¹ Barlow, Frank, ed. and tr., Vita Ædwardi Regis qui apud Westmonasterium requiescit: The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster (London, 1962)Google Scholar; see especially pp. xv ff.; xxv ff.; v: 1, 56. (Hereafter cited as Life.)

² See The Feudal Kingdom (London, 1961)Google Scholar; The English Church 1000-1066 (London, 1963; reprint 1966)Google Scholar; “Edward the Confessor's Early Life, Character and Attitudes,” English Historical Review, LXXX (1965): 225–251CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “The Vita Ædwardi (Book II); The Seven Sleepers: …,” Speculum, XL (1965): 385–397Google Scholar; and especially Edward the Confessor (Berkeley, 1970), pp. xxii f., 291–300Google ScholarPubMed. (Hereafter cited as Edward.)

³ Körner, Sten, The Battle of Hastings, England, and Europe, 1035-1066 (Lund, 1964), p. 36, note 1.Google Scholar

⁴ Edward, p. 300.

⁵ Life, p. 78.

⁶ Ibid., p. 15; Edward, p. 299.

⁷ “And the Lady Edith, who was King Edward's widow, died at Winchester a week before Christmas, and the king [William] had her brought to Westminster with great honour, and laid her near King Edward her husband.”—Old English Chronicle [as modernized in Whitelock, Dorothyet al., The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation (New Brunswick, N. J., 1961), p. 158]Google Scholar That she remained reasonably active and important in William's reign also appears from the following. Guy of Amiens, who wrote very soon after 1066, devotes a passage to the way that by a combination of diplomacy and military pressure William of Normandy obtained the submission of Edward's widow and of the city of Winchester about six weeks after his victory at Hastings; see Morton, Catherine and Muntz, Hope, eds., The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Guy Bishop of Amiens (Oxford, 1972), II. 625–634Google Scholar. If William of Poitiers, writing in the early 1070s, substitutes for this a statement that a woman, morally very unlike her dreadful brother, Harold, was helpful to her husband's adopted son, by the time William I had been king for five or six years and the Lady for that long a member of his court, this shift may have seemed to William of Poitiers more nattering to them both; he also praises Archbishop Ealdred for “manifesting great zeal in the service” of King William though Ealdred supported first Harold and then the Atheling Edgar before he submitted to and crowned William; see Foreville, Raymonde, ed. and tr., Guillaume de Poitiers: Histoire de Guillaume le Conquérant (Paris, 1952), pp. 166–9, 270–1Google Scholar. An English document mentioning Edith the Lady, King Edward's widow, is printed in Dickinson, F. H., “The Sale of Combe,” Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, XXII (1876): 106–13Google Scholar. This shows that her personal household was English, and that she continued to visit her old school at Wilton and to see something of Gisa, a bishop appointed during Edward's reign; it also shows her “by King William's permission” presiding over a small “court of record” held on “the up-floor” of the church she had rebuilt there. William of Malmesbury's Deeds of the Bishops (272) reports her as making a remembered comment during the consecration of Bishop Walcher held in Winchester early in 1072 and (37) tells of her visiting Stigand during his imprisonment: for some discussion of these incidents see Freeman, Edward A., The History of the Norman Conquest of England (Oxford, 1871), IV: 480, 334Google Scholar. His Deeds of the Kings indicates that scandal could pursue her even on her deathbed: if in her last years she was accused of being faithless to King Edward, could this be the result of the way the poet sings her praises in The Life? See Malmesbiriensis, Willelmi, Gesta Regum Anglorum.…, ed. Hardy, Thomas (London, 1840), I: 334Google Scholar. This is also one of the passages which attest tu Edith's learning. Her estates are listed separately in Doomday Book. Were it not for The Life we would know no more about her days as Edward's reigning queen.

⁸ Life, p. xvii and Edward, pp. 291, 293.

⁹ Especially Edward, pp. 240-2, 296-300.

¹⁰ Barlow has perhaps not recognized sufficiently that the direct depiction of Edith in The Life is admittedly limited to showing her as she throve at King Edward's “imperial side” (p. 3). This precludes all but incidental or implied reference to her activity after Edward's death and hence may suggest that she was of virtually no importance during her widowhood. But a king's death often increased the political importance of his widow; Emma of Normandy, Edith's mother-in-law, no doubt owed her second marriage-with Cnut largely to the fact she was King Ethelred's widow, while it was after Cnut's death that she appears most active in her own right. Edith's support must have been important to Harold: the most personal connection he had with Edward came through her. And William's policy toward her indicates that he valued even her outward acquiescence. On the contrary. Barlow, (Life, p. lxv; Edward, p. 241)Google Scholar has made a good deal of the fact that The Life does not give the personal name of Edith's mother. The Work by its overall emphasis does seem to indicate that the Lady was not interested in the restoration of a Scandinavian dynasty in England. But since her mother is indirectly well spoken of (p. 6) and so is an unnamed king of the Danes (pp. 10-11), the omission of Gytha's personal name may be, like the omission of the personal names of all Edith's blood-kin who were still alive after 1066—and, for that matter, of the personal name of the writer—, a precaution designed to protect them if the book on its appearance proved a source of trouble to those named in it.

¹¹ Life, p. 6.

¹² Alter the death of Harthacnut, Svein Estrithson became the principal representative of Cnut's line. Edward's marriage with his near kinswoman may have helped satisfy his claims in England. He and his brother and his sons certainly revived these claims after William's coronation took the English kingship wholly out of their kin.

¹³ For the while that Edith would agree to recognize William's kingship, Svein and his representatives had less support in England than they may have looked for.

¹⁴ Life. p. 74.

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 78. The quotation is from Isaiah 24:2. The reference may also be to Hosca 4:9, but the version rn Isaiah is more pertinent to a situation involving the Lady Edith as well as her writer.

¹⁶ Bishop Guy uses illa…concedens of Edith's decision to accept William as king (Morton, and Muntz, , Carmen, I, 632Google Scholar). Edgar, who submitted at about the same time, had by the summer of 1068 renounced his allegiance.

¹⁷ On the manuscript, British Museum Harlcy MS 526, see Life, pp. lxxix ff. In using Barlow's edition it is important to remember that the book and chapter division is purely editorial.

¹⁸ I shall henceforth refer to these without the word section, as Verse I. Prose I, etc.

¹⁹ For a review of these see my earlier article “Genuiness of the Vita Ædwurd i Regis.” Speculum, XXI (1946): 419–20.Google Scholar

²⁰ Life, p. xv.

²¹ Ibid., pp. 1-5. At the end of this first dialogue the Anonymous indicates why he has used elegiac couplets only here and in Verse VIII. This meter was to him a “less noble buskin” than either his formal prose or his hexameters. It, therefore, suited the personal literary chat in the dialogues but not the high history or great themes of the rest. Guy, in the hexameter Proem he addresses to the “Morning Star” of learning, directly describes the elegiacs used in the body of his Song as “light measures”; see Morton, and Muntz, , Carmen, 1. 18.Google Scholar

²² Life, pp. 56-60. The Anonymous actually did have the kind of literary problem he complains of. The work needed a conclusion: as Barlow has indicated (p. xvi), for the conclusion to more than its own section the end of Prose VII is “abrupt and artistically wrong.” On the other hand, since the Anonymous did not intend to mention directly either the reign of Harold or the personal name of William, he could not continue direct narrative of the political history beyond Edward's funeral: Harold's coronation took place later the same day. Yet simultaneously the writer needed some indirect way to make it clear that the limes after Edward's death proved disastrous. Here Edward served him well because Edward's dying dream made possible the use of the prophetic method I am about to discuss.

²³ Life, pp. 3. 60.

²⁴ Ibid., p. 3. This passage deserves careful attention: it not only presents the central topic, its hoc uiuo is the first indication that Edward was no longer alive at the time of writing. Barlow has accurately translated “when this…king was there.”

²⁵ Ibid., p. 78.

²⁶ Ibid., pp. 3, 12. The reference may be also to the coronation ordo in which the king is called on to reign like Solomon, and David, (see Edward, p. 64)Google Scholar. but that to I Kings is clearly more important since it involves the coming of Solomon after David and before the revolt of Jeroboam against Rehoboam. Barlow, (Life, p. lxii)Google ScholarPubMed has noted “The author was steeped in the Jewish chronicles and prophetic books.”

²⁷ Life, p. 54, note 1.

²⁸ This is the most basic point of Brihtwald's vision in Prose, I (Life, pp. 8–9).Google Scholar

²⁹ The actual title may, of course, be scribal, but I think it likely original. It may mislead about the literary organization, but as a contemporary title it would have value: it shortens readily, distinguishes Edward from predecessors with the same name, locates his tomb, commemorates his great work of church building, and suggests the memorial purpose of the text.

³⁰ Life, p. 5.

³¹ Ibid., p. 1. On the chronographia as a rhetorical device, see Curtium, Ernst Robert, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tr. Trask, Willard R., (New York, 1963), pp. 275–6Google Scholar. Chelae, the old name for the sign Libra, seems to be a Vergilian echo. This sign covers both September 25, the date of the battle of Stumfordbridge at which Tostig was killed while fighting with the Norwegian invaders against an English army led by his own brother, and also October 14, the date of Hastings where Harold, Leofwine, and Gyrth fell in a single day. Hence all four of the Lady Edith's brothers named in The Life died “under the Chelae.” If the annual return of this season made the writer and his patroness feel gloomy, this would not be surprising.

³² Ibid., p. 58 (Stamfordbridge); p. 56. line 1 and note 1, p. 60. final couplet (Hastings).

³³ Ibid., pp. 1, 16, 37-40, 54, 56-7, 60, 74-8, 80.

³⁴ Ibid., p. 74.

³⁵ Ibid., p. 75. Harlow here translates “on a year and a day,” but this does not change the reference since by Epiphany 1067 William was the newly crowned king and the troubles would be those of his reign. Anno uno et die una is an ablative of “time at or within which.” and in view of the Anonymous' comment on 1066 (p. 80) within seems to me the more natural translation.

³⁶ Ibid., p. 75.

³⁷ Ibid., p. 80. The comparison, noted as odd by the Anonymous' “if we may use the expression,” is with the birth of a “blue baby” or other infant born only to die very soon. As an analogy for the very short reign of Harold, it is not ineffective.

³⁸ Ibid., p. 62 (in youth); pp. 60, 81 (at the tomb); pp. 61-63 (of the reign).

³⁹ This remains true even if the missing pages in Prose VIII contained some or all the material Barlow has suggested from the derivative writers. The additional miracles are miracles of the reign and the vision of the Seven Sleepers is taken as an omen of trouble to come in kingdoms; see Barlow, , Life, pp. xxx-xli, 66–74Google ScholarPubMed, and “the Vila Ædwardi (Book II); the Seven Sleepers…,” Speculum XL (1965): 385–397Google Scholar. I agree with Barlow that the healing of Wulfwi “Spillecorn” is unlikely to have been in The Life. It does seem to me likely that The Life once contained an account of the vision of the Seven Sleepers, but that it differed from all the twelfth century versions roughly as follows. 1) It contained no eastern material save the basic vision and perhaps a now submerged reference to the pilgrimage of Bishop Ealdred to Jerusalem in 1058. 2) The king's explanation of his laughing did not involve him in laughing directly at a dire omen. 3) The Anonymous himself made the political application, supporting it by the so-called European proofs including a reference to evil times in England after Edward's death. Such a passage would fit well into The Life at this point because it would in Prose VIII treat the king's laughing somewhat as the queen's tears have been treated in Prose VII (p. 54), and it would allow the Anonymous even more scope for developing his second time of trouble by the prophetic method. All the extant versions, including the “Florence,” seem to me to represent the fusion of some later eastern material with whatever may have been in The Life.

⁴⁰ Life, pp. 42-3.

⁴¹ Edward, p. xxii.

⁴² Life, pp. 42-3, 56, 57-8. The Anonymous certainly could visualizc writing a different and happier piece about his lords. Harold and Tostig. His interest in their campaign in Wales, which is expressed in both the prose and the verse, and his promise to write about this at a better time suggest he had something started here. For such a work a slightly different phrasing of his detailed comparison of their characters (pp. 31-2) might well have been appropriate: this passage is modeled on the comparison of Caesar and Cato in Sallust's Jugurtha [see Rolfe, J. C., ed. and tr., Stalust (London, 1921), pp. 110–113.Google Scholar].

⁴³ See the reprint from Sulcard's, History of Westminster, Life, p. 71.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Whitelock, , AS Chronicle, p. 151.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Life, p. xxviii.

⁴⁶ Körner, , Battle of Hastings, p. 36, note 1Google Scholar. A date in the reign of William is not essentially new: Freeman, (Norman Conquest, IV: 581)Google Scholar wrote: “We cannot too often remember the Biographer's peculiar position. He was a courtier, probably a foreigner, writing to Eadgyth under the reign of William.”

⁴⁷ Life, p. lx.

⁴⁸ First noted by Freeman.

⁴⁹ Life, pp. 43, 56, 60; 76. Latin germanus used in Prose VIII to express Harold's relationship to Edith is a very strong word. Translation mine.

That Harold's reign was not actually forgotten is indicated most clearly by the reference to the battle of Stamfordbridge. Here (p. 58) the phrase “namesake kings” (regibus equiuocis) forces a reader to think of King Harold Godwinson as well as King Harold Hardrada, while the whole passage commemorates Harold's reign at its moment of victory.

⁵⁰ Douglas, David C., William the Conqueror (Berkeley, Calif., 1964), p. 258.Google Scholar

⁵¹ The pertinent text is cited in Freeman, , Norman Conquest, 1869, III: 555Google Scholar from Mabillon, , Vet. An. i: 219Google Scholar. Translation mine.

⁵² Douglas, , William, p. 250.Google ScholarPubMed

⁵³ Ibid., p. 249.

⁵⁴ See Morton, and Muntz, , Carmen, pp. i ffGoogle Scholar. for a recent discussion of the date of this poem.

⁵⁵ Life, p. 58.

⁵⁶ Morton, and Muntz, , Carmen, II, 129–139, 471–480, 531–552Google Scholar. The Anonymous' reference to Edith's dislike for such pages ends his reference to the battle of Stamfordbridge in which he uses equiuocis of the two King Harold's. Guy (I. 174) uses the same adjective in the same connection.

⁵⁷ Life, p. 30.

⁵⁸ Ibid., p. lxxvi.

⁵⁹ Ibid., p. 80.

⁶⁰ Ibid., p. 2.

⁶¹ Ibid., p. 59. Thus The Life is a memorial to six men all important to the Lady Edith: her father, her husband, and the four of her brothers who died in the Fall of 1066.

⁶² Guy mentions Godwin only once, indirectly and without hostility (Morton, and Muntz, , Carmen, I, 245Google Scholar. Both William of Jumieges (Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. Marx, J., [Rouen and Paris, 1914], p. 121)Google Scholar and William of Poitiers (ed. Foreville, pp. 7-12) retell the story of the death of Edward's younger brother in a way that makes Godwin very evil. Since The Life (p. 20) says that Robert of Jumièges used a reminder of this incident to Godwin's disadvantage in 1051, it may have been something of a set piece for condemning Godwin, who in twelfth century Anglo-Norman writings also fares very badly, as does Harold. Since her father had been dead for a dozen years by the time her brother became king, this joint condemnation must have been expecially difficult for the Lady Edith.

⁶³ Life, p. 6. A more literal translation reads: “those arts which, would prepare them to be a strength and a help to the kingdom in the future.”

⁶⁴ William of Poitiers (ed. Foreville, pp. 166-9); see note 7 above. His passage weighed heavily with Freeman in his evaluation of Edith (Norman Conquest, 1869, III: 635Google Scholar). Barlow, Neither (Edward, 242)Google Scholar nor Morton, and Muntz, (Carmen, p. xxi)Google Scholar take it so seriously. But if one contemporary said this of Edith, others may have done so.

⁶⁵ Barlow's, translation (Life, p. 2)Google Scholar does not reflect the per secula of the original.

⁶⁶ Morton, and Muntz, (Carmen, p. 66)Google Scholar recognize that Guy's, Carmen II, 193–4, 371·2Google Scholar, and William of Poitiers' Gesta (ed. Foreville, ), pp. 100, 104, 186, 214, 228Google Scholar show that “The English did not want a foreign king.” But they perhaps go too far in adding “they particularly did not want William.” William seems to have been preferred to a Scandinavian restoration not only by Edith but also by the prelates who accepted him before his coronation: by withdrawing to the north and west they could have held out longer.

⁶⁷ This is the most literal modernization of the annal for 1066 in the ‘D’ version of the Old English Chronicle where the words apply to Archbishop Ealdred, Edgar Cild, Earl Edwin, Earl Morcar and all the chief men of London. Whitelock, (AS Chronicle, p. 144)Google Scholar uses “submit out of necessity.” This annal is probably as late or later than The Life and parallels it also in finding the cause in “our sins.”

⁶⁸ Life, p. xx.

⁶⁹ Life, p. 18.

⁷⁰ It is such a purpose that principally interests Barlow in Appendix A to his Edward where he writes with Schnith, Karl [“Die Wende der englischen Geschichte im 11. Jahrhundert,” Historisches Jahrbuch, LXXXVI (1966): 34–9]Google Scholar and Körner, [“The Political Background of the Encomium Emmae,” in Battle of Hastings, pp. 47 ff.]Google Scholar much in mind. But Barlow's too early dating would rule out the purpose suggested here. That Edith supported the Atheling against Harold, I can see no evidence; nor can Barlow, (Edward, p. 241)Google Scholar. She may, however, have supported him briefly immediately after Hastings: the ‘E’ version of the Old English Chronicle (1066) indicates that the monks of Peterborough did this without going to London. And that she may have hoped for his ultimate peaceful restoration does seem to me one of the suggestions of The Life.

⁷¹ Life, pp. 7, 8.

⁷² Ailred of Rievaulx is a foremost apostle of this doctrine. Part of his interpretation of the dying dream is reprinted in Life, p. 89; the whole may be found in Ailred's, “Vita Sancti Edwardi Regis” in Migne, , Patrologia Latina, 115, cols. 737-90Google Scholar. Ailred in youth had a close connection with the Scotch court where he may first have become an enthusiast for it. But the view must have been widespread to work as much to Henry II's advantage as it did.

⁷³ Life, pp. 50-55.

⁷⁴ Ibid., pp. 21, 27, 53.

⁷⁵ Ibid., pp. 27-30.

⁷⁶ Ibid., p. 27.

⁷⁷ Ibid., pp. 28-30.