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Tostig must have been on the verge of manhood; Swegen and Harold were already men, bold and vigorous, ready to march at their father's bidding, and before long to affect the destiny of their country for evil and for good. Beyond the sea, William, still a boy in years but a man in conduct and counsel, is holding his own among the storms of a troubled minority, and learning those arts of the statesman and the warrior which fitted him to become the wisest ruler of Normandy, the last and greatest conqueror of England.

The actors in the great drama are ready for their parts; the ground is gradually preparing for the scene of their performance. The great struggle of nations and tongues and principles in which each of them had his share, the struggle in which William of Normandy and Harold of England stand forth as worthy rivals of the noblest of prizes, will form the subject of the next, the chief and central portion of my history.

The struggle between Normans and Englishmen began with the accession of Eadward in 1042, although the actual subjugation of England by force of arms was still twenty-four years distant. The thought of another Danish king was now hateful. "All folk chose Eadward to King." As the son of Æthelred and Emma, the brother of the murdered and half-canonised Alfred, he had long been-familiar to English imaginations. Eadward, and Eadward alone, stood forth as the heir of English royalty, the representative of English nationality. In his behalf the popular voice spoke out at once, and unmistakably. His popular election took place in June, immediately on the death of Harthacnut, and even before his burial. Eadward, then, was king, and he reigned as every English king before him had reigned, by that union of popular election and royal descent which formed the essence of all ancient Teutonic kingship. He was crowned at Winchester, April 3, 1043. But by virtue of his peculiar character, his natural place was not on the throne of England, but at the head of a Norman abbey, for all his best qualities were those of a monk. Like him father, he was constantly under the dominion of favourites.

It was to the evil choice of his favourites during the early part of his reign that most of the misfortunes of his time were owing, and that a still more direct path was opened for the ambition of his Norman kinsman. In the latter part of his reign, either by happy accident or returning good sense, led him to a better choice. Without a guide he could not reign, but the good fortune of his later years gave him the wisest and noblest of all guides.

We have now reached the first appearance of the illustrious man round whom the main interest of this history will henceforth centre. The second son of Godwine lived to be the last of our kings, the hero and martyr of our native freedom. The few recorded actions of Harold, Earl of the East Angles, could hardly have enabled me to look forward to the glorious career of Harold, Earl of the West Saxons, King of the English.

Tall in stature, beautiful in countenance, of a bodily strength whose memory still lives in the rude pictorial art of his time, he was foremost alike in the active courage and in the passive endurance of the warrior. It is plain that in him, no less than in his more successful, and, therefore, more famous, rival, we have to admire not only the mere animal courage, but that true skill of the leader of armies which would have placed both Harold and William high among the captains of any age.

Great as Harold was in war, his character as a civil ruler is still more remarkable, still more worthy of admiration. The most prominent feature in his character is his singular gentleness and mercy. Never, either in warfare or in civil strife, do we find Harold bearing hardly upon an enemy. From the time of his advancement to the practical government of the kingdom there is not a single harsh or cruel action with which he can be charged.

Such was the man who, seemingly in the fourth year of Eadward, in the twenty-fourth of his own age, was invested with the rule of one of the great divisions of England, who, seven years later, became the virtual ruler of the kingdom; who, at last, twenty-one years from his first elevation, received, alone among English kings, the crown of England as the free gift of her people, and, alone among English kings, died axe in hand on her soil in the defence of England against foreign invaders.

William of Normandy bears a name which must for ever stand forth among the foremost of mankind. No man that ever trod this earth was endowed with greater natural gifts; to no man was it ever granted to accomplish greater things. No man ever did his work more effectually at the moment; no man ever left his work behind him as more truly an abiding possession for all time. In his character one feature stands out pre-eminently above all others. Throughout his career we admire in him the embodiment in the highest degree that human nature will allow of the fixed purpose and the unbending will.