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Updated: June 2, 2025
Alban, dost thou hesitate, man?" "No, not an instant," said Harold, stung to the quick. "Not, couldst thou offer me all Mercia as her dower, would I wed the daughter of Algar; and bend my knee, as a son to a wife's father, to the man who despises my lineage, while he truckles to my power."
But when Harold gained his chamber, he found there an express, arrived in haste from Chester, with the news that Algar, the sole enemy and single rival of his power, was no more. Fever, occasioned by neglected wounds, had stretched him impotent on a bed of sickness, and his fierce passions had aided the march of disease; the restless and profitless race was run.
At Oxford, too, met the peaceful gathering of 1035, when Danish and English claims were in some sort reconciled, and at Oxford Harold Harefoot, the son of Cnut, died in March 1040. The place indeed was fatal to kings, for St. Frideswyde, in her anger against King Algar, left her curse on it.
"Long life to them both! may Edward the Atheling reign, but Harold the Earl rule! Ah, then, indeed, we may sleep without fear of fierce Algar and still fiercer Gryffyth the Walloon who now, it is true, are stilled for the moment, thanks to Harold but not more still than the smooth waters in Gwyned, that lie just above the rush of a torrent."
The chances of conflict appeared hopeless, so vastly were they out-numbered by the Danes. Algar, however, declared that he would die rather than retreat. "If we fly now," he said, "all East Anglia will fall into the hands of the heathen.
"Small pain had it given thee to forgive Algar old quarrels, and clasp his hand as a father-in-law if thou hadst had for his daughter what the great are forbidden to regard save as a folly." "Is love a folly, my father?"
Now, therefore, I come to my lord, and I ask, 'What lands and what lordships canst thou spare in broad England to Algar, once Earl of Wessex, and son to the Leofric whose hand smoothed the way to thy throne? My lord the King is pleased to preach to me contempt of the world; thou dost not despise the world, Earl of the East Angles, what sayest thou to the heir of Leofric?"
But Algar, below the middle height, though well set, was slight in comparison with Harold. His strength was that which men often take rather from the nerve than the muscle; a strength that belongs to quick tempers and restless energies.
As soon as Gryffyth is subdued, Algar will be crushed in his retreat, like a bloated spider in his web; and then England will have rest, unless our liege, as thou hintest, set her to work again." The Norman knight mused a few moments, before he said: "I understand, then, that there is no man in the land who is peer to Harold: not, I suppose, Tostig his brother?"
Have you no fear that Tostig himself, earl of the most warlike part of the kingdom, will not only do his best to check the popular feeling in your favour, but foment every intrigue to detain you here, and leave himself the first noble in the land? You have made foes of the only family that approaches the power of your own the heirs of Leofric and Algar.
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