of Dover led to resistance on their part, and to a long series of marches and negotiations, which ended in the banishment of Godwine and his son, and the parting of his daughter Edith, the King’s wife, from her husband. From October 1051 to September 1052, the Normans had their own way in England. And during that time King Edward received a visitor of greater fame than his brother-in-law from Boulogne in the person of his cousin from Rouen.
Of his visit we only read that “William Earl came from beyond sea with mickle company of Frenchmen, and the king him received, and as many of his comrades as to him seemed good, and let him go again.” Another account adds that William received great gifts from the King. But William himself in several documents speaks of Edward as his lord; he must therefore at some time have done to Edward an act of homage, and there is no time but this at which we can conceive such an act being done. Now for what was the homage paid? Homage was often paid on very trifling occasions, and strange conflicts of allegiance often followed. No such conflict was likely to arise if the Duke of the Normans, already the man of the King of the French for his duchy, became the man of the King of the English on any other ground. Betwixt England and France there was as yet no enmity or rivalry. England and France became enemies afterwards because the King of the English and the Duke of the Normans were one person. And this visit, this homage, was the first step towards making the King of the English and the Duke of the Normans the same person. The claim William had to the English crown rested mainly on an alleged promise of the succession made by Edward. This claim is not likely to have been a mere shameless falsehood. That Edward did make some promise to William—as that Harold, at a later stage, did take some oath to William—seems fully proved by the fact that, while such Norman statements as could be denied were emphatically denied by the English writers, on these two points the most patriotic Englishmen, the strongest partisans of Harold, keep a marked silence. We may be sure therefore that some promise was made; for that promise a time must be found, and no time seems possible except this time of William’s visit to Edward. The date rests on no direct authority, but it answers every requirement. Those who spoke of the promise as being made earlier, when William and Edward were boys together in Normandy, forgot that Edward was many years older than William. The only possible moment earlier than the visit was when Edward was elected king in 1042. Before that time he could hardly have thought of disposing of a kingdom which was not his, and at that time he might have looked forward to leaving sons to succeed him. Still less could the promise have been made later than the visit. From 1053 to the end of his life Edward was under English influences, which led him first to send for his nephew Edward from Hungary as his successor, and in the end to make a recommendation in favour of Harold. But in 1051–52 Edward, whether under a vow or not, may well have given up the hope of children; he was surrounded by Norman influences; and, for the only time in the last twenty-four years of their joint lives, he and William met face to face. The only difficulty is one to which no contemporary writer makes any reference. If Edward wished to dispose of his crown in favour of one of his French-speaking kinsmen, he had a nearer kinsman of whom he might more naturally have thought. His own nephew Ralph was living in England and holding an English earldom. He had the advantage over both William and his own older brother Walter of Mantes, in not being a reigning prince elsewhere. We can only say that there is evidence that Edward did think of William, that there is no evidence that he ever thought of Ralph. And, except the tie of nearer kindred, everything would suggest William rather than Ralph. The personal comparison is almost grotesque; and Edward’s early associations and the strongest influences around him, were not vaguely French but specially Norman. Archbishop Robert would plead for his own native sovereign only. In short, we may be as nearly sure as we can be of any fact for which there is no direct authority, that Edward’s promise to William was made at the time of William’s visit to England, and that William’s homage to Edward was done in the character of a destined successor to the English crown.
William then came to England a mere duke and went back to Normandy a king expectant. But the value of his hopes, to the value of the promise made to him, are quite another matter. Most likely they were rated on both sides far above their real value. King and duke may both have believed that they were making a settlement which the English nation was bound to respect. If so, Edward at least was undeceived within a few months.
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