w. His spirit seemed to have risen from the weight it took
from the sluggish blood of his father, Ethelred the Unready, and to have
remounted to the brighter and earlier sources of ancestral heroes.
Worthy in that hour he seemed to boast the blood and wield the sceptre of
Athelstan and Alfred. [77]

Thus spoke the King:

"Right worthy and beloved, my ealdermen, earls, and thegns of England;
noble and familiar, my friends and guests, counts and chevaliers of
Normandy, my mother's land; and you, our spiritual chiefs, above all ties
of birth and country, Christendom your common appanage, and from Heaven
your seignories and fiefs,--hear the words of Edward, the King of England
under grace of the Most High. The rebels are in our river; open yonder
lattice, and you will see the piled shields glittering from their barks,
and hear the hum of their hosts. Not a bow has yet been drawn, not a
sword left its sheath; yet on the opposite side of the river are our
fleets of forty sail--along the strand, between our palace and the gates
of London, are arrayed our armies. And this pause because Godwin the
traitor hath demanded truce and his nuncius waits without. Are ye
willing that we should hear the message? or would ye rather that we
dismiss the messenger unheard, and pass at once, to rank and to sail, the
war-cry of a Christian king, 'Holy Crosse and our Lady!'"

The King ceased, his left hand grasping firm the leopard head carved on
his throne, and his sceptre untrembling in his lifted hand.

A murmur of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, the war-cry of the Normans, was heard
amongst the stranger-knights of the audience; but haughty and arrogant as
those strangers were, no one presumed to take precedence, in England's
danger, of men English born.

Slowly then rose Alred, Bishop of Winchester, the worthiest prelate in
all the land. [78]

"Kingly son," said the bishop, "evil is the strife between men of the
same blood and lineage, nor justified but by extremes, which have not yet
been made clear to us. And ill would it sound throughout England were it
said that the King's council gave, perchance, his city of London to sword
and fire, and rent his land in twain, when a word in season might have
disbanded yon armies, and given to your throne a submissive subject,
where now you are menaced by a formidable rebel. Wherefore, I say, admit
the nuncius."

Scarcely had Alred resumed his seat, before Robert the Norman prelate of
Canterbury