Part 31 (2/2)
[100] Saxon Chronicle, Florence Wigorn. Sir F. Palgrave says that the t.i.tle of Childe is equivalent to that of Atheling. With that remarkable appreciation of evidence which generally makes him so invaluable as a judicial authority where accounts are contradictory, Sir F. Palgrave discards with silent contempt the absurd romance of G.o.dwin's station of herdsman, to which, upon such very fallacious and flimsy authorities, Thierry and Sharon Turner have been betrayed into lending their distinguished names.
[101] This first wife Thyra, was of very unpopular repute with the Saxons. She was accused of sending young English persons as slaves into Denmark, and is said to have been killed by lightning.
[102] It is just, however, to G.o.dwin to say, that there is no proof of his share in this barbarous transaction; the presumptions, on the contrary, are in his favour; but the authorities are too contradictory, and the whole event too obscure, to enable us unhesitatingly to confirm the acquittal he received in his own age, and from his own national tribunal.
[103] Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
[104] William of Malmesbury.
[105] So Robert of Gloucester says pithily of William, ”Kyng Wylliam was to mild men debonnere ynou.”--HEARNE, v. ii. p. 309.
[106] This kiss of peace was held singularly sacred by the Normans, and all the more knightly races of the continent. Even the craftiest dissimulator, designing fraud, and stratagem, and murder to a foe, would not, to gain his ends, betray the pledge of the kiss of peace. When Henry II. consented to meet Becket after his return from Rome, and promised to remedy all of which his prelate complained, he struck prophetic dismay into Becket's heart by evading the kiss of peace.
[107] SNORRO STURLESON's Heimskringla.--Laing's Translation, p. 75- 77.
[108] The gre-hound was so called from hunting the gre or badger.
[109] The spear and the hawk were as the badges of Saxon n.o.bility; and a thegn was seldom seen abroad without the one on his left wrist, the other in his right hand.
[110] BED Epist. ad Egbert.
[111] TEGNER's Frithiof.
[112] Some of the chroniclers say that he married the daughter of Gryffyth, the king of North Wales, but Gryffyth certainly married Algar's daughter, and that double alliance could not have been permitted. It was probably, therefore, some more distant kinswoman of Gryffyth's that was united to Algar.
[113] The t.i.tle of queen is employed in these pages, as one which our historians have unhesitatingly given to the consorts of our Saxon kings; but the usual and correct designation of Edward's royal wife, in her own time, would be, Edith the Lady.
[114] ETHEL. De Gen. Reg. Ang.
[115] AILRED, De Vit. Edward Confess.
[116] Ingulfus.
[117] The clergy (says Malmesbury), contented with a very slight share of learning, could scarcely stammer out the words of the sacraments; and a person who understood grammar was an object of wonder and astonishment. Other authorities, likely to be impartial, speak quite as strongly as to the prevalent ignorance of the time.
[118] House-carles in the royal court were the body-guard, mostly, if not all, of Danish origin. They appear to have been first formed, or at least employed, in that capacity by Canute. With the great earls, the house-carles probably exercised the same functions; but in the ordinary acceptation of the word in families of lower rank, house- carle was a domestic servant.
[119] This was cheap. For Agelnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury, gave the Pope 6000 lb. weight of silver for the arm of St. Augustine.-- MALMESBURY.
[120] William of Malmesbury says, that the English, at the time of the Conquest, loaded their arms with gold bracelets, and adorned their skins with punctured designs, i.e., a sort of tattooing. He says, that they then wore short garments, reaching to the mid-knee; but that was a Norman fas.h.i.+on, and the loose robes a.s.signed in the text to Algar were the old Saxon fas.h.i.+on, which made but little distinction between the dress of women and that of men.
[121] And in England, to this day, the descendants of the Anglo- Danes, in c.u.mberland and Yorks.h.i.+re, are still a taller and bonier race than those of the Anglo-Saxons, as in Surrey and Suss.e.x.
[122] Very few of the greater Saxon n.o.bles could pretend to a lengthened succession in their demesnes. The wars with the Danes, the many revolutions which threw new families uppermost, the confiscations and banishments, and the invariable rule of rejecting the heir, if not of mature years at his father's death, caused rapid changes of dynasty in the several earldoms. But the family of Leofric had just claims to a very rare antiquity in their Mercian lords.h.i.+p. Leofric was the sixth Earl of Chester and Coventry, in lineal descent from his namesake, Leofric the First; he extended the supremacy of his hereditary lords.h.i.+p over all Mercia. See DUGDALE, Monast. vol. iii. p. 102; and PALGRAVE's Commonwealth, Proofs and Ill.u.s.trations, p. 291.
[123] AILRED de Vit. Edw.
[124] Dunwich, now swallowed up by the sea.--Hostile element to the house of G.o.dwin.
[125] Windsor.
[126] The chronicler, however, laments that the household ties, formerly so strong with the Anglo-Saxon, had been much weakened in the age prior to the Conquest.
[127] Some authorities state Winchester as the scene of these memorable festivities. Old Windsor Castle is supposed by Mr. Lysons to have occupied the site of a farm of Mr. Isherwood's surrounded by a moat, about two miles distant from New Windsor. He conjectures that it was still occasionally inhabited by the Norman kings till 1110. The ville surrounding it only contained ninety-five houses, paying gabel-tax, in the Norman survey.
[128] AILRED, de Vit. Edward. Confess.
[129] ”Is it astonis.h.i.+ng,” asked the people (referring to Edward's preference of the Normans), ”that the author and support of Edward's reign should be indignant at seeing new men from a foreign nation raised above him, and yet never does he utter one harsh word to the man whom he himself created king?”--HAZLITT's THIERRY, vol. i. p. 126.
This is the English account (versus the Norman). There can be little doubt that it is the true one.
[130] Henry of Huntingdon, etc.
[131] Henry of Huntingdon; Bromt. Chron., etc.
[132] Hoveden.
[133] The origin of the word leach (physician), which has puzzled some inquirers, is from lids or leac, a body. Leich is the old Saxon word for surgeon.
[134] Sharon Turner, vol. i. p. 472.
[135] Fosbrooke.
[136] Aegir, the Scandinavian G.o.d of the ocean. Not one of the Aser, or Asas (the celestial race), but sprung from the giants. Ran or Rana, his wife, a more malignant character, who caused s.h.i.+pwrecks, and drew to herself, by a net, all that fell into the sea. The offspring of this marriage were nine daughters, who became the Billows, the Currents, and the Storms.
[137] Frilla, the Danish word for a lady who, often with the wife's consent, was added to the domestic circle by the husband. The word is here used by Hilda in a general sense of reproach. Both marriage and concubinage were common amongst the Anglo-Saxon priesthood, despite the unheeded canons; and so, indeed, they were with the French clergy.
[138] Hilda, not only as a heathen, but as a Dane, would be no favourer of monks; they were unknown in Denmark at that time, and the Danes held them in odium.--Ord Vital., lib. vii.
[139] Chron. Knyghton.
[140] Weyd-month. Meadow month, June.
[141] c.u.men-hus. Tavern.
[142] Fitzstephen.
[143] William of Malmesbury speaks with just indignation of the Anglo-Saxon custom of selling female servants, either to public prost.i.tution, or foreign slavery.
[144] It will be remembered that Algar governed Wess.e.x, which princ.i.p.ality included Kent, during the year of G.o.dwin's outlawry.
[145] Trulofa, from which comes our popular corruption ”true lover's knot;” a vetere Danico trulofa, i.e., fidem do, to pledge faith.-- HICKE's Thesaur.
”A knot, among the ancient northern nations, seems to have been the emblem of love, faith, and friends.h.i.+p.”--BRANDE's Pop. Antiq.
[146] The Saxon Chronicle contradicts itself as to Algar's outlawry, stating in one pa.s.sage that he was outlawed without any kind of guilt, and in another that he was outlawed as swike, or traitor, and that he made a confession of it before all the men there gathered. His treason, however, seems naturally occasioned by his close connection with Gryffyth, and proved by his share in that King's rebellion. Some of our historians have unfairly a.s.sumed that his outlawry was at Harold's instigation. Of this there is not only no proof, but one of the best authorities among the chroniclers says just the contrary-- that Harold did all he could to intercede for him; and it is certain that he was fairly tried and condemned by the Witan, and afterwards restored by the concurrent articles of agreement between Harold and Leofric. Harold's policy with his own countrymen stands out very markedly prominent in the annals of the time; it was invariably that of conciliation.
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