CHAPTER XV.

THE NORMAN INVASION AND THE CAMPAIGN OF HASTINGS.[1055]

§ 1. _The Building of the Fleet._

[Sidenote: Success of all William’s negotiations.]

We left the Duke of the Normans successful in every negotiation

which concerned his enterprise, both with his own subjects and with

strangers. We saw his cause, after some hesitation, zealously taken

up by his own people, while volunteers flocked eagerly to his muster

from the territories of all the neighbouring princes. We have seen his

undertaking receive the highest of religious sanctions in the blessing

of the Roman Pontiff. Had the enterprise been one against Anjou or

France, warfare would have begun long before the period of the year

which we have now reached. But William’s present warfare was aimed

at a realm whose insular position shielded it at least for a season.

England could be reached only by sea, and the Normandy of those days

had ceased to be a naval power. The army destined to undertake the

conquest of England had to be carried across the Channel. A vast fleet

was therefore needed, and a fleet had to be created for the [Sidenote:

Formation of the Norman fleet. Summer, 1066.] purpose. The creation of

that fleet was the work of the summer of the great year, while King

Harold of England was so carefully guarding his southern coasts.[1056]

As soon as the undertaking was finally determined on, the woods of

Normandy began to be felled,[1057] and the havens of Normandy resounded

with the axes and hammers of carpenters and ship-builders.[1058] A

large proportion of the ships were the [Sidenote: Contributions of

ships.] offerings of the great Barons and Prelates of the land.[1059]

William Fitz-Osbern, who had been the first man in Normandy to pledge

himself to the enterprise, now redeemed his pledge by the gift of sixty

ships. The same large number was contributed by Roger of Montgomery and

by Roger of Beaumont, and also by Hugh of Avranches, the future Earl

of Chester. Fifty ships, with sixty knights, formed the contingent of

Hugh of Montfort. Two less famous men, Fulk the Lame and Gerald the

Seneschal,[1060] contributed forty each. The gift of Walter Giffard

was thirty ships with a hundred knights. The same number of ships,

with their crews, were supplied by Vulgrin, the pious and peaceful

Bishop of Le Mans. He, we are told, was specially zealous in the Duke’s

cause,[1061] looking on him doubtless as the champion of Rome and of

Christendom. But greater even than these great contingents were the

gifts of the Duke’s own kinsfolk, of the members of the ducal house no

less than of those sons of his mother whom his bounty had so lavishly

enriched. A hundred and twenty ships, the largest offering in the whole

list, were the contribution of the Count of Mortain. A gift second

only to that of his brother, a gift of a hundred ships,[1062] was the

contribution of the Bishop of Bayeux. William of Evreux gave eighty,

Robert of Eu sixty. The monk Nicolas, the son of Duke Richard the

Third, now Abbot of the great house of Saint Ouen, gave twenty ships

with a hundred knights. Others of less degree gave one ship or more,

according to their means.[1063] And among these was another monk, of

less lofty birth, but of higher personal renown, than the princely

Abbot of Saint Ouen’s. [Sidenote: Remigius of Fécamp, first Bishop of

Lincoln. 1067–1092.] A single ship with twenty knights was the offering

of Remigius, then almoner of the house of Fécamp,[1064] but who was in

aftertimes to be the last Prelate of the ancient see of Dorchester, the

first who placed his throne on the lordly steep of more famous Lincoln.

But one gift, though the gift of a single ship only, had a value beyond

all others in the eyes of the Duke. The ship which was destined for

his own use, the ship which was to bear William and his fortune,[1065]

was the offering of the conjugal love of the [Sidenote: William’s ship

the “Mora,” the gift of Matilda.] Duchess Matilda. This chosen vessel

bore the name of the Mora, a name not very easy to explain. Either at

its prow or at its stern it bore the likeness of a boy wrought in gold

blowing an ivory horn pointing towards England.[1066]

[Sidenote: Number of the ships variously stated.]

The whole number of the fleet thus collected is variously stated. The

lowest reckoning gives the exact number as six hundred and ninety-six;

the largest of those accounts which are at all credible raises it to an

indefinite number above three thousand.[1067] Exaggeration is always to

be looked for in such accounts; but so great a difference can hardly be

accounted for wholly by exaggeration. It is evident that our different

accounts follow different ways of reckoning; that some, for instance,

counted only the ships strictly so called, while others reckoned also

the small craft of [Sidenote: Character of the ships.] every kind. The

ships, after all, were only large open boats with a single mast and

sail, and with a smaller boat attached. It is plain that they were

designed almost wholly for transport, and they do not seem to have in

any way equalled those mighty horses of the sea[1068] which had borne

Swend and Cnut to the conquest of England.

[Sidenote: William’s attention to ecclesiastical affairs.]

But while William was thus busily pressing his warlike preparations, he

was, no less characteristically, largely occupied with ecclesiastical

affairs. Indeed the chosen champion of the saints and of their honour,

the armed missionary who was setting forth to convert the stiff-necked

islanders from the error of their ways, was bound, more than ever,

to show himself a faithful nursing-father [Sidenote: Council at

Bonneville, June 15.] to the Church at home. In a court or council

which the Duke held at Bonneville in the month of June two important

ecclesiastical appointments were made. Two great Abbeys needed chiefs.

The chair of Saint Evroul was void by the death of Abbot Osbern, and

the new monastery of Saint Stephen was now far enough advanced towards

perfection for the brotherhood to be regularly [Sidenote: Appointment

of Mainer at Saint Evroul,] organized under an Abbot. The monks of

Saint Evroul petitioned the Duke for the appointment of a new head

of their body. William, after consulting with the Diocesan Hugh of

Lisieux, placed the pastoral staff in the hand of the Prior Mainer, who

presently received the abbatial benediction from the Bishop.[1069] But

a greater than Mainer was on this same day advanced from the second to

the [Sidenote: and of Lanfranc at Saint Stephen’s.] highest rank in

monastic dignity. It was at this court at Bonneville that the renowned

Prior of Bec, the future Primate of Canterbury, the man whose acute and

busy spirit made him well nigh the soul of his master’s enterprise,

became the first chief of his master’s great foundation. The scruples

of the great scholar and diplomatist had at last been overcome, and

in the same hour in which Mainer received the staff of Saint Evroul,

Lanfranc also received the staff [Sidenote: Motives to special devotion

at this time.] of the still more famous house of Saint Stephen.[1070]

The policy of pushing on the two great expiatory foundations at this

particular moment is obvious. The champions of the Church must, as

far as might be, wipe out all memory of their former sin. William

must set out on his holy enterprise with perfectly clean hands, and

Matilda must be able to lift up hands no less clean as she prayed

for his safety and victory before the altars which she had reared.

Indeed, even without this overwhelming motive, the eve of so great

and hazardous an undertaking was a moment which specially called for

works of devotion of every kind, and we have seen that it was so felt

by others in Normandy besides the Duke and Duchess.[1071] At this time

therefore, [Sidenote: Consecration of the Holy Trinity at Caen. June

18.] besides the organization of William’s foundation under its first

and greatest Abbot, the material fabric of Matilda’s foundation was

so eagerly pressed on that the unfinished minster was hallowed three

days after the appointment of [Sidenote: Dedication of the Duke’s

daughter Cecily.] the two Abbots.[1072] As part of that great ceremony,

the ducal pair offered on the altar of God an offering more costly

than lands or buildings or jewelled ornaments. In a milder sense than

that in which the words were used by the ancient prophet, they gave

their first-born for their transgression, the fruit of their bodies

for the sin of their souls. The Duke’s eldest daughter Cecily, now a

child, but in after days to become a renowned Abbess of her mother’s

foundation, was dedicated by her parents as a virgin set apart for

God’s service.[1073] It was not however till nine years later that her

lips pronounced the irrevocable vows.[1074]

These ecclesiastical ceremonies are the last Norman events of a

peaceful kind which I have to record during this year of wonders. They

answer to the ecclesiastical events which happened in England at a time

a little earlier. The establishment of Lanfranc at Saint Stephen’s, the

consecration of the minster of the Trinity, answer to King Harold’s

renewed gifts to Waltham, to his labours for ecclesiastical reformation

at Ely.[1075] On each side of the Channel the rival princes and their

subjects were striving to win the favour of Heaven by acts of special

devotion. We have now to turn away from ecclesiastical, and from

all other peaceful affairs, to that great struggle between the two

contending chiefs, on the last act of which we are now fairly entered.

[Illustration: THE VOYAGE AND CAMPAIGN OF WILLIAM.]

§ 2. _The Embarcation and Voyage of William. August–September, 1066._

[Sidenote: The fleet at the mouth of the Dive. August 12?]

At last, in the course of the month of August,[1076] the Norman fleet

was ready to set sail on its great enterprise. William was now to be

occupied with war, and with war alone. He entrusted the government

of the Duchy to Matilda, with the help of a council of wise men, at

whose head stood the famous Roger of Beaumont. The age of Roger made

him fitter for counsel than for action; so he tarried at home, while

his son went to the war.[1077] The Duke himself hastened to the spot

which had been chosen for the embarcation. This spot lay close to the

scene of one of the most memorable of William’s exploits. The mouth

of the Dive, where the fleet of Normandy was now gathered for the

unprovoked invasion of England, lies only a few miles below that ford

of Varaville where the Norman Duke had once, in a more righteous cause,

dealt so heavy a blow against the French [Sidenote: Description of the

place.] invaders of his Duchy. The river there pours itself into the

sea, under the shelter of heights which are a close continuation of

the hills from which King Henry had looked down to see the massacre of

his rear-guard.[1078] The course of the stream has no doubt greatly

changed; the harbour, largely blocked up by sand, has lost much of its

importance as a harbour, though it is now awaking to a kind of renewed

life in the form of a modern watering-place. A large and singular

church, retaining its massive central arches of Norman work, is the

only piece of antiquity which remains in the original small town of

Dive. A modern column and inscription on the height above shows that

the historical interest of the spot is not forgotten, and the name

of the great Duke is still attached to the humble hostelry. In this

harbour then the ships were gathered; the host lay encamped on the

hills, waiting for the south wind which was to bear them across to the

land of promise. The view from those hills is a noble one. To the west

the eye ranges over the whole low country and over the gentler heights

which bound it in the extreme distance. At the foot of the heights

the Dive rolls along its winding course, then no doubt pouring itself

into the sea with a wider and more open flood than it can now boast

of. Beyond it glistens the Orne, the stream which flowed by the rising

minsters of Caen, the stream whose flood, like Kishon of old,[1079]

had wrought such help for William’s cause on the day when he won his

spurs at Val-ès-dunes.[1080] To the north-east stand forth the rocks

which guard the entrance to a yet greater stream, the rocks by which

William’s Wiking forefathers had so often sailed to threaten the great

cities on the Seine, and which now, under Norman guardianship, served

as it were to keep the Lord of Paris imprisoned within the narrow

limits of his inland realm.

The south wind for which William so eagerly waited was as slow in

coming as the east wind which was so eagerly looked for, when a later

William was waiting to set forth for the shores of England on a widely

different [Sidenote: Delay at the Dive.] errand.[1081] The fleet was

detained for a whole month at the mouth of the Dive,[1082] and the

panegyrist of William [Sidenote: Good order maintained in William’s

army.] grows eloquent on the wonderful good order and peaceable

demeanour of the host which was, no doubt most unwillingly, subjected

to this untoward delay. The excellence of the Duke’s commissariat

is set forth in such glowing colours that we cannot help longing to

know the details of his arrangements. The whole army, we are told,

received regular pay and regular provisions during the month which was

thus condemned to inactivity.[1083] All plunder was forbidden, and we

are told that William’s orders to this effect were carried out with

a degree of success which seems incredible. The inhabitants of the

surrounding country learned to pass without fear among the motley host,

a host made up not only of their own countrymen but of adventurers from

every province of Gaul.[1084] The flocks and herds fed undisturbed in

their pastures; the ripening corn remained alike uncut and untrampled

by the dangerous visitors.[1085] In all this there is doubtless much

of the exaggeration of a professed panegyrist. But we can well believe

that the strong will of the Great William was really able to preserve a

degree of good order among the mixed multitude which he commanded which

a lesser man might have found it hopeless to preserve even among an

army of his own subjects.

[Sidenote: Numbers of William’s army.]

The numbers of the host which William had now assembled are as

variously stated as the number of the ships which were to carry them.

The sum total is commonly given at sixty thousand, or even more; but

there are authorities which bring it as low as fourteen thousand.[1086]

Here, as in the case of the ships, while we must allow for error and

exaggeration, we must also allow for different systems of reckoning.

The higher amount may be meant to take in all the armed men of every

class, while the lower may give only the number of knights—what in the

military language of a later age would have been called the number of

_lances_. In the history of all ages nothing is so little trustworthy

as the figures which profess to set before us the numbers of armies.

And I fear that the exact number, or even any near approximation to

the exact number, either of the Norman invaders or of the English

defenders, is one of the things which the historian must, however

unwillingly, leave uncertain.

[Sidenote: Spies sent by Harold.]

It was while the Norman fleet was still at the mouth of the Dive,

while the whole southern coast of England was so strongly guarded by

the watchful care of Harold,[1087] that an incident is said to have

happened, which, though it has been mixed up with events not belonging

to it in date, is most likely not without some foundation in fact.

The King of the English, among his precautions for the defence of the

country,[1088] did not forget to get what knowledge he could as to the

condition and numbers of the enemy. He sent spies across to the mouth

of the Dive. [Sidenote: One is brought before William, who sends him

back with a threatening message to Harold.] One of them was seized

and led before the Duke. We are not told whether William followed the

magnanimous or ostentatious example of Xerxes[1089] in showing the

Englishman the whole strength and numbers of the Norman host; but he at

least sent him home unhurt, though charged with a threatening message

to his sovereign. When the spy strove to hide his errand under some

of the usual subterfuges,[1090] William showed him at once that no

disguises could avail with him. Harold might forbear to waste his gold

and silver in paying spies to search out William’s resources; sooner

than Harold looked for, he would himself come as his own messenger,

and would teach him on his own soil what the power of Normandy

was.[1091] [Sidenote: William’s comparison between himself and Harold.]

And it was now, we are told, that the Duke made that most singular

comparison between himself and his rival of which I have already

spoken. He had promised away all the goods of Harold beforehand, while

Harold had not the strength of mind to promise anything of his.[1092]

He goes on to say that Harold would fight only to retain what he had

wrongfully seized, while he would fight to obtain possession of the

gift of his departed friend which he had earned by his services towards

him.[1093] Success was certain; the fleet was of such a number as to be

fully enough for any purpose that was needed, while he was not cumbered

with any useless multitude of ships. And, as for the army, the fate

of campaigns was decided, not by the number of armies, but by their

valour.[1094]

[Sidenote: William resolves to change his position.]

A month was thus lost at the Dive,[1095] and yet the south wind came

not. The Duke at last resolved to change his position and his place

of embarcation. He had many good reasons for doing so. Had he stayed

much longer in his first quarters, his supplies would probably have

failed him, and he would no longer have been able to keep back his

troops, especially the foreign mercenaries, from plunder. Meanwhile the

same failure of provisions which William merely dreaded had actually

defeated all the schemes of the [Sidenote: Influence of the disbanding

of Harold’s fleet and army. September 8.] English King. While William

lay at the mouth of the Dive, Harold’s great fleet and army, which

had so long guarded the English coast, was finally disbanded, and

the mass of the ships went back to London.[1096] It had in fact been

a sort of involuntary struggle between the two rivals, which could

keep an army for a longer time on foot in a state of inaction. In

this struggle William had succeeded. The host with which Harold had

lined the whole West-Saxon coast was doubtless far larger than the

host which William had gathered at a single haven of Normandy. But

William’s host, gathered from all parts of Gaul, consisted far more

largely of professional soldiers than Harold’s, and in a far smaller

degree of the general levies of the country, eager to return to their

homes and harvests. It is no wonder that the endurance of William’s

army outlasted the endurance of the army of Harold. But William had

doubtless by this time exhausted the supplies afforded by the lands

near the Dive, and he found it expedient to remove to quarters whose

resources were still untouched. And the disbanding of Harold’s fleet

and army supplied another motive equally strong. Now that the shores

of England were left comparatively defenceless, now that the English

fleet no longer rode triumphantly in the Channel, it became a matter

of importance with William to be nearer to the English shores, ready

to sweep down on any unguarded spot at any favourable moment. William

therefore took advantage of a west wind[1097] to hasten from the Dive

to a point which far more [Sidenote: William sails to Saint Valery.

September 12.] closely threatened the southern shores of England.

He passed by the mouth of the Seine and by the whole coast of Upper

Normandy, and took up his position at a spot beyond the limits of his

own immediate dominion, within the territories of his now faithful

vassal Guy of Ponthieu.[1098] [Sidenote: History of the Abbey of

Saint Walaric or Valery.] Near the mouth of the broad estuary of the

Somme, on a low height overhanging the water,[1099] stood a minster,

commemorating the good deeds of Walaric, a saint of Merovingian times,

who had done much to evangelize the still heathen lands of Northern

Gaul.[1100] Like so many other foundations originally secular, it had

seen its canons give way to monks, and the monastery now ranked high

among foundations of its own class. Near its gate a small town had

arisen, bearing, like the abbey itself, the name of its ancient patron,

but in a form which French pronunciation had moulded into a likeness

to the great Valerian house of Rome. The Abbey of Saint Valery, like

many other monasteries, had suffered through its own renown; the

relics of its founder had been carried off by the pious cupidity of a

Count of Flanders, and had been restored by the pious intercession of

a Duke of the French.[1101] Like many other monasteries, the duty of

its defence had given [Sidenote: The Advocates of Saint Valery.] a

title to a line of temporal nobles. The Advocates of Saint Valery were

powerful lords; one of them, as we have seen, had married a daughter of

Normandy, and a younger branch of his race filled a high and honourable

place among [Sidenote: Description of the place.] the great houses

of the Norman land.[1102] Of this famous abbey the vast encircling

wall still remains, but the remains of the church are small, and of

a date somewhat later than the days with which we are concerned. But

the ancient town, rising, with its parish church, above the modern

port which has arisen rather higher up the river, still retains its

walls and gateways and general mediæval look in singular perfection.

Below, immediately on the coast, stands a ruined tower of rude work,

to which an inaccurate or misunderstood legend has attached the name

of Harold of England.[1103] The spot, even apart from its historical

associations, is in every way striking. The broad estuary, the wooded

heights above it, the ancient and the modern town, unite to form a

singularly varied [Sidenote: Gathering of the fleet; its losses.]

landscape. It was here, on the wide expanse of water into which the

mouth of the great Picard river spreads itself, that the fleet of

William rode, still waiting for the long-expected south wind which

should at once transport him and his host to the shores of Sussex.

Its numbers seem to have been somewhat lessened from the numbers,

whatever those numbers were, of the fleet which had been gathered at

the mouth of the Dive. We hear of losses from shipwreck, and of losses

from desertion;[1104] and, as we have seen, it is not impossible that

we ought to add losses from at least partial actions with English

ships.[1105] At any rate, from what cause soever, a good many men were

missing from William’s muster; and we are told that he imitated the

well-known stratagem of Xerxes,[1106] by causing the recovered bodies

of the drowned men to be buried as secretly as might be, lest the

knowledge of their losses [Sidenote: Further delay at Saint Valery.

September 12–27.] might serve to dishearten his followers.[1107] Still

the wind was not favourable; the west wind had brought the fleet to

Saint Valery, but the south wind was not yet willing to bring it to any

English haven. All the time then that Harold was engaged in his great

Northern march and in his victory at Stamfordbridge, William was still

lying inactive in his second naval quarters at the mouth of the Somme.

[Sidenote: The army inspirited by exhortations and religious

ceremonies.]

But with William time was never idle; he had ever at his command the

resources of both worlds to occupy any season of constrained inaction.

It was even more incumbent upon him to respect the property of his

allies and vassals than to respect that of his own subjects. He

occupied himself as diligently in care for his commissariat at Saint

Valery as he had done at the Dive.[1108] By constant exhortations he

kept up the spirits of those of his men who were already beginning to

shrink from the enterprise.[1109] And the champion of the Church, the

pious leader of the great expedition for the second conversion of the

erring English, was not likely to be sparing at such a moment in those

means of spiritual excitement of which he so well knew the efficacy.

Prayers and sacred rites of every kind were resorted to, in order to

move Heaven to send the looked-for wind which should waft its servants

to do its bidding beyond the sea. The Duke himself was unwearied in

his devotions within the minster of Saint Valery, nor did he pay less

regard to the outside of the temple than to the inside. His eyes were

ever watching the weathercock on the minster tower; when he saw it

pointing to the south, his heart was downcast and his eyes were filled

with tears, but the least turn in the opposite direction again kindled

his hopes. Still the wind came not; the sky was cloudy; the weather

was cold and rainy; for fifteen days all the powers of the air seemed

steadily bent against the enterprise.[1110] [Sidenote: Procession of

the body of Saint Valery.] At last recourse was had to a ceremony of

special solemnity, one which, it was thought, could not fail to wring

the long-wished-for boon from the saints and from their Creator. At the

request of the Duke and his army, the Abbot and monks of Saint Valery

came forth from their church in solemn procession, bearing the shrine

which contained the wonder-working body of their glorified patron. A

carpet was spread on the ground, and the shrine was exposed to the gaze

of the army, awaiting their devotions and their offerings. The Duke and

all his host knelt in prayer for the withdrawal of the adverse breeze

and the sending of one more favourable. Nor was their bounty less than

their faith; the shrine of Saint Valery was hidden by the pieces of

money showered down as offerings by his worshippers.[1111]

[Sidenote: The south wind blows. Wednesday, Sept. 27.]

The devotion and the pious liberality of the Norman host did not pass

unrewarded. The prayers and the gifts of William and his followers did

their work. The costly offerings at Caen, the crowning act of devotion

at Saint Valery, at last availed to release the new Agamemnôn from

his unwilling sojourn at another Aulis.[1112] In the milder belief of

William’s age the virginity of Cecily was an offering more acceptable

to Heaven than the bloody sacrifice of Iphigeneia. And at last so many

prayers were heard. On Wednesday the twenty-seventh of September,

two days after Harold’s victory at Stamfordbridge, the south wind

blew.[1113]

[Sidenote: The embarcation.]

The camp was in a tumult of joy and thankfulness. The wished-for

hour was at last come. England and its spoils seemed to lie before

them, ready to be grasped by the hands of the champions of the Church

and of the Norman saints. Men were seen everywhere lifting up their

hands to heaven, exhorting and rejoicing with one another that the

hours of weariness were over, that the moment of action at last had

come.[1114] In the midst of the general joy came the Duke’s orders

for immediate embarcation. William, as eager by temper as he was

cautions by reflexion, was foremost in urging his followers to hasten

on board their vessels, and to lose no time in making for the promised

land.[1115] But his troops needed little urging; the dread of the

unknown sea and of the unknown land, the dread of the wealth of England

and of the might of her defenders,[1116] had all passed away. The

Norman warriors were so clearly the favourites of Heaven, the sign

which they had just received so clearly showed that their cause was

the cause of righteousness, that doubt and fear no longer lingered in

the mind of any man. Men rushed to the shore;[1117] one man exhorted

his followers, another his comrades; each was eager to be first on

board, to be foremost in the holy work. The captain outstripped his

soldiers; the soldier outstripped his companions; men left behind

them their goods and their necessary stores, having one fear only

before their eyes, lest by any mishap they should themselves be left

behind.[1118] Some bore on their shoulders the swords, the spears, the

coats of mail, which would be needed on the other side of the water.

Some yoked themselves to waggons loaded with spears, and loaded also

with casks of wine. This last was the only kind of provision of which

any great quantity seems to have been thought needful; conquered

England was to find the rest.[1119] Some were busy in setting up the

masts, some in unfurling the sails;[1120] the especial work of the

horsemen was the difficult task of bringing their horses on board the

vessels.[1121] The ships resounded with music; the pipe, the zittern,

the drum, the cymbals, all were heard, and the voice of the trumpet

sounded proudly over all.[1122] Meanwhile the Duke once more made

his way to the minster of Saint Valery, and offered his last prayers

and gifts on Gaulish ground before he went forth to the conquest of

the island realm.[1123] Before he reached his ship, evening had set

in. The moon was hidden and the heavens were clouded over. The Duke

therefore ordered every ship to bear a light,[1124] while on the top

of the mast of his own Mora a huge lantern blazed to be the guiding

star of the [Sidenote: William sets sail.] whole navy. William now

went on board; the trumpet sounded, and the voice of the herald

announced the Duke’s last orders before setting sail. The ships were

to keep as near together as might be, and to follow closely after the

beacon-light of his own ship. When they were well out to sea, they

were to rest a while in the dead hour of the night, till the signals

speaking alike to the eye and the ear had again issued the ducal

commands from the ducal vessel.[1125] The fleet set sail; the vessels

halted and rested as the Duke had ordered. But before day-break the

trumpet again sounded from the Mora, and the lantern [Sidenote: Details

of his voyage.] again blazed at her mast. The ships again set sail;

but the ship which carried William and his fortunes far outstripped

all her followers.[1126] We are told that the speed of the vessel,

like that of the divine barks of Scheria,[1127] adapted itself to the

eagerness of her master;[1128] but it is plain that one reason for the

special fleetness attained by William’s ship was that she was one of

the few vessels in the fleet which were unencumbered by horses.[1129]

The day was now dawning, and the ducal ship was alone. At the Duke’s

bidding a sailor climbed the mast to see whether any of the other

vessels were in sight. But the morning light as yet showed him nothing

on all sides but the sea and the sky.[1130] The Duke ordered a halt;

the anchor was cast, and William, as if in his own house, ordered a

plentiful breakfast to be served up. The rich contents of one of the

casks of wine were not forgotten; and William in cheerful mood bade

his men be of good heart and assured them that their comrades would

soon overtake them; God, in whose cause they were setting forth, would

watch over the safety of all the host.[1131] The sailor was again

sent to the mast-head, and he now announced that four ships were in

sight. Presently he saw such a multitude that their masts looked

like a forest upon the waves.[1132] The heart of William was lifted

up in thankfulness.[1133] The south wind still blew; in the morning

light the lantern was no longer needed; the chequered colours of the

sails of the Mora were now the beacon on which every eye in the whole

[Sidenote: William lands at Pevensey. Thursday, September 28.] fleet

was fixed.[1134] England was soon in sight, and by nine in the morning

of Thursday the twenty-eighth of September, the Norman claimant of her

Crown had already set foot upon her shores.[1135]

He landed at a spot so memorable in the earliest English history that,

to one who muses there, the landing even of William himself seems but

of secondary interest.[1136] William came, as it might seem, to pour

a new Latin and Celtic infusion into Teutonic England. He brought

his Romanized Northmen and the Welsh of the Lesser Britain to bear

rule over Saxons, Angles, and Danes who [Sidenote: Description and

historical associations of the place.] had never fallen away from their

Teutonic heritage. He came to begin his work on a spot where the Saxon

of old had dealt one of the heaviest of all his blows against the Roman

and the Briton. He came to subdue England on one of the spots which had

seen most done to turn Britain into England. A north-west course from

Saint Valery had brought the invading fleet to a point in that eastern

part of the South-Saxon coast which, trending to the north-east, is cut

off in a marked way by the promontory of Beechy Head from that long and

nearly straight line of coast which reaches westward to Selsey Bill.

At Beechy Head to the west, and again near Hastings to the east, the

high ground comes down to the sea. Between these points lies a long

flat shore, where the waves now break on a vast mass of shingle, which,

at some points, stretches a long way inland, forming a wilderness of

pebbles, slightly relieved by small patches of gorse and thin herbage.

Between the coast and the hills—the hills which form a part of the

great _Andredes-weald_—there lies a wide level, but here and there

slight and low projections, feeble offshoots from the high ground,

[Sidenote: Pevensey the ancient Anderida.] straggle down towards

the coast. One such post, commanding alike the sea and the inland

country, had been chosen as the site of a Roman city, and Anderida,

the _Andredes-ceaster_ of our forefathers, became, in the later days

of Roman occupation, one of the chief of the fortresses which guarded

the Saxon Shore.[1137] In those days, and in the days of William also,

Anderida was a haven of the sea. The vast expanse of shingle is owing

to the later siltings which have choked up so many harbours along this

coast; in the fifth and in the eleventh century the sea still washed

the foot of the slight eminence occupied by the city, and ships could

ride at anchor beneath the Roman [Sidenote: Remains of the Roman

city.] walls.[1138] Of those walls and of their massive towers large

portions still remain; but not a single human dwelling-place survives

within their circuit. In the south-eastern corner of the Roman city,

the mediæval castle of Pevensey, a foundation of William’s brother

Robert,[1139] has arisen and has fallen into decay. And just without

the ancient walls, the villages of Pevensey and West Ham, each with

its Old-English name and its mediæval church, seem to show by their

position that the first Teutonic settlers in Britain avoided, from

whatever reason, the occupation of the old Roman sites. Few groups

are more striking in themselves than this assemblage of antiquities

of various dates and kinds, Roman and mediæval, ecclesiastical and

military. But the true attraction of the spot comes from the memory

that there was dealt one of the most awful of those awful blows which

made our race dominant in this our island. [Sidenote: Landing of Ælle

in Chichester harbour. 477.] Second among the Teutonic settlements,

first among the strictly Saxon settlements, the followers of Ælle and

Cissa had for fourteen years been fighting their way onwards from their

first landing-place on British soil. The foundations of the South-Saxon

Kingdom had been laid at Cymenes-óra, in the haven which in after days

was to be called after the city to which the younger conqueror gave his

name.[1140] Since that day, the Saxons had been gradually spreading

eastward towards the frontiers of their [Sidenote: Taking of Anderida.

491.] Jutish kinsfolk in Kent. At last, as we read in our Chronicles,

“Ælle and Cissa beset Andredes-ceaster, and slew all that were therein,

nor was there a Briton left there any more.”[1141] So it was that our

fathers did their work; but so it was that England became England.

The fall of Anderida put the finishing stroke to the Teutonic conquest

of south-eastern Britain. The long extent of coast, once part of the

Saxon Shore in the elder sense, now became far more truly a Saxon shore

under the rule of our first Bretwalda.[1142] The walls which were

stormed by Ælle and Cissa have, from that day to this, remained as the

mighty monument of a fallen power, the sepulchre of the races which

our fathers swept away. In the days of William, as now, those walls

had already long ceased to surround the dwelling-places of men.[1143]

The forsaken city could at most have served as an occasional place of

shelter for the people of the two English settlements which had arisen

at either end of it. Beneath those awful ruins, among the memorials of

ancient English victory, the Norman Duke now landed. He came, as it

might seem to a superficial eye, to undo the work of Ælle and Cissa,

to subject the sons of the destroyers of the Briton and the Roman to

men speaking the tongue of Rome, and in the veins of many of whom still

flowed the blood of the British exiles of Armorica. In truth the errand

on which he came was the exact opposite. He came, a chief of Danes and

Saxons who had fallen from their first love, who had cast away the laws

and the speech of their forefathers, but who now came to the Teutonic

island to be won back into the Teutonic fold, to be washed clean from

the traces of their sojourn in Roman lands, and to win for themselves,

among the brethren whom they were to meet as momentary enemies, a

right to an equal share in the name, the laws, and the glories of

Teutonic England.

[Sidenote: Defenceless state of the coast at the time of William’s

landing.]

Pevensey then, the English name which had supplanted the ancient

Anderida, was the place of William’s landing. The town is mentioned

among those ports on the southern coast which Harold had taken special

care to supply with garrisons.[1144] But at the moment of William’s

landing the post was either wholly undefended, or defended by a force

which found it hopeless to offer resistance. It will be remembered that

the Housecarls had gone northward with the King, and that the irregular

levies which had guarded the coast only three weeks before were now

scattered every man to his own home.[1145] Any force then which

occupied Pevensey, or any other point of the South-Saxon coast, is

likely to have been intended as a mere outpost to watch and to give the

alarm, rather than to have been placed there with any hope of seriously

withstanding the invaders. Harold had doubtless hoped that the winds

which had delayed William so long would still work in the cause of

England. He trusted that the enemy’s passage would be delayed till he

could himself return to the southern coast at the head of the victors

of Stamfordbridge. [Sidenote: Lucky moment of William’s voyage.] But

the fortune of William bore him to the English shore at the very moment

which suited his purpose. A little earlier or a little later, he

would have met with a vigorous and, in all probability, a successful

resistance. On that St. Michael’s Eve he met with no resistance

whatever. There were neither ships to hinder him from drawing near

to the shore,[1146] nor soldiers to withstand him in the act of

[Sidenote: He lands without resistance.] landing. The whole Norman

fleet disembarked without a blow being struck against them.[1147] But

the array in which they disembarked seems plainly to show that they had

at [Sidenote: Details of the landing; close order of the ships.] least

reckoned on meeting with armed resistance. The fleet was not allowed

to be scattered; the ships all steered for the same point, and cast

anchor as near together as might be in the one haven of Pevensey.[1148]

The wide expanse of shore at this point would render such a course

especially easy. As soon as the anchors were cast, the ships were run

ashore, the masts were lowered, the shields and saddles were unladen,

the horses were released from their unfamiliar prisons.[1149] The

fighting men then landed as nearly as might be in battle array. The

first armed man who set [Sidenote: William slips; his ready use of the

omen.] foot on English ground was Duke William himself. As he descended

from his ship, his foot slipped and he fell with both his hands upon

the ground. A loud cry of grief was raised at the evil omen. But the

ready wit of William failed him not. “By the splendour of God,” he

cried, “I have taken seizin of my Kingdom, the earth of England is

in my two hands.”[1150] It is added that a soldier, of kindred spirit

with his leader, ran forward, and plucking a handful of thatch from a

cottage, placed it in the Duke’s hand as seizin, not only of England,

but of all that England held within it.[1151] “I accept it,” answered

the Duke; “and may God be with us.”

[Sidenote: Order of the landing.]

The whole army now landed in order. First came the archers, ready for

action, with bended bows and quivers slung at their sides. They scoured

the whole of the neighbouring shore, but they nowhere found an armed

enemy to resist them.[1152] Next came the knights, all in their helmets

and harness. They at once mounted their horses, and formed in the plain

as if to call forth the hidden defenders of England to battle.[1153]

But not a blow was struck; Pevensey was occupied as the first-fruits of

the invasion; a garrison was left to secure William’s first possession

on English ground, and the words of one of our informants might almost

imply that some portion of the Roman ruins was once more turned, in the

rough and hurried way which was all that the time allowed, to purposes

of defence. One object of this fortification and garrison was to guard

the ships, which had been drawn on shore and which were now to be left

behind.[1154] For the stay of the Norman host at Pevensey was not a

long one. No great amount of provisions had been brought with them,

nor could the town of Pevensey and its neighbourhood supply food for

so great a multitude.[1155] It was needful to move to some wealthier

and more convenient post, which would afford better head-quarters for

the army, and which might serve as a central point for a systematic

[Sidenote: The army marches to Hastings. Friday, Sept. 29.] harrying

of the country. Only one day therefore was spent at Pevensey; on the

next day, the feast of the Archangel so deeply reverenced by Norman

devotion, the army marched on eastward, probably along the line of a

Roman road, and came to the town which William chose as his base of

operations for this memorable campaign. That campaign can be called

by no name so fitting as the Campaign of Hastings; for Hastings was

the head-quarters of William, the centre of the whole operations of

the campaign. But in speaking of the great battle itself, the name of

Hastings simply leads to geographical confusions. I speak therefore of

the Campaign of Hastings, while to the battle itself I restore its true

ancient name of Senlac.[1156]

[Sidenote: Description and early history of Hastings.]

The town and port of Hastings[1157] is one which has been more than

once mentioned in the earlier stages of our history.[1158] Its name

has been made memorable by the zeal and energy displayed by its seamen

in their pursuit [Sidenote: 1049.] of the pirate-ships of Swegen after

the murder of Beorn.[1159] Like Pevensey, it had been garrisoned by

Harold.[1160] And yet the town seems to have surrendered to William

without striking a blow. Hastings, like most other English towns, had

most likely no fortifications which could resist Norman arts of attack,

and the prowess of the seamen, whose force would at any time have been

weak against the vast fleet of William, was utterly useless now that

the invaders had actually landed. The town is placed on a part of the

coast where the hills come close down upon the sea, forming a striking

contrast to the wide open flats which the Normans had just left behind

them at Pevensey. Two gorges between hills open immediately upon the

water; the eastern opening is occupied by the elder, the western by

the more modern, town of Hastings. The hill which divides the two is

crowned by the ruins of the castle which probably marks the site of

William’s [Sidenote: Importance of the position.] head-quarters. The

position was an important one; it commanded the great roads east and

west, and also the north road leading directly between London and

the coast. [Sidenote: William makes an entrenched camp on the hill.]

William therefore chose Hastings as a permanent camp.[1161] After

consultation with his brothers, Bishop Odo and Count Robert, he gave

orders for the construction of one of those wooden fortresses which

were so constantly run up for sudden emergencies in Norman warfare, and

which often proved the forerunners of more lasting buildings of stone.

The time at William’s command allowed only of the digging of a trench,

the casting up of a mound, and the fortification of its summit with a

castle of wood.[1162] But it was doubtless this temporary structure

which formed the germ of the stately castle which in after days crowned

the height of Hastings, and within whose walls arose a church and

college, whose chief stall, less than a hundred years after this time,

formed one of the countless preferments of the worldly Archdeacon who

was so soon to be transformed into the champion and martyr of the

Church.[1163]

It is not clear whether it was at Pevensey or at [Sidenote: Slight

loss of the fleet on the voyage.] Hastings that the Duke reviewed his

troops, and found, so we are told in one account, that two only of his

ships had been lost on the passage.[1164] But one rather remarkable

[Sidenote: Fate of the soothsayer.] life had been lost with them. A

clerk, who pretended to the power of soothsaying, had assured the

Duke, not only that his voyage would be prosperous, but that he should

win England without a blow. Harold would of his own accord again bow

to him and become his man. Half the prophecy was already fulfilled;

it remained to see what would be the fate of the other half. But the

prophet himself came not to the muster. He had embarked in one of

the missing ships and was returned as drowned.[1165] “A poor diviner

must he have been,” said William, “who could not divine the way and

time of his own death. Foolish would he be who should put faith in

the words of such a [Sidenote: Was this the time of the affair of

Romney?] soothsayer as this.”[1166] One hardly knows whether these dark

allusions to lost ships and lost men are to be taken in connexion with

the fact that, at some stage of the campaign before the great battle,

certain stragglers from the Norman fleet or army had made their way

eastward as far as Romney, and had there fallen in a skirmish with the

townsmen.[1167] The words of our accounts leave it uncertain whether

a portion of the fleet lost its way on the passage, or whether a

detachment of the army wandered thither from Hastings. In any case,

this and some other indications which we have already seen[1168] all

tend to show that the fight on Senlac was not absolutely the first time

that Normans and Englishmen met with arms in their hands during this

memorable year.

[Sidenote: William systematically ravages the country.]

William, it will be remembered, while encamped in his own territory

and in that of his vassal of Ponthieu, had carefully maintained his

troops at his own cost, and had at least done his best to hinder

all plunder of the surrounding country. But England, though a realm

which William claimed as his own by inheritance, was not to be dealt

with so tenderly.[1169] A poet in the Norman interest tells us that

whatever damage the English suffered was only the fitting punishment

for their stubbornness in not at once admitting the manifest rights

of their lawful [Sidenote: Object of these ravages; to tempt Harold

to fight.] King.[1170] However this may be, there can be little

doubt that William’s ravages were not only done systematically, but

were done with a fixed and politic purpose. It was William’s object

to fight a battle as soon as might be. But it was not his object to

advance for this purpose far into the country, to seek for Harold

wherever he might be found. So to do would have been to cut himself

off from his own powerful base of operations and from his only hope

of retreat in case of defeat. It was William’s object to bring Harold

down to the sea-coast, to tempt him to an attack on the Norman camp,

or to a battle on the level ground. In either of these cases the

Norman tactics would have a distinct advantage over the English. It is

impossible to doubt that the systematic harrying of the whole country

round Hastings was done with the deliberate purpose of provoking the

English King, and of [Sidenote: Lasting effects of William’s harrying.]

bringing him in all haste to defend his subjects. The work was done

with a completeness which shows that it was something more than the

mere passing damage wrought by an army in need of food. The traces of

the ravages done at this time are recorded in the great Survey twenty

years later. The Tapestry not only vividly sets before us the way

in which provisions of all sorts were brought in for the use of the

camp;[1171] it also represents an incident which at once goes to the

heart. A house is being set on fire; the inmates, a woman and a child,

are coming forth from their burning dwelling.[1172] This is doubtless

one instance among thousands of the cruel destruction which was fast

spread over the country, as far as William’s plunderers could reach.

Men fled everywhere with such of their goods and cattle as they could

save, and sought for shelter in the churches and churchyards.[1173] It

would doubtless be the policy of the pious Duke to keep his followers

back, as far as might be, from all damage towards those who thus put

themselves under the direct protection of religion. Elsewhere all was

havock. It was to save his people from the horrors of war in their most

barbarous form that King Harold jeoparded his life and Kingdom.[1174]

[Sidenote: Result of the Northern campaign doubtful at the time of

William’s landing.]

At the moment of William’s landing, and even at the moment of his

occupation of Hastings, he must have been quite uncertain as to the

fortunes of his rival in the North. It was perfectly possible that he

might never have to contend with Harold of England at all. The result

of the Northumbrian campaign could hardly have been known in Sussex

two days after the fight of Stamfordbridge, and it was one of the

possible chances of war that William might have to fight for the Crown

of England against the victorious host of Tostig and Harold Hardrada.

But the two great rivals were not long kept in ignorance of [Sidenote:

Robert the son of Wymarc brings news. His position and estimate of his

conduct.] each other’s movements and purposes. The news was brought to

William by a message from an English landowner of Norman birth, in whom

it is easy to recognize the Staller Robert the son of Wymarc, him who

had stood at the bed’s head of the dying Eadward.[1175] We know not

whether he had retained his Stallership, or any other office, under

Harold. But it is plain that he had become the man of the new King, for

he was living in England under the King’s peace and in full possession

of his lands.[1176] There is nothing in his present conduct which sets

him before us as a traitor to his new allegiance. It is scarcely ground

enough for such a charge to say that he could hardly have been with

Harold at Stamfordbridge.[1177] His conduct in fact seems to have been

that which was really right and honourable under the circumstances in

which he stood. He had to reconcile his good will and his duty towards

his adopted country with his earlier good will and earlier duty towards

his natural sovereign. He sent a messenger to Hastings,[1178] with a

message designed to persuade the Duke, in the interest of all parties,

to give up his enterprise, and to [Sidenote: He counsels William to go

home.] go quietly back to his own dominions. He, Robert, counselled

him as a friend and kinsman;[1179] he would be deeply sorry if any

harm befel him or his army, and, if he remained in England, he and

his army would meet with certain destruction. It was hopeless for

William to think of contending with the forces of England. King Harold

had just defeated the Norwegian invader with a slaughter of twenty

thousand men;[1180] Tostig and Harold Hardrada were slain; the King of

the English was coming southwards with a countless host, a host, men

said, of an hundred thousand.[1181] Against the English King and the

English army, flushed with their victory over the greatest warrior in

the whole world,[1182] it would be madness to risk a battle. Neither

in number nor in strength were the Normans fit to do battle against

King Harold and the English. Against them, in short, William’s army

would count for no more than so many barking curs.[1183] The Duke was a

prudent man, and had hitherto always acted prudently.[1184] Let him act

prudently now; let him go home; let him at all events keep within his

entrenchments and not risk a battle.[1185] If he did go forth to fight,

his rashness would certainly bring about his utter overthrow.

Such counsel as this, addressed to William the Conqueror, speaks muck

more highly for the good intentions of Robert than for his knowledge

of mankind, above all for his knowledge of the man with whom he was

dealing.[1186] William had not crossed the sea for nothing; he was not

like the King in the Gospel, who had to stop on his march to consider

whether he were able with his ten thousand to meet him who came against

him with twenty thousand.[1187] [Sidenote: William’s answer; He will

fight in any case.] It was perhaps not without a reference to that

parable that William answered that, had he only ten thousand men, such

as those of whom he had sixty thousand, he would not draw back; he

would not cross the sea again without avenging himself of his enemy.

He would not even keep himself within his entrenchments; whatever were

the numbers on either side, he would go forth and meet Harold face to

face.[1188] He condescended to thank Robert for the kindly interest

which he took in his welfare, though he hinted that the words in which

he had contrasted Norman and English prowess would better have been

spared.[1189] The Duke had no need of such counsels as those which were

pressed upon him by his cousin’s favourite. He had come into England to

win his Crown, and his Crown he would win at all hazards.

§ 3. _The Southern March of Harold. October 1–13, 1066._

[Sidenote: The news brought to Harold at York. October 1?]

I have already told how the news of William’s landing was brought to

King Harold at the feast of victory at York.[1190] That feast must have

been saddened by the thought of the many brave men who had fallen at

a moment when England needed the help of all her sons, by the thought

that England had been saved only by the death of a brother of her

King, by the thought that, while King and people were rejoicing at

the victory which had just been gained over one enemy, another enemy,

certainly not less terrible, was daily threatening the defenceless

southern coast. And in the very moment of triumph the news came that

the blow had actually fallen. Men now heard that, while Harold was

letting the remnants of the Norwegian army depart in peace, the Duke of

the Normans had actually landed, that he was ravaging English ground

far and wide, that a portion of English ground was already entrenched

and palisaded, and changed into a Norman [Sidenote: The news brought

by a South-Saxon Thegn who saw the landing.] fortress.[1191] The Norman

poet gives us a graphic description of the way in which the news was

brought to the English King. A Thegn of the country heard the cries

of grief and dismay with which the South-Saxon churls beheld the

approach of the Norman fleet.[1192] He went forth; he hid himself in

a convenient lurking-place, and beheld in safety the whole process of

the landing of the Norman army.[1193] He saw first the archers and

then the knights disembark. He saw the shields and armour brought out

of the ships; he saw the carpenters come out with their axes; he saw

the fosse dug, and the palisade thrown up.[1194] The [Sidenote: He

hastens to York.] sight was enough; the heart of the English Thegn

was troubled; he took his weapons, his sword and his javelin;[1195]

he mounted his horse, and rode straight to bear the news to his Lord

King Harold. He hastened on with all speed night and day; he rested

late and rose early,[1196] till he found the victor of Stamfordbridge

in the banquetting-hall at York. Here he at once told his errand. The

countless host from all Gaul, the host of horsemen and archers and

slingers who had gathered under the banner of Duke William,[1197] had

landed at Pevensey. They had already built a fort and had fenced it

with a palisade.[1198] Presently another messenger, a churl, came from

Hastings itself.[1199] He had more news to tell, more details of the

cruel harrying of the South-Saxon land. The host of Normans, Frenchmen,

and Bretons, a host that no man could number, a host like the stars

of heaven or the fishes of the sea, was ravaging far and wide.[1200]

Men were being slain, their widows, their sons, their daughters, their

flocks and their herds, were becoming the prey of the stranger.[1201]

Each message enforced the same truth; the King must march at once

to the defence of his southern coasts, or the whole land [Sidenote:

Answer of Harold.] would be wrested from him. Harold is reported by

the Norman poet to have said that it would have been better to have

given Tostig all that he asked,[1202] so that he might have been

himself in the south to hinder the landing of the French invaders.

Such a speech cannot have been uttered by Harold, as it misconceives

all the relations between him and his brother. The situation is

better conceived when the King is made to say that, had he been on

the South-Saxon shore, the strangers would never have made good their

landing. Either they would have been driven back into the sea, or they

would have escaped its dangers only to perish on English ground. “But,”

he added, “the mischance was the will of the King of Heaven, and I

could not be everywhere at the same moment.”[1203]

[Sidenote: Position of Harold between the two invaders.]

And so of a truth it was. The event of this great campaign, the

overthrow of Harold and of England, turned wholly, setting aside the

mere accidents of battle, on the inability of Harold himself to contend

against two invasions, or to be at the two ends of his Kingdom at the

same time. Of the two invasions, the Norwegian and the Norman, each

rendered the other possible. Or even had the south wind blown sooner

at the mouth of the Dive, the southern coast of England would have

been found guarded against any attack, and Harold would probably have

gone to meet his namesake of Norway flushed with victory over William

and his host. As it was, the fate of England, as ever in that age,

rested on one man, and that one man could not be at once in Sussex

and in Northumberland. Harold, too late to hinder the landing of the

Normans, had now before him the far harder task of dislodging them when

they were already in the land. It was a hard lot to have to hasten at

once on such an errand, after hardly a moment’s rest from the toils

and the glories of Stamfordbridge. One terrible campaign was hardly

over, when another yet more terrible had to be begun. But the heart of

Harold failed him not, and the heart of England beat in unison with

the [Sidenote: Harold begins his march to London.] heart of her King.

As soon as the news came, King Harold held a Council of the leaders of

Stamfordbridge,[1204] perhaps rather an armed Gemót, such as we have

already heard of more than once.[1205] He told them of the landing of

the enemy; he set before them the horrors which would come upon the

land if the invader succeeded in his enterprise.[1206] A loud shout of

unanimous assent rose from the Assembly. Every man pledged his faith

rather to die in arms than to acknowledge any King but Harold.[1207]

The King thanked his loyal followers, and at once ordered an immediate

march to the south, an immediate muster of the forces of his Kingdom.

London again was the trysting-place.[1208] With speed and energy

equal to that which had carried him to his northern capital, he now

set out on the return march. He himself pressed on at once, at the

head of such of his Housecarls and other immediate following as had

survived the fight of Stamfordbridge. Eadwine and Morkere were bidden

to follow with the whole force of [Sidenote: Merlswegen in command of

the North.] their Earldoms. Meanwhile the command of the North was

committed to the Sheriff Merlswegen.[1209] We shall hear of him again

among the patriots of a time a few years later, and we cannot doubt

that this great command was put into his hands because he was known to

be one more worthy of the trust than the King’s own brothers-in-law.

And so it [Sidenote: Eadwine and Morkere keep back from the war.]

proved. Even the great salvation of Stamfordbridge, the deliverance of

Northumberland from the very jaws of her enemy, could not bind the sons

of Ælfgar to gratitude or fidelity to the West-Saxon King. In their

eyes, no doubt, the landing of William only offered another chance of

bringing about their darling scheme of a divided Kingdom. William

had a quarrel with Harold; he had none with Eadwine or Morkere. They

had not forsworn themselves to their lord or done despite to any

holy relics. The invader might well be content with the immediate

territories of his enemy and his house. William might rule over Wessex

and East-Anglia, and might leave Mercia and Northumberland to the

House of Leofric. It was probably with some such designs as these that

the Northern Earls held themselves and their forces back from the

struggle. But, whatever were their motives, the fact that they did hold

themselves back is certain.[1210] The main forces of Northumberland and

north-western Mercia came not to King Harold’s muster.[1211]

[Sidenote: General zeal of the nation.]

But elsewhere another spirit reigned.[1212] Men well knew what was at

stake. They went forth, as loyal subjects, as true men to their lord,

to fight for the King whom they had chosen. But they went forth also

on a higher errand still, to save the land of their birth from the

grasp of the invader, an invader of wholly alien speech and feeling,

an invader who could never be as Cnut or even as Harold of Norway. The

presence of the Frenchmen in the land awoke a spirit in every English

heart which has never [Sidenote: Charge of parsimony against Harold.]

died out to this day. We hear indeed vague stories how Harold lost

favour with the victors of Stamfordbridge by refusing to divide among

them the rich plunder of the Norwegian host.[1213] We hear how he left

the plunder untouched under the care of Archbishop Ealdred,[1214]

instead of scattering it with a bounteous hand among the men whose

toils and whose blood had won it. These stories rest on but poor

authority; still they may have some groundwork of truth.[1215] The

time was not a time for waste of treasure; the armaments of the year

must have been costly in the extreme; Harold needed wealth to oppose

to the wealth of William, and, considering the doubtful fidelity of

the Northern Earls, he could not afford to throw away the sinews of

civil war. A prudent economy on the part of Harold may have called

forth a certain measure of discontent; but it is certain that such

discontent had no serious effect on the campaign. The discontented

in such a case must have been mainly the King’s own Housecarls, and

those who bring this charge against Harold tell us also that it was

the King’s own Housecarls who formed the strength of the host that

fought at Senlac.[1216] It is far more certain that, as King Harold set

forth on his southern march, fresh from the triumph of Stamfordbridge

and with the fate of England resting once more upon him, the men of

the greater part of England flocked eagerly to the Standard of their

glorious [Sidenote: The shires which sent men. Wessex, East Anglia,

Eastern Mercia.] King. They gathered round him from all the shires

through which the Dragon and the Fighting Man passed once more on

their southern journey. They gathered round him from all the shires

under his own immediate rule, and under the rule of his faithful

brothers.[1217] North-western [Sidenote: The North and Northwest kept

away by their Earls.] Mercia stood aloof under Eadwine. Northumberland,

under the rule of Morkere, sent none but such as joined the King’s

own Standard on his march. Not so the lands which were still under

the House of Siward. Whether the young [Sidenote: Loyalty of the

Earldom of Waltheof.] Waltheof came himself we know not; but there is

no doubt that the men of Northampton and Huntingdon came loyally to

King Harold’s muster. And from all the east and south, from the lands

which had passed from the rule of Godwine to the rule of Harold, from

the lands where Gyrth still kept up the memory of Harold’s earlier

government, from all the lands between the Tamar and the German Ocean,

men came to fight for Harold and for [Sidenote: The men of Kent and

London.] England. And, foremost and honoured among all, ranking,

it would seem, every man among the King’s personal following, came

the men of Kent, whose right it was to deal the first blow in the

battle, and the men of the great city itself, whose high privilege

it was to guard the King himself and his Standard.[1218] At the head

of the men of London stood the Sheriff of the Middle-Saxons, the

Staller Esegar,[1219] the son of Æthelstan, the son of Tofig, none the

[Sidenote: Esegar commands the Londoners.] less loyal to his King

because the minster of the Holy Rood had risen on soil which had once

been the dwelling-place of his fathers.[1220] Of his fellow-Staller

Eadnoth we hear nothing; Bondig would almost seem to have tarried in

the North, or, from whatever cause or accident, not to [Sidenote: Few

names of Englishmen preserved.] have appeared at the muster.[1221] We

see then that England, as a whole, failed not of her duty; but few

indeed, compared with the long roll-call of the invaders, are the men

whom we know by name as having joined in the great march and fought in

the great battle. Still there are a few names which have come down to

us, names to be cherished wherever the tongue of England is spoken,

names which should sound like the call of the trumpet in the [Sidenote:

Entries in Domesday.] ears of every man of English birth. In the dry

entries of the Norman Survey a few records still live of the men

who fought and died for England. Two nameless freemen of Hampshire,

owners of a small allodial holding, come first [Sidenote: Ælfric of

Huntingdonshire.] on the patriotic bead-roll. One degree clearer in

personality stands forth Ælfric of Gelling, a Thegn of Huntingdonshire,

and tenant of the Church of Ramsey, who came from Waltheof’s Earldom,

whether in the following of his Earl or at the bidding of his own

loyalty to his King. [Sidenote: Breme of East-Anglia.] From East-Anglia

we find recorded a nameless tenant of the House of Saint Eadmund, and

Breme a freeman of King Eadward’s, who came no doubt in the following

of Earl Gyrth. With a clearer consciousness of their personal being, we

can honour the names of two noble tenants of the Church of Abingdon,

men high in rank in the old West-Saxon Earldom, who fought and fell by

the side of Harold. Their names set them before us as representatives

of the two great Teutonic races of the land, each alike armed to

defend their common blood and speech [Sidenote: Godric and Thurkill

of Berkshire.] against the Southern invader. Thither came Godric the

Sheriff, Lord of Fifhide, whose name witnesses to his English descent,

and thither too came the Danish Thurkill, Lord of the neighbouring

lordship of Kingston. He had, at Earl Harold’s counsel, commended

himself and his lands to Saint Mary of Abingdon, and he came no doubt

with as fervent a trust in the Black Cross of that ancient house as

the King himself reposed in the more famous relic of his own newly

hallowed minster. And it was not only the tenants of religious houses

who went forth to battle for the excommunicated King against the

invader who boasted himself as the special champion of the Church and

of religion. Two English Prelates at least, and several churchmen of

lower rank, personally braved the curse of Rome in the [Sidenote:

Ælfwig Abbot of New Minster.] cause of England. The New Minster of

Winchester, King Ælfred’s great bequest to his royal city, was still

ruled by Ælfwig, the brother of the great Earl Godwine, the uncle of

King Harold himself.[1222] Like Ealhstan and like Eadnoth in earlier

times, he and twelve of his monks marched to the field, not merely to

pray for England, but to wield their weapons among the foremost of her

champions. With their coats of mail over their monastic garb, they took

their place in the ranks, and fought and died alongside of Thurkill

and Godric and the other valiant men whose names no chronicler has

recorded.[1223] Ælfwig came to the fight at the bidding of kindred no

less than at the bidding [Sidenote: Leofric Abbot of Peterborough. His

death, Nov. 1.] of loyalty. Another Prelate, of equal ecclesiastical

rank, and of greater personal fame, Leofric, the renowned Abbot of

Peterborough,[1224] preferred the cause of his country to the cause of

his own house. Eadwine and Morkere kept aloof from the great struggle;

their worthier cousin, the Abbot of five monasteries, followed Harold

to the fight, and, unlike his brother of Winchester, returned to

his home sick and wounded.[1225] And one lowlier churchman must not

[Sidenote: Eadric the Deacon.] be passed by. The Norman record itself

seems to assume a kind of pathos, as we read how Eadric the Deacon,

a freeman of Harold’s, followed his lord from the East-Anglian land

of his earlier government, and died with him in the battle.[1226]

Volunteers like these doubtless took their places among the King’s

personal following. But we cannot doubt that the main strength of the

army consisted of Harold’s own picked troops, his veteran Housecarls,

the conquerors of Gruffydd, the victors of Stamfordbridge. Still it

is clear that the levies of all southern and eastern England answered

readily to Harold’s summons. They flocked to his muster in London in as

great numbers, and with as great speed, as the swift march of events at

this fearful crisis allowed them.

[Sidenote: Harold reaches London. October 5?]

The march of Harold from York to London was as memorable an instance of

the indomitable energy of his character as his march, so short a time

before, from London to York. He seems to have reached London about ten

days after the fight at Stamfordbridge, about a week after William’s

landing at Pevensey.[1227] He came at the head of his own following,

and of such of the general levies of the central shires as had joined

him on the road. In the great city, which had been appointed as the

general trysting-place, he waited, impatiently as it would seem, while

men flocked in from his own Wessex and from the lands of the three

faithful Earls. He waited also for the further succours which were

never to arrive, for the forces which the Earls of the North were

keeping back from [Sidenote: He goes to pray at Waltham.] the muster.

At such a moment of suspense the heart of Harold, no less than the

heart of William, looked for help and guidance from on high. His home

was now in the royal hall of Westminster, beneath the shadow of the

minster of the Apostle, the minster where prayers and masses were

daily going up for the soul of his revered predecessor.[1228] It was

the minster too where he himself had gone through the most solemn act

of his life, where he had received his royal unction and his Imperial

Crown. But it was not before the tomb of Eadward, or before the altar

of Saint Peter, that Harold sought for heavenly strength and counsel in

the great crisis of his life. His heart went back to the home of his

earlier days, to the lowlier church of his own rearing, to the relic

which had ever been the especial object of his devotion, the Holy Cross

which gave England her war-cry. One at least of the few days of the

King’s short stay in London was devoted to a last pilgrimage to his

own Waltham.[1229] [Sidenote: His last gifts to the minster.] Early in

the morning of one of those October days King Harold made his way to

the minster of the Holy Cross, bearing with him the last gifts that

he was to offer there. Those gifts were a further supply of relics,

the treasures of his own chapel,[1230] gathered together no doubt

by the lavish piety of Eadward, but which now formed Harold’s last

oblation upon the high altar of his own minster. Before [Sidenote:

Harold’s vow.] that altar the King and Founder knelt in prayer. He

vowed that, if God gave him victory in the strife to which he was then

marching forth, he would yet further endow the church of the Holy Rood

with gifts and lands, and would yet further increase the number of

those who served God within its walls. Nay more, he would look upon

himself as God’s ransomed servant, and would devote himself to his

special service for ever.[1231] We need not take these striking words

to mean that Harold dreamed, like Ceadwalla or Ine, of laying aside

his Crown and of becoming God’s special servant as monk or priest. We

hear in them simply the voice of deep penitence for the few sins and

errors which stained that noble life, the voice of earnest prayer for

deliverance from the meshes in which the craft of his adversary had

entangled him. We hear in them the voice of high and humble resolution

to live from henceforth, as man and as King, a life such as became a

faithful servant of God, such as became a King sitting on the throne

of the righteous Ælfred, and whose first days of government had been

passed in the old realm of the martyred Eadmund. When his offerings

had been made and his prayers had been uttered, the King turned him to

depart. The Canons and all the members of the Church of Waltham formed

in procession before their sovereign and Founder. They swept westward

along that stately nave, between the two rows of its massive columns,

till they reached the great western portal, over which was placed the

wonder-working relic, the Holy Rood of Montacute and Waltham.[1232]

Before the great object of his life’s reverence, King Harold bowed

himself low, and lay for a while flat on his face [Sidenote: Miracle

of the Holy Rood.] on the consecrated pavement. Then, as men said at

Waltham in after days, the holy image, whose head had hitherto stood

erect, bowed itself towards the King who lay prostrate beneath it. One

eye alone, that of the sacrist Thurkill, was privileged to behold the

actual working of the divine wonder. But many there were who had seen

the image in former days, and who bare witness how its head had been

from that day bowed towards the ground, as if to say “It is finished,”

as if to say that all was over with the hopes and the career of him who

had so devoutly honoured it.[1233]

[Sidenote: Messages between William and Harold.]

It was perhaps on his return from Waltham, it was certainly during his

short sojourn in London, that Harold received another message from his

rival. Here again we come to one of those stages of our narrative where

all is confusion and contradiction. The English writers, in their short

accounts of events which they loved not to dwell upon, are silent as to

any attempts at peaceful negotiations taking place, at the last moment,

between the two armed princes. The witness of the Norman writers is

full indeed, but their witness does not agree together.[1234] The

different versions agree in no circumstance of time, place, or order of

events. Yet we cannot doubt that some messages passed between Harold

and William, and we can almost as little doubt that it was William who

sent the first messenger to Harold, and not Harold who sent the first

messenger to William. It was perfectly in character that an invader

who assumed the character of a legal claimant, nay more, an invader

who professed to come as an armed missionary of the Roman See, should

play out his part by offering the perjurer and usurper one more chance

of repentance. Harold, on the other hand, a national King, simply

defending his own Crown and the freedom of his people, had no need thus

ostentatiously to put himself in [Sidenote: Mission of Hugh Margot to

Harold;] the right. We may then believe that the first message which

passed between the Norman Duke and the English King, after William

landed on English ground, was when Hugh Margot, a monk of Fécamp, came

to King Harold in London. He found him seated, as we may imagine him,

on his throne in his Palace of Westminster, [Sidenote: he calls on him

to give up the Crown.] and called on him, in the name of the Duke of

the Normans, to come down from his throne, and to lay aside his crown

and sceptre. The messenger once more set forth the rights of William,

his claim on the Crown by the bequest of Eadward, his personal claim on

Harold as his sworn man. The Duke was ready to have his claims fairly

discussed, according to the law either of England or of Normandy. If

either Norman or English judges held that Harold’s right was good,

William would let him enjoy that right in peace. Otherwise let him

quietly yield up what he had usurped, and spare the bloodshed and

misery on either side of which he would be guilty if he attempted to

retain it.

[Sidenote: Indignation of Harold restrained by Gyrth.]

A message like this might have provoked the meekest of men. It is not

wonderful that we read in one account[1235] that Harold’s wrath was

highly kindled, nay that he was with some difficulty kept back from a

breach of the rights of ambassadors in the person of the insolent monk.

The influence which thus restrained the King from violence is said to

have been that of Earl Gyrth, who, in the Norman [Sidenote: Harold’s

counter-message to William; his clear statement of his rights.]

accounts, appears throughout as the good genius of his royal brother.

However this may be, we elsewhere find[1236] a message addressed by

Harold to William, which is evidently an answer to the monk of Fécamp,

and which contains a calm and clear statement of Harold’s right. He

does not deny the fact of his oath to William, but he maintains that

it was an extorted oath and therefore of no force. He does not deny

the fact of Eadward’s earlier promise to William, but he maintains

that that promise has been cancelled by a later bequest. Ever since

the blessed Augustine first preached the Gospel to Englishmen, it had

always been the law of England that a testament was of no strength at

all while the testator lived. Up to the moment of his death, a man

might revoke any earlier disposition of his goods, which could not take

effect till the breath was out of his body. Eadward had indeed once

made a promise of the succession in favour of William, but that promise

had become void and of none effect by his later and dying nomination of

the reigning King. How far the words of any message of Harold’s have

been truly reported to us by our Norman informants it is impossible

to say, but it is clear that the answer thus put into Harold’s mouth,

though far from exhaustive, is thoroughly to the purpose as far as it

goes. Harold’s best claim to his Crown, his election by the English

people, is not insisted on. But the answer to the two points insisted

[Sidenote: Harold challenges William to fight on Saturday.] on by

William seems hardly to admit of a rejoinder. We are told in other

accounts that Harold offered William his friendship and rich gifts if

he would depart quietly out of the land, but added that if he were bent

on warfare, he would meet him in battle on the coming Saturday.[1237]

The Duke, we are told, accepted the challenge; he dismissed the

messenger with the honourable gifts of a horse and arms; and Harold,

it is added, when he saw him thus return, repented him that he had done

despite to the messenger whom Duke William had sent to him.

[Sidenote: Harold as well as William eager for battle.]

The challenge had now passed. There can be no doubt that the irritating

message of William, and the reports which must have reached London of

the cruel harrying of the South-Saxon lands, had wrought the effect

which they were doubtless meant to work on the mind of Harold. It was,

as we have seen, the policy of William to draw Harold down to a battle,

in which William should have the vantage-ground of his intrenched camp

at Hastings. And Harold was now as eager for battle as William himself

could be. He was eager to avenge his own wrongs and the wrongs of his

people. He was eager to strike the decisive blow before the French

host could be strengthened by reinforcements from beyond sea.[1238]

His personal wrath was kindled against the man who had insulted and

mocked him by a challenge the most galling that had ever been addressed

to a crowned King upon his throne. And a higher feeling of duty would

bid him to go forth and put a stop as soon as might be to the pitiless

ravages which were laying waste his land and bringing his people to

beggary.[1239] The purpose of the King was to go forth at once and to

meet the invader face to face, according to the challenge which he had

himself given for the coming [Sidenote: Proposal of Gyrth.] Saturday.

But the tale goes on to tell how Gyrth, the special hero of the Norman

writers, again strove to turn his brother from his purpose.[1240] His

counsel was that the King should remain, seemingly as the defender of

London, while he himself should go forth to battle with the Norman.

The King was wearied with his labours in the Northumbrian campaign;

the troops which had as yet come together in London were not numerous

enough to justify the King in attempting to strike a decisive blow

[Sidenote: Gyrth’s scruples about the oath.] at their head. Moreover,

whether the oath was binding or not, Harold could not deny that he

had sworn an oath to William as his lord, and it was not well that a

man should go forth to fight face to face against the lord to whom he

had done homage.[1241] But he, Gyrth, was under no such restraint; he

need feel no such scruples. He had never sworn ought to Duke William;

he could go forth with a clear conscience and fight against him face

[Sidenote: Gyrth proposes that he should march against William, while

Harold remains and harries the country.] to face for his native

land.[1242] Let the King too think on the risk to himself and to his

Kingdom if he jeoparded his own life and all that depended on his own

life, the noble heritage of English freedom,[1243] on the chances of a

single battle. Let Gyrth fight against William. If Gyrth overcame the

invader, the gain to England would be as great as if Harold himself

overcame him. But if William overcame Gyrth, the loss to England would

be far less than if William overcame Harold. If Gyrth were slain or in

bonds, Harold could still gather another army, and could strike another

blow to rescue or to avenge his brother.[1244] Let then the Earl of the

East-Angles go forth with the troops which were already assembled in

London, and let the King himself wait till a greater force had answered

to his summons. Let him meanwhile harry the whole land between London

and the coast, even as the Normans themselves were harrying it. Let him

burn houses, cut down trees, lay waste corn-fields. Let him in short

put a wilderness between himself and his enemy. William then, whether

successful or unsuccessful in the battle with Gyrth, would presently

be starved into favourable terms. He would soon find it impossible

to maintain his host in the wasted land, and he would be driven to

withdraw peacefully to his own dominions.[1245]

[Sidenote: Estimate of Gyrth’s advice.]

A hero was speaking to a hero; we may add, a general was speaking

to a general. Our hearts are moved at the generous self-devotion of

the brave Earl, who recked so little of himself as compared with the

safety of his brother and his country. And in the wise, though cruel,

policy which he enforced upon his brother, we can discern a subtlety

of intellect fitted to grapple with that of William himself. Gyrth,

as painted by hostile historians, stands forth as one who, had he

outlived that one fatal day, would never have allowed England to fall

without striking another blow. But how were the counsels of that

lofty spirit received by the no less lofty spirit to whom they were

addressed? [Sidenote: Norman calumnies.] We may cast aside the mere

inventions of Norman calumny. They represent Harold as thrusting away

his brother with insult, as even spurning his aged mother from his

feet, when, still sad at the fate of Tostig,[1246] she implored him

not to jeopard the lives of all the sons who were left to her.[1247]

Such tales as these come from the same mint of falsehood as the tales

which describe William as striking his wife with his spur or as

beating her to [Sidenote: Answer of Harold; he refuses to ravage his

land or do harm to his people.] death with his bridle.[1248] Another

Norman writer, who at least better understood the characters of the

two noble brothers, puts into the mouth of Harold words which, after

eight hundred years, still send a thrill to the hearts of Englishmen.

All who heard the counsel of Gyrth cried out that it was good, and

prayed the King to follow it.[1249] But Harold answered that he would

never play the coward’s part, that he would never let his friends go

forth to face danger on his behalf, while he himself, from whatever

cause, drew back from facing it.[1250] And he added words which show

how the wise and experienced ruler, the chosen and anointed King, had

cast aside whatever needed to be cast aside in the fiery exile who had

once harried the coast at Porlock.[1251] “Never,” said Harold, “will

I burn an English village or an English house; never will I harm the

lands or the goods of any Englishman. How can I do hurt to the folk who

are put under me to govern? How can I plunder and harass those whom I

would fain see thrive under my rule?”[1252] Truly, when we read words

like these, we feel that it is something to be of the blood and of the

speech of the men who chose Harold for their King and who died around

his Standard.

[Sidenote: Harold marches from London. Thursday, October 12.]

Six days had now been passed in the trysting-place of London.[1253]

Daring the whole of that time men had been flocking in, but the forces

of the North under the sons of Ælfgar had not yet appeared. Harold

now determined to delay no longer. He set out from London, seemingly

on Thursday, exactly one week after his arrival in the great city,

in order to redeem his challenge of giving battle to the invaders on

Saturday. He marched forth at the head of his own following and of

such troops as had come in to the London muster. These would no doubt

be largely reinforced by the levies of Kent and Sussex pressing to his

Standard on the march. At [Sidenote: Numbers of his army; exaggeration

on both sides.] the numbers of the army which he thus collected it is

impossible to do more than guess. The Norman and the English writers

both indulge in manifest exaggerations in opposite directions. The

Normans employ every rhetorical art to set before us the prodigious

numbers of the English. They were a host that no man could number, a

host like the host of Xerxes, which drank up the rivers as it passed.

Nothing but the special favour of God could have given his servants a

victory over their [Sidenote: Harold unjustly censured.] enemies which

was truly miraculous. On the other hand, the English writers yielded

from the very beginning to the obvious temptation of laying the blame

of the national overthrow on the rashness of the King. Harold refused

to wait till a sufficient force had come together; he ventured a battle

with numbers altogether inadequate, and he paid the penalty of his

own over-daring. Such are the comments even of the writers who are

warmest in their admiration of Harold, and who pour forth the most

bitter regrets over his fall.[1254] Yet we must remember that nothing

is easier than to blame a defeated commander, nothing easier than to

throw on his shoulders either the faults of others or the mere caprices

of fortune. And we should remember too that, deeply as we reverence

our national writers, implicitly as we accept their statements of

facts, warmly as we sympathize with their patriotic feelings, their

criticisms on such a point as this are simply the criticisms of monks

on the conduct of a consummate general. We may fairly assume that

whatever captains like William and Harold did was the right thing to do

in the circumstances under which they found themselves. The consummate

generalship [Sidenote: His generalship; he fights on ground of his

own choice.] of Harold is nowhere more conspicuously shown than in

this memorable campaign. He formed his plan, and he carried it out.

He determined to give battle, but he determined to give battle on

his own ground and after his [Sidenote: No attack on the Norman camp

intended.] own fashion. All probability goes against the belief that

Harold designed anything so foolhardy as an attack, by night or by day,

on the Norman camp. No doubt the expectation of such an attack was

prevalent in the Norman camp.[1255] But our evidence proves only the

existence of such an expectation among the Normans; it in no way proves

the existence of any such design on the part of the English King. The

nature of the post which he chose distinctly shows the contrary; it

distinctly shows what Harold’s real plan was. It was to occupy a post

where the Normans would have to attack him at a great disadvantage, and

where he could defend himself at a great advantage. This he effectually

did, and it was no small effort of true generalship to [Sidenote:

Harold probably judged rightly as to numbers.] do so. And for the

post which he chose, and for the mode warfare which he contemplated,

overwhelming numbers were in no way desirable. A moderate force, if

thoroughly compact and thoroughly trustworthy, would really do the

work better. If then Harold marched against the invader at the head of

a force which, to critics of his own day, seemed inadequate for his

purpose, the chances are that Harold knew well what he was doing and

that his critics did not understand his plans. Harold was defeated; he

has therefore paid the usual penalty of defeat in ignorant censure of

his actions. But it is quite certain that his defeat was not owing to

mere lack of numbers, and we may fairly conclude that the force with

which he set out was one which he judged to be sufficient for carrying

out the plan which he had formed.

[Sidenote: Military importance of the campaign; skill of both generals.]

The great campaign of Hastings was thus in truth a trial of skill

between the two greatest of living captains. Each of them, it may

fairly be said, to some extent compassed his purpose against the

other. William constrained Harold to fight; but Harold, in his turn,

constrained William to fight on ground of Harold’s own choosing. He

constrained him to fight on ground than which none could be better

suited for the purposes of the English defence, none worse suited

for the purposes of the Norman attack. This march of Harold from

London into Sussex was a march as speedy and as well executed as his

march from London to York so short a time before. But it was a march

conceived with somewhat different objects. Both marches were made to

meet an invader, to deliver the land from the desolation caused by

the presence of an invader. But the march into Northumberland was

strictly a march to surprize an invader, while the march into Sussex

was a march to meet an invader against whom altogether different

[Sidenote: Harold’s tactics defensive.] tactics had to be employed.

It was Harold’s policy to make the enemy the assailant in the actual

battle as well as in the general campaign. One cannot doubt that the

whole march was designed with reference to this special object. From

the moment when Harold fixed a day for the battle, he no doubt also

fixed a place. He must have known Sussex well, and he had clearly,

from the very beginning, chosen in his own mind the spot on which he

would give battle. His march was strictly a march to the [Sidenote:

He marches through Kent and Sussex,] actual spot on which the battle

was to be fought. His course lay along the line of the great road from

London to the south coast. He halted on a spot which commanded that

road, and which also commanded the great road eastward from William’s

present position. He hastened on through those Kentish and South-Saxon

lands which had been the cradle of his house, and which contained so

large [Sidenote: and encamps on SENLAC. Friday, October 13.] a portion

of his own vast estates. He halted at a point distant about seven miles

from the head-quarters of the invaders, and pitched his camp upon the

ever-memorable heights of Senlac.[1256]

[Sidenote: Nature of the site.]

The spot on which the destinies of England were fixed was indeed one

chosen with the eye of a great general. Harold has, in this respect,

had somewhat scanty justice done to him by those of his own countrymen

who seem inclined to throw on him the blame of the national defeat.

But it is in the Norman accounts, which alone supply details, that the

history of the great battle must be studied; and it cannot be denied

that, in every military respect, they do full justice both to the

English King and to the English army. Their conventional rhetoric of

abuse never fails them; but what Harold and his followers really were

we see from the facts as stated by the Normans themselves, and from

the expressions of unwilling, of half-unconscious, admiration which

those facts wring from them.[1257] Harold might be a perjurer and an

usurper, but the language of his enemies at least shows that they

found him [Sidenote: The post perfectly suited to Harold’s object.]

an equal and terrible adversary in the day of battle. And nowhere is

Harold’s military greatness so distinctly felt as when, with the Norman

narratives in our hand, we tread the battle-field of his own choice,

and see how thoroughly the post was suited for the purposes of him

who chose it. It was the policy of Harold not to attack. The mode of

fighting of an English army in that age made it absolutely invincible

as long as it could hold its ground. [Sidenote: His arrangements purely

defensive.] But neither the close array of the battle-axe men, nor the

swarms of darters and other half-armed irregular levies, were suited to

take the offensive against the horsemen who formed the strength of the

Norman army. It needed only a developement of the usual tactics of the

shield-wall to turn the battle as far as possible into the likeness of

a siege. This was what Harold now did. He occupied, and fortified as

thoroughly as the time and the means at his command would allow, a post

of great natural strength, which he made into what is distinctly spoken

of as a castle.[1258] It was a post which it was quite impossible that

William could pass by without attacking. But it was also a post which

it in no way suited William’s purposes to occupy with his own forces.

By so doing he might have forced Harold to decline fighting; he could

not have compelled him to fight on other ground. Harold was therefore

enabled to occupy the post of his own choice, the natural bulwark of

London and of the [Sidenote: Description of the hill of Senlac or

Battle.] inland parts of England generally. The hill of Senlac,[1259]

now occupied by the Abbey and town of Battle, commemorates in its later

name the great event of which it was the scene. It is the last spur

of the downs covered by the great Andredes-weald, and it completely

commands the broken ground, alternating with hill and marsh, which

lies between itself and the sea. It stands in fact right in the teeth

of an enemy marching northwards from Hastings. The hill itself is of

a peninsular shape, stretching from the east to the south-west, and

it is united by a narrow isthmus to the great mass of the high ground

to the north.[1260] The height is low, compared with the mountains

and lofty hills of the western parts of our island, but its slopes,

greatly varying in their degrees of steepness, would, even where the

ascent is most gentle, afford a formidable obstacle to an enemy who

relied mainly on his cavalry. The spot was then quite unoccupied and

untilled; nothing in any of the narratives implies the existence of any

village or settlement; our own Chronicles only describe the site as by

“the hoar apple-tree,”[1261] some relic, we may well believe, of the

days when streams and trees were still under the guardianship of their

protecting, perhaps indwelling deities. At present the eastern part of

the hill is covered by the buildings of the Abbey, and by part of the

town which has gathered round it, including the parish church. The town

also stretches to the north-west, away from the main battle-ground,

along what I have spoken of as the isthmus. But the hill reaches to

a considerable distance south-west of the isthmus, westward from the

buildings of the Abbey, and this part of the ground, we shall see,

really played the most decisive part in the great event of the place. A

sort of ravine, watered by two small streams which join together at the

base of the hill, cuts off the south-western end of the battle-ground

from the isthmus and the ground connected with it. The steepness of the

ground here is considerable. At the extreme south-east end, the present

approach to the town from Hastings, the ascent is gentler. Turning the

eastern end of the hill, which here takes a slightly forked shape,

the ground on the north side, near the present parish church, is

exceedingly steep, almost precipitous. Along the south front of the

hill, that most directly in the teeth of the invaders, the degree of

height and steepness varies a good deal. The highest and steepest is

the central point occupied by the buildings of the Abbey. Some way

westward from the Abbey is the point where the slope is gentlest of

all, where the access to the natural citadel is [Sidenote: The detached

hill.] least difficult. But here a low, detached, broken hill, a sort

of small island in advance of the larger peninsula, stands out as an

outpost in front of the main mass of high ground, and, as we shall see,

it played a most important part in the battle.

[Illustration: BATTLE OF SENLAC

14th October 1066.

_The position at the commencement of the Norman attack about 9 a.m._]

[Sidenote: Advantage of the site.]

Such a post as this, strong by nature and standing directly in the face

of the enemy, exactly suited Harold’s objects. And the approach to it

was equally unsuited to the objects of William. Seven miles of hill

and dale form the present road from Hastings to Battle. But the Norman

army, in its advance from Hastings, would have to spread itself over

the whole country, a country where marsh and wood doubtless alternated,

except so far as their own ravages had done something to clear their

path. The ground immediately around Senlac is specially broken and

rolling, and the lower land close at the foot of the hill, which

must in many parts have been utterly trackless, was doubtless, in an

October of those days, a mere quagmire. It is only where the present

road enters the town of Battle that a sort of low isthmus of somewhat

higher and firmer ground forms a slight connexion between Senlac and

the opposite hills to the south. Through all this difficult country

the Normans had to make their way to the foot of the English position.

And there they would find, not only a post of great natural strength,

but something which was not without reason called a fortress. Harold

entrenched himself [Sidenote: Harold fortifies the hill. Defences

of the English camp.] behind defences, not indeed equal to those

of Arques[1262] or Old Sarum, but perhaps nearly equal to those of

William’s own camp at Hastings. He occupied the hill; he surrounded it

on all its accessible sides by a threefold palisade, with a triple gate

of entrance, and defended it to the south by an artificial ditch.[1263]

The name of the Watch-Oak is still borne by a tree on the isthmus. In

that quarter no attack was to be feared, and the defences were there

probably less diligently cared for. The royal Standard was planted just

where the ground begins to slope to the south-east, the point most

directly in the teeth of the advancing enemy. Within the fortress thus

formed, the King of the English and his army awaited the approach of

the invaders.

Of the numbers of the host gathered within this narrow compass we

have, as we have seen, no certain account. While the English writers

naturally diminish, the Norman [Sidenote: Stories of desertions; their

probable origin.] writers as naturally magnify their numbers.[1264]

The English writers further tell us that, on account of the straitness

of the post, many of the English deserted.[1265] It may be so; but

it should be again remembered that, with the tactics which Harold

had chosen, overwhelming numbers were not desirable. Enough of good

troops to hold the hill against the enemy were better than a vast

host of tumultuary levies. We can well believe that the population

of the neighbouring country flocked to the Standard in far greater

numbers than at all suited the King’s purpose. The services of some

volunteers may have been rejected; some may have turned away when they

saw the peculiar nature of the service required of them, a kind of

service which we can well conceive to have been neither attractive nor

intelligible to raw levies. But it is certain that, whatever was the

number of the troops who remained or who were retained, little could be

said against their quality. We shall see that the Housecarls, the main

core of the army, retained their old reputation to the last, and the

fault even of the irregular levies was certainly not that of a lack of

mere courage.[1266]

[Sidenote: Stories of further messages, spies, &c.]