When news of the tumult in Northumberland, and of the expulsion of Tostig, reached the Confessor's court, Harold mustered an army and marched northward to deal with the insurgents. This, however, he soon found would be no easy operation. The Northumbrians met him at Oxford, and in such a way as convinced him of the expediency of listening to their complaints. A conference was consequently held, and Harold endeavoured to exculpate his brother and to soften the Northumbrians. "If," said Harold, "you will receive Tostig again as your earl, I promise that he will govern with equity, and according to law." "No!" cried the Northumbrians with one voice, and with that Danish burr which their descendants have inherited; "we were born free; we were brought up free; and a haughty ruler we cannot abide. We have been taught by our ancestors to live free or to die. We have said. Bear thou our answer to Edward the king." Harold could not dispute the justice of the complaints of the Northumbrians. Without delay he went to explain their grievances to the king; and Edward sent him back to give the royal sanction to Tostig's deposition, and to the election of Morkar, the grandson of Leofric. Henceforth, it was not so much against the Northumbrians as against Harold that Tostig's wrath burned fiercely; and when the brothers soon after met at Windsor, at Edward's board, a scene was enacted which made the blood of the saintly king run cold. Harold, it appears, pledged Edward in a cup of wine; and Tostig, exclaiming that such familiarity with the king was unseemly, pulled Harold by the hair of his head. A scuffle immediately ensued, and but for the presence of the king would have ended in bloodshed. "It is notorious," said Edward, raising his hands in holy horror, "that all the sons of Godwin are so transcendently wicked, that if they see any house which they covet, they will murder the owner in the night-time, and destroy his children, to get possession. Verily, they will one day destroy each other." After this outrageous scene at Windsor, Harold and Tostig were at deadly feud; and when Harold, somewhat later, was on his way to Hereford with the king, Tostig, going thither and entering his brother's house, attacked the servants, who were preparing a great feast. Killing the unoffending men, and severing the heads and hewing the limbs from the bodies, he put the corpses into the winecasks, and then, riding forth as if to meet the king and his party, he hinted at the brutal enormity he had perpetrated. "Harold," he said, as he turned away, "you will find the meat for your feast well powdered." And, as Tostig spoke these words, the brothers parted, not to meet again till that day when they met face to face as foes, each with a weapon in his hand and an army at his back.