Tostig, with the ships he had gained both from Norman and Norwegian,
recruited by Flemish adventurers, fled fast from the banners of Harold.
After plundering the Isle of Wight, and the Hampshire coasts, he sailed
up the Humber, where his vain heart had counted on friends yet left him
in his ancient earldom; but Harold’s soul of vigour was everywhere.
Morcar, prepared by the King’s bodes, encountered and chased the traitor,
and, deserted by most of his ships, with but twelve small craft Tostig
gained the shores of Scotland. There, again forestalled by the Saxon
King, he failed in succour from Malcolm, and retreating to the Orkneys,
waited the fleets of Hardrada.
And now Harold, thus at freedom for defence against a foe more formidable
and less unnatural, hastened to make secure both the sea and the coast
against William the Norman. “So great a ship force, so great a land
force, no king in the land had before.” All the summer, his fleets swept
the channel; his forces “lay everywhere by the sea.”
But alas! now came the time when the improvident waste of Edward began to
be felt. Provisions and pay for the armaments failed [236]. On the
defective resources at Harold’s disposal, no modern historian hath
sufficiently dwelt. The last Saxon king, the chosen of the people, had
not those levies, and could impose not those burdens which made his
successors mighty in war; and men began now to think that, after all,
there was no fear of this Norman invasion. The summer was gone; the
autumn was come; was it likely that William would dare to trust himself
in an enemy’s country as the winter drew near? The Saxons--unlike their
fiercer kindred of Scandinavia, had no pleasure in war;--they fought well
in front of a foe, but they loathed the tedious preparations and costly
sacrifices which prudence demanded for self-defence. They now revolted
from a strain upon their energies, of the necessity of which they were
not convinced! Joyous at the temporary defeat of Tostig, men said,
“Marry, a joke indeed, that the Norman will put his shaven head into the
hornets’ nest! Let him come, if he dare!”
Still, with desperate effort, and at much risk of popularity, Harold held
together a force sufficient to repel any single invader. From the time
of his accession his sleepless vigilance had kept watch on the Norman,
and his spies brought him news of all that passed.
And now what had passed in the councils of William? The abrupt
disappointment which the Grand Assembly had occasioned him did not last
very long. Made aware that he could not trust to the spirit of an
assembly, William now artfully summoned merchant, and knight, and baron,
one by one. Submitted to the eloquence, the promises, the craft, of that
master intellect, and to the awe of that imposing presence; unassisted by
the courage which inferiors take from numbers, one by one yielded to the
will of the Count, and subscribed his quota for monies, for ships, and
for men. And while this went on, Lanfranc was at work in the Vatican.
At that time the Archdeacon of the Roman Church was the famous
Hildebrand. This extraordinary man, fit fellow-spirit to Lanfranc,
nursed one darling project, the success of which indeed founded the true
temporal power of the Roman pontiffs. It was no less than that of
converting the mere religious ascendancy of the Holy See into the actual
sovereignty over the states of Christendom. The most immediate agents of
this gigantic scheme were the Normans, who had conquered Naples by the
arm of the adventurer Robert Guiscard, and under the gonfanon of St.
Peter. Most of the new Norman countships and dukedoms thus created in
Italy had declared themselves fiefs of the Church; and the successor of
the Apostle might well hope, by aid of the Norman priest-knights, to
extend his sovereignty over Italy, and then dictate to the kings beyond
the Alps.
The aid of Hildebrand in behalf of William’s claims was obtained at once
by Lanfranc. The profound Archdeacon of Rome saw at a glance the immense
power that would accrue to the Church by the mere act of arrogating to
itself the disposition of crowns, subjecting rival princes to abide by
its decision, and fixing the men of its choice on the thrones of the
North. Despite all its slavish superstition, the Saxon Church was
obnoxious to Rome. Even the pious Edward had offended, by withholding
the old levy of Peter Pence; and simony, a crime peculiarly reprobated by
the pontiff, was notorious in England. Therefore there was much to aid
Hildebrand in the Assembly of the Cardinals, when he brought before them
the oath of Harold, the violation of the sacred relics, and demanded that
the pious Normans, true friends to the Roman Church, should be permitted
to Christianise the barbarous Saxons [237], and William he nominated as
heir to a throne promised to him by Edward, and forfeited by the perjury
of Harold. Nevertheless, to the honour of that assembly, and of man,
there was a holy opposition to this wholesale barter of human
rights--this sanction of an armed onslaught on a Christian people. “It
is infamous,” said the good, “to authorise homicide.” But Hildebrand was
all-powerful, and prevailed.
William was at high feast with his barons when Lanfranc dismounted at his
gates and entered his hall.
“Hail to thee, King of England!” he said. “I bring the bull that
excommunicates Harold and his adherents; I bring to thee the gift of the
Roman Church, the land and royalty of England. I bring to thee the
gonfanon hallowed by the heir of the Apostle, and the very ring that
contains the precious relic of the Apostle himself! Now who will shrink
from thy side? Publish thy ban, not in Normandy alone, but in every
region and realm where the Church is honoured. This is the first war of
the Cross.”
Then indeed was it seen--that might of the Church! Soon as were made
known the sanction and gifts of the Pope, all the continent stirred as to
the blast of the trump in the Crusade, of which that war was the herald.
From Maine and from Anjou, from Poitou and Bretagne, from France and from
Flanders, from Aquitaine and Burgundy, flashed the spear, galloped the
steed. The robber-chiefs from the castles now grey on the Rhine; the
hunters and bandits from the roots of the Alps; baron and knight, varlet
and vagrant,--all came to the flag of the Church,--to the pillage of
England. For side by side with the Pope’s holy bull was the martial
ban:--“Good pay and broad lands to every one who will serve Count William
with spear, and with sword, and with cross-bow.” And the Duke said to
Fitzosborne, as he parcelled out the fair fields of England into Norman
fiefs:
“Harold hath not the strength of mind to promise the least of those
things that belong to me. But I have the right to promise that which is
mine, and also that which belongs to him. He must be the victor who can
give away both his own and what belongs to his foe.” [238]
All on the continent of Europe regarded England’s king as
accursed--William’s enterprise as holy; and mothers who had turned pale
when their sons went forth to the boar-chase, sent their darlings to
enter their names, for the weal of their souls, in the swollen
muster-roll of William the Norman. Every port now in Neustria was busy
with terrible life; in every wood was heard the axe felling logs for the
ships; from every anvil flew the sparks from the hammer, as iron took
shape into helmet and sword. All things seemed to favour the Church’s
chosen one. Conan, Count of Bretagne, sent to claim the Duchy of
Normandy, as legitimate heir. A few days afterwards, Conan died,
poisoned (as had died his father before him) by the mouth of his horn and
the web of his gloves. And the new Count of Bretagne sent his sons to
take part against Harold.
All the armament mustered at the roadstead of St. Valery, at the mouth of
the Somme. But the winds were long hostile, and the rains fell in
torrents.