Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 11.djvu/277

 ON THE LIFE AND DEATH OF EARL GODWINE. 241 own account, than to betake himself to honest hibour in a midland county. I think we may safely assert that if Godwine was the son of a western herdsman, he was certainly not the son of the South-Saxon naval captain, and not likely to be the grand nephew of Ealdorman Eadric. But, on the other hand, I cannot help thinking that historians have been somewhat hasty both in assuming the South-Saxon " Child" to have been Doubtsasto Godwine's father, and in identifying him with the """ reading. nephew of Eadric. As I observed, the description of Wulfnoth as Godwine's father, is wanting both in several MSS. of the " Chronicle " (as indeed the title of " Child" is in one), and in the later writers who have drawn their materials from that source. Again, it is a description which could only have been inserted afterwards, when Godwine had risen to eminence, and when the Danish title " Earl " had supplanted the English " Ealdorman." I therefore cannot help suspecting that it is a later gloss, inserted by some one who had heard that Godwine's father was named Wulfnoth, and leaped too hastily to the conclusion that he and Child Wulfnoth, the South-Saxon, were identical. Again, as Florence does not call Child Wulfnoth Godwine's father, neither does he at all clearly identify Child Wulfnoth with Wulfnoth the son of ^gelma^r. He had just enumerated the brothers of Eadric, including Brihtric and ^gelmser, and had mentioned Wulfnoth and Godwine as the son and grandson of the latter. Immediately after, he tells us how King J^thelred gathered together at Sandwich the great fleet of what he is pleased to call triremes. He then adds ; " Eo tempore, vel paullo ante, fi'ater perfidi Ducis Eadrici Streona3, Brihtric, homo lubricus, ambitiosus, et superbus, apud Regem^ injuste accusavit Suth-Saxonicum ministrum Wlnothum, qui, ne caperetur, fugam iniit." Now, if Florence was so particular to identify this Brihtric with the Brihtric he had mentioned a few lines above, is there not rather a presumption that the Wulfnoth whom he does not similarly identify, but introduces under quite another style, is not the Wulfnoth whom he had just mentioned as the father of Godwine, but some quite distinct person 1 Had they been •* The Chi'onicle pronounces no opinion makes Wulfnotli fly without any accusa- on the " injustice " of the accusation. u tion at aU. the other hand, M.de Bonnechose (ii. 17)