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in setting aside Harthacnut they showed no will to
set aside his father's line. Not a cry was raised
for the children of Æthelred. Cnut's death, indeed,
had at once been followed by a descent of the
Ætheling Eadward with forty Norman ships at
Southampton, but the attack had failed, and its
failure was decisive.

It was Cnut's elder son, Harald -- "Harefoot," as
he was called for his swiftness of foot -- who, Dane as
he was, at any rate represented an England separate
from Denmark, that Leofric and the "lithsmen," a
merchant-gild of London, called to the throne. The
hus-carls of the dead king were still with Emma at
Winchester, and a word from Godwine would have
plunged England into war. But warrior as he had
shown himself in earlier days, it is the noblest trait
in the character of Godwine throughout his political
career that he shrank from civil bloodshed. The
Witan gathered at Oxford to decide the question of
the succession; Leofric demanded a division of the
realm, and stubborn as was Godwine's resistance,
he yielded at last to the doom of his fellow nobles.
For the moment, indeed, his influence, and it may
be dread of the dead king's hus-carls, saved his own
earldom, which was suffered to remain faithful to
Harthacnut; but the rest of England took Harald
for its king.

Harald
Harefoot.

It was, however, impossible that such a division
of the realm could last long. The strife which had
again broken the land into two parts was indeed
the renewal of the old contest between Wessex and
the rest of England; but the new attitude of London
marked a decisive and important change. From

Division
of Eng-
land.

-462-

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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: 462.
    
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