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390 in the death of Edward's brother, Alfred, only a few years before, the West Saxon leader might well have given his support to Svein. He did not however do so, for Svein at the moment was making no headway in Denmark, Accordingly after a short period of indecision, Edward was chosen king by the voice of all the folk of England, and crowned nine months later on Easter Day 1043.

The restoration of Aethelred's line in the person of Edward, known to later generations as Edward the Confessor, freed England from one set of foreign influences, only to introduce another; for Edward, in spite of his direct male descent from Alfred, was half a Norman in blood and almost wholly a Norman in training. When, in 1041, he returned to England, after an exile of more than a quarter of a century, he was already approaching his fortieth year, and he was a man whose habits and ways of thinking had long been fixed. By all who knew him he was accounted a mild-mannered, conscientious person and a confirmed bachelor. He loved hunting, but not fighting. In France a great deal of his life had been spent at Junièges and other monasteries under the influence of Norman ecclesiastics; and among these surroundings he had acquired a taste for a comparatively cultured life and a tendency to lean on clerics for guidance. He probably thought in French and disliked speaking English, and he was at little pains to conceal the fact that he found the manners of his countrymen uncongenial and their ideas boorish and behind the times. When the English magnates decided to accept him as their king, they probably thought that they had gauged his character and reckoned that with his ignorance of English ways he would be unable to direct affairs, and that all real power would consequently slip by degrees into their hands. Such a forecast, however, was not realised quite in the way the magnates expected. For Edward was no sooner seated on the throne than he began to fill his court with sundry Normans, Flemings and Bretons, who looked for honours and careers in England, and were by no means prepared to play the part of mere courtiers. Their numbers, too, year by year increased, and Edward never hesitated to shew that he preferred their cleverer and more polished society to the ruder ways of English and Danes, however high-born or wealthy. Just at first, of course, he had to rely for support on the native nobles and churchmen, who had favoured his accession, and especially on Earl Godwin, who was by far the most powerful territorial magnate in southern England, and who had been chiefly responsible, with Bishop Lyfing of Crediton. for making him king. Edward, however, was astute enough to perceive that Godwin's predominance was much resented in the Midlands and in the North, and that in every district the great landowners were exceedingly bitter in their jealousies and rivalries, and might easily be pitted one against the other in such a manner that the king might, after all, more or less get his own way if he played his cards skilfully. We find Edward accordingly before long