ons were still being added to by
royal grants. But soon England began to feel how great is the evil when
a king and those immediately around him are estranged from the mass of
his people in feeling.

To the French favourites who gradually crowded the court of Eadward the
name, the speech, and the laws of England were things on which their
ignorant pride looked with utter contempt.

Count Eustace of Boulogne, now brother-in-law of the king of the
English, presently came, like the rest of the world, to the English
Court. The king was spending the autumn at Gloucester. Thither came
Count Eustace, and, after his satisfactory interview with the king, he
turned his face homewards. When a few miles from Dover he felt himself,
in a region specially devoted to Godwine, to be still more thoroughly in
an enemy's country than in other parts of England, and he and all his
company took the precaution of putting on their coats of mail.

The proud Frenchmen expected to find free quarters at Dover, and they
attempted to lodge themselves at their pleasure in the houses of the
burghers. One Englishman resisted, and was struck dead on the spot. The
count's party then rode through the town, cutting and slaying at
pleasure. In a skirmish which quickly ensued twenty Englishmen and
nineteen Frenchmen were slain.

Count Eustace and the remnant of the party hastened back to Gloucester,
and told the story after their own fashion. On the mere accusation of a
stranger, the English king condemned his own subjects without a hearing.
He sent for Godwine, as earl of the district in which lay the offending
town, and commanded him to inflict chastisement on Dover. The English
champion was then in the midst of a domestic rejoicing. He had, like the
king, been strengthening himself by a foreign alliance, and had just
connected his house with that of a foreign prince. Tostig, the third son
of Godwine, had just married Judith, the daughter of Baldwin of
Flanders.

Godwine, however, bidden without the least legal proof of offence, to
visit with all the horrors of fire and sword, was not long in choosing
his course. Official duty and public policy, no less than abstract
justice and humanity, dictated a distinct refusal. Now or never a stand
was to be made against strangers, and the earl demanded a legal trial
for the burghers of Dover.

But there were influences about Eadward which cut off all hope of a
peaceful settlement of the matter. Eustace probabl