DISCUSSION AS TO SUCCESSOR. 293 ruin. Against the duke and his baronage, no 1060-1066 power of thine can avail thee." Harold replied that he did not fear the Norman, or any other enemy. The dying king, wearied with importunity, turned himself upon his couch, and faintly intimated that the English nation might name as king, Harold, or whom they liked; and shortly afterwards he breathed his last. claim to succeed. Harold afterwards founded his title upon Harold's Edward's last will; many of our historians. favour his claim, and the different statements are difficult to be reconciled; yet taken altogether, the circumstances are exactly such as we meet with in private life. The childless owner of a large estate, at first leaves his property to his Cousin on the mother's side, from whose connexions he has received much kindness. He advances in age, and alters his intentions in favour of a Nephew on his father's side-an amiable young man, living abroad,and from whom he had been estranged in consequence of a family quarrel of long standing. The young Heir comes to the Testator's house -is received with great affection-and is suddenly cut off by illness. The Testator then returns to his will in favour of his Cousin, who resides abroad. His acute and active brotherin-law has taken the management of his affairs, is well informed of this will; and, when the Testator is on his death-bed, he contrives to tease and persuade the dying man to alter the 1060-1066 will again in his favour. This is exactly the state of the case; and though considerable doubts have been raised relating to the contradictory bequests of the Confessor, there can be no difficulty in admitting that the conflicting pretensions of William and Harold were grounded upon the acts emanating from a wavering and feeble mind. If such disputes take place between private individuals, they are decided by a court of justice; but if they concern a kingdom, they can only be settled by the sword. CHAPTER VI. THE INVASION. 1066. for the crown. 1. UPON the death of Edward the Con- 1066 fessor, there were three claimants to the crown Competitors -his good Cousin, William of Normandy-and English his good Brother-in-law, Harold-each of whom respectively founded their pretensions upon the real or supposed devise of the late king-and Edgar Atheling, the son of Edward the Outlaw, Edgar. who ought to have stood on firmer ground. If kindred had any weight, he was the real heir— the lineal descendant of Ironside-and the only male now left of the house of Cerdic; and he also is said to have been nominated by Edward, as the successor to the throne. Each of these competitors had his partisans: but, whilst William was absent, and Edward young and poor, perhaps timid and hesitating, Harold was on the spot; a man of mature age, in full vigour of body and mind; possessing great influence and great wealth. And on the very day that Edward was laid in his grave, Harold prevailed upon, or compelled the prelates and nobles assembled at Westminster, to accept him as king. Some of our historians 1066 Harold not universally accepted. His govern ment. say, that he obtained the diadem by force. This is not to be understood as implying actual violence; but simply, that the greater part of those who recognised him, acted against their wishes and will. And if our authorities are correct, Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, but who had been suspended by the Pope, was the only prelate who acknowledged his authority. Some portions of the Anglo-Saxon dominions never seem to have submitted to Harold. In others, a sullen obedience was extorted from the people, merely because they had not power enough to raise any other king to the throne. Certainly the realm was not Harold's by any legal title. The son of Godwin could have no inherent right whatever to the inheritance of Edward; nor had the Anglo-Saxon crown ever been worn by an elective monarch. The constitutional rights of the nation extended, at farthest, to the selection of a king from the royal family; and if any kind of sanction was given by the Witan to the intrusion of Harold, the act was as invalid as that by which they had renounced the children of Ethelred, and acknowledged the Danish line. ? 2. Harold is stated to have shewn both prudence and courage in the government of the kingdom; and he has been praised for his just and due administration of justice. At the same time he is, by other writers, reprobated as a tyrant; and he is particularly blamed for his HIS UNCERTAIN POSITION. .297 oppressive enforcement of the forest-laws. Towards his own partisans, Harold may have been ostentatiously just, while the ordinary exercise of the royal prerogative would appear tyrannical to those who deemed him to be an usurper. 1066 state of Harold, as the last Anglo-Saxon ruler, has Distracted often been viewed with peculiar partiality; but England. it is perhaps difficult to justify these feelings. He had no clear title to the crown in any way whatever. Harold was certainly not the heir; Edward's bequest in his favour was very dubious; and he failed to obtain that degree of universal consent to his accession, which, upon the ordinary principles of political expediency, can alone legalize a change of dynasty. The AngloSaxon power had been fast verging to decay. As against their common sovereign, the earls were rising into petty kings. North of the Humber, scarcely a shadow of regular government existed; and even if the Norman had never trod the soil of England, it would have been scarcely possible for the son of Godwin to have maintained himself in possession of the supreme authority. Any of the great nobles who divided the territory of the realm might have preferred as good a claim, and they probably would have been easily incited to risk such an attempt. Hitherto, the crown had been preserved from domestic invasion by the belief that royalty belonged exclusively to the children of Woden.-Fluctuating as the rules of succes |