But whenever famine, murder, and warfare begin to arrive together and visit all those who inhabit the realm, the kingdom will be brought near to utter weakness and ruin, if the period should continue any length of time. Though laws and useful customs may have been observed and maintained to some extent in the times mentioned earlier, they will be wholly forgotten whenever such times appear as those that we have just now described; for in warfare the best men and those of the noblest kinship are destroyed. But failure of crops, rapine, and unpeace of every sort that may then appear will rob those of wealth who are in possession of it and have acquired it honestly, while he gets it who can most readily deprive others by theft and plunder. And when such a time comes upon a nation, it will suffer loss in good morals and capable men, wealth and security, and every blessing as long as God permits the plague to continue. But He metes out according to His mercy, for He is able to save such a country, when He finds that the people have been sufficiently chastised for their sins. Now you can imagine how highly moral the people will become, if such a nation is saved by God’s grace and again brought under the rule of a single monarch, and how prosperous the realm may become in the period immediately following such an unrest as I have just described. For then the kingdom was rent, the morals of the people were confused, and their loyalty was divided among a number of lords, each one of whom was striving to contrive and employ against the others cunning, deception, disloyalty, and evil in every form.[247] Footnote 247: In this chapter the author has summed up the history of Norwegian kingship in the twelfth century, when minorities were frequent and joint kingships almost the rule. Three boys were proclaimed kings in 1103; two kings shared the power in 1130; the royal title fell to three children in 1136. At no time was the realm actually divided, the theory being that the administration and the revenues might be divided, while the monarchy remained a unit. The century was a period of great calamities; pretenders were numerous; and civil war raged at intervals. For a fuller discussion of the theory of Norwegian kingship in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, see above, pp. 35 ff. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XXXVII THE DUTIES, ACTIVITIES, AND AMUSEMENTS OF THE ROYAL GUARDSMEN