There, too, at last, that Danish king was buried. He was
a generous conqueror, and a great benefactor to his capital, and
with him passes much of the splendour of Winchester. Edward the
Confessor, though hallowed at Winchester, looked upon London
as his capital and there built the great abbey which was thenceforth
to see the crowning of England's kings. For St Edward was at
heart a Norman, and Winchester, beside summing up in itself all the
splendour of pre-Norman England, had been given by Ethelred to the
widow of Canute, Emma, the mother of St Edward. She allied herself with
the great Earl Godwin to oppose the Norman influence which St Edward
had brought into England, and it was only when she died that the king
came again into Winchester for Easter, and to hold a solemn court.
During that Easter week Earl Godwin died, and was buried in the
Cathedral. He was the last champion of Saxon England to lie there.
Nothing marks the change that England had passed through during the
first half of the eleventh century more certainly than the fact that
William Duke of Normandy was crowned King of England, not in the old
Minster of Winchester but in that of St Peter, Westminster, which Pope
Nicholas II.
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