those of the famous Earl Godwin, the then ablest man in England. Possessed
of boundless tact and cunning, gifted with an eloquence which seems, from
the accounts remaining of it, to have been rather that of a Greek than an
Englishman; himself of high--perhaps of royal--Sussex blood (for the story
of his low birth seems a mere fable of his French enemies), and married
first to Canute's sister, and then to his niece, he was fitted, alike by
fortunes and by talents, to be the king-maker which he became.

Such a system may have worked well as long as the brain of a hero was
there to overlook it all. But when that brain was turned to dust, the
history of England became, till the Norman Conquest, little more than the
history of the rivalries of the two great houses of Godwin and Leofric.

Leofric had the first success in king-making. He, though bearing a Saxon
name, was the champion of the Danish party and of Canute's son, or reputed
son, Harold Harefoot; and he succeeded, by the help of the "Thanes north
of Thames," and the "lithsmen of London," which city was more than half
Danish in those days, in setting his puppet on the throne. But the blood
of Canute had exhausted itself. Within seven years Harold Harefoot and
Hardicanute, who succeeded him, had died as foully as they lived; and
Godwin's turn had come.

He, though married to a Danish princess, and acknowledging his Danish
connection by the Norse names which were borne by his three most famous
sons, Harold, Sweyn, and Tostig, constituted himself the champion of the
men of Wessex and the house of Cerdic. He had murdered, or at least caused
to be murdered, horribly, Alfred the Etheling, King Ethelred's son and
heir-apparent, when it seemed his interest to support the claims of
Hardicanute against Harefoot. He now found little difficulty in persuading
his victim's younger brother to come to England, and become at once his