Edward never held up his head again, nor uttered another cheerful word after the return of Harold. From that time, until he expired, he scarcely ever ceased to reproach himself for having caused the war which hung so threateningly over England, by entrusting foreigners, instead of his own countrymen, with the affairs of his government. Day and night these thoughts beset him, and he endeavoured in vain to drive them away by religious exercises, and by adding donation upon donation to the churches and monasteries. In vain did the priests pray—in vain did he seek respite by listening to the Bible, which was read to him, for those passages of sublime and fearful grandeur which figuratively announce the coming of the Most High, to punish the nations who had rebelled against His commandments, fell upon his ear like an ominous knell. Writhing upon his death-bed, he would exclaim, "The Lord hath bent His bow—He hath prepared His sword, and hath manifested his anger." Such words struck horror into the souls of all who surrounded his bed, with the exception of Stigand, the archbishop of Canterbury, who, it is said, smiled with contempt upon those who trembled at the ravings of a sick old man. According to the authority of the Saxon Chronicle, Eadmar, Roger of Hoveden, Florence of Worcester, Simeon of Durham, and partially by William of Malmesbury, and Thierry, a careful ransacker of ancient chronicles, it is said, "However weak the mind of the aged Edward, he had the courage, before he expired, to declare to the chiefs who consulted him as to the choice of his successor, that, in his opinion, the man worthy to reign was Harold, the son of Godwin." Edward just lived to see the opening of the most eventful year in our annals—that in which England was invaded by the Normans. He expired on the eve of Epiphany, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where his shrine, though mutilated by time and rude hands, still remains standing in that edifice which his own piety caused him to rebuild, and which illness alone prevented him from being present to witness its consecration. He was long remembered by the Saxons for the body of laws he compiled, which his oppressed countrymen made their rallying cry, whenever they gained an ascendancy over their stern task-masters, the Normans. His conduct to Editha, doubtless, arose from his dislike to earl Godwin, and the persuasions of his Norman favourites, for he seems to have ever been a man of a wavering mind, and who seldom acted from an opinion of his own. With him perished the last king who was legitimately descended from the great Alfred; for although Harold was a Saxon, and displayed as much military and political genius as any (excepting Alfred) in whose veins flowed the blood of kings, he was still the son of the cowherd Godwin, a humble, but more honourable line of descent than that of William the Bastard, against whom he was so soon to measure his strength, for he was at this period busily though silently preparing for the invasion of England.
The Danes were heathens; they professed not Christianity—this Norman did; yet when England was ruled over by a king who had been elected by the voice of the whole witena-gemot, an election that had scarcely ever been disputed, this Norman bastard, this son of Robert the Devil, came over with his hired cut-throats, and armed robbers, and having drenched a once happy country with blood, he covered its smiling shores and cheerful fields with desolation and blackened ashes.
[CHAPTER XXXVII.]
ACCESSION OF HAROLD, THE SON OF GODWIN.
"You have conspired against our royal person,
Joined with an enemy proclaimed, and from his coffers
Received the golden earnest of our death;
Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,
His princes and his peers to servitude,
His subjects to oppression and contempt,
And his whole kingdom unto desolation."—Shakspere.
Harold, the last Saxon who sat upon the throne of England, was elected king by a large assembly of chiefs and nobles in London, on the evening of the very day which saw the body of Edward the Confessor consigned to the tomb. He was crowned by the archbishop Stigand, who, although labouring under the ban of the court of Rome, boldly officiated at this important ceremony. The archbishop is represented in the Bayeux tapestry as standing on the left hand of Harold, who is seated upon the throne, on the day of his coronation. Edgar Atheling, the grandson of Edmund Ironside, was still alive, and was the undoubted heir to the crown, though none of the nobles appear to have advocated his claim. Harold was honourably and legally elected by the witenagemot, which, as we have shown on several occasions, had by its unanimous consent frequently set the rightful heir aside, and placed upon the throne such a successor as was considered most competent to govern. One of our old chroniclers, Holinshed, says, "He studied by all means which way to win the people's favour, and omitted no occasion whereby he might show any token of bounteous liberality, gentleness, and courteous behaviour towards them. The grievous customs, also, and taxes which his predecessor 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." Sharon Turner wisely and cautiously observes, that "the true character of Harold cannot be judged from his actions in the emergency of competition; as he perished before the virtues of his disposition could be distinguished from those of his convenience." Harold commenced his reign by restoring things to their old Saxon forms; he affixed Saxon signatures to his deeds, instead of the Norman seal. Although he did not go so far as to banish all the Normans from his court, it is not improbable that such as were permitted to remain did so at the intercession of Edward on his death-bed. It was a Norman who bore the tidings of the death of Edward to duke William.
The duke was engaged in his park near Rouen when he received the news of Harold's accession; he was busy trying some new arrows when the messenger arrived. In a moment he became thoughtful, crossed the Seine, and hastened to his palace; when he entered the great hall, he began to pace hurriedly to and fro, occasionally fastening and untying the cord that secured his cloak, then again sitting down for a moment, and the next instant hastily arising. He was evidently staggered by Harold's boldness; not probably that he expected his aid, but at the suddenness with which he had assumed the crown. For some time no one dared speak to the "fiery duke;" all stood apart, either in silence or conversing in subdued whispers. An officer at last entered, who either being admitted to more familiarity, or possessing more courage than the rest, thus accosted the angry Norman: "My lord," said he, "why not communicate your intelligence to us? It is rumoured that the king of England is dead, and that Harold has broken his faith to you, by seizing the kingdom." "They report truly," answered the duke, sternly and briefly; "my anger is touching his death, and the injury Harold has done to me." This courtier must have been well acquainted with William's designs, and we can readily fancy the grim smile that faded over the duke's countenance when the officer had completed his harangue, which was as follows: "Chafe not at a thing that may be amended. There is no remedy for Edward's death; but for the wrong which Harold has done, there is. Yours is the right. You have good knights; strike boldly—well begun is half done."[17] No one knew this better than the duke himself; he now found that he could not obtain the kingdom by trickery—that all the trouble he had taken to muster the relics together had been labour in vain,—that fighting in a distant country was an expensive business,—so he went in to consult with his councillors—to consider the ways and means, to reckon up the cost of this great expected gain, and to see which would be the best and cheapest way of executing the few thousands of murders which it was necessary to perpetrate before he could gain possession. The evil genius of the son of Robert the Devil was equal to the emergency.
We must now return to Tostig, who, it will be remembered, when Harold advocated the cause of the oppressed Danes, fled to Flanders, and found shelter at the court of earl Baldwin, whose daughter, Judith, he had married. Earl Baldwin, it will be borne in mind, was the father of Matilda; thus, William the Norman, and Tostig, the son of Godwin, and brother to king Harold, had married two sisters. Tostig seems never to have forgiven his brother for deciding in favour of Morkar, the son of Algar,—who had supplanted him in the government of Northumbria; and no sooner did he hear that Harold was seated upon the throne of England, than he hastily left Flanders, and hurried to Normandy to urge his brother-in-law, duke William, to commence hostilities against England. Although the plans of the Norman duke were not yet matured, William had no objection to set brother against brother; thinking, no doubt, that any attack would serve to divert the attention of Harold from the main invasion, and give him a better opportunity of striking the meditated blow. William supplied Tostig with several vessels, promising him also, as soon as he was prepared, to come to his assistance. With these ships, which were insufficient for the attack, Tostig sailed into the Baltic in search of allies, promising the kingdom to any one who would assist him to conquer it. For this purpose, he sought out the king of Denmark, who was related to him on his mother's side; but the Danish sovereign, well aware that thousands of his subjects were then living peacefully and happily in England, reprimanded him sternly for attempting to invade his brother's dominions, and refused to assist him. Nothing daunted by his ill success, Tostig next steered to the coast of Norway, where Harald Hardrada, the last of the bold Scandinavian sea-kings, reigned.
Few men of that day had seen more service than the Norwegian king, Harald; he had fought endless battles, both by sea and land,—had, in turn, set out to pillage as a pirate, and to conquer and subdue with all the right and might of a sea-king. He had fought in the east, visited Constantinople, enrolled himself in a troop of his own countrymen who, by their valour and daring, had already distinguished themselves both in Asia and Africa; and, though brother to a king, he had, with his battle-axe on his shoulders, timed his footsteps to a march as he mounted guard, like a humble sentinel, at the sculptured gates of the Asiatic palaces. Having enriched himself by serving as a "soldier of fortune," he became weary of the outward grandeur and internal languor of these effeminate courts, pined for the fresh air which blew about his own bluff headlands, and longed again to feel the cold sea spray beating upon his sun-tanned cheeks, and to guide his sea-horse over the ever-moving billows. So one day he entered the palace with his battle-axe over his shoulder, and said that it was his intention to return to Norway. His resignation was received with reluctance: the Asiatic king would rather have parted with a hundred of his followers than with Harald Hardrada. The Norwegian soon found it was his intention to detain him by force; so, seizing a ship, he carried with him a beautiful princess whose affections he had won, and left the imperial palace to guard itself. Once upon the sea, Harald was in no hurry to reach home. He had still room in his ship for more treasures,—he had his beautiful and willing captive for a companion,—his ship filled with grim warriors, who, at his bidding, were ready to grapple with the most formidable dangers; so, after a long piratical cruise along the coast of Sicily, during which he had laden his vessel with treasures, he returned home, raised an army, and laid claim to the throne of Norway. He soon succeeded in obtaining a share of the dominions. To this valorous vikingr, so renowned for his perilous adventures and daring deeds, Tostig came for assistance, promising him England if he could but win it. Hardrada was easily persuaded; he loved to be where blows rained heavily, where dangers hemmed him in—he seemed to breathe more freely where the current of air was stirred by the struggle of arms,—so promised that, as soon as the ice melted and liberated his fleet, he would set sail for England.[18]