rried on a desultory war with the
intruders, and then died, leaving it undecided. His son Eadmund,
nicknamed Ironside, continued the contest for a few months; but in the
autumn of 1016 he died--poisoned, the English said, by Cnut--and Cnut
succeeded to undisputed sway. He at once assumed Wessex as his own
peculiar dominion, and the political history of the English ends for two
centuries. Their social life went on, of course, as ever; but it was the
life of a people in strict subjection to foreign rulers--Danish, Norman,
or Angevin. The story of the next twenty-five years at least belongs to
the chronicles of Scandinavian Britain.

At the end of that time, however, there was a slight reaction. Cnut and
his sons had bound the kingdom roughly into one; and the death of
Harthacnut left an opportunity for the return of a descendant of AElfred.
But the English choice fell upon one who was practically a foreigner.
Eadward, son of AEthelred by Ymma of Normandy, had lived in his mother's
country during the greater part of his life. Recalled by Earl Godwine
and the witan, he came back to England a Norman, rather than an
Englishman. The administration remained really in the hands of Godwine
himself, and of the Danish or Danicised aristocracy. But Mercia and
Northumbria still stood apart from Wessex, and once procured the exile
of Godwine himself. The great earl returned, however, and at his death
passed on his power to his son Harold, a Danicised Englishman of great
rough ability, such as suited the hard times on which he was cast.
Harold employed the lifetime of Eadward, who was childless, in preparing
for his own succession. The king died in 1066, and Harold was quietly
chosen at once by the witan. He was the last Englishman who ever sat
upon the throne of England.

The remaining story belongs chiefly to the annals of Norman Britain.
Harold was assailed at once from either side. On the north, his brother
Tostig, whom he had expelled from Northumbria, led against him his
namesake, Harold Hardrada, king of Norway. On the south, William of
Normandy, Eadward's cousin, claimed the right to present himself to the
English electors. Eadward's death, in fact, had broken up the temporary
status, and left England once more a prey to barbaric Scandinavians from
Denmark, or civilised Scandinavians from Normandy. The English
themselves had no organisation which could withstand either, and no
national unity to promote such organisation in fut