at the gate of Gloucester,
where my lord the King then held court. He made his complaint. My lord
the King, naturally hearing but one side, thought the burghers in the
wrong; and, scandalised that such high persons of his own kith should be
so aggrieved, he sent for me, in whose government the burgh of Dover is,
and bade me chastise, by military execution, those who had attacked the
foreign Count. I appeal to the great Earls whom I see before me--to you,
illustrious Leofric; to you, renowned Siward--what value would ye set on
your earldoms, if ye had not the heart and the power to see right done to
the dwellers therein?"

"What was the course I proposed? Instead of martial execution, which
would involve the whole burgh in one sentence, I submitted that the reeve
and gerefas of the burgh should be cited to appear before the King, and
account for the broil. My lord, though ever most clement and loving to
his good people, either unhappily moved against me, or overswayed by the
foreigners, was counselled to reject this mode of doing justice, which
our laws, as settled under Edgar and Canute, enjoin. And because I would
not,--and I say in the presence of all, because I, Godwin, son of
Wolnoth, durst not, if I would, have entered the free burgh of Dover with
mail on my back and the doomsman at my right hand, these outlanders
induced my lord the King to summon me to attend in person (as for a sin
of my own) the council of the Witan, convened at Gloucester, then filled
with the foreigners, not, as I humbly opined, to do justice to me and my
folk of Dover, but to secure to this Count of Boulogne a triumph over
English liberties, and sanction his scorn for the value of English
lives."

"I hesitated, and was menaced with outlawry; I armed in self-defence, and
in defence of the laws of England; I armed, that men might not be
murdered on their hearth-stones, nor children trampled under the hoofs of
a stranger's war-steed. My lord the King gathered his troops round 'the
cross and the martlets.' Yon noble earls, Siward and Leofric, came to
that standard, as (knowing not then my cause) was their duty to the
Basileus of Britain. But when they knew my cause, and saw with me the
dwellers of the land, against me the outland aliens, they righteously
interposed. An armistice was concluded; I agreed to refer all matters to
a Witan held where it is held this day. My troops were disbanded; but
the foreigners induced my lord not only