Book: Harold, Book 3.
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Harold, Book 3.
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BOOK III.
THE HOUSE OF GODWIN.
CHAPTER I.
And all went to the desire of Duke William the Norman. With one hand
he curbed his proud vassals, and drove back his fierce foes. With the
other, he led to the altar Matilda, the maid of Flanders; and all
happened as Lanfranc had foretold. William's most formidable enemy,
the King of France, ceased to conspire against his new kinsman; and
the neighbouring princes said, "The Bastard hath become one of us
since he placed by his side the descendant of Charlemagne." And
Mauger, Archbishop of Rouen, excommunicated the Duke and his bride,
and the ban fell idle; for Lanfranc sent from Rome the Pope's
dispensation and blessing [69], conditionally only that bride and
bridegroom founded each a church. And Mauger was summoned before the
synod, and accused of unclerical crimes; and they deposed him from his
state, and took from him abbacies and sees. And England every day
waxed more and more Norman; and Edward grew more feeble and infirm,
and there seemed not a barrier between the Norman Duke and the English
throne, when suddenly the wind blew in the halls of heaven, and filled
the sails of Harold the Earl.
And his ships came to the mouth of the Severn. And the people of
Somerset and Devon, a mixed and mainly a Celtic race, who bore small
love to the Saxons, drew together against him, and he put them to
flight. [70]
Meanwhile, Godwin and his sons Sweyn, Tostig, and Gurth, who had taken
refuge in that very Flanders from which William the Duke had won his
bride,--(for Tostig had wed, previously, the sister of Matilda, the
rose of Flanders; and Count Baldwin had, for his sons-in-law, both
Tostig and William,)--meanwhile, I say, these, not holpen by the Count
Baldwin, but helping themselves, lay at Bruges, ready to join Harold
the Earl. And Edward, advised of this from the anxious Norman, caused
forty ships [71] to be equipped, and put them under command of Rolf,
Earl of Hereford. The ships lay at Sandwich in wait for Godwin. But
the old Earl got from them, and landed quietly on the southern coast.
And the fort of Hastings opened to his coming with a shout from its
armed men.
All the boatmen, all the mariners, far and near, thronged to him, with
sail and with shield, with sword and with oar. All Kent (the foster-
mother of the Saxons) sent forth the cry, "Life or death with Earl
Godwin." [72] Fast over the length and breadth of the land, went the
bodes [73] and riders of the Earl; and hosts, with one voice, answered
the cry of the children of Horsa, "Life or death with Earl Godwin."
And the ships of King Edward, in dismay, turned flag and prow to
London, and the fleet of Harold sailed on. So the old Earl met his
young son on the deck of a war-ship, that had once borne the Raven of
the Dane.
Swelled and gathering sailed the armament of the English men. Slow up
the Thames it sailed, and on either shore marched tumultuous the
swarming multitudes. And King Edward sent after more help, but it
came up very late. So the fleet of the Earl nearly faced the Julliet
Keape of London, and abode at Southwark till the flood-tide came up.
When he had mustered his host, then came the flood tide. [74]
CHAPTER II.
King Edward sate, not on his throne, but on a chair of state, in the
presence-chamber of his palace of Westminster. His diadem, with the
three zimmes shaped into a triple trefoil [75] on his brow, his
sceptre in his right hand. His royal robe, tight to the throat, with
a broad band of gold, flowed to his feet; and at the fold gathered
round the left knee, where now the kings of England wear the badge of
St. George, was embroidered a simple cross [76]. In that chamber met
the thegns and proceres of his realm; but not they alone. No national
Witan there assembled, but a council of war, composed at least one
third part of Normans--counts, knights, prelates, and abbots of high
degree.
And King Edward looked a king! The habitual lethargic meekness had
vanished from his face, and the large crown threw a shadow, like a
frown, over his brow. His spirit seemed to have risen from the weight
it took from the sluggish blood of his father, Ethelred the Unready,
and to have remounted to the brighter and earlier sources of ancestral
heroes. Worthy in that hour he seemed to boast the blood and wield
the sceptre of Athelstan and Alfred. [77]
Thus spoke the King:
"Right worthy and beloved, my ealdermen, earls, and thegns of England;
noble and familiar, my friends and guests, counts and chevaliers of
Normandy, my mother's land; and you, our spiritual chiefs, above all
ties of birth and country, Christendom your common appanage, and from
Heaven your seignories and fiefs,--hear the words of Edward, the King
of England under grace of the Most High. The rebels are in our river;
open yonder lattice, and you will see the piled shields glittering
from their barks, and hear the hum of their hosts. Not a bow has yet
been drawn, not a sword left its sheath; yet on the opposite side of
the river are our fleets of forty sail--along the strand, between our
palace and the gates of London, are arrayed our armies. And this
pause because Godwin the traitor hath demanded truce and his nuncius
waits without. Are ye willing that we should hear the message? or
would ye rather that we dismiss the messenger unheard, and pass at
once, to rank and to sail, the war-cry of a Christian king, 'Holy
Crosse and our Lady!'"
The King ceased, his left hand grasping firm the leopard head carved
on his throne, and his sceptre untrembling in his lifted hand.
A murmur of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, the war-cry of the Normans, was
heard amongst the stranger-knights of the audience; but haughty and
arrogant as those strangers were, no one presumed to take precedence,
in England's danger, of men English born.
Slowly then rose Alred, Bishop of Winchester, the worthiest prelate in
all the land. [78]
"Kingly son," said the bishop, "evil is the strife between men of the
same blood and lineage, nor justified but by extremes, which have not
yet been made clear to us. And ill would it sound throughout England
were it said that the King's council gave, perchance, his city of
London to sword and fire, and rent his land in twain, when a word in
season might have disbanded yon armies, and given to your throne a
submissive subject, where now you are menaced by a formidable rebel.
Wherefore, I say, admit the nuncius."
Scarcely had Alred resumed his seat, before Robert the Norman prelate
of Canterbury started up,--a man, it was said, of worldly learning--
and exclaimed:
"To admit the messenger is to approve the treason. I do beseech the
King to consult only his own royal heart and royal honour. Reflect--
each moment of delay swells the rebel hosts, strengthens their cause;
of each moment they avail themselves to allure to their side the
misguided citizens. Delay but proves our own weakness; a king's name
is a tower of strength, but only when fortified by a king's authority.
Give the signal for--war I call it not--no--for chastisement and
justice."
"As speaks my brother of Canterbury, speak I," said William, Bishop of
London, another Norman.
But then there rose up a form at whose rising all murmurs were hushed.
Grey and vast, as some image of a gone and mightier age towered over
all, Siward, the son of Beorn, the great Earl of Northumbria.
"We have naught to do with the Normans. Were they on the river, and
our countrymen, Dane or Saxon, alone in this hall, small doubt of the
King's choice, and niddering were the man who spoke of peace; but when
Norman advises the dwellers of England to go forth and slay each
other, no sword of mine shall be drawn at his hest. Who shall say that
Siward of the Strong Arm, the grandson of the Berserker, ever turned
from a foe? The foe, son of Ethelred, sits in these halls; I fight
thy battles when I say Nay to the Norman! Brothers-in-arms of the
kindred race and common tongue, Dane and Saxon long intermingled,
proud alike of Canute the glorious and Alfred the wise, ye will hear
the man whom Godwin, our countryman, sends to us; he at least will
speak our tongue, and he knows our laws. If the demand he delivers be
just, such as a king should grant, and our Witan should hear, woe to
him who refuses; if unjust be the demand, shame to him who accedes.
Warrior sends to warrior, countryman to countryman; hear we as
countrymen, and judge as warriors. I have said."
The utmost excitement and agitation followed the speech of Siward,--
unanimous applause from the Saxons, even those who in times of peace
were most under the Norman contagion; but no words can paint the wrath
and scorn of the Normans. They spoke loud and many at a time; the
greatest disorder prevailed. But the majority being English, there
could be no doubt as to the decision; and Edward, to whom the
emergence gave both a dignity and presence of mind rare to him,
resolved to terminate the dispute at once. He stretched forth his
sceptre, and motioning to his chamberlain, bade him introduce the
nuncius. [79]
A blank disappointment, not unmixed with apprehensive terror,
succeeded the turbulent excitement of the Normans; for well they knew
that the consequences, if not condition, of negotiations, would be
their own downfall and banishment at the least;--happy, it might be,
to escape massacre at the hands of the exasperated multitude.
The door at the end of the room opened, and the nuncius appeared. He
was a sturdy, broad-shouldered man, of middle age, and in the long
loose garb originally national with the Saxon, though then little in
vogue; his beard thick and fair, his eyes grey and calm--a chief of
Kent, where all the prejudices of his race were strongest, and whose
yeomanry claimed in war the hereditary right to be placed in the front
of battle.
He made his manly but deferential salutation to the august council as
he approached; and, pausing midway between the throne and door, he
fell on his knees without thought of shame, for the King to whom he
knelt was the descendant of Woden, and the heir of Hengist. At a sign
and a brief word from the King, still on his knees, Vebba, the
Kentman, spoke.
"To Edward, son of Ethelred, his most gracious king and lord, Godwin,
son of Wolnoth, sends faithful and humble greeting, by Vebba, the
thegn-born. He prays the King to hear him in kindness, and judge of
him with mercy. Not against the King comes he hither with ships and
arms; but against those only who would stand between the King's heart
and the subject's: those who have divided a house against itself, and
parted son and father, man and wife."
At those last words Edward's sceptre trembled in this hand, and his
face grew almost stern.
"Of the King, Godwin but prays with all submiss and earnest prayer, to
reverse the unrighteous outlawry against him and his; to restore him
and his sons their just possessions and well-won honours; and, more
than all, to replace them where they have sought by loving service not
unworthily to stand, in the grace of their born lord and in the van of
those who would uphold the laws and liberties of England. This done--
the ships sail back to their haven; the thegn seeks his homestead and
the ceorl returns to the plough; for with Godwin are no strangers; and
his force is but the love of his countrymen."
"Hast thou said?" quoth the King.
"I have said."
"Retire, and await our answer."
The Thegn of Kent was then led back into an ante-room, in which, armed
from head to heel in ring-mail, were several Normans whose youth or
station did not admit them into the council, but still of no mean
interest in the discussion, from the lands and possessions they had
already contrived to gripe out of the demesnes of the exiles;--burning
for battle and eager for the word. Amongst these was Mallet de
Graville.
The Norman valour of this young knight was, as we have seen, guided by
Norman intelligence; and he had not disdained, since William's
departure, to study the tongue of the country in which he hoped to
exchange his mortgaged tower on the Seine, for some fair barony on the
Humber or the Thames.
While the rest of his proud countrymen stood aloof, with eyes of
silent scorn, from the homely nuncius, Mallet approached him with
courteous bearing, and said in Saxon:
"May I crave to know the issue of thy message from the reb--that is
from the doughty Earl?"
"I wait to learn it," said Vebba, bluffly.
"They heard thee throughout, then?"
"Throughout."
"Friendly Sir," said the Sire de Graville, seeking to subdue the tone
of irony habitual to him, and acquired, perhaps, from his maternal
ancestry, the Franks. "Friendly and peace-making Sir, dare I so far
venture to intrude on the secrets of thy mission as to ask if Godwin
demands, among other reasonable items, the head of thy humble servant
--not by name indeed, for my name is as yet unknown to him--but as one
of the unhappy class called Normans?"
"Had Earl Godwin," returned the nuncius, "thought fit to treat for
peace by asking vengeance, he would have chosen another spokesman.
The Earl asks but his own; and thy head is not, I trow, a part of his
goods and chattels."
"That is comforting," said Mallet. "Marry, I thank thee, Sir Saxon;
and thou speakest like a brave man and an honest. And if we fall to
blows, as I suspect we shall, I should deem it a favour of our Lady
the Virgin if she send thee across my way. Next to a fair friend I
love a bold foe."
Vebba smiled, for he liked the sentiment, and the tone and air of the
young knight pleased his rough mind, despite his prejudices against
the stranger.
Encouraged by the smile, Mallet seated himself on the corner of the
long table that skirted the room, and with a debonnair gesture invited
Vebba to do the same; then looking at him gravely, he resumed:
"So frank and courteous thou art, Sir Envoy, that I yet intrude on
thee my ignorant and curious questions."
"Speak out, Norman."
"How comes it, then, that you English so love this Earl Godwin?--Still
more, why think you it right and proper that King Edward should love
him too? It is a question I have often asked, and to which I am not
likely in these halls to get answer satisfactory. If I know aught of
your troublous history, this same Earl has changed sides oft eno';
first for the Saxon, then for Canute the Dane--Canute dies, and your
friend takes up arms for the Saxon again. He yields to the advice of
your Witan, and sides with Hardicanute and Harold, the Danes--a
letter, nathless, is written as from Emma, the mother to the young
Saxon princes, Edward and Alfred, inviting them over to England, and
promising aid; the saints protect Edward, who continues to say aves in
Normandy--Alfred comes over, Earl Godwin meets him, and, unless
belied, does him homage, and swears to him faith. Nay, listen yet.
This Godwin, whom ye love so, then leads Alfred and his train into the
ville of Guildford, I think ye call it,--fair quarters enow. At the
dead of the night rush in King Harold's men, seize prince and
follower, six hundred men in all; and next morning, saving only every
tenth man, they are tortured and put to death. The prince is born off
to London, and shortly afterwards his eyes are torn out in the Islet
of Ely, and he dies of the anguish! That ye should love Earl Godwin
withal may be strange, but yet possible. But is it possible, cher
Envoy, for the King to love the man who thus betrayed his brother to
the shambles?"
"All this is a Norman fable," said the Thegn of Kent, with a disturbed
visage; "and Godwin cleared himself on oath of all share in the foul
murder of Alfred."
"The oath, I have heard, was backed," said the knight drily, "by a
present to Hardicanute, who after the death of King Harold resolved to
avenge the black butchery; a present, I say, of a gilt ship, manned by
fourscore warriors with gold-hilted swords, and gilt helms.--But let
this pass."
"Let it pass," echoed Vebba with a sigh. "Bloody were those times,
and unholy their secrets."
"Yet answer me still, why love you Earl Godwin? He hath changed sides
from party to party, and in each change won lordships and lands. He
is ambitious and grasping, ye all allow; for the ballads sung in your
streets liken him to the thorn and the bramble, at which the sheep
leaves his wool. He is haughty and overbearing. Tell me, O Saxon,
frank Saxon, why you love Godwin the Earl? Fain would I know; for,
please the saints (and you and your Earl so permitting), I mean to
live and die in this merrie England; and it would be pleasant to learn
that I have but to do as Earl Godwin, in order to win love from the
English."
The stout Vebba looked perplexed; but after stroking his beard
thoughtfully, he answered thus:
"Though of Kent, and therefore in his earldom, I am not one of
Godwin's especial party; for that reason was I chosen his bode. Those
who are under him doubtless love a chief liberal to give and strong to
protect. The old age of a great leader gathers reverence, as an oak
gathers moss. But to me, and those like me, living peaceful at home,
shunning courts, and tempting not broils, Godwin the man is not dear--
it is Godwin the thing."
"Though I do my best to know your language," said the knight, "ye have
phrases that might puzzle King Solomon. What meanest thou by 'Godwin
the thing'?"
"That which to us Godwin only seems to uphold. We love justice;
whatever his offences, Godwin was banished unjustly. We love our
laws; Godwin was dishonoured by maintaining them. We love England,
and are devoured by strangers; Godwin's cause is England's, and--
stranger, forgive me for not concluding."
Then examining the young Norman with a look of rough compassion, he
laid his large hand upon the knight's shoulder and whispered:
"Take my advice--and fly."
"Fly!" said De Graville, reddening. "Is it to fly, think you, that I
have put on my mail, and girded my sword?"
"Vain--vain! Wasps are fierce, but the swarm is doomed when the straw
is kindled. I tell you this--fly in time, and you are safe; but let
the King be so misguided as to count on arms, and strive against yon
multitude, and verily before nightfall not one Norman will be found
alive within ten miles of the city. Look to it, youth! Perhaps thou
hast a mother--let her not mourn a son!"
Before the Norman could shape into Saxon sufficiently polite and
courtly his profound and indignant disdain of the counsel, his sense
of the impertinence with which his shoulder had been profaned, and his
mother's son had been warned, the nuncius was again summoned into the
presence-chamber. Nor did he return into the ante-room, but conducted
forthwith from the council--his brief answer received--to the stairs
of the palace, he reached the boat in which he had come, and was rowed
back to the ship that held the Earl and his sons.
Now this was the manoeuvre of Godwin's array. His vessels having
passed London Bridge, had rested awhile on the banks of the Southward
suburb (Suth-weorde)--since called Southwark--and the King's ships lay
to the north; but the fleet of the Earl's, after a brief halt, veered
majestically round, and coming close to the palace of Westminster,
inclined northward, as if to hem the King's ships. Meanwhile the land
forces drew up close to the Strand, almost within bow-shot of the
King's troops, that kept the ground inland; thus Vebba saw before him,
so near as scarcely to be distinguished from each other, on the river
the rival fleets, on the shore the rival armaments.
High above all the vessels towered the majestic bark, or aesca, that
had borne Harold from the Irish shores. Its fashion was that of the
ancient sea-kings, to one of whom it had belonged. Its curved and
mighty prow, richly gilded, stood out far above the waves: the prow,
the head of the sea-snake; the stern its spire; head and spire alike
glittering in the sun.
The boat drew up to the lofty side of the vessel, a ladder was
lowered, the nuncius ascended lightly and stood on deck. At the
farther end grouped the sailors, few in number, and at respectful
distance from the Earl and his sons.
Godwin himself was but half armed. His head was bare, nor had he
other weapon of offence than the gilt battle-axe of the Danes--weapon
as much of office as of war; but his broad breast was covered with the
ring mail of the time. His stature was lower than that of any of his
sons; nor did his form exhibit greater physical strength than that of
a man, well shaped, robust, and deep of chest, who still preserved in
age the pith and sinew of mature manhood. Neither, indeed, did legend
or fame ascribe to that eminent personage those romantic achievements,
those feats of purely animal prowess, which distinguished his rival,
Siward. Brave he was, but brave as a leader; those faculties in which
he appears to have excelled all his contemporaries, were more
analogous to the requisites of success in civilised times, than those
which won renown of old. And perhaps England was the only country
then in Europe which could have given to those faculties their fitting
career. He possessed essentially the arts of party; he knew how to
deal with vast masses of mankind; he could carry along with his
interests the fervid heart of the multitude; he had in the highest
degree that gift, useless in most other lands--in all lands where
popular assemblies do not exist--the gift of popular eloquence. Ages
elapsed, after the Norman conquest, ere eloquence again became a power
in England. [80]
But like all men renowned for eloquence, he went with the popular
feeling of his times; he embodied its passions, its prejudices--but
also that keen sense of self-interest, which is the invariable
characteristic of a multitude. He was the sense of the commonalty
carried to its highest degree. Whatever the faults, it may be the
crimes, of a career singularly prosperous and splendid, amidst events
the darkest and most terrible,--shining with a steady light across the
thunder-clouds,--he was never accused of cruelty or outrage to the
mass of the people. English, emphatically, the English deemed him;
and this not the less that in his youth he had sided with Canute, and
owed his fortunes to that king; for so intermixed were Danes and
Saxons in England, that the agreement which had given to Canute one
half the kingdom had been received with general applause; and the
earlier severities of that great prince had been so redeemed in his
later years by wisdom and mildness--so, even in the worst period of
his reign, relieved by extraordinary personal affability, and so lost
now in men's memories by pride in his power and fame,--that Canute had
left behind him a beloved and honoured name [81], and Godwin was the
more esteemed as the chosen counsellor of that popular prince. At his
death, Godwin was known to have wished, and even armed, for the
restoration of the Saxon line; and only yielded to the determination
of the Witan, no doubt acted upon by the popular opinion. Of one dark
crime he was suspected, and, despite his oath to the contrary, and the
formal acquittal of the national council, doubt of his guilt rested
then, as it rests still, upon his name; viz., the perfidious surrender
of Alfred, Edward's murdered brother.
But time had passed over the dismal tragedy; and there was an
instinctive and prophetic feeling throughout the English nation, that
with the House of Godwin was identified the cause of the English
people. Everything in this man's aspect served to plead in his
favour. His ample brows were calm with benignity and thought; his
large dark blue eyes were serene and mild, though their expression,
when examined, was close and inscrutable. His mien was singularly
noble, but wholly without formality or affected state; and though
haughtiness and arrogance were largely attributed to him, they could
be found only in his deeds, not manner--plain, familiar, kindly to all
men, his heart seemed as open to the service of his countrymen as his
hospitable door to their wants.
Behind him stood the stateliest group of sons that ever filled with
pride a father's eye. Each strikingly distinguished from the other,
all remarkable for beauty of countenance and strength of frame.
Sweyn, the eldest [82], had the dark hues of his mother the Dane: a
wild and mournful majesty sat upon features aquiline and regular, but
wasted by grief or passion; raven locks, glossy even in neglect, fell
half over eyes hollow in their sockets, but bright, though with
troubled fire. Over his shoulder he bore his mighty axe. His form,
spare, but of immense power, was sheathed in mail, and he leant on his
great pointed Danish shield. At his feet sate his young son Haco, a
boy with a countenance preternaturally thoughtful for his years, which
were yet those of childhood.
Next to him stood the most dreaded and ruthless of the sons of Godwin
--he, fated to become to the Saxon what Julian was to the Goth. With
his arms folded on his breast stood Tostig; his face was beautiful as
a Greek's, in all save the forehead, which was low and lowering.
Sleek and trim were his bright chestnut locks; and his arms were
damascened with silver, for he was one who loved the pomp and luxury
of war.