Book contents
4 - Harold Godwineson
from Part I - Individual Characters
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
Summary
The reputation of the last Anglo-Saxon king of England has perhaps never been higher than it was some eight centuries after his death, when Edward Freeman produced his magisterial work on the Norman Conquest. For him, Harold was an essential pillar in the meaningful structure of English history, as he elaborated when recounting the passage of Edward I's body through Waltham on its way to Westminster in 1307; for Waltham was supposedly the site of Harold's burial:
But for a while the two heroes lay side by side – the last and the first of English Kings, between whom none deserved the English name or could claim honour or gratitude from the English nation. The one was the last King who reigned purely by the will of the people, without any claim either of conquest or of hereditary right. The other was the first King who reigned purely as the son of his father, the first who succeeded without competitor or interregnum. But each alike, as none between them did, deserved the love and trust of the people over whom they reigned. With Harold our native kingship ends … the Crown, the laws, the liberties, the very tongue of Englishmen, seem all fallen never to rise again. In Edward the line of English Kings begins once more.… The King with whom England fell might greet his first true successor in the King with whom she rose again.
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- Heroes and Anti-Heroes in Medieval Romance , pp. 59 - 80Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012