is titles and property, to appear before the court to answer this
disobedience. The Earl refused to appear. He, his eldest son Harold,
and his second son Sweyn, hastily raised as many fighting men as their
utmost power could collect, and demanded to have Count Eustace and his
followers surrendered to the justice of the country. The King, in his
turn, refused to give them up, and raised a strong force. After some
treaty and delay, the troops of the great Earl and his sons began to fall
off. The Earl, with a part of his family and abundance of treasure,
sailed to Flanders; Harold escaped to Ireland; and the power of the great
family was for that time gone in England. But, the people did not forget
them.

Then, Edward the Confessor, with the true meanness of a mean spirit,
visited his dislike of the once powerful father and sons upon the
helpless daughter and sister, his unoffending wife, whom all who saw her
(her husband and his monks excepted) loved. He seized rapaciously upon
her fortune and her jewels, and allowing her only one attendant, confined
her in a gloomy convent, of which a sister of his--no doubt an unpleasant
lady after his own heart--was abbess or jailer.

Having got Earl Godwin and his six sons well out of his way, the King
favoured the Normans more than ever. He invited over WILLIAM, DUKE OF
NORMANDY, the son of that Duke who had received him and his murdered
brother long ago, and of a peasant girl, a tanner's daughter, with whom
that Duke had fallen in love for her beauty as he saw her washing clothes
in a brook. William, who was a great warrior, with a passion for fine
horses, dogs, and arms, accepted the invitation; and the Normans in
England, finding themselves more numerous than ever when he arrived with
his retinue, and held in still greater honour at court than before,
became more and more haughty towards the people, and were more and more
disliked by them.

The old Earl Godwin, though he was abroad, knew well how the people felt;
for, with part of the treasure he had carried away with him, he kept
spies and agents in his pay all over England.

Accordingly, he thought the time was come for fitting out a great
expedition against the Norman-loving King. With it, he sailed to the
Isle of Wight, where he was joined by his son Harold, the most gallant
and brave of all his family. And so the father and son came sailing up
the Thames to Southwark; great numbers of the people declaring for th