Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 11.djvu/405

ON THE LIFE AND DEATH OF EARL GODWINE. 31-1 of Svend, Kent and Essex were ravaged by a Norwegian fleet, and probably the sudden death of JMagnus alone prevented a more formidable invasion, Thierry, therefore, is hardly justified in saying that " none of the kings of the north ventured to claim with arms in their hands the inheritance of the sons of Cnut." From this moment up to the fight of Hastings, the history of England is, in fact, the history of Godwine and his children. Godwine the Earl, Harold the Earl, Harold the King, ruled England during a period which all allow to have been among the most prosperous in our early history, a season of repose between Danish and Norman invasions. For a moment the intrigues of the stranger banished the stout English chieftains, but only to return to greater power among the united acclamations of their countrymen. The formal position successively occupied by Godwine and Harold was that of Earl of the West-Saxons, Godwine carrying with it the chief jurisdiction over the old westsaxons.^ kingdom of Wessex, with its appendages of Kent and Sussex. This was the portion of the kingdom which had usually remained under the immediate sway of the monarch, ever since the King of the West-Saxons had expanded into the full proportions of " totius Britannise Basileus." Cnut had retained this territory in his own hands, while dividing the rest of England into Earldoms, so that Godwine probably first obtained this extensive jurisdiction, while acting as the lieutenant of the absent Harthacnut, and retained it during the subsequent reigns. It is perhaps the most striking mark of his greatness, that this peculiar possession of the sovereign should now for the first time be placed under the government of a subject. Harold obtained the Earldom of the East-Angles, including, also, Essex, Cambridge, and Huntingdon ; Swegen was invested with the rule of an anomalous province, partly Mercian, partly West-Saxon ; to wit, the shires of Somerset, Gloucester, Hereford, Oxford, and Berks. Of the administration of Godwine and his sons in these high places, we find, of course, exactly contrary statements in the English and the Norman writers, which are mutually compared with tolerable fairness by Malmesbury. Sir F. Palgrave ^ adopts without hesitation the Norman version, ' Auglo-Saxons, 334.