Part I
1
Life in early medieval England was often a frightening, brutal experience for its residents. Between the years 410 to 1066, England’s inhabitants endured repeated invasions from Continental intruders, resulting in the loss of land, the slaughter of their families, and forced submission to foreign kings.1 Prior to the centuries of invasions, England had some manner of safety and protection as it was under the rule of the mighty Roman Empire. When the Roman Empire fell in 410 AD, England found itself isolated and unprotected with no overlord to protect it from the threat of foreign invaders. Having no cohesive united defence, such as a standing army or castles to protect its people, England found itself in a power vacuum that many foreign countries were quick to take advantage of. After the fall of Rome, the vulnerable island of Great Britain became an easy target for invasion.
The first large scale foreign invasion came from a group of German and Danish migrants who later became known as the Anglo-Saxons. Their three tribes, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, sailed to England shortly after the fall of the Roman Empire and conquered both the eastern and southern territories.2 They hadn’t just come to England to conquer it and return home with their booty: they had come to stay. England had a wealth of natural resources and with no English ruler to oppose them, it was quite easy for them to move in, establish rule over all the occupants, and divide the land up among themselves.
The Anglo-Saxons organised England into seven separate kingdoms: East Anglia, Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, Sussex, Essex, and Kent. The seven kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons operated independently from each other, meaning they had their own rulers, their own policies, customs, and even languages. They spent the entirety of the 400-year establishment fighting against each other to expand their territories because more land meant more income from taxes. It was one of the easiest ways to quickly enrich themselves and more money meant more power.
In the 860s, a new, more serious threat emerged: the Vikings. These Nordic warriors had begun terrorising all of Europe with their technologically advanced longships and their superior military skills. By 871 they had successfully overtaken every single Anglo-Saxon kingdom except for Wessex which at that time was ruled by King Alfred. Alfred successfully fought off the Vikings for many years and also held them back by negotiating peace treaties. Alfred was unrelenting in the defence of his kingdom and after fifteen years of conflict, the Vikings finally gave up and the last of the invaders left England. Alfred was the last ruler standing and in 886, he was appointed King of the Anglo-Saxons, having rule over all the seven kingdoms of England.3
Over the next thirteen years of his reign, Alfred managed to establish England as a single, unified kingdom. He organised its military defences, established boroughs, and built large fortifications to protect citizens and soldiers. Not only was he a brilliant military strategist, he was also a very educated man. He had personally translated many important religious works into English and encouraged the Anglo-Saxons to adopt English in the vernacular rather than Latin which was a language only the nobility could read.4 He was a very pious man and felt it his duty to convert his people from the old pagan ways to his newly adopted religion: Christianity.5
King Alfred the Great died on 26 October 899 from an unknown abdominal illness or disease that had plagued him throughout his life.6 He was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward the Elder, and thereafter King Alfred’s bloodline ruled England for the next 130 years.7 These years were marked by a constant state of war against Scandinavian invaders as evidenced by the relatively short reigns of Alfred’s descendants. During those 130 years, nine of Alfred’s heirs ruled which gives them each an average reign of only fourteen years. It was indeed a dangerous life, not just for the inhabitants of England but especially for the rulers.
The rule of Alfred’s descendants ended in 1016 when the king of Denmark, Cnut the Great, took over England and added ‘King of England’ to his title. Just three years earlier, Cnut’s father, King Sweyn Forkbeard had successfully deposed the current reigning English king, Aethelred the Unready, great-great-grandson of King Alfred. Aethelred was a terrible king. He was badly advised and ill-prepared to deal with the Viking invaders who had renewed their invasions early in his reign. He had no military strategy in place to protect the citizens of England and they hated him for leaving them helpless against the Viking raiders. Even Aethelred’s own son, Edmund Ironside, revolted against his father’s incompetent rule.8
Aethelred did have one strategy for dealing with Viking invaders: paying them off. In 991, Aethelred paid £16,000 to King Olaf of Norway for him to abort his invasion of England. When word got out that England was handing out money to invaders, they were hit by even more raiders looking to get their fair share of the king’s money. Throughout the remainder of his reign, Aethelred spent at least £250,000 paying the Vikings just to leave, the equivalent of hundreds of millions of pounds today.9
It wasn’t long before the Vikings decided they wanted more than just money, they wanted to rule this rich kingdom of England themselves. After many more years of relentless war, the kingdom was on the brink of collapse as King Cnut of Norway neared the city of London with his army. Aethelred and his reconciled son, Edmund Ironside, tried to defend London but were defeated and King Aethelred died shortly after the battle. Edmund Ironside inherited the throne and continued fighting off the Vikings but was defeated badly by Cnut at the Battle of Assandun in Essex and was forced to name Cnut as his own heir. Just one month after the agreement was made, Edmund mysteriously died, and Cnut succeeded him. England was now ruled by a Danish king.
One of Cnut’s first acts as king of England was tradition in Viking culture: marrying the widow of the defeated enemy, which in this case was Emma. Emma was a Norman princess who had first been married to Aethelred the Unready in 1002 when she was 17 years old. Despite hating each other, Aethelred and Emma managed to produce two male heirs: Edward and Alfred.10 Emma’s second marriage to Cnut also produced a son: Harthacnut. In the Viking tradition, polygamy was totally acceptable, so Cnut kept his first wife, Aelfgifu, and together they had two sons: Swein and Harold Harefoot. This messy family tree triggered a succession crisis when the 40-year-old King Cnut died unexpectedly on 12 November 1035 without officially naming his heir.11
To be fair to Cnut, he did have a succession plan in mind, he just never put it in writing. He wanted to divide up his many possessions among his three sons. Swein, his eldest son by his first marriage, was sent to Norway to rule as his regent. Harold Harefoot would be made regent in England. For Hathacnut, his son with second wife Emma, Denmark would be the location of his regency. Since Cnut never made these assignments official, his councillors were forced to select the next king of England. This must have been a nerve-racking task considering the king had no less than three sons competing for their father’s inheritance. They believed Harthacnut to be Cnut’s true heir, however, Harthacnut was stuck in Denmark fighting off an invasion from King Magnus of Norway. Instead, the council decided to make Harold the temporary regent in England until such time as Harthacnut returned to England from Denmark to begin his official reign.
Harold had different plans. Since he was the only son physically located in England when his father died, he took full advantage of the situation and immediately started manoeuvring to have himself coronated as king of England. Queen Emma tried but failed to raise a resistance against Harold (she instead favoured her own son Harthacnut) but was forced to flee to Flanders. Harold’s path to the throne was now clear and he was coronated as Harold I, King of England on 12 November 1035. He was not to be a popular king though. The Prose Brut Chronicle disparaged him in the following passage: ‘He went astray from the qualities and conduct of his father King Cnut, for he cared not at all for knighthood, for courtesy, or for honour, but only for his own will.’12 He should have taken more care because he had a lot of brothers waiting in the wings to take his place should he be deposed.
Aside from Cnut’s three sons, there were two other young boys who were in the running for king of England: Edward (later known as Edward the Confessor) and his brother Alfred. As sons of the former king of England, Aethelred the Unready, most people considered them to be the true heirs to the throne, not the Danish king’s sons. Cnut considered Emma’s two sons enough of a threat that he sent them out of the realm, and they were raised with cousins in Normandy. Some chroniclers suggest he meant to have them killed but experienced an emotion rare to him: mercy.13 Now, their mother Emma was about to toss them into the drama.
In the fall of 1036, Emma wrote to Edward and Alfred in Normandy encouraging them to mount an invasion against King Harold. As sons of King Aethelred, they had more than enough blood-right to rule the kingdom of England. Edward followed his mother’s request and mounted a half-hearted attempt at an English invasion but returned to Normandy when he realised his forces would be insufficient to get the job done. His brother Alfred then made an invasion attempt of his own but was captured by Earl Godwin, the most powerful nobleman and land magnate in England who was a close ally of King Harold’s. Godwin turned Alfred over to the king’s men and he was brutally tortured, blinded, and killed.14