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"Oh, that this feud between Leofric's house and Godwin's were at an end. It bodes ill for England." "It is natural," Harold said gently. "It is as gall and wormwood to the earls of Mercia to see the ascendancy of the West Saxons, and still more would it be so were I, Godwin's son, without a drop of royal blood in my veins, to come to be their king."
And there Geri and Leofric had kept house, and told sagas to each other over the beech-log fire night after night; for all Leofric's study was, says the chronicler, "to gather together for the edification of his hearers all the acts of giants and warriors out of the fables of the ancients or from faithful report, and commit them to writing, that he might keep England in mind thereof."
He has done harm to us enough on earth, without leaving his second-cousins' aunts' malkins to harm us after he is in Heaven." "Sir Hereward, Sir Hereward, I fear thou art not as good a Christian as so good a knight should be." "Christian or not, I am as good a one as my neighbors. I am Leofric's son. Leofric put Harthacanute on the throne, and your father, who was a man, helped him.
It is described as "a large English book of many things wrought in verse." It is one of the few of Leófric's books that remain at Exeter, where it has been over eight hundred years. It contains various poems by Cynewulf and others. Several leaves are missing, and ink has been spilt over part of one page. This Exeter library was scattered at the "Reformation."
The table was covered with all his father's choicest plate; the wine was running waste upon the floor; the men were lolling at the table in every stage of drunkenness; the loose women, camp-followers, and such like, almost as drunk as their masters; and at the table head, most drunk of all, sat, in Earl Leofric's seat, the new Lord of Bourne. Hereward could scarce believe his eyes.
Harold pressed Leofric's hand, and raising it to his lips replied: "Be our Houses at peace henceforth and for ever." Tostig's vanity indeed misled him, when he dreamed that any combination of Godwin's party could meditate supporting his claims against the popular Harold nor less did the monks deceive themselves, when they supposed that, with Godwin's death, the power of his family would fall.
Harold pressed Leofric's hand, and raising it to his lips replied: "Be our Houses at peace henceforth and for ever." Tostig's vanity indeed misled him, when he dreamed that any combination of Godwin's party could meditate supporting his claims against the popular Harold nor less did the monks deceive themselves, when they supposed that, with Godwin's death, the power of his family would fall.
So at least says Leofric's paraphrast, who tells long, confused stories of battles and campaigns, some of them without due regard to chronology; for it is certain that the brave Frisians could not on Robert's first landing have "feared lest they should be conquered by foreigners, as they had heard the English were by the French," because that event had not then happened.
The last brutality awoke some better feeling in one of the girls, a large coarse Fleming, who sat by the new lord's side. "Fine words," said she, scornfully enough, "for the sweepings of Norman and Flemish kennels. You forget that you left one of this very Leofric's sons behind in Flanders, who would besom all out if he was here before the morning's dawn."
Siward was isolated in the North: Leofric's earldom was but a fragment of Mercia. But the Earl of Wessex, already master of the wealthiest part of England, seized district after district for his house.
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