1066 (27 page)

In the months that followed, however, Harefoot and his mother Ællfgifu of Northampton worked hard, travelling around the country, offering bribes and issuing threats, and winning leading men over to their cause. During the course of 1036 Harefoot gradually increased his powers so that he became effectively king of all England; and in the process Ælfgifu was regaining for herself the position of queen mother that she had once held in Norway, only this time on her home turf. With still no sign of Harthacanute, Earl Godwin and other important men in the south began to waver in their support for the young King of Denmark. Emma despaired; in this battle of the mothers, it seemed as if Ælfgifu of Northampton was going to be triumphant. At last she accepted that her favourite son Harthacanute was not going to be able to help her in her time of need. Emma's thoughts turned, as they had not done for many years, to the two sons by Æthelred whom she had long ago abandoned in their exile in Normandy.

Some time in 1036 an English messenger arrived in Normandy with an urgent and unexpected letter. It was a letter from the dowager Queen of England to her two long-forgotten sons, Edward and Alfred. 'Emma,' the letter began, 'queen in name only, imparts motherly salutation to her sons Edward and Alfred.' The letter then quickly turned to the question of the English succession, now that 'our lord' Canute had died. Disingenuously, Emma was silent about her earlier hopes that Harthacanute would reign; still less did she mention that the Danish dynasty of Canute had been responsible for Edward's and Alfred's exile in the first place. To her sons she now said:

daily you are deprived more and more of the kingdom, your inheritance, and I wonder what plan you are adopting . . . your procrastination is becoming from day to day a support to the usurper of your rule [Harold Harefoot]. For he goes around hamlets and cities ceaselessly, and makes the chief men his friends by gifts, threats and prayers. But they would rather that one of you should rule over them . . . I entreat, therefore, that one of you come to me speedily and privately, to receive from me wholesome counsel, and to know in what manner this matter, which I desire, must be brought to pass.

Send back word what you are going to do about these matters by the present messenger, whoever he may be. Farewell, beloved ones of my heart.
¹⁷

Emma would later claim that the letter was a forgery concocted by Harold Harefoot in order to lure Edward and Alfred into a trap. Without further evidence (which is highly unlikely to surface at this distance in time) it is impossible to discern the truth; but many historians believe that Emma probably did write the letter and only later wished to disassociate herself in view of the tragedy that ensued from its delivery. If she did write the letter, appealing as a last-ditch measure to her sons by Æthelred in order to prevent the victory of Harefoot and his mother Ælfgifu of Northampton, it was a crass miscalculation of the situation. In 1036 England was simmering on the brink of civil war.

Edward sailed across the Channel with a band of Normans. A few years earlier he had attempted the same crossing, but storms had driven him only as far as the island of Jersey. This time he succeeded in raiding the Southampton area, but, faced with opposition, he retreated back to the continent with little loss and some booty. The king to be known in history books as Edward the Confessor would have to wait another six years before his own peaceful accession to the throne. The fate of Edward's younger brother Alfred, which has been alluded to earlier in this book, now took its dark and tragic course. Refusing aid from Flanders, Alfred came to Boulogne, where his sister Godgifu had recently entered into her marriage with the young Count Eustace II. Supported by Count Eustace I, who provided him with the assistance of 'a few men of Boulogne', Alfred crossed to England from the Boulonnais port of Wissant.
¹⁸
'Few' is a relative term; the force was evidently large enough to be later billeted in separate groups of twenties, twelves and tens and John of Worcester, writing in the twelfth century, implies that it exceeded 600 soldiers.
¹⁹
Narrowly avoiding capture at their first attempted point of landing, Alfred's force made ground at 'another port' along the south coast. Believing they had evaded their enemies, they now sought to make their way across land to London. But the party was intercepted by Earl Godwin of Wessex.

Godwin, the foremost of the English earls, was in a delicate position. To preserve his power and wealth, he needed to back the right candidate for the throne; the wrong decision could be disastrous both for him and his family. He had been a supporter of the absent Harthacanute. Lately, however, the south had been swinging behind Harold Harefoot and Godwin knew this. The intervention,
now,
of a third royal claimant complicated an already complicated position. Godwin at first greeted Alfred as a friend and lord. He then diverted the English prince and his Boulonnais soldiers away from London and led them to Guildford. He was evidently seeking to curry favour with Harefoot and had decided to fall in with what Harefoot wanted. At Guildford, as evening fell, Godwin had the Boulonnais soldiers split up, billeting them in separate groups of twenties, twelves and tens. Only a small force was left behind to guard the young prince. The men of Boulogne were fed and given drink. Soon they took to their beds. They were now at their most vulnerable.

As they slept, the sound of quickening footsteps and low whispers would have broken the silence of the night. Earl Godwin, it seems, had washed his hands of the matter, leaving the sleeping soldiers to the mercy of Harold Harefoot's men, who had been secretly waiting in the dark. Godwin was always to deny any culpability for what followed; but at best he turned a blind eye. As the soldiers from Boulogne slept, Harefoot's men slipped on to the scene and robbed them of their weapons. Then they surprised them, securing them in fetters. When morning broke the helpless soldiers were taken out and, with their hands bound behind their backs, they were lined up and mocked. Then, in a cruel lottery, all but every tenth man was murdered in cold blood. 'They butchered innocent heroes,' the
Encomium Emmae Reginae
tells us,

with blows from their spears, bound as they were like swine. Hence all ages will call such torturers worse than dogs, since they brought to condemnation the worthy person of so many soldiers, not by soldierly force but by treacherous snares. Some, as has been said, they slew, some they placed in slavery to themselves; others they sold, for they were in the grip of blind greed, but they kept a few loaded with bonds to be subject to greater mockery.
²⁰

Alfred fared perhaps the worst of all. He was bound and taken captive. He was then taken to Ely where he was mocked and tortured. At this point it was decreed that he should be blinded as a sign of contempt. No doubt Harefoot intended this as a warning designed to frighten Edward, and anyone else, from making any future intervention into English affairs. Two men were placed on Alfred's arms, and one each on his legs and chest. With his writhing body thus stilled, his eyes were put out. Horribly maimed, Alfred was then taken to Ely Abbey and in the care of the monks he died of his wounds not very long afterwards. The callous manner of Alfred's murder, and that of his Boulonnais entourage, was shocking even to those who lived in this shockingly violent age.

If nothing else, Harold Harefoot had stamped his authority on the land. In the following year, 1037, he was officially recognised as king of all England. Ælfgifu of Northampton had got what she wanted. Her son was now king; Emma's humiliation was complete and she was forced into exile in Flanders. But the saga of rivalry between the two women had further to run. Emma immediately set about plotting revenge on Harefoot and Ælfgifu. Her utter hatred of them both now rose to a new level of intensity. In a flailing gesture, she appealed once again to Edward to help her return to England. Edward wisely replied that such an enterprise would be foolhardy. No men in England had sworn oaths in his favour; another disaster would surely ensue. On the other hand, he told her, his half-brother Harthacanute already had enough men and power in Denmark to invade England and overcome opposition. So Emma turned to her son by Canute. By 1039 Harthacanute had at long last made his peace with King Magnus of Norway and was free to turn his attention to England.

He journeyed first to Bruges to meet his mother and they agreed on a plan. Emma had finally found her champion - an eager son seeking to extend his own domain. Together they raised an army of invasion and sixty ships to carry it to England. But with the preparations in full flow, Harold Harefoot suddenly died at Oxford on 17 March 1040. So ended the short reign of one England's least respected kings. From the perspective of the island shores, it was clear that Harthacanute stood ready to invade; Edward's claim was forgotten. The crown was offered to Harthacanute, and shortly before midsummer 1040 he and Emma arrived with their sixty ships, originally prepared for war but now peacefully received. After almost twenty-three years of bitter rivalry, Emma had finally emerged triumphant over Ælfgifu of Northampton. With the death of Harold Harefoot, Ælfgifu disappears from the old records. She probably fled and lived out her remaining years in obscure exile; but a more grisly fate cannot be excluded. One of Harthacanute's first acts as king was to have Harold Harefoot's body dug up from Westminster Abbey and ignominiously discarded in a fen.

Earl Godwin was left with the tricky task of explaining why he had switched to Harefoot's side in 1036. Most damagingly, he was accused of complicity in the death of Alfred. On trial he swore an oath that he had merely been obeying Harefoot's orders in delivering Alfred and his party to him. He swore that he had had no part in what followed; nor had he wished or counselled it. A number of men bore witness for him. To ease the matter through, he donated an enormously expensive ship with a gilded prow to Harthacanute. The ship was fully equipped with eighty hand-picked men and it gleamed with magnificent gold and gilt armaments and fittings. By dint of these manoeuvres, Godwin survived. The contemporary and later chronicles differ as to what degree of culpability was really to be ascribed to the Earl of Wessex. He would need to defend himself again against these charges during the reign of Edward the Confessor. Unfairly, the taint of guilt was to be inherited, in the eyes of some, by his son Earl Harold.

Obscurity surrounds the reason for Harthacanute's next move. In 1041 he appears to have called over Edward from Normandy in order to associate him in the rule of England. Perhaps he and Emma, faced with unpopularity, particularly as a result of Harthacanute's policy of harsh taxation, needed to bolster their position by bringing in a prince of the authentic Anglo-Saxon line. At any rate, Edward returned to his native shores after almost thirty years of exile in Normandy, French-speaking and French-educated. The first step had been taken in turning the face of England away from Scandinavia and towards France. The following year King Harthacanute, though he was no more than twenty-four years old, suddenly died at a Danish wedding feast by the Thames at Lambeth. It was said that he had been merry and in good spirits, but when he drank from a beaker he was suddenly seized with convulsions, lost the power of speech, collapsed and shortly expired. The whiff of poison hangs around his ending, though neither contemporaries nor modern historians have made any specific allegation. Certainly Harthacanute had quickly become unpopular. Now that he was dead Edward the Confessor ascended the throne as sole king. Godwin again protested his innocence in the murder of Alfred, apparently providing the new king with a ship as magnificent as the one he had given to Harthacanute. Much as he might have wished to banish the powerful Earl of Wessex, Edward needed Godwin as much as Godwin needed Edward. The two formed an uneasy alliance. It was to be another ten years before Edward was able to break away, and then only temporarily, from the influence of the Godwin family.

Edward's attitude to his mother was a different story. Smug, no doubt, at her ultimate triumph over Ælfgifu of Northampton, Emma must have hoped that she would retain her position as a wealthy and influential queen mother. Edward had different plans; he disliked and distrusted her. Harthacanute had been her favourite all along; wriggle as she might, it was probably her own foolhardiness that had led to the death of his full brother Alfred; and for Edward himself she had persistently done less than he wanted. As soon as he was in a position of sufficient power, Edward rode from Gloucester to Winchester with Earl Godwin and others, and taking Emma by surprise, seized her many treasures and disgraced her. She was allowed to live out the remainder of her days - which extended for another nine years - quietly at the palace in Winchester. She played no more active role in the affairs of England. Emma died in 1052, and was buried alongside her second husband Canute in old Winchester Cathedral.

So ended the story of bitter rivalry that engulfed two of the most powerful women of their age. The thrust of the argument of this chapter has been that the lady depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry is Ælfgifu of Northampton, whose eventful life in England, Denmark and Norway we have recalled. But why should the artist of the tapestry have broken off his tale of Harold and William in order to allude to an old scandal that had ceased to be relevant after 1040, when the last of Ælfgifu's bastards died? McNulty, who first proposed that the North­ampton lady was
Ælfgyva,
argued that the reason for Ælfgifu of Northampton's portrayal at this point in the tapestry was to undermine the Norwegian claim to the English throne.
²¹
But the Norwegian claim to England rested upon a treaty that was said to have been entered into in the late 1030s between Harthacanute and King Magnus of Norway. Under the terms of this treaty each agreed that the other would inherit his kingdom should he die childless. Harthacanute was the legitimate son of Emma and Canute; the bastardy and low birth of his half-brothers Swein and Harold Harefoot would have had no bearing on this treaty and, therefore, no bearing on the Norwegian claim in 1066. Nor would the fact that the Norwegians had ousted Swein from their kingdom in 1035 affect the terms of Harthacanute's treaty with Magnus, which was made in or shortly before 1039. Moreover, at the time that the tapestry was made the Norwegian claim was not an issue. Harold's victory at Stamford Bridge had seen to that.