My Name is Earl: The Power Beside the Throne
Originally known as ealdorman, the title was given to a sort of provincial governor of a small town or hundred, with pretty limited powers, all of course very subservient to the king. With the arrival of the Vikings in the ninth century, their idea of
erl, as a sort of sub-king, came more into use in England and the word was quickly adopted. With its adoption came its powers, as earls grew to be all but semi-princes, though having of course no royal prerogative that did not proceed from the monarch. Over the next centuries, earls would become some of the powerbrokers, and even to some extent kingmakers of England, and their support would be sought, bought and traded as they enriched themselves like sort of medieval godfathers. Three in particular were important during the time the House of Wessex held sway, and into the reign of the House of Denmark.
Eadric Streona (died 1017)
Although technically not an earl, as at this point ealdorman was still the title, Streona was the precursor to the sort of powerbroker figure earls would later become. Eadric married Edith or Eadgyth, a daughter of King Aethelred the Unready, but though this was a marriage of convenience, meant to ally him to the House of Wessex, Eadric would turn out to be the most double-dealing, traitorous, untrustworthy turncoat in the Middle Ages. He was loyal to nobody, supporting whomever he saw as best placed to advance his own prospects and play into his agenda, and he flip-flopped back and forth so much you might have considered he didn’t even have a spine.
His first action of note is reported in 1006, when he is said to have slain an Ealdorman the king didn't much like, called Aelfhelm, using the old tried and trusted “hunting accident” idea, though he was careful not to dirty his own hands, paying someone to do his work for him, a local butcher. Soon after, Aelfhelm’s sons were blinded, and King Aethelred was indeed pleased. But Eadric jumped and crossed loyalty lines more than Prince crossed genres, so I’m going to be keeping a record of his various treacheries in this piece. So far, score one for the House of Wessex. It wouldn’t last.
Perhaps due to this favour to his king - or maybe he had carried out the murder on the understanding that he would be so rewarded - Eadric was given the title of Ealdorman of Mercia, even then a powerful position. Although he distinguished himself well in the position, fighting for his king against the Viking raiders, when it was clear that the day was lost and Sweyn Forkbeard was temporarily crowned King of England, Eadric decided it was a good time to leg it, and headed over to Normandy with Queen Emma. The king followed them a year later, in 1014. As we’ve seen though, he wasn’t in France a wet day before Forkbeard snuffed it and the English invited him back, and of course with him came Eadric.
In 1015 the treacherous Ealdorman killed two other thegns, Sigeferth and Morcar, possibly as a reprisal for their collaborating with the men of Forkbeard, and in that same year Eadric again sensed which way the wind was blowing and threw in his lot with the newly-arrived Cnut, who would take the kingdom shortly after, and on his death Eadric would pursue his son, Edmund, in the service of King Cnut.
House of Wessex one, House of Denmark One.
Never a man to waste an opportunity, when Eadric, facing Edmund’s forces in battle, noticed a man in his army who looked like him, he killed and beheaded him, holding up the head and shouting that he had killed Edmund, and his army might as well surrender. They did, this despite the fact that they were in fact winning the battle. When they saw what they believed to be the head of their leader, they lost all hope and ran.
They soon rallied though when they realised they had been fooled, and that their king was still alive, and finally defeated at the Battle of Otford, Eadric again changed sides, allying himself to Edmund. House of Wessex Two, House of Denmark One. When their forces met those of Cnut in 1016 though, Eadric helpfully withdrew his forces from the battle, leaving Edmund exposed. House of Wessex Two, House of Denmark Three. It’s been theorised that this was Eadric’s plan all along, to lull Edmund into a false sense of security and then betray him when his forces were needed the most. Whether or not Cnut was in on the plan, if there was a plan, nobody has commented.
Eadric then turned peacemaker and mediator, brokering the truce between Edmund and Cnut which divided England between the two kings, but which was not to last as Edmund died a year later, leaving Cnut in complete control of the kingdom. Despite his seeming defection, Cnut forgave Eadric and he was allowed to retain the ealdormanship of Mercia. Or
did he forgive him? Cnut obviously knew the kind of man he was dealing with, someone who would sell out his own grandmother if he got him a position, lands or money, and he had an interesting and surprising Christmas present for Eadric. The man who had turned too many times was finally done in on December 25 1017, when Cnut, angered that he had been disloyal - both to him and to Edmund; the point didn’t seem to be to whom, but that his loyalty could not be trusted, and he was without honour (remember, Cnut was a Viking, a man who prized honour above most other traits) - ordered one of his men to “pay what he was owed”, and the axe literally fell.
Being away most of the time, Cnut realised he had to delegate some of his power, and therefore two men rose in his shadow who were pretty much in all but name co-rulers of England in the king’s absence. Unsurprisingly, they were each in control of one of the most important regions of England, the ancient sites of Anglo-Saxon powers, two areas which had once been warring kingdoms, and which to some extent kind of still were.
Godwin, Earl of Wessex (1001 - 1053)
Certainly an eleventh-century powerbroker, Godwin may have believed from an early age that he was destined for great things, as a fleet sent in pursuit of the man who may have been his father, Wulfnoth Cild, accused of crimes against Aethelred the Unready, foundered at sea. Left an estate by Aethelstan in 1014, Godwin would have been basically rich from his teens, though this estate had originally belonged to his family, so really all Aethelstan was doing here was restoring to Godwin what had been taken from him and was his by right. A mere six years later Godwin, now Earl of Wessex, was in Denmark with Cnut, where he made himself indispensable and also married the sister of the Danish earl Ulf, Gytha. In a sort of exchange-marriage, Ulf had married Godwin’s sister, Estrid.
Cnut’s death in 1035 did nothing to slow Godwin’s ambitious rise to power, in fact it expedited it, as he became the main deciding force as to who should succeed the king. Though he supported Harthacnut, he was in Denmark putting down a rebellion, so it was agreed that Harold Harefoot would rule as regent till he could return and claim his throne. You’ve read all this already of course. What do you mean, you just skimmed it? Bullet points? I’ll give you bullet points! What about hollow points, eh? Anyway, as you will (hopefully) also have read, Godwin thwarted the attempts of one of the sons of Aethelred, Aelfred Aetheling, to claim the throne in the name of his father, and turned him over to Harold’s men, who blinded him. He soon died. This of course made him popular with Harold. With no sign of Harthacnut on the horizon any time soon, Godwin decided the best thing to do was make Harold king, and so it came to pass.
Isn’t it odd how earls and nobles had such power back then, the power to literally choose the king? But that’s how it was. Until much later, when divine right of succession was established within the monarchy, there was no guarantee, no mechanism in place to arrange or accept the issue of a king as his successor. The witan, the king’s council, met and decided who they wanted to be the next king. You could say it was better that way, that then someone who may have had no idea how to be a king was not just thrown in at the deep end, but then again, it did mean that the most powerful people in the land chose the man they believed would best serve their interests, so that was hardly fair. The people? What had it to do with the people? They didn’t care who was king. They had enough to be going on with just trying to survive. Why should they care if a Dane or an Englishman sat on the throne? Wouldn’t affect their lives, and even if it did, there was nothing they could do to change it. Still isn’t, now that royal prerogative has been established.
Anyway, as we’ve already seen, Harold wasn’t to last long and Godwin then engineered the return of Harthacnut from Denmark to take his place. This didn’t last long either, and eventually Godwin had to choose a successor, which turned out to be Edward the Confessor, Aethelred’s son, bringing the whole dynasty of the House of Wessex full circle again. Godwin further strengthened his ties with the new king by having him marry his daughter, Edith, though Edward, swearing celibacy, would have no children Godwin or his heirs could control. Indeed, his time as powerbroker was running out. When he refused to punish the town of Dover when its people caused offence to the visiting Count of Boulogne, he basically said “Fu
ck this. I’m not killing English people for some filthy frog!” And realising that he took on the king himself with his defiance, he had no choice but to flee to Flanders (seems to have been the place to flee to, back then), exiled in 1051.
(No, not that one!)
He wasn’t prepared to leave it there though, and he and his fellow earls, who had also been exiled (the other two to Ireland) returned the next year at the head of an army, and Edward thought it prudent to let bygones be bygones. What did offence to a French noble Count for (sorry) anyway? Restored to his earldom, Godwin didn’t have long to enjoy his victory, as he died the next year, of some unspecified illness, but possibly a stroke, which may have left him speechless and without strength for four days before he finally passed away on April 15 1052.
His son Harold would go on to succeed Edward and be the last king of the House of Wessex, ruling for less than a year before dying at the Battle of Hastings as William the Conqueror led the Normans into a new era in English history.
Leofric, Earl of Mercia (died 1057)
Ah, if there’s one thing a man did not want history to remember him by it was that his wife was more famous than he, but Leofric of Mercia is really only taken notice of by history due to being the husband of the famous Lady Godiva, as related below. A contemporary of Godwin, he was earl of the other main territory, the kingdom of Mercia, but supported the claim of Harold Harefoot to the throne, in opposition to Godwin’s championing of the right of Harthacnut. He was therefore not best pleased when, on Harold’s death and Harthcnut’s accession, the new king, enraged at the killing of two of his tax collectors, sent Leofric and Godwin to sack the town of Worcester. This had been his ancestral home, so Leofric, though he obeyed, chafed at the order, and this might indeed have factored into his later decision to support Godwin’s disobedience to Edward the Confessor’s order to sack Dover.
Initially though he fought against Godwin in the name of Edward, who led an army against him at Gloucester in 1051. Leofric convinced the king not to join battle, as too many of the nobility would be lost and it would damage the kingdom, so Edward instead exiled Godwin, which suited Leofric perfectly, making him basically the second most powerful man in England. His own son Aelfgar however damaged that power by bringing a combined force of Irish and Welsh against the king at Hereford; nevertheless this revolt was settled amicably and on Leofric’s death in 1057 his son rose to the earldom.
As we’ll see below in the story of Lady Godiva, Leofric was a man who brutally oppressed his people, levying harsh taxes on the people of Coventry, and could not have been a popular lord. The fact that his wife could not appeal to his mercy says a lot about him too. As usual, historians argue and bicker over how true all of this Godiva stuff is, and as usual we’ll let them, as we have better things to do.