[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I'm not Legate, although we do look quite similar in this light.

Tolkien's criticism of both Byrhtnoth and Beowulf is that they succumbed to chivalry; ceding key advantages to the enemy out of pride and the desire for glory (Byrhtnoth in allowing his enemy free passage over the Blackwater, Beowulf by fighting the dragon single-handed when he had other men with him). He's at some pains in the Silmarillion version to point out that Fingolfin already deemed the strategic position to be hopeless and was acting in rage and grief. If the cause of the Noldor is already lost then the death of the king only speeds up the inevitable, and there is no advantage to be given away when the battle has already ended in defeat. This is not the only example of this sort of behaviour from a prince of the Noldor either: Finrod lays aside his kingship to fulfil an obligation to Beren's house and dies in the attempt without apparent criticism from the narrator. Unlike Beowulf and Beorhtnoth (and Earnur of Gondor, who is portrayed consistently as the dupe of Sauron), in these cases the characters have no position of security or strength to abandon and are therefore not able to make the same mistake as Beorhtnoth and Beowulf. The line is a fine one, but Tolkien draws it himself in his notes on ofermod.

The matter of Tolkien's opinion is further complicated by the separation of some thirty years between the first version of Fingolfin's battle with Morgoth and Tolkien's appraisal of the Anglo-Saxon heroes in The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth. A younger man wrote Fingolfin's last stand than the one who criticised Beorhtnoth's and Beowulf's stubborn pride, and it wouldn't be the only issue on which Tolkien changed his mind over the years.

In the case of Byrhtnoth of Essex at least, I think that Tolkien judges on too little evidence and presumes far too much factual accuracy in the Maldon fragment. I think that any criticism of Byrhtnoth's pride in that piece is a Christian writer trying to explain why God didn't help so valiant and pious a hero of the church against pagan savages, but that's beside the point. Tolkien read the Anglo-Saxon poet's accusation as a tactical criticism and agreed with it, but that doesn't mean that every example of one of his leader heroes apparently throwing everything away in a single gesture should be read in the same way.