NOTE I. p. 58. The Opposition of Northumberland to Harold’s Accession

This story is one of the best illustrations of the way in which one authority fills up gaps in another, and also of the way in which important facts sometimes lurk in authorities which are not of the first rank. The Abingdon and Worcester Chronicles both begin their account of the year 1066 with Harold’s coming from York to Westminster for the Easter Festival (“On þissum geare com Harold cyng of Eoforwic to Westmynstre to þam Eastran”). There is not a word about his going to York or about the cause that took him there. This we learn only from the account in William of Malmesbury’s Life of Wulfstan (Angl. Sacr. ii. 253), which we thus see that we can fully trust for the main outline of the story. The jealousy of the North against the South is admirably described; only the narrative is confused by a notion that Tostig had something to do with the matter. William of Malmesbury seems never to have fully made up his mind where Tostig was at the time of Harold’s accession. His account of the whole business runs thus;

“Quinto anno collati Wlstano Episcopatûs Rex Edwardus fato functus ingens seminarium discordiæ reliquit Angliæ; hinc Haroldo, inde Willelmo Comite Normanniæ, legitimo eam jure clamantibus. Et tunc quidem Haraldus, vel favore impetratâ vel vi extortâ coronâ, regnum paullò minus totum obtinuit. Soli Northamhumbri magnum et gentile tumentes interim parere distulere, Aquilonalem cervicositatem Australi, ut dictitabant, mollitiei subjugare non dignati. Animabat eos ad tyrannidem, et insolentiâ suâ ingentes eorum alebat spiritus, Tostinus ejusdem Regis frater, nec fortitudine degener, si ardens ingenium tranquillis studiis applicare maluisset. Qui postmodum in eâdem provinciâ cum Haraldo Rege Noreganorum, quem in suffragium adsciverat, cæsus pœnas inconsultæ animositatis pependit. Sed hæc posteriùs. Tunc verò Haraldus eo profecturus, ut contumaciam eorum lenioribus curaret remediis, quandoquidem ferro frangere consilium non erat, sanctum virum secum adduxit. Sic enim fama sanctitatis ejus etiam ad abditissimas penetraverat gentes, ut nullam non arrogantiam molliturus crederetur. Nec verò citra opinionem rei fuit eventus. Namque illi populi ferro indomabiles, semper quiddam magnum a proavis spirantes, pro reverentiâ in jura Haraldi facile concesserunt. Et profectò perseverâssent, nisi eos Tostinus, ut dixi, averteret.”

This piece of history is not only valuable in itself, but it also helps us to the origin of a misrepresentation. We have seen Orderic (see above, p. 603) asserting that part of the English nation never submitted to Harold at all, while the rest submitted only unwillingly. This misstatement is clearly an exaggeration of the fact that Northumberland did for a short time refuse to acknowledge him. This same fact may quite possibly be at the bottom of those other stories about Harold’s oppression and tyranny of which we have heard so many. Orderic goes on to tell us (492 C) that, though some powerful men (“potentiorum nonnulli”) refused obedience, yet Eadwine and Morkere were zealous partizans of their brother-in-law (“Eduuinus verò et Morcarus Comites, filii Algari præcipui Consulis, Heraldo familiaritate adhæserunt, eumque juvare toto conamine nisi sunt, eò quod ipse Edgivam sororem eorum uxorem habebat”). There is no evidence that they were openly concerned in the resistance of Northumberland, though one certainly is inclined to put their names for the name of Tostig in William of Malmesbury’s account; but we know how they acted before the year was out.

It is doubtless on the strength of this passage of Orderic that Sir Francis Palgrave ventured to write (Hist. Ang. Sax. 362); “Some portions of the Anglo-Saxon dominions never seem to have submitted to Harold. In others a sullen obedience was extorted from the people, merely because they had not power enough to raise any other king to the throne.” In the page before he had said, “If our authorities are correct, Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, but who had been suspended by the Pope, was the only prelate who acknowledged his authority.” Now, unless Sir Francis merely meant that Harold never received the homage of Malcolm, the only ground for saying that any part of “the Anglo-Saxon dominions” refused to acknowledge Harold is the story of the resistance of Northumberland given by William of Malmesbury. But it is an essential part of that story that the resistance of Northumberland was peaceably overcome by Harold with the help of Saint Wulfstan. That is to say, instead of all the Prelates except Stigand refusing to acknowledge Harold’s authority, the holiest Prelate of the time appears as Harold’s most zealous partizan. The two parts of the story hang inseparably together. If we believe that part of England for a while refused allegiance to Harold, we must also believe that the sainted Bishop of Worcester was his most loyal subject.

I should not have enlarged on any faults in a work of Sir Francis Palgrave, written thirty years before his death, and which certainly does not represent the latest lights of that great scholar, if the worst portions of his early work had not been so injudiciously reprinted as stop-gaps between the fragments of that later work of his which every student of these times ought to have beside him.