Wulf the Saxon | Page 3

say that I hoped he and all other Normans in the land would
some day be packed across the Channel."
"Your ears ought to be slit as an insolent varlet."
"I meant no insolence, my Lord Bishop; and as to the slitting of my
ears, I fancy Earl Harold, my master, would have something to say on
that score."
The prelate was about to reply, but glancing at the angry faces of the
growing crowd, he said coldly:

"I shall lay the matter before him. Come, Walter, enough of this. You
are also somewhat to blame for not having received more courteously
the apologies of this saucy page."
The crowd fell back with angry mutterings as he turned, and, followed
by Walter Fitz-Urse and the ecclesiastics, made his way along the street
to the principal entrance of the palace. Without waiting to watch his
departure, Wulf, the Saxon page, pushed his way through the crowd,
and went off at full speed to carry the message with which he had been
charged.
"Our king is a good king," a squarely-built man,--whose bare arms with
the knotted muscles showing through the skin, and hands begrimed
with charcoal, indicated that he was a smith,--remarked to a gossip as
the little crowd broke up, "but it is a grievous pity that he was brought
up a Norman, still more that he was not left in peace to pass his life as a
monk as he desired. He fills the land with his Normans; soon as an
English bishop dies, straightway a Norman is clapped into his place.
All the offices at court are filled with them, and it is seldom a word of
honest English is spoken in the palace. The Norman castles are rising
over the land, and his favourites divide among them the territory of
every English earl or thane who incurs the king's displeasure. Were it
not for Earl Harold, one might as well be under Norman sway
altogether."
"Nay, nay, neighbour Ulred, matters are not so bad as that. I dare say
they would have been as you say had it not been for Earl Godwin and
his sons. But it was a great check that Godwin gave them when he
returned after his banishment, and the Norman bishops and nobles
hurried across the seas in a panic. For years now the king has left all
matters in the hands of Harold, and is well content if only he can fast
and pray like any monk, and give all his thoughts and treasure to the
building of yonder abbey."
"We want neither a monk nor a Norman over us," the smith said
roughly, "still less one who is both Norman and monk I would rather
have a Dane, like Canute, who was a strong man and a firm one, than
this king, who, I doubt not, is full of good intentions, and is a holy and

pious monarch, but who is not strong enough for a ruler. He leaves it to
another to preserve England in peace, to keep in order the great Earls of
Mercia and the North, to hold the land against Harold of Norway,
Sweyn, and others, and, above all, to watch the Normans across the
water. A monk is well enough in a convent, but truly 'tis bad for a
country to have a monk as its king."
"There have been some war-loving prelates, Ulred; men as ambitious as
any of the great earls, and more dangerous, because they have
learning."
"Ay, there have been great prelates," the smith agreed. "Look at Lyfing
of Worcester, to whom next only to Godwin the king owed his throne.
He was an Englishman first and a bishop afterwards, and was a proof, if
needed, that a man can be a great churchman and a great patriot and
statesman too. It was he rather than Godwin who overcame the
opposition of the Danish party, and got the Witan at last to acquiesce in
the choice of London and Wessex, and to give their vote to Edward.
"Well was it he did so. For had he failed we should have had as great a
struggle in England as when Alfred battled against the Danes. We of
London and the men of Wessex under the great Earl were bent upon
being ruled by a prince of our own blood. The last two Danish kings
had shown us that anything is better than being governed by the
Northmen. It was Lyfing who persuaded the Earl of Mercia to side with
Wessex rather than with Northumbria, but since Lyfing, what great
Englishman have we had in the church? Every bishopric was granted
by Edward to Norman priests, until Godwin and his sons got the upper
hand after their exile. Since then most of them have been