Harold : the Last of the Saxon Kings — Volume 12 eBook

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|                              |
Edric married                     Egelric,
Edgith, daughter of           surnamed Leofwine
King Ethelred ii.                    |
Egelmar,
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Wolnoth.
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Godwin.

Thus this “old peasant,” as the North Chronicles call Wolnoth, as, according to our most unquestionable authorities, a thegn of one of the most important divisions in England, and a member of the most powerful family in the kingdom!  Now, if our Saxon authorities needed any aid from probabilities, it is scarcely worth asking, which is the more probable, that the son of a Saxon herdsman should in a few years rise to such power as to marry the sister of the royal Danish Conqueror—­or that that honour should be conferred on the most able member of a house already allied to Saxon royalty, and which evidently retained its power after the fall of its head, the treacherous Edric Streone!  Even after the Conquest, one of Streone’s nephews, Edricus Sylvaticus, is mentioned (Simon.  Dunelm.) as “a very powerful thegn.  “Upon the whole, the account given of Godwin’s rise in the text of the work appears the most correct that conjectures, based on our scanty historical information, will allow.

In 1009 A.D., Wolnoth, the Childe or Thegn of Sussex, defeats the fleets of Ethelred, under his uncle Brightric, and goes therefore into rebellion.  Thus when, in 1014 (five years afterwards), Canute is chosen king by all the fleet, it is probable that Wolnoth and Godwin, his son, espoused his cause; and that Godwin, subsequently presented to Canute as a young noble of great promise, was favoured by that sagacious king, and ultimately honoured with the hand, first of his sister, secondly of his niece, as a mode of conciliating the Saxon thegns.

NOTE (K)

The want of Fortresses in England.

The Saxons were sad destroyers.  They destroyed the strongholds which the Briton had received from the Roman, and built very few others.  Thus the land was left open to the Danes.  Alfred, sensible of this defect, repaired the walls of London and other cities, and urgently recommended his nobles and prelates to build fortresses, but could not persuade them.  His great-souled daughter, Elfleda, was the only imitator of his example.  She built eight castles in three years. [286]

It was thus that in a country, in which the general features do not allow of protracted warfare, the inhabitants were always at the hazard of a single pitched battle.  Subsequent to the Conquest, in the reign of John, it was, in truth, the strong castle of Dover, on the siege of which Prince Louis lost so much time, that saved the realm of England from passing to a French dynasty:  and as, in later periods, strongholds fell again into decay, so it is remarkable to observe how easily the country was overrun after any signal victory of one of the contending parties.  In