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Alred sighed; and said, "For the Earl and his sons, this is honour; but the other earls, and the thegns, will miss at the banquet him whom they design but to honour, and " "I have said," interrupted Edward, drily, and with a look of fatigue.
Boy," whispered the King, as he bent over the pale cheek of his nephew, "thank not me. From me the thanks should come. On the day that saw Tostig's crime and his death, thou didst purify the name of my brother Sweyn! On to our city of York!" High banquet was held in York; and, according to the customs of the Saxon monarchs, the King could not absent himself from the Victory Feast of his thegns.
"Because," answered Harold, dropping the hand he had clasped, and folding his arms in deep dejection, "because but for that I should say: 'Edith, I love thee more than a brother: Edith, be Harold's wife! And were I to say it, and were we to wed, all the priests of the Saxons would lift up their hands in horror, and curse our nuptials, and I should be the bann'd of that spectre the Church; and my house would shake to its foundations; and my father, and my brothers, and the thegns and the proceres, and the abbots and prelates, whose aid makes our force, would gather round me with threats and with prayers, that I might put thee aside.
The King's wish has its weight, no doubt, but the Witan hath its yea or its nay, and the Witan and Commons are seldom at issue thereon. Thy duke King of England! Marry! Ha! ha!" "I was born a ceorl, and my father before me," returned Sexwolf, "and I feel with my class; though my grandson may rank with the thegns, and, for aught I know, with the earls."
Our wrongs found sympathy beyond our province, for liberty spreads over human hearts as fire over a heath. Wherever we march, friends gather round us. Thou warrest not on a handful of rebels, half England is with us!" "And ye, thegns," answered Harold, "ye have ceased to war against Tostig, your Earl. Ye war now against the King and the Law.
"No," said the Earl, "I propose to exempt Gryffyth alone from the pardon, with promise, natheless, of life if he give himself up as prisoner; and count, without further condition, on the King's mercy." There was a prolonged silence. None spoke against the Earl's proposal, though the two younger thegns misliked it much. At last said the elder, "But hast thou thought who will carry this message?
The rude and homely manner in which the greater part of the Saxon thegns lived dependent solely for their subsistence on their herds and agricultural produce, and therefore on the labour of their peasants not only made the distinctions of rank less harsh and visible, but rendered it the interest of the lords to feed and clothe well their dependents.
"That will we not hear," cried the thegns, with one voice; while the tones of Gamel Beorn, rough with the rattling Danish burr, rose above all, "for we were born free. A proud and bad chief is by us not to be endured; we have learned from our ancestors to live free or die!"
Ælfred, with his small band of followers, could only throw himself into a fort raised hastily in the isle of Athelney among the marshes of the Parret, a position from which he could watch closely the movements of his foes. But with the first burst of spring he called the thegns of Somerset to his standard, and still gathering troops as he moved marched through Wiltshire on the northmen.
But Oswiu's queen brought with her from Kent the loyalty of the Kentish Church to the Roman See; and the visit of two young thegns to the Imperial City raised their love of Rome into a passionate fanaticism.
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