Hello and welcome to the history of England, episode 19, The Rain of Ed with the Confessor.

We left off last week with Ed with the Confessor at his personal high spot. It had to

eat a lot of humble pie over the last 10 years, but for a year from September 1051, Ed

was at last able to taste the fruits of freedom. His reaction showed where his heart really

lay and it sowed the seeds of his own destruction.

Ed would have spent most of his life in Normandy, and the English court was therefore alien to

him. His leading elves, C. Wooden Lea Frick, appeared to have little interest in court and

national power in the way that Goodwind did. So freed from Goodwind's control, it was Normandy

in the Normans that he turned to. French lords were brought over, given land, and given

positions at court. The English hated it, and described them as men who promoted injustice,

gave unjust judgments, and cancelled folly. The truth is probably more that, in the local

Shire and Hundred Courts, these new Norman lords were administering a justice system and

a set of laws that were alien to them, and they were simply making mistakes, but that's

not the way the English saw it. So here we go then, all those hundreds of years

of French and English rivalry actually started before the conquest, not in 1066.

First of all, Ed would invited his nephew William of Normandy over to England for a visit.

William arrived with a full entourage and visits of this kind were most unusual for the time,

I don't think we've seen anything like this so far, have we? Unless they'd come to

raid and pillage of course. And then, to cap it all, Ed would went in nominated William as his

heir. It does seem a slightly odd decision, the obvious choice was Ed with the exile,

son of Edmund Einstein stuck out there in Hungary. But I don't suppose it's quite so bizarre,

if things had been different and if Harold had not happened, the transition of power to William

...