Even the priests, save those immediately about the court, forgot, in
the exigency of the time, their ancient and deep-rooted dislike to
Godwin's House; they remembered, at least, that Harold had never, in
foray or feud, plundered a single convent; or in peace, and through
plot, appropriated to himself a single hide of Church land; and that
was more than could have been said of any other earl of the age--even
of Leofric the Holy. They caught, as a Church must do, when so
intimately, even in its illiterate errors, allied with the people as
the old Saxon Church was, the popular enthusiasm. Abbot combined with
thegn in zeal for Earl Harold.

The only party that stood aloof was the one that espoused the claims
of the young sons of Algar. But this party was indeed most
formidable; it united all. the old friends of the virtuous Leofric,
of the famous Siward; it had a numerous party even in East Anglia (in
which earldom Algar had succeeded Harold); it comprised nearly all the
thegns in Mercia (the heart of the country) and the population of
Northumbria; and it involved in its wide range the terrible Welch on
the one hand, and the Scottish domain of the sub-king Malcolm, himself
a Cumbrian, on the other, despite Malcolm's personal predilections for
Tostig, to whom he was strongly attached. But then the chiefs of this
party, while at present they stood aloof, were all, with the exception
perhaps of the young earls themselves, disposed, on the slightest
encouragement, to blend their suffrage with the friends of Harold; and
his praise was as loud on their lips as on those of the Saxons from
Kent, or the burghers from London. All factions, in short, were
willing, in this momentous crisis, to lay aside old dissensions; it
depended upon the conciliation of the Northumbrians, upon a fusion
between the friends of Harold and the supporters of the young sons of
Algar, to form such a concurrence of interests as must inevitably bear