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Updated: June 24, 2025
These or similar reflections soon terminated the suspense of the select council; and Alred sought the Earl in the oratory, to summon him back to the conclave.
They all paused at the foot of the narrow dais on which Harold stood, and Alred repelled by a gesture his invitation to the foremost to mount the platform. Then Alred began an harangue, simple and earnest. He described briefly the condition of the country; touched with grief and with feeling on the health of the King, and the failure of Cerdic's line.
His voice died on his lips; his eyes roved wildly round with a haggard stare more imploring than defying. Then rose, in his episcopal stole, Alred the bishop, and his clear sweet voice trembled as he spoke.
And Stigand, as the harder and more worldly man of the two, moved up, and bending over the pillow, between Alred and the King, said: "O royal son, about to win the crown to which that of earth is but an idiot's wreath of withered leaves, not yet may thy soul forsake us.
These or similar reflections soon terminated the suspense of the select council; and Alred sought the Earl in the oratory, to summon him back to the conclave.
And cold in that worldly wisdom Haco laboured on, now conferring with Alred and the partisans of Harold; now closeted with Edwin and Morcar; now gliding from the chamber of the sick King. That wisdom foresaw all obstacles, smoothed all difficulties; ever calm, never resting; marshalling and harmonising the things to be, like the ruthless hand of a tranquil fate.
Six of the ecclesiastics, most eminent for Church learning, small as was that which they could boast, compared with the scholars of Normandy and the Papal States, but at least more intelligent and more free from mere formal monasticism than most of their Saxon contemporaries, and six of the chiefs most renowned for experience in war or council, selected under the sagacious promptings of Alred, accompanied that prelate to the presence of the Earl.
Alred lifted his mild eyes to Harold, and there were both pity and approval in his gaze, for he divined the Earl. "Thou hast chosen the right course, my son; and we will retire at once, and elect those with whom thou mayest freely confer, and by whose judgment thou mayest righteously abide." The prelate turned, and with him went the conclave.
Hard is it to tell the distress and the marching and the camping, and the travail, and destruction of men, and also of horses, which the English endured till Harold came; and then luckily came also the good old Leofric, and Bishop Alred the peacemaker, and so strife was patched up Gryffyth swore oaths of faith to King Edward, and Algar was inlawed; and there for the nonce rests the matter now.
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