And yet, after all, the whole scene was only a false alarm. Men acting in a panic are almost always running into the ills which they think they shun. The war did not break out on the banks of the Thames at all. Hardicanute, deterred, perhaps, by the extent of the support which the claims of Harold were receiving, did not venture to come to England, and Emma and Godwin, and those who would have taken their side, having no royal head to lead them, gave up their opposition, and acquiesced in Harold's reign. The fugitives in the marshes and fens returned to their homes; the country became tranquil; Godwin held his province as a sort of lieutenant general of Harold's kingdom, and Emma herself joined his court in London, where she lived with him ostensibly on very friendly terms. Still, her mind was ill at ease. Harold, though the son of her husband, was not her own son, and the ambitious spirit which led her to marry for her second husband her first husband's rival and enemy, that she might be a second time a queen, naturally made her desire that one of her own offspring, either on the Danish or the Saxon side, should inherit the kingdom; for the reader must not forget that Emma, besides being the mother of Hardicanute by her second husband Canute, the Danish sovereign, was also the mother of Edward and Alfred by her first husband Ethelred, of the Anglo-Saxon line, and that these two sons were in Normandy now. The family connection will be more apparent to the eye by the following scheme: Ethelred the Saxon. Emma. Canute the Dane. ------\/---------------/\-------------\/-------- Edward. Hardicanute. Alfred. Harold was the son of Canute by a former marriage. Emma, of course, felt no maternal interest in him, and though compelled by circumstances to acquiesce for a time in his possession of the kingdom, her thoughts were continually with her own sons; and since the attempt to bring Hardicanute to the throne had failed, she began to turn her attention toward her Norman children. After scheming for a time, she wrote letters to them, proposing that they should come to England. She represented to them that the Anglo-Saxon portion of the people were ill at ease under Harold's dominion, and would gladly embrace any opportunity of having a Saxon king. She had no doubt, she said, that if one of them were to appear in England and claim the throne, the people would rise in mass to support him, and he would easily get possession of the realm. She invited them, therefore, to repair secretly to England, to confer with her on the subject; charging them, however, to bring very few, if any, Norman attendants with them, as the English people were inclined to be very jealous of the influence of foreigners.