in Gurth's
proposal. The primary, and, to do him justice, the strongest, was in his
native courage and his generous pride. Should he for the first time in
his life shrink from a peril in the discharge of his duty; a peril, too,
so uncertain and vague? Should he suffer Gurth to fulfil the pledge he
himself had taken? And granting even that Gurth were safe from whatever
danger he individually might incur, did it become him to accept the
proxy? Would Gurth's voice, too, be as potent as his own in effecting
the return of the hostages?

The next reasons that swayed him were those he could not avow. In
clearing his way to the English throne, it would be of no mean importance
to secure the friendship of the Norman Duke, and the Norman acquiescence
in his pretensions; it would be of infinite service to remove those
prepossessions against his House, which were still rife with the Normans,
who retained a bitter remembrance of their countrymen decimated [177], it
was said, with the concurrence if not at the order of Godwin, when they
accompanied the ill-fated Alfred to the English shore, and who were yet
sore with their old expulsion from the English court at the return of his
father and himself.

Though it could not enter into his head that William, possessing no party
whatever in England, could himself aspire to the English crown, yet at
Edward's death, there might be pretenders whom the Norman arms could find
ready excuse to sanction. There was the boy Atheling, on the one side,
there was the valiant Norwegian King Hardrada on the other, who might
revive the claims of his predecessor Magnus as heir to the rights of
Canute. So near and so formidable a neighbour as the Court of the
Normans, every object of policy led him to propitiate; and Gurth, with
his unbending hate of all that was Norman, was not, at least, the most
politic envoy he could select for that end. Add to this, that despite
their present reconciliation, Harold could never long count upon amity
with Tostig: and Tostig's connection with William, through their
marriages into the House of Baldwin, was full of danger to a new throne,
to which Tostig would probably be the most turbulent subject: the
influence of this connection how desirable to counteract! [178]

Nor could Harold, who, as patriot and statesman, felt deeply the
necessity of reform and regeneration in the decayed edifice of the
English monarchy, willingly lose an occasion to witness all that Wi