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Then the monk took up the word and spoke. "Health to Gryffyth-ap-Llewellyn, his chiefs and his people! Thus saith Harold, King Edward's thegn: By land all the passes are watched; by sea all the waves are our own. Our swords rest in our sheaths; but famine marches each hour to gride and to slay. Instead of sure death from the hunger, take sure life from the foe.
"If thou beest Saxon, shame us not with thy ceorlish manners; crave pardon of this Norman thegn, who will doubtless yield it to thee in pity. Uncover thy face and "
"All this is a Norman fable," said the Thegn of Kent, with a disturbed visage; "and Godwin cleared himself on oath of all share in the foul murder of Alfred."
Among the attendant knights and nobles of King William's court was a Saxon knight known as Sir Ordgar, a "thegn," or baronet, of Oxfordshire; and because those who change their opinions political or otherwise often prove the most unrelenting enemies of their former associates, it came to pass that Sir Ordgar, the Saxon, conceived a strong dislike for these orphaned descendants of the Saxon kings, and convinced himself that the best way to secure himself in the good graces of the Norman King William was to slander and accuse the children of the Saxon Queen Margaret.
"Enough," cried Vebba, the blunt thegn from Saxon Kent; "it is plain that neither King nor Witan can replace thee in thine earldom. Tell us not farther of these atrocities; or by're Lady, if the Northumbrians had chased thee not, we would."
I wish, therefore, to send to their outposts a nuncius, with these terms: 'Life and pardon to all who lay down arms and surrender." "What, after such havoc and gore?" cried one of the thegns. "They defend their own soil," replied the Earl simply: "had not we done the same?" "But the rebel Gryffyth?" asked the old thegn, "thou canst not accept him again as crowned sub-king of Edward?"
The pure slave class had never been numerous, and it had been reduced by the efforts of the Church, perhaps by the general convulsion of the Danish wars. But these wars had often driven the ceorl or freeman of the township to "commend" himself to a thegn who pledged him his protection in consideration of payment in a rendering of labour.
The slow thegn frowned, stammered, and renewed: "One thing at least is clear; that the rock is well nigh insurmountable to those who know not the passes; that strict watch, baffling even Welch spies, is kept night and day; that the men on the summit are desperate and fierce; that our own troops are awed and terrified by the belief of the Welch, that the spot is haunted and the towers fiend-founded.
In the same division of the hall were found the bulk and true popular part of the meeting popular indeed as representing not the people, but the things the people most prized-valour and wealth; the thegn landowners, called in the old deeds the "Ministers:" they sate with swords by their side, all of varying birth, fortune, and connection, whether with king, earl, or ceorl.
And many a thegn who had before half believed in the guilt of Godwin as the murderer of Alfred, whispered in gasps to his neighbour: "There is no weregeld for manslaying on the head of him who smiles so in death on his old comrades in life!"
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