Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 11.djvu/274

238 ON THE LIFE AND DEATH OF EARL GODWIXE. writers on this period, ^Yith a eouiitryiiiaii of our own, who may fairly ehiini our respect as the pioneer of all more recent inquiries into early English history, and "with a writer of another land, who has proved himself, though far from the most accurate in detail, yet undoubtedly the most eloquent and picturesque of its narrators. Sharon Turner and Thierry quote the jIS. Chronicle of liadulphus Niger, as well as the Knytlinga Saga, both of which authorities I am obliged to take at second-hand, in support of the story that Godwine was a peasant's son in the west of England, who won the favour of the Danish chieftain Ulf by hospitalit}" and guidance when he had lost his wa}^ after one of the battles between Cnut and Eadmund, Ulf, pleased with the appearance and address of the young Englishman, takes him to the court of Cnut, procures him promotion at the hands of the King, and gives him his own sister Gytlia in marriage. By most later writers this story is passed by in silence. M. de Bonnechose, however, stops to argue against it, as also does Sir Edward Ikilwer Lytton, the notes to whose splendid romance of Harold " show what laurels he might have won in the graver field of history itself, had not his genius been diverted into another and more popular channel. Sir Edward only alhidcs to the story in order to dismiss it with the utmost contempt, as directly contrary to the authority of the Saxon Chronicle and of Florence of Worcester. Now^ I must confess that 1 have a lingering attachment to Thierry's story, pai-tly from early associations, partly from the natural wish to recognise in a great man the architect of his own fortune, and to find that the last prince who was raised to the throne by the free choice of the English people did, in the fullest sense, derive his origin from their own ranks. I would not, indeed, be understood as fully committing myself to the legend, which is certainly surrounded by difficulties, but it certainly does not strike me as the gross absurdity which most modern writers seem to consider it. That ill a jtcriod of extreme confusion ;iiid ii;ili(iii;d disorganisation, a youth oi" lowly birth, but of coniinaiiding abiliti(;s, might, if a lucky accident once put him ujxtii the track of fortune, make his way to the highest dignities of the state, is in itself neither incredible nor iiiipi-(»bable. A few y<'ars before. Eadric Streone, wIkiiii all describe as a person of low l»iiili, li;i(l risen to be the first man in the kini:;dom.