Harold II

Harold II., King of England (d. 1066), was born probably in 1022, his father being Earl Godwine (q.v.) and his mother Gytha, a Danish lady. In Godwine's lifetime Harold was Earl of East Anglia, and on his death succeeded to the earldom of Wessex. He shared his father's banishment in 1051, and retired to Ireland, and was restored with him in 1053. During the reign of the Confessor Harold headed the English party as his father had done, and more than held his own against the Norman party. After the death of Eadward, son of Eadmund Ironside, who had been destined by Eadward the Confessor as his heir, the Earl of Wessex became the only Englishman likely to succeed him; The king, however, had promised the crown to William of Normandy, and Harold, having been ransomed by the latter when made prisoner by Count Guy, of Ponthieu (probably in 1064), promised, according to the Norman writers, to marry his daughter and secure the succession to him, receiving a part of the kingdom as a marriage portion. The whole story is obscure; and if Harold did make such a promise he repudiated it when Eadward acknowledged him on his deathbed as his heir and the Witan elected bim to the kingdom.

Harold's reign was a brief and stormy one. He had immediately to repel an invasion in the north led by Harold Hardrada, of Norway (q.v.), and his own brother Tostig, whom he had alienated some years before by acquiescing in the rebellion of the Northumbrians against him and their election of Morkere as earl in his stead. No sooner were these defeated and slain at Stamford Bridge, near York, than Harold had to hurry southwards to oppose Duke William, who had landed in Sussex. The defeat and death of the last Saxon king at Hastings (q.v.) followed.

Though he had made a pilgrimage to Rome, and seen some of the French courts, Harold had not that knowledge of Continental affairs which had belonged to Godwine. He was, however, at least his equal in general ability, and his superior as a military teacher. Though certainly not devoid of personal ambition, it is likely that his efforts to conciliate the Mercian house sprang quite as much from a patriotic desire for the union of the kingdom as from the wish to secure it for himself. The best historical information regarding him is to be found in Freeman's Norman Conquest, which is the basis of Tennyson's play.