LODWINE (d. 1053 ), earl of the West-Saxons and the lead ing Englishman of his day, was the son of Wulfnoth, whose iden tity is uncertain. Of Godwine's youth, nothing is known except that he soon became a personal favourite of Canute, who, about 1o18, conferred upon him the rank of earl—probably of some one shire in Wessex. In 1o19 Godwine accompanied the king on his visit to Denmark, and shortly afterwards was given in mar riage Gytha, sister of Ulf, and raised (IO2o) to the dignity of earl of all Wessex. On Canute's death in 103 5, he assisted Queen Emma in supporting the claims of her son, Hardicanute, in oppo sition to those of Harold Harefoot for whom the Witan at Oxford, led by Leofric, had declared (see HARDICANUTE). Meanwhile Aelfred, son of Emma by her former husband Aethelred II., had landed in England with the hope of gaining the crown, but, fall ing into Godwine's power, he was handed over to Harold and killed.
On the death of Hardicanute in 1042, after a reign of less than two years, Godwine secured an English succession to the throne by his promotion of the election of Edward the Confessor, the surviving son of Emma and Aethelred. He was now the first man in the kingdom, and though he had powerful rivals in the earl Leofric of Mercia and earl Siward of Northumbria, he secured the marriage of his daughter Eadgyth to the king (1045), an earldom in the Severn valley for his son Sweyn, one in East Anglia for his son Harold, and a third in the Chilterns for his nephew Beorn. Nevertheless, his opposition to the Norman fa vourites of the king, particularly to Robert, abbot of Jumieges, who in 1o51 became archbishop of Canterbury, and his attempt to cover up the misdeeds of his son Sweyn (d. 1052), was bring ing the earl into disfavour. The climax came with his refusal to punish the men of Dover for stirring up a riot amongst the retinue of Eustace, Count of Boulogne, who was on a visit to the king in 1051. Godwine and his sons gathered their forces in Gloucestershire, and the earls of Mercia and Northumbria has tened to the assistance of the king. Though war was averted by mediation, Godwine and his family were outlawed (see EDWARD THE CONFESSOR). In the following year, however, the suspicions of the English thegns having been aroused by a visit of Edward's kinsman, William, duke of Normandy, Godwine was enabled to return in triumph. Some six months later, the earl was taken ill while at the king's table, and died on April 15, See authorities in Freeman's Norman Conquest, vols. i. and ii., and Cambridge Mediaeval Hist., vol. iii.