The Norman Conquest Read online

  Soon after Cnut’s death, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, there was a meeting of all his counsellors in Oxford. England already had a long tradition of such assemblies: it is a mark of the kingdom’s political maturity that in times of crisis its leading men would generally come together to debate their differences rather than immediately reaching for their swords. But the decision to meet in Oxford that autumn shows how serious the situation had already become, for the town lay on the River Thames, which in turn marked the boundary between Wessex and Mercia. And, sure enough, when the meeting took place, the two earldoms were divided over the succession. ‘Earl Leofric and almost all the thegns north of the Thames’, to quote the Chronicle, wanted their next king to be Harold. But ‘Earl Godwine and all the most prominent men in Wessex’ declared in favour of Harthacnut.21

  Godwine was almost certainly the single most powerful man in England, but on this occasion he found the odds stacked against him. We are not told anything about the sympathies or whereabouts of Earl Siward at this crucial moment, though it is hard to imagine he was not present; possibly the Chronicle’s comment about ‘all the thegns north of the Thames’ implies that he also supported Harold. But the Chronicle does tell us that Harold’s candidacy was backed by Cnut’s mercenary fleet in London, a formidable force of several thousand men, and more than a match for the late king’s housecarls, who had apparently declared for Harthacnut. The greatest problem for Harthacnut’s supporters, however, was that their candidate was still in Denmark; Harold, by contrast, was resident in England, probably present at the Oxford meeting, and therefore in a much better position to push his claim.

  At length a compromise was reached which recognized the regional split. Wessex, it was agreed, would be held in trust for Harthacnut by his mother, Emma, who was to reside at Winchester with the housecarls. The rest of England, by implication, would be held by Harold, who would also act as regent of the whole kingdom on behalf of himself and his brother. Godwine and his supporters evidently opposed this arrangement but, as the Chronicle says, ‘they could put no obstacle in the way’. Their only consolation was that no firm decision had been taken on who should be the next king: as the Chronicle’s talk of trust and regents implies, the succession was to hang fire until Harthacnut’s return.22

  But Harthacnut, who had his hands full in Denmark, failed to appear, and the competition between the two rival camps intensified. Each side worked to undermine the support of the other, and no one worked harder than Queen Emma. A few years later, she commissioned a highly tendentious political tract, known today as the Encomium Emmae Reginae (‘In Praise of Queen Emma’), which above all else sought to justify her behaviour during this period. It is the source of the notion, noted in the previous chapter, that her marriage to Cnut had been a consensual affair rather than a fait accompli. The Encomium also claimed, conveniently, that there had been a prenuptial agreement: Cnut had apparently sworn an oath to Emma ‘that he would never set up the son of any wife other than herself to rule after him’. Harthacnut, in other words, was the only true heir; Harold, son of Ælfgifu of Northampton, could have no legitimate claim. Emma also set out to discredit her rivals in less subtle ways. The author of the Encomium assures us that Harold was not actually a son of Cnut at all, but a changeling, taken by Ælfgifu from the bed of a servant. It was crude propaganda, but clearly believed in some quarters: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports the same slur.23

  Not that Ælfgifu was above playing the same game. It is not entirely certain at what point she returned to England, but her regency in Norway had ended in disaster around 1034— she and her other son, Swein, had been driven out of the country, and Swein had died not long afterwards. Ælfgifu may therefore have already been in England at the time of Cnut’s death; she was certainly back before June 1036, for at that point we catch wind of her struggle against Emma in a letter written at the imperial court in Germany. Emma had sent messengers to her daughter, Gunhilda, complaining about Ælfgifu’s activities. ‘Your wretched and wicked stepmother, wishing to deprive your brother Harthacnut of the kingdom by fraud, organized a great party for all our leading men, and, eager to corrupt them at times with entreaty and at times with money, tried to bind them with oaths to herself and her son.’ According to Emma’s messengers, Ælfgifu’s wining and dining was unsuccessful. ‘Not only did the men not give their consent to her in any such way; but of one accord they dispatched messengers to your aforesaid brother, so that he might soon return to them.’

  But this seems to have been wishful thinking on Emma’s part. There was still no sign of Harthacnut, and meanwhile Harold’s power was clearly growing. We can see as much by looking at the coinage that was in circulation. The English coinage system at this time was highly sophisticated; each coin, as well as bearing the name of the king, also carried the name of the place it had been minted. This means we can not only see at a glance which coins were struck for Harold and which for Harthacnut; we can also, with more considered analysis, see how much of the country each had under his control. What we see at first is power split along the line of the Thames, as had been agreed in the meeting at Oxford. But, as time goes on, the geographical spread of Harthacnut’s coinage contracts, while that of his rival expands. Throughout 1036, it seems, support for Harold was growing stronger. At some point, he sent men to Winchester, and deprived Emma of what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle calls ‘all King Cnut’s best valuables’— including, perhaps, the regalia necessary for a coronation. It looked as if the queen’s grip on power, assiduously maintained through her marriage to two English kings, was about to end because of her son’s continued absence. It must have been around this point that she recalled that she had two other sons living in exile across the Channel.24

  The future Edward the Confessor and his brother, Alfred, of course, remained in Normandy. As far as we can tell, nobody in England—least of all their mother—had considered either of them as potential candidates for the throne in the immediate wake of Cnut’s death. The Norman chronicler William of Jumièges tells us that, upon hearing the news of that ‘long-desired death’, Edward had set out for England ‘immediately’, but Jumièges was writing about twenty years later, and in any case careful chronology was never his major concern. It is more likely that his story belongs to the autumn of 1036, when Emma appears to have turned to the sons of her first marriage in a desperate attempt to improve her diminishing political fortunes.

  Edward, said William of Jumièges, set sail for England with a fleet of forty ships, full of soldiers. This suggests that he intended to make a forceful bid for the throne, and, despite Jumièges’ best efforts to pretend otherwise, it clearly ended in failure. Edward landed safely at Southampton, but was immediately confronted by a large army of Englishmen. Battle was joined and Edward, we are assured, was the victor, but he concluded that the prospect of further success was slight. ‘Seeing that he could not possibly obtain the kingdom of the English without a larger army, he turned the fleet about and, richly laden with booty, sailed back to Normandy.’25

  There are two reasons for supposing that Edward’s botched bid for power had taken place at his mother’s behest. First, William of Jumièges has his English hero landing at Southampton, which would be the most obvious port of entry for a rendezvous with Emma at nearby Winchester. Secondly, and more compellingly, Emma herself, in the pages of her Encomium, goes to elaborate lengths to deny having ever encouraged her sons in Normandy to return to England. A letter was sent to them in her name, says the anonymous author, but it was a forgery, devised by her enemy Harold. As ever, the Encomium’s very insistence on this point suggests that what it is attempting to deny is the truth. Emma clearly had a hand in persuading her sons to come back, however much she may have subsequently wished to pretend otherwise.26

  For at some point in the same autumn of 1036, Alfred also decided to cross the Channel to England. Precisely how, why and when he went is unclear. The Encomium, for instance, says that he went with only a few men, and the Anglo
-Saxon Chronicle insists that his aim was simply to visit his mother. William of Jumièges, by contrast, says that Alfred crossed with a considerable force, which would seem to imply a more ambitious objective.27 Later English chroniclers believed that Alfred, who sailed from Wissant to Dover, set out at the same time that Edward sailed for Southampton; most modern historians think it more likely that Alfred set out later, after his brother’s expedition had failed. Accounts of Alfred’s adventure differ in their detail largely because no one writing in England wished to be associated with its outcome. All versions of the story, however, agree that soon after arriving in England, Alfred and his men were met by Earl Godwine.

  Godwine, as we have seen, had been the principal ally of Queen Emma in the aftermath of Cnut’s death – ‘her most devoted supporter’, in the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. But that had been when he, like she, had been confident of Harthacnut’s imminent return. Once that return started to look increasingly unlikely, Godwine’s support must have begun to waver. At some stage he decided to switch his allegiance to Harold, and the trigger for his desertion may well have been Emma’s attempt to promote Edward and Alfred. Godwine had been the principal beneficiary of the Danish conquest; the last person he wanted to see on the throne was one of that conquest’s principal victims, seeking to settle old scores. A creature of Cnut, he could only hope to prosper under one of Cnut’s sons; if not Harthacnut, then Harold. His only problem was how to make up for his late conversion to Harold’s cause; the arrival of Alfred in the autumn of 1036 presented him with the perfect opportunity.28

  Despite the equivocation of some modern commentators, there is considerable agreement in our sources about what happened next. Both the Encomium and William of Jumièges agree that when Godwine met Alfred he took him under his protection; according to the Encomium this entailed diverting him from his intended destination of London and leading him instead to Guildford, where he and his followers were feasted with plenty of food and drink, and shown to beds in separate lodgings. Then, during the night they were seized and attacked. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which breaks into mournful verse, ‘some of them were sold for money, some cruelly murdered; some of them were put in chains, some of them were blinded; some were mutilated, and some were scalped’. It was, the Chronicle laments, the single worst atrocity in England since the Danish conquest. Alfred himself was spared, but cast in chains and taken to Ely in Cambridgeshire, where he was blinded and left in the care of the local monks. A short while later, in February 1037, he died from his wounds and was buried in the town’s abbey.29

  There can be little doubt that Godwine was responsible for this massacre. One version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle discreetly excises his name from its account, but another accuses him directly (‘Godwine prevented him [Alfred], and placed him in captivity / Dispersing his followers besides, slaying some in various ways’).* William of Jumièges, who offers what is arguably the most neutral version of events, says that Godwine imprisoned and slew some of his guests, but sent Alfred and certain others to Harold in London; it was Harold who was responsible for ordering his rival’s subsequent blinding. Emma, in her Encomium, endeavoured to shift all the blame on to Harold, claiming it was his men, not Godwine’s, who appeared in the night at Guildford and carried out the atrocities— a suggestion so implausible that even her hired author seems to have found it difficult to swallow.30

  All these accounts, however, were written with the benefit of hindsight. At the time the killing of Alfred achieved its objective for those involved. Godwine, had successfully ingratiated himself with Harold by removing a potential rival for the throne; Harold, with Godwine by his side, enjoyed universal political support. ‘In this year’, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in its entry for 1037, ‘Harold was everywhere chosen as king, and Harthacnut repudiated because he remained too long in Denmark.’

  ‘His mother’, the Chronicle adds, ‘was driven from the country without any mercy to face the raging winter.’31

  It might be supposed that Emma, on being forced into exile, would cross to Normandy. But the queen had long ago severed any vestigial links, political or emotional, which might have pulled her towards the land of her birth. She chose instead to settle in Flanders, an independent county to the north of France. It is possible that she had been there once before, for Cnut had passed through the same region during his celebrated visit to Rome (the author of Emma’s Encomium, a Fleming himself, recalled how the king had characteristically showered the churches of St Omer with valuable gifts). Whatever the case, Emma, as Cnut’s widow, was well received by the count of Flanders, Baldwin V, and furnished with a suitably luxurious residence in the town of Bruges.32

  As soon as she and her supporters were comfortably ensconced, the exiled queen began to plot her next move. If the Encomium is to be believed, her first thought was to send messengers to Edward in Normandy, asking him to visit her without delay. He, we are told, duly rode to Flanders, but explained that he could offer no help. It is easy enough to believe that Edward, having already made two unsuccessful bids for the English throne, and having seen his brother brutally murdered in an apparently similar attempt, would want no further part in any of his mother’s schemes. According to the Encomium, however, he declined to assist her on more technical grounds, explaining that ‘the English nobles had sworn no oaths to him’. This sounds altogether more suspicious: Edward is being wheeled on only to renounce his claim, thereby legitimizing Emma’s next move, which, as the Encomium makes clear, was to send messengers to Harthacnut. As the queen must have appreciated, Edward, a long-term exile, was in no real position to offer her any serious help. Only Harthacnut, in his capacity as king of Denmark, could command the resources necessary for a new invasion of England.

  He kept everyone waiting for a further two years, but at length the young Danish king showed his hand. According to the Encomium, he assembled a great fleet in anticipation of an armed struggle, but in the first instance set out with only ten ships to meet his mother in Bruges. This, says the Encomium, was nearly a disaster, because they sailed into a storm and were forced to drop anchor while at sea. During the night that followed, however, Harthacnut received divine encouragement, dreaming that Harold, ‘the unjust usurper of his kingdom’, would die in just a few days’ time. And so it came to pass. The storm subsided, Harthacnut completed his voyage to Bruges, and was at last reunited with his mother. A short while later, messengers arrived from England, informing them that Harold was dead, and begging Harthacnut to take the crown.33

  As the dream sequence makes clear, the Encomium’s account is informed by its knowledge of future events. Unfortunately, we have few other sources against which to check its version of events. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, having dealt with the murder of Alfred, thereafter maintains a studious silence on political matters for the rest of Harold’s reign, commenting only on ecclesiastical affairs and the state of the weather. Had Harold lived longer, we might know more about these missing years; as it is, he remains one of the most anonymous kings ever to have sat on England’s throne. Even his colourful cognomen, Harefoot, tells us nothing, for it was not recorded until the twelfth century (as Harefah) and probably arose from confusion with the Norwegian king Harold Fairhair. Nor do we know anything about the circumstances of his death. The Chronicle notes only that he died at Oxford on 17 March 1040 and was buried at Westminster.34

  In lieu of other evidence, the most reasonable assumption must be that Harold’s death was unsuspicious and unexpected; it certainly seems to have caught the great men of England unprepared. The substance of the Encomium’s story, that Harthacnut received a peaceful offer of the crown after Harold’s death, is confirmed by the Chronicle. ‘They sent to Bruges for Harthacnut’, it says in one version, ‘with the best intentions.’ The Danish king duly arrived a week later and was accepted as England’s new ruler. But, as the comment about best intentions suggests, the various versions of the Chronicle for these years were also written retrospect
ively, and the brief rule of Harthacnut was a disaster from the first. In the words of the Chronicle, ‘he never did anything worthy of a king while he reigned’.35

  To be fair to Harthacnut, the political situation he inherited was ghastly. The great men of England— in particular, its three principal earls— had previously rejected him in favour of his half-brother. But with Harold now dead the tables had been unexpectedly turned; everyone must have felt acutely anxious about the recent past and how it might affect their future prospects. Harthacnut himself did nothing to calm matters when he ordered his predecessor’s body to be dug up from Westminster Abbey and, in the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘flung into a fen’. Clearly the new king was not about to let bygones be bygones; one imagines that he received plenty of encouragement from his mother. According to a later chronicler called John of Worcester, Harold’s corpse was subsequently thrown into the Thames, before being recovered by a sympathetic fisherman and taken for reburial in London’s Danish cemetery.36

  John of Worcester (until recently known to historians as Florence of Worcester) is, in fact, our best source for the reign of Harthacnut (and also one of our best informants for the Norman Conquest); although he lived and wrote in the early twelfth century, he used the earlier Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a model, and added many credible details.37 As his account makes clear, it proved impossible to blame all the mistakes of Harold’s reign on the dead king himself. The murder of Alfred, about which men had remained silent for so long, now became the subject of recrimination, and the archbishop of York openly blamed Earl Godwine and the bishop of Worcester (which would explain John of Worcester’s inside knowledge). The bishop was for a while deprived of his office, while the earl was obliged to make public amends for his crime, albeit using the oldest excuse in the book. ‘He swore to the king’, explains John of Worcester, ‘that it had not been by his advice or at his wish that his brother was blinded, but that his lord, King Harold, had ordered him to do what he did.’38