some traders, and sons of traders, for having crossed the high seas
three times at their own risk; some could boast the blood of Offa and
Egbert; and some traced but three generations back to neatherd and
ploughman; and some were Saxons and some were Danes: and some from the
western shires were by origin Britons, though little cognisant of
their race. Farther down still, at the extreme end of the hall,
crowding by the open doors, filling up the space without, were the
ceorls themselves, a vast and not powerless body; in these high courts
(distinct from the shire gemots, or local senates)--never called upon
to vote or to speak or to act, or even to sign names to the doom, but
only to shout "Yea, yea," when the proceres pronounced their sentence.
Yet not powerless were they, but rather to the Witan what public
opinion is to the Witan's successor, our modern parliament: they were
opinion! And according to their numbers and their sentiments, easily
known and boldly murmured, often and often must that august court of
basileus and prelate, vassal-king and mighty earl, have shaped the
council and adjudged the doom.

And the forms of the meeting had been duly said and done; and the King
had spoken words no doubt wary and peaceful, gracious and exhortatory;
but those words--for his voice that day was weak--travelled not beyond
the small circle of his clerks and his officers; and a murmur buzzed
through the hall, when Earl Godwin stood on the floor with his six
sons at his back; and you might have heard the hum of the gnat that
vexed the smooth cheek of Earl Rolf, or the click of the spider from
the web on the vaulted roof, the moment before Earl Godwin spoke.

"If," said he, with the modest look and downcast eye of practised
eloquence, "If I rejoice once more to breathe the air of England, in
whose service, often perhaps with faulty deeds, but at all times with