Thus Edith, Earl Godwin's relict, who once enjoyed wealth and influence, was now overwhelmed with grief and a prey to the deepest misfortunes. She had borne seven sons to her husband: Sweyn, Tostig, Harold, Gurth, Alfgar, and Wulnoth. They were all earls, and distinguished for their handsome persons, as well as what the world calls excellence; but each of them underwent a different and disastrous fate. Alfgar and Wulnoth, indeed, feared God and lived according to his laws, and both died in the odour of sanctity confessing the true faith, the one a pilgrim and monk at Rheims, the other at Salisbury. For the other five, following the career of arms, they met their death in a variety of ways, and on different occasions.
The sorrowing mother now offered to Duke William, for the body of Harold, its weight in gold; but the great conqueror refused such a barter, thinking it was not right that a mother should pay the last honours to one by whose insatiable ambition, vast numbers lay unburied. He issued orders that the bodies of his own soldiers should be buried with the greatest care; and also gave all the English who applied for leave free liberty to bury those of their friends. After providing for the decent interment of the dead the duke marched to Romney. --Orderic Vitalis
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