The title of Edgar Atheling was scarcely mentioned, much less the claim of the duke of Normandy; and Harold, assembling his partisans, received the crown from their hands, without waiting for the free deliberation of the states, or regularly submitting the question to their determination.[*] If any were averse to this measure, they were obliged to conceal their sentiments; and the new prince, taking a general silence for consent, and founding his title on the supposed suffrages of the people, which appeared unanimous, was, on the day immediately succeeding Edward's death, crowned and anointed king, by Aldred, archbishop of York.

The whole nation seemed joyfully to acquiesce in his elevation.
The first symptoms of danger which the king discovered, came from abroad, and from his own brother, Tosti, who had submitted to a voluntary banishment in Flanders.

Enraged at the successful ambition of Harold, to which he himself had fallen a victim, he filled the court of Baldwin with complaints of the injustice which he had suffered; he engaged the interest of that family against his brother; he endeavored to form intrigues with some of the discontented nobles in England he sent his emissaries to Norway, in order to rouse to arms the freebooters of that kingdom, and to excite their hopes of reaping advantage from the unsettled state of affairs on the usurpation of the new king; and, that he might render the combination more formidable, he made a journey to Normandy, in expectation that the duke, who had married Matilda, another daughter of Baldwin, would, in revenge of his own wrongs, as well as those of Tosti, second, by his counsels and forces, the projected invasion of England.[**] [* Gul.

Pictavensis, p.196.Ypod.Neust.p.

486.
Order.