EDWARD THE CONFESSOR. 22A

on account of his youth and inexperience , was cvery unfit to oppose the pretensions of so popularand enterprising- a rival. The animosity, whichhe had long borne to earl Godwin , made himaverse to the succession of his son ; and he couldnot, without extreme reluctance, think of anincrease of grandeur to a family, which had risenon the ruins of royal authority , and which, bythe murder of Alfred , his brother, had contri-buted so much to the weakening of the Saxonline. In this uncertainty, he secretly cast hiseye towards his kinsman , William duke of Nor-mandy , as the only person whose power, andreputation , and capacity, could support anydestination which he might make in his favourto the exclusion of Harold, and his family 4I .

This famous prince was natural son of Robert,duke of Normandy , by Ilarlotta , daughter of atanner in Falaise 44 , and was very early establishedin that grandeur, from which his birth seemedto have set him at so great a distance. Whilehe was but nine years of age , his father hadresolved to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem ;a fashionable act of devotion , which had takenplace of the pilgrimages to Rome , and which ,as it was attended with more difficulty anddanger , and carried those religious adventurers tothe first sources of Christianity , appeared tothem more meritorious, Before his departure,

41 Ingulf, p. 68.

44 Brorapton, p. 910,

Vol. I. Q

HAP

III.