em,
and shouting for the English Earl and the English Harold, against the
Norman favourites!

The King was at first as blind and stubborn as kings usually have been
whensoever they have been in the hands of monks. But the people rallied
so thickly round the old Earl and his son, and the old Earl was so steady
in demanding without bloodshed the restoration of himself and his family
to their rights, that at last the court took the alarm. The Norman
Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Norman Bishop of London, surrounded by
their retainers, fought their way out of London, and escaped from Essex
to France in a fishing-boat. The other Norman favourites dispersed in
all directions. The old Earl and his sons (except Sweyn, who had
committed crimes against the law) were restored to their possessions and
dignities. Editha, the virtuous and lovely Queen of the insensible King,
was triumphantly released from her prison, the convent, and once more sat
in her chair of state, arrayed in the jewels of which, when she had no
champion to support her rights, her cold-blooded husband had deprived
her.

The old Earl Godwin did not long enjoy his restored fortune. He fell
down in a fit at the King's table, and died upon the third day
afterwards. Harold succeeded to his power, and to a far higher place in
the attachment of the people than his father had ever held. By his
valour he subdued the King's enemies in many bloody fights. He was
vigorous against rebels in Scotland--this was the time when Macbeth slew
Duncan, upon which event our English Shakespeare, hundreds of years
afterwards, wrote his great tragedy; and he killed the restless Welsh
King GRIFFITH, and brought his head to England.

What Harold was doing at sea, when he was driven on the French coast by a
tempest, is not at all certain; nor does it at all matter. That his ship
was forced by a storm on that shore, and that he was taken prisoner,
there is no doubt. In those barbarous days, all shipwrecked strangers
were taken prisoners, and obliged to pay ransom. So, a certain Count
Guy, who was the Lord of Ponthieu where Harold's disaster happened,
seized him, instead of relieving him like a hospitable and Christian lord
as he ought to have done, and expected to make a very good thing of it.

But Harold sent off immediately to Duke William of Normandy, complaining
of this treatment; and the Duke no sooner heard of it than he ordered
Harold to be escorted to the ancient t