The citizens of London
were his zealous partisans; the bishops and clergy had adopted his
cause; and all the powerful nobility, connected with him by alliance
or friendship, willingly seconded his pretensions. The title of Edgar
Atheling was scarcely mentioned, much less the claim of the duke of
Normandy; and Harold, assembling his partisans, received the crown from
their hands, without waiting for the free deliberation of the states, or
regularly submitting the question to their determination.[*] If any were
averse to this measure, they were obliged to conceal their sentiments;
and the new prince, taking a general silence for consent, and founding
his title on the supposed suffrages of the people, which appeared
unanimous, was, on the day immediately succeeding Edward's death,
crowned and anointed king, by Aldred, archbishop of York. The whole
nation seemed joyfully to acquiesce in his elevation.
The first symptoms of danger which the king discovered, came from
abroad, and from his own brother, Tosti, who had submitted to a
voluntary banishment in Flanders. Enraged at the successful ambition of
Harold, to which he himself had fallen a victim, he filled the court
of Baldwin with complaints of the injustice which he had suffered; he
engaged the interest of that family against his brother; he endeavored
to form intrigues with some of the discontented nobles in England he
sent his emissaries to Norway, in order to rouse to arms the freebooters
of that kingdom, and to excite their hopes of reaping advantage from the
unsettled state of affairs on the usurpation of the new king; and, that
he might render the combination more formidable, he made a journey to
Normandy, in expectation that the duke, who had married Matilda, another
daughter of Baldwin, would, in revenge of his own wrongs, as well
as those of Tosti, second, by his counsels and forces, the projected
invasion of England.
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