4

Best Laid Plans

In the autumn of 1047 Edward the Confessor was also breathing a huge sigh of relief, a major threat to his rule having providentially passed.

Five years earlier, the new king’s reign appears to have begun well enough— unsurprisingly, since his candidacy for the throne had been accepted by all parties before his accession. It was surely a mark of confidence on the part of Edward and his counsellors, rather than any lingering sense of uncertainty, that caused them to wait almost ten months before staging a coronation. English kingship was elective— a reign began when the new ruler was recognized by his leading subjects, just as Edward had been recognized in June 1042, within days of Harthacnut’s death. Coronation, by contrast, was simply confirmation— a ritual designed to secure God’s blessing. Edward, being both devout and unhurried, probably decided to delay his own coronation so it could be held on the holiest day of the year. The new king was eventually crowned in Winchester on Easter Sunday 1043— ‘with great ceremony’, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘before all the people’.¹

Before the same year was out, however, Edward discovered that certain people had already failed him. In mid-November 1043, continues the Chronicle, the king went to Winchester and deprived his mother, Emma, of all her possessions, both lands and treasure— ‘all that she owned in gold and silver and things beyond description’. Given her treatment of him since his childhood, Edward might be thought to have acted simply out of long-standing resentment, and indeed one version of the Chronicle explains the king’s actions by saying that his mother had been very hard on him in the past. But it also goes on to imply that Emma had offended her son far more recently, saying ‘she did less for him than he wished, both before he became king and afterwards as well [my italics]’.²

The real reason Edward had taken offence in 1043 is illuminated incidentally in a saint’s life. written later in the century. While the king was reigning in peace like Solomon, it says,

his own mother was accused of having incited the king of the Norwegians, who was called Magnus, to invade England, and of having given countless of her treasures to him, as well as her support. Wherefore this traitor to the kingdom, enemy of the country, betrayer of her son, was judged, and all of her property was forfeited to the king.³

Some modern historians have dismissed this story as nothing more than rumour, pointing out that within a year Emma had apparently been pardoned and at least partially rehabilitated.⁴ But whether the former queen was guilty or not, the notion that Edwardsuspected her of treason accords perfectly with his actions as described by the Chronicle, where the king is seen to act as a result of information he has only just received, racing to Winchester from Gloucester and catching his mother unawares. He also reportedly confronted her in considerable force, taking with him all three of his major earls and their military followers. This was clearly not a cold dish of revenge, but a heated response to a breaking crisis.

Moreover, the notion that Emma might have made overtures to Magnus of Norway was far from being an absurd conspiracy.⁵ She was a serial hatcher of plots and his designs on England were becoming alarmingly real. Elected around ten years earlier by Norwegian nobles opposed to the imperial rule of Cnut, Magnus had gone on to vie for power with Harthacnut, keeping the latter pinned down in Denmark from 1035 while the English succession crisis had unfolded. At length the two rivals had come to terms, agreeing that, in the event of one of them dying, the survivor should be the other’s heir— or such at least was the tradition by the mid-twelfth century.⁶ True or not, when Harthacnut died in 1042 Magnus had moved swiftly to make himself Denmark’s new master, and it soon became clear that England was to be his next target.

The seriousness with which Edward and his counsellors regarded the threat from Norway is evident from their actions during the years that followed. In 1044, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘the king went out to Sandwich with thirty-five ships’. Sandwich, now a landlocked little town close to the east Kent coast, was then one of England’s principal seaports— ‘the most famous of all the ports of the English’, as the author of the Encomium calls it— and the place where royal fleets would assemble to protect the country against invasion.⁷ The summer of 1045 saw Edward again at Sandwich, this time with men and ships in even greater numbers. ‘No one had ever seen so large a naval force in this country’, says the C Chronicle, while the D version tells us explicitly that this force had been assembled ‘because of the threat of Magnus of Norway’.

In the event Magnus did not sail for England in 1045, a fact which the D Chronicle attributes to his struggle against Swein Estrithson. Swein, the son of Cnut’s sister, Estrith, had acted as regent in Denmark for his cousin, Harthacnut, during the latter’s reign in England. After Harthacnut’s death he had advanced his own claim to the Danish throne, though apparently without much initial success. In 1045 he seems to have done rather better, and his progress clearly frustrated Magnus’ plan to invade England.

But, as subsequent reports in the Chronicle make equally clear, Swein’s luck failed to hold: ‘Magnus conquered Denmark’, says the D version for 1046. The following year, we are told, Swein sent messengers to England, hoping to enlist the support of fifty ships, but his request was turned down ‘because Magnus had a great naval force’. ‘And then Magnus drove out Swein and seized the country with great slaughter, and the Danes paid him a large amount of money and accepted him as king.’

With Swein defeated and Magnus established as master of both Norway and Denmark, it was surely only a matter of time before the plan to conquer England was revived, and the Anglo-Scandinavian empire of Cnut was restored. But, providentially, in October 1047—even as the Truce of God was being proclaimed in Normandy— Magnus suddenly died. Accounts of his death differ, but all are late and none is very exciting. According to one thirteenth-century writer, the king was riding a horse which was startled by a hare and dashed him into a tree. Another thirteenth-century source says Magnus simply fell sick and died in bed.⁸

But, boring or not, Magnus’ death meant that England was suddenly released from the threat of invasion. Swein was able to assert his right to Denmark, while in Norway power passed to Magnus’ paternal uncle. As his earlier request for help shows, Swein was already on good terms with the English, and the new Norwegian king began his reign by sending ambassadors to England in order to make peace.⁹ Once again, Edward had triumphed over a younger rival by the simple expedient of living longer.

During these anxious years of invasion fear, Edward had clearly been worried about the possibility of Scandinavian sympathizers lurking in England. First there had been the rumour in 1043 that his mother was plotting to replace him with Magnus; then the following year the king had banished a niece of Cnut named Gunhilda, along with her two children, while in 1046 he had similarly sent into exile one of Cnut’s supporters called Osgod Clapa. As in his mother’s case, Edward was probably responding to a mix of present fears and past grievances. These people may have constituted a genuine Scandinavian fifth column, or simply have been the victims of what the king regarded as a long-overdue house-cleaning exercise by which the effects of the earlier Danish conquest were gradually undone.¹⁰

So where did that leave Earl Godwine, by far the greatest beneficiary of Cnut’s takeover? Despite his efforts to exculpate himself, Godwine had clearly been deeply implicated in the murder of Edward’s brother, Alfred. Yet by all accounts the earl had also been the key figure in helping Edward ascend to the throne.¹¹ Did this indicate that at some point between the two events the pair had agreed to sink their differences? Had Edward forgiven his brother’s murder in exchange for Godwine’s support in recovering his birthright?

A case can certainly be made for their reconciliation. At the very start of the reign, the earl sought to appease the new king by presenting him with a magnificent warship, ornamented with gold, and manned by eighty soldiers, their helmets, armbands and armour all similarly gilded. It was the subject of a lengthy contemporary poem, and the poet explicitly links the gift with Godwine’s newfound loyalty:

This he gave to the newly enthroned king, begging that it be received and found acceptable, promising that he will often and with pleasure add to it. Wherefore he holds out his hands, takes oaths of loyalty, swearing to protect Edward as his king and lord with faithful vow and service.¹²

In the early years of his reign the Confessor had also agreed to raise three of Godwine’s kinsmen to the highest rank. In 1043 the earl’s eldest son, Swein, had been given an earldom in the south-west Midlands, and two years later his second son, Harold, had been handed control of East Anglia: both were in their early twenties. Another of Godwine’s young male relatives, his nephew Beorn, was similarly promoted to an earldom in the south-east Midlands at some point in 1045.¹³

More significant still was the fact that, at the start of the same year, Edward married Godwine’s daughter, Edith. We know a reasonable amount about Edith because several decades later she commissioned one of the most important sources for her husband’s reign, a text known as the Life of King Edward. Unsurprisingly the anonymous author is fulsome in praise of his patron’s appearance, character and accomplishments. Edith, we are assured, was ‘inferior to none, superior to all … recommended by the distinction of her family and the ineffable beauty of her surpassing youth’. Educated by the nuns of Wilton in Wiltshire, she was also apparently quite the bluestocking, fluent in four languages, and so learned and talented that she was famous for her own poems, prose, needlework and painting. Dignified and reserved, serious and modest, affectionate, generous and honest: Edith was clearly ‘a wife worthy of so great a husband’. She and Edward were married at an unknown location on 23 January 1045.¹⁴

But did Edward really have an alternative? Any assessment of his relationship with Godwine has to take into account the fundamental weakness of the king’s position at the start of his reign. Although he was fast approaching forty, he had not lived in England since his childhood; for a quarter of a century he had been living the life of an exile in Normandy. This meant that on his arrival in 1041 Edward had exceedingly few friends and allies— his only real confidants were the handful of Continental supporters who accompanied him from Normandy, many of whom were clerics. Godwine, by contrast, had been the principal force in English politics for almost all of the same twenty-five-year period. His lands and wealth, great as they were, could not quite rival those of the king; but in terms of lordship, the earl greatly outclassed Edward, with scores of followers in almost every shire in southern England, all ready to do his bidding. Events suggest that his will was all but irresistible. In 1040 he had supported Harthacnut, but the following year he had changed his mind and given his backing to Edward. What if he changed his mind again, and switched his support to another candidate— Magnus, for example, or perhaps Swein Estrithson? The reality was that, if Edward wanted to survive, he had little choice other than to do what Godwine suggested— and probably no say at all in choosing his own bride. As the author of the Life of King Edward explains with surprising candour, ‘Edward agreed all the more readily to contract this marriage because he knew that, with the advice and help of Godwine, he would have a firmer hold on his hereditary rights in England.’¹⁵

The corollary of this statement is pretty clear: had Edward refused, he would probably have found himself out of a job.

The suspicion, borne out by later events, is that Edward never forgave Godwine for Alfred’s murder, and merely went through the motions in marrying Edith. It is a suspicion reinforced by the fact that the match never produced any children. Later chroniclers insisted that this was because it was never consummated; most modern commentators, by contrast, ascribe it to sheer bad luck, and point to infertility as the more likely cause. Yet according to Edith’s own testimony (i.e. the Life of King Edward), the reason there were no children was because Edward had lived ‘a celibate life’; indeed, ‘he preserved with holy chastity the dignity of his consecration, and lived his whole life dedicated in true innocence’. This testimony deserves to be taken seriously; after all (as one modern historian has observed), had the reality been different, the Life would have been a laughing stock. More importantly, subsequent events do not support the idea that Edward was anxious to beget an heir. The reasonable conclusion remains that Edward agreed to marry Edith for purely political reasons and resisted her extensively chronicled charms.¹⁶

This may not have been an obvious problem for the first few years of the couple’s marriage. We know that Edward was at least forty in January 1045, but we have no clear idea of the age of his bride. If Edith was the eldest of Godwine’s many children, she could have been as old as twenty-five, but equally she could have been the minimum age for marriage as set by the Church, which was twelve. If the latter was the case, then the initial absence of children might not have been too surprising. As time wore on, however, public anxiety about the lack of a successor must have grown, and with it the tension between Edward and Godwine.¹⁷

There are signs of this happening in the chronicle accounts. At first we see the two men collaborating. When, for example, the archbishop of Canterbury resigned due to ill health in 1044, the shady deal by which he appointed his own replacement proceeded, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘by permission of the king and Earl Godwine’. But later in the decade the pair are seen to part company over England’s foreign policy. When Swein Estrithson sought English help against Magnus of Norway, Godwine was all in favour (his own marriage to Cnut’s sister-in-law meant that he was Swein’s uncle); according to John of Worcester, the earl ‘advised the king that he might safely send at least fifty ships’— but Edward refused. ‘It seemed a foolish plan to everybody’, explains the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, while John of Worcester adds that the opposition was led by Earl Leofric of Mercia. Whether or not Edward was actively cultivating Leofric as an ally, the episode shows that there were clearly others willing to help him stand up to Godwine.¹⁸

Nor was this Godwine’s only embarrassment at the time. That same year his eldest son, Swein, fled into exile, having caused a scandal the previous year by abducting the abbess of Leominster. This was bad enough, but two years later Swein returned to England in search of a pardon, only to compound his crime by betraying and murdering his cousin, Beorn Estrithson, the brother of the Danish king. This was regarded as a truly heinous offence. Swein was declared to be a ‘nithing’, says the Chronicle —a man without any honour—and once again fled overseas.¹⁹

And yet, if the case of Swein shows anything, it is that the power of Earl Godwine, despite the setbacks and embarrassments, remained as firm as ever. In 1050, just months after his second banishment, the earl’s good-for-nothing son received a royal pardon and was allowed to re-enter the country. Edward was evidently still obliged to accommodate his father-in-law’s every wish. The Godwines, it seems, could quite literally get away with murder.²⁰

To add to the king’s woes at the end of the 1040s, the threat from Scandinavia persisted; the death of King Magnus, it seems, had provided only a temporary respite. Norway and Denmark were once again at war, and such instability must have caused great anxiety for both the English king and his peaceable subjects. In 1048 the coasts of Kent and Essex were attacked by a pair of old-school Vikings, named by the Chronicle as Lothen and Yrling, who ‘seized indescribable booty, both in captives, gold and silver’. The following year Essex was raided again by an ever larger fleet, led this time by the exiled Osgod Clapa.²¹

By the end of the year 1050, however, Edward had come up with a plan —a plan which, if it worked, would rid him of the over-mighty Godwine, safeguard England from Viking attack, and simultaneously solve the pressing problem of the English succession. It was, in short, ambitious, and it required the participation of his kinsman, the duke of Normandy.

In the months and years after the battle of Val-ès-Dunes, William had been busy consolidating his victory, destroying castles and capturing rebels. Count Guy, the leader of the failed revolt, proved a particularly stubborn problem, having fled to his castle at Brionne which, according to William of Poitiers, was virtually impregnable, its stone keep surrounded on all sides by the unfordable waters of the River Risle. As William of Jumièges explains, the duke was forced to surround Brionne with siege castles in order to strangle it into submission. At length (after three years in one account) the starving count surrendered and was sent into exile.²²

As William ousted the man who had tried to topple him, his loyal subjects worried about the security of his dynasty. ‘Now that the duke, flourishing in the strength of his youth, was passed the age of adolescence’, says William of Jumièges, ‘his magnates urgently drew attention to the problem of his offspring and succession.’ Like Edward the Confessor, William needed to get married and busy in his bed so that others could sleep easy in theirs. William of Poitiers indicates that there was discussion and disagreement amongst the duke’s advisers about where he ought to go looking for a wife. In the Middle Ages, matrimony among the great was often an extension of diplomacy; historically, the dukes of Normandy had sought brides beyond their borders. In the end it was decided that William should marry Matilda, a daughter of Baldwin, count of Flanders.²³

We don’t know much about the young Matilda— her date of birth, like Edith’s, is unknown.²⁴ So too, for that matter, is her height: the popular notion that she was only four feet two inches is a modern myth.²⁵ William of Jumièges tells us that she was ‘a very beautiful and noble girl of royal stock’. The ‘beautiful’ part sounds conventional, but given that the principal concern was to produce children, Matilda’s attractiveness must have mattered. ‘Royal stock’ refers to the fact that Matilda’s mother, Adela, was a daughter of the late French king, Robert the Pious, who had died in 1031. This, of course, meant that Matilda herself was a niece of Robert’s son and successor, Henry I, and indeed it seems quite possible that the king, William’s ally in 1047, may have suggested the marriage alliance with Flanders. Certainly in May the following year both William and Count Baldwin appear together as witnesses on a charter drawn up at Henry’s court.²⁶

What William of Jumièges fails to mention (unsurprisingly) is that before the marriage could be celebrated it was forbidden by the pope. Indeed, the first certain information we have about the match comes in October 1049, when Pope Leo IX, then holding a celebrated council in the French city of Rheims, intervened to ban it. Chroniclers writing in the early twelfth century believed that he did so because William and Matilda were too closely related, but the fact that no modern historian has been able to discover a credible genealogical link between the couple suggests that the real reason for the ban lay elsewhere.²⁷

The true explanation was probably political. In 1049 Leo had only been pope for a few months, and had been appointed by his relative, the emperor Henry III, who—it just so happened— was on extremely bad terms with Baldwin of Flanders. Earlier in the year, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle explains, Baldwin had attacked the imperial palace at Nijmegen, and the emperor, in revenge, had assembled a great army against him, made up of famous men from all regions— including Pope Leo. By the time the Council of Rheims met in October Baldwin had submitted, but neither Henry III nor Leo IX would have been happy at the thought of their former enemy strengthening his position in any way— say, for example, by entering a marriage alliance with the duke of Normandy.²⁸

So the pope’s objections were probably political rather than canonical; but being political meant they could be speedily overcome. Within months of the Council of Rheims senior Norman churchmen were visiting Leo in Rome, and by 1051 we find Matilda witnessing charters as William’s countess. Most likely, therefore, the marriage was celebrated at some point in 1050, when William was in his early twenties and Matilda in her mid-to-late teens. The wedding took place in the small town of Eu on Normandy’s north-eastern border. The bride arrived escorted by her father, who also brought many gifts, and the groom came accompanied by his mother and stepfather, as well as many knights. ‘He married her legally as his wife,’ says William of Jumièges, ‘and led her with the greatest ceremony and honour into the walls of Rouen.’ The ducal capital, adds William of Poitiers, gave itself over to rejoicing.²⁹

In England, however, there may have been rather less jubilation. Edward the Confessor, of course, had an extremely long and close relationship with Normandy and its rulers, and there is no reason to suppose that this had in any way suffered since he had left to reclaim his father’s crown. But his relationship with Flanders was, by contrast, terrible. Possibly this was due to the malign influence of his mother, who may have poisoned the mind of Count Baldwin during her long sojourn in Bruges. Whatever the cause, throughout the 1040s the count had repeatedly given refuge to the king’s enemies. Gunhilda and her children; Osgod Clapa; the incorrigible Swein Godwineson— all had fled to Flanders after Edward had sent them into exile. So too had Lothen and Yrling, the two pirates who raided Kent and Essex in 1048, in order to sell their plunder. Flanders, in short, had become for Edward what Normandy had been for his father— a harbour for his enemies and place to unload English riches. Small wonder that when the German emperor had asked Edward to mount a naval blockade of Baldwin’s ports in 1049, the English king had readily obliged.³⁰

The marriage of William and Matilda must therefore have filled Edward with considerable foreboding: an alliance between Normandy and Flanders raised the alarming prospect of a Channel coast hostile from one end to the other. Clearly, the king had to do something to counteract this latent threat to English interests. It was yet another reason why the young Norman duke was an essential part of his plan.

At the start of the year 1051 a storm was already brewing between Edward and Earl Godwine. For some time, it seems, the two men had not seen eye to eye over the government of the English Church. The king may not have had much power in secular politics, but he did have the final say in the appointment of abbots and bishops, and, unsurprisingly, he preferred to advance his own associates—the clerks of his chapel who had crossed with him from Normandy—rather than those put forward by his father-in-law. As the Life of King Edward explains, ‘when the holders of dignities died, one set of men wanted vacant sees for their own friends, and others were alienating them to strangers’.

This argument reached its highest pitch following the death, in October 1050, of Eadsige, the archbishop of Canterbury. The monks of Canterbury, who had the first say in choosing a replacement, elected one of their own, a certain Æthelric, and asked Godwine to seek the king’s approval. The earl readily agreed—Æthelric was one of his kinsmen—but his request was refused. Edward already had a candidate in mind in the shape of his long-time friend and mentor, Robert of Jumièges, who, as his surname suggests, was a Norman. The former abbot of Jumièges, Robert had crossed with Edward in 1041 and thereafter remained his most intimate counsellor— ‘the most powerful confidential adviser of the king’, as the Life of King Edward puts it. Towards the start of the reign Edward had elevated him to be bishop of London, possibly in the teeth of native opposition (unusually, there is no mention of the appointment in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle). The prospect of his promotion to Canterbury certainly caused consternation in Godwine circles. ‘All the clergy protested with all their might against the wrong’, says the author of the Life. But they protested in vain, because ultimately the will of the king prevailed. In March 1051, Edward held a meeting of his council in London and Robert’s appointment was confirmed.³¹

At the same time, the king almost certainly dropped another, even bigger bombshell. Six years into their marriage, he and Edith still had no children, despite the prayers we know that certain churchmen had been offering up for their fertility. Of course, this fact is not surprising if we believe Edith’s later claim that Edward had never slept with her, and our grounds for believing as much are greatly reinforced by the king’s actions during this crucial year. It was probably in the same council of March that year that Edward announced that he wanted the English succession to go to his kinsman, William of Normandy.

‘Almost certainly’; ‘probably’: the announcement of William’s candidature for the throne has to be hedged around in this way because no English source written at the time admits that it happened. The suggestion that Edward promised William the succession occurs only in Norman sources written, or at least revised, after the Norman Conquest itself. This has led some historians to doubt that the promise was ever made at all, and to argue that it was a simply a story dreamt up after the event to justify William’s accession.³²

Taken together, however, the English and Norman sources strongly suggest that the promise was made. Both William of Poitiers and William of Jumièges, for example, aver that the offer was carried to William in the first instance by Robert of Jumièges, and English sources confirm that the new archbishop of Canterbury did indeed leave England in the spring of 1051 (like all newly appointed archbishops, he had to travel to Rome to collect his pallium, or scarf of office, from the pope in person).³³

Given the silence of our English sources, the reaction of Earl Godwine can only be guessed at, but we may suppose that it was not favourable. Defeated in recent years on the issue of foreign policy; frustrated in recent months in his scheme for a new archbishop, the earl was now, it seems, expected to abandon the hope of one day seeing a grandson on the English throne, and to accept instead that the position would be filled by yet another foreigner. The prospect can hardly have pleased him. William, if he came to England, would not be like Edward, a powerless exile with a small entourage. He would be an independent power, a duke of one of France’s most formidable provinces, with a reputation already established for prowess in arms. As such, he would be unlikely to tolerate the over-mighty earl, and well placed to destroy him.

What is clear from the English sources is the mounting tension between Godwine and the king in the months that followed the March council. Towards the end of June Robert of Jumièges returned from the Continent and immediately caused fresh controversy by refusing to consecrate the Godwinist candidate who had been elected to succeed him as bishop of London. He also clashed with Godwine himself, claiming that the earl had invaded certain lands belonging to Canterbury (‘a cause in which right was on the bishop’s side’, says the author of the Life of King Edward, with remarkable candour). In general the Life identifies the new archbishop as the source of all the trouble, accusing him of poisoning Edward’s mind against the blameless Godwine, and causing the king to believe that the earl was planning to attack him, ‘just as he had once attacked his brother’.³⁴

At the end of the summer the situation exploded. The last days of August saw the arrival in England of Eustace, count of Boulogne, Edward’s brother-in-law (at some point after 1035, Eustace had married Edward’s sister, Godgifu). The reason for his visit is unknown. Some historians have suggested, on fairly flimsy evidence, that he and Godgifu might have had a daughter, and have inferred from the timing of the visit that its purpose was to discuss her right to the English throne. Less speculativelyas count of Boulogne, sandwiched between Normandy and Flanders, Eustace may well have wished to discuss with Edward the implications of the recent Norman-Flemish alliance. All we can say for certain is what the E Chronicle tells us: that the count came to see the king, ‘talked over with him what he wished’, and on his return journey got into a fight with the citizens of Dover. The D Chronicle presents it as an accident: Eustace’s men ‘behaved foolishly when looking for lodgings’ and an argument ensued. The E version says that before they entered Dover Eustace’s men donned their mail shirts, which makes it sound as if they came with hostile intent, and raises the possibility that they may have been put up to it. Whatever the case, by all accounts a large number of men on both sides ended up wounded or dead, and Eustace returned to the king, by then in Gloucester, to give a one-sided account of what had happened. Edward, incensed on his brother-in-law’s behalf, determined to punish the people of Dover, and gave orders that the town be harried, much as his predecessor, Harthacnut, had done in the case of Worcester a decade earlier. The orders, however, were given to the earl responsible for Dover – Godwine – who refused to carry them out. ‘It was abhorrent to him to injure the people of his own province’, says the E Chronicle.³⁵

And so, at last, the argument between the two men burst into the open. At the start of September the defiant earl raised the men of Wessex, while his sons rallied their men from the shires of East Anglia and the south-west Midlands. At Beverstone, fifteen miles south of Gloucester, they assembled what the D Chronicle calls ‘a great army, without number, all ready for war against the king’. But Edward was finally ready to confront his father-in-law, and responded in kind, summoning England’s other great earls – Leofric of Mercia and Siward of Northumbria – who in turn raised the men of their earldoms and rode to his aid, ‘ready to attack Godwine’s levies if the king had wished it’.

On the very brink of civil war, England’s great men hesitated. ‘Some of them considered that it would be great folly if they joined battle’, explains the D Chronicle, ‘because almost all the noblest in England were present in those two companies, and they were convinced they would be leaving the country open to the invasion of her enemies, and be bringing utter ruin upon ourselves.’ Clearly, the lessons of Æthelred’s reign had been well learned. Both sides agreed to stand down, and it was also agreed that Godwine would come to London in two weeks’ time in order to stand trial. Unfortunately for the earl, during that fortnight the balance of power shifted; his host, says the D Chronicle, ‘decreased in number more and more as time went on’, while the E Chronicle admits that the king’s own army seemed ‘quite the best force there ever was’. By the time the two sides reached London – their camps separated by the River Thames – it must have been obvious that Godwine was going to have to accept fairly humiliating terms.

Only when these terms were delivered, however, was the full extent of Edward’s wrath revealed. According to the author of the Life – a seemingly well-informed source at this point – the earl was told he could have the king’s peace ‘when he gave him back his brother alive’. On hearing these words, the same text continues, Godwine pushed away the table in front of him, mounted his horse and rode hard for his manor of Bosham on the Sussex coast. From there he took ship for Flanders (where else?), taking with him his wife, and his sons Swein and Tostig. Two other sons, Harold and Leofwine, had already fled west and sailed to exile in Ireland. That left the earl’s daughter, Queen Edith, as the only Godwine remaining in England, and Edward immediately banished her to a nunnery.

‘If any Englishman had been told that these events would take this turn he would have been amazed’, said the author of the D Chronicle.’Godwine had risen to such great eminence as if he ruled the king and all England.’ And now he was gone.³⁶

It is worth pausing at the point of Edward’s triumph to consider some of its implications. In the first place, there can be little doubt that this episode reveals the full extent of his hatred for Godwine. The Life of King Edward strives throughout to make Robert ofJumièges the villain of the piece, but it is clear even from this partisan account that it was the king himself who was for once making the running. The author’s decision to include (and, moreover, not to deny) the damaging accusation about Alfred’s murder suggests that this really did lie at the heart of the matter, and reinforces the belief that Edward had never truly forgiven the earl for his part in that terrible crime.

Equally revealing is Edward’s treatment of his queen. The decision to send Edith to a nunnery suggests that there was little in the way of genuine affection in their marriage, at least on Edward’s part. When she later commissioned the Life, Edith tried to put the best possible gloss on these events, suggesting that she was sent her to childhood home at Wilton, merely to wait until the storm had passed. But the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, far more credibly, says that the queen was taken to the nunnery at Wherwell in Hampshire, where one of Edward’s elder half-sisters was the abbess. Edith, through the Life, also reveals in passing that there was a plan to divorce her, though she insists that it was Archbishop Robert’s idea and says that Edward himself suspended the proceedings.³⁷

Some modern historians have seized on the mention of a divorce as proof that the marriage itself was not celibate, arguing that it shows a king preparing to remarry in the hope of siring children.³⁸ The problem with this, of course, is that it requires us to discount the Norman sources which assure us that Edward had promised the throne to William earlier in the same year. And the suggestion that the king did make this promise is reinforced at precisely this moment, in one of our English sources. Having described Edith’s banishment, the D Chronicle immediately adds:

then soon came Duke William from beyond the sea with a great retinue of Frenchmen, and the king received him and as many of his companions as it pleased him, and let him go again.

This single sentence has caused a great deal of controversy: it occurs only in the D version of the Chronicle, and in the 1950s one eminent scholar suggested that it was not part of the original text at all but a later interpolation. Aside from the obvious objection (why would a later copyist bother to introduce such a short and ambiguous statement?), there are good grounds for rejecting this conspiracy theory and accepting the testimony of this evidence at face value. The D Chronicle, once dismissed as a late source written in the faraway north of England, is now considered to have been compiled at the instance of Ealdred, bishop of Worcester, a figure often present at Edward’s court and, indeed, a player in the dramatic events of 1051. As such we can be fully confident that what it says is true: soon after the banishment of the Godwines, William of Normandy crossed the Channel to visit the king of England.³⁹

The reasonable supposition is that this visit was in some way connected with the claim to the throne: with Godwine gone, Edward would have finally been in a position to welcome William and perhaps to confirm in person the offer made by proxy earlier in the year. Of course, the D Chronicle says nothing about the business of the succession; all it tells us, apparently, is that the king received his kinsman and let him go again. The problem is that the meaning of the word ‘received’ has been lost in translation. The original Old English word used by the chronicler is underfeng, and a comparison of its use in other texts shows that it clearly means ‘received as a vassal’. Thus, when the Chronicle says that Edward received William ‘and as many of his companions as it pleased him’, it does not mean that certain unlucky members of the duke’s entourage were left standing outside in the autumn cold. Rather, it means that William and some of those with him did homage to the English king, swearing to serve him faithfully and acknowledging him as their lord.

This brief statement in the D Chronicle is therefore doubly valuable. Not only does it tell us that the duke of Normandy crossed to England in the immediate aftermath of the crisis, thus reinforcing the belief that Edward had promised him the throne, it also reveals the king’s side of the bargain. Grateful as he may have been for the support of William’s family during his long years of exile, and affectionate as he clearly was towards his Norman friends and advisers, Edward is unlikely to have dropped so substantial a cherry into his kinsman’s lap without demanding something in return. What the king wanted, we may surmise, was a guarantee of the duke’s loyalty – a guarantee all the more urgent given William’s recent marriage to the daughter of England’s long-standing enemy, the count of Flanders. Edward can never have liked the idea of such an alliance, and he must have liked it even less after Godwine had fled to Flanders that autumn. Now, more than ever, it was imperative to bind William and Normandy to England. And so the duke was invited to visit the king in person, not merely to become his heir, but to kneel before him, and become his man.⁴⁰

By the end of the momentous year 1051, therefore, Edward’s plan had succeeded brilliantly. His friend Robert of Jumièges was in place as archbishop of Canterbury, his kinsman William of Normandy had been bound firmly to an alliance with England and, most importantly and dramatically, his hated father-in-law, Earl Godwine, was gone. The king was not so foolish as to suppose that the earl, whose rise had been in large part predicated on his skill in war, would take his losses lying down. Sooner or later the exile would try to fight his way back. For this reason Edward took immediate steps to safeguard his victory, rewarding others with the Godwine family’s confiscated lands and titles. It seems likely, for example, that his two principal allies, Leofric of Mercia and Siward of Northumbria, saw the extent of their domains expanded with portions of the earldoms of Godwine’s sons. Certainly Leofric’s eldest son, Ælfgar, was given the earldom of East Anglia vacated by Godwine’s son Harold. At the same time, the western half of Godwine’s own earldom of Wessex, along with the title of earl, were given to Odda, one of the king’s greatest thegns and probably also a kinsman. (‘A good man, pure and very noble’, says the D Chronicle, providing a rare character note.) In addition, Edward could count on the support of his nephew, Ralph (the son of his sister, Godgifu), who had been given the earldom left empty by the murder of Godwine’s nephew, Beorn Estrithson, in 1049. All these men had a vested interest in keeping the Godwines out.⁴¹

But, in spite of his careful preparations against a counter-revolution, the king had made one major miscalculation. In March 1051, during the same council in which he had appointed the new archbishop of Canterbury and almost certainly announced his plan for the succession, Edward had also instituted a tax break. As the D Chronicle explains, it was at this moment that the king had done away with the geld – the tax his father, Æthelred, had introduced thirty-nine years earlier in order to pay for England’s mercenary fleet. If the move was calculated to increase the king’s popularity, it was seemingly effective. ‘This tax vexed the English nation for all the aforesaid time’, continues the D Chronicle. ‘It always had priority over other taxes that were paid in various ways, and was the most generally oppressive.’ This, of course, had been especially true in the time of Edward’s immediate predecessor, Harthacnut, whose demand for a geld of almost four times the usual size appears to have cost him his kingship. It is, indeed, entirely likely that the pledge of good governance extracted from Edward on his return in 1041 could have contained a specific promise to reduce the level or incidence of geld in the future.⁴²

Of course, abolishing the geld also meant abolishing the mercenary fleet, but this too may have been considered a desirable outcome. Edward and others around him probably disliked the ongoing presence of a mercenary force in their midst. Historically, at least, the fleet had been crewed by men of Scandinavian extraction, and if that remained the case in 1051 they would have been viewed warily by a king who had spent the past decade banishing Scandinavian sympathizers. Moreover, there is a possible connection between the fleet and Earl Godwine, in that the earl’s nephew, Beorn Estrithson, may have been its captain. Certainly, soon after Beorn’s murder in 1049, the king paid off nine of the fleet’s fourteen ships, and gave the five remaining crews a year’s notice. By the time he abolished the geld in 1051, the entire force had been disbanded.⁴³

Edward and his advisers must have believed that they could manage perfectly well by relying on the established royal right to raise an army (or a navy – the sources make little distinction) on demand as the need arose. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in 1008 Æthelred the Unready had demanded a helmet and coat of mail from every eight hides of land in England – a demand which, given that the kingdom contained some 80,000 hides, suggests an army of around 10,000 men. Similarly, we know from the Domesday Book that in Edward’s own day the rule in Berkshire was for every five hides of land to supply and subsidize one soldier for a two-month period – a system which, if applied across the whole kingdom, would have produced a 16,000-man host.⁴⁴ Thus when in the spring of 1052 the king and his counsellors got wind that Godwine was preparing to invade, a fleet was raised by just such conventional means and assembled at Sandwich. The C Chronicle tells us that it was formed of forty small vessels, and the E Chronicle adds that it was captained by two of Edward’s new earls, Ralph and Odda.

When, after a lengthy wait, Godwine sailed at midsummer, it seemed as if the king’s ships might be a sufficient deterrent. Although the earl slipped past Sandwich and made a landing further along the Kent coast, he was pursued by Ralph and Odda and forced to keep moving. A storm in the Channel subsequently caused Godwine to sail back to Flanders and the king’s fleet to return to Sandwich.

Not long afterwards, however, the disadvantages of relying on a non-professional navy became apparent. As the E Chronicle explains, the king’s ships were ordered back to London to receive new crews and captains, but long delays meant that ‘the fleet did not move, and they all went home’.

This dispersal of the royal forces gave Godwine his chance. Again he set sail for England, this time harrying the Isle of Wight and linking arms with his sons Harold and Leofwine, who had raised a fleet of their own from Ireland. Probably towards the end of August, their combined armada sailed east along the coasts of Sussex and Kent, seizing provisions, ships and hostages, and recruiting more and more men to their banner. By the time they reached Sandwich, they had, according to the C Chronicler, ‘an overwhelming host’. ‘The sea was covered with ships’, says the Life of King Edward. ‘The sky glittered with the press of weapons.’

Had there still been a royal navy stationed in Sandwich, the Godwines could hardly have achieved such success. But Edward, although aware of his enemies’ return, was struggling to assemble a force with which to oppose them. ‘He sent up country for reinforcements’, says the C Chronicle, ‘but they were very slow in coming.’

And so Godwine and his sons were able to sail their fleet unopposed along the north Kent coast and up the River Thames. On Monday 14 September they reached London and stationed themselves at Southwark on the river’s southern bank. By this time the king had succeeded in assembling a fleet of fifty ships and also a large army. The Godwines sent a message to him, demanding the restoration of their lands and titles. Edward sent back an angry refusal. It was, in short, an almost exact replay of the previous autumn, with the two sides once again separated by the River Thames, each waiting for the other to blink.

But this time round the advantage clearly lay with Godwine. During his absence public opinion seems to have swung behind him, possibly because Englishmen were against the idea of a Norman succession; certainly all versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are at this point laced with ill-disguised hostility towards the king’s Norman advisers. The Life of King Edward says that reinforcements were swelling the earl’s ranks from all directions, while the Chronicle informs us that the citizens of London were also quick to fall in with his wishes. It seems obvious that, as the Life claims, the military superiority lay with Godwine, and that no one was prepared to risk a civil war by fighting for Edward. The earl had stopped at Southwark that Monday morning at low tide, but all day long the tide had been rising in his favour. When it reached its peak his fleet raised anchor and swung across the river to encircle the king’s ships on the opposite bank. Godwine’s supporters reportedly had to be restrained from attacking the royal forces. Negotiations followed, and an exchange of hostages, but everyone realized that this was now checkmate.

The king’s Norman friends certainly realized it, and responded by mounting their horses and fleeing. Some went north, says the Chronicle, and others rode west. Robert of Jumièges and his companions forced their way out of London’s east gate, slaying those who tried to stop them, and hastening all the way to the headland in Essex known as the Naze. There the archbishop committed himself to a boat that was barely sea-worthy and risked a dangerous voyage across the Channel to Normandy. The E version of the Chronicle, pro-Godwine in its sympathies, was pleased to note that in his haste Robert left behind his pallium, and opined that this proved that God had not wanted him to be archbishop in the first place.

The next morning a council met outside of London, and the revolution of the previous year was formally reversed. Godwine ostentatiously begged Edward’s forgiveness, claiming he and his family were innocent of all the charges brought against them. The king, barely able to contain his fury, had no option but to grant his pardon and restore to the earl and his sons their confiscated estates. The council ratified the complete friendship between them, says the C Chronicle, and made a promise of good laws to the whole nation. Archbishop Robert was declared an outlaw, adds the E Chronicle, together with all the Frenchmen, ‘for they had mainly been responsible for the discord that had arisen between Godwine and the king’. A short time later, concludes the Life of King Edward, now that the storm had finally subsided,’the queen, the earl’s daughter, was brought back to the king’s bedchamber’.⁴⁵

It was now abundantly clear that there was not going to be a Norman succession. Robert of Jumièges, once he recovered from his perilous crossing of the Channel, was probably the first to relate to the duke of Normandy the terrible turn that events in England had taken.

But by the time the archbishop arrived in Normandy that autumn, events in England were the least of William’s worries.