Battle of Hastings, The Read Online Free

his power. Godwin’s motives are less clear. He had
voted for Harthacnut’s succession and against Harold after Cnut’s death, and this may have appeared a way to reinstate himself in the king’s good graces. In later years, when he
came to trial for his part in the crime, he maintained that in surrendering Alfred to Harold’s men, he was acting under the king’s orders and had not known that the Atheling’s
mutilation was intended. Whatever the facts of the case, it shocked the inhabitants of England, most of whom had probably virtually forgotten the Atheling’s existence during the peaceful days
of Cnut’s reign. Never was a bloodier deed done in this land since the Danes came, declared the Anglo-SaxonChronicle, which recorded the death of ‘the guiltless
Atheling’ in a burst of poetry. Whatever Godwin’s motives, his part in the crime permanently stained his name and soured his relations with Alfred’s brother Edward when the latter
eventually succeeded to the throne. Not the least of the Norman accusations against Godwin’s son Harold in future years would be the fact that his father had betrayed a prince of the royal
house of Wessex who was kin to their duke and was under Norman protection.
    If Godwin had hoped to propitiate Harold Harefoot by his betrayal of the Atheling, he might have saved himself the trouble. Within four years Harold was dead, succeeded by his half-brother,
Harthacnut, who had been Godwin’s candidate for the throne all along. Harthacnut lasted a bare two years on the throne before dropping dead at a bridal feast, but during his short reign he
invited his half-brother, the Atheling Edward, by now the only surviving son of Æthelred, to return to England and (it is assumed) to succeed him. Thus, after a gap of twenty-four years, the
direct heir of the royal house of Wessex returned to the English throne.
    It is difficult, on the limited evidence available, to assess the character of King Edward fairly. In part, this is due to the atmosphere of piety spread retrospectively over his life by the
appellation – which he acquired only after his death – of St Edward the Confessor. What is definitively known of him suggests that his later sainthood may have been no more deserved
than the title of ‘the Martyr’ was merited by his uncle Edward, assassinated in 978 for the benefit of his father Æthelred. The only thing we know of his personality is that he
seems to have had a tendency to fly into ungovernable rages. The main characteristic that can be deduced from his policies is a determination never to leave England again. The situation in England
to which he returned, though clearlypreferable to his former position of impoverished hanger-on at the ducal court in Normandy, cannot have been without difficulty, and it is
much to his credit that he negotiated it so successfully that he contrived (though clearly no warrior-king, like his half-brother Edmund Ironside) to die peacefully in his bed after a relatively
prosperous reign of twenty-four years. His biography, the Vita Ædwardi Regis, commissioned by his wife , portrays him as an old man, majestic, white-haired and white-bearded, all
his thoughts fixed on the next world. He is probably more realistically described by his twentieth-century biographer:
    If there is one trait that runs through the whole and can usefully be stressed at the beginning, it is Edward’s ability to survive. Despite an inclination to rashness
     and inflexibility, he was blessed with a saving caution. And there is a general characteristic which must be held in mind. Edward was never a roi fainéant or a puppet ruler.
     Although he was neither a wise statesman nor a convincing soldier, he was both belligerent and worldly-wise. He caused most of his enemies to disappear and outlived almost all who had disputed
     his authority. He was rex piissimus, a fortunate king, blessed by Heaven. vii
    Since, however, it was during his reign that the