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 favourites!
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 to France in a fishing-boat.The other Norman favourites 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.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 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 valour 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 forced by a storm on that shore,and that he was taken prisoner,there is no doubt.In those barbarous days,all shipwrecked strangers were taken prisoners,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 honoured 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 anxious about his successor;because he had even invited over,from abroad,EDWARD THE OUTLAW,a son of Ironside,who had come to England with his wife and three children,but whom the King had strangely refused to see when he did come,and who had died in London suddenly (princes were terribly liable to sudden death in those days),and had been buried in St.Paul's Cathedral.The King might possibly have made such a will;or,having always been fond of the Normans,he might have encouraged Norman William to aspire to the English crown,by something that he said to him when he was staying at the English court.But,certainly William did now aspire to it;and knowing that Harold would be a powerful rival,he called together a great assembly of his nobles,offered Harold his daughter ADELE in marriage,informed him that he meant on King Edward's death to claim the English crown as his own inheritance,and required Harold then and there to swear to aid him.Harold,being in the Duke's power,took this oath upon the Missal,or Prayer-book.It is a good example of the superstitions of the monks,that this Missal,instead of being placed upon a table,was placed upon a tub;which,when Harold had sworn,was uncovered,and shown to be full of dead men's bones-bones,as the monks pretended,of saints.This was supposed to make Harold's oath a great deal more impressive and binding.As if the great name of the Creator of Heaven and earth could be made more solemn by a knuckle-bone,or a double-tooth,or a finger-nail,of Dunstan!
Within a week or two after Harold's return to England,the dreary old Confessor was found to be dying.After wandering in his mind like a very weak old man,he died.As he had put himself entirely in the hands of the monks when he was alive,they praised him lustily when he was dead.They had gone so far,already,as to persuade him that he could work miracles;and had brought people afflicted with a bad disorder of the skin,to him,to be touched and cured.This was called 'touching for the King's Evil,'which afterwards became a royal custom.You know,however,Who really touched the sick,and healed them;and you know His sacred name is not among the dusty line of human kings.