House of Godwin
The House of Godwin (Old English: Godƿin) was an Anglo-Saxon family who were one of the leading noble families in England during the last fifty years before the Norman Conquest. Its most famous member was Harold Godwinson, King of England for nine months in 1066.
House of Godwin
The founder of the family's greatness, Earl Godwin, was raised from comparative obscurity by King Cnut and given the Earldom of Wessex c. 1018-1019. He retained his position during the reigns of Cnut's sons Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut, and consolidated it when King Edward the Confessor conferred earldoms on Sweyn and Harold, Godwin's two eldest sons by his Danish wife Gytha.
The family survived a short-lived exile in Flanders 1051-1052. After Godwin's death in 1053, his sons held the earldoms of Wessex, East Anglia, and later Northumbria; Harold, in particular, became the most powerful man in England, eclipsing the power of the king. When Edward the Confessor died childless in 1066, he was succeeded by Harold Godwinson.
Harold gained a great victory over the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada and his own estranged brother Tostig Godwinson at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Three weeks later, with his defeat and death at the Battle of Hastings, Anglo-Saxon self-rule came to an end. Later generations of the family were scattered around Northern Europe. Through female lines, the Godwin family are ancestors of royal houses across Europe, including the Grand Princes of Kiev and the modern British royal family.[1][2][3]
Patrilineally, agnates of the House of Godwin have lived in Norway since 1067, where they belonged to the kingdom's greatest aristocratic dynasties. King Olaf III of Norway installed Skule Kongsfostre, an older son or stepson of Earl Tostig, at the Rein estate in Trøndelag (Central Norway), establishing the Rein dynasty. Among his descendants were King Inge II of Norway and Duke Skule Bårdsson.
Earl Tostig's younger son, Ketil Hook, was given the Torgar estate in Hålogaland (Northern Norway) and married a granddaughter of chieftain Hárek of Tjøtta, establishing the younger Torgar dynasty. Finally, King Harold Godwinson's son Harold Haroldson joined the retinue of King Magnus III of Norway; his descendants may have been the many Godwins who appear in Eastern Norway from the early 13th century.
As earls, that is, quasi-sovereign princes, the family maintained its own nobility or retinue, including housecarls. The family's vassals included the kings of Gwynedd (Wales).
The family disperses[edit]
Only two members of the family were allowed to live undisturbed in England under Norman rule. Edward the Confessor's widow Edith, daughter of Godwin, lived in retirement, remaining in possession of all her private lands, until her death in 1075. She was buried near her husband in Westminster Abbey.[34] Her niece Gunhild, daughter of Harold Godwinson, was an inmate of the nunnery in Wilton until 1093, when she was abducted by Alan the Red, a Breton who held the lordship of Richmond. She lived with him, and then with his successor Alan the Black, after which she disappears from history.[35]
Godwin's youngest son, Wulfnoth (b. c. 1036), was kept as a hostage in Normandy from 1051 until William the Conqueror's death in 1087, and was then transferred to Winchester by William Rufus, where he may have become a monk. He is thought to have died about 1094.[36]
In the aftermath of the battle of Hastings Godwin's widow, Gytha, by then in her sixties, withdrew to the south-west of England, where she held vast estates and where resistance to the Conquest was mounting. William the Conqueror turned his attention to crushing this resistance at the beginning of 1068, and laid siege to the city of Exeter, but Gytha had already fled, probably with her daughter Gunhild and Harold's daughter Gytha, and taken refuge first on an island in the Bristol Channel, probably Steep Holm, and then at Saint-Omer in Flanders.[37][38][39] Harold's young sons Godwin and Edmund, and possibly also their brother Magnus, may have been at the siege of Exeter; certainly they made their way to the court of king Diarmait of Leinster in Ireland, from where they launched two unsuccessful raids against south-west England. Two of the sons, probably Godwin and Edmund, survived to join their relatives in Saint-Omer. From there the whole party seems to have proceeded to Denmark in the hope that its king, Sweyn II, would help them regain their position in England. Sweyn failed them in this, but after a few years he arranged an advantageous marriage for the younger Gytha with Vladimir Monomakh, Prince of Smolensk and later Grand Prince of Kiev. Their descendants intermarried with royal houses across Europe, and transmitted the blood of the Godwins to, among many others, the present monarchs of the United Kingdom and Denmark.[40]
Ulf, a younger son of Harold Godwinson, was captured at some point by William the Conqueror, and was held prisoner in Normandy. At the death of William the Conqueror his son Robert Curthose released and knighted Ulf, but no more is known of his life.[41]
Harold, the youngest and probably posthumous son of Harold Godwinson, was taken by his mother to Dublin, and later went to Norway, where he was welcomed by the king. In 1098 he was one of the men Magnus III Barelegs took with him on an expedition to Orkney, the Hebrides, the Isle of Man and Anglesey. No further mention of Harold appears in any source.[42]
Arms attributed to King Harold II
Although the Anglo-Saxons used representative symbols, often displayed on banners, heraldry had not emerged by then, and members of the House of Godwin are neither known nor likely to have borne coats of arms. In the Great Hall of Winchester Castle in Winchester, then-capital of England, as well as several armorials, some coats of arms have been attributed to members of the House.
Members of the House of Godwin have possessed several titles, mainly in England and Norway, including stand-alone titles (thane, hirdmann, duke, knight) not attached to a particular fief or estate as well as numerous lordships such as Lord of the Manor of Bosham (Earl Godwin) and Lord of the Manor of Hougun (Earl Tostig). The following list is sorted chronologically.