§ 4. William’s Alliance with Tostig

William had thus, by a characteristic effort of his craft, won over his own Duchy to support him in his enterprise. He had now to seek for allies beyond his own borders. And, first and foremost, it concerned him to know whether he could look for any support in the land to whose dominion he aspired. There is not a shadow of evidence to show that William had a single native partizan within the four |confined to the Normans settled there.| seas of Britain.^[862]He may have carried on intrigues with the Normans whom Harold had allowed to remain in England. But even on this head we have no distinct evidence. A single notice some months later seems to show that, even at the time of William’s landing, the Normans in England, however eagerly they may have wished for his success, looked on his enterprise as hopeless.^[863] But it is certain that one, perhaps two,^[864] native Englishmen |William’s cause embraced by the banished Tostig.| were zealous on William’s behalf. At what stage of his negotiations we know not, but seemingly early in the year, one Englishman at least came to William’s court, to excite him to war against England and to offer his own services for the cause. But that Englishman was no discontented noble at Harold’s court, no leader of a powerful faction within his realm. He was an exile, buoyed up by an exile’s proverbially desperate hopes. The first foreign volunteer who answered to William’s summons was Tostig the son of Godwine.^[865]

In the banished brother of the English King, William found an ally willing to help him in all his schemes, an ally far more impetuous than himself, far more eager to strike a blow at once and at all hazards. The fallen Earl of the Northumbrians had sunk from bad to worse. He had now thrown off every feeling of an Englishman and a brother of the English King. He had once perhaps dreamed of the Kingdom for himself; he now found himself shut out from all hopes of his Earldom, or indeed of restoration in any shape. Harold, as Earl, at the Northampton conference, had done all that he could do for his brother; but he had agreed to the sentence of outlawry which the national voice had called for, and he had not as King done anything to recall Tostig to his country. In fact the restoration of Tostig was in every way impossible. |His hopelessness of restoration.| He had shown his thorough unfitness to rule, and it is absurd to suppose that he would have been satisfied to sit down and live peaceably in England as a private man. Harold could have had neither the will nor the power to break the Oxford compact, to dispossess Morkere of the Earldom which had been so solemnly confirmed to him, and to set his brother to rule once more over the unwilling people of Northumberland. Nor could he be asked to depose in favour of a pardoned outlaw either of his two loyal brothers who ruled in Kent and in East-Anglia. Nor could Tostig reasonably hope that Harold would put him in a still closer relation to himself by restoring the West-Saxon Earldom in his favour. In short, no banished man ever seemed doomed to a more hopeless banishment. It is not wonderful then that the heart of Tostig was turned to an exceeding bitterness against the country which had cast him out, and against the brother who had refused to sacrifice the public weal to his interests. If he still retained the consciousness of originally right intentions, such a consciousness would only add fuel to the fire. It is quite possible that the murderer of Gamel and Ulf may have looked on himself as a martyr to the cause of good order among the barbarous Northumbrians. At all events, he looked on himself as absolved from all ties either to his |He determines on a restoration by force.| brother or to his country. An attempt at an armed return on the part of Tostig was no more than was to be expected. It was what any banished man of that age was sure to attempt, if he could only collect the needful force in any quarter. Osgod Clapa, Godwine, Ælfgar, Harold himself, had all set him the example. The practice was so common that it could hardly be looked upon as specially blameworthy. If we blame Harold severely for the slaughter at Porlock, it is really because he pays the penalty of his greatness, because we cannot help judging him by a severer standard than that by which we judge smaller |Difference between the case of Tostig and the cases of other returning exiles.| men.^[866] But there are very marked degrees in a course which, however usual at the time, must be set down as being in every case contrary to ideal loyalty and patriotism. The case of Godwine needs no defence; it is covered by the general right of insurrection against mis-government. If Godwine came to restore himself, he came also to deliver England. Harold, like Osgod Clapa, tried to effect his return by the help of mercenaries hired in a foreign land. But he did not ally himself with any enemies of the King or Kingdom. Ælfgar, on his first banishment, went a step further by leaguing himself with a rebellious vassal, if not within the Kingdom of England, at least within the Empire of Britain.^[867] On the occasion of his second banishment, he did not scruple to employ the help of a fleet of Wikings, who must have been cruising on the shores of England with no friendly intent.^[868] All these are steps in a descending scale. But neither Osgod nor Harold nor Ælfgar sank to the wickedness of roaming over the world in search of any foreign potentate who would restore him by force, even at the expense of the utter subjugation of England. Tostig alone did not scruple at this depth of treason. He stands before us as acting more distinctly as the enemy of his country than any Englishman whom we have come across since the days of Ælfric and Eadric.

Tostig, we have seen, on his banishment from England, took refuge with his brother-in-law Count Baldwin, and spent the winter at his court.^[869] But, early in the next year, perhaps not very long after the election of Harold, most likely as soon as the news of the messages which passed between William and Harold had found its way to Bruges, Tostig was at the Court of William, urging him to the invasion of England. He eagerly asked the Duke how he could suffer the perjurer to reign,^[870] and promised his own |Relations between William and Tostig.| vigorous help in promoting all his plans.^[871] It would seem that he reached Normandy before the Assembly at Lillebonne, and it is even implied that the exhortations of Tostig were among the inducements which led William to summon that Assembly.^[872] But Tostig’s exhortations could have been only a very secondary inducement, serving at most to strengthen and hasten a resolution which William had already formed. It would be an insult to William to suppose that he really needed Tostig as a counsellor. The relations between the two men are perfectly easy to understand; the small man was likely to be useful as a momentary tool in the hands of the great man. Though Tostig left his wife at the court of her brother, the family connexion between Judith and Matilda would secure him a brotherly reception at the Court of Rouen; indeed we are told that, on the strength of that connexion, Tostig and William had long been intimate friends.^[873] And now each of the two friends was in a position to be useful to the other. Tostig, driven from England, was in search of foreign help, and the Court of Normandy was the natural place for him to seek for it in the first instance. As soon as he knew of William’s designs on the English Crown, he would hail in him the very man for his purpose. And the prince who already contemplated the invasion of England would rejoice at an alliance with the banished and hostile brother of the English King. Tostig had doubtless, after the manner of exiles, persuaded himself that all England was ready to welcome, not only himself, but any stranger who might appear under the pretext of restoring him. William was too wise to believe tales of this kind, but he might well look on Tostig as likely to prove an useful tool, as one whose incursions might serve to harass the King of the English, and to distract his attention from the main danger. Tostig’s impetuous temper would naturally call for earlier and more effective support than the prudence of William would be inclined to give, or indeed than, at that early stage of his preparations, he was able to give. It was undesirable utterly to thwart Tostig, or to make an enemy of him; it was perhaps becoming |Tostig attacks England with William’s sanction. May, 1066.| desirable to get rid of him. He was therefore allowed to make an incursion on the English coasts. At his own risk, but with the Duke’s sanction, he set sail from the Côtentin at the head of such a naval force as he could get together. This force would doubtless consist of Flemish and Norman mercenaries and volunteers. The Norman account tells us that King Harold’s fleet was so vigorously on the alert that Tostig was unable to land in England, while contrary winds hindered his return to Normandy.^[874] We know however that he did land in England, and that he committed considerable ravages. ^[875] But, from this point, the career of Tostig and that of William become altogether distinct, and the story of Tostig’s later doings will join itself to another thread of my narrative. Tostig probably chafed under the restraints of William’s prudence; perhaps he thought himself forsaken, or even betrayed, by an ally whose support was so slowly and grudgingly given. It is certain that he soon threw up his alliance with the Norman Duke, and sought for more ready aid elsewhere.