words, in which Sir Francis steps out of his way to express a personal opinion of his own have perfectly amazed us. Sir Francis, holding, as he did, a doctrine of hereditary right in which we believe that no other scholar agrees with him, was perfectly consistent in condemning Harold, but the same argument must condemn William also. William was as little the heir of Cerdic and Woden as Harold was. Sir Francis, on his principles, ought uncompromisingly to have supported the claims of the Etheling against both. But he had a strange prejudice against Harold, which, as we before said, led him in the earlier work part of which is here reprinted, not only into such strange judgments as we have quoted, but into distinct inaccuracies of some importance. Here is Sir Francis' account of Harold's accession:-

'On the very day that Edward was laid in his grave, Harold prevailed upon, or compelled the prelates and nobles assembled at Westminster, to accept him as king. Some of our historians say, that he obtained the diadem by force. This is not to be understood as implying actual violence; but, simply, that the greater part of those who recognised him, acted against their own wishes and will. And if our authorities are correct, Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, but who had been suspended by the Pope, was the only prelate who acknowledged his authority.

'Some portions of the Anglo-Saxon dominions never seem to have submitted to Harold. In others, a sullen obedience was extorted from the people, merely because they had not power enough to raise any other king to the throne. Certainly the realm was not Harold's by any legal title. The son of Godwin could have no inherent right whatever to the inheritance of Edward; nor had the AngloSaxon crown ever been borne by an elective monarch. The constitutional rights of the nation extended, at farthest, to the selection of a king from the royal family; and if any kind of sanction was given by the Witan to the intrusion of Harold, the act was as invalid as that by which they had renounced the children of Ethelred, and acknowledged the Danish line.

'Harold is stated to have shown both prudence and courage in the government of the kingdom; and he has been praised for his just and due administration of justice. At the same time he is, by other writers, reprobated as a tyrant; and he is particularly blamed for his oppressive enforcement of the forest laws. Towards his own partisans, Harold may have been ostentatiously just, while the ordinary prerogative would appear tyrannical to those who deemed him to be an usurper.

6

Harold, as the last Anglo-Saxon ruler, has often been viewed. with peculiar partiality; but it is, perhaps, difficult to justify these feelings. He had no clear title to the crown in any way whatever.' (Vol. iii. p. 295.)

Against this we need do little more than quote the words of

the Chronicle* and of Florence†, which distinctly state, in language which seems expressly designed to meet every cavil, that Harold was elected King, on the recommendation of his predecessor, by the Witan of all England, and was solemnly consecrated by Archbishop Ealdred. Sir Francis Palgrave's story is made up out of the vague and rhetorical expressions of Norman and later writers. For Harold's tyranny and oppressive enforcement of the forest laws he has to stoop as low as Knighton. The assertion that no bishop but Stigand recognised Harold is not only refuted by the fact that he was crowned by Ealdred, but it is most curiously refuted by Sir Francis's own next sentence. The only authority we can find for the assertion that any part of England refused to acknowledge Harold, or paid him only a sullen obedience, is a story told by William of Malmesbury in his Life of Saint Wulfstan. § According to him the Northumbrians did for a while refuse to acknowledge Harold; but what followed? Harold went down to Northumberland, accompanied by the holy Bishop of Worcester, whose eloquence soon won over all malcontents. Sir Francis should really have chosen between his bishops and his Northumbrians. It was open to him to represent either of those classes of men as enemies of King Harold; but he could have no right to represent both.

This is a specimen of the sort of inaccuracy || which, as we said at starting, disfigures Sir Francis Palgrave's early narrative of these events. Sir Francis Palgrave might, if he pleased, deny the validity of the act which elected Harold,

* A. 1066: And Harold eorl feng to Englalandes cynerice swa 'swa se cyng hit him geude, and eac men hine parto gecuron, and 'was gebletsod to cynge on Twelftan mæssedæg.'

†A. 1066: Quo tumulato, subregulus Haroldus, Godwini ducis 'filius, quem rex ante suam decessionem regni successorem elegerat, 'à totius Angliæ primatibus ad regale culmen electus, die eodem. 'ab Aldredo Eboracensi archiepiscopo in regem est honorificè 'consecratus.'

X Scriptt. 2339. It is amusing to compare his account of Harold with that of Florence.

Anglia Sacra, vol. ii. p. 253.

We cannot help mentioning one inaccuracy of detail which gives a completely false notion of the English tactics at Senlac. Harold,' says Sir Francis Palgrave, dropped from his steed in agony' (vol. iii. p. 317). But Harold, according to the custom of English kings, fought on foot. He is so drawn on the Tapestry. William of Malmesbury (vol. iii. p. 241) gives the reason, Rex 'ipse pedes juxta vexilla stabat cum fratribus, ut, in commune 'periculo æquato, nemo de fugâ cogitaret.'

just as he might deny the validity of the act which deposed Richard II. or of the act which elected William and Mary. But we protest against a direct misstatement of the facts, and we are amazed when we are told that William's constitutional right was better than Harold's. To us nothing can be plainer than, that, if there ever was a lawful King in this world, King Harold was a lawful King. Bequest, election, ecclesiastical consecration, were all united. He was not of the royal house, but the principle which allowed the rejection of the direct heir (to use modern language utterly unknown in those times) in favour of a better qualified uncle or cousin would justify the rejection of the whole family if all were unqualified. The descendants of Eadmund Ironside had already been passed by on the election of Eadward himself, and they were now reduced to three children, a boy and two girls, who would have been passed by at any earlier time.* And we suppose that the sound doctrine that Parliament may do anything was as true in the eleventh century as in the seventeenth.

Harold then was, beyond all doubt, rightful and lawful King of the English. Where then were the claims of William? William made out his case by ingeniously mixing up two distinct things, the alleged bequest of Eadward and the alleged perjury of Harold. We have already remarked that the purely English writers say nothing whatever on either head. This sort of silence on a matter of which they must have heard seems to us rather to prove that they could not deny that something of the kind really did happen. The bequest and the fealty may both of them have been little known in England at the time when they happened, but Florence of Worcester must have known all about them after William had blazed them abroad through all Christendom. We must therefore admit the fact of a certain suppressio veri on the part of our national authorities; we must acknowledge that Eadward probably did make some sort of bequest to William and that Harold probably did in some shape or other swear fealty to William. But for details we must go to the Norman writers, and they tell their story with such an infinity of contradiction as to time, place, and circumstance that nothing satisfactory can be made out. As for the claims themselves, they admitted of an easy

The two sons of Eadgar were elected as minors, but there was then no better qualified person in the royal family, nor any very eminent layman out of it. In all earlier cases minors had been passed by. Alfred himself reigned to the exclusion of his nephews.

We do not remember to have ever seen any reference to the wonderful version of these events which Gervase of Tilbury put

answer. Neither Eadward's bequest nor Harold's fealty could give William the slightest claim to the crown of England, because neither Eadward nor Harold, but only the assembled Witan of the realm, had any right to dispose of it. This is so plain that the Norman writers themselves put this answer into Harold's mouth. Eadward's bequest, in itself worthless till confirmed by the election of the Witan, was set aside by his later bequest in favour of Harold. Harold's oath to William might bind Harold's own soul, but it could in no way bind the English people. Its violation might be a personal crime on Harold's part, it might afford a plausible casus belli to the Duke of the Normans, but it could not convert the Duke of the Normans into the lawful King of the English. Nothing could in itself be weaker than either claim, but the confusion of the two, mixed up with various collateral matters, such as the expulsion of the Normans from England, the murder of the Etheling Alfred, the neglect of Peter's-pence on the part of the islanders, was enough to obtain for William a favourable hearing both from the Papal Court and from Europe generally. The circumstance which aroused most indignation against Harold illustrates one of the lowest superstitions of the time. The mere breach of fealty was a matter of every-day occurrence, which awakened no special censure; it would have been hard to find a vassal prince who had not broken his fealty over and over again. Harold's great crimeas the story runs-lay in profaning the relics of the saints by which he swore. Yet the same story represents him as being basely entrapped into this more solemn form of oath, and as swearing without the least notion that it was the relics of the saints on which he was swearing. Surely, if the saints were thought to be capable of personal vengeance, their wrath would have fallen much more justly upon William for profaning holy objects to such a fraudulent end. Yet there can be no doubt that it was this, more than anything else, which turned general European opinion in William's favour and gave to his invasion of England something of the character of a Crusade.

together for the benefit of the Emperor Otto the Fourth. Harold, King Eadward's nephew or grandson (nepos), is sent to Normandy for his education. He there contracts a close friendship for William. They engage to marry each other's sisters. Harold is unwilling to do so, but landing in Flanders he is entrapped into the marriage, as in all other versions into the fealty. As he fails to give his sister to William, the Duke comes over, wins the battle, kills Harold, marries his sister and reigns by a Crown Matrimonial. (Otia Imperialia, vol. ii. p. 20, ap. Leibnitz, Rer. Brunsw. Scriptt., vol. i. p. 945.)

* Will. Malmes. vol. iii. p. 238.

Armed with such a title as this, William ventured on the invasion of England. A combination of circumstances, above all the simultaneous invasion of Harold Hardrada, enabled him to land at Pevensey and to conquer on the hill of Senlac. As soon as Harold had fallen, it at once became plain what England had lost in him, and how little fitted any surviving Englishman was to take his place. To that tremendous energy which had sped from the field of victory at Stamford-bridge to the field of overthrow at Senlac succeeded two months of the most contemptible drivelling on record. England was not conquered; the invader at most had possession of a single county; there were plenty of brave hearts and stout hands to resist him, but there was no leader. It took William full five years really to conquer England, but, after Harold was gone, William never again met Englishmen arrayed against him in a pitched battle. Indeed he hardly met them again in arms at all till, as elected and consecrated King, he had a formal right to deal with them as rebels. Two or three short sieges were all the opposition that William met with between his victory and his coronation. Had the courage and patriotism which spent itself in local revolts after he became King been concentrated in another effort like Harold's to hinder him from becoming King, the Norman Bastard would never have received the crown of Cerdic in King Edward's minster. The precious interval was spent within the walls of London in selfish dissensions and conspiracies. The child Eadgar was elected King, and the Northern Earls, as faithless to him as they had already been to Harold, and were about to be to William, left him to his fate. While the strength of the country was still untouched, London surrendered, the chief men of the whole land did homage, the invader was elected, crowned, and anointed King with all the rites which national usage prescribed. The wonderful advantage which he thus gained cannot be overrated. But we must here make a distinction which is apt to be forgotten, and we must guard against two errors of opposite kinds. In the vulgar view William became King at once upon his victory; the almanacmakers date his reign from St. Calixtus-day and not from Christmas. In the view of Hume and writers of that sort all later opposition is mere rebellion, justifiable rebellion perhaps, but still rebellion against a de facto King. Thierry, on the other hand, dwells exclusively on the gradual conquest of the whole country, as if the resistance which William met at Chester in 1070 was exactly of the same kind as the resistance which he met at Romney in 1066. There was between the two all the difference which was involved in William's formal