On the other hand, there are difficulties about the belief that this position was conferred on Harold by any formal vote of the Witan. It is plain that a perfectly free choice of the King during the actual vacancy was a right which the English people, or their leaders, prized very dearly. All attempts to limit the choice of the electors beforehand had always signally failed.^[1254] Since the abortive scheme of Æthelwulf, nothing at all answering to a King of the Romans had been seen in England.^[1255] And if there were some reasons which, under present circumstances, might make such an unusual course specially desirable, there were other reasons which told against it with nearly equal force. With the royal house on the verge of extinction, with such a competitor as William carefully watching the course of events, it was most desirable to settle the succession with as much certainty as the laws of an elective monarchy allowed. It was most desirable that the successor to the throne should be the man most fitted for the highest of offices, the wisest head and the stoutest arm in the land. It was, in a word, the wish of every clear-sighted patriot that the successor of Eadward should be no other than Earl Harold. But, on the other hand, the choice of Earl Harold, or of any other man not of kingly blood, was something strange and unprecedented, something which might well shock the feelings and prejudices of men. The choice of a new King would in fact be the choice of a new dynasty; it would be to wipe out a sentiment as old as the days when the first West-Saxon set foot on British ground; it would be to transfer the Crown of Wessex, of England, of Britain, from the house of Cerdic, of Ecgberht, and of Æthelstan to the house of Godwine the son of Wulfnoth. Men might not as yet be so ready for so momentous a change as they certainly were nine years |Possible claims of young Eadgar.| later. And an irrevocable decision in favour of Harold might well be looked on as a wrong done to a third possible competitor. The royal house, though on the verge of extinction, was not yet extinct. The Ætheling had left a son, the young Eadgar. The son was undoubtedly not entitled to the same constitutional preference as his father. But in some respects he was a more promising candidate than his father. Like the renowned Bastard himself, he was little, but he would grow.^[1256] If a vacancy happened at once, his claims could hardly be pressed. But the King might live many years, and Eadgar might succeed his great-uncle in all the vigour of early manhood. He was not indeed, like his father, an Englishman born, the son of an English King by an English mother. But then he might be, as his father had not been, brought up with the feelings of an Englishman, of a destined ruler of England. Nine years before the death of Eadward, men might well deem that it was not expedient, by any premature declaration in favour of the great Earl, to cut off the chances of a succession in many ways so desirable as that of the young Ætheling. If King Eadward lived long enough to make Eadgar’s succession possible and expedient, that succession might, like that of his father, form a better check to the ambition of William than the succession of Harold.

On the whole then it is perhaps safer not to suppose any formal act of the Witan on behalf of Harold. The circumstances of the case may be explained by supposing that Eadward promised Harold his recommendation in case of his own death during Eadgar’s childhood. It would be a sort of understood thing that, in case of such an event, the Earl of the West-Saxons would be a candidate for the Crown with every chance of success. As Harold’s renown increased, as the chances of Eadward’s life grew weaker, as Eadgar’s incapacity became more and more manifest, men would look with more and more certainty to the great Earl as their future King.^[1257] Without any formal decree, he would, by common consent, step into the position, or more than the position, of a born Ætheling, and he would find himself insensibly sharing the powers, and even the titles, of royalty. And we cannot doubt that the great rival beyond sea was carefully watching every step of this process. If we realize that Harold—the Duke of the English—was virtually, if not formally, the designated successor to the Crown, we can still better understand the eagerness of William to obtain by any means the Earl’s recognition of his claims. It was not merely to bind the most powerful man in the land to his cause; it was to obtain what was virtually an abdication from one who was virtually the destined heir.

The famous oath of Harold is so uncertain as to its date and all its circumstances that it might be treated without impropriety at almost any stage of my narrative. But, as it is so uncertain, as it is recorded by no contemporary English writer, I prefer to put off its consideration till it is convenient to take up again the thread of Norman affairs, to examine fully into William’s claims, and to describe his preparations to assert those claims. Meanwhile we have to see how Harold ruled over England, now that he was without an equal competitor within the land. Save the shires ruled by the turbulent Ælfgar, the government of all England was now divided between himself and his brothers; and there was now nothing but the life of the reigning King between him and the English Crown.