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half Danish daughter became queen of England;
and these examples are only typical of the divided
interests of a realm consisting of half-a-dozen different
territories having no common traditions, and inhabited
by groups of peoples varying in origin, many of them
new-comers, and all of them more concerned with
petty aspirations and animosities than with patriotic
ideals. We do them wrong if we blame their
blindness. "England," in the sense we attach to
the word, as the expression of a national unit, did
not exist.
For example, there was nothing to prevent an
"Englishman," now that the trade was learnt, from
turning Viking himself, and playing the pirate on his
native shores. Osgod Clapa, king’s "minister," being
exiled, in 1049 returned with a fleet, part of which
attacked Walton-on-the-Naze. Svein, the eldest son
of Godwine, at the same time kidnapped and
murdered his cousin Björn of Wessex. Harold, the
hero of the English, when his family was "under a cloud,"
took refuge in Dublin, and in 1052 came back
to ravage Devon, and then, joining his father Godwine,
who had brought a fleet from Flanders, attacked Kent
until the king yielded and reinstated them. Ælfgar
Leofric’s son, Harold’s rival, imitated him twice over
(1055 and 1058), regaining his earldom with the help
–first of Irish Danes, and finally with a great fleet of
Norse from the Isles. But the most characteristic
and unscrupulous of these English Vikings was
Tosti, son of Godwine, whose fatal adventure shook
not only the Danelaw but the whole fabric of Anglo-Saxon
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