With the gift of the Northumbrian earldom on Siward's death to his brother Tostig all England save a small part of the older Mercia lay in the hands of the house of Godwine, and as the waning health of the king, the death of his nephew, the son of Eadmund who had returned from Hungary as his heir, and the childhood of the AEtheling Eadgar who stood next in blood, removed obstacle after obstacle to his plans, Harold patiently but steadily moved forward to the throne.
[Sidenote: Normandy] But his advance was watched by one even more able and ambitious than himself.

For the last half-century England had been drawing nearer to the Norman land which fronted it across the Channel.

As we pass nowadays through Normandy, it is English history which is round about us.

The name of hamlet after hamlet has memories for English ears; a fragment of castle wall marks the home of the Bruce, a tiny village preserves the name of the Percy.

The very look of the country and its people seem familiar to us; the Norman peasant in his cap and blouse recalls the build and features of the small English farmer; the fields about Caen, with their dense hedgerows, their elms, their apple-orchards, are the very picture of an English country-side.