to watch the course of events at Edward’s court during the closing years of his reign. The year 1064, which is an absolute blank in the Saxon Chronicles, is generally chosen for an event, undated, perplexing and mysterious, namely, Harold’s visit to the court of William the Norman, and his oath of fealty to that prince. About this oath, his subsequent breach of which figured so largely in the indictment preferred against him on the battlefield of Hastings, Norman writers have much to say, Saxon writers nothing, nor does the witness even of the Normans always agree together. It is impossible to doubt the truth of the main outlines of the story, but unfortunately it is equally impossible to fill in the details. Did Harold go to Normandy with express purpose to assure William of his nomination by Edward as the successor to his throne? Did he go thither in order to obtain the liberation of two of his kinsmen, hostages once given to the English king and transferred to the keeping of the Norman duke? Or was his visit to Rouen involuntary and accidental, the result of shipwreck and felonious detention by a lawless count? All of these versions of the story have been given, and though the last is the one which is generally received and on the whole the most probable, to speak with any certainty on the question seems impossible. All that will be attempted here will be to describe some of the chief scenes of the fatal journey as they are depicted in that all-but contemporary record, the Tapestry of Bayeux.
We see Harold taking leave of the aged king who, white-bearded, and adorned with crown and sceptre, is seated on his throne. With hawk on hand, preceded by his dogs and followed by his squire, Harold rides to the family property at Bosham and enters the church at that place to worship. He embarks, and crosses the channel with a favouring breeze filling his sails. There is no suggestion in the pictures of storm or shipwreck, though these seem to be almost required by the course of events. Whatever the cause may have been, Harold, when he lands in the territory of Guy, Count of Ponthieu, is arrested by the count’s orders, and is conducted, still with the hawk on his hand, but with dejected countenance and with spurless heels, to Beaurain, where he is imprisoned. Parleys (no doubt as to the amount of ransom demanded) follow with his captor: but at this point William of Normandy’s messengers arrive, who vigorously plead the cause of Harold and press for his liberation. The result of the negotiations and of the payment by the Norman duke of a heavy ransom (as to this the Tapestry is silent) is that Guy conducts his prisoner to William, who receives him in his palace as an honoured guest. William and Harold undertake together a campaign in Brittany under the shadow of Mont St. Michel. The soldiers are seen crossing the river Couesnon (the boundary between Normandy and Brittany), and holding high their shields above their heads as they wade the water breast-high. Some of the men are in danger of being swallowed up by the quicksands, from which they are drawn by the strong arm of the tall-statured Harold. At the close of this campaign Harold is knighted by Duke William, who with one hand places the helmet on his head, and with the other fastens the straps of his coat of mail.
Then follows at Bayeux the fateful scene of the oath-taking. The duke, attended by his courtiers (a full assembled parliament according to the poet Wace), sits on his throne, and Harold stands before him between two great coffers, which (as we know from other sources) were filled with the bones of some of the greatest saints in Normandy. He puts a hand on each coffer-lid and swears; but what is the purport of the oath? The Tapestry itself simply says that he makes his oath to Duke William. Of the Norman writers some represent him as swearing that he will marry William’s daughter, Adela (a little damsel not half his age); others, as becoming in the fullest sense of the word William’s vassal; others as undertaking to hand over to him the Castle of Dover; but almost all give us the impression that in some way or other Harold was cognisant of William’s determination to assert his claim as heir to his cousin of England, and promised to aid him therein when the occasion should arise. What burden an oath thus exacted under duress should have laid upon the conscience of the swearer, and how the contract was affected by the undoubted fact that the consent of the witan was necessary for any disposal of the crown either by Edward or by Harold, are questions of casuistry on which much has been said, but which need not be discussed here. We note, however, that the Tapestry gives no support to the often-repeated story that Harold was beguiled into taking the oath on relics of greater and more awful sanctity than he was aware of. Whether the whole episode were mere misadventure or the failure of some cunningly devised scheme on Harold’s part, one cannot but marvel at the lightness of heart with which he threw himself into the power of the most dangerous of all his rivals, at a time when he needed all his vigilance and all his ability in order to secure the splendid prize for which he had so long been labouring.[247]
The year following that usually assigned to Harold’s visit to Normandy (1065) witnessed another revolution in the fortunes of one member of the Godwine family. Tostig, Earl of Northumbria, was, as has been said, an especial favourite at court, and seems to have been the best beloved brother of the royal “Lady,” Edith. He was, not, however, by any means equally popular with the men of his own Northumbrian earldom, who seem to have complained both of his frequent absences and of the stern, almost bloodthirsty, character of his government when he did appear among them. There was a general rising of all the thegns in Yorkshire and Northumberland; they decreed in some tumultuous assembly the outlawry of their earl, then hunting in Wiltshire with the king; they massacred all the men of his household, whether English or Danes, upon whom they could lay their hands, and seized his weapons stored up in the arsenal at York, his gold, his silver and all his money about which they could obtain information. These massacres and robberies seem to have taken place both at York and Lincoln; and the insurgent thegns then proceeded to elect a new earl to reign over them. This was the young Morkere, grandson of Leofric. Elfgar, the twice-banished Earl of Mercia, was now dead; his eldest son, Edwin, had succeeded him in Mercia, and to Edwin’s younger brother, Morkere, was given the splendid but difficult office which had been wrested from Tostig. In support of their rebellious acts—for they were nothing less—the northern thegns marched to Northampton, where Morkere was joined by his brother, Edwin, at the head of the Mercian fyrd and—ominous conjunction—-of many Welsh auxiliaries. Once more civil war seemed inevitable, but the good offices of Harold were sought for as mediator between the insurgents and the king. He failed, however, to reconcile the Northerners and his brother; and after two gemots held at Northampton and at Oxford the negotiations ended in an entire surrender to all the demands of the rebels (October 28, 1065). The outlawed Tostig went over sea with his wife and followers to his brother-in-law, Count Baldwin; the grant of his earldom was confirmed to Morkere, and the insurgent army at last returned northward, not, however, till they had so wasted Northamptonshire with fire and sword and carried off such quantities of cattle that it was years before that county recovered from their ravages.