Harold : the Last of the Saxon Kings — Complete

Close by his banner, amidst the piles of the dead, William the Conqueror pitched his pavilion, and sate at meat. And over all the plain, far and near, torches were moving like m...

King Edward sate, not on his throne, but on a chair of state, in the presence-chamber of his palace of Westminster. His diadem, with the three zimmes shaped into a triple trefoi...

On the height called Pen-y-Dinas (or “Head of the City”) forming one of the summits of Penmaen-mawr, and in the heart of that supposed fortress which no eye in the Saxon camp ha...

The two brethren of Waltham, Osgood and Ailred, had arrived a little after daybreak at the spot in which, about half a mile, to the rear of Harold’s palisades, the beasts of bur...

There was great rejoicing in England. King Edward had been induced to send Alred the prelate [139] to the court of the German Emperor, for his kinsman and namesake, Edward Athel...

Merry was the month of May in the year of our Lord 1052. Few were the boys, and few the lasses, who overslept themselves on the first of that buxom month. Long ere the dawn, the...

It was one day in the height of summer that two horsemen rode slowly, and conversing with each other in friendly wise, notwithstanding an evident difference of rank and of natio...

Four meals a day, nor those sparing, were not deemed too extravagant an interpretation of the daily bread for which the Saxon prayed. Four meals a day, from earl to ceorl! “Happ...

All other thought had given way to Harold’s impetuous yearning to throw himself upon the Church, to hear his doom from the purest and wisest of its Saxon preachers. Had the prel...

It so chanced, while this interview took place between Githa and the Earl, that Gurth, hawking in the woodlands round Hilda’s house, turned aside to visit his Danish kinswoman....

It was on his throne that the King sate now--and it was the sword that was in his right hand. Some seated below, and some standing beside, the throne, were the officers of the B...

And now, while war thus hungered for England at the mouth of the Somme, the last and most renowned of the sea-kings, Harold Hardrada, entered his galley, the tallest and stronge...

William was willing to delay the engagement as long as he could; for he was not without hope that Harold might abandon his formidable position, and become the assailing party; a...

Harold passed into the Queen’s ante-chamber. Here the attendance was small and select compared with the crowds which we shall see presently in the ante-room to the King’s closet...

Now, all the great chiefs, spiritual and temporal, assembled in Oxford for the decree of that Witan on which depended the peace of England. The imminence of the time made the co...

“And now,” said William, reclining on a long and narrow couch, with raised carved work all round it like a box (the approved fashion of a bed in those days), “now, Sire Taillefe...

On the broad plain between Pevensey and Hastings, Duke William had arrayed his armaments. In the rear he had built a castle of wood, all the framework of which he had brought wi...

She had taken up her abode in a small convent of nuns that adjoined the more famous monastery of Waltham; but she had promised Hilda not to enter on the novitiate, until the bir...

On the fourteenth of October, 1066, the day of St. Calixtus, the Norman force was drawn out in battle array. Mass had been said; Odo and the Bishop of Coutance had blessed the t...

Side by side, William and Harold entered the fair city of Rouen, and there, a succession of the brilliant pageants and knightly entertainments, (comprising those “rare feats of...

Only in solitude could that strong man give way to his emotions; and at first they rushed forth so confused and stormy, so hurtling one the other, that hours elapsed before he c...

Harold, without waiting once more to see Edith, nor even taking leave of his father, repaired to Dunwich [124], the capital of his earldom. In his absence, the King wholly forgo...

While Harold sleeps, let us here pause to survey for the first time the greatness of that House to which Sweyn’s exile had left him the heir. The fortunes of Godwin had been tho...

A magnificent race of men were those war sons of the old North, whom our popular histories, so superficial in their accounts of this age, include in the common name of the “Dane...

Messire Mallet de Graville possessed in perfection that cunning astuteness which characterised the Normans, as it did all the old pirate races of the Baltic; and if, O reader, t...

Brief was the sojourn of Tostig at the court of Rouen; speedily made the contract between the grasping Duke and the revengeful traitor. All that had been promised to Harold, was...

The Queen’s [113] closet opened like the King’s on one hand to an oratory, on the other to a spacious ante-room; the lower part of the walls was covered with arras, leaving spac...

William, Count of the Normans, sate in a fair chamber of his palace of Rouen; and on the large table before him were ample evidences of the various labours, as warrior, chief, t...

The next morning William was long closeted alone with Lanfranc,--that man, among the most remarkable of his age, of whom it was said, that “to comprehend the extent of his talen...

The fugitive Britons, scarce one-tenth of the number that had first rushed to the attack,--performed their flight with the same Parthian rapidity that characterised the assault;...

This memorable trial ended, as the reader will have forseen, in the formal renewal of Sweyn’s outlawry, and the formal restitution of the Earl Godwin and his other sons to their...

Not till after repeated messages, at first without talk of ransom and in high tone, affected, no doubt, by William to spin out the negotiations, and augment the value of his ser...

Around Northampton lay the forces of Morcar, the choice of the Anglo-Dane men of Northumbria. Suddenly there was a shout as to arms from the encampment; and Morcar, the young Ea...

Messire Mallet de Graville (as becomes a man bred up to arms, and snatching sleep with quick grasp whenever that blessing be his to command) no sooner laid his head on the palle...

While these conferences took place in the house of Godwin, Harold, on his way to London, dismissed his train to precede him to his father’s roof, and, striking across the countr...

The snares now spread for Harold were in pursuance of the policy thus resolved on. The camp soon afterwards broke up, and the troops took their way to Bayeux. William, without g...

“I tell thee, Hilda,” said the Earl, impatiently, “I tell thee that I renounce henceforth all faith save in Him whose ways are concealed from our eyes. Thy seid and thy galdra h...

The stately mirth of the evening banquet seemed to Harold as the malign revel of some demoniac orgy. He thought he read in every face the exultation over the sale of England. Ev...

Resolving, should the auguries consulted permit him to depart, to entrust Gurth with the charge of informing Edith, Harold parted from his betrothed, without hint of his suspend...

The next day, as Harold was entering the palace of Westminster, with intent to seek the King’s lady, his father met him in one of the corridors, and, taking him gravely by the h...

Meanwhile, King Harold of England had made himself dear to his people, and been true to the fame he had won as Harold the Earl. From the moment of his accession, “he showed hims...

At dawn, Harold woke from uneasy and broken slumbers, and his eyes fell upon the face of Hilda, large, and fair, and unutterably calm, as the face of Egyptian sphinx.

It was the eve of the 5th of January--the eve of the day announced to King Edward as that of his deliverance from earth; and whether or not the prediction had wrought its own fu...

We have seen, in an earlier part of this record, that Harold possessed, amongst his numerous and more stately possessions, a house, not far from the old Roman dwelling-place of...

Githa, Earl Godwin’s wife, sate in her chamber, and her heart was sad. In the room was one of her sons, the one dearer to her than all, Wolnoth, her darling. For the rest of her...

While, full of themselves, Harold and Edith wandered, hand in hand, through the neighbouring glades--while into that breast which had forestalled, at least, in this pure and sub...

Fair, broad, and calm set the sun over the western woodlands. Hilda stood on the mound, and looked with undazzled eyes on the sinking orb. Beside her, Edith reclined on the swar...

It is the nature of that happiness which we derive from our affections to be calm; its immense influence upon our outward life is not known till it is troubled or withdrawn. By...

The royal party entered London by the great bridge which divided Southwark from the capital; and we must pause to gaze a moment on the animated scene which the immemorial thorou...

gloomy pool reflected upon its stagnant waters the still shadows of the autumnal foliage. As is common in ancient forests in the neighbourhood of men’s wants, the trees were dwa...

Young Olave, the son of Hardrada, had happily escaped the slaughter. A strong detachment of the Norwegians had still remained with the vessels, and amongst them some prudent old...

While King Edward was narrating to the Norman Duke all that he knew, and all that he knew not, of Hilda’s history and secret arts, the road wound through lands as wild and wold-...

As Hilda entered the hall, the various idlers accustomed to feed at her cost were about retiring, some to their homes in the vicinity, some, appertaining to the household, to th...

With all her persuasion of her own powers in penetrating the future, we have seen that Hilda had never consulted her oracles on the fate of Harold, without a dark and awful sens...

Tostig, with the ships he had gained both from Norman and Norwegian, recruited by Flemish adventurers, fled fast from the banners of Harold. After plundering the Isle of Wight,...

Gurth and Harold were seated in close commune in the Earl’s chamber, at an hour long after the complin (or second vespers), when Alred entered unexpectedly. The old man’s face w...

All within the palace of Westminster showed the confusion and dismay of the awful time;--all, at least, save the council-chamber, in which Harold, who had arrived the night befo...

No subject of England, since the race of Cerdic sate on the throne, ever entered the courtyard of Windshore with such train and such state as Earl Godwin.--Proud of that first o...

The good Bishop Alred, now raised to the See of York, had been summoned from his cathedral seat by Edward, who had indeed undergone a severe illness, during the absence of Harol...

The new palace of Edward the Confessor, the palace of Westminster, opened its gates, to receive the Saxon King and the Norman Duke, remounting on the margin of the isle, and now...

On entering the chamber set apart for him in the convent, Harold found Haco and Wolnoth already awaiting him; and a wound he had received in the last skirmish against the Breton...

Hitherto he had advanced on his career without calculation; and nature, not policy, had achieved his power. But henceforth he began thoughtfully to cement the foundations of his...

Some days after the tragical event with which the last chapter closed, the ships of the Saxons were assembled in the wide waters of Conway; and on the small fore-deck of the sta...

Back went Hugues Maigrot, the monk, to William, and told the reply of Harold to the Duke, in the presence of Lanfranc. William himself heard it in gloomy silence, for Fitzosborn...

It was the second day after that which assured him the allegiance of the thegns, that a message was brought to Harold from the Lady Aldyth. She was in Oxford, at a convent, with...

“And now,” said Harold, “I am at leisure to thank thee, brave Norman, for more than thine aid in council and war;--at leisure now to turn to the last prayer of Sweyn, and the of...

The chiefs dispersed to array their troops for the morrow’s march; but Harold and his kinsmen entered the chamber where the women waited the decision of the council, for that, i...

The time of year customary for the National Assembly; the recent consecration of Westminster, for which Edward had convened all his chief spiritual lords, the anxiety felt for t...

The sun had just cast his last beams over the breadth of water into which Conway, or rather Cyn-wy, “the great river,” emerges its winding waves. Not at that time existed the ma...

The Duke of the Normans was in the forest, or park land, of Rouvray, and his Quens and his knights stood around him, expecting some new proof of his strength and his skill with...

The sun rose, and the stairs and passages without were filled with the crowds that pressed to hear news of the Earl’s health. The doors stood open, and Gurth led in the multitud...

Tostig sate in the halls of Bruges, and with him sate Judith, his haughty wife. The Earl and his Countess were playing at chess, (or the game resembling it, which amused the idl...

It was a bright still summer noon, when Harold sate with Edith amidst the columns of the Druid temple, and in the shade which those vast and mournful relics of a faith departed...

For five days and five nights did Godwin lie speechless [132]. And Harold watched over him night and day. And the leaches [133] would not bleed him, because the season was again...

Whether, owing to Hilda’s runes, or to the merely human arts which accompanied them, the Earl’s recovery was rapid, though the great loss of blood he had sustained left him awhi...

Trusting, for the time, to the success of Edward’s urgent demand for the release of his kinsmen, as well as his own, Harold was now detained at the court by all those arrears of...

Tostig chafed mightily at the King’s message; and, on Harold’s attempt to pacify him, grew so violent that nothing short of the cold stern command of his father, who carried wit...

“When this comes to thee, Harold, the brother of thy childish days will sleep in the flesh, and be lost to men’s judgment and earth’s woe in the spirit. I have knelt at the Tomb...

And all went to the desire of Duke William the Norman. With one hand he curbed his proud vassals, and drove back his fierce foes. With the other, he led to the altar Matilda, th...

The boat shot over the royal Thames. Borne along the waters, the shouts and the hymns of swarming thousands from the land shook, like a blast, the gelid air of the Wolf month. A...

His rank as son of Sweyn, the first-born of Godwin’s house--a rank which might have authorised some pretensions on his own part, gave him all field for the exercise of an intell...

The Vala met them at the threshold, and testified so little surprise at the sight of the bleeding and unconscious Earl, that Vebba, who had heard strange tales of Hilda’s unlawf...

Through the blue skies over England there rushed the bright stranger--a meteor, a comet, a fiery star! “such as no man before ever saw;” it appeared on the 8th, before the kalen...