attachment of the people of both his Kingdoms, regretted and retracted the engagements of fidelity, perhaps even of submission, which he had made to Eadward when his own [Sidenote: He claims the English Crown. 1045.] position seemed less secure. He now fell back on the claim by virtue of which he had possessed himself of Denmark, and which, in his eyes, gave him an equal right to the possession of England. Magnus sent an embassy to England, claiming the Crown, and setting forth his right.[208] He and Harthacnut had agreed that whichever of them outlived the other should succeed to his dominions. Harthacnut was dead; Magnus had, by virtue of that agreement, succeeded to the Crown of Denmark; he now demanded Harthacnut’s other Kingdom of England. [Sidenote: Eadward’s answer.] Eadward, we are told, answered in a magnanimous strain, in which he directly rested his right to the English Crown on the choice of the English people.[209] While his brother lived, he had served him faithfully as a private man, and had put forward no claim by virtue of his birth. On his brother’s death, he had been chosen King by the whole nation and solemnly consecrated to the kingly office. Lawful King of the English, he would never lay aside the Crown which his fathers had worn before him. Let Magnus come; he would raise no army against him, but Magnus should never mount the throne of England till he had taken the life of Eadward.[210] Magnus, so the Norwegian Saga tells us, was so struck with this answer, that he gave up all thoughts of attacking England, and acknowledged Eadward’s right to the English Crown. This account, as perhaps Eadward’s answer also, savours somewhat of romance. But that Magnus did contemplate an invasion of England is certain, and, as England had given him no cause for war, an invasion of England would seem to imply a [Sidenote: Preparations against Magnus. 1044–5.] claim on the English Crown. The Norwegian King was looked on as dangerous in the year after Eadward’s coronation, and in the next year he was kept back from an invasion of England only by a renewal of the war in the North. In both these years Eadward found it necessary to gather a fleet together at Sandwich.[211] In the first year the fleet amounted to thirty-five ships only; in the second year we are told that it was a fleet such as no man had ever seen before.[212] In this last case we are distinctly told that its object was to repel an expected invasion on the part of Magnus. [Sidenote: The war renewed by Swend in partnership with HAROLD HARDRADA.]