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gave a verbal consent to all that the duke required, intending afterwards to escape from his promise."

Nothing more was said on the fatal subject for some time; and Harold was flattering himself that no serious consequences would arise from his unfortunate agreement with William, when the duke summoned a great council of his barons to meet at Avranches, or, according to another account, at Bayeux. "The day preceding that fixed for the assembly, William had caused all the bones and relics of saints that were preserved in the convents and religious houses of the country round about to be secretly collected, and put into a large chest or hamper, which was placed in the middle of the hall where the council was to sit, and carefully covered with a cloth of gold. When the duke had taken his seat in the chair of state, holding in his hand a drawn sword, ornamented with a chaplet of flowers of gold, and having around him his Norman barons, with the Saxon chief among them, he commanded a missal to be brought and placed upon the chest which contained the relics. Then addressing Harold, he said in a loud voice, 'Harold, I here require thee, in presence of this noble assembly, to confirm by oath the promises thou hast already made to me in private; namely, that thou wilt assist me to obtain the crown of England after Edward's death, that thou wilt marry my daughter Adela, and that thou wilt send thy sister into Normandy that I may give her in marriage to one of my barons.' The English chief, again taken by surprise, did not dare to deny his promise; and approaching the missal with a troubled air, laid his hand upon its leaves, and swore to be true to his engagements with the duke, if he lived, and if God granted him assistance. 'God be thy assistance!' said the whole assembly at once; and while Harold still stood, at a signal from the duke the missal and the cloth of gold were removed, and the dry bones and skeletons which filled the chest to the brim were exposed to view, and the son of Godwin became aware that he had been betrayed into taking an oath of tremendous sanctity. When his eyes lighted on the heap of relics, say the Norman historians, he shuddered, and started back with a changed countenance." After thus obtaining his object, William did not seek longer to detain his guest, who departed for England, taking his nephew with him, but leaving his brother behind, as a hostage in William's keeping for the faithful fulfilment of his promise. William accompanied him to the sea-shore, and took an affectionate leave of him.

"Ah," said King Edward when Harold returned, and told him all that had occurred, "I forewarned you of what William would do; I know him too well. Heaven grant that I may not live to see the misfortunes which are about to fall on this country!" It would seem, from Edward's demeanour, that he was conscious of having made some such promise as that alluded to by William during his exile in Normandy.

DEATH OF EDWARD-INVASION OF ENGLAND-BATTLE OF

HASTINGS.

Edward did not long survive the return of Harold from Normandy. Naturally of a weak and melancholy temperament, his last days were spent in gloomy forebodings and superstitious observances. His subjects likewise shared his anxiety, and began to remember old prophecies, in which terrible misfortunes were predicted to the Saxon nation. The feeling of sanctity attached to the oath which Harold had sworn-an oath which, according to the ideas of the time, was not the less binding that it had been imposed by deceit had much to do with this national melancholy. Unless that oath were broken, the Norman duke would almost certainly be king of England. But if that oath were broken, would not Heaven punish the impiety? Such was the universal feeling of the English people, when the death of the king, on the 5th of January 1066, obliged them to come to a practical decision. On his deathbed the king was haunted with frightful visions; and, to the horror of his attendants, he would, in his paroxysms, repeat such passages of Scripture as the following:The Lord hath bent his bow; he hath prepared his sword; he waveth and brandisheth it like a warrior; he will show his wrath by fire and sword." In vain did Stigand, the archbishop of Canterbury, assure them that these were but the raving fancies of a dying man; they received them as the divine announcements of coming disaster.

Before his death, Edward did one courageous act-he nominated Harold as his successor. Accordingly, on the day after Edward's funeral, Harold was elected king of England, and anointed by Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury. There was only one person alive who could have disputed the throne with Harold, Edgar, the grandson of Edmund Ironside, and grandnephew of Edward; but Edgar, though English by descent, was a foreigner by birth, and possessed no qualifications which could entitle him to be the rival of Harold. Harold therefore ascended the throne without opposition, and signalised the commencement of his reign by various vigorous and decisive measures, calculated to secure the independence of his country against Norman intrigue. The beginning of his reign, however, was marked by the portentous appearance of a comet, which was visible for a month, and was gazed at by crowds as the harbinger of war and misfortune.

Meanwhile the news of Edward's death had reached the Norman duke." At the moment when he received the intelligence," says Thierry, "he was in his park, near Rouen, with a new bow and arrows in his hand, trying them. On receiving the news he became thoughtful, gave the bow and arrows mechanically into the hands of one of his men, and passing the Seine, repaired to

his palace at Rouen. Entering the long hall, he paced backwards and forwards, sometimes sitting down, and immediately rising again, shifting his seat and posture, and unable to remain in one place. No one dared to approach him; all his men looked on and wondered. At length one officer, who was more familiar with him than the rest, ventured to go up to him. My lord, said he, 'there is a report that the king of England is dead, and that Harold has broken his oath to you, and seized the throne. Is this news true?' 'It is true,' replied William; and it is this that causes my chagrin.' 'Do not distress yourself about what cannot be amended,' said the other. For Edward's death there is no remedy; but for the wrong done you by Harold there is. You have right on your side, and brave knights to defend it. Make an attempt, then, upon England; a work well begun is half ended.""

William had taken his resolution; but, crafty and cautious as he was audacious, he first sent a friendly message to Harold. "William, Duke of the Normans," so ran the message, "sends to remind thee of thy oath, sworn to him with thy hand and แ with thy mouth upon the holy relics of the saints." "I remember the oath well," was Harold's reply; "but I was under coercion when I took it. Besides, I promised what it is not in my power to perform. The country has made me king, and I cannot give up the kingdom against the country's will; neither can I against the country's will, marry a foreign wife. As for my sister, whom the duke proposed to give in marriage to one of his nobles, would he have me send a corpse? She is dead." This answer was reported to William; who, however, did not even yet lose his temper, but sent another message, couched in mild but reproachful terms, intreating Harold at least to fulfil part of his promise, by marrying his daughter Adela. To put an end to all further solicitation on this point, Harold married the sister of two great Saxon chiefs, Edwin and Morkar. Roused by this final insult, the Norman duke swore that, within a year, he would be revenged on the perjured Harold and those who supported him.

The beginning of the year 1066 was spent in preparations on both sides. The Norman duke received an accession to his cause in the person of Harold's own brother, Tostig, who, it will be remembered, had, about nine years before, left England, owing to fancied ill-treatment at the hands of the late king and of his brother, and gone over to Flanders. No sooner had Harold ascended the throne, than Tostig presented himself to Duke William in Normandy, and offered to assist him in deposing his brother. William listened to his proposals, and gave him som vessels with which to make an attempt on some part of the English coast. Tostig, instead of proceeding immediately to England, bent his course to Denmark, where he endeavoured te engage Sweno, the Danish king, in the enterprise. Failing in this, he next addressed himself to Harold of Norway, the last of

the renowned sea-kings of Scandinavia, and already famous for his exploits all over the north of Europe. "The world knows," said Tostig to him, "that there is no warrior living like thee. Thou hast but to wish it, and England will be thine." Harold was persuaded, and agreed to collect an armament, and invade England in the summer or the autumn. Thus were the English threatened with two simultaneous invasions-the invasion of William and his Normans from the south, and of the Norwegians under Harold and Tostig from the north.

Leaving Tostig and the Scandinavian Harold for a while, let us return to William and his Normans. Far and wide did he publish the perjury of Harold, enlisting the superstition of the times on his side. All Europe was intent on the impending struggle between the man who had broken his oath, sworn on the holy relics, and the man who had deceived his guest into taking the oath; and, strange as it may appear, the sympathy was on the side of the latter. At Rome, especially, the Norman interest prevailed. William accused Harold of sacrilege before the pontifical court, demanded that England should be laid under interdict so long as Harold reigned over it, and presented his own claims to the throne. The cause of the Norman found a willing advocate in Archdeacon Hildebrand, who saw in William a tool for the accomplishment in England of his own gigantic scheme of spiritual supremacy. Ardently and perseveringly he endeavoured to bring the cardinals and leading clergy over to his views, and to persuade them to sanction a Norman invasion of England. For some time his representations were ineffectual. "I almost earned," he says, "infamy from some of the brethren for my conduct; for they muttered that I was labouring in the cause of murder and bloodshed." Before his indomitable energy, however, all opposition gave way; and a judicial sentence was at length pronounced by the pope himself, in terms of which "William Duke of Normandy had permission granted him to enter England, to restore it to the sway of the Romish see, and to re-establish in it the tax of Peter's pence." At the same time a papal bull was sent to William, declaring the excommunication of Harold and all who should adhere to him; and, as a further evidence of the sacredness of William's cause in the eyes of the church, a consecrated banner was sent as a gift from the pope, along with a diamond ring, in which was enchased one of the hairs of the apostle Peter.

In the meantime, while waiting the blessing of the church, William had not been neglecting more substantial preparations. "The duke," says William of Malmesbury, "spent the whole year in providing the necessaries of war; his own soldiers were armed and kept in discipline at great expense; foreign troops were invited into his service; his different squadrons and battalions were carefully formed and made up of the tallest and strongest men, whilst he took care that the chief captains and

officers, besides having a perfect knowledge of the military art, should be men of mature experience: to have seen them either at the head of their soldiers or alone, you would have thought them kings, not captains." It was not without some difficulty, however, that William persuaded his own subjects of Normandy to assist him in his project. "Doubtless," said the Norman citizens in the council which William summoned on purpose to ask their assistance in arms and money, "Duke William is our liege lord. We are not bound, however, to pay him money to assist him in wars beyond the sea. His wars have already burdened us too much; and if he fails in this expedition, our country will be ruined." The crafty duke knew how to overcome this opposition. “He sent,” says Thierry, "for those men separately who had opposed his wishes in the council, beginning with the most rich and influential, and begged that they would assist him purely as a personal favour. No one had courage, thus singly interrogated face to face with the duke, to utter a refusal. Whatever amount of money, arms, or provisions they promised, was immediately registered; and in this manner the example of those who subscribed first determined the amount promised by those who came last. One subscribed for a ship, another for so many armed men, and some engaged their personal service. The clergy gave money; the merchants gave arms and stuffs; and the country people gave corn. Carpenters were soon employed in all the ports of Normandy building and refitting vessels; armourers and smiths in making lances, swords, and mail; and porters in carrying burdens backwards and forwards between the ships and the manufactories."

The arrival from Rome of the papal bull, the consecrated banner, and the diamond ring, in which the hair of St Peter was enchased, increased the enthusiasm. From east and west, from north and south, from Anjou, Brittany, Flanders, France, and Burgundy, nay, even from the banks of the Rhine, adventurers flocked in to join the expedition, led partly by the hopes of salvation in joining an enterprise which the church had blessed, and partly by the hopes of plunder. To all these adventurers William made ample promises. To one he promised the governorship of a town when England should be conquered, to another so much land, to another a rich English wife. To one covetous adventurer, who assisted him with a ship and twenty men-at-arms, he gave an English bishopric in prospect.

At the middle of August 1066 all was ready; hundreds of vessels and transport-boats were collected at the mouth of the river Dive; and the army was encamped on the beach, waiting for a fair wind to embark. For a whole month the winds blew contrary. This delay was trying to William, both on account of the expense which it caused, and of its discouraging effect on the minds of the soldiers. Never were his prudence and energy more conspicuous. "The expenses of the knights," says his contem

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