necessary it was that he should have some one to answer for him. Now-a-days, if Tom Dodd stole a hen, wit- Compurganesses would be called to prove that Dodd was tion. seen skulking about the hen-roost on a certain evening; that later on, he was met with a suspicious-looking bundle under his arm; and so forth. This is what is called evidence. The Old-English did not go about things in this way. They wisely did not trust their eyes and ears; the devil played such tricks in those days! Therefore if Dodda was accused of stealing a hen, in the first place he had to swear in court that the charge was false; then five or six of his neighbours (the number varied according to circumstances) were called in, not to prove that Dodda had not committed the theft, but to swear that they believed he had sworn a clean and true oath.' The value of the oath varied according to the rank of the swearer; a thane's oath was worth that of six ceorls. It has sometimes been thought that we have here the germ of trial by jury, but we can see what a wholly different thing it was, since this jury had not to try the evidence, but simply to support the oath of their comrade. If the neighbours were doubtful about Dodda, and would not swear for him, he had then to go to the ordeal. First he must fast three days; then he went to church, where mass was sung, and he took the communion, the priest first solemnly adjuring him by all holy things not to partake if he were in any way guilty. Then the ordeal was got ready; the accused had either to plunge his hand in boiling water, or to carry a lump of red-hot iron for a distance of nine feet. His hand was forthwith bound up, and not opened for three days. If at the end of that time it had festered, he was pronounced guilty; if not, he was innocent.

Ordeal.

The object of the ordeal was to appeal to the judgment of God, but it took effect by working on the mind of the accused. After the fasting, the solemn service, and the adjuration, while the boiling water was hissing, he was a bold man who could brazen it out to the end, when he knew that God and the saints were looking on, able and willing to confound his cause. If he trembled or turned pale, the case went against him.

1 If a thief was taken in the act, he might be slain at once by his captors.-Palgrave, Engl. Commonwealth, p. 210.

As has been said before,1 the Church of that day took an active part in punishing crime. She imposed penances, which the State gave her power to enforce. In fact, while the State only undertook to make good the losses caused by crime (by its system of fines for every offence), the Church undertook to root out sin, and was supported in this work by the secular power.

THE STORY OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST.

short reigns of Harold and At the death of Harthacnut, of native kings was restored

WE need not stop over the Harthacnut, the sons of Cnut. Edward the in 1042, the old line Confessor. in the person of Edward, son of Ethelred, known as Edward the Confessor. story of the Norman conquest. again become personal, and we shall only have a glimpse now and then of the English people; while we are chiefly taken up with kings, earls, and bishops.

His

reign brings us to the direct And here our history must

First we have the white-handed, waxen-faced King Edward, with his snowy hair and beard, who was said to have the gift of healing, and whom his people reverenced as a saint. He was a good man, no doubt, of pure life and kindly disposition (except in occasional fits of rage), very reverent to holy things, and wishful to govern his people well. But he had no ability or energy. If other people would take the trouble of governing for him, he was only too glad to give his whole time to singing and dreaming in church, to church business, and to the amusement of hunt

1 See p. 32.

tendencies.

ing, which he greatly loved. The last of the old kingly race of Wessex, he was very little of an Englishman. Edward's Half Norman by his mother, he was wholly Norman Norman by education and tastes. He preferred the sprightly Norman-French to the grand Old-English tongue, and the English manners and customs seemed to him barbarous compared to the refinement of Normandy. Especially was he shocked by the lax discipline of the English Church, and he brought Norman monks to England to set an example of strictness. He surrounded himself with Norman favourites, who had his most intimate friendship, and managed the affairs of his palace. Many of these Normans received lands and high offices in England. Ulf was made bishop of Dorchester; Robert of Jumièges archbishop of Canterbury. Richard Scrob, who received an estate in Herefordshire, built a castle there after the fashion of the barons in Normandy. Such a castle England had never seen before. Her nobles were not used to shut themselves up, as if in an enemy's country, in strongholds from which, while safe themselves, they could oppress the poor people round about; and this castlebuilding was looked upon with great horror by the English.

But as yet the Normans had not got everything to themselves. The fourfold division of England made by Cnut still stood, and the four great earls were the chief The four ministers of power. Whether the doughty earl great earls. Siward, earl of Northumbria from the Humber to the Tweed, was often seen at Edward's court we know not. Northumbria was a turbulent region, not very obedient to the English king; yet we shall find Siward marching at his sovereign's bidding more than once. Leofric, the earl of Mercia, who was very wise both in church matters and in worldly business, was thought to be a great blessing to all this nation;' but his sons and his grandsons, as we shall afterwards see, wrought England much sorrow. But the figures of chiefest interest at the court of Edward are those of Godwin, earl of Wessex, and his sons; Swegen, who held a new earldom in the western shires; Harold, earl of East Anglia; and Tostig.

6

The origin of Godwin is doubtful; but he married the sister of Earl Ulf, one of the companions of Cnut; Earl his sons therefore were half Danish by blood. Godwin. It is difficult to give a sure verdict on the character of

Godwin and his sons, because the Norman writers, and those who followed them, have heaped most bitter blame on all the house of Godwin; while the modern English writers, regarding them as the heroes of the national party, have equally overladen them with praise. When we look at the old chronicles which were written at the time, we find the figures of Godwin and Harold somewhat dim. We can only guess at what they were from what they did. But what they did does not seem to justify either the extravagant blame of the one side, nor the overdone praise of the other. There is, however, a marked difference between Godwin and his son Harold. Godwin, the clever and eloquent earl, hangs under suspicion of a dark crime, the murder of the innocent Etheling Alfred, the brother of Edward, who was entrapped and slain in the days of Harold, son of Cnut. Godwin, it is true, has long ago purged himself of this crime by oath before the assembly of his peers, in ancient English fashion; and the king, who has never accused him of it, has received him at his court-nay, he has taken his daughter Edith to wife. Yet still the suspicion is revived from time to time, and one of the old chroniclers quotes it against him from an old rime of the day. But Harold. Harold, he tells us in another rime, is the noble earl, who at all times loyally served his lord in word and deed. As to. Swegen, it is plain he was a violent young man, who did not shrink from the darkest deeds; but he repented him of his sins, and died on his way back from a Swegen. pilgrimage to Jerusalem—a very common mode of expiating sin in those days. Swegen does not greatly concern us; but the history of England turns on the history of Godwin and Harold. Whether of their own free will, or because their interest and their patriotism ran together, they were the champions of England against the 'outlandish men' with whom the king had filled his court.

Great was the anger of Englishmen when the highest office in the English Church, the archbishopric of Canterbury, was given by the king to the Norman Robert of Jumièges (1051), while Elfric, whom the monks of Canterbury had chosen, and Earl Godwin had recommended to the king, was rejected. But this Robert, who had already been seven years bishop of

Jealousy between English and Norman party.

London, had got possession of the king's ear, and for some time back had been stirring up the king's mind against Godwin, by whispering the old story of his brother Alfred's murder. The jealousy between the English and the Norman party was increasing. A slight event threw the whole country into a blaze,

Affair of

Eustace.

Eustace, count of Boulogne, a French nobleman, had married a sister of King Edward. In the autumn of 1051 he crossed the Channel, and paid a visit to his royal brother-in-law. What his business was we Count are not told; but it was successful, and Eustace appears to have been so puffed up with pride that on his homeward journey he deemed he had a right, like the king, his brother-in-law,1 to demand free quarters from the citizens of Dover. As he and his men drew near to Dover, they put on their byrnies and rode into the town like men who are monarchs of all they survey. But when one of his men tried to take up his quarters at the house of a certain townsman, the townsman, who deemed that every Englishman's house was his castle, slew the insolent Frenchman. A skirmish took place; many were slain on both sides, but the Frenchmen were driven off, and hastened back to the king at Gloucester, to complain of the treatment they had received. The king was very wroth, and ordered Earl Godwin, in whose earldom Dover lay, to chastise the rude townsmen. But the earl, because he was loth to hurt his own people, who had only defended their rights, refused to go. monstrous,' said he to the king, that you should Edward judge unheard those whom it is your duty to care for.' Then the king sent for his nephew Ralph, Godwin. the Norman earl of Hereford, and for Leofric, earl of Mercia, and Siward, earl of Northumbria, with their forces, and held a Witenagemot to judge Godwin; while the earl and his stalwart sons gathered together the men of their earldoms, intending also to go to the meeting.

6

'It is

quarrels
with

But when Godwin heard that the influence of the Frenchmen was likely to prevail, he and his men trimmed themselves

1 Feorm, or the right of demanding board and lodging free wherever they went, was one of the privileges of the old English kings, at least on all lands which had been originally Folkland; booklands were exempted from these obligations.-Allen, p. 144.