Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie and this is Episode 387, The

Dushas Cast. This show is ad-free due to member support and is a way of thanking members

for keeping the show independent. I offer members only content, including extra episodes

and rough transcripts and you can get instant access to all the members extras by signing

up for membership at the British History Podcast.com. For about the price of a lot of it per month.

Thank you very much to Denise, Tom and Catherine for signing up already.

War was coming. That much was clear. If Harold had worried that the comet was a bad omen,

by now he knew for sure. Word would have reached him that the Pope had declared that the church was

on the side of Duke William of Normandy in his demand for England. And at about the same time,

Harold's idiot brother had been raiding his way along many of the sink ports of England,

stopping only to bring war upon Mercia and Northumbria at the same time. And then when that

genius plan failed, he sculpted off to Scotland to seek an audience with King Malcolm Canmore.

The same guy who was probably still holding a grudge with Harold over that broken betrothal.

Things were starting to go really badly, and so King Harold II sent out the call for his ferds.

But he seems to have only called upon Southern England. Furthermore, the call itself doesn't seem

to have gone much beyond 50 miles inland. And as such, if you were a villager living in central

Mercia, you might not have even been aware that England was under threat of invasion.

So why did he do this? Well, remember that Harold II wasn't a member of the royal family,

at least not the one that traditionally held the crown. He was instead the sion of the powerful

house of Godwin, a southern dynasty whose power was concentrated in Wessex since before it was

even the house of Godwin. Harold's grandfather, for example, was an influential southern noble.

You know, before he turned to a life of piracy. So the house of Godwin's roots and its base of

...