Welcome to the British History Podcast.

My name is Jamie and this is episode 366.

Move or you will be moved.

Part 1.

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The summer of 1051 must have felt like some sort of nightmare.

A French aristocrat wrote into Dover, picked a fight and then slaughtered the local townsfolk.

And that man's cousin, the King of England, told the townsfolk's Lord, Earl Godwin of

Wessex, to go back there and finish the job by butchering his own people on behalf of

that French aristocrat.

The peasants and townsfolk, the average people that would have been you and me in this

story, were completely at the mercy of these noblemen.

And their lives were being used to wage petty, backstabbing power struggles in a court

that they would never see.

And even for medieval England, what King Edward was demanding here, that Godwin go and kill

his own people, was beyond the pale.

And it's hard to look at the command as anything less than the King abandoning his duties

to his people and instead choosing to satisfy his desire to hurt his chief counselor.

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