Edward, broken with age and infirmities, saw the
difficulties too great for him to encounter; and though his inveterate
prepossessions kept him from seconding the pretensions of Harold, he
took but feeble and irresolute steps for securing the succession to the
duke of Normandy.[**] [6] While he continued in this uncertainty, he was
surprised by sickness, which brought him to his grave on the fifth of
January, 1066, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, and twenty-fifth of
his reign.
[* Order. Vitalis, p. 492.]
[** See note F, at the end of the volume.]
This prince, to whom the monks gave the title of Saint and Confessor,
was the last of the Saxon line that ruled in England. Though his reign
was peaceable and fortunate, he owed his prosperity less to his own
abilities than to the conjunctures of the times. The Danes, employed
in other enterprises, at tempted not those incursions which had been
so troublesome to all his predecessors, and fatal to some of them. The
facility of his disposition made him acquiesce under the government of
Godwin and his son Harold; and the abilities, as well as the power of
these noblemen, enabled them, while they were intrusted with authority,
to preserve domestic peace and tranquillity.
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