Saxons-elected Edward, the son of Ethelred and Emma; as if, on the extinction of the intrusive family, the rights of the old Anglo-Saxon branch revived; and the Danish monarchy, after lasting twenty-five years (from 1017 to 1042), came peaceably to an end.

If the laws of direct descent had been firmly established in those days, Edward's claims would have yielded to those of another Edward, known from his perpetual exile as Edward "the Outlaw," the son of Edmund Ironside. But the son of Ethelred was sufficiently near, and had gained the support of the most powerful of the English earls, whose name is even now more familiar to us than that of the king he made. Strange stories are told of the birth and fortunes of the great Earl Godwin.. He was the son of a Saxon churl, and was in the time of Sweyn's invasion engaged in guarding a herd of oxen, when a fugitive Danish noble, who had been defeated in a battle near Warwick, besought him to act as his guide to the shore of the Severn. Compassion moved the young Saxon, and he led the suppliant in safety to his ship. When success crowned the Danish party, no reward was too high in the estimation of the grateful warrior for the person who had saved his life. Godwin grew rich and great by the favour of the enemy, but never lost his love for England, or his desire to free her from oppression. All through the reign of Canute his wealth and influence increased, for he managed to maintain his character at once of a patriotic Saxon and a serviceable Dane. Earldoms accumulated in his hands-crimes were imputed to him by one party, and virtues, perhaps as ill-founded, by the other. He was accused of having aided or counselled the ruthless Emma in the murder of the youthful Alfred of having sold his country to the Danes-of having defended his countrymen against the Danes-of being a Dane, and of being an Englishman; but Godwin bore the accusations very peaceably, and, at the end of the reign of Hardicanute, was possessor, along with his five sons, of almost all the

A.D. 1042-1066.]

EARL GODWIN.

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south or Saxon part of England, and of several of the great earldoms in the north.

We are not to think an earldom a mere title of rank, as in our own days, without any substantial power. An earl in the days of Godwin was the ruler of his county or earldom with greater and more immediate authority than the king. He appointed to all offices, administered justice, collected revenue, and commanded the armed array. When Godwin stood up in the Witanagemote, surrounded by his five sons, Harold, Sweyn, Tostig, Gurth, and Leofwin, he not only represented six votes in the decision of a question, but the six highest officers and greatest landholders in the country. When this powerful family was ascertained to have given its adhesion to Edward, no further opposition was made. The Duke of Normandy parted with his cousin, who had resided so long with him at Rouen, with great joy at his good fortune; and the son of Emma, now near forty years of age, was presented by Godwin to the assembled lords and counsellors, and proclaimed King of England without a dissentient voice.

A more unfit man to maintain the dignity of the crown, threatened as it was by the overweening authority of his nobles and the plots of a foreign enemy, could not have been found. His feelings towards England were probably those of positive dislike. It had been a rude and bitter stepmother in comparison with the maternal tenderness extended to him by Normandy. He had seen his brother Alfred treacherously slain; he had been himself forced into ignominious flight. The healthy energy of the earls, old Godwin equally with young Harold, made them look with pity if not with contempt on the unmanly tenor of his existence-his subordination to the Romish priests, and gratification at the flatteries of the Norman nobles. But perhaps their personal ambition was satisfied, at the same time, with the prospect of so weak and spiritless a master. To tie him still more to the interests of the family, the great Earl made him agree to marry his

daughter, the beautiful Edgitha (or Edith), and, strengthened with this royal connexion, there was no limit to the possible advancement of the descendants of the Saxon churl.

Edward, as if to show that he was not so spiritless as his subjects thought, inaugurated his reign by an assault on his mother's wealth. Emma, the widow of two kings, and equally detestable in her characters of wife and mother, was now spending her old age in Winchester, and hoped perhaps to escape the recollection of her ill-used son, and enjoy her wealth in peace. But Edward saw great advantages and little danger in stripping so unpopular a personage of her estates; and he made a sudden dash down into Hampshire, and took possession of her goods and lands. To show his impartiality, however, he stript a Saxon bishop of all his holdings, at the same time as a Norman princess, and gratified his dislike of the nation he professed to rule by turning Stigand out of his episcopal office. At a very early period of his reign his ecclesiastical policy was shown. It was simply to root out the English clergy, and supply their places with Normans. In this he was supported by the authority of the Pope and the advice of Norman William. The Saxons had offended the curia at Rome by withholding the Peter's pence which Canute had agreed to pay; the old contest also between the monks and seculars still smouldered in the land, and even the Danes had become so far identified with their neighbours, that they were no longer the blind supporters of the Papal claims which they had shown themselves immediately after their conversion.

Edward, however, made up for any religious deficiency of his subjects by the most slavish prostration before the Church. He tried indeed to imitate the asceticism and voluntary sufferings of the heroes of the monkish legends, and commenced by refusing to live with Edith, the fair daughter of Earl Godwin, whom he married in 1045, on the plea that celibacy made him more like a monk than matrimony. Earl Godwin was

A.D. 1042-1066.]

EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.

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of course displeased with this resolution of the self-denying husband, as he had been in hopes, through his daughter's marriage, of being the founder of a line of kings. But when this justifiable ambition was shut out from its natural gratification, we must not be surprised if other thoughts came into many people's minds, when they compared the priest-ridden, self-flagellating, fasting, and relic-visiting Edward with the bold-eyed, frank-mannered, strong-armed Harold, who bore the sharpest sword in England against its enemies, and the strongest shield against the oppressors of the poor. The delight with which the English had seen the restoration of the old Saxon line in the person of Edward-the descendant and representative of the half-fabulous Cerdic and the patriotic Alfred-was soon changed into dislike and apprehension by the proceedings of the king. The popularity of the Godwins evidently displeased him, and availing himself of the indignation excited by the unpardonable conduct of one of the earls, Sweyn, in breaking into a nunnery at Leominster, and carrying off the abbess, although with her own consent, he succeeded in producing a quarrel in the wrongdoer's family, which weakened it more than any external enmity could have done. When Sweyn endeavoured to obtain a reversal of the sentence of banishment pronounced on him for his crime by some private arrangement with the king, Harold and his kinsman Beorn interfered. Sweyn stabbed Beorn in making his escape, and thus there was a blood feud between the brothers. Edward therefore lost no time in restoring Sweyn to his earldom, as an additional guard against the designs of his family, and had the gra tification at the same time of nominating a Norman bishop, Robert of Jumieges, to the archbishopric of Canterbury.

§ 20. Considering themselves now strong enough to proceed more openly, the Norman party invited a great French noble to visit the Court. Eustace of Boulogne, the brotherin-law of the king, came over with his attendants, and was

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received as befitted the dignity of so great a man. He was so inflated, indeed, with the notion of his importance, that, on his departure from England, he determined to make his entrance into the peaceable town of Dover in a manner worthy of the most powerful potentate. He pulled up in a meadow a little way from the walls, and put on his armour. His helmet was ornamented with two bits of whalebone, by way of pennon, in proof that as Count of Boulogne-which perhaps had a few fishing-boats lying high and dry on the sands-he was a maritime power of the first magnitude; and ordering his attendants to follow his example, he sprang on his warhorse, pointed his spear, and dashed through the streets of Dover as if he had taken the town by storm. Having sufficiently alarmed the inhabitants by this warlike approach, he ordered his train to mark with chalk the best houses they saw, as a sign they would occupy them for the night. But one surly Englishman disregarded the chalk on his door, and would not let the Frenchman in. The Frenchman drew his sword, and wounded the inhospitable citizen. He called out for help. His family came to his aid, and the intruder was slain. Eustace heard of the riot; mounted his horse again, and, breaking into the Englishman's house, killed him on his own hearthstone. He then scoured the streets, crushing over women and children, and putting men everywhere to the sword. Some few took to their bows and quarter-staves, and resisted the assailants; and in a few minutes Eustace was in headlong flight, leaving nineteen of his followers dead upon the causeway.

He fled as fast as fear and a good horse could carry him to Gloucester, where the king was holding his court, complained of the insolence of the townsmen of Dover, and demanded vengeance for the injuries he had received. Edward was very angry, as befitted a man who valued a Frenchman's comfort more than an Englishman's life, and ordered Godwin to take what force he required, and execute unsparing justice on the guilty town. Godwin thought, perhaps, it