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truly remarks to supplicate the aid of his liege lord, that lord who had already so unjustly wrested Tilliers from him. He repaired to Poissi, and, "in the character of a vassal, the future conqueror craved his lord's aid." This was gladly given, and William, willing enough to fight under the banner of the French king, so that his vengeance might be sated, told over the chief rebels man by man. The combined forces assembled on the Val des Dunes. The fight was fierce and long, until the rebels fled in confusion, and the foaming mill-race of Bourbillon was choked with the dead. The defeat was total; and the insurgents sought mercy. "William was prudently gracious," and complete success crowned his first battle.

But William, by whom war seems to have been viewed-like his cherished sports, hawking and hunting - as a mere pastime, now turned his arms against Geoffry Martel, Count of Anjou, who had obtained possession of Alençon, and continually harassed the Norman border. He therefore besieged Alençon, "prosecuting the campaign with insulting unconcern, savoring of affectation, hawk on fist, or following the hounds, as though the country did not remain to be acquired, but was already gained." This disgusted even his own followers, many of whom still "grudged the raising of their caps to the tanner's grandson; " while the inhabitants of Alençon spread outside the walls "filthy, gore-besmeared skins, and as he drew nigh they whacked them, with, "Plenty of work for the tanner; plenty of work for the tanner.' William swore his great oath that dearly should they pay for this chafing insult. He stormed the outwork, he wreaked on the prisoners who fell into his hands the most atrocious tortures, and the terrified townsmen were at length compelled to capitulate.

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Again there was war, and it was now between the King of France and his vassal. Many of the Norman barons had found refuge at the French court, and, instigated by them, Henry determined to expel the "pirates" from the soil of France. But William acted with his wonted caution. Although the hostile troops poured in on every side, he stood strictly on his defence.

True to feudal principle, he avoided dealing the first blow, for if his liege lord struck first, then his fealty would be at an end. Still the French troops poured in, and they occupied the bourgade of Mortemer as headquarters; and here, ere they had awakened from the drunken riot in which they had passed the night, the Normans fired the town, and gave chase to the terrified fugitives, gaining a complete victory, which was grimly announced to the French king, then at some distance, by Roger de Toeny, who, ere dawn, climbing a tree, bade him, in rude verse, rise up from his slumber, and bury his friends, who lay dead at Mortemer. King Henry now concluded a discreditable peace with William, who returned, well pleased at the result of his second victory-all unconscious as yet of that third and far greater victory, Hastings.

While William had thus grown up amid strife and bloodshed, his second cousin Edward, who had sojourned in Normandy until 1040, when he was invited to England by his half brother Hardicanute, had become ruler of that kingdom. Although in training for a, saint, the feeble Confessor never seems to have been a favorite with the nation, and on the death of Hardicanute he appears to have owed his elevation to the crown chiefly to the exertions of the Earl of Wessex, Godwin, but partly also to the clearly-expressed notice from the Norman court, that if the English refused to recognize the son of Emma, they should feel the pressure of Norman power. Thus, nearly a generation before the battle of Hastings was fought, Norman influence had its weight in English politics.

The son of a Norman mother, educated in Normandy, and a dweller there throughout his early manhood, it is not surprising that Edward should have become far more Norman than English in habits and feeling, and that on his accession to the throne he should have invited over many of those who had been friends during his exile. With his Norman favorites came Norman customs: the use of their language, of their handwriting, and, what seems to have given yet more offence, Edward's adoption of "the great seal," which, after the usage of continental sovereigns, he appended

to the parchments in addition to the old-accustomed Anglo-Saxon sign of the cross. This last innovation might be considered of slight moment, but Sir Francis Palgrave points out very forcibly the actual grievances which resulted from its use, inasmuch as

"The adoption of these forms gave the king an additional reason for retaining about his person the clerks whom he had brought from France, and by whom all his writing business was performed. They were his domestic chaplains and the keepers of his conscience, and, in addition to these influential functions, they were his law advisers, and also his Secretaries of State, and through them it was the custom to prefer all petitions and requests to the king: One suitor was desirous of obtaining a grant of land; another, mayhap, required a writ' to enable him to receive amends for an injury; a third wished to ask for leave to quarter himself and his hounds and his horses on one of the king's manors-and in such cases we cannot doubt but that Robert the Norman monk of Jumieges, or Giso the Fleming, or Ernaldus the Frenchman, would have many means of serving their own party and disappointing their adversaries; and many an honest Englishman was turned away with a hard word and a heavy heart by these Norman cour

tiers."

These clerks, too, were, of course, in orders, and thus they stood ready to receive the best church preferment the king could give; and thus Norman prelates filled English sees years before Hastings and the conquest. Sir Francis Palgrave, although far from unfavorable to the Normans, referring to the numbers who came over and settled in England during the Confessor's reign, remarks: "It is certain that the Norman party began to conduct themselves in such a manner as to occasion much disgust among the nation at large;" and when we find that of the few castles that then existed, some of the most important, those towards the Welsh marshes, were garrisoned by French and Norman soldiers, under the command of leaders of their own nation, and that in the great towns and cities many Normans were already to be found, invited thither doubtless by the lavish encouragement proffered them by the feeble king, we shall not be surprised at the general discontent.

Probably it was the part Earl Godwin and his sons took in expressing

this general feeling which led to their expulsion in 1050-1, for we find that in the latter year William, now the unchal lenged and powerful Duke of Normandy, came over with a splendid following on a visit to his good cousin Edward. "Prosperity acts like a telescope, and often enables folks to bring distant relations much nearer," shrewdly remarks our author, "so we shall not be guilty of any great breach of charity if we suppose that William, young, ambitious, and enterprising, did not undertake this journey purely out of natural love and affection toward his old aunt and kinsman. Did he begin to form any plans for the invasion of England ?” Very probably he did; for while the wealth of the land invited spoilers, William could at a glance see that its strangely unprotected state, "the great towns, with few exceptions, either quite open, or fortified only by stockades or banks, or perhaps by a ruinous Roman wall," would render it an easy prey to the strong hand. How long William's visit lasted we know not. That he was most honorably received we need scarcely be told, for the court was already filled with his countrymen, and Earl Godwin and his sons were still in exile.

With the departure of William, public feeling, it would seem, expressed itself strongly, for Godwin and his sons soon afterward returned, and their case being laid before the Witenagemot, the decision was not only that they were innocent, but that they had been unjustly deprived of their earldoms. So complete indeed was the triumph of the Godwins that "all the French were declared outlaws, because it was said that they had given bad advice to the king, and brought unrighteous judgments into the land." Robert, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Ulf, Bishop of Dorchester, fled for their lives, and only a few Normans, too obscure to awaken suspicion, were allowed to remain. It was not long after this-probably in cited to it by this strong reaction of Saxon feeling-that Edward summoned "Edward the Outlaw," sole surviving son of Edmund Ironside, from Hungary, with the intention of proclaiming him heir to the crown. Hither "the Atheling," with his wife and three young children, came; but the people's

gladness was speedily turned to sorrow,! for ere two years passed away he sickened and died. "Did the Atheling die a natural death ?" asks Sir Francis Palgrave, hinting that "Harold gained much by this event." We think there can be little doubt that the Atheling did not; but surely suspicion would point to William rather than to Harold. More than once before William was believed to have sent an unwelcome competitor out of the way by poison, while against Harold no such charge was ever made. Fierce and unscrupulous as were Earl Godwin and his sons, theirs was always open violence, not the stealthy administration of what has been shrewdly called "the powder of succession." What seems to us to throw strong suspicion on William is, that if Harold gained aught by the death of the Atheling, William certainly gained more; for the Norman historians declare that immediately on his death, Edward nominated the Duke of Normandy as his heir. That the king did So we see no reason for denying, although that he sent Harold over with the welcome message, and that Harold did homage to his future sovereign, may, we think, be classed among those convenient fictions which writers of

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court history" always have at their command. Suspicion, indeed, is cast on the assertion, as the author of Revolutions in English History truly says, by the circumstance that "the three earls named by William as having been present when the King of England made this promise were all persons who were no longer living;" while the reference to the Bayeux tapestry-that most valuable record, not of history, but of life and manners-is certainly worthless. The whole series is a pictorial narrative of the conquest of England from the Norman standpoint. "It may be," as the same author remarks," an authority about the armor or the costume of those times it is no authority in relation to history."

* Sir Francis Palgrave remarks that the incidents of Harold's being tempest-tossed on Ponthieu, seized by Count Guido, and liberated from him at Willian's order, are very apocryphal; while "the dramatic circumstances of Harold's oath on concealed relics are totally unknown to the earlier and only trustworthy annalists."

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Edward survived five or six years. We have little information respecting these years, but the Godwin family still held almost supreme power, and the feeble king seems to have wholly employed his last days in expediting the completion of Westminster Abbey. These were not "go-a-head" times, but still the reader may be surprised to learn that nearly twenty years were employed on it. The work was meditated by Edward almost from the time of his accession to the throne, in lieu of a pilgrimage which he had vowed to make to the tomb of St. Peter, at Rome; it was finished at the close of 1065, and the last Christmas festival that the Confessor celebrated was marked by the consecration of St. Peter's Minster. Built by Norman architects at immense expense, framed," as Malmesbury records, "with courses of stone, so correctly laid that the joint deceives the eye, and leads it to imagine it is all one block," the king, doubtless, looked around with pride on his votive abbey that Holy Innocents' day when the chant was first raised within its walls. But he was removed from thence to his bed, and within ten days was laid to rest there, bequeathing that fatal legacy to the land-a disputed succession.

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three claimants to the crown-his good cousin "Upon the death of Edward there were William of Normandy, his good brother-in-law Harold, each of whom founded their pretensions upon the real or supposed devise of the late king, and Edgar Atheling, the son of Edward the Outlaw, who ought to have stood on firmer ground, for if kindred had any weight Ironside, and the only male now left of the he was the real heir, the lineal descendant of house of Cerdic."

The tender age of Edgar seems, however, from the first to have rendered his pretensions very subordinate, and the conflict was between William and Harold. It certainly appears that Edward had aroused the hopes of both these competitors, and although it may be difficult to reconcile the different statements, yet," taken altogether," Sir Fran cis Palgrave truly remarks, "the circumstances are exactly such as we meet with in private life."

"The childless owner of a large estate, at first leaves his property to his cousin on the mother's side, from whose connections he has received much kindness. He advances in age,

and alters his intentions in favor of a nephew on the father's side-an amiable young man living abroad. The young heir comes, is received with great affection, and is suddenly cut off by illness. The testator then returns to his will in favor of his cousin who resides abroad. His acute and active brother-in-law

has taken the management of his affairs, is well informed of this will, and when the testator is on his death-bed, he contrives to tease and persuade the dying man to alter the will again in his favor. There can be no difficulty in admitting that the conflicting pretensions

66

on

Turning quick round; then o'er his face
His mantle cast, then changed his place,
And on a ledge his head he laid,
While all around him stood afraid,
And marvelled what this might be."

"Sirs," said the seneschal, "ye will soon know the cause of this." William now aroused himself, and he agreed with Osbern the Bold that the first step would be to require Harold to surrender the in heritance, and perform the duty he owed Harold returned a haughty reply, and to him as his sovereign. To this message each prepared for battle.

of William and Harold were grounded on the acts emanating from a wandering and feeble mind. If such disputes take place between private individuals, they are decided by a Unfortunately for Harold, while Duke court of justice, but if they concern a kingdom, William was intimately acquainted with they can only be settled by the sword." the strength and the weakness of EngAnd swiftly was the appeal to the land, he scarcely knew the resources of sword resorted to. Harold had the ad- his adversary. Normandy had now for vantage of being on the spot; and some years past been rapidly rising in the very day that Edward was laid in power and influence. William's marhis grave, he prevailed upon, or compel- riage with Matilda, the daughter of Bauled, the prelates and nobles assembled douin de Lisle, the Count of Flanders, a at Westminster, to accept him as king." his prestige; while the firm but wise years before, had greatly added to "A man of mature age, in full vigor of body and mind, possessing great influ around him a loyal and active nobility, rule which he maintained, had drawn ence and great wealth," it is not surpris- firm in allegiance to him, and at the same ing that with many he should be popular; but by many he was not recognized time, true to their hereditary tendencies, ready to avail themselves of any opporas king, while from the slowness of communication between different parts of tunity for aggrandizement which circumthe country, the more remote districts stances might offer. Thus, from the very could scarcely have been made acquaint-period of Harold's defiance, William

ed with the death of the late king, certainly not with the succession of the new. Harold, however, forthwith began to exercise the functions of government, and he is stated to have showed both prudence and courage, together with a strict regard to the due administration of justice.

few

the number of men he could bring into stood on vantage ground. Whatever the field, they were all one in mind; one alike in allegiance to their ruler, and one in hopes of reward; while Harold could only depend on a portion of his subjects, and could hold out no promise of advan

tage more than would result from sucis probable that this portion of the third cess in a strictly defensive warfare. It volume would have been largely amplified had the author's life been longer spared; otherwise it is difficult to account for the affairs of England during the eventful summer of 1066 being so completely passed over, and merely two or

Swiftly flew the news to his rival. William was hunting with a noble train in the park of Rouen, when a "sergeant," from England, hastened into his presence with the startling news. The bow dropped from William's hand, he hastily returned home, and Wace naïvely and most minutely tells us how ner-three lines of reference devoted to the vously he

"Oft his mantle tied, and then

Untied, then tied it swift again;
Nor would he speak to any one-
To speak or question him dared none;
Then in a boat the Seine he passed,
And to his castle hurried fast;
And down on the first bench sat he,
From time to time right hastily,

important battle of Stamford Bridge. Now the case was, that, during the summer, Harold mustered his forces, and took his station at the Isle of Wight, but his troops became weary of the long waiting; provisions were with difficulty obtained, and Harold, probably believ ing the invasion would be postponed to

the next spring, actually disbanded his army, and returned to London. It was then he received intelligence that his brother Tostig, together with Harold Hardrada, had landed in the north, prepared to contest the kingdom, and again had Harold, even as yet scarcely settled as king, to raise forces to repel this new and unlooked-for invasion.

Meanwhile, William by lavish promises had assembled all his nobility, and had also invited adventurers from Brittany and Poitou, and Maine and Flanders, to join his standard; nor, although holding ecclesiastical power in little respect, did he neglect to supplicate the sanction of the Pope, who transmitted to him the gonfanon of St. Peter, and a precious ring, in which a relic of the chief of the Apostles was inclosed. William's excuses for the prosecution of this war, were, as Sir Francis Palgrave says, futile enough, "yet the color of right, which William endeavored to obtain, shows a degree of deference to public opinion, and that, at all events, supposing Edward's bequest might be disputed, he was justified in his attempt by good conscience and honor." The number of vessels assembled by William is uncertain. Maistre Wace relates that he often heard his father say, they were six hundred and ninety-six, but that others calculated them at three thousand; this could only have been by including even the smallest craft. And in baleful splendor did the fatal armament set forth from the mouth of the Dive, on the eve of St. Michael. The well-appointed fleet, gay with painted sides and parti-colored sails, and William's own vessel, the gift of Matilda, "the crimson sails swelling to the wind, the gilded vanes glittering in the sun, at the head of the ship the effigy of a child, armed with a bow and arrow, ready to discharge his shaft against the hostile shore," and its saintly banner waving aloft, led the way.

"As the vessels approached, and as the masts rose higher and higher on the horizon, the peasantry who dwelt on the coast, and who had congregated on the cliffs, gazed with the utmost alarm at the hostile vessels, which, as they well knew, were drawing near for the conquest of England, portended by that fearful comet blazing in the sky. The alarm spread; and one of the few thanes who were left in the shire of the South Saxons galloped up to a rising ground to survey. The thane

saw the boats pushing through the surf, glistening with shields and spears; in others stood war-horses, neighing and pawing. Now followed the archers, closely shorn, and arrayed his longbow strung for the fight in his hand, in light and unencumbered garb; each held and by his side hung the quiver, filled with those cloth-yard shafts, which, in process of time, became the favorite and national weapon of the yeomanry of England. . . . The archers leap out of the boats, and disperse themselves on the shore. The knights are the planks, each covered with his haubergeon now seen carefully and heavily treading along of mail, his helmet laced, the shield well strengthened with radiating bars of iron, depending from his neck, his sword borne by his attendant esquire. The gleaming, steel-clad multitude cover the shingly beach in apparent disorder, but, in a few moments, each warrior is mounted on his steed. Banners, pennons, and pennoncels are raised, the troops form which they already claim as their possession. into squadrons, and advance upon the land, Boat after boat poured out the soldiery of the various nations and races assembled under the banners of William; and lastly came the pioneers with their sharp axes.”

Such was the scene, thus graphically presented to us, which met the startled eye of the thane that eventful evening. William chose at once his place of encampment; "before nightfall the Norman chief would be entirely secured from surprise." So the thane turned his horse's head, and riding night and day, he neither tarried nor rested until he reached the city of York, and found Harold-the victory of Stamford Bridge having been gained the day before-" banqueting in festal triumph," and Sir Francis Palgrave adds, very unjustly, we think, "with hands embrued in the blood of a brother." Now, although Tostig, as well as Harold Hardrada, lost his life in this decisive battle, it must be borne in mind that he was the aggressor; that Harold proffered; him Northumbria, and that only on his refusal to accept any conditions of peace, was the battle fought.

On receiving the news, Harold immediately marched southward; but it must have been with many a foreboding that he prepared for the great contest. It has been very easy for historians, both French and English, to talk about the sluggish Saxons and the warlike and gallant Normans; but the slightest glance at the situation of the respective armies will show that while everything favored the invaders, seldom, indeed, has a de

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