The answers which Harold either made, or which writers of his time thought that he ought to have made, are of the greatest moment in our constitutional history.The King is the doer of everything; but he can do nothing of moment without the consent of his Witan.They can say Yea or Nay to every proposal of the King.An energetic and popular king would get no answer but Yea to whatever he chose to ask.A king who often got the answer of Nay, Nay, was in great danger of losing his kingdom.The statesmanship of William knew how to turn this constitutional system, without making any change in the letter, into a despotism like that of Constantinople or Cordova.
But the letter lived, to come to light again on occasion.The Revolution of 1399 was a falling back on the doctrines of 1066, and the Revolution of 1688 was a falling back on the doctrines of 1399.
The principle at all three periods is that the power of the King is strictly limited by law, but that, within the limits which the law sets to his power, he acts according to his own discretion.King and Witan stand out as distinct powers, each of which needs the assent of the other to its acts, and which may always refuse that assent.The political work of the last two hundred years has been to hinder these direct collisions between King and Parliament by the ingenious conventional device of a body of men who shall be in name the ministers of the Crown, but in truth the ministers of one House of Parliament.We do not understand our own political history, still less can we understand the position and the statesmanship of the Conqueror, unless we fully take in what the English constitution in the eleventh century really was, how very modern-sounding are some of its doctrines, some of its forms.Statesmen of our own day might do well to study the meagre records of the Gemot of 1047.
There is the earliest recorded instance of a debate on a question of foreign policy.Earl Godwine proposes to give help to Denmark, then at war with Norway.He is outvoted on the motion of Earl Leofric, the man of moderate politics, who appears as leader of the party of non-intervention.It may be that in some things we have not always advanced in the space of eight hundred years.
The negotiations of William with his own subjects, with foreign powers, and with the Pope, are hard to arrange in order.Several negotiations were doubtless going on at the same time.The embassy to Harold would of course come first of all.Till his demand had been made and refused, William could make no appeal elsewhere.We know not whether the embassy was sent before or after Harold's journey to Northumberland, before or after his marriage with Ealdgyth.If Harold was already married, the demand that he should marry William's daughter could have been meant only in mockery.
Indeed, the whole embassy was so far meant in mockery that it was sent without any expectation that its demands would be listened to.
It was sent to put Harold, from William's point of view, more thoroughly in the wrong, and to strengthen William's case against him.It would therefore be sent at the first moment; the only statement, from a very poor authority certainly, makes the embassy come on the tenth day after Edward's death.Next after the embassy would come William's appeal to his own subjects, though Lanfranc might well be pleading at Rome while William was pleading at Lillebonne.The Duke first consulted a select company, who promised their own services, but declined to pledge any one else.It was held that no Norman was bound to follow the Duke in an attempt to win for himself a crown beyond the sea.But voluntary help was soon ready.A meeting of the whole baronage of Normandy was held at Lillebonne.The assembly declined any obligation which could be turned into a precedent, and passed no general vote at all.But the barons were won over one by one, and each promised help in men and ships according to his means.
William had thus, with some difficulty, gained the support of his own subjects; but when he had once gained it, it was a zealous support.And as the flame spread from one part of Europe to another, the zeal of Normandy would wax keener and keener.The dealings of William with foreign powers are told us in a confused, piecemeal, and sometimes contradictory way.We hear that embassies went to the young King Henry of Germany, son of the great Emperor, the friend of England, and also to Swegen of Denmark.The Norman story runs that both princes promised William their active support.
