Some historians say, and William the Conqueror afterwards declared, that Edward then sent Harold over to him in Normandy to offer the crown to the duke; but we shall never know whether this is true or not. All we know is that Harold was in Normandy about this time, cast upon the Norman coasts by a storm, and that, as the price of his return to England, William forced him to swear above holy relics an oath that he would support the claim of the duke to the Crown of England. After a reign of twenty-four years Edward laid down the crown that he had worn so uneasily, dying on the eve of Twelfth Day, immediately after the consecration at Westminster of the glorious edifice that he had built to receive his tomb.[47] His last act, the remission of the hated Danegeld, now happily no longer needed, was one of the most welcome measures of his long reign. His people thought that in the mild King they had lost a saint, and they called him, as we call him still, Edward the Confessor. Chapter XXVIII King Harold, Godwin’s Son, and the Battle of Stamford Bridge (1066) The king who succeeded Edward was in every way unlike him. The fair hair and beard and blue eyes of Edward, described by our chroniclers, his long, feminine fingers, his florid complexion and thin form, belonged to quite a different type from the strong, able man who succeeded him. Harold had, in fact, been the real ruler of the kingdom since his father died; and he seems to have inherited much of his father’s genius for administration. He, like all his family, was strongly opposed to the Norman influence which was creeping into England, and he was looked upon by the people as the guardian of their liberties and the representative Englishman of his day. There was no dispute or hesitation about his accession to the throne: had all his race been royal he could not more quietly have succeeded to the crown. His troubles arose, not from the English people, but from his own family. The English chronicles say that he was the eldest son of Godwin, but there seems some probability that the Norse sagas are right in making him a younger son, who had been the favourite with his own father and also with the King, and that it was Tosti’s anger at this preference that made him, as the eldest son, take up arms against Harold. They tell us that when Edward was dying Harold bent down over the King, and then, straightening himself, he turned to those who were standing by, saying, “I take you to witness that the King has now made over to me the realm of England.” When the news reached Tosti, who was, we remember, in exile in Flanders, he at once set out for Denmark and Norway, to persuade their kings to help him to recover his own possessions in England. To Sweyn, King of Denmark, he offered his help to win the country for him and make him King of England, as Canute, his uncle, had been, if he would dethrone Harold and restore to him, Tosti, his possessions in Northumbria.