5. Harold, King of the English.-Edward left no son or brother to succeed him. His brother's grandson, Edgar, known as the Atheling or the Prince, was but a boy, and England could not be ruled by a boy. The great men chose Harold as their king, though he was not of the royal race. Harold would under any circumstances have had a difficult task before him. The earls of Mercia and Northumberland were sure to be jealous of him, and the north of England was not inclined to do much to help a man who came from the south. Though England had long been governed as one country, it was not united in heart as it is now. A man who lived in York did not feel much interest in the safety of men who lived in Exeter or Southampton. Beyond the sea there were still worse dangers. Harald Hardrada, the Norwegian king, was threatening to invade Northern England, and William, Duke of the Normans, the ablest and most warlike of an able and warlike race, threatened Southern England. Harald Hardrada only wanted, as Cnut had done before him, to get as much land or wealth as he could, but William actually claimed to be the true English king. He had no rightful claim at all, but by putting together a number of reasons, none of which was worth anything, he managed to make it seem as though he had a real claim.

6. The Norman Invasion.-Harold, therefore, had hard fighting before him. He heard that Harald Hardrada had landed in Yorkshire. At once he marched north and defeated and slew the Norwegian Harald at Stamford Bridge, near York. On the field

of victory he was told that William had landed near Pevensey. He marched hastily southwards. If England had been united, William would certainly have been overcome. But the men of the centre and north of England did not care to fight for Harold. Only the men of the south and his own trained soldiers stood by him. His brother Gurth begged him not to risk a battle, and advised him to lay waste the land between London and Pevensey, so as to starve William out. Harold answered that not a foot of English ground should be desolated by him. He took up his position at Senlac on a chalk ridge a few miles north of Hastings.

7. The Battle of Senlac.--The Battle of Senlac, or of Hastings, as it is sometimes called, was one of those battles the winning of which depended on something more than mere bravery. Harold's Englishmen were as brave as William's Normans. But Englishmen thought, as Englishmen have often thought since, that it was best to do exactly as their fathers had done. The old fashion was to fight on foot, packed closely together, with their shields. before them, and even a palisade in front of them. An army so defended can resist as long as it stands firm, but it cannot move from the spot where it is, without separating its shields and leaving openings through which the enemy can break in. William's Normans were mostly on horseback. They could move backwards and forwards, or sideways, just as their general wanted them to move. As usually happens, where two armies are equally brave, the ne which had the commander with the strongest

D

brain prevailed. William's footmen and horsemen tried first to storm the hill and were driven back. They tried again, and by William's orders pretended to fly. Some of the English were simple enough to think that the victory was won. They rushed out in triumph. The Normans swiftly turned back, chased them uphill, and broke through the palisade. The English could resist for hours yet, but they

could not conquer. Slowly and surely the Norman horse pressed along the crest of the hill, strewing the height with corpses as the hay is strewn in swathes before the mower. Harold and his chosen comrades held out longest. Then William called. for his archers and bade them shoot into the air. Down came an arrow crushing through Harold's eye. The English King lay slain, and the Normans had gained the victory.

8. The Conquest of England.-It took three years and a half more to conquer England. The English had learned no lesson from their failure at Senlac. They could not unite against William. Sometimes the West resisted, sometimes the North. Each district fought separately, and each was separately overpowered.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CONQUEROR AND HIS SONS.

WILLIAM I, 1066. WILLIAM II., 1087. HENRY I., 1100.

war, but a

1. William the Conqueror.-William is known in history as the Conqueror. But the word did not mean once what it means now. It did not mean a man who obtained his kingdom by a victory in man who obtained something which he did not possess before, whether he fought for it or not. William claimed to be King of England for certain reasons which, as he pretended, gave him a lawful title. Soon after the Battle of Senlac he was elected king by the great men, and though they were too much in fear of him to refuse to choose him, he could now speak of himself as the lawful King of England, as Edward and Alfred had been before him. He was one of those men who love order and good government whenever they do not come in the way of their own plans. But he would suffer no one to withstand him. 'Stark he

was,' writes an Englishman of the time, to men who withstood him; so harsh and cruel was he that none withstood his will. Earls that did aught against his bidding he cast into bonds. Bishops he stripped of their bishoprics; abbots of their abbacies. He spared not his own brother; first he was in the land, but the king cast him into bondage. If a man would live and hold his lands, need it were that he followed the king's will.'

2. The Normans gain Lands in England.-Even when William did most wrong, he tried to make it seem as though it were rightly done. The fierce horsemen who had charged with him up the hill of Senlac had not come simply to please the Duke. They wanted to be great men in England, to own rich corn-lands and stately homes. If William had not got these things for them they would have turned against him. He therefore set to work to do as they wished, but he made robbery look like the enforcement of the law. He said that he had been the lawful king ever since the death of Edward, and that therefore all Englishmen who had fought against him at Senlac or anywhere else had been fighting against their lawful king, and had forfeited their lands as rebels. He thus got a very large number of estates into his hands, and these he gave away to his Norman followers. Before long, almost all the great estates were in the hands of Normans. The English kept small estates, or became dependent upon the great Norman landowners.

3. William supported both by the Normans and the English. In this way William was able to do