death soon after quieted for a while their murmurs.  The king, who had the least share in the transactions of his own reign, and who was of a temper not to perceive his own insignificance, begun in his old age to think of a successor.  He had no children:  for some weak reasons of religion or personal dislike, he had never cohabited with his wife.  He sent for his nephew Edward, the son of Edmund Ironside, out of Hungary, where he had taken refuge; but he died soon after he came to England, leaving a son called Edgar Atheling.  The king himself irresolute in so momentous an affair, died without making any settlement.  His reign was properly that of his great men, or rather of their factions.  All of it that was his own was good.  He was careful of the privileges of his subjects, and took care to have a body of the Saxon laws, very favorable to them, digested and enforced.  He remitted the heavy imposition called Danegelt, amounting to 40,000_l._ a year, which had been constantly collected after the occasion had ceased; he even repaid to his subjects what he found in the treasury at his accession.  In short, there is little in his life that can call his title to sanctity in question, though he can never be reckoned among the great kings.

CHAPTER VI.

HAROLD II.—­INVASION OF THE NORMANS.—­ACCOUNT OF THAT PEOPLE, AND OF THE
STATE OF ENGLAND AT THE TIME OF THE INVASION.

[Sidenote:  Harold II., A.D. 1066.]

Though Edgar Atheling had the best title to the succession, yet Harold, the son of Earl Godwin, on account of the credit of his father, and his own great qualities, which supported and extended the interest of his family, was by the general voice set upon the throne.  The right of Edgar, young, and discovering no great capacity, gave him little disturbance in comparison of the violence of his own brother Tosti, whom for his infamous oppression he had found himself obliged to banish.  This man, who was a tyrant at home and a traitor abroad, insulted the maritime parts with a piratical fleet, whilst he incited all the neighboring princes to fall upon his country.  Harold Harfager, King of Norway, after the conquest of the Orkneys, with a powerful navy hung over the coasts of England.  But nothing troubled Harold so much as the pretensions and the formidable preparation of William, Duke of Normandy, one of the most able, ambitious, and enterprising men of that age.  We have mentioned the partiality of King Edward to the Normans, and the hatred he bore to Godwin, and his family.  The Duke of Normandy, to whom Edward had personal obligations, had taken a tour into England, and neglected no means to improve these dispositions to his own advantage.  It is said that he then received the fullest assurances of being appointed to the succession, and that Harold himself had been sent soon after into Normandy to settle whatever related to it.  This is an obscure transaction, and would,