Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 22.djvu/57

 wine stood high in the king's favour. He accompanied Cnut on his visit to Denmark in 1019, is said to have commanded a body of English during the king's expedition against the Wends, and to have distinguished himself in the war [see under ]. Cnut made him his chief adviser and admitted him to his confidence. He married him to Gytha, the sister of earl Ulf, who was the husband of his own sister, Estrith, and the most powerful of the Danish earls (, i. 202;, ii. c. 52; , p. 196. Gytha is erroneously called the sister of Cnut, Vita Eadwardi, p. 392), and probably on his return to England appointed him earl of the West-Saxons (Norman Conquest, i. 469). Although Godwine was an earl already, there is nothing to show what jurisdiction he had hitherto held, for the title of Earl of Kent which is sometimes given him does not rest on any ancient authority (ib. p. 451). Wessex, the ‘home of English royalty,’ had never before been placed under the government of a subject, the king ruled there in person. This arrangement had been maintained by Cnut; while the rest of the kingdom was divided into great earldoms, he kept Wessex in his own hands (ib. p. 448). He may have found that his plans of northern conquest made it desirable that he should place a viceroy over the wealthiest and most important part of his new kingdom, and the new earl of the West-Saxons became his representative there, and in his absence from England seems, in some measure, to have acted as governor of the realm (Vita, p. 392). Godwine was thus the most powerful man in the kingdom after the king himself, and from about 1020 his name is almost always written in charters before the names of all other lay nobles, whether English or Danish. He gained vast wealth, and held lands in almost every shire of southern and central England. Prudent in counsel and strenuous in war he had gained Cnut's favour, and the king took delight in his society. With an uncommon capacity for work he combined a cheerful temper and a general courtesy. He was not puffed up by his rapid rise; was always gentle in his manners, and unwearyingly obliging to his equals and his inferiors (Vita). He was an eloquent speaker, and his oratory seems to have been of considerable assistance to him. Norman writers describe him as fierce, cunning, and greedy (, p. 179;, vii. c. ii.), and Henry of Huntingdon (p. 758) takes the same line; William of Malmesbury notes the different estimates formed by English and by Norman writers (Gesta Regum, i. 335). Godwine appears to have been a remarkably able man, ambitious, unscrupulous, and eager for the aggrandisement of his house. His marriage with Gytha, and the benefits which he received from Cnut, naturally gave him Danish sympathies, his two elder sons Swegen, or Swend, and Harold were called by Danish names, and though he lived to represent English national feeling, it is not unlikely that at this period ‘he must have seemed to Englishmen more Dane than Englishman’ (, Conquest of England, p. 479).

On the death of Cnut in 1035 Godwine supported the claim of Harthacnut, the son of Cnut by Emma. In this he was endeavouring to carry out the plan of Cnut, and to secure a continuance of the connection between England and Denmark. While he and the men of his earldom were in favour of Harthacnut, earls Siward and Leofric and the people north of the Thames and the Londoners declared for Harold. A meeting of the witan was held at Oxford; Godwine and the chief men of Wessex persisted as long as they could, and at last yielded to a proposal that the kingdom should be divided [see under ]. In Harthacnut's absence Godwine acted as the chief minister of Emma, who ruled Wessex for her son, and he thus had the king's housecarls or guard under his command. The division of the kingdom must have materially lessened his power, which was now confined to Wessex. Harthacnut remained in Denmark, and his prolonged absence strengthened Harold. In 1036 the sons of Emma by her first husband, Æthelred the Unready [see under the ætheling and ], came over to England. The death of Ælfred and the cruelties practised on him and his men are attributed to Godwine by name in the Abingdon version of the Chronicle and by Florence of Worcester. In the Worcester version they are put down to Harold; in the ‘Encomium Emmæ’ Godwine decoys the ætheling, while the actual attack is made by partisans of Harold. The biographer of Eadward the Confessor, writing a panegyric on Godwine and his house for Godwine's daughter, asserts that the earl was innocent. William of Poitiers, of course, asserts his guilt. William of Malmesbury did not find the story of Ælfred's death in the versions of the Chronicle with which he was acquainted, and accordingly tells it merely as a matter of common report which ascribed the deed to the ætheling's fellow-countrymen and chiefly to Godwine. Henry of Huntingdon's account, which is more or less a romance, simply shows that in his time there was a strong tradition of Godwine's guilt. A large number of the earl's con-