confusion with Geoffrey Mappestone.
Not a great deal is known about King Harold and his descendants. His first love was Edith Swannehals (Swan-neck), who provided him with at least five, and possibly six, children. He married the high-born Ealdgyth ten months before he died, and their son Harold was born posthumously. There is some suggestion that young Harold had a twin brother called Ulf, but it is also possible that Ulf was another of Edith’s children, or perhaps the son of a third liaison. Ulf was a prisoner of William until the Conqueror’s death in 1087.
Meanwhile, Harold was used as a focal point for rebellion by his uncles, but fled from England after the Saxon uprising in 1069-70. He probably went to Ireland and then to Norway, and it is known he took part in a battle at Anglesey in 1098, supporting King Magnus Olaffson against the Norman earls of Shrewsbury (Robert de Belleme) and Chester. Then he disappears from the records.
Harold’s sons by Edith — Godwine, Edmund and Magnus — were older than Ulf and Harold, and they were desperate to gain back what their father had lost. They were involved in several invasions, mostly in the south- west, but were beaten back each time. They eventually migrated to Flanders, where they made alliances with William’s European enemies.
Godwine and Edmund travelled to Denmark to encourage their cousin King Swein to invade England, but Swein died in 1074, and Denmark entered a period of instability. Edmund and Godwine fade from the records at that point. Magnus may have remained in Flanders or even been killed in one of the English battles. The brothers’ rebellions and rabble-rousing have been seen as irrelevant and no more than a nuisance to William, but England was unsettled after the invasion, and it is unlikely that an astute ruler like William — or his equally capable son Henry — would have ignored them.
Duke Robert of Normandy did make a brief visit to his brother Henry in the summer of 1103, when he asked King Henry to restore the estates and title of his friend William de Warrene, Earl of Surrey. Henry was not pleased to see him, but acceded to the request, although it cost Robert a good deal of money. So, Warrene gained back his lands and served Henry faithfully for the rest of his life; Henry gained a loyal supporter and a handsome sum of money; and Robert lost out. It was a foolish, magnanimous gesture typical of a man who, although likeable and generous, was not in Henry’s class as a leader. Robert and Henry did not meet again until they were on opposite sides at the Battle of Tinchenbrai in 1106.
