§ 1. Sickness and Death of Eadward. December 28, 1065–January 5, 1066

We left Eadward on his death-bed. His work was over; his newly built minster was hallowed, though he had been himself shut out from taking any part in that great ceremony. The Witan had been gathered, as usual, for the Christmas festival; the special summons to the dedication of Saint Peter’s, and, still more, the pressing urgency of the national affairs, had, we may well believe, called together a greater number than usual of the Thegns and Prelates |National anxiety as to the succession.| of the land. It was plain that the nation would soon be called on to elect a King, and to elect a King under circumstances of which no past age had ever seen the like. Perhaps vague reports may already have found their way into the land, warning men of the dangers which were likely to threaten England alike from her own exiles and from the foreign kinsman of the dying King. But, even if no thought of Tostig or of William crossed men’s minds, there was enough to make those days of Eadward’s last sickness days of the deepest anxiety to every patriotic Englishman. From the beginning of Eadward’s sickness, no hope of his recovery seems to have been entertained. The question in every man’s mind must have been, who should fill his place when he was taken from them. The choice of the electors would be perfectly free. Things were not as they had been when Swend and Cnut were in the land, claiming the votes of the Witan at the point of the sword. But |State of the royal line.| things were as they had never been before since the line of Cerdic had ruled over united England. The King who lay at the point of death was, with the single exception of the boy Eadgar and his sisters, the last of his race. The names of Christina and Margaret were most likely never uttered; England had never yet dreamed of giving herself a female ruler. A sentimental interest might gather round Eadgar as the last male of the kingly house, but a sentimental interest was all that he could awaken. His age and, as events proved, his character rendered him wholly unfit for rule. And Eadgar, it should be borne in mind, did not possess that constitutional claim to a preference which was all that, before the actual election, would have belonged even to a son of the dying King. At three earlier times had the royal line been reduced so low as to number none but members of an age too young for personal government. Eadwig, Eadward the Martyr, Æthelred, had all been chosen in their non-age. But the princes so chosen were all of them true Æthelings, Englishmen born, sons of an English King by an English mother. And, in those days, as there was no better qualified candidate in the royal house, so there was no man out of it marked out by the hand of nature as a born King of Men. In those days the greatest of living Englishmen was no Thegn or Ealdorman, but the renowned Primate Dunstan. England had therefore, in all those cases, accepted a King in his boyhood or even in his childhood. There was now no such need. |No constitutional preference due to Eadgar.| Eadgar, grandson of Ironside as he was, had no constitutional claim upon the votes of the Witan beyond any other male person in the realm. He was not born in the land; he was not the son of a crowned King and his Lady. |Position of Harold.| And close beside the throne, just beyond the strict limits of the royal house, stood the foremost man in England, already, it may be, associated in some sort to the honours of royalty, already an Under-King who received the oaths and homage of vassal princes, as a sharer in the rule of the Empire of Britain.^[2] Whether he had been marked out by any formal act or not, we cannot doubt that men had long learned to look to Harold the son of Godwine as their future King. And yet, when the day of choice drew near, men might well stop and wonder at the step which they were about to take. The Law justified the act; the needs of the time commanded it; but it was a strange and unwonted |Novelty of an election from beyond the royal house.| act nevertheless. It was something new, something which might well set the minds and tongues of men at work, to be called on, freely and under no fear of the Danish axe, to choose a King who had no royal forefathers, a King who came not of the stock of Ecgberht, Cerdic, and Woden. Men whose office or whose sagacity had taught them to scan the chances of the time might ask how such |Attitude of William and Tostig.| a choice would be looked on by the exile at the court of Baldwin, and by the prince who now, in the height of success and glory, had made the Norman land the wonder of continental Europe. Rumours might already be afloat that the English Earl, soon about to become the English King, had, in some strange and unknown way, already |Possible attitude of Northumberland.| become the man of the Norman Duke. And without going so far afield, men might ask how the great land north of the Humber would look on the choice which to Wessex and East-Anglia seemed the only choice possible. The Thegns and Prelates of Northumberland might give their votes with the other Witan, but would the fierce people of that proud and distant province submit, without a blow or a murmur, to the kingship of a West-Saxon, a son of Godwine, a brother of Tostig? The days when thoughts like these were working in men’s minds must have been days of |Importance of Eadward’s dying recommendation.| care and perplexity. There was one source from which light and help might be looked for, light and help which might in some sort seem to come directly from heaven. The words of a dying man have been in all times looked on as solemn and almost prophetic utterances. The words of a dying King were, by the traditional feelings of Englishmen, clothed with an authority second only to that of the Law itself. Eadward was a dying man and a dying King. And he was yet more. Strange as it seems to us, he was already beginning to be looked on with somewhat of the reverence due to a Saint. The will of Eadward had perhaps never been held to be of such moment, his voice had perhaps never been so eagerly listened for in the Councils of his Kingdom, as when he lay, helpless and wellnigh speechless, on his bed at Westminster. Men waited for the voice of the dying man, the dying King, the dying Saint, to confirm once more with his last breath the nomination of the successor on whom, amidst all doubts and dangers, the heart of England still was fixed. In choosing for the first time a King not of the blood of Cerdic, it would be no small strength and comfort if they knew that the step was taken with the full approval and the full bidding of the last King of Cerdic’s house. The King was sick unto death; the Witan were gathered round his palace. The moment the breath was out of his body, it would become their duty to choose his successor. It was doubtless with no small anxiety, with somewhat even of religious awe, that they awaited the last expression of the will of Eadward as to who that successor should be.

The West Minster was consecrated on Wednesday; the news was brought to the King, who, as his legend says, on hearing it laid his head on his pillow as if to say, It is finished.^[3] For five days his sickness increased, and the public anxiety heightened at every stage of the disorder.^[4] |He becomes speechless. Tuesday, January 3, 1066.| On the sixth day from the consecration, his speech began to fail him; his voice was so feeble that his words could no longer be understood; for two days he lay worn out by the extremity of his sickness.^[5] It was no time to trouble the weary sufferer with questions even as to the |He recovers his speech. Thursday, January 5.| welfare of his Kingdom. At last, on the following Thursday, the eve of the Epiphany, his flagging powers rallied, as the powers of dying men often do rally at the point of death. He awoke from his sleep in the full possession of |The group round his bed.| his senses and of his speech. On either side of his bed stood the two great chiefs of his realm, Harold the Earl and Stigand the Archbishop.^[6] At the bed’s head, in still more immediate personal attendance on his master, stood the Staller, Robert the son of Wymarc, a man of Norman birth, but whom history does not charge with treason towards England. On the ground, close by the foot of the bed, sat the Lady Eadgyth, the sister of the great Earl, cherishing the feet of her royal husband in her bosom. Her thoughts wandered perhaps to the brother beyond the sea, the brother on whose behalf she had so deeply sinned, the brother who had so lately held the place nearest to Eadward’s heart, but who was now for ever cut off from all hopes of crowns or earldoms. The tongue of Eadward was loosened, but his first words were words of prayer.^[7] In his long slumber he had seen a vision; if that vision were truly from heaven, he prayed that he might have strength to declare it; if it were but the phantom of a disordered brain, he would that his tongue should rather cleave to the roof of his mouth. He sat up in his bed, supported in the arms of Robert. But the message which he had to declare from heaven called for a larger audience than the four favoured ones who were gathered round him. A few more of his chosen friends—their names are not recorded—were summoned to |He declares his vision.| the bedside of the dying King.^[8] He then, fluently and with energy,^[9] poured forth the awful words of warning. “Long ago, when I was a youth in Normandy, I knew two monks, most holy men and most dear to me. Many long years have passed away since they were taken away from the cares and sorrows of this world. But now, in my trance, God hath sent them again to me to speak to me in His holy name. ‘Know,’ said they to me, ‘that they who hold the highest place in thy realm of England, the Earls, the Bishops, the Abbots, the men in holy orders of every rank, are not what they seem to be in the eyes of men. In the eye of God they are but |He foretells the sorrows of England.| ministers of the fiend. Therefore hath God put a curse upon thy land; therefore hath He given thy land over into the hand of the enemy. Within a year and a day from thy death, shall fiends stalk through thy whole land, and shall harry it from one end to another with fire and sword and the hand of plunder.’ Then said I to them, ‘Let me then show these things to my people in the name of God. Haply they will repent, and His loving-kindness will have mercy upon them. For He had mercy on the men of Nineveh, when they heard the voice of His threatening, and repented them of their evil ways.’ But they answered me, ‘They will not repent, neither shall the mercy of God come |Allegory of the green tree.| nigh unto them.’ Then said I, ‘What shall be the time or the way in which we may look for these your threatenings to come to an end?’ ‘In that day,’ they answered, ‘when a green tree shall be cut away from the midst of its trunk, when it shall be carried away for the space of three furlongs from its root, when, without the help of man, it shall join itself again to its trunk, and shall again put forth leaves and bear fruit in its season. Then first shall be the time when the woes of England shall come to an end.’”^[10]

The King ceased his words of prophecy. Harold, Eadgyth, Robert, all who had been gathered to hear, were struck with awe, and remained speechless. One heart alone, we are |disbelief of Stigand.| told, was hardened. Stigand leaned over the King’s bed, and whispered in the ear of Earl Harold that all this prophetic talk was but the babbling of an old man worn out by sickness.^[11] The Primate, stout-hearted Englishman as we know him, was, we may well believe, a hard and worldly man, and his experience of men of his own calling, his familiarity with what others looked on as miracle and prophecy, may well have made him less inclined to superstition than to unbelief. The lay heart was more easily touched; the female heart most easily of all. Eadgyth, and others who were devoutly given, knew well, we are told, the sins of England. They shuddered as they thought how often the warning voice of the Roman Pontiff, how often the voice of Eadward and of Eadgyth herself, had spoken in vain to the guilty nation.^[12] The pious Lady perhaps deemed that the uncanonical appointment of Stigand was more likely to bring down the wrath of God than the murder of Gospatric. At the last Christmas feast, she whose heart was now so deeply stirred at the thought of ecclesiastical corruptions, had in that very palace stretched forth her hand to shed blood which no Law had bidden to be shed, blood which, as far at least as she was concerned, was innocent.

But there was other work to be done that day besides hearkening to foretellings of evil, besides disputing as to the degree of trust to be placed in the words of him who foretold it. The moment was come when the all-important question might be pressed on the mind of the dying King. His friends stood and wept around him; the tears of the Lady as she sat at his feet fell faster and more thickly still. He gave orders for his burial. He checked the grief of his friends; he bade them rejoice at his coming deliverance, and he craved the prayers of his people for his soul.^[13] He spoke of the constant love and devotion which had been ever shown him by the wife whom he had once driven away from his hearth and board. She had ever been to him as a loving and dutiful daughter;^[14] God would reward her for her good deeds in this world and in the next. At last Harold and Stigand—nor have we any right to exclude Robert from their counsels—found means of calling Eadward’s mind to the great subject which then filled the whole heart of England. When all was over, when his body was laid in his new minster, when his soul had gone to its reward, who should fill the place which he had so long filled on earth? Who, when he was gone, should wear the royal crown of England, the Imperial |Eadward names Harold as his successor.| diadem of Britain? Eadward, at that last moment, was not wanting to his last duty. He stretched forth his hand towards the Earl of the West-Saxons, and spake the words, “To thee, Harold my brother, I commit my Kingdom.”^[15] He then went on to declare his last wishes to his chosen |Eadward’s last wishes.| successor. For Eadward to give Harold instructions in the art of government was certainly needless, and the dying man doubtless felt it to be so. But there were a few personal wishes which were near to his heart; there were a few personal favourites whom he wished to commend to the |He commends to Harold’s care the Lady| favourable care of his successor. First among these was the Lady herself. I need not again enlarge on the mysterious relations between Eadward and Eadgyth; but, in these his last days at least, she is described as enjoying his perfect confidence and affection. But a sister who certainly abetted Tostig, who perhaps abetted William, against the brother who was now called to reign,^[16] might be thought likely to meet with less consideration at the hands of Harold than she had, latterly at least, met with at the hands of Eadward. The King commended her who was so soon to be his widow to the friendly care of his successor. Let him show to her, as a Lady and a sister, all faithful worship and service, and never, while she lived, let her lose |and the Norman favourites.| the honours which he had bestowed upon her.^[17] He commended also to Harold his Norman favourites, those whom, in his simplicity, he spoke of as men who had left their native land for love of him.^[18] Those who were willing to abide in the land as English subjects under Harold’s allegiance he prayed him to keep and to protect. Those who refused to become the men of the new King he prayed him to dismiss under his safe-conduct to their own land, taking with them all the goods which they had acquired by his own favour.^[19]

The King had now done the last act of his kingly office. With this last request to Harold all thought of earthly things passed away from the mind of Eadward. But the man and the saint had still friends to comfort; he had a soul for which to request their prayers; he had a body to be committed to the ground with the solemn rites of the Church. He craved that his body might be buried in the minster which he had reared, in a special spot within the hallowed walls which their inmates would point out to |His death not to be concealed, lest he lose the prayers of his people.| those who stood round him.^[20] One faint thought of earth perhaps came back to his mind, when he bade them not to hide his death from his people. At such a moment it might perhaps be convenient to let men believe that Eadward still lived, till every arrangement could be made for the quiet election and consecration of his successor. But Eadward’s care for his own soul made him tremble at such a prospect. “Let my death,” he earnestly prayed, “be at once announced everywhere, that all the faithful may at once call on the mercy of Almighty God for me a sinner.”^[21] Eadgyth meanwhile wept without ceasing. Eadward comforted her with the allegorical words; “Fear not; I shall not die, but by God’s grace, I shall soon arise to better health.”^[22] But the last moment was clearly drawing near; the last comfort of the Church had to be |He communicates and dies. Thursday, January 5, 1066.| given. The dying saint received the Body of his Lord, seemingly at the hands of Stigand; the irregularity of his position as Primate was perhaps not held to affect acts done by him as a simple priest.^[23] Strengthened by this spiritual food; Eadward’s soul gently passed away, and the last King of the House of Cerdic was no more. His body lay as in sleep; his cheeks like the rose, his beard like the lily, his white hands falling peacefully by his side; men saw written on the face of the departed saint that he had gone to his Creator.^[24]

The King was dead. The last day of his kingship had been the worthiest. After all the errors and follies of his reign, Eadward died, not only as a saint, but as an Englishman and a patriot. For the last thirteen years of his life Harold had been his guide and guardian; for the last nine years he had been the expectant successor of the Crown. And now the day had come and the word was spoken. Those years of faithful guardianship had not been without their fruit; Eadward, with Harold and Stigand at his side, had become another man from Eadward who had once listened to every lie which rose to the lips of Robert of Jumièges.^[25] The old wayward spirit had again burst forth when revolt overthrew his last favourite;^[26] but his last favourite was at least an Englishman and a son of Godwine. |English spirit of Eadward’s last requests.| And the latest act of all had made up for all that had gone before. Eadward showed on his death-bed that he had at last learned that the Norman could never bear sway in England with the good-will of the English people. The dream of the Norman Duke as the heir of the English Crown had passed away. The dream of England portioned out among Norman Earls, Prelates, and Knights had passed away with it. England was to have an English King, the noblest man of the English people. No stranger was to be endured in the land, but such as would plight their homage to the King of England’s choice. For others, however dear to him, all that Eadward now craved was that they might depart, unhurt and unplundered, from the land. Visions of danger may have flitted across his mind, and in the delirium of sickness, in the mere excitement of pious fear, they may have shaped themselves into vague foreshadowings of the wrath to come. But what the last dying wishes of Eadward were we know beyond a doubt. His last wishes, his last hopes, were the same as the wishes and the hopes of every faithful Englishman. His last earthly desire was that Harold should wear his Crown, that Harold should reign over a land freed from the presence of every man whose presence he might find inconsistent with the welfare of England and her King.

And he has had his reward. Far more precious than the vulgar praises of Norman legend-makers, far more precious even than the wrought up panegyric of the courtly chaplain of his widow, is the song in Eadward’s honour preserved in our national Chronicles from the hands of a gleeman of his own time and of his own people.^[27] The English poet sang of Eadward’s early troubles, how he had to seek a foreign land, when Cnut overcame the race of Æthelred, and when Danes wielded the dear realm of England for eight and twenty winters.^[28] He sang of Eadward’s personal virtues; how he was holy, clean, and mild, how the baleless King was ever blithe of mood.^[29] He sang of the glories of his reign; how he guarded his land and people; how renowned warriors stood around his throne; how the son of Æthelred ruled over Angles and Saxons, how Welsh and Scots and Britons all obeyed the mighty sway of the noble Eadward.^[30] But before his song ceases, the minstrel has yet to tell of one deed far above all, of one last act which made the name of Eadward truly glorious. Bitter death snatched the noble King from earth; angels bore his truthful soul to |The poet dwells on the nomination of Harold.| heaven. But a truer note of patriotic feeling rings forth in the words which tell us how the wise King made fast his realm to Harold the noble Earl, in the words which, bursting from the poet’s heart, tell us how well the noble Earl deserved the greatest of earthly gifts. He in all time by words and deeds had truly obeyed his lord, and had left nought undone which was needful for the ruler of his people.^[31]