If the time that has been suggested was the real time of Harold's oath to William, its fulfilment became a practical question in little more than a year.How the year 1065 passed in Normandy we have no record; in England its later months saw the revolt of Northumberland against Harold's brother Tostig, and the reconciliation which Harold made between the revolters and the king to the damage of his brother's interests.Then came Edward's sickness, of which he died on January 5, 1066.He had on his deathbed recommended Harold to the assembled Witan as his successor in the kingdom.The candidate was at once elected.Whether William, Edgar, or any other, was spoken of we know not; but as to the recommendation of Edward and the consequent election of Harold the English writers are express.The next day Edward was buried, and Harold was crowned in regular form by Ealdred Archbishop of York in Edward's new church at Westminster.Northumberland refused to acknowledge him; but the malcontents were won over by the coming of the king and his friend Saint Wulfstan Bishop of Worcester.It was most likely now, as a seal of this reconciliation, that Harold married Ealdgyth, the sister of the two northern earls Edwin and Morkere, and the widow of the Welsh king Gruffydd.He doubtless hoped in this way to win the loyalty of the earls and their followers.
The accession of Harold was perfectly regular according to English law.In later times endless fables arose; but the Norman writers of the time do not deny the facts of the recommendation, election, and coronation.They slur them over, or, while admitting the mere facts, they represent each act as in some way invalid.No writer near the time asserts a deathbed nomination of William; they speak only of a nomination at some earlier time.But some Norman writers represent Harold as crowned by Stigand Archbishop of Canterbury.
This was not, in the ideas of those times, a trifling question.Acoronation was then not a mere pageant; it was the actual admission to the kingly office.Till his crowning and anointing, the claimant of the crown was like a bishop-elect before his consecration.He had, by birth or election, the sole right to become king; it was the coronation that made him king.And as the ceremony took the form of an ecclesiastical sacrament, its validity might seem to depend on the lawful position of the officiating bishop.In England to perform that ceremony was the right and duty of the Archbishop of Canterbury; but the canonical position of Stigand was doubtful.He had been appointed on the flight of Robert; he had received the PALLIUM, the badge of arch-episcopal rank, only from the usurping Benedict the Tenth.It was therefore good policy in Harold to be crowned by Ealdred, to whose position there was no objection.This is the only difference of fact between the English and Norman versions at this stage.And the difference is easily explained.At William's coronation the king walked to the altar between the two archbishops, but it was Ealdred who actually performed the ceremony.
Harold's coronation doubtless followed the same order.But if Stigand took any part in that coronation, it was easy to give out that he took that special part on which the validity of the rite depended.
Still, if Harold's accession was perfectly lawful, it was none the less strange and unusual.Except the Danish kings chosen under more or less of compulsion, he was the first king who did not belong to the West-Saxon kingly house.Such a choice could be justified only on the ground that that house contained no qualified candidate.Its only known members were the children of the AEtheling Edward, young Edgar and his sisters.Now Edgar would certainly have been passed by in favour of any better qualified member of the kingly house, as his father had been passed by in favour of King Edward.And the same principle would, as things stood, justify passing him by in favour of a qualified candidate not of the kingly house.But Edgar's right to the crown is never spoken of till a generation or two later, when the doctrines of hereditary right had gained much greater strength, and when Henry the Second, great-grandson through his mother of Edgar's sister Margaret, insisted on his descent from the old kings.This distinction is important, because Harold is often called an usurper, as keeping out Edgar the heir by birth.
But those who called him an usurper at the time called him so as keeping out William the heir by bequest.William's own election was out of the question.He was no more of the English kingly house than Harold; he was a foreigner and an utter stranger.Had Englishmen been minded to choose a foreigner, they doubtless would have chosen Swegen of Denmark.He had found supporters when Edward was chosen; he was afterwards appealed to to deliver England from William.He was no more of the English kingly house than Harold or William; but he was grandson of a man who had reigned over England, Northumberland might have preferred him to Harold; any part of England would have preferred him to William.In fact any choice that could have been made must have had something strange about it.
Edgar himself, the one surviving male of the old stock, besides his youth, was neither born in the land nor the son of a crowned king.
Those two qualifications had always been deemed of great moment; an elaborate pedigree went for little; actual royal birth went for a great deal.There was now no son of a king to choose.Had there been even a child who was at once a son of Edward and a sister's son of Harold, he might have reigned with his uncle as his guardian and counsellor.As it was, there was nothing to do but to choose the man who, though not of kingly blood, had ruled England well for thirteen years.
