There is not the slightest sign of any intention on the part of Eadward during his later years to nominate William to the Witan as future king.  The two streams of English and Norman history were joined together in the year when the two sovereigns met for the only time in their reigns.  Those streams again diverged.  England shook off the Norman influence to all outward appearance, and became once more the England of AEthelstan and Eadgar.  But the effects of Eadgar’s Norman tendencies were by no means wholly wiped away.  Normans still remained in the land, and circumstances constituted secondary causes of the expedition of William.

It was in the year 1051 that the influence of strangers reached its height.  During the first nine years of Eadward’s reign we find no signs of any open warfare between the national and the Normanising parties.  The course of events shows that Godwine’s power was being practically undermined, but the great earl was still Jutwardly in the enjoyment of royal favour, and his fast possessions were still being added to by royal grants.  But soon England began to feel how great is the evil when a king and those immediately around him are estranged from the mass of his people in feeling.

To the French favourites who gradually crowded the court of Eadward the name, the speech, and the laws of England were things on which their ignorant pride looked with utter contempt.

Count Eustace of Boulogne, now brother-in-law of the king of the English, presently came, like the rest of the world, to the English Court.  The king was spending the autumn at Gloucester.  Thither came Count Eustace, and, after his satisfactory interview with the king, he turned his face homewards.  When a few miles from Dover he felt himself, in a region specially devoted to Godwine, to be still more thoroughly in an enemy’s country than in other parts of England, and he and all his company took the precaution of putting on their coats of mail.

The proud Frenchmen expected to find free quarters at Dover, and they attempted to lodge themselves at their pleasure in the houses of the burghers.  One Englishman resisted, and was struck dead on the spot.  The count’s party then rode through the town, cutting and slaying at pleasure.  In a skirmish which quickly ensued twenty Englishmen and nineteen Frenchmen were slain.

Count Eustace and the remnant of the party hastened back to Gloucester, and told the story after their own fashion.  On the mere accusation of a stranger, the English king condemned his own subjects without a hearing.  He sent for Godwine, as earl of the district in which lay the offending town, and commanded him to inflict chastisement on Dover.  The English champion was then in the midst of a domestic rejoicing.  He had, like the king, been strengthening himself by a foreign alliance, and had just connected his house with that of a foreign prince.  Tostig, the third son of Godwine, had just married Judith, the daughter of Baldwin of Flanders.