With the exception of the bickerings both on the part of the Saxon and Danish chiefs against the Normans whom Edward countenanced, all went on in tolerable order at the Saxon court for seven or eight years; for Leofric and Siward were ever throwing their formidable weight into the opposite scale, and thus keeping an even balance between the power of Godwin and the throne. Edward had rendered himself popular with both the Danes and the Saxons; he had revived the old laws of his ancestors, abolished the odious tax of Dane-geld, without retaliating upon such of his subjects as belonged to that nation, as Canute and Harold had beforetime done while lording it over the Saxons. An event at last occurred which scarcely any one would have foreseen or have guarded against, and which reads more like a drunken frolic, or a common street brawl, than the grave record of history, although it ended by embittering the feelings of the Saxons against the Normans, and was another of those almost invisible steps which eventually led to the conquest of England. Amongst the foreigners who came to pay their court at this time to the king of England, was Eustace, count of Boulogne, who had married a sister of Edward, but whether maid or widow at the time of her union with the French count, is not very clearly made out; nor is it recorded whether she was the daughter of Emma of Normandy, though she laid claim to Ethelred as her father. Eustace, proud to claim such a relationship, whatever it might be, mounted the two slips of feathered whalebone in his helmet, and with a showy train of followers visited the English court, where he and his retinue were hospitably entertained by Edward. Here he met with Normans and French who spoke nearly the same language as himself, and there is but little doubt that such an assembly did not fail to show their contempt for everything that was Saxon, voting vulgar a court in which a cowherd had risen to the rank of earl; and probably extolling their own ancestry, who, time out of mind, had been brought up to the more "polite" profession of murder and robbery both by sea and land. While returning on his visit from Edward, he commanded his train to halt before they entered Dover, and putting on his coat of mail, ordered his followers to do the same; and thus armed, they entered the town. They then commenced riding up and down the streets, insulting the inhabitants, and selecting the best houses in which to take up their quarters for the night; for such had been the custom of the Danes, who made the houses of the Saxons their inns, sometimes permitting, as a great favour, the owner and his family to share the meal which they had compelled them to provide. It is pretty clear that the deeds of these "good old times" had furnished the topic of conversation amongst the visitors at the Saxon court, made up as it would be of Normans and Northmen, and descendants of the Vikingrs, who now found it dangerous