NOTE F. p. 48. The Date of the Marriage of Harold and Ealdgyth

It did not occur to me, when writing either the text or the Appendix of my second volume, that the marriage of Harold and Ealdgyth could be placed at any date except at some time between the death of her first husband Gruffydd and Harold’s election to the Crown. See vol. ii. p. 477. The different accounts which we have, not one of them of first rate authority, all connect the death of Gruffydd and the second marriage of his widow (see vol. ii. p. 630), as if no great time had elapsed between the two events. There is however no direct statement as to the date to be found anywhere, and one or two hints, none of them perhaps of any great strength singly, but having together a sort of cumulative force, have suggested to me that it is quite as likely that the marriage may have taken place after Harold’s coronation.

1. One of the fullest of the Accounts of Ealdgyth, which I quoted in vol. ii. p. 630, is that of Benoît de Ste. More, no great authority certainly. He, it will be remembered, places the death of Gruffydd, and consequently the marriage of his widow, after Harold’s accession. As to the death of Gruffydd he is of course wrong, but it is quite possible that he may have given the right date to the marriage, and may have wrongly inferred that the death of Gruffydd must have happened a short time before it.

2. What more immediately concerns us at this point is that none of the accounts of Harold’s coronation contains any mention of Ealdgyth, unless the expression of Orderic (quoted in vol. ii. p. 630), which follows almost immediately after his account of the coronation, and which might be understood to imply that Harold was already married, be taken as an exception. The words of Orderic however do not seem decisive. Neither of course is the absence of any mention of Ealdgyth’s coronation decisive the other way, but it is worth mentioning among other hints.

3. In none of the accounts of the messages which passed between William and Harold after Harold’s coronation is there a single word implying that Harold was already married, though some mention of his marriage would have been much to the purpose. And several of the versions imply that Harold could have married William’s daughter even after his coronation. Wace (Roman de Rou, 11088) thus sums up Harold’s offences;

So again in the Cartulary of Saint Bertin, p. 197 (a passage to which I shall have again to refer), the cause of William’s expedition is said to be “eo quod filiam ipsius Wilhelmi in uxorem accipere recusaverit [Haroldus].” This is hardly the language which would be used of a man who had already taken another wife. Perhaps too the words of William of Malmesbury (iii. 238) may look the same way. He tells us that Harold on his accession “nihil de pactis inter se et Willelmum cogitabat, liberatum se sacramento asserens quod filia ejus quam desponderat citra nubiles annos obierat.” This is in answer to a message of William, which must have included a summons to marry some one of his daughters. Harold answers that the particular daughter to whom he had engaged himself was dead. This is not at all like the language of a man who was already married.

In the account given by Eadmer (5), followed by Simeon of Durham (1066), it is still more distinctly implied that Harold could have married William’s daughter, even after his coronation. When Harold refuses to comply with William’s first demands, the Duke sends a second embassy, calling upon him at any rate to marry his daughter, which Harold refuses to do (“Iterùm ei amicâ familiaritate mandavit quatenùs, aliis omissis, servatâ fidei sponsione, saltem filiam suam uxorem duceret.... At ipse nec illud quidem se facere velle ... respondit”).

The statements quoted in the last two paragraphs are of course very confused and contradictory. Their evidence as bearing on the real nature of the engagements entered into between Harold and William I shall discuss elsewhere. But it is remarkable that, among several passages where we should have naturally looked for some mention of the marriage, if it had taken place, not one mentions it, while some distinctly imply that it had not taken place.

The political motive of the marriage would be much the same, whatever was its date. Whether it happened before or after Harold’s accession, it was most likely an attempt to secure the fidelity of Eadwine and Morkere. If it happened after the coronation, an obvious time for it would be the time of Harold’s recognition by the Northumbrians (see Note I).

I do not pretend positively to decide the question, as there is no direct testimony either way, but I think it right to mention that I have found what are at least hints favouring a view of the matter which had not occurred to me when I spoke of it in my former volume.