was too young to be chief of a party, and was considered by Edward too powerless to be nominated heir. He, therefore, again secretly appointed his Norman cousin his successor, and gratified his hatred to the family of Godwin by elevating a potentate to be their master whose ferocity would revenge the indignities they had cast upon himself.. Harold, however, went on as if unconscious of the king's dislike. He reduced the rebellious Welsh to order, put the land in a state of defence against hostile attempts-for the Danes had again become threatening on the eastern coast— and from policy and natural inclination encouraged a strong national feeling, by which he hoped to profit when the struggle with his foreign rival began. To keep this patriotic sentiment entire, he went so far as to side with the men of Northumberland against the cruelties and oppressions of his brother Tostig. First placing himself at the head of an army which could have forced them to submit, he listened to their complaints, and on finding they were well-founded, condemned Tostig to the loss of his earldom, and conferred it on the son of Alfgar, whose earldom of Mercia was, next to Harold's own possessions, the most powerful in the kingdom. The Northumbrians, instead of fighting the great justiciary of the king, found him a just and gentle judge. He won over the hearts of a great county, and lost the affection and aid of an ambitious and unpatriotic brother. But his regard for England roused various enmities abroad. William, who had a genius for hating, hated him with all his might. In one of his treaties with Edward, the English earl had given two of his nephews as hostages. Edward had sent them for safe custody to William, and William kept them long after the articles of the treaty were executed. Harold went across to negotiate for the release of his relations, and was forced by a storm into the mouth of the Somme. Here he was seized as lawful prize by the Count de Ponthieu, the small potentate on whose territory he had landed. He was A.D. 1042-1066.] RISE OF HAROLD. 87 stript of all he had, and thrown into a dungeon to expedite his ransom. William saw his advantage in this incident, and paid the sum required. Harold proceeded to Rouen to thank his benefactor, and the great English earl found himself the guest of his hated rival. That rival affected the greatest kindness, offered him his sister Adele in marriage, and having confidentially told him of Edward's will in his favour, asked him to promise his assistance when the throne was vacant, and trust to his gratitude for a reward. Harold looked round, and saw no means of escape. He promised all that was asked, believing, probably, that an extorted promise has no validity; and was even persuaded one day to swear that he would be true liegeman to the duke. An ordinary oath was not thought much of while it depended on the mere honour and truthfulness of the swearer, but William prepared a sanction for the engagement of which Harold little dreamed. When he had said the words of the oath, a cloth was removed from the table over which he had stretched his hand, and a basket of holy bones and other relics was displayed. An oath over the remains of saints and martyrs was of holier binding power than any other, and Harold was perplexed in mind. Perhaps he thought of applying to the Church for a dispensation, but he and his nation were so unpopular at Rome that he had nothing to expect from the friendship of the Pope. The pontiffs had for a long time been greatly irritated by the behaviour of the English clergy. Stigand of Canterbury, elected by his priests and people when the Norman intruder was expelled in 1052, had applied for the pallium, the sign of his episcopal induction, to the then occupant of the papal chair. This was Benedict the Tenth, who was about to ratify the English nomination in the usual manner, when the emperor, who still considered the popes his servants, dismissed the Roman pontiff, as being appointed without his sanction, and installed a dependent of his own in his place. Nicholas the Second reversed all the aets of his predecessor, and refused the canonical institution to the English primate. Stigand therefore made up his mind to do without it, and fulfilled all the duties of his office without troubling himself any farther about the successor of St. Peter and nominee of the German Cæsar. But William had more wisdom. He stationed his favourite theologian, Lanfranc, the best scholar and most eloquent teacher of the age, at the apostolical court; and in a very short time there was no more obedient subject or warm supporter of the Duke of Normandy than Nicholas the Second of Rome. § 23. Meantime Edward, the king-monk, softened towards his countrymen as his end approached. Perhaps he saw the perils that hung over them from the violence and harshness of his Norman kinsman. He saw Harold's character rising every day, and on his death-bed got so far over his repugnance to the son of Godwin, that he named him to the bystanders as the person to whom he left the crown. This was so natural a course of proceeding, that his appointment was ratified at once by the national voice; and Harold, on the day after Edward's death, was publicly declared king of England, and crowned in Westminster Abbey by Stigand, the Archbishop, who at that very moment was at open enmity with the Pope. There could be no real grief for the loss of so useless a sovereign as Edward, but it was felt that he had acted as a defence against the storm which all men saw was about to burst upon the realm; and when the English spirit of ecclesiastical independence was exchanged in a few years for the slavish submission which characterized the early Norman occupation, the follies and even the faults of the last legitimate king were lost in the remembrance of his monastic virtues. His indolence, cowardice, and neglect of all the duties of his station were elevated by priestly adulation into almost supernatural graces. Popular affection, as we shall see in a future page, in the same manner clothed the son of Cerdic with political virtues to which he could make no pretence. Statements were pertinaciously made within a year of his death of the amount of English liberties under his administration; and A.D. 1066.] DEATH OF EDWARD. 89 documents, at a later period called the Laws of King Edward, were forged by patriotic antiquarians, professing to contain the Anglo-Saxon laws and customs of his time, and deriving a more binding authority by being published in his name. The greatness of his ancestors and the cruelty of his successors were equally favourable to the reputation of one of the weakest of our ante-Norman kings; and while, on the one side, he escaped from the intrusive clergy the title of Saint, and from the English, his contemporaries, the less complimentary nickname of the Frivolous or Simple (as the blunt simplicity of the Gauls would have called him), he is still known in our almanacs as Edward the Confessor, as if his peaceable demise before the days of trial had been the only cause of his not earning the martyr's crown on behalf of the Romish Church, to which the amalgamated peoples had become equally devoted. C A.D. LANDMARKS OF CHRONOLOGY. 838. Ethelwolf, son of Egbert, assumes /890. Alfred divides the kingdom into the Danes, Scotch, and Welsh. 951. Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury. A.D. 991. The first land-tax in England; and figures of arithmetic first introduced in England. 993-1008. Repeated invasions of the Danes. Ethelred orders a general massacre, when their countrymen invade the kingdom, and after levying heavy contributions, subdue a great portion of the kingdom. 1013. Sweyn, the Danish sovereign, invades England, and after repeated victories is proclaimed king. 1014. Canute, son of Sweyn, proclaimed king. 1028-1033. Canute takes the title of King of England, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and acquires the surname of Great. 1042. Edward the Confessor succeeds to the crown. 1049. Banishment of Earl Godwin, and the forfeiture of his estates. 960. Dunstan made Archbishop of 1051. William, Duke of Normandy, Canterbury. 975-8. Controversies between the re gular and the secular clergy visits King Edward, and receives a promise that the crown should descend to him. 1066. Harold, son of Earl Godwin, elected to the crown. 90 BOOK V. THE NORMAN OCCUPATION. CHAPTER I. WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. FROM A.D. 1066 To A.D. 1087. CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. FRANCE-Philip I., the Fair. SCOTLAND.-Malcolm III. (Canmore). POPES.-Alexander II.; Gregory VII. (Hildebrand); Victor III. § 1. Retrospect of the Saxon rule, and of the general condition of society. 2. Existing remains of the Saxon period.-§ 3. Etymology of the names of places.-§ 4. Accession of HAROLD, and claims of WILLIAM of Normandy, who assembles his fleets and armies.— § 5. Harold's preparations for resisting the Norman invasion. Invasion of Tostig and Harold Hardrada. Battle of Stamford Bridge.§ 6. The Norman invasion. William lands near Pevensey Castle. Anecdotes of the Saxons and Normans.-§ 7. Battle of Hastings. Death of Harold. -§ 8. Reflections on the battle and its consequences. Coronation of William. Massacre attending it.§ 9. William's arrival in London, and his proceedings for subduing and reconciling the people.-§ 10. The widow of Godwin and mother of Harold takes refuge in Exeter. Siege of Exeter, and flight of Harold's mother.-§ 11. Resistance made to the Normans, but without combination or military skill. Their devastating career and ferocious cruelty. Resistance of the Saxon clergy.-§ 12. Further inundations of the Normans. § 13. Introduction of the feudal system. The whole kingdom divided among the Conqueror's retainers in manors-in-chief. Ceremony of receiving the feud.-Amount of a knight's fee. Number of knights' fees.-§ 14. Privileges of the Norman nobility, and their abuses.-§ 15. The general survey of England begun, called Doomsday. The nobility and serfs.§ 16. King William's military array. Despotism of the times.§ 17. War with France, and death of William. His character. § 1. THE Romanized Briton, the Saxon, and the Dane had now settled down into an undistinguishable people throughout |