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Harold, King Of England
![]() Edith searching for the Body of Harold. In 1065, the Northumbrians rebelled against the rule of Tostig, and Harold found himself compelled, between policy and a sense of justice, to side with them, and to acquiesce in their choice of Morcar and the banishment of Tostig. At the beginning of 1066 King Edward died, his last breath being to recommend that Harold should be chosen king. He was crowned on January 6th, and at once set himself with steadfast energy to consolidate his kingdom. At York he won over the reluctant men of Northumbria, and he next married Ealdgyth, Griffith's widow, in order to secure the alliance of her brothers, Morcar and Edwin. His short reign of forty weeks and one day was occupied with incessant vigilance against the attacks of two formidable enemies at once. Duke William lost no time in beginning his preparations for the invasion of England, and Tostig, after trying the Normans and the Scots, and filibustering along the coasts on his own account, succeeded in drawing to his side the famous Harold Hardrada, king of Norway. In the month of September the two reached the Humber, and Harold marched to meet them, resting neither day nor night. The Icelandic historian, Snorro, in his dramatic narrative of the fight, tells how Harold rode out accompanied with twenty of his housecarls to have speech with Earl Tostig, and offer him peace; and when asked what amends King Hardrada should have for his trouble in coming, replied, "Seven feet of the ground of England, or more perchance, seeing he is taller than other men."
At Stamford Bridge Harold overtook his enemy, and after a bloody struggle won a complete victory (September 25, 1066), both Tostig and Harold Hardrada being among the slain. But four days later Duke William landed at Pevensey. Harold marched southward with the utmost haste, bringing with him the men of Wessex and East Anglia, and the earldoms of his brothers; but the two earls, Edwin and Morcar, held aloof and kept back the men of the north, although some of the men of Mercia, in the earldom of Edwin, followed their king to the fatal struggle which was fought out from nine in the morning till past nightfall, on October 14, 1066. The English fought with the most stubborn courage, and the battle was only lost by their allowing the pretended flight of the Normans to draw them from their impregnable position on the crest of the hill, ringed with an unbroken shield wall. On its slope, right in front of the Norman army, waved the golden dragon of Wessex, as well as the king's own standard, a fighting man wrought upon it in gold. Here Harold stood with his mighty two-handed axe, and hewed down the Normans as they came. Before nightfall he fell, pierced through the eye with an arrow. His housecarls fought where they stood till they fell one by one; his brothers, Gurth and Leofwin, died beside him. The king's body was found upon the field, recognized only by a former mistress, the fair Eadgyth Swanneshals ("Edith of the swan's neck"). At first, William ordered it to be buried on the rocks at Hastings, but seems after to have permitted it to be removed to Harold's own church at Waltham. Than Harold, no braver or more heroic figure ever filled a throne; no king ever fought more heroically for his crown. If he failed, it was because he had to bow his head to fate, and in his death he saved all the honor of his family and his race. His tragic story has given a subject for a romance to Lytton, and for a stately drama to Tennyson.
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