tter event for the future of his kingdom. His Norman blood, his early residence in the duchy, and the marked predilection which he showed for men of Norman race, very naturally lead to the impression that, in the earlier part of his reign at least, his desire was to provide for the transmission of his inheritance to his mother's family. But even this conclusion is not beyond question. Edward on his accession in 1042 occupied a most difficult position. After twenty-five years of Danish rule a very distinct party in the state wished to maintain the Scandinavian connection. Edward's recognition as king was mainly the work of Earl Godwine and his party, and the earl expected and could enforce full payment for his services. Edward would have shown less than the little intelligence with which he is to be credited if he had failed to see that some counterpoise to the power of his overmighty subject might be found by giving wealth and influence to strangers from across the Channel. Hence arose that stream of Norman immigration which distinguishes the reign and the consequent formation of a royalist, non-national party; for each individual settler must have understood that all he might possess in the island depended on the king's favour. Such a policy was bound sooner or later to produce a reaction on the part of Godwine and his associates; and thus arose the famous crisis of the autumn of 1051. Godwine, trying to reassert his influence in the state, fails to carry with him the other earls of England in an attack on the king's favourites and is driven to flee the country. What Godwine resented was clearly the existence of a rival power at court, and the apathy in his cause of such men as Leofric of Mercia and Siward of Northumbria suggests that he was not recognised by them as in any real sense the champion of national as against foreign influences. With his flight the first period of the reign of Edward the Confessor ends, and in the interval before his restoration William of Normandy made his first appearance on the shores of England.
Of this visit we know very little; the native chronicler of Worcester simply tells us that " Earl William came from over sea with a great company of Frenchmen, and the king received him and as many of his companions as pleased him and let them go again." The question at once presents itself, did Edward at this time make any promise of the English crown to William ? If he ever did make an explicit promise to this effect it can scarcely be placed at any other date, for this was the only occasion after Edward's departure from Normandy in 1042 on which the king and the duke are known to have met in person. The fact that such a promise forms an essential part of the story of the Conquest as told by all Norman writers is an argument in its favour which would more than counterbalance the natural silence of the English authorities, were they much better informed upon matters of high policy than is actually the case. But, after all, the question is really of secondary importance, for in the next year Godwine returned to power, and Edward for the rest of his reign seems to have made no serious attempt to disturb the ascendency of the English party.
The death of Godwine in 1053 made little immediate difference to the political situation in general nor to the existing relations between Normandy and England. The succession of his son Harold to the earldom of Wessex provokes no comment on the part of the contemporary chroniclers; the semi-hereditary character of the great earldoms was by this time recognised for all working purposes. Nevertheless, we can see that the accession of Harold to a provincial government of the first rank, and most probably to the unofficial primacy in the state which had been held by Earl Godwine, takes place among the chief events in the sequence of causes which ended in the great overthrow of 1066. On the other hand we should not be led by the actual cause of the history into the assumption that Harold's designs upon the crown had already begun at this early date. With all his perso