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Rh increased, the anxiety of the princes concerning the succession to the Empire became manifest. Henry of Bavaria and Otto of Swabia, with bishops and other nobles, met together and agreed, in the event of the king's death, to elect as his successor Otto's nephew Henry, who had followed Otto in the Lorraine palatinate, and was likewise a nephew of the king's confidant, Archbishop Herman, and a grandson of Otto II. The king recovered. Happily for the schemers, he was not a Tudor; but the occurrence must have deepened his regret when the child just at this time born to him proved to be another daughter. This eldest daughter of Henry and Agnes, Matilda, died in her fifteenth year as the bride of Rudolf of Swabia, the antagonist of her brother Henry IV.

The year 1046 opened again, as so many before and after it, with misery to the country people. In Saxony there was widespread disease and death. Among others died the stout old Margrave Eckhard, who, "wealthiest of margraves," made his kinsman the king his heir.

The king, after attending Eckhard's funeral, turned to the Netherlands, where Duke Godfrey's incapable younger brother, Gozelo Duke of Lower Lorraine, was dead ; here too Count Dietrich (Theodoric) of Holland was unlawfully laying hold on the land round Flushing, belonging to the vacant duchy.

At Utrecht, where he celebrated Easter, Henry prepared one of his favourite river campaigns against Dietrich. Its success was complete, both the lands and the count falling into Henry's hands. Flushing was given in fief to the Bishop of Utrecht, and Henry, keeping Pentecost at Aix-la-Chapelle, determined to settle once for all the affairs of Lorraine.

The means he used would appear to have been three: the conciliation of Godfrey, the strengthening of the bishops, and the grant of Lower Lorraine to a family powerful enough to hold it. At Aix Godfrey, released from Gibichenstein, threw himself at Henry's feet, was "pitied," and restored to his dukedom of Upper Lorraine. This transformation from landless captive to duke might have conciliated some; but Henry did not know his man. Duke Godfrey's hereditary county of Verdun was not restored, but granted to Richard, Bishop of the city. Lower Lorraine was given to one of the hostile house of Luxemburg, Frederick, brother of Duke Henry of Bavaria, whose uncle Dietrich had long held the Lorraine bishopric of Metz.

At the same assembly there took place an event of importance for the North and in the history of Henry's own house, viz. the investiture of Adalbert, Provost of Halberstadt, with the Archbishopric of Bremen, the northern metropolis, which held ecclesiastical jurisdiction, not only in the coast district of German Saxony, but in all the Scandinavian lands and over the Slavs of the Baltic.