Normandy for his half-brother Edward, son of Emma by Ethelred, and installed him at court as heir to the throne. Accordingly, when Hardicanute died in June, 1042, Edward, later known as the Confessor, succeeded without serious opposition.
There were not wanting other pretenders to the crown. One was Sweyn Estrithson, a nephew of Canute; but Godwin was on the side of Edward, and Godwin was the most powerful man in the country. Magnus, King of Norway and Denmark, also put forward claims, and would have endeavoured to enforce them in 1045, had his attention not been distracted by the attack upon him of Harold Hardrada and Sweyn, his rivals at home.[1] Meanwhile Emma, who still coquetted with the Danish party, and who seems to have preferred her connections by her second to those by her first marriage, was disgraced; and later, several of the more dangerous Danish lords in England were banished as a measure of precaution. Thus Edward's position was made secure. But Edward had been educated at the Norman court, and had Norman sympathies and Norman favourites. Danish influence gave place, not, as should have been the case, to English, but to Norman; and there was much English discontent.
A man to lead the national party was happily at hand in the person of Godwin, Earl of the West Saxons, the strongest, most wealthy, and most able subject of his day, and a very distinguished seaman. He seems to have successively misunderstood the tendencies both of Emma and of Edward. He certainly rendered valuable assistance to the plans of each, vastly, it is true, increasing his own importance and social dignity in the process. He had married Gytha, a niece of Canute; his daughter Edith married Edward the Confessor; his sons and nephews were all advanced to high posts. But at length he aroused himself to the growing seriousness of the foreign aggressions, and took up a definite position in the van of the national movement. Godwin forced upon the English monarchy almost the first of the long series of constitutional compromises which have given us our liberties. He may have been a selfseeker; undoubtedly he was, in some stages of his career, very much like a pirate. But he initiated a good work. When foreign influence, grown to an unexampled height, at length procured the outlawry of him and his family, he retired to Flanders, to reappear at the head of a fleet. He was beloved and admired by the people, and Edward, the most overrated of the English kings, was supported
- ↑ Sax. Chron., 435.
