Note 5 — PART II HISTORICAL STUDIES

One has, it is true, always to remember that if Edward, on his mother's side, was a Norman, so was Harold, as his name reminds us, on his mother's side, a Dane. Nor is it without significance that, on the exile of his house (1051), he fled to the Scandinavian settlers on the Irish coast, and found, no doubt, among them those who shared his almost piratical return in 1052.5 The late Professor's bias against all that was 'French', together with his love for the 'kindred' lands of Germany and Scandinavia, led him, perhaps, to obscure the fact that England was a prey which the Dane was as eager to grasp as the Norman. But this in no way impugns the truth of his view that 'the Norman tendencies of Edward' paved the way for the coming of William. Nor can we hesitate to begin the study of the Norman Conquest with the coming of those, its true forerunners—