Normandy was ever the land of his affection.... His heart was French. His delight was to surround himself with companions who came from the beloved land, and who spoke the beloved tongue, to enrich them with English estates, to invest them with the highest offices of the English kingdom.... His real affections were lavished on the Norman priests and gentlemen who flocked to his court as to the land of promise. These strangers were placed in important offices about the royal person, and before long they were set to rule as Earls and Bishops over the already half conquered soil of England.... These were again only the first instalment of the larger gang who were to win for themselves a more lasting settlement four and twenty years later. In all this the seeds of the Conquest were sowing, or rather ... it is now that the Conquest actually begins. The reign of Edward is a period of struggle between natives and foreigners for dominion in England.[4] One has, it is true, always to remember that if Edward, on his mother's side, was a Norman, so was Harold, as his name reminds us, on his mother's side, a Dane. Nor is it without significance that, on the exile of his house (1051), he fled to the Scandinavian settlers on the Irish coast, and found, no doubt, among them those who shared his almost piratical return in 1052.[5] The late Professor's bias against all that was 'French', together with his love for the 'kindred' lands of Germany and Scandinavia, led him, perhaps, to obscure the fact that England was a prey which the Dane was as eager to grasp as the Norman. But this in no way impugns the truth of his view that 'the Norman tendencies of Edward' paved the way for the coming of William. Nor can we hesitate to begin the study of the Norman Conquest with the coming of those, its true forerunners-- 'Ke Ewart i aveit menéz Et granz chastels è fieux dunez,' and with whom may be said to have begun the story of Feudal England.