f his kingdom and
of the Saxon dynasty continued wholly uninterrupted after his death.
Contentions and struggles between the two great races of Saxons
and Danes continued for some centuries to agitate the island. The
particular details of these contentions have in these days, in a
great measure, lost their interest for all but professed historical
scholars. It is only the history of great leading events and the lives
of really extraordinary men, in the annals of early ages, which can
now attract the general attention even of cultivated minds. The vast
movements which have occurred and are occurring in the history of
mankind in the present century, throw every thing except what is
really striking and important in early history into the shade.

The era which comes next in the order of time to that of Alfred in the
course of English history, as worthy to arrest general attention, is,
as we have already said, that of William the Conqueror. The life of
this sovereign forms the subject of a separate volume of this series.
He lived two centuries after Alfred's day; and although, for the
reasons above given, a full chronological narration of the contentions
between the Saxon and Danish lines of kings which took place during
this interval would be of little interest or value, some general
knowledge of the state of the kingdom at this time is important, and
may best be communicated in connection with the story of Godwin.

Godwin was by birth a Saxon peasant, of Warwickshire. At the time when
he arrived at manhood, and was tending his father's flocks and herds
like other peasants' sons, the Saxons and the Danes were at war. It
seems that one of Alfred's descendants, named Ethelred, displeased his
people by his misgovernment, and was obliged to retire from England.
He went across the Channel, and married there the sister of a Norman
chief named Richard. Her name was Emma. Ethelred hoped by this
alliance to obtain Richard's assistance in enabling him to recover his
kingdom. The Danish population, however, took advantage of his absence
to put one of their own princes upon the throne. His name was Canute.
He figures in English history, accordingly, among the other English
kings, as Canute the Dane, that appellation being given him to mark
the distinction of his origin in respect to the kings who preceded and
followed him, as they were generally of the Saxon line.

It was this Canute of whom the famous story is told that, in order to