He accepted the office, with all its toils and perils, but he would neither bear the title nor crown. He chose to leave the title of King of Jerusalem to Him to whom alone it belonged; he would not wear a crown of gold where that King had Worn a crown of thorns, and he kept only his knightly helmet, with the title of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre.
Well did he fulfil his trust, ever active, and meeting the infidels with increasing energy wherever they attacked him; but it was only for one year. The climate undermined his health; he fell sick of a fever, and died in July, 1100, just one year from the taking of Jerusalem. He lies buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, beneath a stone bearing these words: "Here lieth the victorious Duke Godfrey de Bouillon, who won all this land to the Christian faith. May whose soul reign with Christ." His good sword is also still kept in the same church, and was long used to dub the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre.
CAMEO XIV. THE ETHELING FAMILY. (1010-1159.)
_Kings of England_.
Knute and his sons.
Edward.
Harold.
William I.
William II.
Henry I.
_Kings of France_.
Henry I.
Philippe I.
Louis VI.
When, in 1016, the stout-hearted Edmund Ironside was murdered by Edric Streona, he left two infant sons, Edmund and Edward, who fell into the power of Knute.
These children were placed, soon after, under the care of Olaf Scotkonung, King of Sweden, who had been an ally of their grandfather's, and had sent to England to request that teachers of the Gospel might come to him. By these English clergy he had been baptized, and his country converted, so that they probably induced him to intercede with Knute for the orphan princes. Shortly after, a war broke out between Denmark and Sweden, and Olaf, believing, perhaps, that the boys were unsafe in the North, where Knute's power was so great, transferred them to Buda, to the care of Stephen, King of Hungary.
It was a happy home for them. Stephen, the first king of Hungary, was a most noble character, a conqueror and founder of a kingdom, humble, devout, pious, and so charitable that he would go about in disguise, seeking for distressed persons. He was a great lawgiver, and drew up an admirable code, in which he was assisted by his equally excellent son Emeric, and was the first person who in any degree civilized the Magyar race. His son Emeric died before him, leaving no children; and, after three years of illness, Stephen himself expired in 1038. His name has ever since been held in high honor, and his arched crown, half-Roman, half-Byzantine, was to the Hungarians what St. Edward's crown is to us. After Hungary was joined to the German Empire, there was still a separate coronation for it, and it was preserved in the castle of Buda, under a guard of sixty-four soldiers, until the rebellion of 1848, when it was stolen by the insurgents, and has never since been recovered.
After Stephen's death, there was a civil war between the heathen Magyars and the Christians, ending in the victory of the latter, and the establishment of Andrew in the kingdom. This was in 1051, and it was probably the sister-in-law of this Andrew whom the Saxon prince Edward married. All we are told about her is, that her name was Agatha, and that she was learned and virtuous.
In 1058, Edward, the only survivor of the brothers, was invited by his cousin, the childless Confessor, to return to England, and there be owned as Etheling, or heir to the crown. He came, but after his forty years' absence from his native country, his language, habits, and manners were so unlike those of the English, that he was always known by the name of Edward the Stranger.
After two years, both the Stranger and his wife Agatha died, leaving three young children, Christina, Margaret, and Edgar, of whom the boy was the youngest. His only inheritance, poor child, was his title of Etheling, declaring a claim which was likely to be his greatest peril. Edward the Confessor passed him entirely over in disposing of his kingdom; and as he was but six, or, as some say, ten years old, Harold seems to have feared no danger from him, but left him at liberty within the city of London.
There he remained while the battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings were fought, and there, when the tidings came that the Normans had conquered, the little child was led forth, while a proclamation was made before him that Edgar was King of England. But it was only a few faithful citizens that thus upheld the young descendant of Alfred. Some were faint-hearted, others were ambitious; Edwin and Morkar said they would support him if the bishops would; the bishops declared that the Pope favored the Normans. The Conqueror was advancing, and from the walls of London the glare of flame might be seen, as he burnt the villages of Hertfordshire and Surrey, and soon the camp was set up without the walls, and the Conqueror lodging in King Edward's own palace of Westminster. The lame Alderman Ansgard was carried in his litter to hold secret conference with him, and returned with promises of security for lives and liberties, if the citizens would admit and acknowledge King William. They dreaded the dangers of a seige, and gladly accepted his proposal, threw open their gates, and came forth in procession to Westminster to present him with the keys, basely carrying with them the helpless boy whom they had a few weeks before owned as their king.
Edgar was a fair child, of the old Saxon stamp of beauty, with flaxen hair and blue eyes; and the Duke of Normandy, harsh as he usually was, received him affectionately. Perhaps he thought of his own orphanhood at the same age, and the many perils through which he had been preserved, and pitied the boy deprived of his kingdom, without one faithful hand raised to protect him, and betrayed to his enemies. He took him in his arms, kissed him, promised him favors and kindness, and never broke the promise.
For the next two years Edgar remained at the court of William, until the general spirit of hatred of the Normans began to incite the Saxons to rise against them. Cospatric, Earl of Durham, thought it best to secure the safety of the royal children, and, secretly withdrawing Edgar and his two sisters from the court, he embarked with them for the Continent, intending to take them to their mother's home in Hungary.
Contrary winds drove the ship to Scotland, and there the orphans were brought to King Malcolm III. Never had an apparent misfortune been in truth a greater blessing. Malcolm had but seven years before been himself a wandering exile, sheltered in the court of Edward the Confessor, after his father, the gracious Duncan, was murdered, and the usurper Macbeth on the throne. He had venerated the saintly Confessor, and remembered the untimely death of the Stranger, which had left these children friendless in what was to them a foreign land; and he owed his restoration to his throne to the Saxon army under old Siward Bjorn. Glad to repay his obligations, he conducted the poor wanderers to his castle of Dumfermline, treated them according to their rank, and promised to assert Edgar's claim to the crown.
He accordingly advanced into England, where, in many places, partial risings were being made on behalf of "England's darling," as the Saxon ballads called young Edgar, after his ancestor Alfred. It was, however, all in vain: Malcolm did not arrive till the English had been defeated on the banks of the Tyne, and the Normans avenging their insurrection by such cruel devastation, that nine years after the commissioners of Domesday Book found no inhabitants nor cultivation to record between York and Durham.
There is some confusion in both the English and Scottish histories respecting Malcom's exertions in Edgar's cause; indeed, the Border warfare was always going on, and now and then the King took part in it. At length William and Malcolm, each at the head of an army, met in Galloway, and after standing at bay for some days, entered into a treaty. Malcolm paid homage to the English King for the two Lothians and Cumberland, and at the same time secured the safety of Edgar Etheling. The boy solemnly renounced all claim to the English crown, engaging never to molest the Conqueror or his children in their possession of it; while, on the other hand, he was endowed with estates in England, and a pension of a mark of silver a day was settled upon him. He could not at this time have been more than fourteen-there is more reason to think he was but ten years old-but the oath that he then took he kept with the most unshaken fidelity, in the midst of temptations, and of examples of successful perjury.