The mere obligation of homage would, in the skilful hands of William and Lanfranc, be quite enough to work on men's minds, as William wished to work on them.To Harold meanwhile and to those in England who heard the story, the engagement would not seem to carry any of these consequences.The mere homage then, which Harold could hardly refuse, would answer William's purpose nearly as well as any of these fuller obligations which Harold would surely have refused.
And when a man older than William engaged to marry William's child-daughter, we must bear in mind the lightness with which such promises were made.William could not seriously expect that this engagement would be kept, if anything should lead Harold to another marriage.The promise was meant simply to add another count to the charges against Harold when the time should come.Yet on this point it is not clear that the oath was broken.Harold undoubtedly married Ealdgyth, daughter of AElfgar and widow of Gruffydd, and not any daughter of William.But in one version Harold is made to say that the daughter of William whom he had engaged to marry was dead.
And that one of William's daughters did die very early there seems little doubt.
Whatever William did Lanfranc no doubt at least helped to plan.The Norman duke was subtle, but the Italian churchman was subtler still.
In this long series of schemes and negotiations which led to the conquest of England, we are dealing with two of the greatest recorded masters of statecraft.We may call their policy dishonest and immoral, and so it was.But it was hardly more dishonest and immoral than most of the diplomacy of later times.William's object was, without any formal breach of faith on his own part, to entrap Harold into an engagement which might be understood in different senses, and which, in the sense which William chose to put upon it, Harold was sure to break.Two men, themselves of virtuous life, a rigid churchman and a layman of unusual religious strictness, do not scruple to throw temptation in the way of a fellow man in the hope that he will yield to that temptation.They exact a promise, because the promise is likely to be broken, and because its breach would suit their purposes.Through all William's policy a strong regard for formal right as he chose to understand formal right, is not only found in company with much practical wrong, but is made the direct instrument of carrying out that wrong.Never was trap more cunningly laid than that in which William now entangled Harold.
Never was greater wrong done without the breach of any formal precept of right.William and Lanfranc broke no oath themselves, and that was enough for them.But it was no sin in their eyes to beguile another into engagements which he would understand in one way and they in another; they even, as their admirers tell the story, beguile him into engagements at once unlawful and impossible, because their interests would be promoted by his breach of those engagements.William, in short, under the spiritual guidance of Lanfranc, made Harold swear because he himself would gain by being able to denounce Harold as perjured.
The moral question need not be further discussed; but we should greatly like to know how far the fact of Harold's oath, whatever its nature, was known in England? On this point we have no trustworthy authority.The English writers say nothing about the whole matter;to the Norman writers this point was of no interest.No one mentions this point, except Harold's romantic biographer at the beginning of the thirteenth century.His statements are of no value, except as showing how long Harold's memory was cherished.
According to him, Harold formally laid the matter before the Witan, and they unanimously voted that the oath--more, in his version, than a mere oath of homage--was not binding.It is not likely that such a vote was ever formally passed, but its terms would only express what every Englishman would feel.The oath, whatever its terms, had given William a great advantage; but every Englishman would argue both that the oath, whatever its terms, could not hinder the English nation from offering Harold the crown, and that it could not bind Harold to refuse the crown if it should be so offered.
