Edward is surrounded by Norman monks and
Norman lords. " Justice! " cries the Count,
"upon the men of Dover, who have set upon
and slain my people! " The King sends
immediately for the powerful Earl Godwin, who
happens to be near—reminds him that Dover
is under his government—and orders him
to repair to Dover and do military execution
on the inhabitants. " It does not become
you," says the proud Earl in reply, " to
condemn without a hearing those whom you
have sworn to protect. I refuse to do it."

The King, therefore, summoned the Earl, on
pain of banishment and the loss of his titles and
property, to appear before the court to answer
this disobedience. The Earl refused to appear.
He, his eldest son Harold, and his second son
Sweyn, hastily raised as many fighting men
as their utmost power could collect, and
demanded to have Count Eustace and his
followers surrendered to the justice of the
country. The King, in his turn, refused to
give them up, and raised a strong force.
After some treaty and delay, the troops of the
great Earl and his sons began to fall off.
The Earl, with a part of his family and
abundance of treasure, sailed to Flanders; Harold
escaped to Ireland; and the power of the great
family was for that time gone in England.
But, the people did not forget them.

Then, Edward the Confessor, with the
true meanness of a mean spirit, visited his
dislike of the once powerful father and
sons upon the helpless daughter and sister,
his unoffending wife, whom all who saw her
(her husband and his monks excepted) loved.
He seized rapaciously upon her fortune and
her jewels, and allowing her only one attendant,
confined her in a gloomy convent, of
which a sister of his, no doubt an unpleasant
lady after his own heart, was abbess or jailer.

Having got Earl Godwin and his six sons
well out of his way, the King favored the
Normans more than ever. He invited over
WILLIAM, DUKE OF NORMANDY, the son of that
Duke who had received him and his murdered
brother long ago, and of a peasant girl, a
tanner's daughter, with whom that Duke had
fallen in love for her beauty, as he saw her
washing clothes in a brook. William, who
was a great warrior, with a passion for fine
horses, dogs, and arms, accepted the
invitation; and the Normans in England, finding
themselves more numerous than ever when he
arrived with his retinue, and held in still
greater honour at court than before, became
more and more haughty towards the people,
and were more and more disliked by them.

The old Earl Godwin, though he was abroad,
knew well how the people felt; for, with part
of the treasure he had carried away with him,
he kept spies and agents in his pay all over
England. Accordingly, he thought the time
was come for fitting out a great expedition
against the Norman-loving King. With it,
he sailed to the Isle of Wight, where he was
joined by his son Harold, the most gallant and
brave of all his family. And so the father and
son came sailing up the Thames to Southwark;
great numbers of the people declaring for them,
and shouting for the English Earl and the
English Harold, against the Norman favorites!

The King was at first as blind and stubborn,
as kings usually have been whensoever they
have been in the hands of monks. But, the
people rallied so thickly round the old Earl
and his son, and the old Earl was so steady in
demanding, without bloodshed, the restoration
of himself and his family to their rights, that
at last the court took the alarm. The Norman
Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Norman
Bishop of London, surrounded by their retainers,
fought their way out of London, and
escaped from Essex in a fishing-boat to France.
The other Norman favorites dispersed in all
directions. The old Earl and his sons (except
Sweyn, who had committed crimes against
the law) were restored to their possessions
and dignities. And Editha, the virtuous and
lovely Queen of the insensible King, was
triumphantly released from her prison, the
convent, and once more sat in her chair of
state, arrayed in the jewels of which, when she
had no champion to support her rights, her
mean cold-blooded husband had deprived her.

The old Earl Godwin did not long enjoy his
restored fortune. He fell down in a fit at the
King's table, and died upon the third day
afterwards. Harold succeeded to his power,
and to a far higher place in the attachment
of the people than his father had ever held.
By his valor he subdued the King's enemies
in many bloody fights. He was vigorous
against rebels in Scotland—this was the time
when Macbeth slew Duncan: upon which
event our English Shakespeare, hundreds of
years afterwards, wrote his great tragedy—
and he killed the restless Welsh King
GRIFFITH, and brought his head to England.

What Harold was doing at sea, when he
was driven on the French coast by a tempest,
is not at all certain; nor does it at all matter.
That his ship was, by a storm, forced on that
shore, and that he was taken prisoner, there
is no doubt. In those barbarous days, all
shipwrecked strangers were taken prisoner,
and obliged to pay ransom. So, a certain
Count Guy, who was the Lord of Ponthieu,
where Harold's disaster happened, seized him,
instead of relieving him like a hospitable and
Christian lord as he ought to have done, and
expected to make a very good thing of it.

But, Harold sent off immediately to Duke
William of Normandy, complaining of this
treatment, and the Duke no sooner heard of it
than he ordered Harold to be escorted to the
ancient town of Rouen, where he then was,
and where he received him as an honored
guest. Now, some writers tell us that Edward
the Confessor, who was by this time old and
had no children, had made a will, appointing
Duke William of Normandy his successor,
and had informed the Duke of his having
done so. There is no doubt that he was