T HE period immediately following the martyrdom of Edmund, King of
the East Angles, is one of great obscurity, owing to ,the constantly swelling tide of Northman invasion. We are told -that his brother, Edwold, declined to maintain the struggle in -behalf of his Anglo-Saxon countrymen, and retired to a cloister, where he died in the year 871, was sainted, and is remembered
• only in the ecclesiastical calendar and as the patron saint of the -church of Stokewood, in Dorsetshire. There are some pennies
• also of a prince, named Ethelward, which, from their resemblance to those of King Edmund, have been attributed to some Anglo- Saxon Prince in East Anglia, about this period. The only figures -that stand out distinctly in this general obscurity are those of Danish or Northman rulers. Gothrnn or Gurmund, who accepted baptism at the hands of King Alfred of the West Saxons, and was thenceforward known as Athelstan, is stated to have reigned in East Anglia, and coins of his still remain. His death is assigned variously to the years 889 and 890, and the chroniclers state that his reign had lasted twelve years, and that his sway -extended over nearly all Essex. He is also styled King of the Northern Angles, with the seat of his government in East Anglia. He is said to have been succeeded on this throne by another North- man jar, Eoluic (Eric). William of Malmesbury adds that after a reigu of fourteen years he was taken off by the Angles because he -conducted himself with cruelty towards them. 'The chronicler gthelwtrd makes him fall in a battle at Holme in the year 904, -calling hlm King of the barbarians, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle -assigns thbaame event to the year 905. The Northman rule con-
tinued in East Anglia till the year 921, when Edward the Elder —of the West Saxons—conquered and reduced it to a dependency on his own kingdom.
There is a coin of " /Elfred Rex," with the word " Northwic " on the reverse, which has been attributed to the year 872, and may have indicated a temporary ascendancy of the West-Saxon Alfred in the rising town of Norwich, in the vicinity, if not (as some now believe) on the actual site, of the old Romano-British city of Venta Icenorum. No coin is known of Edward the Elder connected with this Province, but there is a coin struck at Norwich (attributed to the year 925) of Athelstan (first King of all the Angle-land), who is said to have incorporated East Anglia in his monarchy, and greatly improved Norwich. There are also coins of his successors, Edmund, Edred, Edmund the Martyr, and Ethelred struck by the East Anglian mints. The slaughter of the Northmen by the orders of this last Sovereign was revenged by Sweyn of Denmark, among other acts, by entirely burning and wasting the town of Norwich. From the ruins of this earlier town gradually grew up the present city. In 1110 the Danes made a settlement there, and in the following year subdued all the East Anglians. Mr. Pettigrew considers that at this time they refortified the castle of Norwich, "the for- tifications of which have been found to correspond with their practice, being rotund, as was also that at Thetford, of Danish occupation. Norfolk was retained by Sweyn to the time of his death in 1014, and he was succeeded by Canute, who was driven out by Ethelred, who had retired to Normandy. Turkil, or Turketil, a Danish Earl, held possession of all Norfolk under Sweyn, and was permitted by Ethelred to continue governor of the East Angles, and entrusted with the fleet, consisting of forty ships. With these he treacherously proceeded to Denmark, and successfully urged Canute to return, who, with 160 vessels, landed at Sandwich in 1016." In the partition of the kingdom between Canute and Edmund Ironside, which soon followed, East Anglia was assigned to Edmund, and constituted the northern limit of his principality, Mercia and Northumbria being assigned to Canute.
When the Royal House of the West Saxons was restored in the person of Edward the Confessor, East Anglia was governed tinder him by Ealdormen or Earls, but there is considerable uncertainty as to the names and succession of these governors. Harold, Earl God- wine's son, held East Anglia in the early part of the reign. On his flight with the rest of his family in 1051, the Earldom was bestowed on Alf gar, son of Leofric, Earl of Mercia. On the restoration of Godwine and his family, the Earldom no doubt reverted to Harold, but on the death of Godwine, Harold, succeeding to his father's Earldom of Wessex, resigned that of East Anglia to /Elfgar. A quarrel next arose between the houses of Godwine and Leofric, which led to the banishment of 2Elfgar, in 1055, who thereupon fled to Ireland, and raising forces there, allied himself with Griffith, Prince of Wales, and invading Herefordshire with him, defeated the Royal forces under Raulf, Earl of Hereford. This Raulf or Raoul, Radulf or Ralph, a nephew of King Edward the Confessor, is one of the mysterious persons of this period. Mr. Planche has, however, elucidated his history in a very satisfactory manner in a paper read before the Archmological Association, and we avail our- selves of his researches in a slightly modified form. He appears then to have been a younger son of Dreux or Drogo, Count of the Vexin,
Pontoise, Chaumont, and Amiens, by the Anglo-Saxon Princess Goda (Edward's sister). He accompanied or followed his uncle
Edward into England, and (perhaps on the banishment of Godwine's son, Sweyn), was invested with the earldom of Hereford. He co-operated with the Earls Leofric and Siward against the God- wine party in 1051; but on their restoration to power was specially exempted from the banishment awarded to most of the foreign nobles, out of consideration to his Royal relative. His defeat on the invasion of /Elfgar and Griffith is attributed by the chroniclers to his having made his Saxon followers fight on horseback, to which they were unaccustomed ; but they also denounce him as weak, indolent, and cowardly. Whether these charges are true or not, he died two years afterwards, on the 21st of December, 1057, and was buried in Peterborough Cathedral, to which he had been a benefactor. However, by several writers of the immediately subse- quent period he is spoken of as Earl of the East Angles or of Norfolk, and by one writer is said to have succeeded to the govern- ment of the latter county on the death of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, but to have held it a very short time. lElfgar and Griffith, on being confronted by fresh forces under Earl Harold, found it prudent to come to terms, and 2Elfgar coming to an understanding with Godwine's all-powerful son, repaired to the Confessor's Court, made his peace, and was restored to his Earl- dom of East Anglia. But on September 30th in the year 1057 Leofiic died, and his son, 2Elfgar, succeeded him as Earl of Mercia. Dr. Lappenberg conjectures that Elfgar's own earldom of East Anglia was then divided among the younger sons of the great families, as we find Gyrth, Harold's brother, receiving Suffolk. It is, however, not an improbable conjecture that at this time Earl Raoul or Ralph received Norfolk as an addition to his former earl- dom, and as the authority already quoted says, held it only a very short time, dying, as we have seen, on the 21st of December. It is a fact, at any rate, that an Earl Ralph is mentioned in Domesday Book as having held lands in Norfolk in the time of Edward the Confessor, which were afterwards held by his son, Earl Ralph (from whom he is distinguished by the epithet of "the old Earl ") the well known Ralph Guader, or Raoul de Gael, Earl of Norfolk in the early part of the reign of William the Conqueror. The probability, then, is, that on the death of the first Earl Ralph, in December, 1057, the house of Godwine seized his earldom of Norfolk, and that his son Ralph, called De Guader, from the castle of Gael, in Brittany (which once was called Guadel or Wadel, and was probably inherited by him from his father, the elder Earl Ralph or Raoul), joined the Conqueror in his enterprise against Harold, with a view of recovering, as he did, the last earldom of Norfolk. His subsequent conspiracy against William, which led to his forfeiture and flight in 1075, is part of regular English history. Mr. Plauche considers that he was justified in it by the accusation which rested against William of having poisoned his (Ralph's) uncle, Walter de Mantes, but it is not creditable to him in that point of view that subsequently to the alleged murder he followed tamely the banner of the murderer to Hastings, and accepted at his hands the fruits of the victory in the earldom and estates in Norfolk. He at the same time received Suffolk and the rest of the old earldom of East Anglia. We can easily see why King William distrusted and opposed his marriage with Emma, the daughter of William Fitz-Osborne, on whom the King had bestowed the earldom of Hereford, formerly held by Earl Ralph the elder, naturally apprehending, no doubt, a design to unite these two earldoms at a future period in the person of Earl Ralph the younger, in case of the death of Earl Roger de Breteuil, Fitz-Osborne's son and successor. It is said that the conspiracy against King William began on the wedding day of Earl Ralph, his principal associates being his brother-in-law, Roger de Breteuil, and Waltheof, Earl of North- ampton. Waltheof, however, repenting, disclosed the plot to Archbishop Lanfranc (perhaps in the confessional); and then by his advice to the King himself, who was then in Normandy. Roger was taken and thrown into a prison, out of which he never came alive ; but Ralph, Earl of Norfolk, escaped to Denmark. His wife "heroically defended the Castle of Norwich, till she could make honourable terms for herself and the Bretons under her command. Ralph, after ineffectually attempting an inroad with some forces hastily raised in Denmark, retired to Brit- tany, and eventually made a pilgrimage with his heroic and faithful Countess to the Holy Land, in which the mortal career of both is said to have terminated." Such is the general history of the Government of this Province down to the reign of William the Conqueror.
The extent to which Saxon names have been preserved in this Province has been already referred to. The patronymics or genealogies of the original settlers of this district can be to this day traced in 97 instances in Norfolk and 56 in Suffolk, the marks thus deduced much exceeding in number those in almost any county of England. They are, of course, too numerous to be mentioned by us here in detail.
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