Harold (13 page)

How were Harold and his family able to build up this vast wealth in land? This is not an easy question to answer because of the relative paucity of sources for this aspect of Harold’s career – there is an unfortunate dearth of surviving secular writs and diplomas from this period. Although Domesday Book gives an overall idea of the extent of Harold’s lands, the amount, its value and its location, the entries therein provide little or no indication of how or when all but a few portions of it came into his possession. In addition, Domesday Book was compiled in 1086, from local memories of how the land was held some twenty years earlier. Inevitably, a certain amount of confusion and distortion must have crept in. The most notable example is the record of Earls Godwine, Aelfgar, Leofric and Tosti as landholders in 1066, by which time all of them had either died or been dispossessed some years earlier. There may be some justification for Tosti’s appearance, since he was only dispossessed late in 1065 and arrangements for the appropriation and administration of all his lands may not have been fully in place before King Edward’s death. No such justification appears possible for the other cases. Aelfgar apparently died in 1062, Leofric in 1057 and Godwine as long ago as 1053. It has been suggested that in these latter cases the estates mentioned were held in 1066 by the widows of these men and this is certainly a possibility, since all of these ladies were certainly still alive in 1066. These limitations mean that the value of Domesday Book in terms of discovering how land was acquired is therefore restricted. In spite of these deficiencies, there exists a number of scattered clues which enable us to construct an outline of how Harold and his family may have come by their lands and wealth.
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The most striking fact about the location of Harold’s own lands is their concentration in the south of England and in shires where Harold at one time or another held the position of earl. The shires of Harold’s enlarged Wessex earldom contained land valued at £1,834, or 64 per cent of the total. The shires of his former earldom of East Anglia contained land valued at a further £406, increasing this to 78 per cent of the total. The remaining £606 worth of land, or 22 per cent, was scattered through the other shires with smaller concentrations in Hertfordshire (£118), Yorkshire (£107), and Lincolnshire (£201). This points to what was undoubtedly an important factor in his accumulation of lands, that is his employment in royal service as an earl. There were four principal sources of lands in this period. The first was family land inherited from relatives. The second was ‘bookland’ or land granted by diploma, most often by the king or another lord and in return for loyal service. The third was land attached to an office like that of an earl, which was received on appointment as a royal official. The fourth was straightforward purchase. It will be seen that two of these four ways of securing land, and certainly the most significant to Harold’s family, depended on royal service. The location of Harold’s lands implies strongly that it was through such service that he came by the majority of his property.
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The first source of lands for Harold’s family, like any other, would most naturally be those lands inherited from their ancestors. As a Sussex
thegn
, Wulfnoth
Cild
, Harold’s grandfather, must have held lands in that county, though we are ignorant of the exact location or extent of almost all of these. The sole exception is the estate at Compton, later forfeited to the crown until restored to Godwine by
Atheling
Athelstan. In order to hold the status of
thegn
Wulfnoth would have required at least five hides of land; his ability to suborn twenty ships of the royal fleet in 1009 suggests considerable influence and more extensive lands in Sussex. The later possession of about a third of this entire shire in 1066 by seven members of Harold’s family probably reflects their original strength in their native county. These family lands would, in the normal course of events, have been inherited by Wulfnoth’s son, Godwine, but the former’s exile and forfeiture for treason in 1009 instead meant their confiscation by King Aethelred.
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This placed Godwine in a difficult position as either a completely landless man or one with very little land. In order to restore his position he had no alternative but to seek royal service, which alone could provide him patronage and a source of lands, but as the son of a traitor he obviously could not seek service with the king himself. As we have seen, Godwine was able to solve this problem by entering the service of
Atheling
Athelstan. When the
atheling
died in 1014, the services Godwine had performed were sufficient to result in the recovery of at least part of his patrimony, namely the estate at Compton. Thereafter Godwine probably sought service with Athelstan’s brother, Edmund ‘Ironside’, in order to preserve the lands he had gained or regained and, hopefully, extend them further. The fact that his family were later recorded in Domesday Book as holding almost a third of Sussex suggests that at this stage Godwine concentrated on recovering lands formerly held by his father. Unfortunately, we have no knowledge of the extent of Godwine’s landholding at this point, but the fact that Cnut promoted him to earl soon afterwards suggests that he had already made enough progress in royal service to be of use to the king in this office. It seems unlikely, though not impossible, that a very minor
thegn
would have been able to cope with such an important position.
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The most crucial period in the growth of the family lands was undoubtedly when King Cnut was seeking loyal servants among the English nobility, following his conquest of England and the death of his rival, Edmund ‘Ironside’. Cnut had disposed of a large number of the old English nobility, whom he apparently considered, for one reason or another, untrustworthy. As a result, a great deal of their land fell into his hands for redistribution among men he did trust. One of these trusted men was Godwine. It has been said that Godwine, in Cnut’s time, was not ‘the colossus’ he was to become in Edward’s years. Indeed, the Domesday Book indicates that the lands held by his sons in 1066 were vastly extended beyond those he held himself during Cnut’s reign. However, if Godwine were not the greatest noble of Cnut’s later reign, it is difficult to explain his position at the head of the witness lists of Cnut’s diplomas from 1023 onwards, his ability, initially, to hold southern England against Harold ‘Harefoot’, or his initial attraction as an ally for Edward.
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What benefits did Godwine receive, therefore, from Cnut’s redistribution of lands? Undoubtedly the main benefit was through his appointment as earl, which brought him lands associated with this office. Thus Godwine appears to have gained lands as a result of his initial appointment as earl over the central shires of Wessex in 1018, perhaps including the comital lands of Aldermaston in Berkshire, Over Wallop in Hampshire and Southwark in Surrey. Similarly, when Earl Godwine’s authority was extended in 1020 to include Western Wessex, he thereby gained many lands in the western shires, probably including such estates as Puddleton in Dorset, Moretonhampstead in Devon and Old Cleeve and Brompton Regis in Somerset. Finally, when Godwine succeeded to authority over Kent, perhaps around 1023, he probably gained the associated earldom lands in that county, such as Fordwich and Dover. All these comital lands were probably ultimately acquired as part of Godwine’s expanding office of Earl of Wessex and came directly as royal grants from Cnut following their seizure from his predecessors. It was these lands which provided Godwine with the necessary wealth and power to allow him to carry out his duties as earl. They were not lands owned by Godwine and could not be bequeathed to his family but were official lands in the king’s gift and would be passed on to the next Earl of Wessex.
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In addition to these estates probably associated with the office of earl, Godwine also benefited directly from royal patronage. The Chronicle of Ramsey states that a number of English nobles ‘relinquished the hereditary right of posterity and succession . . . to the Danish military followers of the king’ and Godwine, through his marriage to Gytha in 1020 or 1023, had joined these Danish followers. Therefore, he probably gained a number of estates, which had been forfeited by disgraced noble families, through private grants from King Cnut as a reward for his loyal service. There are a number of examples of lands once held by old families, which subsequently fell into the hands of Godwine and other new men. In many of these cases the links between the loss by old families and the acquisition by new men are unclear but it should be stressed that this does not mean that any improper appropriation was necessarily involved. Indeed, it is clear in some instances that the way in which such lands came into Godwine’s hands was entirely conventional. For example, it has been suggested that, in one case,
Atheling
Athelstan’s will was overturned, resulting in an estate at Chalton in Hampshire passing to Godwine. In fact, this estate had been bequeathed to King Aethelred himself and as part of the royal demesne could then be granted to Godwine by a later king, though whether Edmund, Cnut or Edward is unknown. In another instance,
Ealdorman
Aethelweard’s sister, Aelfgifu, bequeathed a number of estates, including Haversham and Princes Risborough in Buckinghamshire, to the king and to the Old Minster at Winchester respectively. The former estate was probably then quite properly granted from the royal demesne to Godwine by Cnut. The position of the latter estate is less clear because it came into the hands of the Church. It may have been appropriated by Cnut or even granted to him by the Old Minster and subsequently re-granted to Godwine, either by Cnut himself or possibly by Edward. Alternatively, it may have come into Godwine’s control directly through a similar deal with the Old Minster as that which was construed between the earl and Christ Church, Canterbury, and which brought him control of Folkestone in Kent. In the same way,
Ealdorman
Aelfheah bequeathed the estates of Faringdon, Berkshire and Aldbourne, Wiltshire, to his brother,
Ealdorman
Aelfhere, and both of these subsequently passed to Godwine. Aelfhere was succeeded in 983 by his brother-in-law, Aelfric
Cild
, who was then dispossessed by King Aethelred in 985, his lands passing into royal hands to be granted, probably by Cnut, or by Edward, to Godwine. It is important to note that when estates found their way from one family to another we usually have no record at all of how this occurred. However, it seems clear that in the cases we have considered, such evidence as is available usually points to the king as the agent of the transfer.
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A few examples of such transfers survive and these provide some confirmation that many of the estates which came into Godwine’s hands were granted to him by King Cnut. One such transfer concerns Polhampton in Hampshire, recorded in a rare surviving diploma of 1033. Other lands undoubtedly came as grants from King Edward, who sought to foster Godwine’s support early in his reign. Sandford-on-Thames is representative of these, granted to Godwine by a surviving diploma of 1050. Similar royal grants probably lay behind Godwine’s possession of estates at Chalton and Catherington in Hampshire and Angmering, Rotherfield and Hastings in Sussex, all of which had formerly been part of the royal demesne. Godwine is also known to have purchased some of his lands, for example Woodchester in Gloucestershire, which he bought from Azur and gave to his wife.
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These and similar acquisitions made Godwine a well-established and powerful landholder in southern England, with extensive estates throughout Wessex. As one of Godwine’s younger sons, Harold could expect to inherit a portion of his father’s lands. Indeed, this may have been the source of many of his Sussex estates, some of which may even have been granted to him by his father during the latter’s lifetime. However, that Harold should surpass his father in wealth and power to the extent that he did was unusual and we must now consider how this came about.

Harold probably began to gather a significant landholding of his own only after he had been appointed Earl of East Anglia by King Edward in 1044 or 1045. Harold’s appointment to this earldom resulted from his father’s alliance with and his sister’s marriage to King Edward in January 1045. This appointment to an earldom, and those of his elder brother Swein and cousin Beorn, represented the second great extension of the family’s lands. It provided Harold with the opportunity to establish a power base, independent of his father, and to gain directly from the profits of royal service. The appointment made Harold the deputy of the king in East Anglia, collecting taxes, presiding over courts, enforcing royal decisions and grants, and defending the region. In order to carry out this wide range of duties, Harold was granted extensive estates to provide him with the necessary resources. These lands may have included many of those previously held by Thorkell the Tall, when he was the earl of the region under Cnut, but unfortunately we have no direct evidence of this. As earl, Harold received a third of the royal profits from court fines and customs dues, another significant source of income. Harold’s extensive powers as earl also meant that many less powerful men and women sought his protection and support, often by way of gifts and bequests such as those presented by Lady Wulfgyth, her son, Ketel, and Thurstan, son of Wine (see p. 71). These people and many others like them sought Harold’s protection for themselves and their lands and in return acknowledged him as their lord. Domesday Book records large numbers of men in his former East Anglian earldom who still acknowledged Harold as their lord in 1066 and had probably done so since he was earl there.
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The lands granted to Earl Harold through his earldom were not the only lands that he gained, although it is true that they were the basis of his power in eastern England. In 1066, long after he had surrendered the earldom of East Anglia, he still held lands valued for tax at £406 in the counties of Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Huntingdon and Cambridge. The Domesday Book entries do not reveal exactly when these lands came into Harold’s possession, but it seems likely that the bulk of them passed to him during the period of his rule as earl in this region. It is also probable that most of this land came into Harold’s control not because of his position as earl, but through private grants from his new brother-in-law, King Edward. Although there is no specific evidence of this, the subsequent retention of these lands by Harold does indicate that they were not related to his position as earl. They probably represented King Edward’s endowment of his new brother-in-law and included former royal properties like Brightlingsea, Writtle, Lexden, Lawford and Newport in Essex, and Necton in Norfolk. The intention behind this fairly widespread alienation of royal demesne was probably to provide Harold with the resources necessary to defend his earldom from the contemporary Scandinavian threat, but perhaps also to win over his loyalty. The strategic location of a number of Harold’s estates in Essex strongly suggest that defence was a priority among the reasons for his tenure. It was probably also at some point during his tenure of the East Anglian earldom that Harold was granted a number of estates forfeited by Athelstan, son of Tofi the Proud, including land at Waltham in Essex, Hitchen in Hertfordshire and Lambeth in Surrey, valued at £140 in total. It is also possible that Harold may have purchased some of the lands he held in East Anglia, though we have no specific examples of this.
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