Harold : the Last of the Saxon Kings — Complete by Lytton (rm book recommendations .TXT) 📕

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Sharon Turner.

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See the Introduction to PALGRAVE’s History of the Anglo-Saxons, from which this description of the Witan is borrowed so largely, that I am left without other apology for the plagiarism, than the frank confession, that if I could have found in others, or conceived from my own resources, a description half as graphic and half as accurate, I would only have plagiarised to half the extent I have done.

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Girald. Gambrensis.

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Palgrave omits, I presume accidentally, these members of the Witan, but it is clear from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that the London “lithsmen” were represented in the great National Witans, and helped to decide the election even of kings.

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By Athelstan’s law, every man was to have peace going to and from the Witan, unless he was a thief.—WILKINS, p. 187.

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Goda, Edward’s sister, married first Rolf’s father, Count of Nantes; secondly, the Count of Boulogne.

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More correctly of Oxford, Somerset, Berkshire, Gloucester, and Hereford.

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Yet how little safe it is for the great to despise the low-born. This very Richard, son of Scrob, more euphoniously styled by the Normans Richard Fitz-Scrob, settled in Herefordshire (he was probably among the retainers of Earl Rolf), and on William’s landing, became the chief and most active supporter of the invader in those districts. The sentence of banishment seems to have been mainly confined to the foreigners about the Court—for it is clear that many Norman landowners and priests were still left scattered throughout the country.

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SENECA, Thyest. Act ii.—“He is a king who fears nothing; that kingdom every man gives to himself.”

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Scin-laeca, literally a shining corpse; a species of apparition invoked by the witch or wizard.—See SHARON TURNER on The Superstitions of the Anglo-Saxons, b. ii. c. 14.

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Galdra, magic.

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Fylgia, tutelary divinity. See Note (H), at the end of the volume.

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Morthwyrtha, worshipper of the dead.

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It is a disputed question whether the saex of the earliest Saxon invaders was a long or short curved weapon,—nay, whether it was curved or straight; but the author sides with those who contend that it was a short, crooked weapon, easily concealed by a cloak, and similar to those depicted on the banner of the East Saxons.

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See Note (K), at the end of the volume.

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Saxon Chronicle, Florence Wigorn. Sir F. Palgrave says that the title of Childe is equivalent to that of Atheling. With that remarkable appreciation of evidence which generally makes him so invaluable as a judicial authority where accounts are contradictory, Sir F. Palgrave discards with silent contempt the absurd romance of Godwin’s station of herdsman, to which, upon such very fallacious and flimsy authorities, Thierry and Sharon Turner have been betrayed into lending their distinguished names.

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This first wife Thyra, was of very unpopular repute with the Saxons. She was accused of sending young English persons as slaves into Denmark, and is said to have been killed by lightning.

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It is just, however, to Godwin to say, that there is no proof of his share in this barbarous transaction; the presumptions, on the contrary, are in his favour; but the authorities are too contradictory, and the whole event too obscure, to enable us unhesitatingly to confirm the acquittal he received in his own age, and from his own national tribunal.

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Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

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