Normans were better disciplined and better armed. Harold, however, could no longer wait in London, but marched against William, with a force which he doubtless deemed sufficient for the ground he had in view.

William had advanced from Pevensey to Hastings, and had pitched his camp on a hill above the town. On the evening of October 13, Harold arrived within seven miles of Hastings, and took up a strong position on the hill of Senlac, which was steepest towards the south, the Hastings side, and defended on either flank by a stream and swampy ground. Harold further secured it with a threefold hedge of stakes and wattles, and a ditch. It is said the night was spent by the English in drinking and singing, by the Normans in confession and prayer.

The next day (Oct. 14) the Norman army marched up from Hastings and attacked the hill of Senlac. The Norman knights were on horseback, after the fashion of the Battle Continent; the English were all on foot, as of old, of Hastings. formed into a thick impenetrable shield-wall. Vainly did the Norman infantry and cavalry dash against their unswerving ranks, which thrust them back as the rock thrusts back the sea-foam. The Frenchmen began to lose heart; the left wing, which consisted of Bretons, fled; the infection spread, and for a moment the whole Norman line gave way. A report flew round that the duke was slain; William uncovered his face, which was protected by a nose-piece fastened to his helmet, and drove back the fleeing with words and blows. The Normans now began a second onset with redoubled eagerness; the barricade was broken through in several places; Duke William slew Earl Gyrth, the brother of Harold, with his own hand, and Earl Leofwin also perished. But still the shield-wall was unbroken. Then the Norman leader bethought himself of a cunning shift to draw the English from their position; the left wing had orders to pretend to flee. The English right wing rushed down upon them with shouts, and left the most accessible side of the hill open to the Normans. The Norman horsemen now rode to the top of the hill, and the hardest tug of battle began. The English shield-wall held so close and firm that the dead alone fell from the ranks. Both leaders shone in prowess, Harold hewing down horse and man with his great Danish axe, then the main

weapon of the English soldier. It was now evening, and the battle had been raging since nine o'clock. Then Duke William ordered his archers to shoot up into the air, that the arrows might fall downwards on the English. One of these arrows pierced King Harold in the eye; he fell to the ground in death agony. But still his thanes and house-carls fought unflinchingly round his standard, the Fighting Man, and the banner of England, the Dragon of Wessex, which waved for the last time over the hopes of England. Not till these heroes, the flower of the English nobility, were slaughtered to a man, were the standard and the Dragon overthrown. Then the rest of the army took to flight, and 'the Frenchmen held the battle-field.'

They did not long pursue the vanquished foe in the darkness, for even in the flight the English turned and inflicted loss on their pursuers. William returned to the hill of Senlac, gave thanks to God, and ate and drank among the dying and the dead. Where the down-trodden standard of England lay he ordered his own banner to be reared; and there, a few years later, rose the high altar of a stately abbey, built by the conqueror's care, that cloistered monks might ever offer prayers for the souls of the slain-the Abbey of Battle. William ordered the body of Harold to be buried in a cairn on the sea-shore: 'Let him be the warden of the coast, where before he sat in arms,' said the conqueror, grimly jesting. But it would seem that Harold's body was afterwards taken to his own church at Waltham.

To no man did fate ever give a greater part to play than to this half-Danish Englishman, Harold, the son of Godwin. To be the second man in a great revolution which rid his country of the stranger; to quell the Briton and make England again supreme from shore to shore; to shatter the invading force of Norway under one of her greatest heroes; and, lastly, overborne by the double stroke, to die for his country in a last glorious though mournful struggle—to have done this is sufficient fame for Harold. We do not know what England would have been if he had lived, and been victorious over the Norman. Edwin and Morkar, those unstable men, the want of cohesion in government, the as yet imperfect union of South and North, make the problem a hard one.

But beside Harold's cairn on the sea-shore, we seem to be

standing at the grave of the old England. This was the fatal day of England, the mournful death of our sweet country, when she changed her ancient lords for strangers.' 'When the Normans had fulfilled the righteous will of God upon the English nation, there was hardly a noble of English race left in England, but all were brought to thraldom and sorrow, so that it was a disgrace to be called an Englishman.' 'The Lord hath taken away health and honour from the English people for their sins, and hath bidden that they be no more a people.' So wrote the men of the next generation, sad as the Jews by the waters of Babylon. But a day of resurrection is at hand. England will be again a people, and the Normans will become Englishmen. The laws, the language, the liberties of England will rise again, stronger than before. She will become the mother of mighty nations, who will inherit from her the freedom which King Alfred strove for, the freedom which stands in willing obedience to law. And she will bequeath to these nations the deathless song of Shakspere and of Milton, and of the great company who have followed them. The making of the English nation was completed by the suffering of all men of English race together, under the hand of the Norman.

Edward the Confessor

DATES.

Earl Godwin outlawed

Harold earl of the West Saxons

Harold subdues the Welsh

Tostig outlawed

Godwin's return

A.D. 1042

1051

1052

1053

1063

1065

1066

Death of Edward, crowning of Harold, battle of Stam

ford Bridge, and battle of Hastings

CHAPTER IX.

WILLIAM THE BASTARD, the victor of Hastings, is a man who has left such a mark on the history of England, that it is worth our while to look at him a little more closely. In Character of person he was immensely tall and strong; very William I. stout, too, in his later years; stern and wrathful in his behaviour, though given to grim jokes at times. The English

chroniclers find two things to praise him for—the support which he gave to the Church, and the good order which he kept. In truth, William was a soldier of order, he hated misrule and savageness; he supported the Church, because she was the greatest help to the cause of order. But there have been great men, such as our own King Alfred, who have fought for the cause of order because they felt it to be a higher cause than their own, and these are the men who have left the noblest names behind them in history. William was not one of these; he had not learned to yield up his own will to a higher law; and therefore, though he was nobler by nature than most men of his time, his stern self-will led him into acts of injustice and cruelty, such as were blamed even by the men of that day. Yet all these acts were done, like his invasion of England, under some legal excuse, for William hated violence, and if he could not always be just, he wished at least to appear just. He had had the very education to make him self-reliant and hard-hearted. He had been left as a boy to fight his own way in life, and make good his position as Duke of Normandy against proud and powerful barons who despised him for his shameful birth, and who were determined that they would not brook his rule. It was a hard life that William had as a young man, and it was a life to make a man hard. Yet it is certain that there were wells of tenderness in William's heart which were never quite dried up; he loved his wife devotedly, and he was an affectionate father till galled by the ingratitude of his children. It is worthy of

note that in an age of vice his married life was free from blame. There have been many better men in the world, and there have been many worse, but there have been few that have done more lasting deeds.

The first step taken by the English nobility after the battle of Hastings was to choose a new king. They chose the EthelEdgar the ing Edgar, grandson of Edmund Ironsides, the Etheling. only remaining prince of the royal line of Wessex. He was very young, and quite unfit to be leader at such a difficult time. And before he was crowned the Earls Edwin and Morkar forsook him and went off to the North. As William of Malmesbury says, all the strength of the land had fallen with Harold; there was now no leader in William. whom Englishmen could trust. William gradually skirted London with his forces, laying waste the country;

Submits to

and before long Edgar the Etheling, with the bishops who had made him king, gave up the game as lost, and made submission to William. The City of London was not long in following their example.

William, as soon as he was master of London, though the conquest of England was only begun, took care to secure his position by being solemnly crowned king in West- William minster Abbey. For the coronation rite was of the crowned. utmost importance in those days, when all forms were taken as serious matters, supposed to make real changes when they were used. A king solemnly crowned and anointed by the Church was very much stronger than any uncrowned claimant. All the forms which had been used in the choosing and crowning of the Old-English kings were gone through in William's case; the consent of the people was asked, and William swore to defend the Church, to rule his people justly, to uphold right laws, and keep down violence and wrong judgments; or as the Anglo-Saxon chronicle says, he swore that he would rule this folk as well as any king before him had done at the best, if they would be faithful to him.

The first great result of the coronation was that the Earls Edwin and Morkar came and made submission to William. Since they were the Earls of Mercia and Yorkshire,1 Submission their submission was the nominal submission of the middle and north of England. Edwin received Morkar. the promise of William's daughter in marriage.

of Earls Edwin and

But four years of fighting lay before William ere he could call England his own. Had England been united, the conquest might have taken much longer. But not only was there no one leader like Harold able to make all Englishmen trust and follow him, there was not as yet a united English nation. So there was resistance, first in one part of England, then in another, but no united resistance of all England against the Normans. When William made his first triumphal return to Normandy in 1067 he was only master of the southeastern counties, including London. Then the suc- the West and cessful siege of Exeter, in 1068, made him master of the West. In the summer of the same year there was 1 Morkar had given the northern part of his earldom, from Tyne to Tweed, to Oswulf. This is the modern county of Northumberland, to which the name Northumberland begins about this time to be restricted. Northumberland is first distinguished from Yorkshire in the 'Worcester Chronicle,' 1065.

Conquest of

North.