The new king also treated his mother, who had returned to England, not only with coldness, but some degree of severity, on account of her having neglected him in his adversity. He accused her of preferring her son by Canute to his brother and himself--which, when the characters of her first and second husbands are compared, appears by no means improbable. He stripped her of the great wealth she had amassed, and compelled her to live in seclusion at Winchester. The accusation of her having been a party to the murder of her son Alfred, and of her criminal intercourse with the Bishop of Winchester, from which she is said to have cleared herself by walking barefoot over nine red-hot ploughshares, must be regarded as tradition merely.
The English fondly believed that by the accession of Edward they had delivered themselves for ever from the dominion of foreigners, but they soon found out that they were in error; for the king, who had been educated at the court of his uncle in Normandy, had contracted so strong an affection for the natives of that country that his court was speedily filled by them. This partiality will be considered by no means an unnatural one, when it is remembered that the natives of that populous and wealthy state were far more polished than the comparatively rude, unlettered English, and that their culture was much superior. The example of the monarch had its influence; the courtiers imitated the Normans both in dress and manners. French became the language not only of the court, but of the law; even the Church felt its influence, Edward creating Robert of Jumièges (1044), and Ulf (1049), two Norman priests, respectively Bishops of London and Dorchester. In 1051 Robert was made Archbishop of Canterbury. Similar appointments were made in secular affairs, and the whole country was filled with a swarm of Norman strangers. All these changes gradually excited the jealousy of the English nation; although it may be justly doubted whether the most far-sighted amongst them foresaw that they were preparing the way for a fresh conquest of the country.
The natural result of this unwise partiality for foreigners was the growth of a strongly national party, and with it Earl Godwin was not slow to identify himself. By a process of deliberate family aggrandisement, he had succeeded in making the influence of his house nearly paramount in England; and this was based not only on immense possessions and administrative authority, but on the great personal talents of himself and his sons, which were wedded to dispositions of a more than ordinarily ambitious nature. Their power was, indeed, most formidable. Godwin, as has been already mentioned, was Earl of Wessex; his eldest son, Sweyn, was Earl of a district partly in Wessex and partly in Mercia; his second son, Harold, was Earl of the East Angles; and his nephew, Beorn, was Earl of the Middle Angles, a district which included Bedfordshire and Lincolnshire.