Note Pp. p. . The Submission at Berkhampstead

For once I venture to set aside the authority of the Chronicles. I do not think that Eadwine and Morkere could have been at Berkhampstead. Their presence there is asserted by the Worcester Chronicle and also by Florence, but it is hard to see how it can be reconciled with Florence’s own account of their movements just before (see p. ). They are not mentioned by William of Poitiers, who makes them submit to William at Barking after his coronation (147, 148). The Archdeacon is capable of any disregard of chronology, but he is not likely to have cut the Berkhampstead submission into two or to have imagined a submission at Barking which did not take place. A submission of Eadwine and Morkere after the coronation falls in much better with the rest of the story than a submission before. And it is less violent to suppose that their names have got into the Chronicle in a wrong place—a process which the likeness of the names Barking and Berkhampstead would make specially easy—than to suppose that the story in William of Poitiers is an invention without a motive.

Had Stigand a share in the submission of Berkhampstead? William of Poitiers specially introduces him; indeed he is the only person whom he mentions by name (141); but he brings him to Wallingford; “Adveniens eodem [Wallingford] Stigandus, Pontifex Metropolitanus, manibus ei sese dedit, fidem sacramento confirmavit, abrogans Athelinum, quem leviter elegerat.” But the whole story is a model of geographical confusion; Berkhampstead is not mentioned; the request of the English that William will accept the Crown, the debate on the question, and the speech of Hamon of Thouars, are all placed “statim ut Lundonia conspectui patebat.” I have ventured to transfer all these events to Berkhampstead, where it is plain from Florence and the Worcester Chronicle that the chief act of submission took place. But the presence or absence of Stigand is a knotty point. He is not mentioned in the Chronicle, nor in the fuller list in Florence, which seems to be specially meant as a complete list of the Bishops present. On the other hand, he is the only person named by William of Poitiers, and it is certain that he must have submitted before the coronation. Is it possible that, when submission was unavoidable, he was the first to submit, and that he met William at Wallingford before the others met him at Berkhampstead? The two English writers leave Wallingford out altogether, but William must have crossed the Thames somewhere, and there seems no reason to reject William of Poitiers’ statement that he crossed it at Wallingford.

Sir Henry Ellis (ii. 267) quotes a story which is said to be in William of Poitiers, but which I cannot find there, how one Wigod of Wallingford received and entertained William at Wallingford, till Stigand and others came there to make their submission. Of this I can say nothing, but Wigod of Wallingford is a real man, occurring in Domesday (62, 150) and elsewhere. “Wigod Minster” signs a doubtful charter in Cod. Dipl. iv. 189, and “Wigodus Regis pincerna” signs the Waltham charter (iv. 159). In the writ (Cod. Dipl. iv. 215) addressed to Bishop Wulfsige and Earl Gyrth and the Thegns of Oxfordshire, dating therefore between 1058 and 1066, the King also greets “mínne léfne may Mygod on Walingeforde,” and gives him instructions which show that he was high in the royal confidence. We should surely read “Wygod.” The kinsfolk of Eadward are endless. Do “mage” and “consanguineous” really mean no more than “well-beloved Cousin” when addressed by a modern Sovereign to a modern Earl?

END OF VOLUME THE THIRD.