‘Where did they learn all that mumbo-jumbo? Is the old religion still practised?’
‘No, no. Recollections of it remain in trivial customs at feast-times and scarcely understood superstitions at weddings, births, and funerals.’
‘So they made it all up for the occasion?’
‘More or less. There’s an old woman at Cerne Abbas who pretends she remembers it all and preserves it as, she says, part of our English Heritage. No doubt they consulted her.’
Edward, ten years on, pondered this.
‘But, supposing I had achieved the copulation they desired, they could not be sure she would thereby be impregnated.’
‘Ah. That was why it was a betrothal not a marriage. Not yet part of your household, she was still free to couple with whomever she liked and as often as she liked, at least for a month or so.’
‘And if she had produced a child who looked nothing like her or me?’
‘Oh, any child she might have produced would certainly have looked like a Godwin for it was only Godwins that she’d have let near her.’
‘Her brothers?’
‘Who else? Father too, I daresay.’
‘You?’
‘Ah, no.’ Tostig laughed. ‘She and I never got it on.’
Edward and Edith were married with little celebration by Stigand in Winchester on the twenty-third of January 1045. Edward never achieved penetration, though came near it during the short spell between the first wedding night and Shrove Tuesday. He was aroused by her feet -- long, white, high-arched, unblemished (she was still only sixteen years old), bound in gold thongs or not -- but above her knee he flopped. At first she was puzzled and confused - she was, after all, no virgin and thought she knew what she was doing. Confusion gave way to unbridled anger and contempt. Both felt deeply humiliated. He insisted they give up trying for Lent. They gave up trying for ever. Mourning Tostig, Edward embraced total celibacy for the rest of his life. Edith found discreet consolation wherever she could but was careful not to become pregnant: she knew he would disown her and the child if she did.
On one of the last nights they spent together she hurled at him this final threat:
‘Do not believe that because you have left me childless you will prevent a Godwinson from ascending your throne: it is the Witan that will decide your successor, and the Witan is Godwin’s.’
From that day he worked to prove her wrong.
Chapter Eighteen
Edward was a man riven with contradictions. Clever, even intellectual, he was yet capable of being moved to tears of exaltation by brief moments of aesthetic emotion, especially when these were inspired by religious artefacts, music or architecture. But nowhere were the contradictions of his nature better exemplified than in his dealings with the Godwin family and in the vexed and related problem of who would succeed him.
Godwin himself he hated. For Harold he learnt a grudging respect. Tostig he loved. And Edith he agreed to marry, albeit it was a marriage which, after the first storms, settled on both sides into refined and distant disdain. Hate, respect, love and a bad marriage . . . whatever -- he was bound to the clan throughout his reign and for most of it longed to be rid of them but, try as he might, he could not loosen the knots, for the truth was that neither could survive without the other.
Six years went by during which he felt he was managing better and better without them. In 1048 he saw off the Vikings who harried the Isles of Wight and Thanet, commanding his fleet without their help. He built up a civil service dominated by Normans, most of them in minor orders. He arranged a marriage between his older widowed sister, Godgifu, and a member of Duke Williams’s inner circle, Count Eustace of Boulogne, and invited the Count and his sister to visit him. In 1051 he promoted the Norman Robert of Jumieges, Bishop of London, to the see of Canterbury, and brought over another Norman, William, to be Bishop of London.
The influence and power of the Godwin clan was fading. It only needed now for the northern earls, Siward and Leofric, to agree to come to his aid if it came to an armed confrontation. Edward, Robert of Canterbury, William of London and brother-in-law Count Eustace of Boulogne now met secretly in a manor of the King’s in the Chilterns and concocted the provocation which would fire Godwin up to an act of disobedience gross enough to be labelled treason. Eustace arranged to leave by Dover and ordered his followers to cause a riot in the streets there. They did so, and unwitting victims of the schemes of greater men, lost their lives when the burghers retaliated. Edward ordered Godwin to harry the town mercilessly as a punishment for abusing so shockingly the customs of hospitality, an offence particularly serious in an important port where it was essential travellers should feel safe.
Godwin, apprised of the circumstances of the riot, refused, and was summoned to Gloucester to answer charges of disobedience. On the way he and his sons raised an army, among whose youngest members were the young Walt Edwinson of Iwerne and Aethelstan of Cheddar, known as Timor. At Gloucester judgement was postponed until September, by when the harvest had depleted Godwin’s army, and the whole clan were forced into exile for a year. Even Queen Edith was banned from the court and sent to a nunnery. However, during the year that followed, Edward, no doubt cock-a-hoop at his success, blundered badly.
First, he invited the bastard Duke of Normandy himself on what was to all intents and purposes a state visit.
William was now twenty-three years old and at last firmly in control of his dukedom which had been disputed throughout his minority. He did not stay long - long enough to accept Edward’s offer of the succession and the promise that Edward would name the Duke his successor in due course. In return he promised Edward that when the time came he would press his claim to the utmost.
Second, the choice pickings vacated by the Godwins went not to the northern earls but Edward’s Norman friends, so when the Godwins returned the northerners were loth to come to Edward’s aid again.
Edward’s forced capitulation now must have been the bitterest moment in his long struggle. Robert and many other Normans were sent packing; the Witan accepted Godwin’s oath-swearing and exonerated him of all his crimes including the murder of Alfred, Edward’s elder brother. Queen Emma, in a fit of rage at hearing of the Godwins’ return, fell, broke her hip, and died soon after. Queen Edith was readmitted to the Court and insisted on having her bowers at all the important places the court perambulated through enlarged so she could entertain and be entertained by the poets, musicians, dancers and no doubt lovers she collected about her.
Stigand, already elevated to Winchester, had advised and spied for the Godwins all through, and now was rewarded with the see of Canterbury. Only one pope, and then only briefly, confirmed him in the position. That pope’s predecessors and successors excommunicated him, but he did not let that bother him. Succeeding Archbishops of York carried out important ceremonies like consecrations on his behalf- he was in any case bored by all that. Stigand was a politician. The see of Canterbury gave him a considerable power base -- not founded on the spiritual authority it conferred but on the lands and huge emoluments that went with both his sees. Both? As far as he was concerned taking up Canterbury was no reason for letting go of Winchester although canon law forbad such pluralism.
One consolation followed shortly. Godwin now insisted on remaining in the King’s court, no doubt meaning to be earlier advised of any plots against him. Edward tolerated his presence. He placed him at his side at every great feast - generally speaking feasts were the only times Godwin dragged himself out of the bed he now shared with a succession of nubile concubines - and pressed food and drink on him with a generosity that may have been double-edged.
At all events, on Easter Monday, just six months after his return, Godwin started up from the table, one hand clutched his forehead, the other his chest, a great fountain of black blood gushed from his mouth and he crashed into the table sending all flying. He died two days later.
It was said that he had yet again asserted his innocence of Alfred’s mu
rder and called upon God to choke him if he was guilty. In fact his swollen liver had caused the veins in his oesophagus to become varicose. They burst and he bled to death.
After that and for the next twelve years things settled into a peaceful reign. Prosperity abounded on all sides, the climate went through a benign spell and Edward, showing ever-increasing understanding of the ways of his countrymen, ruled well, interfering as little as possible, and only when the self-regulating nature of the nation seemed in danger of malfunctioning. In this his chief counsellor was Tostig. During the Godwins’ exile Tostig had married Judith, kin to their host, the Count of Flanders. He was now in his mid-thirties and age, together with the Godwin vices of eating and drinking too much, had coarsened his appearance. Moreover, he no longer took pleasure in being buggered. Edward too had moved beyond a desire for such practices. However, they remained intimate friends and Tostig proved himself a valuable guide through the intricacies and absurdities of English law and customs.
Meanwhile, in 1054, Old Siward of Northumbria, accompanied by his son, joined Malcolm son of Duncan in an attempt to oust Macbeth from the Scottish throne. In the one battle that was fought, young Siward was slain. The next year, 1055, Old Siward himself died, leaving only one child, Waltheof, not yet ten years old. There were many Anglo-Danish connections who could have succeeded him, but Edward, no doubt following his own inclinations as well as recalling past favours, and possibly yielding to the usual pressures the Godwinsons were able to bring to bear, made Tostig Earl of Northumbria.
This left Mercia, held by Aelfgar, Leofric’s son, and one of the most troublesome men in the kingdom. Twice already he had revolted against Edward, or at any rate the Godwins, and been banished too. On the first occasion he went to Ireland, raised an army and rallied himself with Griffith, who called himself King of Wales, to whom he married his eldest daughter. Together they ravaged the Welsh borders, and plotted with the Norwegians who made landings in the north. Harold broke the Welsh in his first campaign against them, though Griffith survived. Tostig saw off the Norse and thus left Aelfgar exposed and powerless. Because of the loyalty of his housecarls and thegns, who went through the whole oath-swearing charade on his behalf, and because both Edward and Harold wanted peace, he was allowed to survive. He died, presumably of natural causes, in 1062. He was succeeded by his son Edwin, who was only just twenty years old, and not, for the time being, a force to be considered.
In 1057, and on Tostig’s advice, Edward invited the Athling, son of Ironside, to come home from Hungary and bring his infant son with him, offering oaths that their lives would be safe and that they would be paid the respect due to them (save the crown itself) if they came. Such invitations were double-edged. A refusal could be construed as a declaration of hostility, even as evidence that he coveted the crown. If that were believed he could, according to the customs of the time, expect assassins to be contracted to kill him. He chose the wiser course and set off for England. Unfortunately, and for once there is no reason to suspect foul play except in so far as it was the custom of the time, he died between Dover and London. His four-year-old son, Edgar, now the Athling, remained at Edward’s court and grew up there - a lonely figure, often to be seen sucking his thumb in the darker corners of bowers and halls.
Because of his celibacy and self-restraint (apart front over-indulging in partially fermented mead) Edward gained a reputation for ascetism which was scarcely deserved: the aesthetic rather than spiritual delights of religion were his passion and he approached them with the instincts of a dilettante. He collected and commissioned beautifully illuminated missals, gospels, and even whole bibles, rich with gold leaf and lapis lazuli and filled with painting of the Winchester school. He would travel the length and breadth of his kingdom to hear a choir of monks whose reputation had reached him. He encouraged his bishops and priests to wear more and more sumptuous vestments. With his support and patronage English gold and silver smiths achieved a European reputation for their censers, ciboriums, chalices, reliquaries, processional crosses and the rest. And none of this was a charge on the country -- it all came from Queen Emma’s treasury. The national treasury was full -- partly because of increased revenue from the general prosperity, partly because of good management.
The prosperity of all was also increased, as also was Edward’s popularity, when he refused to go on collecting heregild, the burdensome tax that paid for the armed forces. The result was that over the decade the number of trained housecarls diminished and the ships of the navy were laid up.
Did more than mere economy lie behind this? Certainly it must be true that if Harold had arrived on Senlac Hill with double the number of housecarls that he actually had, there would have been no Norman Conquest. Enough, however, of both ships and men were available for Harold and Tostig to destroy, in two campaigns, Griffith, the troublesome Welsh Kingling, who persisted in making cross-border raids. Since the alliance between Ironside and Canute, nearly forty years earlier, these were the only campaigns that the English had to fight and most of what fighting there took place in Wales not England. Thus was maintained a peace whose length was unequalled anywhere in the western world at that time and not often surpassed since.
Chapter Nineteen
In March 1065 he knew he was dying of Diabetes Mellitus, honeyed urine, and sent for William, Bishop of London, one of the few Normans who remained in place. The Godwinsons tolerated the bishop. London was not important - certainly the largest town in the country, it was still, according to the way they saw things, peripheral - a port on the edge of the country, for the most part occupied by foreigners, and keeping itself very much to itself, with its own laws and customs. Goods came in and goods went out, the merchants paid their dues and taxes, it ran itself.
Bishop William was a tall, lean man, with an ascetic, sculptured face, almost bald apart from a fringe of black hair round his tonsure. He climbed to the upper room, and wrinkling his nose at the sweet but unpleasant smells that met him there, pulled a chair up to the king’s bedside. He recited the office of vespers from memory, supplying the responses where the king mumbled or was slow. Then he leant back in his chair and their eyes met -- the king’s loosely focused, his white hair an aureole above them, his face drawn and pale; the bishop’s dark, alert, considering.
‘William, I’m dying,’ Edward murmured.
‘I know,’ replied the bishop. ‘But you have, I am told, time enough to assure yourself of a welcome from St Peter.’
‘Saints, only, go straight through Heaven’s portals.’
William fell silent. A silence that could be interpreted to mean that something might be arranged.
Edward added: ‘I sinned often and grievously in my youth.’
‘If you are referring to buggery, forget it. There are vastly more serious affairs that should be weighing on your conscience. You have done nothing to reform the English church. You have allowed the priests to marry or take concubines, you have turned a blind eye not only to their concupiscence but also their gluttony and drunkenness. Hardly any of them even know there is a pope, let alone what a pope is.’ He cleared his throat, pulled his chair in so the legs scraped on the floor, and went on.
‘Naturally all this has affected the natural piety of your people. You have done little or nothing to discourage pagan practices. You have allowed them to live in plenty and squander the fruit of their toil in luxury and wantonness, denying the church and therefore God, the full surplus of their labours . . .’ he waxed angry, ‘it behoves all men to return to their Maker what they do not need beyond the barest necessities to sustain life. The church, and the Lords of the realm, who are the church’s protectors and defenders, require from men who work in the fields everything every man can possibly give them. Only thus will their souls, untempted to profligate consumption of the fruits of their own labours, be assured of salvation and redemption at the Last Trump.’
He was stamping round the room now, waving an admonitary finger at the prostrate monarch, and occ
asionally spitting on plosive syllables.
‘There are other things, too-’
‘I need to piss.’
‘I am referring first to that running sore on the fabric of the state, the godless family--’
‘I NEED TO PISS.’
‘Oh very well. Shall I call a servant?’
‘No. No time. Under the bed. Please.’
Under the bed? Did his monarch expect him to get under the bed? The bishop stooped, lifted the covers which trailed to the floor, stuck his head and shoulders beneath them.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the Jerusalem.’
Backing out from under the bed, he came up with a large chamber pot in the form of a coopered bucket with a handle.
‘Is this what you want?’
But the king was now lying back with his eyes shut and a hint of a smile on his face.
‘Too late,’ he murmured, and gave the lower part of his body a wriggle below the coverlet. ‘You were saying . . . something about a running sore?’
The bishop looked at him with unconcealed disdain then shook himself, as if to cast off trivialities.
‘A running sore. Yes. The godless Godwinsons. And then there is Stigand. Excommunicated but strutting his ... his ... carcase not just in Canterbury and Winchester but up and down the land as if he were a greater prince of the church than His Holiness himself-’
‘Remind me. Who is the Pope, just now?’ Edward opened one eye then the other. ‘They’ve changed so often this last ten years or so.’
‘I forget. It’s what he is that matters. Anyway, these are the sins, sins of omission to some extent, which will doom you to centuries in Purgatory, if not worse, if you don’t do something about them. You must put your house in order before you go. Let us thank God He has granted you the time you need to do so.’
The Last English King Page 15
