The great national reaction under Godwine and Harold made England once more England for a few years.  But this change, happy as it was, could not altogether do away with the effects of the French predilections of Eadward.  With Eadward, then, the Norman Conquest really begins.  The men of the generation before the Conquest, the men whose eyes were not to behold the event itself, but who were to do all that they could do to advance or retard it, are now in the full maturity of life, in the full possession of power.

Eadward is on the throne of England; Godwine, Leofric, and Siward divide among them the administration of the realm.  The next generation, the warriors of Stamfordbridge and Senlac, of York and Ely, are fast growing into maturity.  Harold Hadrada is already pursuing his wild career of night-errantry in distant lands, and is astonishing the world by his exploits in Russia and Sicily, at Constantinople and at Jerusalem.

The younger warriors of the Conquest, Eadwine and Morcere and Waltheof and Hereward, were probably born, but they must still have been in their cradles or in their mothers’ arms.  But, among the leaders of Church and State, Ealdred, who lived to place the crown on the head both of Harold and of William, is already a great prelate, abbot of the great house of Tewkesbury, soon to succeed Lyfing in the chair of Worcester.

Tostig must have been on the verge of manhood; Swegen and Harold were already men, bold and vigorous, ready to march at their father’s bidding, and before long to affect the destiny of their country for evil and for good.  Beyond the sea, William, still a boy in years but a man in conduct and counsel, is holding his own among the storms of a troubled minority, and learning those arts of the statesman and the warrior which fitted him to become the wisest ruler of Normandy, the last and greatest conqueror of England.

The actors in the great drama are ready for their parts; the ground is gradually preparing for the scene of their performance.  The great struggle of nations and tongues and principles in which each of them had his share, the struggle in which William of Normandy and Harold of England stand forth as worthy rivals of the noblest of prizes, will form the subject of the next, the chief and central portion of my history.

The struggle between Normans and Englishmen began with the accession of Eadward in 1042, although the actual subjugation of England by force of arms was still twenty-four years distant.  The thought of another Danish king was now hateful.  “All folk chose Eadward to King.”  As the son of AEthelred and Emma, the brother of the murdered and half-canonised Alfred, he had long been-familiar to English imaginations.  Eadward, and Eadward alone, stood forth as the heir of English royalty, the representative of English nationality.  In his behalf the popular voice spoke out at once, and unmistakably.  His popular election took place