NOTE K. pp. 67, 540. The Political Position of the Lady Eadgyth

I am not aware of any mention of Eadgyth in any English writer between the death of Eadward and her own death (Chronn. Wig. Petrib. 1076; Fl. Wig. 1074). The accounts of the latter event however show that Winchester was her dwelling-place, and that she was in high honour with William.

I am now more inclined than I was in vol. i. p. 334 to look on Winchester as the actual morning-gift, first of Emma and then (by reversion or by the despoiling of Emma) of Eadgyth. It is plain that the city was the usual dwelling-place of each of the widowed Ladies in her widowhood. That Winchester was the morning-gift of Eadgyth is distinctly asserted by Guy of Amiens (see above, p. 541).

There are several indications that Eadgyth was not thoroughly loyal towards England. The only direct statements to that effect are certainly to be found only in very suspicious sources, but, weighing one thing with another, they seem not to be wholly without probability. William of Poitiers, in the midst of his savage abuse of Harold (126), adds, “Germana quoque, illi moribus absimillima, quum armis non valeret, votis inpugnabat et consilio.... Voluit autem virilis prudentiæ femina, intelligens honesta quælibet et vitâ colens, Willelmum Anglis dominari.” So the Hyde writer (290) says distinctly, “Haroldus, defuncto Edwardo, mox regnum Anglorum, contradicente Edithâ Reginâ sorore suâ, usurpavit.” I do not quite understand what the writer of the French Life means when he says (4075) that Harold

When we remember Eadgyth’s preference for Tostig and her alleged complicity in one of his worst crimes, we may perhaps think it quite possible that she was no loyal subject of Harold. We may even be led to see a special meaning in the earnest request made by Eadward on his death-bed, that she should lose nothing of her rights and honours (see above, p. 15). And, when Tostig had fallen, it is even possible that she may have looked to William as being in some sort his avenger. She may also, at an earlier time, have fallen under the baneful fascination of her husband’s foreign favourites. And the Norman account, strange as it sounds, derives a certain corroboration from its very strangeness. It is the sort of thing which no one would have been likely to think of, if there had not been some real ground-work for it. And the honour shown to her by William, and the respect with which she is always treated by Norman writers, are in themselves suspicious. It was of course the obvious policy of William, representing himself as he did as the lawful successor of Eadward, to show every respect to the widow of his predecessor. But when we remember that that widow was also the sister of Harold, it is hardly honourable to her that William was able to carry out a policy of this kind. The other female members of her family found that England under William was no place for them. But while her mother, her sister, her nieces, were all in banishment, Eadgyth sat quietly at Winchester in all the honours of the Old Lady. In fact her character is a riddle from beginning to end, and her relations to her brothers are almost as mysterious as her relations to her husband.