res 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 personal weakness, King Edward's own wishes were likely to be the decisive factor in the choice of his successor, nor have we any record that Harold opposed the candidate whom we know to have received the king's favour shortly after this time.
This candidate, whose appearance in the field with the king's sanction was likely to prove fatal to any aspirations to the throne in which either William or Harold might have begun to indulge, was Edward the Etheling, son of the famous Edward Ironside, and therefore nephew by the half-blood to the Confessor. He had been sent by Cnut into remote exile, and the summons which brought him back to England as its destined heir was the work of King Edward himself. By a strange chance, immediately on his arrival in 1057, and before he had even seen the king, the etheling fell ill and died,  and, although there was something about his end which was rather mysterious, there is nothing to suggest that it was accelerated in the interest of any other pretender to the crown. With his death there really passed away the one promising chance of perpetuating the old English dynasty, for Edgar, the son of the dead etheling, who was to live until 1126 at least, can only have been the merest child in 1057.
It would seem then that 1057 is the earliest possible year from which the rivalry of Wi11iam of Normandy and Harold Godwinson for the throne of England can be dated. The recall of Edward the Etheling suggests that it cannot be placed earlier, while the state of preparedness in which both parties are found at the beginning of 1066 shows that their plans must have been formed for some years at least before the Confessor's death. And there is one mysterious episode which may very possibly have some connection with the change in the succession question caused by the death of Edward the Etheling. In or about 1058 Earl Harold made a tour on the continent, reaching as far as Rome, but also including Normandy and North France generally, and we are told that he made ' arrangements for receiving help from c