rts, Hythe, Hastings, Dover, and Sandwich. His
progress towards London was a triumphant one with his sons. 'All
Kent--the foster-mother of the Saxons,' we are told, on this occasion
'sent forth the cry, "Life or death with Earl Godwin!"'

Crimes may rest on the name of Earl Godwin, despite his oath to the
contrary and his formal acquittal by the Witan-gemot, and dark deeds
are still affixed to his memory, but 'there was an instinctive and
prophetic feeling throughout the English nation that with the house of
Godwin was identified the cause of the English people.' With all his
faults he was a great Englishman, and was the popular embodiment of
English or Saxon feeling against the Normanising sympathies of Edward.

In legend the Godwin family, even in death, seem to have been connected
with the sea. There is the legend of Godwin's destruction with his
fleet in the Goodwin Sands, and there is the much better authenticated
legend of Harold's burial in the sea-sand at Hastings. The Norman
William's chaplain records that the Conqueror said, 'Let his corpse
guard the coasts which his life madly defended.'

Wrap them together[3] in a purple cloak,
And lay them both upon the waste sea-shore
At Hastings, there to guard the land for which
He did forswear himself.

Tenterden Steeple is certainly not the cause of the Goodwin Sands, and
the connection supposed to exist between them seems to have first
occurred to some 'aged peasant' of Kent examined before Sir Thomas More
as to the origin of the Goodwin Sands. But, as Captain Montagu
Burrows, R.N., mentions in his most interesting book on the Cinque
Ports, Tenterden Steeple was not built till 1462, and 'was not in the
popular adage connected with the Goodwin Sands, but with Sandwich
Haven. It ran thus--

Of many people it hath been sayed
That Tenterden steeple Sandwich haven hath decayed.'

Godwin's connection with Tenterden Steeple seems, therefore, to be as
mythical as his destruction in the Goodwin Sands with his whole fleet,
and we are driven to suppose that the connection of his family name
with the Goodwin Sands arose either from Norman and monkish detestation
of Harold and Godwin's race, and the desire to associate his name as
infamous with those terrible quicksands; or that these Sands had some
connection with the great earl and his family which we know not of,
whether as having been, according to doubtful legend, his estate, or
because he must