wards to him and his brother, in his mother's
HAROLD, HARDICANUTE, AND EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.
17
name (but whether really with or without his
mother's knowledge is now uncertain), he allowed
himself to be tempted over to England, with a
good force of soldiers, and landing on the
Kentish coast, and being met and welcomed by
Earl Godwin, proceeded into Surrey, as far as
the town of Guildford. Here, he and his men
halted in the evening to rest, having still the
Earl in their company ; who had ordered lodg-
ings and good cheer for them. But, in the dead
of the night, when they were off their guard,
being divided into small parties sleeping soundly
after a long march and a plentiful supper in
different houses, they were set upon by the
King's troops, and taken prisoners. Next morn-
ing they were drawn out in a line, to the number
of six hundred men, and were barbarously tor-
tured and killed, with the exception of every
tenth man, who was sold into slavery. As to the
wretched Prince Alfred, he was stripped naked,
tied to a horse and sent away into the Isle of
Ely, where his eyes were torn out of his head,
and where in a few days he miserably died. I
am not sure that the Earl had wilfully entrapped
him, but I suspect it strongly.
Harold was now King all over England,
though it is doubtful whether the Archbishop of
Canterbury (the greater part of the priests were
Saxons, and not friendly to the Danes) ever con-
sented to crown him. Crowned or uncrowned,
with the Archbishop's leave or without it, he
was King for four years : after which short reign
he died, and was buried ; having never done
much in life but go a hunting. He was such a
fast runner at this, his favourite sport, that the
people called him Harold Harefoot.
Hardicanute was then at Bruges, in Flanders,
plotting with his mother (who had gone over
there after the cruel murder of Prince Alfred),
for the invasion of England. The Danes and
Saxons, finding themselves without a King, and
dreading new disputes, made common cause,
and joined in inviting him to occupy the Throne.
He consented, and soon troubled them enough;
for he brought over numbers of Danes, and
taxed the people so insupportably to enrich
those greedy favourites that there were many
insurrections, especially one at Worcester, where
the citizens rose and killed his tax-collectors ;
in revenge for which he burned their city. He
was a brutal King, whose first public act was to
order the dead body of poor Harold Harefoot to
be dug up, beheaded, and thrown into the river.
His end was worthy of such a beginning. He
fell down drunk, with a goblet of wine in his
hand, at a wedding-feast at Lambeth, given in
honour of the marriage of his standard-bearer, a
Child's History of England, 2.
Dane, named Towed the Proud. And he
never spoke again.
Edward, afterwards called by the monks The
Confessor, succeeded ; and his first act was to
oblige his mother Emma, who had favoured him
so little, to retire into the country ; where she
died some ten years afterwards. He was the
exiled prince whose brother Alfred had been so
foully killed. He had been invited over from
Normandy by Hardicanute, in the course of his
short reign of two years, and had been hand-
somely treated at court. His cause was now
favoured by the powerful Earl Godwin, and he
was soon made King. This Earl had been sus-
pected by the people, ever since Prince Alfred's
cruel death ; he had even been tried in the last
reign for the Prince's murder, but had been pro-
nounced not guilty ; chiefly, as it was supposed,
because of a present he had made to the swinish
King, of a gilded ship with a figure-head of solid
gold, and a crew of eighty splendidly armed
men. It was his interest to help the new King
with his power, if the new King would help him
against the popular distrust and hatred. So they
made a bargain. Edward the Confessor got the
Throne. The Earl got more power and more '
land, and his daughter Editha was made queen ;
for it was a part of their compact that the King
should take her for his wife.
But, although she was a gentle lady, in all
things worthy to be beloved — good, beautiful,
sensible, and kind — the King from the first
neglected her. Her father and her six proud
brothers, resenting this cold treatment, harassed
the King greatly by exerting all their power to
make him unpopular. Having lived so long in
Normandy, he preferred the Normans to the
English. He made a Norman Archbishop, and
Norman Bishops ; his great officers and favourites
were all Normans ; he introduced the Norman
fashions and the Norman language ; in imitation
of the state custom of Normandy, he attached a
great seal to his state documents, instead of
merely marking them, as the Saxon Kings had
done, with the sign of the cross — just as poor
people who have never been taught to write,
now make the same mark for their names. All
this, the powerful Earl Godwin and his six
proud sons represented to the people as dis-
favour shown towards the English; and thus
they daily increased their own power, and daily
diminished the power of the King.
They were greatly helped by an event that
occurred when he had reigned eight years.
Eustace, Earl of Boulogne, who had married
the King's sister, came to England on a visit.
After staying at the court some time, he set
345
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
forth, with his numerous train of attendants, to
return home. They were to embark at Dover.
Entering that peaceful town in armour, they
took possession of the best houses, and noisily
demanded to be lodged and entertained without
payment. One of the bold men of Dover, who
would not endure to have these domineering
strangers jingling their heavy swords and iron
corselets up anil down his house, eating his meat
and drinking his strong liquor, stood in his door-
way and refused admission to the first armed
man who came there. The armed man drew,
and wounded him. The man of Dover struck
the armed man dead. Intelligence of what he
had done, spreading through the streets to where
the Count Eustace and his men were standing
by their horses, bridle in hand, they passionately
mounted, galloped to the house, surrounded it,
forced their way in (the doors and windows
being closed when they came up), and killed
the man of Dover at his own fireside. They
then clattered through the streets, cutting down
and riding over men, women, and children. This
did not last long, you may believe. The men of
Dover set upon them with great fury, killed
nineteen of the foreigners, wounded many more,
and, blockading the road to the port so that
they should not embark, beat them out of the
town by the way they had come. Hereupon
Count Eustace rides as hard as man can ride
to Gloucester, where Edward is, surrounded by
Norman monks and Norman lords. " Justice ! "
cries the Count, " upon the men of Dover, who
have set upon and slain my people ! " The
King sends immediately for the powerful Earl
Godwin, who happens to be near ; reminds him
that Dover is under his government ; and orders
him to repair to Dover and do military execu-
tion on the inhabitants. " It does not become
you," says the proud Earl in reply, " to condemn
without a hearing those whom you have sworn
to protect. I will not do it."
The King, therefore, summoned the Earl, on
pain of banishment and loss of his titles and
property, to appear before the court to answer
this disobedience. The Earl refused to appear.
He, his eldest son Harold, and his second son
Sweyn, hastily raised as many fighting men as
their utmost power could collect, and demanded
to have Count Eustace and his followers sur-
rendered to the justice of the country. The
King, in his turn, refused to give them up, and
raised a strong force. After some treaty and
delay, the troops of the great Earl and his sons
began to fall off. The Earl, with a part of his
family and abundance of treasure, sailed to
Flanders ; Harold escaped to Ireland ; and the
power of the great family was for that time gone
in England. But, the people did not forget
them.
Then. Edward the Confessor, with the true
meanness of a mean spirit, visited his dislike of
the once powerful father and sons upon the
helpless daughter and sister, his unoffending
wife, whom all who saw her (her husband and
his monks excepted) loved. He seized rapa-
ciously upon her fortune and her jewels, and
allowing her only one attendant, confined her
in a gloomy convent, of which a sister of his
— no doubt an unpleasant lady after his own
heart — was abbess or jailer.
Having got Earl Godwin and his six sons
well out of his way, the King favoured the Nor-
mans more than ever. He invited over William.
Duke of Normandy, the son of that Duke who
had received him and his murdered brother long-
ago, and of a peasant girl, a tanner's daughter,
with whom that Duke had fallen in love for her
beauty as he saw her washing clothes in a brook.
William, who was a great warrior, with a passion
for fine horses, dogs, and arms, accepted the
invitation ; and the Normans in England, finding
themselves more numerous than ever when he
arrived with his retinue, and held in still greater
honour at court than before, became more and
more haughty towards the people, and were
more and more disliked by them.
The old Earl Godwin, though he was abroad,
knew well how the people felt ; for, with part of
the treasure he had carried away with him, he
kept spies and agents in his pay all over Eng-
land. Accordingly, he thought the time was
come for fitting out a great expedition against
the Norman-loving King. With it, he sailed to
the Isle of Wight, where he was joined by his
son Harold, the most gallant and brave of all
his family. And so the father and son came
sailing up the Thames to South wark ; great num-
bers of the people declaring for them, and shout-
ing for the English Earl and the English Harold,
against the Norman favourites !
The King was at first as blind and stubborn
as kings usually have been whensoever they
have been in the hands of monks. But the
people rallied so thickly round the old Earl
and his son, and the old Earl was so steady in
demanding without bloodshed the restoration of
himself and his family to their rights, that at
last the court took the alarm. The Norman
Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Norman
Bishop of London, surrounded by their re-
tainers, fought their way out of London, and
escaped from Essex to France in a fishing-boat.
The other Norman favourites dispersed in all
HAROLD THE SECOND.
iQ
directions. The old Earl and his sons (except
Sweyn, who had committed crimes against the
law) were restored to their possessions and dig-
nities. Editha, the virtuous and lovely Queen
of the insensible King, was triumphantly released
from her prison, the convent, and once more sat
in her chair of state, arrayed in the jewels of
which, when she had no champion to support
her rights, her cold-blooded husband had de-
prived her.
The old Earl Godwin did not long enjoy his
restored fortune. He fell down in a fit at the
King's table, and died upon the third day after-
wards. Harold succeeded to his power, and to
a far higher place in the attachment of the peo-
ple than his father had ever held. By his valour
he subdued the King's enemies in many bloody
fights. He was vigorous against rebels in Scot-
land — this was the time when Macbeth slew
Duncan, upon which event our English Shake-
speare, hundreds of years afterwards, wrote his
great tragedy ; and he killed the restless Welsh
King Griffith, and brought his head to England.
What Harold was doing at sea, when he was
driven on the French coast by a tempest, is not
at all certain j nor does it at all matter. That
his ship was forced by a storm on that shore,
and that he was taken prisoner, there is no
doubt. In those barbarous days, all ship-
wrecked strangers were taken prisoners, and
obliged to pay ransom. So, a certain Count
Guy, who was the Lord of Ponthieu where
Harold's disaster happened, seized him, instead
of relieving him like a hospitable and Christian
lord as he ought to have done, and expected to
make a very good thing of it. '
But Harold sent off immediately to Duke
William of Normandy, complaining of this treat-
ment ; and the Duke no sooner heard of it than
he ordered Harold to be escorted to the ancient
town of Rouen, where he then was, and where
he received him as an honoured guest. Now,
some writers tell us that Edward the Confessor,
who was by this time old and had no children,
had made a will, appointing Duke William of
Normandy his successor, and had informed the
Duke of his having done so. There is no doubt
that he was anxious about his successor ; be-
cause he had even invited over, from abroad,
Edward the Outlaw, a son of Ironside,
who had come to England with his wife and
three children, but whom the King had
strangely refused to see when he did come,
and who had died in London suddenly (princes
were terribly liable to sudden death in those
days), and had been buried in St. Paul's Cathe-
dral. The King might possibly have made
such a will ; cr, having always been fond of the
Normans, he might have encouraged Norman
William to aspire to the English crown, by
something that he said to him when he was
staying at the English court. But, certainly
William did now aspire to it ; and knowing
that Harold would be a powerful rival, he
called together a great assembly of his nobles,
offered Harold his daughter Adele in marriage,
informed him that he meant on King Edward's
death to claim the English crown as his own
inheritance, and required Harold then and
there to swear to aid him. Harold, being in the
Duke's power, took this oath upon the Missal,
or Prayer-book. It is a good example of the
superstitions of the monks, that this Missal,
instead of being placed upon a table, was
placed upon a tub ; which, when Harold had
sworn, was uncovered, and shown to be full of
dead men's bones — bones, as the monks pre-
tended, of saints. This was supposed to make
Harold's oath a great deal more impressive and
binding. As if the great name of the Creator of
Heaven and earth could be made more solemn
by a knuckle-bone, or a double-tooth, or a
finger-nail, of Dunstan !
Within a week or two after Harold's return to
England, the dreary old Confessor was found
to be dying. After wandering in his mind like
a very weak old man, he died. As he had put
himself entirely in the hands of the monks when
he was alive, they praised him lustily when he
was dead. They had gone so far, already, as to
persuade him that he could work miracles ; and
had brought people afflicted with a bad disorder
of the skin, to him, to be touched and cured.
This was called " touching for the King's Evil,"
which afterwards became a royal custom. You
know, however, Who really touched the sick,
and healed them ; and you know His sacred
name is not among the dusty line of human
kings.
CHAPTER VII.
ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD THE SECOND, AND
CONQUERED BY THE NORMANS.
AROLD was crowned King of Eng-
land on the very day of the maudlin
Confessor's funeral. He had good
need to be quick about it. When
the news reached Norman William,
hunting in his park at .Rouen, he
dropped his bow, returned to his
palace, called his nobles to council,
presently sent ambassadors to Harold,
and
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
calling on him to keep his oath and resign the
Crown . Harold would do no such thing. The
barons of France leagued together round Duke
William for the invasion of England. Duke
William promised freely to distribute English
wealth and English lands among them. The
Pope sent to Normandy a consecrated banner,
and a ring containing a hair which he warranted
to have grown on the head of Saint Peter. He
blessed the enterprise ; and cursed Harold ;
and requested that the Normans would pay
"Peter's Pence" — or a tax to himself of a
penny a year on every house — a little more
regularly in future, if they could make it con-
venient.
King Harold had a rebel brother in Flanders,
who was a vassal of Harold Hardrada, King
of Norway. This brother, and this Norwegian
King, joining their forces against England, with
Duke William's help, won a fight in which the
English were commanded by two nobles ; and
then besieged York. Harold, who was waiting
for the Normans on the coast at Hastings, with
his army, marched to Stamford Bridge upon the
river Derwent to give them instant battle.
He found them drawn up in a hollow circle,
marked out by their shining spears. Riding
round this circle at a distance, to survey it, he
saw a brave figure on horseback, in a blue
mantle and a bright helmet, whose horse sud-
denly stumbled and threw him.
" Who is that man who has fallen ? " Harold
asked of one of his captains.
" The King of Norway," he replied.
" He is a tall and stately king," said Harold,
" but his end is near."
He added, in a little while, " Go yonder to my
brother, and tell him, if he withdraw his troops,
he shall be Earl of Northumberland, and rich
and powerful in England."
The captain rode away and gave the message.
" What will he give to my friend the King of
Norway ? " asked the brother.
" Seven feet of earth for a grave," replied the
captain.
" No more ? " returned the brother, with a
smile.
" The King of Norway being a tall man, per-
haps a little more," replied the captain.
" Ride back ! " said the brother, " and tell
King Harold to make ready for the fight ! "
He did so, very soon. And such a fight
King Harold led against that force, that his
brother, and the Norwegian King, and every
chief of note in all their host, except the Nor-
wegian King's son, Olave, to whom he gave
honourable dismissal, were left dead upon the
field. The victorious army marched to York.
As King Harold sat there at the feast, in the
midst of all his company, a stir was heard at
the doors ; and messengers all covered with
mire from riding far and fast through broken
ground came hurrying in, to report that the
Normans had landed in England.
The intelligence was true. They had been
tossed about by contrary winds, and some of
their ships had been wrecked. A part of their
own shore, to which they had been driven back,
was strewn with Norman bodies. But they had
once more made sail, led by the Duke's own
galley, a present from his wife, upon the prow
whereof the figure of a golden boy stood point-
ing towards England. By day, the banner of
the three Lions of Normandy, the diverse
coloured sails, the gilded vanes, the many deco-
rations of this gorgeous ship, had glittered in
the sun and sunny water ; by night, a light had
sparkled like a star at her mast-head. And
now, encamped near Hastings, with their
leader lying in the old Roman castle of
Pevensey, the English retiring in all directions,
the land for miles around scorched and smok-
ing, fired and pillaged, was the whole Norman
power, hopeful and strong on English ground.
Harold broke up the feast and hurried to
London. Within a week, his army was ready.
He sent out spies to ascertain the Norman
strength. William took them, caused them to
be led through his whole camp, and then dis-
missed. " The Normans," said these spies to
Harold, " are not bearded on the upper lip as
we English are, but are shorn. They are
priests." "My men,"' replied Harold, with a
laugh, " will find those priests good soldiers ! "
"The Saxons," reported Duke William's out-
posts of Norman soldiers, who were instructed
to retire as King Harold's army advanced,
" rush on us through 'their pillaged country with
the fury of madmen."
" Let them come, and come soon ! " said
Duke William.
Some proposals for a reconciliation were
made, but were soon abandoned. In the
middle of the month of October, in the year
one thousand and sixty-six, the Normans and
the English came front to front. All night the
armies lay encamped before each other, in a
part of the country then called Senlac, now
called (in remembrance of them) Battle. With
the first dawn of day, they arose. There, in the
faint light, were the English on a hill ; a wood
behind them ; in their midst, the Royal banner,
representing a fighting warrior, woven in gold
thread, adorned with precious stones ; beneath
the banner, as it rustled in the wind, stood
King Harold on foot, with two of his remaining
brothers by his side; around them, still and
silent as the dead, clustered the whole English
army — every soldier covered by his shield, and
bearing in his hand his dreaded English battle-
axe.
On an opposite hill, in three lines, archers,
foot-soldiers, horsemen, was the Norman force.
Of a sudden, a great battle-cry, " God help us !"
burst from the Norman lines. The English an-
swered with their own battle-cry, " God's Rood !
Holy Rood ! " The Normans then came sweep-
ing down the hill to attack the English.
There was one tall Norman Knight who rode
before the Norman army on a prancing horse,
throwing up his heavy sword and catching it,
and singing of the bravery of his countrymen.
An English Knight, who rode out from the
English force to meet him, fell by this Knight's
hand. Another English Knight rode out, and
he fell too. But then a third rode out, and
killed the Norman. This was in the first be-
ginning of the fight. It soon raged everywhere.
The English keeping side by side in a great
mass, cared no more for the showers of Norman
arrows than if they had been showers of Norman
rain. When the Norman horsemen rode against
them, with their battle-axes they cut men and
horses down. The Normans gave way. The
English pressed forward. A cry went forth
among the Norman troops that Duke William
was killed. Duke William took off his helmet,
in order that his face might be distinctly seen,
and rode along the line before his men. This
gave them courage. As they turned again to
face the English, some of their Norman horse
divided the pursuing body of the English from
the rest, and thus all that foremost portion of
the English army fell, fighting bravely. The
main body still remaining firm, heedless of the
Norman arrows, and with their battle-axes cut-
ting down the crowds of horsemen when they
rode up, like forests of young trees, Duke Wil-
liam pretended to retreat. The eager English
followed. The Norman army closed again, and
fell upon them with great slaughter.
" Still," said Duke William, " there are thou-
sands of the English, firm as rocks around their
King. Shoot upward, Norman archers, that
your arrows may fall down upon their faces ! "
The sun rose high, and sank, and the battle
still raged. Through all the wild October day,
the clash and din resounded in the air. In the
red sunset, and in the white moonlight, heaps
upon heaps of dead men lay strewn, a dreadful
spectacle, all over the ground. King Harold,
wounded with an arrow in the eye, was nearly
blind. His brothers were already killed.
Twenty Norman Knights, whose battered armour
had flashed fiery and golden in the sunshine all
day long, and now looked silvery in the moon-
light, dashed forward to seize the Royal banner
from the English Knights and soldiers, still
faithfully collected round their blinded King.
The King received a mortal wound, and dropped.
The English broke and fled. The Normans
rallied, and the day was lost.
O what a sight beneath the moon and stars,
when lights were shining in the tent of the vic-
torious Duke William, which was pitched near
the spot where Harold fell — and he and his
Knights were carousing, within — and soldiers
with torches, going slowly to and fro, without,
sought for the corpse of Harold among piles of
dead — and the warrior, worked in golden thread
and precious stones, lay low, all torn and soiled
with blood — and the three Norman Lions kept
watch over the field !
CHAPTER VIII.
ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE FIRST, THE NORMAN
CONQUEROR.
^JLWPON the ground where the brave
' iBj Harold fell, William the Norman
afterwards founded an abbey, which,
under the name of Battle Abbey, was
a rich and splendid place through
many a troubled year, though now it
is a grey ruin overgrown with ivy. But the
first work he had to do, was to conquer
the English thoroughly ; and that, as you
know by this time, was hard work for any man.
He ravaged several counties ; he burned and
plundered many towns ; he laid waste scores
upon scores of miles of pleasant country ; he
destroyed innumerable lives. A t length Stigand,
Archbishop of Canterbury, with other represen-
tatives of the clergy and the people, went to his