Northumbrian delegates were heard; and they made the customary
proposition in those cases of civil differences, to refer all matters
to the King and the Witan; each party remaining under arms meanwhile.

This was finally acceded to. Harold repaired to Oxford, where the
King (persuaded to the journey by Alred, foreseeing what would come to
pass) had just arrived.




CHAPTER VI.


The Witan was summoned in haste. Thither came the young earls Morcar
and Edwin, but Caradoc, chafing at the thought of peace, retired into
Wales with his wild band.

Now, all the great chiefs, spiritual and temporal, assembled in Oxford
for the decree of that Witan on which depended the peace of England.
The imminence of the time made the concourse of members entitled to
vote in the assembly even larger than that which had met for the
inlawry of Godwin. There was but one thought uppermost in the minds
of men, to which the adjustment of an earldom, however mighty, was
comparatively insignificant--viz., the succession of the kingdom.
That thought turned instinctively and irresistibly to Harold.

The evident and rapid decay of the King; the utter failure of all male
heir in the House of Cerdic, save only the boy Edgar; whose character
(which throughout life remained puerile and frivolous) made the