wars. He was wedded to a wife of Danish blood, and his two eldest children, Swein and Harold, bore the Danish names of Cnut's elder boys. It was no wonder, therefore, that he supported, on Cnut's death, the continuance of that union of England with Denmark which Harthacnut's succession se- cured.
But the internal policy of both king and minis- ter had made their outer policy impossible. Their whole system of government and administration had nursed English feeling into a new and vigorous life. To England Cnut had been an English king. If he had ruled other lands it was from Winchester, as dependencies of his English crown. The very Danes who had settled in England had learned through his long and peaceful reign to look on themselves as Englishmen, and on Denmark as a foreign land. But Harthacnut had scarcely been seen in England; from early childhood he had been trained in Denmark as its king, and it might well be thought that his rule meant the rule of England from a Danish throne. If the influence of Godwine and the Lady Emma at Winchester was strong enough to hold the West-Saxon earldom true to the claims of Harthacnut, the rest of England called for a national king. In pleading for the succession of Harthacnut, Godwine doubtless seemed to the peo- ple at large to be pleading for Danish rule. To his fellow earls he seemed no doubt pleading for his own, and political rivalry united with national feel- ing in urging Earl Leofric of Mercia to withstand him. It marks the hold which Cnut's greatness had given him on the affections of Englishmen, that even
Godwine's Policy.
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Publication Information: Book Title: The Conquest of England. Contributors: John Richard Green - author, Alice Stopford Green - author. Publisher: Harper & Brothers Publishers. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1884. Page Number: 461.
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