less
boughs; and so Edith and Harold were betrothed by the grave of the son of
Cerdic. And from the line of Cerdic had come, since Ethelbert, all the
Saxon kings who with sword and with sceptre had reigned over Saxon
England.

BOOK VI.
AMBITION.

CHAPTER I.

There was great rejoicing in England. King Edward had been induced to
send Alred the prelate [139] to the court of the German Emperor, for his
kinsman and namesake, Edward Atheling, the son of the great Ironsides.
In his childhood, this Prince, with his brother Edmund, had been
committed by Canute to the charge of his vassal, the King of Sweden; and
it has been said (though without sufficient authority), that Canute's
design was, that they should be secretly made away with. The King of
Sweden, however, forwarded the children to the court of Hungary; they
were there honourably reared and received. Edmund died young, without
issue. Edward married a daughter of the German Emperor, and during the
commotions in England, and the successive reigns of Harold Harefoot,
Hardicanute, and the Confessor, had remained forgotten in his exile,
until now suddenly recalled to England as the heir presumptive of his
childless namesake. He arrived with Agatha his wife, one infant son,
Edgar, and two daughters, Margaret and Christina.

Great were the rejoicings. The vast crowd that had followed the royal
visitors in their procession to the old London palace (not far from St.
Paul's) in which they were lodged, yet swarmed through the streets, when
two thegns who had personally accompanied the Atheling from Dover, and
had just taken leave of him, now emerged from the palace, and with some
difficulty made their way through the crowded streets.

The one in the dress and short hair imitated from the Norman,--was our
old friend Godrith, whom the reader may remember as the rebuker of
Taillefer, and the friend of Mallet de Graville; the other, in a plain
linen Saxon tunic, and the gonna worn on state occasions, to which he
seemed unfamiliar, but with heavy gold bracelets on his arms, long haired
and bearded, was Vebba, the Kentish thegn, who had served as nuncius from
Godwin to Edward.

"Troth and faith!" said Vebba, wiping his brow, "this crowd is enow to
make plain roan stark wode. I would not live in London for all the gauds
in the goldsmith's shops, or all the treasures in King Edward's vaults.
My tongue is as parched as a hay-field in the weyd-month. [140] Holy