The Norman Conquest

by Marc Morris

  Against this, however, one may make two related observations. First, if Edward’s piety is a construct, it is a massively sustained and elaborate one. Second, although the precise date of the Life’s composition is debated, all historians agree that it was written in the period 1065 to 1070 – i.e. when Edward was either still alive or the memory of him still very fresh. As with the claim about his chastity, therefore, so too with his piety in general. Had the Life’s picture of a religious king – a saint in all but name – been significantly at odds with reality, it would have been laughed out of court, or perhaps taken to be a mischievous piece of satire.6

  There is, in fact, other contemporary evidence to support the Life’s picture of a genuinely pious Confessor. William of Jumièges, as we’ve seen, believed the king’s peaceful accession in 1042 was divinely ordained, while the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle later imagined his soul being guided to heaven by angels. Less than a decade after Edward’s death, William of Normandy (by then the Conqueror) described him in a letter to the abbot of Fécamp as ‘the man of blessed memory, my lord and relative King Edward’, and had a reliquary of gold and silver made for his remains. Similarly, while we may reasonably doubt whether Edward actually cured anyone simply by touching them, the Life’s comment that he began the practice during his youth in Normandy is lent credibility by the fact that the kings of France, supported by monks and abbots, had begun to do so at exactly this time. Lastly, the Life’s claim that Edward loved to associate with monks and abbots, particularly foreign ones, is well supported by the evidence. Of the four individuals who are known to have crossed to England with him in 1041, three are churchmen.7

  From the identities and careers of these individuals we can see that Edward was an active supporter of church reform. Robert of Jumièges had been abbot of a monastery reformed by William of Volpiano.8 The remaining two, Hermann and Leofric, had both received their training in Lotharingia (Lorraine), a region which, like Burgundy, was a byword for reform.9 Edward made both of them bishops in the mid-1040s, and they both distinguished themselves by reforming and reorganizing their dioceses (Leofric, for example, moved the seat of his bishopric from Crediton to Exeter). Edward’s support for reform is also apparent from his enthusiastic response to the papacy of Leo IX. English representatives were sent to the Council of Rheims in 1049, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘so that they might inform the king of whatever was there decided in the interests of Christendom’. The following year Edward sent two further delegations of bishops to attend Leo’s Easter and September councils, and in 1051 Robert of Jumièges set out for Rome to collect his pallium.10

  But these links with reform and the reform papacy were severed with the return of the Godwines in 1052. It would be going too far to suppose that the earl and his sons were opposed to reform per se. The quarrel between Godwine and Robert of Jumièges, for example, seems to have been primarily political and personal, concerned with Church property rather than Church practice. At the same time, we have clear testimony from the Life of King Edward that the Godwines believed that too many bishoprics were going to foreigners, and we also know that when Bishop Hermann sought to transfer his episcopal seat to Malmesbury Abbey, the earl and his sons backed the monks of Malmesbury in resisting the move.11 Most of all, when Edward’s revolution was reversed and Robert of Jumièges had fled, the Godwines ensured that the archbishopric of Canterbury went to Stigand.

  Stigand, like Godwine, was a creature of Cnut. Although he was apparently a native of East Anglia, his name is Norse, which suggests that he may have been of mixed Anglo-Danish parentage. He first appears as early as 1020, when Cnut appointed him as minister of his new church at Assandun,* built to atone for and commemorate the most decisive battle of the Danish conquest. In 1043 Stigand became bishop of East Anglia, a position awarded to him by the newly crowned Confessor, but clearly arranged at the behest of Cnut’s widow, Emma, to whom he had evidently remained attached. When Emma fell later that same year, Stigand fell too, but unlike her he quickly recovered his position, and in 1047 he was promoted again, this time to Winchester, the very heart of the Anglo-Danish connection, where Emma continued to dwell. Although there is no direct evidence to connect his rise in this period to the patronage of the Godwines, Stigand acted as go-between during their confrontation with the king in 1051, and reportedly wept when Godwine went into exile.12

  As his background as a secular priest suggests, Stigand was not a reformer. In September 1052 he became the first non-monk to be made archbishop of Canterbury for almost a century. He was, in addition, guilty of committing what supporters of reform regarded as the most serious of abuses. According to twelfth-century sources, Stigand was notorious for his simony, openly buying and selling bishoprics and abbacies. Certainly he had no problem with pluralism – holding more than one Church appointment at the same time, a practice which was another of the reformers’ principal concerns. Having been promoted to Canterbury, Stigand saw no reason to relinquish his grip on Winchester, and continued to hold the two bishoprics in tandem. Naturally, given the circumstances of his promotion in 1052, the new archbishop chose not to follow in the footsteps of his immediate predecessors and travel to Rome to collect his pallium. Instead, he used the one that Robert of Jumièges had left behind.13

  There can be no doubt, given the past histories and attitudes of all involved, that Stigand was Godwine’s appointment in 1052, and no clearer demonstration of the extent to which the counterrevolution had restored the earl to all his former power. If Edward was gloomy that Christmas it was with good reason, for he had been returned to a state of political tutelage of the sort he had experienced at the start of his reign. By the same token, if the king’s mood seemed to brighten the following spring, the cause was almost certainly Godwine’s sudden death.

  As the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle explains, Edward was at Winchester to celebrate Easter, as was Godwine. But as they sat down to dinner on Easter Monday, the earl suddenly collapsed, ‘bereft of speech and deprived of all his strength’. Hopes that it was a passing fit proved false; Godwine lingered for three more days in the same enfeebled state before dying on 15 April. This makes it sound as if he suffered a fatal stroke, but according to William of Malmesbury (who loved a good story), the earl choked to death, having first said to Edward: ‘May God not permit me to swallow if I have done anything to endanger Alfred or to hurt you.’ He was buried in the Old Minster, taking his accustomed place beside Cnut, Harthacnut and Emma.14

  His father-in-law’s death did not make Edward any stronger; the funeral was not followed by the return of any of the king’s exiled friends, nor the removal of Stigand, for Godwine was immediately succeeded as earl of Wessex by his eldest surviving son, Harold. Probably around thirty years old in 1053, Harold was apparently everything his father had been and more. ‘A true friend of his race and country,’ says the Life of King Edward, ‘he wielded his father’s powers even more actively, and walked in his ways of patience and mercy.’ Strong in mind and body, kind to men of goodwill but ferocious when dealing with felons, Harold ensured that the Godwine grip on what had once been the royal heartland was sustained. At his appointment to Wessex, says the Life, ‘the whole English host breathed again and was consoled for its loss’.15

  But if the king was no stronger, the Godwines as a family were weaker. Prior to his father’s death, Harold had been earl of East Anglia, and before taking up the reins in Wessex he was required to surrender his former command. Pluralism might be tolerated in the case of England’s most senior churchman but evidently not in the case of its greatest earl. Whether Edward was in any position to insist upon this point is doubtful; one suspects that the law was laid down in council by the kingdom’s other leading families. For into the earldom of East Anglia vacated by Harold stepped Ælfgar, son of Earl Leofric of Mercia. Ælfgar, sadly, is one of the many ghosts in this story, whose character passes entirely without comment in contemporary annals. Even his age is unknown: the best we can say is that he was of appro
ximately the same generation as Harold. What we can say with some certainty, however, is that he and Harold were rivals. Ælfgar, you may recall, had been earl of East Anglia once before, during the Godwines’ short-lived exile, only to be demoted without compensation after their triumphant return. His reappointment in 1053 must therefore have seemed to Ælfgar and his supporters nothing less than his due. Whether Harold and his family saw it in this light is another matter.16

  The effect of Ælfgar’s promotion was to recalibrate English politics. In September 1052 Godwine and his sons seemed set to enjoy a monopoly of power but, barely seven months on, the deaths of Swein and Godwine himself had reduced the number of earldoms under their control from three to one. As the new earl of Wessex, Harold was now the kingdom’s most powerful magnate, but his power was checked by the combined weight of Leofric in Mercia and Ælfgar in East Anglia, as well as Earl Siward, who remained in charge in Northumbria. For the first time in a generation, barring the brief exception of 1051–2, there was something approaching a balance of power between England’s earls.

  Whether this balance handed any initiative back to the king is a moot point.17 If we consider the most pressing and controversial of all political questions – the succession – then the answer seems to be: probably not. The return of the Godwine family clearly meant that there was little or no chance that the crown would pass peacefully to William of Normandy. Yet even the Godwines, determined as they had been to see Edith honourably restored to her position as queen, must have realized that there was even less likelihood that Edward was going to beget an heir of his own body. An alternative plan therefore had to be found. One option might have been to consider the candidacy of Earl Ralph, the king’s nephew, son of his sister Godgifu, but there is no sign that this was ever discussed, or that Ralph ever entertained any hopes in this direction.

  Edward, however, had another nephew, descended in the male line, and the son of a former king. The king in question was Edward’s elder half-brother, Edmund, by this date if not before remembered as ‘Ironside’ for his heroic but ultimately unsuccessful struggle against his supplanter, Cnut. Shortly before his death in 1016 Edmund had fathered two sons who had subsequently fallen into Cnut’s clutches. According to John of Worcester, the Dane wanted them dead, but to avoid scandal in England sent them to be killed in Sweden. The Swedish king, however, refused to comply, and sent the infants on to Hungary, where they were protected and raised. One of them, named after his father, died in Hungary at an unknown date. But the other, whose name was Edward, survived and prospered. For obvious reasons, historians have dubbed him Edward the Exile.18

  In 1054 it was decided to find Edward the Exile and bring him to England, evidently to become the kingdom’s heir: in the first half of the year Bishop Ealdred of Worcester set out across the Channel to put the plan into action. Precisely whose plan it was, however, is difficult to say. The D version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that the bishop went overseas ‘on the king’s business’, a statement which carries some weight since the D version was compiled in Ealdred’s own circle. At the same time, Ealdred is known to have been a Godwine sympathizer: he had secured Swein’s pardon in 1050 and aided Harold’s escape in 1051. It is hard to believe that the embassy could have left in the teeth of opposition from either Edward or the Godwines, though fair to point out that raising a powerless exile to the throne had worked very well for the Godwines in the past. Given the balance of power in England, perhaps the most plausible scenario is that both the king and his in-laws agreed to drop their most cherished schemes for the succession in favour of a compromise candidate who enjoyed something like cross-party support.

  As it turned out, however, the mission was unsuccessful. Ealdred travelled as far as the imperial city of Cologne, where he was received by the local bishop and the emperor Henry III himself, but that appears to have been the furthest extent of his itinerary. No doubt he looked to Henry’s influence to get his message to Hungary, but either the distances were too great or the politics too complicated (Hungary had frequently been in rebellion against imperial rule). Or perhaps Ealdred’s offer did reach its intended recipient, only to be greeted with an indifferent response. Edward the Exile, having left England as an infant, can have had little or no memory of his native country, and almost certainly spoke no English. He had grown to manhood in Hungary and married a Hungarian lady named Agatha. To all intents and purposes he was simply an eastern European aristocrat with a curious family history. Whatever the reason, after almost a year abroad, Ealdred returned to England empty-handed.19

  By the time of his return the country was embroiled in a fresh crisis. The early months of 1055 had brought the death of Siward, the long-serving earl of Northumbria. A warlike man, appointed by Cnut and nicknamed Digri (‘the Strong’) in Danish, Siward had remained usefully strenuous to the end. One of his chief responsibilities had been to check the ambitions of the kings of Scotland, who had been steadily advancing southwards from their heartlands around the River Tay for over a century. The summer before his death, apparently at Edward’s behest, the earl had led a campaign across the border to depose Macbeth (and thereby earned lasting fame: he is Old Siward in Shakespeare’s play). The operation was successful but, as in literature, so in life: Siward’s eldest son was killed in the fighting, and thus when the earl himself died a few months later there was debate about who should succeed him. Siward had another son, Waltheof, but he was evidently too young – or at least, deemed to be too young – to assume such an important strategic command. Instead, the royal council that met in March 1055 decided that the earldom of Northumbria should pass to Tostig, the second surviving son of Earl Godwine.20

  The Life of King Edward is naturally in no doubt about the merits of this appointment. Tostig, it claims, was ‘a man of courage, endowed with great wisdom and shrewdness of mind’. Although shorter than Harold, he was in every other respect his older brother’s equal: handsome, graceful, brave and strong. ‘No age or province’, the Life concludes, ‘has reared two mortals of such worth at the same time.’21

  But clearly not everyone agreed. The Life also explains that Tostig had obtained his new title with the help of his friends, especially Harold and Queen Edith, ‘and with no opposition from the king’ – an assertion that would seem rather redundant unless the truth lay some way in the opposite direction. At the very least, the Life seems to be answering other voices which claimed that Edward had been against promoting yet another Godwineson to high office.

  One of those voices almost certainly belonged to Earl Ælfgar, whose recent reappointment to East Anglia had served to restore some equilibrium to English politics. The promotion of Tostig to Northumbria now threatened to upset that equilibrium, and left Ælfgar and his father, Leofric of Mercia, sandwiched between the Godwines to the north and south. It seems very likely that Ælfgar angrily opposed Tostig and his family in the king’s council that March, for in the course of the same meeting he was declared an outlaw. The three different versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle offer sharply contrasting (though typically brief) accounts of this incident, reflecting the sympathies of their compilers and the tensions that were threatening to destabilize the kingdom. According to the E Chronicle, written at Canterbury and broadly pro-Godwine, Ælfgar was exiled ‘on the charge of being a traitor to the king and the whole country’, having accidentally admitted his guilt. But the C Chronicle, written at a monastery in Mercia, insists that the earl ‘was outlawed without having done anything to deserve his fate’. Significantly, the D Chronicle, compiled in the circle of Bishop Ealdred and usually careful not to take sides, echoes the sentiment that Ælfgar was essentially innocent.22

  If the events of the Confessor’s reign had proved anything, however, it was that exiles rarely accepted their punishment. Like Harold before him, Ælfgar fled in the first instance to Ireland, where he bolstered his own military household by hiring a fleet of eighteen mercenary ships. From there he sailed back across the Irish Sea in order t
o seek the assistance of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, king of the whole of Wales since a bloody victory over his southern rival earlier in the year. Gruffudd had no particular love for the English, nor indeed the family of his visitor: as recently as 1052 he had led a devastating raid across the English border, and at the start of his career in 1039 he had been responsible for the death of uncle, Eadwine. But like all successful participants in the bear pit that was Welsh politics, GrufFudd knew a golden opportunity when he saw one. He and Ælfgar evidently agreed to sink their differences and join together for an attack on England. In late October 1055, their combined forces crossed the border into Herefordshire, where they defeated the local levies led by Earl Ralph and sacked the city of Hereford. When a larger English army was subsequently assembled against them, the invaders wisely withdrew, leaving its commander, Earl Harold, with nothing to do apart from ringing Hereford’s charred remains with an improved set of defences. At length Harold took it upon himself to negotiate and terms were agreed. ‘The sentence against Ælfgar was revoked,’ says the C Chronicle, ‘and he was restored to all his possessions.’23