Hereward, The Last of the English | Page 4

kings ruled from the Forth to the Land's End.
A noble figure he was, that great and wise Canute, the friend of the
famous Godiva, and Leofric, Godiva's husband, and Siward Biorn, the
conqueror of Macbeth; trying to expiate by justice and mercy the dark

deeds of his bloodstained youth; trying (and not in vain) to blend the
two races over which he ruled; rebuilding the churches and monasteries
which his father had destroyed; bringing back in state to Canterbury the
body of Archbishop Elphege--not unjustly called by the Saxons martyr
and saint--whom Tall Thorkill's men had murdered with beef bones and
ox-skulls, because he would not give up to them the money destined for
God's poor; rebuking, as every child has heard, his housecarles' flattery
by setting his chair on the brink of the rising tide; and then laying his
golden crown, in token of humility, on the high altar of Winchester,
never to wear it more. In Winchester lie his bones unto this day, or
what of them the civil wars have left: and by him lie the bones of his
son Hardicanute, in whom, as in his half-brother Harold Harefoot
before him, the Danish power fell to swift decay, by insolence and
drink and civil war; and with the Danish power England fell to pieces
likewise.
Canute had divided England into four great earldoms, each ruled, under
him, by a jarl, or earl--a Danish, not a Saxon title.
At his death in 1036, the earldoms of Northumbria and East Anglia--the
more strictly Danish parts--were held by a true Danish hero, Siward
Biorn, alias Digre "the Stout", conqueror of Macbeth, and son of the
Fairy Bear; proving his descent, men said, by his pointed and hairy
ears.
Mercia, the great central plateau of England, was held by Earl Leofric,
husband of the famous Lady Godiva.
Wessex, which Canute had at first kept in his own hands, had passed
into those of the famous Earl Godwin, the then ablest man in England.
Possessed of boundless tact and cunning, gifted with an eloquence
which seems, from the accounts remaining of it, to have been rather
that of a Greek than an Englishman; himself of high--perhaps of
royal--Sussex blood (for the story of his low birth seems a mere fable
of his French enemies), and married first to Canute's sister, and then to
his niece, he was fitted, alike by fortunes and by talents, to be the
king-maker which he became.

Such a system may have worked well as long as the brain of a hero was
there to overlook it all. But when that brain was turned to dust, the
history of England became, till the Norman Conquest, little more than
the history of the rivalries of the two great houses of Godwin and
Leofric.
Leofric had the first success in king-making. He, though bearing a
Saxon name, was the champion of the Danish party and of Canute's son,
or reputed son, Harold Harefoot; and he succeeded, by the help of the
"Thanes north of Thames," and the "lithsmen of London," which city
was more than half Danish in those days, in setting his puppet on the
throne. But the blood of Canute had exhausted itself. Within seven
years Harold Harefoot and Hardicanute, who succeeded him, had died
as foully as they lived; and Godwin's turn had come.
He, though married to a Danish princess, and acknowledging his
Danish connection by the Norse names which were borne by his three
most famous sons, Harold, Sweyn, and Tostig, constituted himself the
champion of the men of Wessex and the house of Cerdic. He had
murdered, or at least caused to be murdered, horribly, Alfred the
Etheling, King Ethelred's son and heir-apparent, when it seemed his
interest to support the claims of Hardicanute against Harefoot. He now
found little difficulty in persuading his victim's younger brother to
come to England, and become at once his king, his son-in-law and his
puppet.
Edward the Confessor, if we are to believe the monks whom he
pampered, was naught but virtue and piety, meekness and
magnanimity,--a model ruler of men. Such a model ruler he was,
doubtless, as monks would be glad to see on every throne; because
while he rules his subjects, they rule him. No wonder, therefore, that
(according to William of Malmesbury) the happiness of his times
(famed as he was both for miracles and the spirit of prophecy) "was
revealed in a dream to Brithwin, Bishop of Wilton, who made it public";
who, meditating in King Canute's time on "the near extinction of the
royal race of the English," was "rapt up on high, and saw St. Peter
consecrating Edward king. His chaste life also was pointed out, and the

exact period of his reign (twenty-four years) determined; and, when
inquiring about his posterity,