of England.

Now we come to

THE REIGN OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR,

who, we are told, was heartily chosen by all the people, for the two
very good reasons, that he was an Englishman by birth, and the only
man of either the English or the Danish royal families who was at
hand. He was the son of Ethelred and Emma, and at the Christmas
festival of his coronation there was great rejoicing. As his early
training had been at the court of his uncle, Richard the Good, in
Normandy, he had learnt to prefer Norman-French customs and life to
those of the English. During his reign, therefore, he brought over
many strangers and appointed them to high ecclesiastical and other
offices, and Norman influence and refinement of manners gradually
increased at the English court, and this, of course, led to the more
stately celebration of the Christmas festival. The King himself, being
of a pious and meditative disposition, naturally took more interest in
the religious than the temporal rejoicings, and the administration of
state affairs was left almost entirely to members of the house of
Godwin during the principal part of his reign. Many disturbances
occurred during Edward's reign in different parts of the country,
especially on the Welsh border. At the Christmas meeting of the King
and his Wise Men, at Gloucester, in 1053, it was ordered that Rhys,
the brother of Gruffydd, the South Welsh king, be put to death for his
great plunder and mischief. The same year, the great Earl Godwine,
while dining with the king at Winchester at the Easter feast, suddenly
fell in a fit, died four days after, and was buried in the old
cathedral. A few years later (1065), the Northumbrians complained that
Earl Tostig, Harold's brother, had caused Gospatric, one of the chief
Thanes, to be treacherously murdered when he came to the King's court
the Christmas before. King Edward kept his last Christmas (1065), and
had the meeting of his Wise Men in London instead of Gloucester as
usual. His great object was to finish his new church at Westminster,
and to have it hallowed before he died. He lived just long enough to
have this done. On Innocent's Day the new Minster was consecrated, but
the King was too ill to be there, so the Lady Edith stood in his
stead. And on January 5, 1066, King Edward, the son of Ethelred, died.
On the morning of the day following his death, the body of the
Confessor was laid in the tomb, in his new church; and on the same
day--

HAR