ancestors, tnat death was preferable to servitude, and had taken the field determined to perish, rather than suffer a renewal of those indignities to which they had so long been exposed; and they trusted that Harold, on reflection, would not defend in another that violent conduct, from which he himself in his own government, had always kept at so great a distance. This vigorous remonstrance was accompanied with such a detail of facts, so well supported, that Harold found it prudent to abandon his brother's cause; and returning to Edward, he persuaded him to pardon the Northumbrians, and to confirm Morcar in the government. He even married the sister of that nobleman; * and by his interest procured Edwin, the younger brother, to be elected into the government of Mercia. Tosti in a rage departed the kingdom, and took shelter in Flanders with Earl Baldwin, his father-in-law.

By this marriage, Harold broke all measures with the duke of Normandy, and William clearly perceived that he could no longer rely on the oaths and promises which he had extorted from him. But the English nobleman was now in such a situation, that he deemed it no longer necessary to dissemble. He had, in his conduct towards the Northumbrians, given such a specimen of his moderation as had gained him the affections of his countrymen. He saw that almost all England was engaged in his intérests; while he himself possessed the government of Wessex, Morcar that of Northumberland, and Edwin that of Mercia. He now openly aspired to the succession; and insisted, that since it was necessary, by the confession of all, to set aside the royal family, on account of the imbecility of Edgar, the sole surviving heir, there was no one so capable of filling the throne, as a nobleman of great power, of mature age, of long experience, of approved courage and abilities, who, being a native of the kingdom, would effectually secure it against the dominion and tyranny of foreigners. Edward, broken with age and infirmities, saw the difficulties too great for him to encounter; and though his inveterate prepossessions kept him from seconding the pretensions of Harold, he took but feeble and irresolute steps for securing the succession to the duke of Normandy. While he continued in this uncertainty, he was surprised by sickness, which brought him to his grave on the fifth of January, 1066, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, and twenty-fifth of his reign.

*Order. Vitalis, p. 492.

+ See note F, at the end of the volume.

This prince, to whom the monks give the title of Saint and Confessor, was the last of the Saxon line that ruled in England. Though his reign was peaceable and fortunate, he owed his prosperity less to his own abilities than to the conjunctures of the times. The Danes, employed in other enterprises, attempted not those incursions which had been so troublesome to all his predecessors, and fatal to some of them. The facility of his disposition made him acquiesce under the government of Godwin and his son Harold; and the abilities, as well as the power of these noblemen, enabled them, while they were intrusted with authority, to preserve domestic peace and tranquillity. The most commendable circumstance of Edward's government was his attention to the administration of justice, and his compiling, for that purpose, a body of laws, which he collected from the laws of Ethelbert, Ina, and Alfred. This compilation, though now lost, (for the laws that pass under Edward's name were composed afterwards,*) was long the object of affection to the English nation.

Edward the Confessor was the first that touched for the king's evil: the opinion of his sanctity procured belief to this cure among the people: his successors regarded it as a part of their state and grandeur to uphold the same opinion. It has been continued down to our time; and the practice was first dropped by the present royal family, who observed that it could no longer give amazement even to the populace, and was attended with ridicule in the eyes of all men of under standing.

HAROLD.

[1066.] Harold had so well prepared matters before the death of Edward, that he immediately stepped into the vacant throne; and his accession was attended with as little opposition and disturbance, as if he had succeeded by the most undoubted hereditary title. The citizens of London were his zealous partisans; the bishops and clergy had adopted his cause; and all the powerful nobility, connected with him by alliance or friendship, willingly seconded his pretensions, The title of Edgar Atheling was scarcely mentioned, much less the claim of the duke of Normandy; and Harold, assembling his partisans, received the crown from their hands, without waiting for the free deliberation of the states, or

*Spelm. in verbo Belliva.

regularly submitting the question to their determination.* If any were averse to this measure, they were obliged to conceal their sentiments; and the new prince, taking a general silence for consent, and founding his title on the supposed suffrages of the people, which appeared unanimous, was, on the day immediately succeeding Edward's death, crowned and anointed king, by Aldred, archbishop of York. The whole nation seemed joyfully to acquiesce in his elevation.

The first symptoms of danger which the king discovered, came from abroad, and from his own brother, Tosti, who had submitted to a voluntary banishment in Flanders. Enraged at the successful ambition of Harold, to which he himself had fallen a victim, he filled the court of Baldwin with complaints of the injustice which he had suffered; he engaged the interest of that family against his brother; he endeavored to form intrigues with some of the discontented nobles in England; he sent his emissaries to Norway, in order to rouse to arms the freebooters of that kingdom, and to excite their hopes of reaping advantage from the unsettled state of affairs on the usurpation of the new king; and, that he might render the combination more formidable, he made a journey to Normandy, in expectation that the duke, who had married Matilda, another daughter of Baldwin, would, in revenge of his own wrongs, as well as those of Tosti, second, by his counsels and forces, the projected invasion of England.†

The duke of Normandy, when he first received intelligence of Harold's intrigues and accessions, had been moved to the highest pitch of indignation; but that he might give the better color to his pretensions, he sent an embassy to England, upbraiding that prince with his breach of faith, and summoning him to resign, immediately, possession of the kingdom. Harold replied to the Norman ambassadors, that the oath, with which he was reproached, had been extorted by the wellgrounded fear of violence, and could never, for that reason, be regarded as obligatory; that he had had no commission, either from the late king or the states of England, who alone could dispose of the crown, to make any tender of the succession to

* Gul. Pictavensis, p. 196. Ypod. Neust. p. 486. Order. Vitalis, p. 492. M. West. p. 221. W. Malms. p. 93. Ingulph. p. 68. Brompton, p. 957. Knyghton, p. 2339. H. Hunting. p. 210. Many of the historians say, that Harold was regularly elected by the states; some, that Edward left him his successor by will.

+ Order. Vitalis, p. 492.

the duke of Normandy; and if he, a private person, had assumed so much authority, and had even voluntarily sworn to support the duke's pretensions, the oath was unlawful, and it was his duty to seize the first opportunity of breaking it: that he had obtained the crown by the unanimous suffrages of the people, and should prove himself totally unworthy of their favor, did he not strenuously maintain those national liberties, with whose protection they had intrusted him; and that the duke, if he made any attempt by force of arms, should experience the power of a united nation, conducted by a prince who, sensible of the obligations imposed on him by his royal dignity, was determined that the same moment should put a period to his life and to his government.*

This answer was no other than William expected; and he had previously fixed his resolution of making an attempt upon England. Consulting only his courage, his resentment, and his ambition, he overlooked all the difficulties inseparable from an attack on a great kingdom by such inferior force, and he saw only the circumstances which would facilitate his enterpřise. He considered that England, ever since the accession of Canute, had enjoyed profound tranquillity, during a period of near fifty years; and it would require time for its soldiers, enervated by long peace, to learn discipline, and its generals experience. He knew that it was entirely unprovided with fortified towns, by which it could prolong the war; but must venture its whole fortune in one decisive action, against a veteran enemy, who, being once master of the field, would be in a condition to overrun the kingdom. He saw that Harold, though he had given proofs of vigor and bravery, had newly mounted a throne which he had acquired by faction, from which he had excluded a very ancient royal family, and which was likely to totter under him by its own instability, much more if shaken by any violent external impulse. And he hoped that the very circumstance of his crossing the sea, quitting his own country, and leaving himself no hopes of retreat, as it would astonish the enemy by the boldness of the enterprise, would inspirit his soldiers by despair, and rouse them to sustain the reputation of the Norman arms.

1

The Normans, as they had long been distinguished by valor among all the European nations, had, at this time, attained to

* W. Malms. p. 99. Higden, p. 285. M. West. p. 222. De Gest Angl., incerto auctore, p. 331.

the highest pitch of military glory. Besides acquiring by arms such a noble territory in France, besides defending it agains continual attempts of the French monarch and all its neigh bors, besides exerting many acts of vigor under their presen sovereign, they had, about this very time, revived their an cient fame, by the most hazardous exploits, and the most wonderful successes, in the other extremity of Europe. A few Norman adventurers in Italy had acquired such an ascendant, not only over the Italians and Greeks, but the Germans and Saracens, that they expelled those foreigners, procured to themselves ample establishments, and laid the foundation of the opulent kingdom of Naples and Sicily.* These enterprises of men, who were all of them vassals in Normandy, many of them banished for faction and rebellion, excited the ambition of the haughty William, who disdained, after such examples of fortune and valor, to be deterred from making an attack on a neighboring country, where he could be supported by the whole force of his principality.

The situation also of Europe inspired William with hopes that, besides his brave Normans, he might employ against England the flower of the military force which was dispersed in all the neighboring states. France, Germany, and the Low Countries, by the progress of the feudal institutions, were divided and subdivided into many principalities and baronies; and the possessors, enjoying the civil jurisdiction within themselves, as well as the right of arms, acted, in many respects, as independent sovereigns, and maintained their properties and privileges, less by the authority of laws, than by their own force and valor. A military spirit had universally diffused itself throughout Europe; and the several leaders, whose minds were elevated by their princely situation, greedily em braced the most hazardous enterprises; and being accustomed to nothing, from their infancy, but recitals of the success attending wars and battles, they were prompted by a natural ambition to imitate those adventures which they heard so much celebrated, and which were so much exaggerated by the credulity of the age. United, however loosely, by their duty to one superior lord, and by their connections with the great body of the community to which they belonged, they desired to spread their fame each beyond his own district; and in all assemblies, whether instituted for civil deliberations

* Gul. Gemet. lib. vii. cap. 30.