Harold : the Last of the Saxon Kings — Complete by Lytton (an ebook reader TXT) 📖

Torfaeus, Hist. Rer. Norweg. Now I need not say to any scholar in our early history, that the Norse Chronicles, abounding with romance and legend, are never to be received as authorities counter to our own records, though occasionally valuable to supply omissions in the latter; and, unfortunately for this pretty story, we have against it the direct statements of the very best authorities we possess, viz. The Saxon Chronicle and Florence Of Worcester. The Saxon Chronicle expressly tells us that Godwin’s father was Childe of Sussex (Florence calls him minister or thegn of Sussex 285), and that Wolnoth was nephew to Edric, the all-powerful Earl or Duke of Mercia. Florence confirms this statement, and gives the pedigree, which may be deduced as follows: ________________________________ | | Edric married Egelric, Edgith, daughter of surnamed Leofwine King Ethelred II. | Egelmar, | Wolnoth. | Godwin.

Thus this “old peasant,” as the North Chronicles call Wolnoth, as, according to our most unquestionable authorities, a thegn of one of the most important divisions in England, and a member of the most powerful family in the kingdom! Now, if our Saxon authorities needed any aid from probabilities, it is scarcely worth asking, which is the more probable, that the son of a Saxon herdsman should in a few years rise to such power as to marry the sister of the royal Danish Conqueror—or that that honour should be conferred on the most able member of a house already allied to Saxon royalty, and which evidently retained its power after the fall of its head, the treacherous Edric Streone! Even after the Conquest, one of Streone’s nephews, Edricus Sylvaticus, is mentioned (Simon. Dunelm.) as “a very powerful thegn.” Upon the whole, the account given of Godwin’s rise in the text of the work appears the most correct that conjectures, based on our scanty historical information, will allow.

In 1009 A.D., Wolnoth, the Childe or Thegn of Sussex, defeats the fleets of Ethelred, under his uncle Brightric, and goes therefore into rebellion. Thus when, in 1014 (five years afterwards), Canute is chosen king by all the fleet, it is probable that Wolnoth and Godwin, his son, espoused his cause; and that Godwin, subsequently presented to Canute as a young noble of great promise, was favoured by that sagacious king, and ultimately honoured with the hand, first of his sister, secondly of his niece, as a mode of conciliating the Saxon thegns.

NOTE (K)

The want of Fortresses in England.

The Saxons were sad destroyers. They destroyed the strongholds which the Briton had received from the Roman, and built very few others. Thus the land was left open to the Danes. Alfred, sensible of this defect, repaired the walls of London and other cities, and urgently recommended his nobles and prelates to build fortresses, but could not persuade them. His great-souled daughter, Elfleda, was the only imitator of his example. She built eight castles in three years. 286

It was thus that in a country, in which the general features do not allow of protracted warfare, the inhabitants were always at the hazard of a single pitched battle. Subsequent to the Conquest, in the reign of John, it was, in truth, the strong castle of Dover, on the siege of which Prince Louis lost so much time, that saved the realm of England from passing to a French dynasty: and as, in later periods, strongholds fell again into decay, so it is remarkable to observe how easily the country was overrun after any signal victory of one of the contending parties. In this truth, the Wars of the Roses abound with much instruction. The handful of foreign mercenaries with which Henry VII. won his crown,—though the real heir, the Earl of Warwick (granting Edward IV.‘s children to be illegitimate, which they clearly were according to the rites of the Church), had never lost his claim, by the defeat of Richard at Bosworth;—the march of the Pretender to Derby,—the dismay it spread throughout England,—and the certainty of his conquest had he proceeded;—the easy victory of William III. at a time when certainly the bulk of the nation was opposed to his cause;—are all facts pregnant with warnings, to which we are as blind as we were in the days of Alfred.

NOTE (L)

The Ruins of Penmaen-mawr.

In Camden’s Britannia there is an account of the remarkable relics assigned, in the text, to the last refuge of Gryffyth ap Llewellyn, taken from a manuscript by Sir John Wynne in the time of Charles I. In this account are minutely described, “ruinous walls of an exceeding strong fortification, compassed with a treble wall, and, within each wall, the foundations of at least one hundred towers, about six yards in diameter within the walls. This castle seems (while it stood) impregnable; there being no way to offer any assault on it, the hill being so very high, steep, and rocky, and the walls of such strength,—the way or entrance into it ascending with many turnings, so that one hundred men might defend themselves against a whole legion; and yet it should seem that there were lodgings within those walls for twenty thousand men.

“By the tradition we receive from our ancestors, this was the strongest refuge, or place of defence, that the ancient Britons had in all Snowdon; moreover, the greatness of the work shows that it was a princely fortification, strengthened by nature and workmanship.” 287

But in the year 1771, Governor Pownall ascended Penmaen-mawr, inspected these remains, and published his account in the Archaeologia, vol. iii. p. 303, with a sketch both of the mount and the walls at the summit. The Governor is of opinion that it never was a fortification. He thinks that the inward inclosure contained a carn (or arch-Druid’s sepulchre), that there is not room for any lodgment, that the walls are not of a kind which can form a cover, and give at the same time the advantage of fighting from them. In short, that the place was one of the Druids’ consecrated high places of worship. He adds, however, that “Mr. Pennant has gone twice over it, intends to make an actual survey, and anticipates much from that great antiquary’s knowledge and accuracy.”

We turn next to Mr. Pennant, and we find him giving a flat contradiction to the Governor. “I have more than once,” 288 says he, “visited this noted rock, to view the fortifications described by the editor of Camden, from some notes of that sensible old baronet, Sir John Wynne, of Gwidir, and have found his account very just.

“The fronts of three, if not four walls, presented themselves very distinctly one above the other. I measured