The situation was awkward in any case. But it looks as though it was Emma’s ambition that destabilized it. She launched a propaganda war by spreading scurrilous stories about Harefoot’s birth. Harefoot struck back by stripping her of ‘all the best [of Cnut’s] treasure’. But, despite the slight, Emma held out in Winchester ‘as long as she could’.
At this moment Emma’s two sons by Æthelred, Edward and Alfred, decided to leave the safety of their exile in Normandy and fish in the troubled waters of an England which they had fled more than twenty years previously. Each claimed, innocently, to ‘wish to visit his mother’. But no one was deceived. Had Emma encouraged their gamble? Or had Harefoot, as Emma was later to claim, tricked these possible rivals into putting themselves into his power?
Probably as reinsurance, the two travelled separately. Edward made for Southampton but was beaten off and returned to Normandy. Alfred, on the other hand, evaded the English fleet and successfully landed at Dover. But he was soon picked up by Godwin’s troops and taken to Guildford. The upshot was another royal murder, which ranked as a cause célèbre with Edward the Martyr’s death at Corfe. Alfred’s men were killed or variously mutilated, while the æthling (prince) himself was taken to Ely, where he too was blinded, and ‘so carelessly … that he soon died’.
The deed was done ‘by the king’s [Harefoot’s] men’. But what was Godwin’s role? The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle said that he handed over Alfred ‘because such conduct was very agreeable to Harold [Harefoot]’. Godwin himself later claimed on oath that he was only acting on Harefoot’s orders. The issue is important morally: if the first were true, Godwin was an accessory before the fact in Alfred’s murder; if the latter, he was innocent. But the political realities were the same. As early as 1036, Godwin had decided that, with Harthacnut still unable to leave Denmark, his cause and Emma’s was hopeless, and it was time to conciliate Harefoot.
As usual, Godwin read the runes correctly, and in 1037, following Harthacnut’s continued absence, Harefoot was universally accepted as king. Emma, irreconcilable, was driven out ‘against the raging winter’. She found refuge in Flanders, where, under the protection of Count Baldwin V, she settled into a comfortable exile in Bruges. Meanwhile, Ælfgifu, who had been both indefatigable and imaginative in winning over support to Harefoot, was triumphant and probably acted as virtual regent for her colourless son.
But Emma in Bruges was not idle either. She had discussions with Edward. She poured out her troubles to her daughter by Cnut, Godgifu, who was married to Henry, son and heir of the Holy Roman Emperor, Conrad II. But everything depended on her beloved Harthacnut. Only he had the power. Finally, in 1039, an agreement with the now independent kingdom of Norway freed his hands in Scandinavia and he set sail with a great fleet of sixty-two ships to join Emma in Bruges. He overwintered there. But, before he could launch an invasion of England, Harefoot died at Oxford on 17 March 1040.
Once more, this time more by good luck than anything else, England had avoided civil war. Instead, the witan ‘sent after Harthacnut to Bruges, supposing they did well’. But Emma and Harthacnut, who were taking no chances this time, brought the great fleet with them anyway. Raising the vast sums required to pay off the ships would bedevil the politics of the reign: England had got out of the habit of paying the Danegeld and saw no reason to recommence. Harthacnut’s other concern was to take his revenge on the regime that had kept him, as he saw it, from his inheritance for five years. Harefoot’s body, which had been buried at Westminster, was ‘dragged up and thrown in a ditch’, and moves, which came to nothing, were made against Godwin for his complicity in Alfred’s murder.
Emma was now in her element. As mater regis (‘queen mother’), she recovered all the wealth and more that she had lost in 1037. But how to guarantee the future? Her son Harthacnut was only in his early twenties. But he was unmarried and the males of Cnut’s line were, it was now clear, not long-lived. In the circumstances, Emma turned to her other surviving son, Edward, as the spare, if not the heir that she had always considered Harthacnut to be. In 1041 Edward was recalled from Normandy and, according to The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘sworn as king and abode in his brother’s court’. It was during this strange period of double kingship that Emma commissioned the Encomium Emmae Reginae, with its frontispiece showing her, Harthacnut and Edward, all three wearing crowns.
But the diarchy did not last long. Emma’s fears about Harthacnut’s longevity proved correct and he had a seizure during a drinking bout at a marriage at Lambeth. He survived the stroke itself but never recovered speech and died on 8 June 1042. He was unregretted: ‘then were alienated from him’, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports, ‘all that before desired him, for he framed nothing royal during his whole reign’. It is a damning verdict and shows that the years of uncertainty which had followed Cnut’s death, and the heavy taxation of Harthacnut’s reign, had dissipated any remaining English affection for Cnut’s house. Its direct male line, in any case, was extinguished. Perhaps it was time to return to the House of Wessex.
Chapter 5
Confessor and Conquest
Edward the Confessor, Harold Godwinson
EDWARD WAS NOMINATED as king almost before the life was out of his predecessor. ‘Before [Harthacnut] was buried’, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports, ‘all the people chose Edward for king at London.’ Some historians have understood this to mean that Edward II was carried to the throne on a wave of patriotic sentiment for the House of Wessex. It is possible. On the other hand, the verdict of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle suggests, at best, modified rapture: ‘they received him as their king as was natural’.
I
By this time, Edward was already nearing forty. He had spent well over half his life as an exile in Normandy and was probably more French than English. Certainly, he seems to have been happier in Norman or French company. Both his coins, whose portrait type is the most realistic yet, and the Bayeux Tapestry show him with a long, rather lugubrious face, and moustache and beard. The beard began as a rather straggly imperial but became more luxuriant with age. In character, he seems to have had something of that other long-term exile, Charles II, about him. He was ordinarily rather lazy about affairs of state, but, when backed into a corner, he could be both cunning and decisive. And he, too, was determined never to go on his travels again.
The difference, of course, lay in their sexual appetites. Later, the fact that Edward was childless was misunderstood by his monkish admirers to mean that, though married for over two decades, he was voluntarily celibate. On this basis he was named ‘the Confessor’ and honoured as a saint.
But the real Edward was a man and a king of his time. And he did all the things an eleventh-century king had to do. He led his troops and his fleet. He loved hunting, and, when he relaxed of an evening, he liked to listen to the recital of bloodthirsty Norse sagas. Of course, like most English kings, he was pious and showy in his devotions – especially towards the end. But his childlessness, it seems clear, was the result, not of piety, but of mere bad luck – and perhaps of an impossible wife.
Edward’s coronation was delayed for the unusually long period of nine months. This allowed for careful preparation; it also enabled the coronation to be timed to coincide with Easter, the principal feast of the Church. ‘Early’ on Easter Day Edward was crowned at Winchester ‘with much pomp’. Archbishop Eadsige of Canterbury performed the ceremony and ‘before all the people well admonished [the king]’. The Church, clearly, wanted another Edgar: it remained to be seen whether they had got him.
Eight months later, Edward