Sussex.

[122] Very few of the greater Saxon nobles could pretend to a lengthened
succession in their demesnes. The wars with the Danes, the many
revolutions which threw new families uppermost, the confiscations and
banishments, and the invariable rule of rejecting the heir, if not of
mature years at his father's death, caused rapid changes of dynasty in
the several earldoms. But the family of Leofric had just claims to a
very rare antiquity in their Mercian lordship. Leofric was the sixth
Earl of Chester and Coventry, in lineal descent from his namesake,
Leofric the First; he extended the supremacy of his hereditary lordship
over all Mercia. See DUGDALE, Monast. vol. iii. p. 102; and PALGRAVE's
Commonwealth, Proofs and Illustrations, p. 291.

[123] AILRED de Vit. Edw.

[124] Dunwich, now swallowed up by the sea.--Hostile element to the
house of Godwin.

[125] Windsor.

[126] The chronicler, however, laments that the household ties, formerly
so strong with the Anglo-Saxon, had been much weakened in the age prior
to the Conquest.

[127] Some authorities state Winchester as the scene of these memorable
festivities. Old Windsor Castle is supposed by Mr. Lysons to have
occupied the site of a farm of Mr. Isherwood's surrounded by a moat,
about two miles distant from New Windsor. He conjectures that it was
still occasionally inhabited by the Norman kings till 1110. The ville
surrounding it only contained ninety-five houses, paying gabel-tax, in
the Norman survey.

[128] AILRED, de Vit. Edward. Confess.

[129] "Is it astonishing," asked the people (referring to Edward's
preference of the Normans), "that the author and support of Edward's
reign should be indignant at seeing new men from a foreign nation raised
above him, and yet never does he utter one harsh word to the man whom he
himself created king?"--HAZLITT's THIERRY, vol. i. p. 126.

This is the English account (versus the Norman). There can be little
doubt that it is the true one.

[130] Henry of Huntingdon, etc.

[131] Henry of Huntingdon; Bromt. Chron., etc.

[132] Hoveden.

[133] The origin of the word leach (physician), which has puzzled some
inquirers, is from lids or leac, a body. Leich is the old Saxon word for
surgeon.

[134] Sharon Turner, vol. i. p. 472.

[135] Fosbrooke.

[136] Aegir, the Scandinavian god of the ocean. Not one of the Aser, or
Asas (the celestial race), but sprung from the giants. Ran or Rana, his