Godwin was an Earl of Wessex and held Ashington in Washington, Catherington, Chalton, Compton, East Esewrith, etc. {per "Kin of Mellcene Thurman Smith," pub. privately by Mrs. Edward T. Smith, used 8/1960 at Wyoming State Library}. W. H.Turton, "The Plantagenet Ancestry" (Balt.: Gen.Pub.Co., 1968), p. 26, asserts that Gytha is daughter of Thorkel Sprakalog who is son of Stybiorn (956-984) and Thyra of Denmark (daughter of King Harold Blaatand of Denmark).

Godwin md 1020 Githa; he d 1053; was an English Statesman.  His parentage is uncertain, but thought to be a son of Wulfnoth who was a son of Ethelmer who was a son of Ethelric.  Godwin became chief adviser to King Canute; was made earl of Wessex, and was given great wealth and lands.  After Canute's death, Godwin and King Canute's widow, Queen Emma (of Normandy), supported the claims of the throne of her son by Canute, Harthacanute, against those of Harold Harefoot, Canute's son by AElgifu of Northampton.  Godwin apparently permitted the murder of another claimant to the throne, Alfred AEtheling, son of Queen Emma by her first husband, AEthelred II, and brother of Edward (later Edward the Confessor).  This brutality seems to have earned him the enmity of Harthacanute and of Edward, who succeeded Harthacanute.  The king married Godwin's daughter in 1045 and Godwin was the most powerful earl in England.

died on the seventeenth before the kalends of May