Reconquering England for the English in Havelok the Dane

Dominique Battles

The Chaucer Review, Volume 47, Number 2, 2012, pp. 187-205 (Article)

Published by Penn State University Press

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The Middle English Havelok the Dane (ca. 1295–1310), set in pre-Conquest England and rooted in Lincolnshire history, features an Anglo-Danish alliance through marriage between the heir to the throne of Denmark, Havelok, and the heir to the throne of England, Goldeboru.1 The alliance comes amidst circumstances, paralleled in the two countries, of political usurpation and conquest. Both Havelok and Goldeboru lose their fathers (and kings) in early childhood, find themselves robbed of their royal positions, and are thrust into hardship despite the best efforts of their ailing fathers to provide for their future safety and well-being. Though Havelok is often considered a romance, in which such romantic unions typically play a central role, the marriage between the royal heirs departs from convention in that the union serves strictly political aims as it goes against both of their wishes, eliciting his feel- ings of awkwardness and her disgust. Their joint political destiny becomes manifest to both of them only after marriage when they realize that this union empowers them to reclaim their royal authority and take back their countries, which they do. Political readings of Havelok the Dane tend to situ- ate the poem in the present, within the contemporary political affairs of the reign of Edward I (1272–1307), emphasizing the abuse of royal power in general.2 While these readings rightly identify political corruption as a primary

1. The material for this article appears in my forthcoming volume, to be published by Routledge, entitled Cultural Difference and Material Culture in Middle English Romance: Normans and Saxons (New York, 2013). 2. David Staines, “Havelok the Dane: A Thirteenth-Century Handbook for Princes,” Speculum 51 (1976): 602–23; and Christopher Stuart, “Havelok the Dane and Edward I in the 1290’s,” Studies in Philology 93 (1996): 349–64. Stuart proposes general comparisons between Edward’s political affairs in Scotland in the later part of his reign and Havelok’s affairs in Denmark (361–63). See also

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concern of the poem, they ignore many of the poem’s most distinctive and specific political dynamics, notably the rather overt theme of conquest on two national fronts. I argue that the poet of Havelok the Dane looks to the past not the present, to the earlier period of the Norman Conquest, where a famous Anglo-Danish alliance, forged in the region of Lincolnshire, and recorded in Lincolnshire histories, promised to reconquer England and restore the Anglo-Saxon heir to the throne. The Anglo-Danish alliance of 1069–71, like the poem Havelok the Dane, figures prominently in the political consciousness of Lincolnshire, where most of the events took place, and forms part of the story of a Lincolnshire man called Hereward, also known as Hereward “the Wake,” who organized the most substantial and sustained resistance campaign against the Normans in the years immediately following the Conquest.3 Accounts of his activities in the late 1060s and early 1070s survive in upwards of ten differentmedieval sources, mostly from Lincolnshire, spanning the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, including L’Estoire des Engleis of Geffrei Gaimar (twelfth century), the Liber Eliensis (twelfth century), the Liber de Hyda (a compilation spanning 455 to 1023), the Historia Croylandensis (the “False Ingulph,” a fourteenth-century compilation), Florence of Worcester (late eleventh to early twelfth century), Orderic Vitalis (late eleventh to early twelfth century), and the Annales Burgo-Spaldenses (a fourteenth-century compilation some- times attributed to a certain John of Peterborough).4 Hereward’s efforts for English freedom are most substantially treated in the thirteenth-century fic- tionalized biography the Gesta Herewardi, also originating in Lincolnshire.5

Ananya J. Kabir, “Forging an Oral Style?: “‘Havelok’ and the Fiction of Orality,” Studies in Philology 98 (2001): 18–48, at 31–32, 46–47; Sheila Delany and Vahan Ishkanian, “Theocratic and Contractual Kingship in Havelok the Dane,” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 22 (1974): 290–302; and Susan Crane, Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Romance (Berkeley, 1986), 40–52. 3. For some time, Hereward was considered a member of the Wake family. More recently, his ancestry has come under revision. See Victor Head, Hereward (Stroud, 1995), 156–69; and Peter Rex, Hereward: The Last Englishman (Stroud, 2007), 36–50. Maurice Keen devotes two chapters to the legend of Hereward in The Outlaws of Medieval Legend (London, 2000), 9–38. Concurring with Keen’s assertion that this tradition emerged out of the political conflicts of the Norman Conquest, Thomas Ohlgren identifies the story of Earl Godwin, whose conflicts with a French advisor of Edward the Confessor are preserved in the anonymous Vita Ædwardi Regis (ca. 1065–1067), as the “earliest extended account of outlawry in English literature” (“General Introduction,” in Thomas Ohlgren, ed., Medieval Outlaws [Stroud, 1998], xv–xxxv, at xvii). See also Timothy S. Jones’s introduction to his translation of “The Outlawry of Earl Godwin” (which includes theVita ), in Ohlgren, ed., Medieval Outlaws, 3–12. 4. See Victor Head, Hereward, 16–36. 5. The Gesta Herewardi appears in Michael Swanton, ed. and trans., Three Lives of the Last Englishmen (New York, 1984), 45–88 (repr. as “The Deeds of Hereward,” in Ohlgren, ed., Medieval Outlaws, 28–99). All references to the Gesta are from Swanton’s 1984 edition. For an excellent

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The source that holds greatest relevance forHavelok the Dane, however, is the twelfth-century Peterborough Chronicle of Hugh Candidus, which accounts for many of the most sweeping changes the English poet makes to the legend of Havelok. dominique battles The poet of Havelok the Dane essentially extends the story’s original Lincolnshire setting to include the famous Anglo-Saxon political resistance efforts that centered in Lincolnshire following the Conquest. Specifically, the English poet references a particular historical episode in the career of Hereward, namely, his sacking of Peterborough Abbey in 1069 (1070 in some histories), allegedly to foil imminent Norman takeover, a deed that first brought Hereward to national prominence. This episode forms a subtext for Havelok the Dane in four important ways: (1) like Havelok, it features the wider backdrop of political conquest; (2) it accounts for the name changes introduced by the English poet for the heroine, the English heiress, as well as for her father, the king; (3) it helps to account for the poet’s enhanced characterization of Havelok as a saintly figure; and (4) like Havelok, it casts the Danes as vital allies of the English people in the face of hostile takeover. Joining the stories of Hereward and Havelok is not unique to the Middle English Havelok the Dane. An earlier Lincolnshire work, the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman source for the Havelok legend, Geffrei Gaimar’s L’Estoire des Engleis (1135–40), also preserves the story of Hereward. Gaimar lived and wrote in both Hampshire and Lincolnshire under the patronage of Constance FitzGilbert, the wife of Ralf FitzGilbert, who held lands in Lincolnshire and who had been involved in founding and maintaining several monastic houses in the region.6 Originally hired by Constance to translate into French Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, Gaimar also wrote L’Estoire, whose first half (lines 1–3594) derives from a version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, treating English history from the arrival in England of Cerdic of Wessex, a relative of Hengist, in 495 up to the death of William II Rufus in 1100. L’Estoire made English history available and respectable for the non-native, French-speaking audience, and several copies of L’Estoire also contain a topography (ca. 1150s) of English roads, counties, and bishoprics, suggesting a

study of the Gesta Herewardi and English identity, see Hugh M. Thomas, “The Gesta Herewardi, the English, and Their Conquerors,” Anglo-Norman Studies 21 (1999): 213–32. Timothy S. Jones discusses the Gesta in relation to other sources for the Hereward legend (Outlawry in Medieval Literature [New York, 2010], 74–87). 6. See Alexander Bell, L’Estoire des Engleis by Geffrei Gaimer (Oxford, 1960), ix–x; and Gaimar, L’Estoire des Engleis, ed. and trans. Thomas Duffus Hardy and Charles Trice Martin, 2 vols.(London, 1889; repr. 1966). Hardy and Martin also include an edition and translation of the anonymous Lai d’Haveloc.

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foreign audience.7 Gaimar’s L’Estoire recounts a number of events pertaining to Anglo-Danish history, including the episode of Buern Cucecarle and the Danish conquest of Northumbria in 866 (lines 2571–2701), the Danish invasion under Gormant (lines 3239–3310), and the story of Havelok the Dane (lines 96–819), which it conveys as a strictly regional legend.8 As it happens, it also provides one of the surviving records of the deeds of Hereward the Wake and his fight for Anglo-Saxon freedom (lines 5463ff.). Gaimar’sL’Estoire attests, therefore, to an early, regionally based connection between the stories of Havelok and Hereward and sets the stage for the fuller cross-pollination between the stories we find in the Middle English Havelok the Dane. While he is best remembered for organizing the last holdout of Anglo-Saxon resistance at the city of Ely in Lincolnshire in 1071, forcing William the Conqueror into a prolonged and costly siege of the city, Here- ward first launched his national political career in late spring 1070 through a superb and controversial act of vandalism: a raid on Peterborough Abbey. The story of Hereward’s sacking of Peterborough Abbey is preserved in the Peterborough Chronicle of Hugh Candidus, originally composed in the first half of the twelfth century, transcribed later in the mid-thirteenth century by Robert of Swaffham, and also surviving, in part, in an Anglo-Norman verse translation entitled La Geste de Burch.9 According to Hugh, for whom this was still recent history, as the newly appointed Norman abbot, Turold, heads towards Peterborough Abbey with a fighting force of 160 knights, Hereward and some of his men raid the abbey before Turold arrives.10 The raid occurs shortly after Hereward and his followers have allied themselves with a group of Danes under King Swein (1047–76), who have landed at Ely. Hereward and

7. David Carpenter, The Struggle for Mastery: The Penguin History of Britain 1066–1284 (London, 2003), 6. 8. Hans-Erich Keller, “Gaimar, Geffrei,” in Joseph R. Strayer, ed., The Dictionary of the Middle Ages, 13 vols. (New York, 1985), 5:340–41. 9. All references and citations of Hugh Candidus are from The Chronicle of Hugh Candidus, a Monk of Peterborough, ed. W. T. Mellows (London, 1949); and The Peterborough Chronicle of Hugh Candidus, trans. Charles Mellows and William Thomas Mellows (Peterborough, 1966). Hugh spent his life from boyhood on at Peterborough, eventually becoming subprior. His chronicle seems to have been augmented after his death. The original manuscript of Hugh’s chronicle, as transcribed in the Peterborough Cartulary, was part of the library of Sir Robert Cotton and lost in the fire that destroyed most of that collection in 1731. Mellows’s edition is based on a seventeenth-century tran- scription of the Peterborough Cartulary (Cambridge, Cambridge University Library MS Dd.14.28) (xvi–xviii). Mellows’s edition also includes an edition of the partial Anglo-Norman verse translation of Hugh’s chronicle, entitled La Geste de Burch (177–203), with a modern English translation by Alexander Bell (204–18). 10. Hugh Candidus, The Chronicle, ed. Mellows, 77–87; trans. Mellows and Mellows, 41–45. Mellows’s Latin edition also includes a comparison of Hugh’s account of this episode with versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (xxvi–xxix).

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his band strip the abbey of all its many valuables, including two important holy relics. None of the monks is killed or harmed in the raid, but many of the older monks leave with Hereward, presumably as hostages, as they return to 11 Ely to rejoin the Danes. Hereward intends to give the treasure to the Danes dominique battles in part to seal the alliance and, more importantly, because he believes “melius illa Dani seruarent ad opus ecclesie quam Franci” (79) (the Danes would guard these things better than the Frenchmen for the use of the church [41]). While seemingly an act of hostility, Hereward “ipse sepe postea iurauit se bona intencione hoc fecisse” (79) (oft times swore in after times that he had done this of good intention [41]) in order to keep this treasure out of Norman hands. More to the point, Hereward “homo monachorum erat” (79) (was himself a man of the monks [41]), and he and many of the men involved in the attack held lands belonging to Peterborough Abbey, lands that William intended to redistribute in exchange for knightly service. Thus these men “stood to lose everything by William’s move.”12 Among the monks taken to Ely with Hereward is Prior Aethelwold, who wishes to safeguard certain relics counted among the abbey treasure. In a vivid scene Aethelwold slips out of the feasting hall at Ely where the Danes and Anglo-Saxons are celebrating, posts two faithful servants as guards, and sneaks into the room containing the treasure. He finds the wooden chest containing the receptacle holding the arm of Saint Oswald and the relic of the Holy Innocent, quickly hides these relics in his bedstraw, splashes his face with cold water, and returns to the feasting hall to face the Danes. The next day Aethelwold secretly dispatches two servants to take the relics to Ramsey Abbey and returns himself to Peterborough upon Hereward’s orders. While this famous episode from the life of the most famous Anglo-Saxon resistance fighter by no means provides a neat mirror-image of the plot of Havelok the Dane, it nevertheless contains a striking number of common narrative elements that invite comparison. First, aside from the obvious kinship of Lincolnshire origins, the stories share the backdrop of political conquest at the national level, set in the pre-Conquest era, involving the hostile takeover

11. Cyril Hart, The Danelaw (London, 1992), 628, 648. While Hugh does not specify the size of the crosses that Hereward seized, records from a half-dozen communities prior to the Con- quest indicate churches having collections of man-size crosses crafted of precious metal. See Robin Fleming, “Lords and Labour,” in Wendy Davis, ed., From the Vikings to the Normans (Oxford, 2003), 107–37, at 135. 12. Hart notes that Peterborough Abbey was the first religious house to face this threat to its lands after the Conquest (The Danelaw, 647–48). The monasteries of Ely and Bury St. Edmunds soon faced the same situation. These three monasteries, moreover, carried “an imposition of knight service almost equaling the demands made on all the rest of the English abbeys put together” (647).

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of the throne, which is located in Winchester, the pre-Conquest capital of England. Likewise, the episodes from the life of Hereward and the Middle English Havelok provide parallel cases where events in Lincolnshire take on national proportions. Hereward’s raid on Peterborough Abbey magni- fied his fame from the local to the national level from that point on. Havelok the Dane, in turn, extends the geographic and political ramifications of a regional legend to encompass the entire realm. While earlier versions of the legend of Havelok restrict the story to the region of Lincolnshire, the Middle English Havelok extends the story’s geographic scope to include the whole of England, including the city of Winchester (lines 158, 318), the royal seat of King Æthelwold, as well as Dover, London, Lincoln, Chester, and Cornwall, one of many ways the poem incorporates more of pre-Conquest history and geography, replicating the scale of loss on the eve of the Conquest.13 Second, we have the matter of the name changes introduced by the English poet. While the two earlier, Anglo-Norman versions of the Havelok legend retain approximately the same names for the heroine’s father—King “Adelbrit”/”Ekenbright”—and the name “Argentille” for the heroine her- self, the Middle English poet changes the names of these characters to “Athelwold” and “Goldeboru,” respectively.14 “Athelwold” is an Anglo-Saxon name with precedents throughout pre-Conquest history, and it constitutes one of many ways the Havelok-poet recasts this figure from earlier versions as a distinctly Anglo-Saxon figure. For example, we find a King Athelwold in seventh-century East Anglia, in the twelfth-century Liber Eliensis, where the geography is consistent with the Lincolnshire setting of Havelok the Dane.15

13. See Thorlac Turville-Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature, and National Identity 1290–1340 (Oxford, 1996), 149–53; and Robert Allen Rouse, The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England in Middle English Romance (Cambridge, U.K., 2005), 156. 14. In earlier versions of the story of Havelok, the character corresponding to the king Athelwold goes by the name “Adelbriht” (Gaimar), “Achebrit” (Lai d’Haveloc), “Egelbright” (Lambeth), or “Athelbright” (AN Brut). The figure of “Goldeboru” in Havelok goes by the name “Argentille” in earlier versions. G. V. Smithers has a useful chart of proper names for the story (Havelok [Oxford, 1987], xxxi). 15. Æthelwold was a pious and just king responsible for converting Swithelm, the king of the East Saxons, to Christianity. Here we see the kind of alliance that brought the Angles (whence Æthel- wold descends) and the Saxons together as the Anglo-Saxons. Æthelwold ruled for a short time after the death of his brother, Æthelhere, who in turn had ruled after their brother, King Anna, an equally beloved and benevolent king, had been killed in battle with the Mercian king in 654, in the nineteenth year of his reign. See E. O. Blake, ed., Liber Eliensis, Camden Third Series 92 (London, 1962), Book I.2, 7–8; and Janet Fairweather, trans., Liber Eliensis. A History of the Isle of Ely from the Seventh Century to the Twelfth, Compiled by a Monk of Ely in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2005). See also William of Malmesbury’s Chronicle, ed. and trans. J. A. Giles (London, 1847; repr. 1968), 89. This same King Æthelwold of East Anglia also appears in the Liber Monasterii de Hyda, ed. Edward Edwards, Rolls Series 45 (London, 1866; repr. 164), 11. The Liber de Hyda also mentions a King Ethelwold of the South Saxons (7–8). The East Anglian Æthelwold also appears in the

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Other famous Athelwolds (or Aethelwolds) include a son of King Aethelred (first cousin to King Alfred)16 and also Athelwold, the Earldorman of Kent17 (both mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle); and Aethelwold, the promi- nent scholar, monastic reformer, Abbot of Abingdon (ca. 954–63), and later dominique battles Bishop of Winchester (963–84).18 “Goldeboru,” another Anglo-Saxon name, translates literally to “golden city.” Thus it is a proper female name that also recalls a place. These name changes have confounded medieval and modern scholars alike, since they fail to correlate concretely to any historical (or fictional) figures, certainly not in concert with one another. In the early fourteenth century, Robert Mannyng, in researching and compiling his Chronicle, encountered a series of dead ends in trying to uncover the historical basis for Havelok, and the Middle English version clearly did not help:

noiþer Gildas, no Bede, no Henry of Huntynton, no William of Malmesbiri, ne Pers of Bridlynton writes not in þer bokes of no Kyng Athelwold ne Goldeburgh, his douhtere, ne Hauelok not of told. (lines 521–24)19

Not only are versions of the Lincolnshire legend of Havelok rare, as Robert indicates, but the names “Athelwold” and “Goldeboru” of the English version fail to clarify the historical basis of the legend, even for a Lincolnshire man like Robert familiar with the sources, both pre- and post-Conquest, local and

eleventh-century Life of St. Botulf. See Scott Kleinman, “The Legend of Havelok the Dane and the Historiography of East Anglia,” Studies in Philology 100 (2003): 245–77, 255–56; Dorothy Whitelock, “Fact and Fiction in the Legend of St. Edmund,” Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archeology 31 (1969): 230–31, at 230; and G. V. Smithers, ed., Havelok, liii–lvi. 16. See Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge, trans., Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources (London, 1983), 120, 177. 17. Keynes and Lapidge, trans., Alfred the Great, 113. 18. See Barbara Yorke, “Bishop Aethelwold: Winchester’s ‘Golden Eagle,’” in Simon Barker and Colin Haydon, eds., Winchester History and Literature (Winchester, 1992), 22–35. 19. Robert Mannyng of Brunne, The Chronicle, ed. Idelle Sullens (Binghamton, N.Y., 1996), 500–502. Interestingly, these lines referencing an English version of the legend such as the Middle English Havelok, as indicated by the names “Athelwold” and “Goldeburgh,” occur in one manuscript witness of Mannyng’s Chronicle (MS P), but are replaced in a separate manuscript (MS L) with an eighty-two-line summary of the legend derived from an earlier French version, thus pre- serving the names “Egelbright” and “Argille” (compare “Argentille”). That Mannyng knew French as well as English versions of the legend is evidenced by his reference to King “Gunter” (line 506) as Havelok’s father, instead of “Birkabeyn” as in Havelok the Dane.

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otherwise.20 The name “Goldeburc” occurs in the Anglo-Norman Romance of Horn (ca. 1170; line 257) as the daughter of the German Emperor Baderouf and the grandmother of the hero Horn, but she plays no active role in the poem, nor does the poem provide sufficient details of characterization to make for meaningful comparison with the Goldeboru of Havelok.21 Modern investigations into the historical basis for the name changes found in Havelok have met with similar frustrations.22 In the Peterborough Chronicle, however, the names “Goldeboru” and “Aethelwold” occur in close proximity under circumstances of conquest, involving Danes, similar to those found in Havelok, only here “Goldeboru” refers to a place, not a person. In this passage, the Norman Abbot Turold arrives at Peterborough Abbey in the aftermath of Hereward’s raid:

Turo abbas . . . inuenit autem combusta omnia intus et foris, preter solam ecclesiam. Tunc illa quo uocabatur ciuitas aurea facta est pau- perima. Prior autem Adeluuoldus et ceteri seniores ducti sunt sicut diximus cum thesauris, et fuerunt in Eli cum Danis. (80)

Abbot Turold . . . found all things both within and without utterly burned, save only the church. So that city which was called the Golden Borough became the poorest of cities. Prior Aethelwold and others of the elders were carried, as we have said, with the treasures, and were at Ely with the Danes. (42)

As it happens, during the Middle Ages Peterborough Abbey was commonly known as the “golden city,” or, in English, “Golden Borough,” “Gildeneburch,”

20. Robert Mannyng of Brunne, The Chronicle, ed. Sullens, 13–22; see also Thorlac Turville-Petre, “Havelok and the History of the Nation,” in Carole M. Meale, ed., Readings in Medieval English Romance (Woodbridge, 1994), 121–34, at 123–24. Many scholars have argued that the story of Havelok originates with Gaimar, who created the story from diverse sources. See Derek Pearsall, “The Development of Middle English Romance,”Mediaeval Studies 27 (1965): 91–116, at 98; and Kleinman, “The Legend of Havelok the Dane,” 264–65. Others have argued against this theory, suggesting that the French sources of Gaimar and the anonymous Lai d’Haveloc derive from an earlier, orally transmitted legend, which then receives fuller treatment in the Middle English Havelok the Dane. For a full discussion of this argument, see Nancy Mason Bradbury, “The Traditional Origins of Havelok the Dane,” Studies in Philology 90 (1993): 115–42. 21. Mildred K. Pope and T. B. W. Reid, eds., The Romance of Horn, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1955, 1964). A similarly frustrating situation surrounds the occurrence of the name “Swanborow.” In Havelok the Dane, Swanborow (line 411) is the name of one of Havelok’s two sisters who are mur- dered by Goddard, aside from which she plays no role in the poem. In the Old French Romance of Horn, Suanburc is Horn’s mother, playing an important narrative role. Again, insufficient characterization of her in Havelok impedes meaningful interpretation. 22. Kleinman, “The Legend of Havelok the Dane,” 265–76.

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or “Burch” for short.23 The Anglo-Norman version of this episode inLa Geste de Burch preserves the reference to Peterborough as the “golden city,” and con- firms the fate of the abbey and its surrounds, saying “Ore est Gildeneburch a ‘chaitif burch’ turné” (line 471) (Now is Gildenberg turned to “wretched bor- dominique battles ough” [215]). Both Hugh Candidus and the author of La Geste de Burch go on to describe the further impoverishment of the monastery under the leadership of the Norman Abbot Turold, who redistributed abbey lands to his knights and relations, and depleted the abbey of its many precious possessions, reduc- ing the abbey to a third of its original value.24 Like the king’s young daughter, Goldeboru, Peterborough, the “Golden Borough,” becomes a contested entity of great value, reduced to poverty against a backdrop of conquest despite the best efforts of a benevolent fatherly figure called Athelwold. Furthermore, the poet of Havelok expands the role of King Athelwold over previous versions, notably in the king’s piety. For example, the English poet alone renders the figure of King Athelwold as unmarried. All earlier versions of the story of Havelok include the king’s wife Orwein, the mother of Argentille, who dies shortly after her husband. The poet of Havelok the Dane, however, eliminates both the name and the character of the king’s wife, an inexplicable move that makes more sense if his character is based, at least in part, on another unmarried man such as a cleric. This would accord, too, with the intense piety of King Athelwold, who “lovede God with al his micth” (line 35), who seals Godrich’s pledge using formal objects of the mass (lines 185–88), who self-flagellates as he approaches death (lines 213–17), and who voices Christ’s own last words, “In manus tuas” (Luke 23:46), on his deathbed (line 228), all elements of characterization introduced by the English poet and not found in earlier versions of the story.25 Thus, the king’s habits resemble those of a cleric, further suggesting a link with the figure of Prior Aethelwold.

23. The original Anglo-Saxon town of this site was called “Medehamstede.” In the tenth century, a new abbey was built on the ruins of the old abbey (ruined by a Danish attack), and, in around 1000, a wall was built around the entire complex including town and abbey, at which point it was renamed “St. Peter’s Burgh” (Burgh referring to the fortification). In subsequent years, the abbey was bequeathed so many riches and precious treasures that it became known as “Gildene Burch.” See The Peterborough Chronicle 1070–1154, ed. Cecily Clark, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1970), 115, 126. Hugh Candidus refers to Peterborough most often as simply “Burch.” Kleinman put forth Peterborough as one of several possible sources for the name Goldeboru in the poem, but he does not develop the connection further (“The Legend of Havelok the Dane,” 266). 24. Hugh Candidus, The Chronicle, ed. Mellows, 84–85; and La Geste de Burch, trans. Bell, in Mellows, ed., The Chronicle, 216 (lines 525–38). 25. See also Kimberly K. Bell, “Resituating Romance: The Dialectics of Sanctity in MS Laud Misc. 108’s Havelok the Dane and Royal Vitae,” Parergon 25 (2008): 27–51, 38–40. Bell reads Athelwold in light of other saintly kings of the South English Legendary in a general sense.

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Above all, like Prior Aethelwold, King Athelwold holds the future of England in his mind as the threat of hostile takeover looms. The connection between the person Goldeboru, the heroine of Havelok, and the place of the “Golden Borough,” or Peterborough Abbey, from the story of Hereward helps to account for the particular way the poet develops her role from earlier versions of the legend of Havelok. While it is not uncom- mon for a poet of popular romance to expand the role of the central female figure found in earlier stories, her importance tends to grow chiefly in the amatory sphere. Such is not the case in Havelok, where Goldeboru and Have- lok express disgust and indifference, respectively, toward one another upon their marriage. Instead, the heroine’s expanded role takes the form of political rather than romantic influence. King Athelwold anguishes on his deathbed over the future not only of his young daughter, but also of her succession to the throne, soliciting among his barons a future guardian for her, a man who can look after “Boþen hire and Engelonde” (line 173). The poet leaves no doubt that the girl and the realm stand as one when the king Þe erl hire bitauhte And al the lond he euere awhte [Of] Engelonde, eueri del; And preide, he shulde yeme hire wel. (lines 206–9) The king worries over the future of his daughter, whose fate is inextricably intertwined with that of England. The third narrative feature linking Havelok the Dane to the story of Hereward as rendered in the Peterborough Chronicle has to do with the characterization of Havelok himself, and concerns the poet’s recasting of him as a saintly figure. The Middle EnglishHavelok the Dane introduces two important features to the portrait of the hero Havelok: a birthmark in the shape of a golden cross on his shoulder, and a substantial episode relating the trials of Havelok’s early childhood after his father dies. The birthmark complements the hero’s other distinguishing physical feature, a flame that glows in his mouth as he sleeps, derived from earlier sources of the legend.26 The birthmark and oral flame eventually expose his royal lineage at night as

26. See Gaimar, L’Estoire de Engleis, lines 243–46, 625–41; and Lai d’Haveloc, lines 437, 450, and 838. The anonymous Lai and Gaimar’s Havelok episode have been edited together by Alexander Bell (Manchester, U.K., 1925). Alexander Bugge argues that the figure of Havelok derives ultimately from St. Olaf Tryggvason, whose light over his head corresponds to the flame in Havelok’s mouth (“The Origin and Credibility of the Icelandic Saga,” American Historical Review 14 [1909]: 249–61, at 252–55).

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he sleeps—first to his would-be murderer Grim (lines 604–5), then to his wife (lines 1262–63), and later to the citizens of Denmark (lines 2139–40). While the flame in his mouth derives from earlier versions of the story, the birthmark on the shoulder is unique to the Middle English Havelok. The poet dominique battles uses it simultaneously and in conjunction with the flame to reveal Havelok’s true identity to others. In fact, it seems to altogether replicate the function of the flame as an identifying mark in the narrative. If the shoulder mark serves the same narrative function as the flame, at the same points in the narrative, then why would the poet include it? The story of Prior Aethelwold and Hereward in the Peterborough Chronicle suggests some important reasons why the English poet of Havelok would introduce this seemingly redundant detail. Of all the monastery treasures Hereward keeps from Norman hands, the relics hold most value for Prior Aethelwold; as the Danes and Anglo-Saxons feast, he sneaks into the room containing the stolen treasure and recovers the relics, sending them on to Ramsey Abbey. These relics include the arm of St. Oswald and a shoulder-blade of one of the Holy Innocents.27 Once at Ramsey, this relic of the shoulder-blade causes an incident when the sacrist watching the church one night hears an infant’s voice calling “‘Sanctus’ ac si dixisset ter ‘nolumus hic requiescere’” (84) (“Holy! Holy! Holy!” as though he had said three times “We desire not to rest here” [44]). When Abbot Martin hears of this the next morning, he interprets that the relic of the Holy Innocent is communicat- ing that the relics of Peterborough Abbey belong back in Peterborough, and he has Prior Turbern arrange for their immediate return. The episode from the story of Hereward includes, therefore, not only the name “Aethelwold,” who protects the treasure of the “Golden Borough,” but also a prominently featured shoulder of a holy child. The link between Havelok’s shoulder and the shoulder-blade relic of Peterborough Abbey also helps to account for the particular shape and nature of the birthmark on the hero’s shoulder. The poet refers to the mark on Have- lok’s shoulder as a “kyne-merk” or “kunrik” (lines 604, 2143), king’s mark, and as such it corresponds to other birthmarks in medieval literature. In the Middle English Emaré, for instance, Emaré gives birth to an infant, Segramour, with a “dowbyll kyngus marke” (line 504), the mark of royal status.28 Similarly,

27. The Anglo-Norman verse translation of Hugh’s chronicle relates the story of the arm of St. Oswald but not that of the shoulder-blade of the Holy Innocent. See Hugh Candidus, The Chronicle, ed. Mellows, 195–97, 214–16. 28. Walter Hoyt French and Charles Brockway Hale, eds., The Middle English Metrical Romances, 2 vols. (New York, 1964), 1:439.

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the thirteenth-century Richars li Biaus features a foundling hero who bears a birthmark on his right shoulder in the form of a double cross (“ii crois” [line 669]) that also marks his royal status.29 The double cross, therefore, appears to be the standard shape for such king’s marks. To be sure, the mark on Havelok’s shoulder underscores his royal destiny, as corroborated by these other literary examples and by the expanded royal scope (including England as well as Denmark) for the hero in the poem as a whole. However, the mark on Havelok’s shoulder differs from those of Richars and Segramour in both shape and color, suggesting a more specific point of reference. We see the mark on the hero’s shoulder through the eyes of several different people, and always at nighttime. The mark first is seen through the eyes of Grim and his wife, who see “a kynemerk—/A swith brith, a swathe fair” (lines 604–5) on the right shoulder of the child Havelok. Later, we see it again through Goldeboru’s eyes: “On hise shuldre, of gold red,/She saw a swiþe noble croiz” (lines 1262–63). Later, in Denmark, we see the mark through the eyes of Ubbe:

So weren he war of a croiz ful gent On his riht shuldre, swiþe briht, Brihter þan gold ageyn þe liht; So þat he wiste, heye and lowe, Þat it was kunrik þat he sawe. It sparkede, and ful briht shon So doth þe gode charbucle—ston, Þat men se mouhte, by þe liht A peni chesen, so was it briht. (lines 2139–47)

Havelok’s birthmark takes the form of a single red gold cross that shines as bright as a carbuncle, even in the dark. Two things align this birthmark pow- erfully with the treasure of Peterborough Abbey: first, the mark takes the distinctly religious (and not especially kingly) form of a single, not double, cross.30 Second, unlike the birthmarks of the babies Segramour and Richars,

29. The wife of the man who discovers the baby, upon discovering the birthmark, cries “Dieus . . . cjilz sera rois!” (“God, . . . he will be a king!”) (line 670). Also, the baby’s face shines “con lumiere” (like a light) (line 664), another possible correspondence to the light in Havelok’s mouth. See Richars li Biaus: roman du XIIIe siècle, ed. Anthony J. Holden (Paris, 1983). For a discussion of possible source influence between Richars li Biaus and Havelok the Dane, see Maldwyn Mills, “Havelok’s Return,” Medium Ævum 45 (1976): 20–35, at 24–28. 30. See also Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 46–48.

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whose color and aspect is not described, Havelok’s birthmark is described with words redolent of worked precious metal, specifically, red gold that shines brightly like a precious stone (carbuncle). Many of the valuables seized from Peterborough Abbey, in addition to the shoulder-blade relic, were pre- dominique battles cisely this sort of jewel-studded treasure, worked in gold, much of it described as “red gold.”31 The phrase “gold red” (line 1262), which has puzzled scholars, derives specifically from Anglo-Saxon tradition, where gold is quite frequently described as “red” rather than “yellow” (as we describe it today), a designa- tion that carried over into the Middle English period.32 This Anglo-Saxon connection to “red gold” perhaps accounts for why, of the three depictions of the birthmark in the poem, only the one seen through the eyes of Goldeboru, the English heiress, specifies it as “gold red.” Furthermore, an image of “rede gold” (line 47) appears earlier in the poem in association with the golden age of King Athelwold, whose portrait as a ruler draws upon Anglo-Saxon historiographic motifs.33 Thus, in addition to announcing the hero’s royal lineage, the birthmark of the displaced husband of Goldeboru also suggests, in both form and medium, the displaced Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical treasure of the Golden Borough. Furthermore, this shoulder-blade of the Holy Innocent in the story of Prior Aethelwold accounts for the early portrayal of Havelok as a holy innocent in Havelok the Dane. Of all the extant versions of the life of Havelok, the Middle English Havelok the Dane is the only one to cover the early childhood of the hero, including an incident that recalls the biblical account of the massacre of the Holy Innocents.34 Upon the death of the Danish King

31. According to Hugh Candidus, among the treasures seized from Peterborough Abbey by Hereward and his men was a footrest from underneath the crucifix made of pure gold and gems (The Peterborough Chronicle, trans. Mellows and Mellows, 41). The Anglo-Saxon Peterborough Chronicle specifies that this golden footrest is crafted fromreade golde (The Peterborough Chronicle, ed. Clark, 1). 32. On reade golde (red gold) as an Anglo-Saxon phrase, see Earl R. Anderson, Folk Taxonomies in Early English (Madison, N.J., 2003), 130–41; and Nigel Barley, “Old English Color Classification: Where Do Matters Stand?,” Anglo-Saxon England 3 (1974): 15–28. A somewhat more literal derivation of the phrase distinguishes between Anglo-Saxon metalwork, which combined gold metal with lavish use of garnet, as opposed to the niello-and-silver technique preferred by Viking metalworkers. See Perette E. Michelli, “Anglo-Saxon Metalwork,” in Paul Szarmach, M. Teresa Tavormina, and Joel T. Rosenthal, eds., Medieval England: An Encyclopedia (New York, 1998), 506–8. 33. Rouse has shown how the figure of King Athelwold as a leader who maintains peace on the kingdom’s roads participates in a common Anglo-Saxon historiographic motif of safe travel that carried into the post-Conquest era known as “peace of the four roads” (The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England, 106–12). 34. See Julie Nelson Couch, “The Vulnerable Hero: Havelok and the Revision of Romance,” Chaucer Review 42 (2008): 330–52; Kimberly K. Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 43–44; and Maldwyn Mills, “Havelok and the Brutal Fisherman,” Medium Ævum 36 (1967): 219–30.

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Birkabeyn, Goddard, the king’s corrupt official, imprisons the royal children Havelok and his two sisters in a tower. In a horrific scene, Goddard enters the tower intent on slaying all three of them. He first seizes the two girls as if it were “his gamen” (line 468), and then “karf on-two here þrotes” (line 471) as the young Havelok witnesses. Havelok escapes the same fate only by pleading for his life. The poet stresses the children’s vulnerability and, above all, their innocence: Havelok individually and the children collectively are termed “seli” (lines 477, 499). By contrast, earlier versions of the story include no mention of Havelok’s sisters or any attempt to murder them. In Gaimar, Havelok’s mother, the queen, flees Denmark with baby Havelok, who is an only child. They are attacked by outlaws and she gets flung into the sea. Grim, the fisherman on board the same ship, saves Havelok and raises him as his own (lines 418–36). The Lai d’Haveloc relates an almost identical story (lines 603–610). Havelok the Dane, however, presents the hero in his early childhood as a direct victim of a corrupt tyrant who (like Herod) feels threatened by the boy’s lineage, and this telling includes a massacre scene involving the “innocent” royal children, one of whom bears a birthmark on his shoulder that “calls out” at night in several separate scenes, like the relic of the Holy Innocent of Peterborough Abbey wanting to return home. The shoulder- blade of the Holy Innocent in the Peterborough Chronicle helps to account for this particular modification in the characterization of Havelok. The tri- angle of Prior Aethelwold, the Golden Borough, and the shoulder-blade of the Holy Innocent becomes replicated in King Athelwold, Goldeboru, and Havelok, the victimized hero with a distinctive shoulder. The connection between Havelok the Dane and the relic of the Holy Innocent of Peterborough Abbey is in keeping with the sweeping revision of the story of Havelok as a saint’s life. As others have noted, Havelok the Dane contains several narrative features emblematic of the hagiographic tradition.35 The incipit to the poem reads, for instance, “Incipit vita Havelok, quondam Rex Anglie et Denemarchie” (Here begins the life of Havelok, sometime king of England and Denmark), the term vita normally being used to reference the life of a saint, not a secular hero. Similarly, as noted earlier, the poet adds instances of pathos recounting the hero’s early suffering, as in the

35. Bell argues that the hagiographic aspect of Havelok stems from the work’s manuscript context, which is overwhelmingly religious in content, therefore dictating a religious reading of the poem (“Resituating Romance,” 42–51). I would suggest that the relationship also works in the reverse: the author of Havelok altered the story internally in such a way as to qualify it for inclusion in such a religious collection. See also Diane Speed, “The Construction of the Nation in Middle English Romance,” in Meale, ed., Readings in Medieval English Romance, 135–58.

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massacre scene, another hallmark of the saintly hero. Godrich and Goddard, the victimizers of the poem, are both associated with Judas (lines 319, 425). Additionally, almost from the beginning, Havelok’s unusual attributes of the flame in his mouth and the birthmark on his right shoulder become associ- dominique battles ated with prophecy, as when Grim and his wife announce that “He shal hauen in his hand/Al Denemark and Engeland” (lines 609–10), a conclusion that Goldeboru, too, later draws. While Grim and his wife might recognize the Danish heir, they have no basis for including England in his patrimony; thus the scene serves a proleptic function, something not found in the comparable scene in either Gaimar or the Lai. Likewise, Goldeboru’s revelation of her husband’s destiny takes on a miraculous quality not found in earlier versions. In Gaimar (lines 195–242) and in the Lai d’Haveloc (lines 397–532), Argentille has an inscrutable dream of her husband being attacked by a bear with some foxes, and she relies on others to interpret the dream for her. In Havelok the Dane the same scene becomes a holy vision wherein Goldeboru is visited by an angel at night who tells her of Havelok’s lineage and political destiny in both Denmark and England (lines 1264–78), concluding “Þou shalt quen and leuedi ben!” (1274). In this way, the story of Havelok becomes hybridized with hagiographic tradition, a quality that accords with the hero’s affiliation with the relic of the Holy Innocent of Peterborough Abbey. The story of Prior Aethelwold and Hereward’s raid on Peterborough Abbey also correlates with the Danish connection in Havelok the Dane. The Middle English Havelok concerns matters of Danish succession as much as English succession, and it features an Anglo-Danish alliance as a central tool of English political salvation. So, too, the larger story of Hereward’s raid on Peterborough concerns a crisis of English political succession, and it features an Anglo-Danish alliance as a corrective, however temporary or limited, to England’s political woes. In 1069, a fleet estimated between 240 and 300 ships arrived in England, harrying the coast of Ipswich and Norwich.36 During this mission, King Swein struck up an alliance with Edgar Aetheling, Edward the Confessor’s son and heir, then living in exile in Scotland, along with the earls Gospatric and Waltheof, Siward Barn, Mærle-Sveinn, the sheriff of Lincolnshire, Arnkell, the sons of Karli, and “with all the Northumbrians and the

36. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, “D,” 1069, mentions 240 ships (ed. Dorothy Whitelock [New Brunswick, N.J., 1961], 150). See also R. Allen Brown, The Normans and the Norman Conquest, 2nd edn. (Woodbridge, 1985), 168–69. King Swein himself did not personally attend this mission, instead placing the fleet under the command of his brother Asbjorn and at least two of his sons. See Ann Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995), 36.

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people, riding and marching with an immense army, rejoicing exceedingly.”37 Together they regained possession of the city of York, the first major retaliatory success since the Conquest, and a victory that sparked similar uprisings in the southwest.38 Not long after the victory at York, Swein arrived at Ely and allied himself with Hereward, precipitating the famous raid on Peterborough Abbey. There is no question that the purpose of the Anglo-Danish alliance of 1069–71 was reconquest, followed by some form of joint rule between England and Denmark. The Danes seem to have had their own political ambitions for allying themselves with these dispossessed Anglo-Saxon lead- ers, in all likelihood expecting to gain the English throne amidst William’s political struggles. Hugh Candidus remarks that Hereward, along with his Danish allies, attacked Peterborough because he “putabat illos uincere Willilmum regem, et ipsos possessuros terram” (79) (supposed they were conquering King William, and would themselves possess the land [41]), and they clearly had the backing of the English population to do so. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle notes that when King Swein arrived in England, “the local people came to meet him and made a truce with him—they expected he was going to conquer the country.”39 Orderic Vitalis emphasizes English support further, suggesting that King Swein came by express invitation, not- ing “Some [Anglo-Saxons] sent to Swein, king of Denmark, and urged him to lay claim to the kingdom of England which his ancestors Swein and Cnut had won by the sword.”40 The historical picture, therefore, includes a Danish king allied with the dispossessed heir to the English throne with the intent of reconquest.41 Moreover, the presence of Danish allies at York and Ely in the years 1069–71 greatly increased the import, both militarily and imaginatively,

37. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, “D,” 1069 (ed. Whitelock, 150); Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest, 37; and Brown, The Normans and the Norman Conquest, 168–69. 38. Scattered revolts followed at Exeter, led by men from Devon and Cornwall, and at Robert of Mortain’s new castle at Montacute. While most likely inspired by the success at York, these revolts do not seem, however, to have represented a unified or broadly coordinated Anglo-Saxon front. See Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest, 37. 39. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, “E,” 1069 (ed. Whitelock, p. 151). 40. Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1969–80), 2:172; Hart, The Danelaw, 627; and Rex, Hereward, 84–88. As cousin to Queen Edith, the wife of Edward the Confessor, King Swein had a somewhat legitimate claim to the English throne, and for the next hundred years, Danish rulers would periodically reassert this claim. In 1193, Cnut VI made over his rights to the English throne to Philip Augustus, ending the Danish claim. See Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest, 36. 41. According to historian David Carpenter, King Swein had allied himself with Edgar Atheling, who had gained the support of King Malcolm in trying to regain the throne. Carpenter claims that, in the confrontation at Ely, the Danes were bought off, and hence withdrew their support from Hereward. See The Struggle for Mastery, 76–77. On the deal struck between King Swein and William the Conqueror, which left Hereward’s forces in the lurch, see also Rex, Hereward, 88.

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for both the Anglo-Saxon people and William the Conqueror, placing these native uprisings in a completely different class than previous rebellions.42 This historical Anglo-Danish alliance has a number of important parallels with the Anglo-Danish alliance in Havelok the Dane. For one, the dominique battles Danes appear as allies rather than foes. This positive image of the Danes that we find in both stories is striking in itself when we consider the far more common historical image of the Danes as ravenous Viking invaders who terrorized England during the pre-Conquest period—an image alluded to briefly (and erroneously) in Havelok the Dane when Godrich attempts to thwart Havelok’s retaliatory invasion.43 Furthermore, both accounts present an alliance between the royal house of Denmark and the dispossessed heir to the English throne (Edgar Atheling; Goldeboru) with the intent of retaking England. Also, like Havelok, the larger context of Hereward’s raid on Peterborough Abbey and the preceding events projects the likelihood of a Danish ruler gaining joint possession of the English as well as the Danish thrones. Above all, the “Danish solution” advanced in both Havelok and Hugh Candidus reflects the very real, desperate hope of the Anglo-Saxons during the height of Hereward’s activities for outside aid in their fight for freedom, hopes that seem to have centered almost exclusively on Denmark.44 The Danes, of course, eventually dashed all such hopes. Nevertheless, the powerful association in both texts of Denmark with political salvation forms part of the cultural memory of the decades following the Conquest. In short, Hugh Candidus’s account of Hereward’s sacking of Peterborough Abbey provides the basis for some of the most profound changes the English poet makes to the legend of Havelok. It explains the poet’s particular use of the names Athelwold and Goldeboru, as well as these persons’ relationship to one another as protector and protected. It also accounts for the intensely pious, at times priestly, portrait of King Athelwold. It accounts for the prominence of the hero’s shoulder and the holy birthmark it bears as a literary incarnation of the shoulder-blade relic of the Holy Innocent restored to its rightful home. The context of the Holy Innocent itself, a symbol of infantsuffering, accounts

42. Brown, The Normans and the Norman Conquest, 168–71. 43. Godrich warns his “Englishe” (line 2566) force against the “Denshe men” (line 2575), whom he rumors to have raided local priories and churches, seized the treasure, burned the priests, and strangled the monks and nuns, thus playing on the historical image of Danes as “dogges” (line 2596), none of which applies in this particular instance. Turville-Petre reads this passage as a con- scious attempt to revise the historical understanding of the Danish ancestors of the people of the region of Lincolnshire (“Havelok and the History of the Nation,” 132). 44. Peter Rex, The English Resistance: The Underground War Against the Normans (Stroud, 2009), 79, 95–103.

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for the addition, unique to the English version of the story, of Havelok’s suffering in early childhood. It also explains more broadly the poet’s recasting of Havelok as a saintly figure, and his lifelong innocence and piety, all in keeping with the story’s ecclesiastical origins. It accounts, further, for the altered political and geographic scope of the poem; just as the incident at Peterborough forms a microcosm of the progress of the Norman Conquest of England, so the struggles of Havelok and Goldeboru against conquest and disinheritance affect the entire country, not just a single region, as in earlier accounts. Above all, it accounts for the centrality of the English heiress Goldeboru, who, like the Golden Borough, falls victim to poverty in the midst of a power-struggle only to be restored, as if by destiny, through an Anglo-Danish alliance, her marriage to Havelok. Havelok the Dane magnifies the theme of political conquest and resistance in England by incorporating the historical role played by the people of Lincolnshire during the time of the Norman Conquest. The poem re-creates the political terrain of the Norman Conquest and draws from a famous episode in Anglo-Saxon resistance to the Conquest, revisiting its lingering tensions and anxieties while proposing an alternate outcome that would favor the English. The ending of the poem provides the happy conclusion missing in the historical reality of post-Conquest England. The poem tracks the usurpation of political power in Winchester (the Anglo-Saxon royal seat) which prompts an Anglo-Danish alliance in Lincolnshire in the union of Havelok and Goldeboru (mirroring the Anglo-Danish alliance in that same region forged by Edgar Atheling, and later by Hereward), and ends with a coronation in London, the post-Conquest capital city of England.45 Unlike the historical outcome of 1071, the fictional Anglo-Danish alliance of Havelok succeeds, as the English heiress returns to England triumphant with the help of the Danes, thus realizing the failed historical promise that nearly came to be. Moreover, the restoration of the English heiress correlates to a restoration of English judiciary practice, as Godrich faces distinctly English methods for punishing treason.46 The marriage of Havelok, the new Danish king, and Goldeboru,

45. Under the Normans, the capital city of England gradually shifted from Winchester to London, and the royal palace in Winchester was eventually demolished in 1141. See Trevor Rowley, Norman England 1066–1214 (Oxford, 2010), 94–98; and Tony Dyson and John Schofield, “Saxon London,” in Jeremy Haslam, ed., Anglo-Saxon Towns in Southern England (Southampton, 1984), 285–313, at 288, 303, 308. Rouse reads the geographic shift at the end ofHavelok in the spirit of social integration rather than segregation, as I do here (The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England in Middle English Romance, 156). 46. Rouse argues that the two executions at the end of the tale also contrast Continental and insular practice: Goddard, in Denmark, is executed by flaying and other horrific means, a method typical of the Continent; Godrich is executed in England by English means by being led to

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the restored English monarch, fulfills in a fictional way the historical dream of reconquest promised by King Swein, the Danish king and one-time ally of Hereward the Wake, the nobleman from Lincolnshire who became an icon of Anglo-Saxon freedom. dominique battles

Hanover College Hanover, Indiana ([email protected])

execution on a horse’s tail (The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England, 104–5). He cites J. G. Bellamy, The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages, 13; and W. R. J. Barrow, “The Penalties for Treason in Medieval Life and Literature,” Journal of Medieval History 7 (1981): 187–202.

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