knights.

All silently they marched to a spot where the Moorish king, with
thirty-six chieftains, lay encamped, and at daylight the knights
of the Cid made a sudden attack. The king awoke. It seemed to him
that there were coming against him full seventy thousand knights,
all dressed in robes as white as snow, and before them rode a knight,
taller than all the rest, holding in his left hand a snow-white
banner and in the other a sword which seemed of fire. So afraid
were the Moorish chief and his men that they fled to the sea, and
twenty thousand of them were drowned as they tried to reach their
ships.

There is a Latin inscription near the tomb of the Cid which may
be translated:

Brave and unconquered, famous in triumphs of war,
Enclosed in this tomb lies Roderick the Great of Bivar.

EDWARD THE CONFESSOR

KING FROM 1042-1066

I

The Danish kings who followed Canute were not like him. They were
cruel, unjust rulers and all the people of England hated them.
So when in the year 1042 the last of them died, Edward, the son
of the Saxon Ethelred, was elected king.

He is known in history as Edward the Confessor. He was a man of
holy life and after his death was made a saint by the Church, with
the title of "the Confessor." Though born in England, he passed the
greater part of his life in Normandy as an exile from his native
land. He was thirty-eight years old when he returned from Normandy
to become king.

As he had lived so long in Normandy he always seemed more like a
Norman than one of English birth. He generally spoke the French
language and he chose Normans to fill many of the highest offices
in his kingdom.

For the first eight years of his reign there was perfect peace
in his kingdom, except in the counties of Kent and Essex, where
pirates from the North Sea made occasional attacks.

[Illustration: NORWEGIAN PIRATES ON THE COAST OF KENT]

These pirates were mostly Norwegians, whose leader was a barbarian
named Kerdric. They would come sweeping down upon the Kentish coast
in many ships, make a landing where there were no soldiers, and
fall upon the towns and plunder them. Then, as swiftly and suddenly
as they had come, they would sail away homeward, before they could
be captured.

One day Kerdic's fleet arrived off the coast, and as no opposing
force was visible, the pirates landed and started toward the nearest
town to plunder it.

By a quick march a body of English soldiers reached t