Catalonia was put down by him, and after the death of Masaniello he defeated the intrigues for offering the crown of Naples to the duke of Guise. He refused to be a party to the treaty of Munster, which left Spain to cope single-handed with her powerful rival. When the prince of Condé was driven to seek an asylum in Spain, Haro conceived the idea of forming an army of malcontent Frenchmen to secure the re-establishment of the prince; but this scheme failed on the majority of Louis XIV. being declared. The Portuguese, meanwhile, were laying siege to Badajoz (1658). Haro raised an army of fifteen thousand men, went personally to direct its operations, and drove the Portuguese over the Guadalquiver. In 1659, the celebrated treaty of the Pyrenees was framed by Haro and Mazarin, the most important stipulation being the marriage of Louis XIV. with Maria Theresa of Austria, daughter of Philip IV. Philip, in testimony of his gratitude to Haro, created him a duke, with the title of "Peace." Haro was a wise rather than a brilliant administrator. He was a sedulous promoter of agriculture, and the finances of the country revived under his rule. His house was a rendezvous for all t he literary men of the day, and the king frequently joined their assemblies. His son, Caspar, was viceroy of Naples.—F. M. W.
HAROLD I., King of England, surnamed, from his swiftness, Harefoot, was the illegitimate son of Canute the Great by Algiva of Southampton, and at his father's death in 1036, succeeded to the vacant throne. In those days bastardy was no objection, or a very slight one, in royal families; and Canute had therefore equally divided his dominions between his three sons, allotting Denmark to Hardicanute, his lawful offspring, while he bestowed Norway and England respectively on Sweyn and Harold, the children of Algiva. The celebrated Godwin, earl of Kent, who was all-powerful among the Saxons in the southern division of the kingdom, resolved, however, to choose as sovereign Hardicanute, who by the mother's side was connected with the old line of Saxon royalty. Civil war seemed imminent, when a compromise was effected by means of the wittenagemot. In accordance with the resolution of that assembly, England was divided between the two half-brothers—Harold receiving the provinces north of the Thames, and Hardicanute the southern moiety of the island. The latter continuing still absent in Denmark, Harold had little difficulty in neutralizing the compromise of the wittenagemot, and attaching the provinces of the south to his dominions; and although his election as "full king" was never actually sanctioned by legislative authority, he became at last the virtual monarch of the entire realm. Few important political events diversify the brief reign of Harold; and but little, save what is conflicting and uncertain, is recorded of his character. He died in 1040.—J. J.
HAROLD II., King of England, and the last of its Saxon monarchs, was the eldest son of the famous Earl Godwin, who played so conspicuous a part during the reign of Edward the Confessor. Valiant, accomplished, and ambitious—yet at the same time animated by a spirit of undoubted patriotism—Harold, the son of Godwin, possessed in a remarkable measure all those qualities that stamp the impress of natural sovereignty on their owner, and warrant him in aspiring to the elevation of a throne. As governor of East Anglia under his father, the earlier portion of his life was spent amid the stormy conflicts of that troubled era when Saxon supremacy in England was tottering to its fall. The final champion of the Saxon nationality, Harold did all in his power to delay, if not completely to arrest, the impending catastrophe; but the result proved how little a single arm, even the most vigorous, could achieve in the existent position of affairs in England to postpone the overthrow of Saxon ascendancy, and the infusion of a new and victorious element into English life. In the temporary fall of Godwin, in 1051, his son Harold was necessarily involved. While Godwin himself, to escape the vengeance of the Norman favourites of Edward, sought refuge with Baldwin of Flanders, Harold fled westward, and embarking at Bristol, crossed the sea to Ireland. But the voluntary banishment of the great earl proved, as might have been anticipated, of short duration. In the following summer, 1052, Godwin collected a number of ships and fell upon the southern coast, where he was eagerly welcomed by the Saxon population. At the Isle of Wight he was met by Harold, who brought a considerable force from Ireland to his father's aid. Advancing on London, they forced the most advantageous terms from the overawed but reluctant monarch. On the death of Godwin, Harold succeeded to his father's earldom and his vast political influence. In 1063 he was commissioned by Edward to check the inroads of the Welsh, the turbulent and ever-active foes of English rule. That difficult task was accomplished by the Saxon earl in the most successful manner; and by a wonderful combination of bravery and skill, he gained repeated victories over the half-savage mountaineers, reducing them at last to such great straits that t hey decapitated their king, Griffith, and despatched his head to Harold in token of their complete submission. The prosperous issue of his campaign against the Welsh tended yet farther to increase the prestige of Harold in the estimation of the English people; and it was about this period that the eyes of some were turned towards him as an appropriate successor to the childless monarch who at present wore the crown. Edward was becoming, on account of bodily infirmity and other reasons, from year to year more incapable of holding, even nominally, the reins of government; and the legitimate claimant to the throne, Edward Atheling the son of the Confessor's half-brother, the famous Edmund Ironside, had suddenly died shortly after his arrival in London, to which he was invited by the English monarch with the professed intention of pronouncing him his heir. Atheling, indeed, had left a son, Edgar; but he was still a child, feeble in body, and in mind only little removed from idiocy. It was natural that, in such circumstances, many of the Saxons should look up to Harold as the best and most national successor to the throne; and no less natural was it that the subject of their aspirations, impelled on the one hand by the inherent ambition of his character, and, on the other, contemplating in his own elevation to regal dignity the surest bulwark against Norman tyranny and encroachment, should aim at grasping a sceptre which the people seemed ready to offer to his hand. But on the opposite coast of the English channel there was a second competitor for the Saxon crown, possessed of intellect superior even to that of Harold, and gifted with a deep, far-seeing, and crafty genius. This was William the Bastard, duke of Normandy. For a lengthened period he had been entertaining ambitious projects on England, and the declining health of Edward contributed to confirm and ripen them. Happily for William's pretensions, a fortuitous circumstance that occurred in 1065, about a year before the death of Edward, threw the great Saxon earl into the power of the Norman prince. Harold, who then visited France, was shipwrecked near the mouth of the Somme, in the territory of Guy, count of Ponthieu, who detained him as his prisoner, so that he was compelled to have recourse to the good offices of the duke of Normandy to effect his deliverance. William gladly snatched at this opportunity of binding to himself by a strong obligation so dangerous a rival, and paid the required ransom for Harold's release. Brought to the duke's court at Rouen, Harold soon discovered that, although outwardly treated with great respect, and even the semblance of affection, he was virtually in a worse prison than that which he had lately quitted. His liberty and life, in short, were in the hands of his crafty host; and, to procure his freedom, he yielded to the pressure of events, and in the town of Bayeux, before a grand council of the Norman nobles, he solemnly swore to aid Duke William in obtaining the kingdom of England after the death of Edward, agreeing at the same time to other conditions of minor importance. He was then permitted to depart; and not long after his return to his native country Edward the Confessor's decease occurred, in 1066. The crown, as had been foreseen, was now by common consent offered to Harold; and, deeming the compelled oath he had taken at Bayeux no valid impediment to such a course, he accepted it, and was proclaimed king in a vast assembly of the chiefs and nobles, and of the citizens of London. On receiving intelligence of this transaction, the rage of the Norman ruler knew no bounds. Resting his right to the English throne on a pretended will of Edward's, he despatched at once ambassadors to Harold, demanding the surrender of the sceptre and the fulfilment of his oath. Harold denied the validity of a promise extorted from him by blended fraud and force, and rightly added, that the English sceptre was not properly his own either to assume or to surrender, but had been intrusted to his custody by the expressed will of the free English people. Irritated past endurance at this summary rejection of his demand, the Norman duke made preparations for the speedy invasion of England. Stigmatizing the new Saxon monarch as a perjured traitor, he proclaimed a crusade against him, invoked and obtained the assistance of the pope, and invited the Free Lances of Europe, as well as summoned his immediate vassals to gather around his standard. After various
