CHAPTER I


THE CONQUEST

The battle of the 14th of October, 1066, was decisive of the struggle for
the throne of England, but William of Normandy was in no haste to gather
in the results of the victory which he had won. The judgment of heaven
had been pronounced in the case between him and Harold, and there was no
mistaking the verdict. The Saxon army was routed and flying. It could
hardly rally short of London, but there was no real pursuit. The Normans
spent the night on the battlefield, and William's own tent was pitched on
the hill which the enemy had held, and in the midst of the Saxon wounded,
a position of some danger, against which his friend and adviser, Walter
Giffard, remonstrated in vain. On the next day he fell back with his army
to Hastings. Here he remained five days waiting, the Saxon Chronicle
tells us, for the nation to make known its submission; waiting, it is
more likely, for reinforcements which were coming from Normandy. So keen
a mind as William's probably did not misjudge the situation. With the
only real army against him broken to pieces, with the only leaders around
whom a new army could rally dead, he could afford to wait. He may not
have understood the rallying power of the Saxon soldiery, but he probably
knew very well the character of the public men of England, who were left
alive to head and direct a new resistance. The only candidate for the
throne upon whom all parties could unite was a boy of no pronounced
character and no experience. The leaders of the nobility who should have
stood forth in such a crisis as the natural leaders of the nation were
men who had shown in the clearest way their readiness to sacrifice
England to their personal ambitions or grievances. At the head of the
Church were men of but little higher character and no greater capacity