they shun. The war did not break out on the banks of the Thames at
all. Hardicanute, deterred, perhaps, by the extent of the support
which the claims of Harold were receiving, did not venture to come to
England, and Emma and Godwin, and those who would have taken their
side, having no royal head to lead them, gave up their opposition, and
acquiesced in Harold's reign. The fugitives in the marshes and fens
returned to their homes; the country became tranquil; Godwin held his
province as a sort of lieutenant general of Harold's kingdom, and
Emma herself joined his court in London, where she lived with him
ostensibly on very friendly terms.

Still, her mind was ill at ease. Harold, though the son of her
husband, was not her own son, and the ambitious spirit which led her
to marry for her second husband her first husband's rival and enemy,
that she might be a second time a queen, naturally made her desire
that one of her own offspring, either on the Danish or the Saxon side,
should inherit the kingdom; for the reader must not forget that Emma,
besides being the mother of Hardicanute by her second husband Canute,
the Danish sovereign, was also the mother of Edward and Alfred by her
first husband Ethelred, of the Anglo-Saxon line, and that these two
sons were in Normandy now. The family connection will be more apparent
to the eye by the following scheme:


Ethelred the Saxon. Emma. Canute the Dane.
------\/---------------/\-------------\/--------
Edward. Hardicanute.
Alfred.