§ 1. The Negotiations between William and Harold

Events had happened so fast at Westminster, on the eve of the Epiphany and on the festival itself, that the Duke of the Normans heard the whole story in a single message.^[755] An English ship carried the news to Normandy; whether it was sent specially by any of William’s friends in England, or whether it went simply in the ordinary course of communication between two friendly countries, we are not distinctly told. But, as a special messenger brought the news to the Duke, we may conceive that some of the strangers whom Harold’s clemency had allowed to remain in the land^[756] took the earliest opportunity of sending the news |Reception of the news by William.| to their native sovereign.^[757] A graphic description is given of the reception of the news by the Duke.^[758] He was in his park of Quevilly near Rouen,^[759] with many knights and esquires^[760] around him, going forth to the chase. He had in his hand his bow—the bow which, like that of Odysseus, no other man could bend^[761]—strung and bent and ready for the arrow. He was in the act of giving it to a page to bear after him, when there came to the gate a messenger, a man-at-arms from England. The new comer went straight to the Duke; he greeted him, he took him aside, and told him the news privily and briefly. “King Eadward has ended his days and Earl Harold is raised to the Kingdom.”^[762] The message at least acted as a respite for the destined victims of William’s bow, for the Duke had now other matters than hunting to think about. He turned aside from the craft of the woods; he was as a man in anger; ofttimes he laced and ofttimes he unlaced his mantle; he spake to no man and no man dared to speak to him.^[763] He crossed the Seine in a boat; he went to his hall, and entered therein; he sat down on a bench and turned from one side to another. His head rested against a pillar,^[764] and his face was covered with his mantle. Long time he thus sat in thought, no man daring to speak to him, though many asked one another what ailed him. |Dialogue between the Duke and William Fitz-Osbern.| At last one drew near whom long and intimate friendship allowed to deal more freely with his sovereign. The famous Seneschal, William Fitz-Osbern,^[765] of whom we have so often heard, now rode back from the park and entered the hall, humming a tune^[766] as he walked. He passed straight by the Duke, and many asked him what the news was which so ailed their sovereign. The Duke, hearing what passed between the Seneschal and the others, looked up. William Fitz-Osbern then told him that it was in vain for him to try to hide the news which he had heard, for that it was already blazed abroad through all the streets of Rouen. Every man in the city knew that Eadward was dead, and that Harold held the Kingdom of England. The Duke answered that that news was indeed the thing which grieved him. No news could grieve him more; he sorrowed alike for the death of Eadward and for the wrong done to him by Harold. Was he simply proving his friend? or were even his stout heart and wily brain cowed and perplexed for a moment by the suddenness of the tidings? At all events it is in the mouth of William Fitz-Osbern—the bold of heart^[767]—that the first exhortation to action is placed in our story. He bids the Duke not mourn, but arise and be doing. Let him begin, let him carry through what he begins; let him, in a word, cross the sea and wrest the Kingdom from the usurper.

The result of William’s deliberations with this trusty counsellor was the sending of an embassy to the King |Contradictory accounts of the nature of William’s message.| of the English. The nature of the message is as diversely told as the rest of the story of which it forms the sequel. Again the contemporary English writers are silent; they make no mention of Norman affairs till later in the year, till the very eve of the Norman invasion. And of the other writers, each naturally throws the message into such a shape as suits his own version of that oath of which the message was necessarily the counterpart. Whatever Harold had sworn, whatever it suited William to give out that Harold had sworn, that of course William now called on Harold to perform. But that demand ranges in different versions from a summons to Harold to resign his Kingdom to a simple summons to marry William’s daughter.^[768] We hear of more messages than one, and in one account the tone of the second message is wonderfully lowered from the tone of the first. If Harold will not resign the Kingdom, nor give up the castle of Dover, nor do any of the other things which he has promised, let him at least marry the Duke’s daughter. If he declines to do even that, the Duke will certainly come against him in arms to support his rights. The date of the embassy, and the place of its reception by Harold, are as uncertain as the exact nature of the message or of the oath. It was a matter on which William was not likely to delay, and the number of events and negotiations which were crowded into a few months |Date of the Embassy uncertain.| show that he did not delay. But our only statement as to time is the assertion of a very untrustworthy writer that the message was either sent or received on the tenth day |[January 15, 1066?]| after Eadward’s death.^[769] One would like on many grounds to know whether it was received before or after Harold had set forth on his mission to win the hearts of the malecontents of Northumberland. One would like to know whether Harold received the message of William when surrounded by his own West-Saxons, or whether it reached him, as an earlier embassy from Gaul had reached Glorious Æthelstan,^[770] while he was engaged in arranging the affairs of the most distant and most troublesome portion of his |Possible bearing of the message on the discontents of Northumberland.| Kingdom. The point is interesting, as it is just possible that the Northumbrian opposition to Harold may have been in some degree connected with the challenge brought to him from Normandy. The succession of William was indeed not likely to be looked on with a whit more of favour in Northumberland than it was looked on in Wessex. But crafty spirits were at work, who might easily turn the claims of the Norman to their own ends. Such, it might be argued, were the results of the hasty election of Harold; such were the results of binding the free sons of the North by the voices of Wessex and East-Anglia. It would be better for the North again to choose its own King, a King who had never become the man of the stranger, a King whose right could not be challenged by any rival beyond the sea. Such arguments as these seem quite in character with the position of parties at the time, but we can neither affirm nor deny that they were actually used. The exact time of Harold’s northern journey, the exact time, place, and substance of the message which Harold received from the Norman Duke, are among those details of our story which must remain unknown to us.

Whatever was the exact purport of the embassy, there can be no doubt as to its object. It was sent simply in order that William might add another count to his indictment against the English King. It was sent in order that William might be able to say, not only that Harold had neglected to perform his engagements, whatever they were, but that he had formally refused to perform them when formally called upon. Whatever William demanded, we may be sure that he demanded it only in the expectation, and even in the hope, that Harold would refuse it. He could not seriously expect that Harold would, at his bidding, either come down from his throne or consent to hold his Crown in vassalage. William knew the temper both of England and of her King a great deal too well for this. Even the summons to marry William’s daughter could hardly have been seriously meant; if Harold were already married, it could only have been sent in mockery.^[771] At all events, the one object of the embassy was to put Harold, according to William’s view of the case, still further in the wrong. Its object was to supply William with fresh topics for argument and for rhetoric in the appeal which he was about to make to Normandy, to Gaul, and to Christendom.

The answer of Harold to the message is of course differently conceived, according as the message is differently conceived. The answer depends on the message, just as the message depends on the oath. But all accounts agree |His answer in any case a distinct refusal.| in describing the answer as a complete refusal. Whatever William summoned Harold to do, Harold refused to do it. And, according to some versions, if mockery was intended by the Norman, it was answered with mockery in return. The English King is called upon to fulfil his promise of giving his sister in marriage to a Norman noble. Harold answers that his sister is dead, and he asks whether the Duke wishes her corpse to be sent to him for the purpose.^[772] When called on himself to marry the Duke’s daughter, he answers, according to one version, that the daughter whom he promised |Constitutional language attributed to Harold. He cannot marry a foreign wife without the consent of the Witan.| to marry is already dead.^[773] According to another account, he takes a high constitutional ground. A King of the English cannot marry a foreign wife without the consent of the Witan of England. Such an act could not be done without doing great damage to his Kingdom.^[774] This answer, whether ever really made or not, is not likely to point to any formal enactment on the subject of royal |English feeling with regard to foreign marriages.| marriages. But it expresses the universal feeling of the nation that none but Englishwomen were fit to be wives and mothers of English Kings. England had seen one Norman Lady, and one King who was Norman on his mother’s side. There was no wish among the English people to see such another Lady or such another King. The marriage of Emma, and the Norman connexion which followed it, had well nigh been the undoing of England. That they had not been wholly her undoing was due to the reigning King and his father. Their dynasty at least, the Kings of the House of Godwine, should be for ever kept free from all foreign elements. Harold’s own Danish mother, the kinswoman or ally of the great Cnut, could hardly be looked on as a stranger. Tostig and his foreign wife were in banishment, and England had no wish for their return. The whole nation was no doubt fully purposed that the next brood of Æthelings whom England saw should be no half-caste offspring of Norman or even of German or Flemish mothers, but Englishmen of purely English blood. Against such a feeling as this Harold, even if he had wished, could not have dared to struggle. The answer put into his mouth, whether historically genuine or not, well expresses uncorrupted English feeling on this important point. It well expresses too the necessity under which a King of the English lay, not only to obey the written Law, but to consult in all things the wishes and feelings of the English people.

Another form of the answer put into Harold’s mouth breathes an equally sound and constitutional spirit. William demands the Kingdom of England, which Harold, he alleges, had sworn to make over to him. The English King |The oath null without the consent of the Witan.| answers that such an oath was in itself void; to break it were a less evil than to keep it. The oath was one by which Harold bound himself to transfer to Duke William an heritage which was neither Harold’s nor William’s, but which only the voice of the English people could bestow on any man.^[775] The oath or vow which a maiden in her father’s house made without her parents’ knowledge was void by the laws of God and man.^[776] Much more then was the oath void which he, when still a subject, without the knowledge of King or people, had sworn under the pressure of a momentary constraint, on a matter touching the whole realm.^[777] It was not reasonable to ask him to give up a Crown which had been placed on his head by the common voice of his countrymen, and of which their voice alone could lawfully deprive him.^[778] Such is the doctrine which is put into Harold’s mouth by a writer whose divided |Constitutional importance of the answer.| sympathies lean decidedly to the Norman side. It is a doctrine most wholesome and necessary for a constitutional King, a doctrine which the historian himself allows to be true or at least highly plausible.^[779] Valuable, if it be a genuine record of what Harold said, this speech becomes almost more valuable if we look on it as the speech which a writer a generation later deemed most in keeping with Harold’s character and position. The argument, for its own purpose, as an answer to William, is perfect. The accession of Harold was not the act of Harold only; it was equally the act of the English people. However guilty Harold might be towards William, the English people were free from all guilt towards William and towards all mankind. And, whatever might be the guilt of Harold, it was a guilt which, as his own argument assumes, lay wholly in taking the oath, not at all in breaking it.

The errand then of the Norman ambassadors was a bootless one. No doubt it was the intention of him who sent them that it should be bootless. Whatever were their demands, whether they came once only or oftener, whether they raised their demands or lowered them, whether they dealt in persuasion only or in threats as well as persuasion,^[780] Harold, evidently speaking the voice of the English people, refused all that was demanded of him. No other course indeed was possible. The point hardly needs to be argued. Harold could not, without the consent of the Witan, either resign the Crown to William or hold it of him in vassalage. And the consent of the Witan would certainly not have been given for any such purpose. The whole question in short was frivolous. The dispute had reached a stage which was past negotiation, and Harold and William alike knew that all negotiation was vain. What William gained by his embassy was again to entangle Harold in the meshes of his subtle craft. Harold could only refuse every demand of William; but Harold’s refusal of William’s demands made another point on William’s side, of which he was not slow to take advantage.