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Updated: June 11, 2025
The serious Margaret then rose quietly, and went to her brother, and said, in good Saxon: "Fie! if you behave thus, I shall call you NIDDERING!" At the threat of that word, the vilest in the language that word which the lowest ceorl would forfeit life rather than endure a threat applied to the Atheling of England, the descendant of Saxon heroes the three thegns drew close, and watched the boy, hoping to see that he would start to his feet with wrath and in shame.
In a word, do you Saxons merely overrun, and neglect to hold what you win?" "We fight in self-defence, not for conquest, Sir Norman. We have no skill in building castles; and I pray you not to hint to my thegns the conceit of dividing a land, as thieves would their plunder. King Gryffyth is dead, and his brothers will reign in his stead. England has guarded her realm, and chastised the aggressors.
Hardicanute, who succeeded Harold, whose memory he abhorred, whose corpse he disinterred and flung into a fen , had been chosen by the unanimous council both of English and Danish thegns; and despite Hardicanute's first vehement accusations of Godwin, the Earl still remained throughout that reign as powerful as in the two preceding it.
The thegns and prelates met in haste. Harold's marriage with Aldyth, which had taken place but a few weeks before, had united all parties with his own; not a claim counter to the great Earl's was advanced; the choice was unanimous.
Heard ye not, thegns and abbots, heard ye not this bad, false man offer, as if for peace, and as with the desire of justice, that the Pope should arbitrate between your King and the Norman? yet all the while the monk knew that the Pope had already predetermined the cause; and had ye fallen into the wile, ye would but have cowered under the verdict of a judgment that has presumed, even before it invoked ye to the trial, to dispose of a free people and an ancient kingdom!"
"How!" said Godrith, reddening, "thinkest thou so meanly of us thegns of Middlesex as to deem we cannot entertain thus humbly a friend from a distance? Ye Kent men I know are rich. But keep your pennies to buy stuffs for your wife, my friend." The Kent man, seeing he had displeased his companion, did not press his liberal offer, put up his purse, and suffered Godrith to pay the reckoning.
My lithsmen murmur at my absence, and grievances, many and sore, have arisen in my exile." The King stared in terror; and his look was that of a child when about to be left in the dark. "Nay, nay; I cannot spare thee, beau frere. Thou curbest all these stiff thegns thou leavest me time for the devout; moreover, thy father, thy father, I will not be left to thy father! I love him not!"
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.
The same tendencies drew the lesser thegns around the greater nobles, and these around the provincial ealdormen.
One critic good-humouredly exclaims, "We have a full attendance of thegns and cnehts, but we should have liked much better our old friends and approved good masters thanes and knights." Nothing could be more apposite for my justification than the instances here quoted in censure; nothing could more plainly vindicate the necessity of employing the Saxon words.
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