eagerly pursued; and a report was spread that William himself had fallen. The whole army began to waver; when the duke, with his helmet in his hand, rode along the line, exclaiming, "I am still alive, and, with the help of God, I still shall conquer." The presence and confidence of their commander revived the hopes of the Normans; and the speedy destruction of the English, who had pursued the fugitives, was fondly magnified into an assurance of victory. These brave but incautious men had, on their return, been intercepted by a numerous body of cavalry; and on foot and in confusion they quickly disappeared beneath the swords or rather the horses of the enemy. Not a man survived the carnage. 'William led his troops again to the attack; but the English column, dense and immoveable, as a rock amidst the waves, resisted every assault. Disappointed and perplexed, the Norman had recourse to a stratagem, suggested by his success in the earlier part of the day. He ordered a division of horse to á flee they were pursued; and the temerity of the pursuers was punished with instant destruction. The same feint was tried with equal success in another part of the field. These losses might diminish the numbers of the English; but the main body obsti-nately maintained its position, and bade defiance to every effort of the Normans. 'During the engagement, William had given the most signal proofs of personal bravery. Three horses had been killed under him, and he had been compelled to grapple on foot with his adversaries. Harold had also animated his followers, both by word and example, and had displayed a courage worthy of the crown for which he was fighting. His brothers Gurth and Leofwin had perished already; but as long as he survived, no man entertained the apprehension of defeat, or admitted the idea of flight. A little before sunset an arrow, shot at random, entered his eye. He instantly fell; and the knowledge of his fall relaxed the efforts of the English. Twenty Normans undertook to seize the royal banner, and effected their purpose with the loss of half their number. One of them, who maimed with his sword the dead body of the king, was afterwards disgraced by William for his brutality. At dusk the English broke up and dispersed through the wood. The Normans followed their track by the light of the moon, when ignorance of the country led them to a spot intersected with ditches, into which they were precipitated in the ardour of pursuit. The fugitives, recalled by the accident, inflicted a severe vengeance on their adversaries. As William, attracted by the cries of the combatants, was hastening to the place, he met Eustace of Boulogne and fifty knights fleeing with all their speed. He called on them to stop; but the earl, while he was in the act of whispering into the ear of the duke, received a stroke on the back, which forced the blood out of his mouth and nostrils. He was carried in a state of insensibility to his tent: William's intrepidity hurried him on to the scene of danger. His presence encouraged his men: succours arrived; and the English, after an obstinate resistance, were repulsed. Thus ended this memorable and fatal battle. On the side of the victors almost sixty thousand men had been engaged, and more than one-fourth were left on the field. The number of the vanquished and the amount of their loss are unknown. By the vanity of the Norman historians, the English army has been exaggerated beyond the limits of credibility: by that of the native writers it has been reduced to a handful of resolute warriors; but both agree that with Harold and his brothers perished all the nobility of the south of England, a loss which was never repaired. The king's mother begged as a boon the dead body of her son: she offered as a ransom its weight in gold; but the resentment of William had rendered him callous to pity, and insensible to all interested considerations. He ordered the corpse of the fallen monarch to be buried on the beach; adding, with a sneer, he guarded the coast while he was alive; let him continue to guard it after death.' By stealth, however, or by purchase, the royal remains were removed from this unhallowed site, and deposited in the church of Waltham, which Harold had founded before he ascended the throne.' *15. 1791.-PRINCE POTEMKIN DIED, Field Marshal of Russia, who rose from the lowest rank of society, and was successively the lover, the confidant, the General-in-Chief, and Prime Minister of the Empress Catherine II, who allotted 100,000 rubles to erect a mausoleum to his memory. 17.-SAINT ETHELDREDA. She was a princess of distinguished piety, daughter of Anna, King of the East-Angles, and Hereswitha his queen, and was born about the year 630, at Ixning, a small village in Suffolk. In the year 673, she founded the conventual church of Ely, with the adjoining convent. Of this monastery she was constituted abbess, the monks and nuns living in society and regular order: it flourished for nearly two hundred years, but was destroyed, with its inhabitants, by the Danes, in 870.-See T.T. for 1814, p. 255. *17. 1553.-GEORGE PRINCE OF ANHALT DIED, A most excellent and pious Prince, who not only protected the Reformation in his dominions, but entered into holy orders, as Bishop of Mersburgh, that he might propagate it in the church. 18. SAINT LUKE THE EVANGELIST. Luke was born at Antioch, the metropolis of Syria, a place celebrated for the study of the liberal arts. The notion that he was a painter is without foundation, as it is not countenanced by antient writers. Dr. Lardner thinks that he might have been by profession a physician, as the expression' beloved physician,' Col. iv, 14, seems to intimate. Luke lived a single life, and died in the 84th year of his age, about the year of Christ 70; probably a natural death. *18. 1677.-DR. MANTON DIED, A Nonconformist Minister of great piety and talents, and author of several valuable theological works, particularly Discourses on the Gospel of St. John. *19. 1723.-SIR GODFREY KNELLER died, A celebrated portrait-painter in the reigns of William, Anne, and George I. He was a pupil of Rembrandt; travelled into Italy, and settled in England, where he shone in his profession without a rival. *19. 1767.-DANIEL DAY DIED, ÆT. 84. This gentleman was a block and pump-maker in Wapping, commonly called the Good Day, and the founder of Fairlop Fair, held annually on the first Friday in July in Hainault Forest, in Essex: Deep in the Forest's dreary tracks, Where ranged at large fierce Waltham blacks'; Where passengers, with wild affright, Shrunk from the terrors of the night; While o'er the marsh false meteors beam, The stem of this vegetable wonder, which is rough and fluted, measures, at three feet from the ground, about thirty-six feet in girth. About twenty years ago, Mr. Forsyth's composition was applied to the decayed branches of this venerable tree, and it was fenced with a close paling about five feet high, to protect it from wanton injury. There were, at that time, several large branches, some of which were about twelve feet in girth; and the whole circum 1 The banditti, so called from blacking their faces, or, as our antient English writers term them, outlaws and foresters, had been the terror of the country from the time of William the Conqueror, who attempted to forest the land, until the reign of George I. ference of the tree, at the extent of its branches, was about three hundred feet. In the month of June 1805, this oak having been accidentally set on fire, the trunk was considerably injured, and some of the principal branches wholly destroyed; and though Its bare and forky branches show How much it lacks the vital warmth below, The stately ruin yet our wonder gains'. On this spot, in the language of Gay, are annually seen Pedlars' stalls with glitt'ring toys are laid, Here the tight lass, knives, combs, and scissars spies, The mountebank now treads the stage, and sells GAY. Mr. Day was the possessor of a small estate in Essex, at no great distance from Fairlop Oak. To this venerable tree he used, on the first Friday in July, annually, to repair; thither it was his custom to invite a party of his neighbours to accompany him, and, under the shade of its branches and leaves, to dine on beans and bacon. He had good reason to be proud of having caused a very considerable circulation of money, and of having introduced that kind of civilization which is the concomitant of commerce in a part of the country which had for ages been dangerous, wild, and, in some degree, unexplored. Mr. Day, during his 'In the Gentleman's Magazine for July 1806, there is a print of the tree as it appeared after the fire. |