Harold (36 page)

This disaster finally put an end to the immediate attempts by King Harold’s sons to reclaim the English throne. They were unable to recruit further mercenary forces, perhaps because their resources of treasure were running out, but principally because of their lack of success to date, and especially in 1069. It was probably at this time that Countess Gytha and her ladies finally abandoned their refuge on Flatholme and sought refuge at St Omer in Flanders. King Harold’s dynasty had abandoned its hopes of regaining the throne directly and, as circumstances were to prove, finally.
¹⁷

Many have seen the family’s hopes as foolish, and the actions of King Harold’s sons as irrelevant. However, England during the period 1067–9 was in chaos and the whole country seethed with rebellion. During this time, several claimants to the throne competed for support, including
Atheling
Edgar, Earls Edwin and Morcar, using Harold’s son by Alditha, Swein of Denmark, and William himself. Therefore, it was not unreasonable for King Harold’s sons also to enter this contest, and to feel that they had as good a chance as any of success. The failure even to come near to achieving their aim was due in the main to William’s decisive reaction to the very real threat they posed. His campaign in the south-west decisively nipped their schemes in the bud. Subsequently, they were forced to base themselves abroad and use mercenary troops, making it difficult for them to win any real support in England. Another significant factor was their failure to win the support of their cousin, Swein of Denmark, who was clearly intent on pursuing his own claim to the throne rather than supporting that of his cousins. The fact that many of Harold’s key supporters had fallen at Hastings and that the Normans controlled a large part of the family lands in the south-east severely handicapped them. The brothers inexperience in warfare was also a contributory factor to their failure, although the long defence of Exeter and their victory over Eadnoth suggest this was not decisive. Perhaps if either Gyrth or Leofwine, with their greater authority and experience, had survived the battle at Hastings things might have been different.
¹⁸

The brothers’ bid for the throne was over, but this was not the end of the story. A considerable amount is known about the fate of the remnants of King Harold’s family after their final withdrawal from England in 1069. The elderly Countess Gytha, with Harold’s sister, Gunnhild, probably settled in quiet retirement at St Omer in Flanders, where Count Baldwin VI apparently received them charitably as relatives of his aunt Judith and in spite of their rivalry with his brother-in-law, William of Normandy. Countess Gytha’s remaining treasure may have helped to persuade Baldwin to provide them with refuge. Thereafter, the royal ladies performed good works, and the death of the king’s sister, Gunnhild, was recorded at Bruges in 1087. She bequeathed a psalter with Anglo-Saxon glosses to St Donation’s in Bruges and this book, known as ‘Gunnhild’s Psalter’, was still there in the sixteenth century. She also donated a collection of religious relics to St Donation’s, most notably the mantle of St Bridget. A copy of Aelfric’s works donated to St Bertin’s may, perhaps, have been a legacy of Countess Gytha.
¹⁹

It seems likely that King Harold’s sons escorted these ladies to Flanders, as it would have been rather risky for them to navigate the Norman controlled Channel alone. Although Baldwin’s hospitality was undoubtedly extended to the ladies of Harold’s family, it might seem unlikely that he would also provide refuge for Harold’s sons. After all, he had close ties with King William, and Harold had also been responsible for the death of his aunt Judith’s husband. It is possible that Baldwin intended to use them as a form of insurance should his alliance with William fail. It should be recalled that the Flemish counts had a long history of hostile relations with England, and William, of course, was now King of England. If this assumption is accurate, then the presence of these exiles must have caused King William considerable unease. Indeed, the arrival of this group in Flanders, perhaps in late 1069 or early 1070, may have prompted William to depose Bishop Aethelric of Sussex on 24 May 1070, in case he became a fifth column in support of their return. He was, after all, a relative of the family and based in the ancient family heartland just across the Channel from them. Therefore, it became imperative to remove him for political reasons. It seems likely that this was the reason for Papal concern about this particular deposition, as expressed in a number of later Papal letters. On 16 July 1070 Baldwin VI died and a succession dispute broke out between his infant sons, supported by King William, and his brother, Robert the Frisian. This dispute ended on 22 February 1071 at the battle of Cassel, the victory falling to William’s enemy, Robert, who became the uncontested Count of Flanders. The threat of a descent by Harold’s sons on Sussex from a hostile Flanders may have contributed to the unusual organization of the Norman castellanries in the Sussex rapes.
²⁰

It was probably from Flanders, where they had accompanied or followed the ladies of the family, that King Harold’s sons, Godwine and Edmund, journeyed to the court of their cousin, Swein of Denmark, accompanied by their sister, Gytha. This is recorded by Saxo Grammaticus, who, although writing much later, seems to portray a not improbable situation and whose account is perhaps confirmed by two independent sources. The latter record an embassy to Denmark by Godwine the younger, mistakenly identified as Harold’s brother rather than his son, which sought King Swein’s aid against William. The brothers may have hoped that their arrival in Denmark would finally secure Swein’s backing for their restoration. If so, they were swiftly disillusioned, as Swein’s own recent invasions of England had proved fairly disastrous and he was in no hurry to repeat them. Thereafter, Swein’s death in 1074 or 1076 ushered in a period of confusion, which was not fully resolved until well into the next century. The final fate of Godwine and Edmund is unknown, but Gytha, according to later Scandinavian sources, was sent by Swein to marry the Russian Prince of Smolensk, Vladimir
Monomakh
. The date of this event is unclear but it probably occurred in 1074 or 1075. It has been objected that no Russian source records the name of Vladimir’s first wife and Vladimir’s own testament records her only as the mother of his son, George. However, this is not unusual and many women are unnamed in Russian sources, including Vladimir’s own Byzantine mother, and the fact of the marriage appears to be generally accepted.
²¹

Prince Vladimir was then around twenty-one years old and ruler of the city of Smolensk in western Russia. He held an important but not key position in the complex hierarchy of Russian princes. At this time, Russia consisted of a series of principalities each based on a major city and each ruled by a member of the dynasty of St Vladimir. The principalities were arranged in a rough hierarchy with Kiev at the summit, usually ruled by the senior prince. Vladimir probably welcomed his marriage as providing him with a royal connection. It also brought with it an alliance with the Danes, which might prove very useful in dissuading the neighbouring Poles from invading Russia.
²²

The marriage proved fruitful and in 1076 Msistislav, the first of a number of sons, was born to Gytha in Novgorod. Two years later, Vladimir was promoted to the position of Prince of Chernigov, following the expulsion of his cousin, Oleg, from that city. He successfully ruled this, the second city in Russia and an important bastion, for some sixteen years, defending it against a series of attacks by the steppe nomads. Finally, in 1094, he was expelled by Oleg with the aid of nomad allies and he moved to his father’s city of Pereyaslavl. It is likely that Gytha accompanied her husband throughout this period and shared his successes and failures. She appears to have provided him with a large number of children, perhaps as many as eight sons and three daughters. In this respect, Gytha appears to have been as fruitful as her mother, Edith ‘Swan-neck’, and her grandmother and namesake, Gytha.
²³

Gytha’s life as a Russian princess may have been relatively pleasant. Although Russia was in many ways a strange land and very different from her own England, some things were familiar. A testament written by Vladimir himself records a great deal about the family. This relates that Vladimir’s father understood five languages, one of which must have been Norse, since Vladimir’s grandmother was a Swedish princess. This implies that Gytha and her husband both spoke Norse and so were able to converse with ease. In addition, Vladimir was a great warrior and hunter very much in the mould of Harold, Gytha’s own father. He was a devout Christian and a founder of churches in a number of Russian cities. He ruled in a similar fashion to an English king through councils, courts and military force. He was very wealthy even by English standards, and Gytha would have lived in some style. He appears to have had very strong feelings for his family, although these are usually only expressed towards his brothers and sons. Thus he records Gytha’s death, though not her name, and among the advice he offers to his sons is ‘Love your wives, but grant them no power over you’. This perhaps sums up their relationship.
²⁴

Sadly, Gytha died on 7 May 1107 before her husband attained the pinnacle of his career by becoming Grand Prince of Kiev in 1113. The eldest of her sons, Msistislav, born in Novgorod in 1076, was widely known in the Norse world by her father’s name, Harold. He went on to succeed his father as Grand Prince of Kiev in 1125, ruling the city until his own death in 1132. This Russian Harold, according to Norse sources, had a daughter called Ingibiorg, who later married Cnut
Lavard
of Denmark and bore him a son who became King Valdemar I of Denmark, from whom the current queens of both Denmark and Great Britain are ultimately descended. In this way, the blood of King Harold Godwineson, runs again in the veins of the rulers of England.
²⁵

Other members of King Harold’s family also survived the Conquest. Harold, his son by Queen Alditha, born early in 1067 at Chester, and named after his dead father, probably became a pawn in the political struggles against William after 1066. This young Harold was probably used by his uncles, Earls Edwin and Morcar, as a threat to King William in their attempts to secure their own position in England. Although this is not stated in any of the sources, it is probable that when Edwin and Morcar, disappointed with William’s treatment of them, rebelled in 1068 and again in 1069, they used the potent threat of young Harold’s claim to the kingdom against William. This was also probably the reason for the failure of Edwin and Morcar to join the other English rebels until 1071, when it was too late. The others supported
Atheling
Edgar as king, but the northern earls wanted their young nephew Harold on the throne. The response to this threat was William’s dramatic winter march across the Pennines in 1069–70 to occupy Chester, and finally to crush the two earls in a battle near Stafford. As a result, Harold and his mother fled, probably to Dublin, with which, as a former wife of Gruffydd of Wales, she would have been familiar. Ultimately, the young Harold apparently journeyed to Norway, where William of Malmesbury plausibly suggests that he was well received by Olaf Haraldsson, in return for the merciful treatment he himself had earlier received from King Harold, after Stamford Bridge. Young Harold is next found among the followers of King Magnus Olafsson off the Isle of Anglesey in 1098 when a battle was fought against the Norman earls of Shrewsbury and Chester, during which, by one of history’s ironies, Earl Hugh of Shrewsbury was struck from a distance with a fatal arrow. Thereafter, young Harold disappears from the records.
²⁶

King Harold’s remaining daughter, Gunnhild, seems to have been stranded in England at the time of the Conquest and she is first recorded in the
Vita Wulfstani
as a nun at Wilton. She was perhaps already there in 1066, as part of her education, like her aunt Queen Edith. Initially, she remained there as a refugee from the Normans, using the protection afforded to those who had taken the veil as her safeguard. She shared her comfortable confinement there with another royal lady, Edith, the daughter of Malcolm and St Margaret of Scotland and the niece of
Atheling
Edgar. Subsequently, she was probably virtually imprisoned there in order to prevent her posing a threat to King William by marrying a rival and thus transmitting a claim to the throne. Indeed, she became the centre of just such a controversy after King William’s death. In August 1093, in the reign of William
Rufus
, in her late thirties or forties, Gunnhild was abducted by Alan the Red, Earl of Richmond. She lived with Earl Alan, sinfully according to Anselm, until his death soon after, perhaps in late 1093 or early 1094. Perhaps in an attempt to preserve her freedom, she then sought to marry the dead earl’s brother and successor, Alan the Black.
²⁷

The main evidence for this episode comes from two letters written to Gunnhild by Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, at some time after his consecration on 4 December 1093. According to the first of these, Gunnhild, who was now living with Alan the Red, claimed she was not bound to her position as a nun because she had never made a formal profession before a bishop, and that a promise made to her of an abbacy had not been honoured. This argument would have been accepted by Archbishop Lanfranc, Anselm’s predecessor, and perhaps provides confirmation of her status as a refugee later forced to remain at Wilton rather than a nun. Anselm accepted these facts, but because of his stricter views he urged her to return to the cloister, although she was no longer a virgin. He suggested that Alan the Red would repudiate her. In spite of its stern message, his letter is written in tenderness to an errant princess and in it Anselm refers to Gunnhild as his ‘dearest and most longed for daughter’. He had already met her, probably when he visited England in 1086, and developed a close platonic relationship with her. In a subsequent letter following Alan the Red’s death, when Gunnhild had taken up with Alan the Black, Anselm predicted that his death also would follow if she remained with him. Anselm was now aware that Gunnhild had worn the veil willingly and, as a result, his second letter is much colder in tone, as he attempts to disgust Gunnhild with the world and compel her to return to the cloister, but it nevertheless remains respectful.
²⁸