It was nearly dawn when the second messenger arrived, and I took him straight to the King who still sat at the supper table. We could see bad news in his face, before he opened his mouth. But as his tale proceeded we were shocked at the extent of the disaster.
‘We were ready, arrayed in our ranks, when the enemy came into sight. But the Earl had commanded us all to stay on our horse. When the trumpets sounded the horses began to gallop and our men could not control them. Most of the army had ridden off the field before a blow had been struck.’
‘Wait a moment,’ the King interrupted. ‘Who are you? Whom do you serve? Where were you in this army?’
‘I am Wulf, a free thane. But because I have commended myself to the Bishop of Hereford I fought with the levy of the minster. My horse ran away with the rest of them, though presently I was able to stop it.’
‘What became of the Earl and his Normans? They are trained to fight mounted. Their horses would not run away.’
‘They left the field in good order, when they saw our army scattered. They did not return to the city. I think they hid themselves in Richard’s Castle. No one in Hereford saw them after the rout.’
‘A good knight would have charged with his household alone,’ said the King aside in French. ‘That’s the end of Ralph as a warleader. Well, go on, Wulf,’ he added in English.
‘By the time the Welsh reached the city we had got rid of our horses. We stood to defend the hedges and gardens. But the wind blew from the west, and as the houses burned round us we were driven back. We hoped that the minster would not burn, since its walls are stone. When the rest fled the Bishop’s men rallied to defend it, and the monks came out armed to join us. Presently the Welsh carried the west door, and I think the monks were all killed. When I swam the Wye the Welsh held all the town. They were binding the burgesses to sell them as slaves. On the far side of the river I found old Bishop Athelstan. Because I was the last man to get away unhurt from the sack he gave me a horse and sent me to tell the King.’
‘I am glad to know the Bishop is safe. Are you sure the minster was destroyed?’
‘Yes, my lord. When I looked back the whole roof was burning. With the Welsh were Vikings, who know how to destroy stone buildings. Welshmen don’t like cities.’
‘You have done your duty. Go and rest. Treasurer, give this man a bag of silver. Chancellor, two letters must leave at once. Write to Bishop Athelstan, offering him the hospitality of the King’s hall. Write to Earl Harold, commanding him to march immediately against the Welsh with the whole levy of Wessex. That’s the best we can do. Now, if my chaplain is ready, I shall go to hear Mass.’
Suddenly the King was an old man. He shuffled to his chapel, bent and stumbling. I knew what had broken his spirit; for a second time his nephew had shown himself a coward, and the only man who could restore the situation was the hated Earl Harold.
Harold restored the situation with brisk efficiency. He gathered an army from all England; even Northumbria sent a contingent, now that it was governed by a Godwinsson. At the beginning of winter this great host invaded south Wales, and King Griffith dared not meet it in the field. By the time the court moved to Gloucester for the Christmas crownwearing a peace had been arranged.
‘And I must ratify what the Earl has promised in my name,’ the King complained to me on the evening he heard the news. ‘Alfgar must be forgiven and restored to his Earldom. Harold easily forgives a traitor who led savage Vikings to ravage his own countrymen, for Harold himself did it not long ago. My nephew Ralph, who has always been loyal to me, loses his Earldom; of course it goes to Harold. I can’t complain of that, I suppose, since Ralph has shown himself utterly incompetent. But Alfgar the traitor is not punished at all. He paid off his Vikings quite brazenly with the plunder of Hereford, and they have gone back to Dublin rich and happy. That means, of course, that they will gladly follow the next Earl who chooses to revolt against me.
‘This is the end of the united Kingdom of the English,’ he went on, half to himself, as he settled into bed. ‘Never before could an Englishman call in the Vikings and expect forgiveness. Anglo-Danes are not Englishmen, and have always been judged by a different standard. Henceforth it will be impossible to control the Earls. A rebuke, and the culprit will turn Viking. I don’t see how a King can come after me, for all that Bishop Britwold was told that God would choose my successor. I don’‘t understand politics. I shall just carry on from day to day, and do my best for good order in the Church while under Harold the Kingdom falls to pieces.’
Yet even in Church matters, which had for so long been his peculiar province, the King could not always have his own way. In February 1056 died Bishop Athelstan, a sick old man who had never got over the destruction of his minster. For some years he had been so frail that a Welsh Bishop had helped him as coadjutor; but of course a Welshman could not be Bishop of Hereford. The King had promised the next vacant Bishopric to a Lotharingian named Walter who was chaplain to the Lady. Now Harold declared that the Bishop of Hereford must be an Englishman and a warrior; for he might be called on to hold the new defences of the city, recently completed at Harold’s orders. There was hot argument at the Lent Council. As cupbearer I heard most of it, for the great men were too angry to be discreet. In the end the King gave way.
He did not give way gracefully. He complained about Harold to everyone he met. When the Lady came into his chamber that evening, to show him a roll of foreign silk, he told her his grievance as though she had been born an enemy to the house of Godwin.
‘There’s no Bishopric for your Walter. He’s the best clerk in the household, and he has taken the trouble to learn English to fit him for a responsible post. But the great Earl of the West Saxons wants Hereford for a toady of his own. That’s what it boils down to. Of course Harold began with a lot of nonsense about English Bishoprics for Englishmen, as though he had never supported Stigand the Dane. Tostig was foolish enough to agree with him; and even Odda, who genuinely cares for the welfare of the Church, said he thought Hereford was no place for a Lotharingian. I’m glad to say Alfgar sat quiet. Whenever that city is mentioned he blushes to the roots of his beard. Leofric won’t talk about it either, for shame at the treason of his son. But since they did not oppose Harold I suppose they must agree with him. Then it emerged that Harold not only wants the See for an Englishman, he has already picked the Englishman who must have it — Leofgar, his chaplain. What a world we live in!’
‘My brother is in general a good judge of men,’ said the Lady coolly. ‘This Leofgar may perhaps make an excellent Bishop.’
‘You don’t know him?’
‘I can’t recall him. But Harold’s chaplains are usually respectable men.’
‘Not Leofgar. He may once have been a respectable housecarle, but as a clerk he is downright scandalous. Harold pointed him out to me, and one look was enough. The fellow shaves his chin as a clerk should, but on his lip was a whacking great moustache sticking out beyond his ears.’
‘Is that very terrible? Now I come to think of it, I have never seen a Bishop wearing a moustache. But there are holy men who dress curiously on purpose, to show their contempt for the ways of the world. Do you remember that Irish pilgrim, with a kilt so short it was positively indecent?’
‘There’s a canon of the Church forbidding clerks to wear moustaches, or at least I think there is. Anyway, it’s the mark of a warrior, worn chiefly by swaggering Vikings. If Harold needs a warrior to defend his new wall at Hereford let him appoint one, and pay him from the revenues of his Earldom. What he has done is to appoint a commander, and arrange to have him paid from the patrimony of St. Ethelbert.’
‘An honourable housecarle might make a very good Bishop, if he has good advisers to keep him straight on tricky questions of ritual and theology. Harold may be too interested in the secular business of defence; but you say Tostig didn’t object, and he is a sound churchman.’
‘Ah, that’s it. I understand. Tostig can do no wrong. I should have rem
embered. It’s very hard that the Lady of England should be loyal to her brother, rather than to the King who married her.’
‘Are we married? There’s a problem that puzzled my father.’
The Lady swept out of the chamber, leaving that unanswerable query hanging in the air.
Thus the promotion of Leofgar was a project on which all the Godwinssons were united, and the King could not resist. By Easter the warrior-Bishop had been enthroned in his half-repaired minster, where he passed his time in training the burgesses in the old English method of fighting, on foot with a great two-handed axe.
Perhaps Bishop Leofgar clung to his moustache to keep himself warlike, not because he was by nature a warrior. In any case he was not so experienced in battle as the famous King Griffith. Within three months of his consecration, in June 1056, the Bishop and the levy of Hereford met the Welsh army at Glasbury-on-Wye, and the Welsh were victorious. The Bishop was slain, axe in hand; and with him many of his clergy, which proves that Leofgar was at least a leader who could make his clerks follow him. For the second year in succession Earl Harold and the whole levy of England must be called out to drive off the plundering Welsh.
It was a most unpleasant campaign, though I am thankful to say I saw nothing of it. The King would never again take the field. The shock of Earl Ralph’s misconduct had made him an old man, and in any case he was now in his fifty-fifth year, which is too old to begin learning the military art. The court continued its round of hunting in the forests of Cotswold, and all we heard from the army was the endless plea for more horses to replace those that had died from the cold of the mountains.
Earl Harold penetrated the inmost fastnesses of Wales, and of course the Welsh dared not meet such a great army in the open field. By autumn both sides had had enough of the war, and Bishop Aldred, that experienced peacemaker, was able to arrange terms. They were not terms of which the English could be proud; King Griffith was undefeated, and if we wanted peace we must buy it from him. He came to Gloucester, and once more swore to be a faithful servant of King Edward; in return he was recognised as lord of all the lands of Chester beyond the river Dee (which he had conquered years before), and of Archenfield, the district between the Wye and the Monnow, which he had overrun as he marched to the sacking of Hereford. This peace left him with a more powerful Kingdom than any Welshman had ruled since the days of King Arthur.
One other man gained from these negotiations, the accomplished Bishop of Worcester. Once again the See of Hereford was vacant, and once again the Council was divided about the filling of it. To avert another quarrel between Earl Harold and the King it was agreed that Bishop Aldred should hold it in plurality with Worcester. Soon after he received yet a third Bishopric. Hermann of Lotharingia had worried himself sick; he could not make the most simple decision without groans and tears and self-reproaches. He retired of his own accord to a monastery oversea. But he kept the title of his Bishopric, so that Aldred was styled administrator only.
7. The Rule of Earl Harold
It was becoming more and more difficult to govern England. Everyone knew that the King disliked Earl Harold, but Earl Harold was held responsible for every action of the government. About this time died Earl Odda, the only great man whom the King trusted thoroughly; he had always been devout and he made a most edifying end, actually taking the cowl of a monk as he lay on his deathbed. Earl Ralph was in disgrace, and his health was failing. He died in December 1057, as much from shame and disappointment as from any other cause; his son was a child, and his brother would not leave his County of Mantes in France. Harold Ralphsson now holds a great fief to the west of Hereford, but in those days it was never suggested that he should succeed his father.
Earl Leofric died in the same autumn, and England was the poorer for it. He was the last of the elder statesmen, the magnates who had been trained by King Canute when England was the centre of the northern world. He was a good Christian and a lavish founder of churches, and the influence of the noble Godiva had increased his beneficence. He had been a Councillor when the Council offered the crown to King Edward. A landmark was gone.
Of course Earl Alfgar succeeded his father in Mercia, where the family were almost hereditary rulers. He was not allowed to keep East Anglia as well, though he wanted to. All through the autumn there were long and stormy meetings of the Council; but with Leofric gone Harold could not be withstood. At Christmas the new division of power was made public, and 1058 opened with the house of Godwin supreme over the greater part of England.
Harold himself added Ralph’s late Earldom of Hereford to the chief Godwinsson Earldom of Wessex. That could be defended on grounds of public policy, since Harold was the only English commander who could cope with the King of all the Welsh. Tostig remained in Northumbria, which also seemed reasonable; Tostig was a Godwinsson but he was rather Harold’s rival than his follower, and he had been first promoted at the instance of the Lady, supported by the King. His personal friendship with the King of the Scots was a valuable asset, and he was beginning to bring order to the lawless north.
But the aggrandisement of the younger, untried Godwinssons was a naked display of Harold’s power. Gyrth, a gallant warrior but in other respects quite undistinguished, was granted Alfgar’s late Earldom in East Anglia. Leofwin, who had gone on Viking cruise with Harold while Gyrth peacefully shared his father’s exile in Bruges, was given a new Earldom which did not represent any one of the ancient provinces of England; he ruled over what had long ago been the independent Kingdoms of Sussex and Kent, together with several of the Danish shires north of London. The Londoners maintained that no Earl could rule them, for it was their privilege to serve only the King of all the English; in name their claim was recognised, but Leofwin’s novel Earldom surrounded them on every side.
There was yet another Godwinsson, little Wulfnoth, the youngest of the family and still a child. When he was older Harold would find an Earldom for him, and unless he robbed his other brothers he must filch a province from Alfgar. It was natural that the thanes of English Mercia, and their Earl, should be restive under such a government.
I have forgotten to mention the unexpected appearance, and speedy disappearance, of the atheling Edward. That is because it did not affect the court, and we saw it only as a minor setback to the plans of the greedy Earl Harold. It happened in the summer of 1057, before the rearrangement of the Earldoms.
The King was then nearer sixty than fifty, and since the reign of the legendary Cerdic no King of the true English line had hitherto attained old age. The problem of the succession filled every mind except that of King Edward, who never worried over it. His chosen successor was Duke William, and he would further his cause in any way he could; but he trusted far more in the vision of Bishop Britwold, and often reminded his friends that the next King of the English had already been chosen by God.
Harold also had his chosen candidate, this foreign atheling. It was two years since Bishop Aldred had visited the Emperor, and still there was no news of the Hungarian. I wondered whether some friend of King Edward had passed on a hint to the Emperor; but I misjudged my lord, who was too straightforward for such diplomacy. In the summer of 1057 we were told that Edward the atheling, with his Hungarian wife and their two small children, had landed on the south coast.
It seemed odd that an exile should delay for two years before visiting the prosperous Kingdom where he had a very good prospect of the throne; but the excuses forwarded to court sounded reasonable. Armies had been ravaging on the borders of the Empire; then the elder child had fallen sick while the Hungarian princess gave birth to the younger; then Edward himself had been ill. He was still not fully recovered, his messenger informed us; as soon as he was strong enough for the long ride he would come to court.
As it happened, he never got farther than London.
There Harold met him, and I suppose they had a lot to say to one another. For the plan, as anyone could see, was that this stranger should be chosen as the next King of the Engl
ish precisely because he was a stranger, with no following in the country; he would reign as a helpless puppet while Harold ruled. All the same, this delay in London showed a lack of consideration for the King who was his host, and the West Saxons murmured against the foreigner who could not be bothered to look at the province which one day would be the heart of his Kingdom.
Then we heard that the atheling was dead, of the disease he had brought with him from Hungary. He was buried beside King Ethelred, his grandfather, in St. Paul’s minster, and the King granted an ample revenue for the support of his widow and children. At the time we heard all sorts of rumours about the wicked plots of Earl Harold, who was very much disliked by the West Saxons; of course it was said that Harold had poisoned the atheling, for fear that when he met his uncle the two Cerdingas would combine to overthrow the house of Godwin. But West Saxons will say anything, especially about an unpopular Earl; Harold had arranged to bring in the Hungarian, and his early death was a setback to a careful plan.
It did not distress the King, who had never seen his nephew. The court was not even put into mourning, though Requiem Masses were sung. King Edward had quite firmly made up his mind about what would happen to England after he was dead.
‘Either I shall be succeeded by my cousin, Duke William, or there will never be another King of all the English,’ he said to the Lady one evening, at a time when the death of the atheling was still fresh in our minds. ‘Duke William is all that a King should be: strong and just and honest, and earnest to reform the Church. He is chaste also, which is regrettably rare in a great man nowadays, and his mercy is really remarkable. Do you know that in Normandy they have abolished the death-penalty? Rebels and brigands may happen to get killed in battle, but if they are captured their lives are spared. In all his reign the Duke has never hanged a man.’
The Cunning of the Dove Page 16
