The death of the king was destined to be the signal for England's misfortunes to recommence, and he was becoming weaker every day. Sinister reports had been circulated. Old prophecies were recalled which threatened England with invasion and subjugation by a foreign people. The king himself, constantly occupied with his devotional practices, saw fearful visions in his dreams and would cry out, with a vague remembrance of biblical imagery, "The Lord has stretched His bow, He has unsheathed His sword; He moves and brandishes it like a warrior; His wrath shall be manifested through fire and by sword." {88} His servants shuddered at these threatening prophecies; but the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stigand, only laughed. "Dreams of the sick old man," he would say. It is said that, before dying, Edward designated Harold to the members of the Wittenagemot as his successor; other chroniclers (the Norman writers) maintain, on the contrary, that when Harold and his relations presented themselves in the king's chamber, the latter said in a feeble whisper, "You know, my thanes, that I have bequeathed my kingdom to the duke of Normandy; do I not here see men who have sworn to uphold his rights?" Whatever the dying man may have wished, the opinion of the English chiefs was not to be mistaken. Scarcely had Edward the Confessor been buried in Westminster Abbey, which he had built in place of performing the pilgrimage to Rome, when the Wittenagemot proclaimed as king of England, Harold, the son of Godwin, and the grandson of the herdsman Ulfuoth, overlooking in his favor the rights of Edgar Atheling, son of Edward Atheling, and grandson of Edward Ironsides, as well as the more formidable pretensions of the duke of Normandy.