Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/743

Rh and published in 1873, as left for publication by his daughter Mrs Shelley. Many other short and anonymous works proceeded from his ever busy pen, but mauyaie irrecovcrable, and all are forgotten. Godwin's place in literature is permanent, in that he produced one work which proved effective in changing the course of thought in its time, but not permanent in the sense that his writings will continue to be widely read. His life was published in 1876 in two volumes, under the title IVilliam Godwin, his Friends and Con- tempnrm'ics, by C. chan Paul. The best estimate of his literary position is that given by Mr Leslie Stephen in his English Thought in (In: 18H: Century.  GODWINE, son of Wulfnoth, earl of the West-Saxons, is the leading Englishman in the, and he holds a special place in English history generally. He is the ﬁrst Englishman who plays the part of a minister and parliamentary leader, of one high in ottice under the crown who at the same time sways the assemblies of the nation by his power of speech. Such a position was perfectly possible before the Norman Conquest; it did not again become possible for some ages. Godwine appears as the chief champion of England against Norman inﬂuence, and as the father of the last English king of the native stock. In these two characters he drew on himself the fullest bitterness of Norman hatred ; and to this hatred is doubtless largely, though not wholly, owing the extraor- dinary contradiction with which the chief events of his life are told, and the amazing slanders which have been heaped upon his memory. His birth and origin are utterly uncertain. The highest authorities, the contemporary English Chronicles, are silent. There are two alternative statements, which are seemingly quite irreconcilable, but either of which alone would have much to be said for it. By putting together certain passages in the English Chronicles, in Domesday, and in the will of the .Etheling .‘Ethelstau, son of King 1Ethelred, a strong presumption is raised that Godwine was the son of Wulfnoth the South-Saxon who was outlawed in , and that his services in the war against Cnut were deemed to entitle him to a restitution of his father’s forfeited lands. There is no direct statement to this effect, but a number of undesigned coincidences point towards such a belief. On the other hand, there is a story which appears in various quarters, and which seems to come from more than one in- dependent source, which makes Godwine’s father Wuifnoth a churl somewhere on the borders of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, and which makes Godwine win the favour of the Danish earl Ulf by showing him his way after the battle of Sherstone in. A third account connects Godwine with the family of Eadric the traitor of jEthelred’s day; but this version seems at once to be impossible to reconcile with either of the other two stories, and to rest on less authority than either. But, whatever was Godwine’s origin, there is no doubt that, according to Cnut’s rule of preferring Englishmen to high ofﬁce, he rose to power very early in that kiug’s reign. lie was an earl in. The next year he distinguished himself at the head of the English troops in Cnut’s Northern vars, and received in marriage Gytha, the sister of the king’s ln‘other-in-law Earl Ulf. In he became earl of the West-Saxmis, that is, of all England south of the Thames, 3. new ofﬁce, doubtless connected with Cnut’s fre- quent absences from England. All this again is not in the Chronicles, though particular points are incidentally conﬁrmed by them. Still this stage of his history seems to be fairly made out from other sources. From Cnut’s death in the events of Godwine’s life are recorded in the Chronicles, often with great minuteness. Much is also learned from the contemporary biographer of Eadward. He asserted the claims of Harthacnut, the son of Cnut and Emma, to the crown of his father; but he had to consent to a division of the kingdom, and could only secure Wessex for Harthacnut, while Harold reigned in Northamberland and Mercia. He then acted as the chief minister of Emma, while she was regent on behalf of Harthacnut during his ﬁrst reign. During this time the [Etheling [Elfred, Son of fEthelred and Emma, landed in England in the hope of winning back his father’s crown; but coming into the power of Harold, he was blinded by his order, and died of his wounds. Godwine was said to have betrayed jElfred to Harold, and the charge was eagerly seized upon by the Norman writers. But it was not invented by them. At the beginning of Harthacnut’s second reign in , Godwine was formally accused of the death of xElfred, and ms regularly tried and acquitted. His guilt is asserted in a poem inserted in one of the Chronicles, but the words which tell against him are carefully altered in another version. The story is told with great confusion and contradiction, and the version unfavourable to Godwine seems to be incon- sistent with his position at the time as minister, not of Harold, to whom he is said to have betrayed xElfred, but of Harthacnut, whose kingship seems to be forgotten in the story. Godwine remained in power during the reigns of Harold and H arthacnut, and on the death of the last-named king in, he was foremost in promoting the election of Eadward, the son of fEthelred and Emma, to the vacant throne. As earl of the VVest—Saxons he was the ﬁrst man in the kingdom, but his power was still balanced by that of the other great earls, Leofrie in Mercia and Siward in N orthumberland. His sons Swegen and Harold, together with Beorn, the nephew of his wife Gytha, were promoted to earldoms (–), and his daughter Eadgyth was married to the king. \Ve hear much of his good and strict government of his earldom, and of his inﬂuence with the king and with the whole nation. He was not, however, all-powerful ; in one very remarkable case, which is most instructive as a piece of constitutional history, he was out-voted in the witenagemot on a question of foreign policy. In, when his wife’s nephew Swegen Estrith- son, new king of the Danes, was at war with Magnus of Norway, Godwine proposed to help Swegen with ﬁfty ships ; but the notion was opposed by Leofrie, ant “all folk ” ac- cepted the amendment of the Mercian earl. Godwine had also to strive against the king’s fondness for Normans and other strangers, above all in the disposal of ecclesiastical ofﬁces. Godwine’s policy, in this and in other matters, was opposed to all French connexions of every kind. N ext to Englishmen he favoured natives of the kindred Continental lands, and he supported a policy of alliance with the empire and its princes. In all this, at home and abroad, he had specially to withstand the inﬂuence of the king’s Norman favourite Robert of J umiéges, appointed bishop of London in and archbishop of Canterbury in. Godwine was supported by the English bishops Stigand of \Vinches— ter and Lyﬁng of Worcester. The appointment of Robert to the archbishoprie marks the decline of G odwine’s power ; the foreign inﬂuence was now at its height, and the English earl was to feel the strength of it. In the course of a series of outrages committed by the king’s foreign favouiites led to a breach between the king and the earl. The king’s brother-in-law, Eustace count of Boulogne, returning with his followers from a visit to the king, tried to obtain quarters by force in the houses of the burgesses of Dover. An Englishman who withstood them was killed 3 a fight followed, in which the count and his company were driven out of the town. The king, hear- ing the tale from Eustace, bade Godwine inﬂict military chastisement on the townsmen; the earl refused, and demanded a fair trial of the charge before the witan. About the same time men’s minds were stirred by the outrages of several Normans who had received estates in Herefordshire. The inﬂuence of the archbishop was used against Godwine, and he was summoned to appear before the witan at