Harold : the Last of the Saxon Kings — Complete

Through the small lattice-work of the windows of the loghouse, lights blazed; from the roof-top smoke curled; from the hall on the other side of the dwelling, came the din of tumultuous wassail, but the intense stillness of the outer air, hushed in frost, and luminous with stars, contrasted and seemed to rebuke the gross sounds of human revel. And that northern night seemed almost as bright as (but how much more augustly calm, than) the noon of the golden south!

On a table within the ample porch was an immense bowl of birchwood, mounted in silver, and filled with potent drink, and two huge horns, of size suiting the mighty wassailers of the age. The two men seemed to care nought for the stern air of the cold night—true that they were wrapped in furs reft from the Polar bear. But each had hot thoughts within, that gave greater warmth to the veins than the bowl or the bearskin.

They were host and guest; and as if with the restlessness of his thoughts, the host arose from his seat, and passed through the porch and stood on the bleak rock under the light of the moon; and so seen, he seemed scarcely human, but some war-chief of the farthest time,—yea, of a time ere the deluge had shivered those rocks, and left beds on the land for the realm of that icy sea. For Harold Hardrada was in height above all the children of modern men. Five ells of Norway made the height of Harold Hardrada 224. Nor was this stature accompanied by any of those imperfections in symmetry, nor by that heaviness of aspect, which generally render any remarkable excess above human stature and strength rather monstrous than commanding. On the contrary, his proportions were just; his appearance noble; and the sole defect that the chronicler remarks in his shape, was “that his hands and feet were large, but these were well made.” 225

His face had all the fair beauty of the Norseman; his hair, parted in locks of gold over a brow that bespoke the daring of the warrior and the genius of the bard, fell in glittering profusion to his shoulders; a short beard and long moustache of the same colour as the hair, carefully trimmed, added to the grand and masculine beauty of the countenance, in which the only blemish was the peculiarity of one eyebrow being somewhat higher than the other 226, which gave something more sinister to his frown, something more arch to his smile. For, quick of impulse, the Poet-Titan smiled and frowned often.

Harold Hardrada stood in the light of the moon, and gazing thoughtfully on the luminous sea. Tostig marked him for some moments where he sate in the porch, and then rose and joined him.

“Why should my words so disturb thee, O King of the Norseman?”

“Is glory, then, a drug that soothes to sleep?” returned the Norwegian.

“I like thine answer,” said Tostig, smiling, “and I like still more to watch thine eye gazing on the prows of thy war-ships. Strange indeed it were if thou, who hast been fighting fifteen years for the petty kingdom of Denmark, shouldst hesitate now, when all England lies before thee to seize.”

“I hesitate,” replied the King, “because he whom Fortune has befriended so long, should beware how he strain her favour too far. Eighteen pitched battles fought I in the Saracen land, and in every one was a victor—never, at home or abroad, have I known shame and defeat. Doth the wind always blow from one point?—and is Fate less unstable than the wind?”

“Now, out on thee, Harold Hardrada,” said Tostig the fierce; “the good pilot wins his way through all winds, and the brave heart fastens fate to its flag. All men allow that the North never had warrior like thee; and now, in the mid-day of manhood, wilt thou consent to repose on the mere triumph of youth?”

“Nay,” said the King, who, like all true poets, had something of the deep sense of a sage, and was, indeed, regarded as the most prudent as well as the most adventurous chief in the Northland,—“nay, it is not by such words, which my soul seconds too well, that thou canst entrap a ruler of men. Thou must show me the chances of success, as thou wouldst to a grey-beard. For we should be as old men before we engage, and as youths when we wish to perform.”

Then the traitor succinctly detailed all the weak points in the rule of his brother. A treasury exhausted by the lavish and profitless waste of Edward; a land without castle or bulwark, even at the mouths of the rivers; a people grown inert by long peace, and so accustomed to own lord and king in the northern invaders, that a single successful battle might induce half the population to insist on the Saxon coming to terms with the foe, and yielding, as Ironsides did to Canute, one half of the realm. He enlarged on the terror of the Norsemen that still existed throughout England, and the affinity between the Northumbrians and East Anglians with the race of Hardrada. That affinity would not prevent them from resisting at the first; but grant success, and it would reconcile them to the after sway. And, finally, he aroused Hardrada’s emulation by the spur of the news, that the Count of the Normans would seize the prize if he himself delayed to forestall him.

These various representations, and the remembrance of Canute’s victory, decided Hardrada; and, when Tostig ceased, he stretched his hand towards his slumbering warships, and exclaimed:

“Eno’; you have whetted the beaks of the ravens, and harnessed the steeds of the sea!”

CHAPTER VII

Meanwhile, King Harold of England had made himself dear to his people, and been true to the fame he had won as Harold the Earl. From the moment of his accession, “he showed himself pious, humble, and affable 227, and omitted no occasions to show any token of bounteous liberality, gentleness, and courteous behaviour.”—“The grievous customs, also, and taxes which his predecessors had raised, he either abolished or diminished; the ordinary wages of his servants and men-of-war he increased, and further showed himself very well bent to all virtue and goodness.” 228

Extracting the pith from these eulogies, it is clear that, as wise statesman no less than as good king, Harold sought to strengthen himself in the three great elements of regal power;—Conciliation of the Church, which had been opposed to his father; The popular affection, on which his sole claim to the crown reposed; And the military force of the land, which had been neglected in the reign of his peaceful predecessor.

To the young Atheling he accorded a respect not before paid to him; and, while investing the descendant of the ancient line with princely state, and endowing him with large domains, his soul, too great for jealousy, sought to give more substantial power to his own most legitimate rival, by tender care and noble counsels,—by efforts to raise a character feeble by nature, and denationalised by foreign rearing. In the same broad and generous policy, Harold encouraged all the merchants from other countries who had settled in England, nor were even such Normans as had escaped the general sentence of banishment on Godwin’s return, disturbed in their possessions. “In brief,” saith the Anglo-Norman chronicler 229, “no man was more prudent in the land, more valiant in arms, in the law more sagacious, in all probity more accomplished:” and “Ever active,” says more mournfully the Saxon writer, “for the good of his country, he spared himself no fatigue by land or by sea.” 230 From this time, Harold’s private life ceased. Love and its charms were no more. The glow of romance had vanished. He was not one man; he was the state, the representative, the incarnation of Saxon England: his sway and the Saxon freedom, to live or fall together!

The soul really grand is only tested in its errors. As we know the true might of the intellect by the rich resources and patient strength with which it redeems a failure, so do we prove the elevation of the soul by its courageous return into light, its instinctive rebound into higher air, after some error that has darkened its vision and soiled its plumes. A spirit less noble and pure than Harold’s, once entering on the dismal world of enchanted superstition, had habituated itself to that nether atmosphere; once misled from hardy truth and healthful reason, it had plunged deeper and deeper into the maze. But, unlike his contemporary, Macbeth, the Man escaped from the lures of the Fiend. Not as Hecate in hell, but as Dian in heaven, did he confront the pale Goddess of Night. Before that hour in which he had deserted the human judgment for the ghostly delusion; before that day in which the brave heart, in its sudden desertion, had humbled his pride—the man, in his nature, was more strong than the god. Now, purified by the flame that had scorched, and more nerved from the fall that had stunned,—that great soul rose sublime through the wrecks of the Past, serene through the clouds of the Future, concentering in its solitude the destinies of Mankind, and strong with instinctive Eternity amidst all the terrors of Time.

King Harold came from York, whither he had gone to cement the new power of Morcar, in Northumbria, and personally to confirm the allegiance of the Anglo-Danes:—King Harold came from York, and in the halls of Westminster he found a monk who awaited him with the messages of William the Norman.

Bare-footed, and serge-garbed, the Norman envoy strode to the Saxon’s chair of state. His form was worn with mortification and fast, and his face was hueless and livid, with the perpetual struggle between zeal and flesh.

“Thus saith William, Count of the Normans,” began Hugues Maigrot, the monk.

“With grief and amaze hath he heard that you, O Harold, his sworn liege-man, have, contrary to oath and to fealty, assumed the crown that belongs to himself. But, confiding in thy conscience, and forgiving a moment’s weakness, he summons thee, mildly and brother-like, to fulfil thy vow. Send thy sister, that he may gave her in marriage to one of his Quens. Give him up the stronghold of Dover; march to thy coast with thine armies to aid him,—thy liege lord,—and secure him the heritage of Edward his cousin. And thou shalt reign at his right-hand, his daughter thy bride, Northumbria thy fief, and the saints thy protectors.”

The King’s lip was firm, though pale, as he answered:

“My young sister, alas! is no more: seven nights after I ascended the throne, she died: her dust in the grave is all I could send to the arms of the bridegroom. I cannot wed the child of thy Count: the wife of Harold sits beside him.” And he pointed to the proud beauty of Aldyth, enthroned under the drapery of gold. “For the vow that I took, I deny it not. But from a vow of compulsion, menaced with unworthy captivity, extorted from my lips by the very need of the land whose freedom had been bound in my chains—from a vow so compelled, Church and conscience absolve me. If the vow of a maiden on whom to bestow but her hand, when unknown to her parents, is judged invalid by the Church, how much more invalid the oath that would bestow on a stranger the fates of a nation 231, against its knowledge, and unconsulting its laws! This royalty of England hath ever rested on the will of the people, declared through its chiefs in their solemn assembly. They alone who could bestow it, have bestowed it on me:—I have no power to resign it to another—and were I in my grave, the trust of the crown would not pass to the Norman, but return to the Saxon people.”

“Is this, then, thy answer, unhappy son?” said the monk, with a sullen and gloomy aspect.

“Such is my answer.”

“Then, sorrowing for thee, I utter the words of William. ‘With sword and with mail will he come to punish the perjurer: and by the aid of St. Michael, archangel of war, he will conquer his own.’ Amen.”

“By sea and by land, with sword and with mail, will we meet the invader,” answered the King, with a flashing eye. “Thou hast said:—so depart.”

The monk turned and withdrew.

“Let the priest’s insolence chafe thee not, sweet lord,” said Aldyth. “For the vow which thou mightest take as subject, what matters it now thou art king?”

Harold made no answer to Aldyth, but turned to his Chamberlain, who stood behind his throne chair.

“Are my brothers without?”

“They are: and my lord the King’s chosen council.”

“Admit them: pardon, Aldyth; affairs fit only for men claim me now.”

The Lady of England took the hint, and rose.

“But the even-mete will summon thee soon,” said she. Harold, who had already descended from his chair of state, and was bending over a casket of papers on the table, replied:

“There is food here till the morrow; wait me not.” Aldyth sighed, and withdrew at the one door, while the thegns most in Harold’s confidence entered at the other. But, once surrounded by her maidens, Aldyth forgot all, save that she was again a queen,—forgot all, even to the earlier and less gorgeous diadem which her lord’s hand had shattered on the brows of the son of Pendragon.

Leofwine, still gay and blithe-hearted, entered first: Gurth followed, then Haco, then some half-score of the greater thegns.

They seated themselves at the table, and Gurth spoke first:

“Tostig has been with Count William.”

“I know it,” said Harold.

“It is rumoured that he has passed to our uncle Sweyn.”

“I foresaw it,” said the King.

“And that Sweyn will aid him to reconquer England for the Dane.”

“My bode reached Sweyn, with letters from Githa, before Tostig; my bode has returned this day. Sweyn has dismissed Tostig; Sweyn will send fifty ships, armed with picked men, to the aid of England.”

“Brother,” cried Leofwine, admiringly, “thou providest against danger ere we but surmise it.”

“Tostig,” continued the King, unheeding the compliment, “will be the first assailant: him we must meet. His fast friend is Malcolm of Scotland: him we must secure. Go thou, Leofwine, with these letters to Malcolm.—The next fear is from the Welch. Go thou, Edwin of Mercia, to the princes of Wales. On thy way, strengthen the forts and deepen the dykes of the marches. These tablets hold thy instructions. The Norman, as doubtless ye know, my thegns, hath sent to demand our crown, and hath announced the coming of his war. With the dawn I depart to our port at Sandwich 232, to muster our fleets. Thou with me, Gurth.”

“These preparations need much treasure,” said an old thegn, “and thou hast lessened the taxes at the hour of need.”

“Not yet is it the hour of need. When it comes, our people will the more readily meet it with their gold as with their iron. There was great wealth in the House of Godwin; that wealth mans the ships of England. What hast thou there, Haco?”

“Thy new-issued coin: it hath on its reverse the word PEACE.” 233

Who ever saw one of those coins of the Last Saxon King, the bold simple head on the one side, that single word “Peace” on the other, and did not feel awed and touched! What pathos in that word compared with the fate which it failed to propitiate!

“Peace,” said Harold: “to all that doth not render peace, slavery. Yea, may I live to leave peace to our children! Now, peace only rests on our preparation for war. You, Morcar, will return with all speed to York, and look well to the mouth of the Humber.”

Then, turning to each of the thegns successively he gave to each his post and his duty; and that done, converse grew more general. The many things needful that had been long rotting in neglect under the Monk-king, and now sprung up, craving instant reform, occupied them long and anxiously. But cheered and inspirited by the vigour and foresight of Harold, whose earlier slowness of character seemed winged by the occasion into rapid decision (as is not uncommon with the Englishman), all difficulties seemed light, and hope and courage were in every breast.

CHAPTER VIII

Back went Hugues Maigrot, the monk, to William, and told the reply of Harold to the Duke, in the presence of Lanfranc. William himself heard it in gloomy silence, for Fitzosborne as yet had been wholly unsuccessful in stirring up the Norman barons to an expedition so hazardous, in a cause so doubtful; and though prepared for the defiance of Harold, the Duke was not prepared with the means to enforce his threats and make good his claim.

So great was his abstraction, that he suffered the Lombard to dismiss the monk without a word spoken by him; and he was first startled from his reverie by Lanfranc’s pale hand on his vast shoulder, and Lanfranc’s low voice in his dreamy ear:

“Up! Hero of Europe: for thy cause is won! Up! and write with thy bold characters, bold as if graved with the point of the sword, my credentials to Rome. Let me depart ere the sun sets: and as I go, look on the sinking orb, and behold the sun of the Saxon that sets evermore on England!”

Then briefly, that ablest statesman of the age, (and forgive him, despite our modern lights, we must; for, sincere son of the Church, he regarded the violated oath of Harold as entailing the legitimate forfeiture of his realm, and, ignorant of true political freedom, looked upon Church and Learning as the only civilisers of men,) then, briefly, Lanfranc detailed to the listening Norman the outline of the arguments by which he intended to move the Pontifical court to the Norman side; and enlarged upon the vast accession throughout all Europe which the solemn sanction of the Church would bring to his strength. William’s reawaking and ready intellect soon seized upon the importance of the object pressed upon him. He interrupted the Lombard, drew pen and parchment towards him, and wrote rapidly. Horses were harnessed, horsemen equipped in haste, and with no unfitting retinue Lanfranc departed on the mission, the most important in its consequences that ever passed from potentate to pontiff. 234 Rebraced to its purpose by Lanfranc’s cheering assurances, the resolute, indomitable soul of William now applied itself, night and day, to the difficult task of rousing his haughty vavasours. Yet weeks passed before he could even meet a select council composed of his own kinsmen and most trusted lords. These, however, privately won over, promised to serve him “with body and goods.” But one and all they told him, he must gain the consent of the whole principality in a general council. That council was convened: thither came not only lords and knights, but merchants and traders,—all the rising middle class of a thriving state.

The Duke bared his wrongs, his claims, and his schemes. The assembly would not or did not discuss the matter in his presence, they would not be awed by its influence; and William retired from the hall. Various were the opinions, stormy the debate; and so great the disorder grew, that Fitzosborne, rising in the midst, exclaimed:

“Why this dispute?—why this unduteous discord? Is not William your lord? Hath he not need of you? Fail him now—and, you know him well—by G—- he will remember it! Aid him—and you know him well—large are his rewards to service and love!”

Up rose at once baron and merchant; and when at last their spokesman was chosen, that spokesman said: “William is our lord; is it not enough to pay to our lord his dues? No aid do we owe beyond the seas! Sore harassed and taxed are we already by his wars! Let him fail in this strange and unparalleled hazard, and our land is undone!”

Loud applause followed this speech; the majority of the council were against the Duke.

“Then,” said Fitzosborne, craftily, “I, who know the means of each man present, will, with your leave, represent your necessities to your Count, and make such modest offer of assistance as may please ye, yet not chafe your liege.”

Into the trap of this proposal the opponents fell; and Fitzosborne, at the head of the body, returned to William. The Lord of Breteuil approached the dais, on which William sate alone, his great sword in his hand, and thus spoke:

“My liege, I may well say that never prince has people more leal than yours, nor that have more proved their faith and love by the burdens they have borne and the monies they have granted.”

An universal murmur of applause followed these words. “Good! good!” almost shouted the merchants especially. William’s brows met, and he looked very terrible. The Lord of Breteuil gracefully waved his hand, and resumed:

“Yea, my liege, much have they borne for your glory and need; much more will they bear.”

The faces of the audience fell.

“Their service does not compel them to aid you beyond the seas.”

The faces of the audience brightened.

“But now they will aid you, in the land of the Saxon as in that of the Frank.”

“How?” cried a stray voice or two.

“Hush, O gentilz amys. Forward, then, O my liege, and spare them in nought. He who has hitherto supplied you with two good mounted soldiers, will now grant you four; and he who—”

“No, no, no!” roared two-thirds of the assembly; “we charged you with no such answer; we said not that, nor that shall it be!”

Out stepped a baron.

“Within this country, to defend it, we will serve our Count; but to aid him to conquer another man’s country, no!”

Out stepped a knight.

“If once we rendered this double service, beyond seas as at home, it would be held a right and a custom hereafter; and we should be as mercenary soldiers, not free-born Normans.”

Out stepped a merchant.

“And we and our children would be burdened for ever to feed one man’s ambition, whenever he saw a king to dethrone, or a realm to seize.”

And then cried a general chorus:

“‘t shall not be—it shall not!”

The assembly broke at once into knots of tens, twenties, thirties, gesticulating and speaking aloud, like freemen in anger. And ere William, with all his prompt dissimulation, could do more than smother his rage, and sit griping his sword hilt, and setting his teeth, the assembly dispersed.

Such were the free souls of the Normans under the greatest of their chiefs; and had those souls been less free, England had not been enslaved in one age, to become free again, God grant, to the end of time!

CHAPTER IX

Through the blue skies over England there rushed the bright stranger—a meteor, a comet, a fiery star! “such as no man before ever saw;” it appeared on the 8th, before the kalends of May; seven nights did it shine 235, and the faces of sleepless men were pale under the angry glare.

The river of Thames rushed blood-red in the beam, the winds at play on the broad waves of the Humber, broke the surge of the billows into sparkles of fire. With three streamers, sharp and long as the sting of a dragon, the foreboder of wrath rushed through the hosts of the stars. On every ruinous fort, by sea-coast and march, the warder crossed his breast to behold it; on hill and in thoroughfare, crowds nightly assembled to gaze on the terrible star. Muttering hymns, monks hudded together round the altars, as if to exorcise the land of a demon. The gravestone of the Saxon father-chief was lit up, as with the coil of the lightning; and the Morthwyrtha looked from the mound, and saw in her visions of awe the Valkyrs in the train of the fiery star.

On the roof of his palace stood Harold the King, and with folded arms he looked on the Rider of Night. And up the stairs of the turret came the soft steps of Haco, and stealing near to the King, he said:

“Arm in haste, for the bodes have come breathless to tell thee that Tostig, thy brother, with pirate and war-ship, is wasting thy shores and slaughtering thy people!”

CHAPTER X

Tostig, with the ships he had gained both from Norman and Norwegian, recruited by Flemish adventurers, fled fast from the banners of Harold. After plundering the Isle of Wight, and the Hampshire coasts, he sailed up the Humber, where his vain heart had counted on friends yet left him in his ancient earldom; but Harold’s soul of vigour was everywhere. Morcar, prepared by the King’s bodes, encountered and chased the traitor, and, deserted by most of his ships, with but twelve small craft Tostig gained the shores of Scotland. There, again forestalled by the Saxon King, he failed in succour from Malcolm, and retreating to the Orkneys, waited the fleets of Hardrada.