Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 11.djvu/407

 ON THE LIFE AND DEATH OF EARL GODWINE. 31:3 expected, that by tliis means, the crown of England would in due time descend to a grandson of his own, who woukl have his uncles for his natural guardians and ministers. This hope was frustrated by the absurd and unnatural terms on which the royal ])air lived together, on which I shall leave Eadward's monastic biographers to enlarge ; suffice it to record the motive which some of them assign, that he was unwilling to become the father of children who would be the grandchildren of the traitor Godwine, This Queen's character puts us in some })erplexity ; it appears from Malmesbury that her private life did not pass altogether without scandal, but that her d^'ing assertion of her innocence was accepted by all men as sufficiently clearing her reputation. We, however, are rather concerned with her in the character of Godwine's daughter and Harold's sister. She was indeed disgraced and restored with her father and brothers, but she has also won the dubious honour of Norman approbation. William of Poitou ^ represents her not only as an enemy to Harold, but as actually a favourer of William ; taking the oppor- tunity for a good deal of round abuse of the one, and of eulogy on the other. And we find also a fact recorded on better authority, which must for ever stamp her name with infamy. Florence, in recounting the wrongs of the Northumbrians, which led to the expulsion of Tostig, enumerates " the execrable murder of the noble North- umbrian Thegn Gospatric, whom Queen Eadgyth, for the sake of her brother Tostig, caused to be treacherously slain in the King's court, the fourth night after our Lord's nativity." * This recorded crime may sufficiently balance the interested praises of Ingulf, and the saying about " the rose and the thorn." ^ Indeed, whatever we say to the phrase of the Abbot of Croyland, " in nullo patris aut fratrum barbariem sapiens," we may at least accept, in a different sense from that intended, the descrij^tion of her given by the Norman chaplain, that she was '' Ilcraldo moribus absimillima." ^ The hrst of Godwine's sons who appears i:>rominently is the eldest, Swegen. We have seen, Malmesbur3^'s descrip- tion " raultotiens a patre et fratre Haroldo descivit, et, ^ 199. ^ A. lOO'o. omnium liberalium artium esset pjTiina- Eyitham." inj^eiiium ; quam cum vidoivs, si literas Eadgyth is, " fociuiiiuni iu cujus puctore corporis desideraivs."'
 * " Sicut sjiiiia rosam genuit Gudwiims slum, sed parvum iu rebus nuiiidanis
 * "' M.ilmosbury's "lencral description of stupcrcs.modestiam cex'teaniiiuetspeciem