Those were the days when holy King Edward sat upon the throne in Thorney Island, by London town, and doughty Earl Godwin swayed the land. Many hated this Godwin; not a few feared, but ever followed him; but I who knew him can tell you so much of him: Were he greedy of wealth and grasping after means to might, yet had he a stout English heart, and none loved better than he the English land, or kenned better the wants of English folk. Churl's son or childe's son, I wit not, but King Edward took his daughter, fair Edith, as Lady of the English; and the children of Godwin were of the blood of kings, for he wedded Gytha the Danish Lady, kinswoman of King Canute. But though foremost in Witan and in leaguer, two of his own sons might Earl Godwin never rule. Of the six sons of Godwin, with three have I, Winifred, had my dealings, and of those three this is my reckoning: Sweyn the eldest was a man, for all his wilfulness and his sinful wrath. Harold the next-born was a noble prince. Woe worth the day wherein the arrow slew him! As for Tostig, fair of face as Michael Archangel, he was a devil. Now the Abbey of Leominster stood in the old land of Offa, some fourteen miles from the Hereford, where the king's armies are wont to pass over Wye into the fastnesses of the Welsh. Some three years before my lady Algive became our Abbess, Sweyn the first-born son of Godwin was made Earl, and given as Earldom much of the old kingdom of the March--to wit, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, and more beside. Ere long there spread from mouth to mouth tales of the wildness of our young Earl, even such wildness as Godwin his father bore with never in any other lord in England. More viking he seemed than Englishman, which made some to wonder, and to put abroad a groundless slander. And with brooding brows and foreboding nods, folk would tell of how he spurned the wise words of the old, or of how he would at times drink deep, and then fall to singing, fighting, or love-making maybe. Yet was he a righteous lawgiver, and open-handed ever: loving a daring deed, a hearty lay, a tale of the great ones of bygone years. Few there were that wished him not well, and few that prayed not God to bring him through the storms of youth to a steady manhood. Alack! alack for Lord Sweyn! tallest, proudest, most gifted of all the Godwinsons!