n those days.
Such visits as those which William and Eustace of Boulogne paid at this
time to this country were altogether novelties, and unlikely to be
acceptable to the English mind. We may be sure that every patriotic
Englishman looked with an evil eye on any French-speaking prince who
made his way to the English court.

William came with a great following; he tarried awhile in his cousin's
company; he went away loaded with gifts and honours. And he can hardly
doubt that he went away encouraged by some kind of promise of succeeding
to the kingdom which he now visited as a stranger. Direct heirs were
lacking to the royal house, and William was Eadward's kinsman. The
moment was in every way favourable for suggesting to William on the one
hand, to Eadward on the other, the idea of an arrangement by which
William should succeed to the English crown on Eadward's death. The
Norman writers are full of Eadward's promise to William, and also of
some kind of oath that Harold swore to him. Had either the promise or
the oath been a pure Norman invention, William could never have paraded
both in the way that he did in the eyes of Europe. I admit, then, some
promise of Eadward, some oath of Harold. But when the time came for
Eadward the Confessor to make his final recommendation of a successor,
he certainly changed his purpose; for his last will, so far as such an
expression can be used, was undoubtedly in favour of Harold.

There is not the slightest sign of any intention on the part of Eadward
during his later years to nominate William to the Witan as future king.
The two streams of English and Norman history were joined together in
the year when the two sovereigns met for the only time in their reigns.
Those streams again diverged. England shook off the Norman influence to
all outward appearance, and became once more the England of AEthelstan
and Eadgar. But the effects of Eadgar's Norman tendencies were by no
means wholly wiped away. Normans still remained in the land, and
circumstances constituted secondary causes of the expedition of William.

It was in the year 1051 that the influence of strangers reached its
height. During the first nine years of Eadward's reign we find no signs
of any open warfare between the national and the Normanising parties.
The course of events shows that Godwine's power was being practically
undermined, but the great earl was still Jutwardly in the enjoyment of
royal favour, and his fast possessi