<h2><SPAN name="page82"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>CHAPTER VII.<br/> <span class="GutSmall">WILLIAM’S INVASION OF ENGLAND.</span><br/> <span class="smcap">August-December</span> <span class="GutSmall">1066.</span></h2>
<p><span class="smcap">The</span> statesmanship of William had
triumphed. The people of England had chosen their king, and
a large part of the world had been won over by the arts of a
foreign prince to believe that it was a righteous and holy work
to set him on the throne to which the English people had chosen
the foremost man among themselves. No diplomatic success
was ever more thorough. Unluckily we know nothing of the
state of feeling in England while William was plotting and
pleading beyond the sea. Nor do we know how much men in
England knew of what was going on in other lands, or what they
thought when they heard of it. We know only that, after
Harold had won over Northumberland, he came back and held the
Easter Gemót at Westminster. Then in the words of
the Chronicler, “it was known to him that William Bastard,
King Edward’s kinsman, would come hither and win this
land.” This is all that our own writers tell us about
William Bastard, between his peaceful visit to England in 1052
and his warlike visit in 1066. But we know that King Harold
did all that man could do to defeat his purposes, and that he was
therein loyally supported by the great mass of the English
nation, we may safely say by all, save his two brothers-in-law
and so many as they could influence.</p>
<p>William’s doings we know more fully. The military
events of this wonderful year there is no need to tell in
detail. But we see that William’s generalship was
equal to his statesmanship, and that it was met by equal
generalship on the side of Harold. Moreover, the luck of
William is as clear as either his statesmanship or his
generalship. When Harold was crowned on the day of the
Epiphany, he must have felt sure that he would have to withstand
an invasion of England before the year was out. But it
could not have come into the mind of Harold, William, or
Lanfranc, or any other man, that he would have to withstand two
invasions of England at the same moment.</p>
<p>It was the invasion of Harold of Norway, at the same time as
the invasion of William, which decided the fate of England.
The issue of the struggle might have gone against England, had
she had to strive against one enemy only; as it was, it was the
attack made by two enemies at once which divided her strength,
and enabled the Normans to land without resistance. The two
invasions came as nearly as possible at the same moment.
Harold Hardrada can hardly have reached the Yorkshire coast
before September; the battle of Fulford was fought on September
20th and that of Stamfordbridge on September 25th. William
landed on September 28th, and the battle of Senlac was fought on
October 14th. Moreover William’s fleet was ready by
August 12th; his delay in crossing was owing to his waiting for a
favourable wind. When William landed, the event of the
struggle in the North could not have been known in Sussex.
He might have had to strive, not with Harold of England, but with
Harold of Norway as his conqueror.</p>
<p>At what time of the year Harold Hardrada first planned his
invasion of England is quite uncertain. We can say nothing
of his doings till he is actually afloat. And with the
three mighty forms of William and the two Harolds on the scene,
there is something at once grotesque and perplexing in the way in
which an English traitor flits about among them. The
banished Tostig, deprived of his earldom in the autumn of 1065,
had then taken refuge in Flanders. He now plays a busy
part, the details of which are lost in contradictory
accounts. But it is certain that in May 1066 he made an
ineffectual attack on England. And this attack was most
likely made with the connivance of William. It suited
William to use Tostig as an instrument, and to encourage so
restless a spirit in annoying the common enemy. It is also
certain that Tostig was with the Norwegian fleet in September,
and that he died at Stamfordbridge. We know also that he
was in Scotland between May and September. It is therefore
hard to believe that Tostig had so great a hand in stirring up
Harold Hardrada to his expedition as the Norwegian story makes
out. Most likely Tostig simply joined the expedition which
Harold Hardrada independently planned. One thing is
certain, that, when Harold of England was attacked by two enemies
at once, it was not by two enemies acting in concert. The
interests of William and of Harold of Norway were as much opposed
to one another as either of them was to the interests of Harold
of England.</p>
<p>One great difficulty beset Harold and William alike.
Either in Normandy or in England it was easy to get together an
army ready to fight a battle; it was not easy to keep a large
body of men under arms for any long time without fighting.
It was still harder to keep them at once without fighting and
without plundering. What William had done in this way in
two invasions of Normandy, he was now called on to do on a
greater scale. His great and motley army was kept during a
great part of August and September, first at the Dive, then at
Saint Valery, waiting for the wind that was to take it to
England. And it was kept without doing any serious damage
to the lands where they were encamped. In a holy war, this
time was of course largely spent in appeals to the religious
feelings of the army. Then came the wonderful luck of
William, which enabled him to cross at the particular moment when
he did cross. A little earlier or later, he would have
found his landing stoutly disputed; as it was, he landed without
resistance. Harold of England, not being able, in his own
words, to be everywhere at once, had done what he could. He
and his brothers Gyrth and Leofwine undertook the defence of
southern England against the Norman; the earls of the North, his
brothers-in-law Edwin and Morkere, were to defend their own land
against the Norwegians. His own preparations were looked on
with wonder. To guard the long line of coast against the
invader, he got together such a force both by sea and land as no
king had ever got together before, and he kept it together for a
longer time than William did, through four months of inaction,
save perhaps some small encounters by sea. At last, early
in September, provisions failed; men were no doubt clamouring to
go back for the harvest, and the great host had to be
disbanded. Could William have sailed as soon as his fleet
was ready, he would have found southern England thoroughly
prepared to meet him. Meanwhile the northern earls had
clearly not kept so good watch as the king. Harold Hardrada
harried the Yorkshire coast; he sailed up the Ouse, and landed
without resistance. At last the earls met him in arms and
were defeated by the Northmen at Fulford near York. Four
days later York capitulated, and agreed to receive Harold
Hardrada as king. Meanwhile the news reached Harold of
England; he got together his housecarls and such other troops as
could be mustered at the moment, and by a march of almost
incredible speed he was able to save the city and all northern
England. The fight of Stamfordbridge, the defeat and death
of the most famous warrior of the North, was the last and
greatest success of Harold of England. But his northward
march had left southern England utterly unprotected. Had
the south wind delayed a little longer, he might, before the
second enemy came, have been again on the South-Saxon
coast. As it was, three days after Stamfordbridge, while
Harold of England was still at York, William of Normandy landed
without opposition at Pevensey.</p>
<p>Thus wonderfully had an easy path into England been opened for
William. The Norwegian invasion had come at the best moment
for his purposes, and the result had been what he must have
wished. With one Harold he must fight, and to fight with
Harold of England was clearly best for his ends. His work
would not have been done, if another had stepped in to chastise
the perjurer. Now that he was in England, it became a trial
of generalship between him and Harold. William’s
policy was to provoke Harold to fight at once. It was
perhaps Harold’s policy—so at least thought
Gyrth—to follow yet more thoroughly William’s own
example in the French invasions. Let him watch and follow
the enemy, let him avoid all action, and even lay waste the land
between London and the south coast, and the strength of the
invaders would gradually be worn out. But it might have
been hard to enforce such a policy on men whose hearts were
stirred by the invasion, and one part of whom, the King’s
own thegns and housecarls, were eager to follow up their victory
over the Northern with a yet mightier victory over the
Norman. And Harold spoke as an English king should speak,
when he answered that he would never lay waste a single rood of
English ground, that he would never harm the lands or the goods
of the men who had chosen him to be their king. In the
trial of skill between the two commanders, each to some extent
carried his point. William’s havoc of a large part of
Sussex compelled Harold to march at once to give battle.
But Harold was able to give battle at a place of his own
choosing, thoroughly suited for the kind of warfare which he had
to wage.</p>
<p>Harold was blamed, as defeated generals are blamed, for being
too eager to fight and not waiting for more troops. But to
any one who studies the ground it is plain that Harold needed,
not more troops, but to some extent better troops, and that he
would not have got those better troops by waiting. From
York Harold had marched to London, as the meeting-place for
southern and eastern England, as well as for the few who actually
followed him from the North and those who joined him on the
march. Edwin and Morkere were bidden to follow with the
full force of their earldoms. This they took care not to
do. Harold and his West-Saxons had saved them, but they
would not strike a blow back again. Both now and earlier in
the year they doubtless aimed at a division of the kingdom, such
as had been twice made within fifty years. Either Harold or
William might reign in Wessex and East-Anglia; Edwin should reign
in Northumberland and Mercia. William, the enemy of Harold
but no enemy of theirs, might be satisfied with the part of
England which was under the immediate rule of Harold and his
brothers, and might allow the house of Leofric to keep at least
an under-kingship in the North. That the brother earls held
back from the King’s muster is undoubted, and this
explanation fits in with their whole conduct both before and
after. Harold had thus at his command the picked men of
part of England only, and he had to supply the place of those who
were lacking with such forces as he could get. The lack of
discipline on the part of these inferior troops lost Harold the
battle. But matters would hardly have been mended by
waiting for men who had made up their minds not to come.</p>
<p>The messages exchanged between King and Duke immediately
before the battle, as well as at an earlier time, have been
spoken of already. The challenge to single combat at least
comes now. When Harold refused every demand, William called
on Harold to spare the blood of his followers, and decide his
claims by battle in his own person. Such a challenge was in
the spirit of Norman jurisprudence, which in doubtful cases
looked for the judgement of God, not, as the English did, by the
ordeal, but by the personal combat of the two parties. Yet
this challenge too was surely given in the hope that Harold would
refuse it, and would thereby put himself, in Norman eyes, yet
more thoroughly in the wrong. For the challenge was one
which Harold could not but refuse. William looked on
himself as one who claimed his own from one who wrongfully kept
him out of it. He was plaintiff in a suit in which Harold
was defendant; that plaintiff and defendant were both accompanied
by armies was an accident for which the defendant, who had
refused all peaceful means of settlement, was to blame. But
Harold and his people could not look on the matter as a mere
question between two men. The crown was Harold’s by
the gift of the nation, and he could not sever his own cause from
the cause of the nation. The crown was his; but it was not
his to stake on the issue of a single combat. If Harold
were killed, the nation might give the crown to whom they thought
good; Harold’s death could not make William’s claim
one jot better. The cause was not personal, but
national. The Norman duke had, by a wanton invasion,
wronged, not the King only, but every man in England, and every
man might claim to help in driving him out. Again, in an
ordinary wager of battle, the judgement can be enforced; here,
whether William slew Harold or Harold slew William, there was no
means of enforcing the judgement except by the strength of the
two armies. If Harold fell, the English army were not
likely to receive William as king; if William fell, the Norman
army was still less likely to go quietly out of England.
The challenge was meant as a mere blind; it would raise the
spirit of William’s followers; it would be something for
his poets and chroniclers to record in his honour; that was
all.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>The actual battle, fought on Senlac, on Saint Calixtus’
day, was more than a trial of skill and courage between two
captains and two armies. It was, like the old battles of
Macedonian and Roman, a trial between two modes of warfare.
The English clave to the old Teutonic tactics. They fought
on foot in the close array of the shield-wall. Those who
rode to the field dismounted when the fight began. They
first hurled their javelins, and then took to the weapons of
close combat. Among these the Danish axe, brought in by
Cnut, had nearly displaced the older English broadsword.
Such was the array of the housecarls and of the thegns who had
followed Harold from York or joined him on his march. But
the treason of Edwin and Morkere had made it needful to supply
the place of the picked men of Northumberland with irregular
levies, armed almost anyhow. Of their weapons of various
kinds the bow was the rarest. The strength of the Normans
lay in the arms in which the English were lacking, in horsemen
and archers. These last seem to have been a force of
William’s training; we first hear of the Norman bowmen at
Varaville. These two ways of fighting were brought each one
to perfection by the leaders on each side. They had not yet
been tried against one another. At Stamfordbridge Harold
had defeated an enemy whose tactics were the same as his
own. William had not fought a pitched battle since
Val-ès-dunes in his youth. Indeed pitched battles,
such as English and Scandinavian warriors were used to in the
wars of Edmund and Cnut, were rare in continental warfare.
That warfare mainly consisted in the attack and defence of strong
places, and in skirmishes fought under their walls. But
William knew how to make use of troops of different kinds and to
adapt them to any emergency. Harold too was a man of
resources; he had gained his Welsh successes by adapting his men
to the enemy’s way of fighting. To withstand the
charge of the Norman horsemen, Harold clave to the national
tactics, but he chose for the place of battle a spot where those
tactics would have the advantage. A battle on the low
ground would have been favourable to cavalry; Harold therefore
occupied and fenced in a hill, the hill of Senlac, the site in
after days of the abbey and town of Battle, and there awaited the
Norman attack. The Norman horsemen had thus to make their
way up the hill under the shower of the English javelins, and to
meet the axes as soon as they reached the barricade. And
these tactics were thoroughly successful, till the inferior
troops were tempted to come down from the hill and chase the
Bretons whom they had driven back. This suggested to
William the device of the feigned flight; the English line of
defence was broken, and the advantage of ground was lost.
Thus was the great battle lost. And the war too was lost by
the deaths of Harold and his brothers, which left England without
leaders, and by the unyielding valour of Harold’s immediate
following. They were slain to a man, and south-eastern
England was left defenceless.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>William, now truly the Conqueror in the vulgar sense, was
still far from having full possession of his conquest. He
had military possession of part of one shire only; he had to look
for further resistance, and he met with not a little. But
his combined luck and policy served him well. He could put
on the form of full possession before he had the reality; he
could treat all further resistance as rebellion against an
established authority; he could make resistance desultory and
isolated. William had to subdue England in detail; he had
never again to fight what the English Chroniclers call a
<i>folk-fight</i>. His policy after his victory was
obvious. Still uncrowned, he was not, even in his own view,
king, but he alone had the right to become king. He had
thus far been driven to maintain his rights by force; he was not
disposed to use force any further, if peaceful possession was to
be had. His course was therefore to show himself stern to
all who withstood him, but to take all who submitted into his
protection and favour. He seems however to have looked for
a speedier submission than really happened. He waited a
while in his camp for men to come in and acknowledge him.
As none came, he set forth to win by the strong arm the land
which he claimed of right.</p>
<p>Thus to look for an immediate submission was not unnatural;
fully believing in the justice of his own cause, William would
believe in it all the more after the issue of the battle.
God, Harold had said, should judge between himself and William,
and God had judged in William’s favour. With all his
clear-sightedness, he would hardly understand how differently
things looked in English eyes. Some indeed, specially
churchmen, specially foreign churchmen, now began to doubt
whether to fight against William was not to fight against
God. But to the nation at large William was simply as
Hubba, Swegen, and Cnut in past times. England had before
now been conquered, but never in a single fight. Alfred and
Edmund had fought battle after battle with the Dane, and men had
no mind to submit to the Norman because he had been once
victorious. But Alfred and Edmund, in alternate defeat and
victory, lived to fight again; their people had not to choose a
new king; the King had merely to gather a new army. But
Harold was slain, and the first question was how to fill his
place. The Witan, so many as could be got together, met to
choose a king, whose first duty would be to meet William the
Conqueror in arms. The choice was not easy.
Harold’s sons were young, and not born
Æthelings. His brothers, of whom Gyrth at least must
have been fit to reign, had fallen with him. Edwin and
Morkere were not at the battle, but they were at the
election. But schemes for winning the crown for the house
of Leofric would find no favour in an assembly held in
London. For lack of any better candidate, the hereditary
sentiment prevailed. Young Edgar was chosen. But the
bishops, it is said, did not agree; they must have held that God
had declared in favour of William. Edwin and Morkere did
agree; but they withdrew to their earldoms, still perhaps
cherishing hopes of a divided kingdom. Edgar, as
king-elect, did at least one act of kingship by confirming the
election of an abbot of Peterborough; but of any general
preparation for warfare there is not a sign. The local
resistance which William met with shows that, with any combined
action, the case was not hopeless. But with Edgar for king,
with the northern earls withdrawing their forces, with the
bishops at least lukewarm, nothing could be done. The
Londoners were eager to fight; so doubtless were others; but
there was no leader. So far from there being another Harold
or Edmund to risk another battle, there was not even a leader to
carry out the policy of Fabius and Gyrth.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the Conqueror was advancing, by his own road and
after his own fashion. We must remember the effect of the
mere slaughter of the great battle. William’s own
army had suffered severely: he did not leave Hastings till he had
received reinforcements from Normandy. But to England the
battle meant the loss of the whole force of the south-eastern
shires. A large part of England was left helpless.
William followed much the same course as he had followed in
Maine. A legal claimant of the crown, it was his interest
as soon as possible to become a crowned king, and that in his
kinsman’s church at Westminster. But it was not his
interest to march straight on London and demand the crown, sword
in hand. He saw that, without the support of the northern
earls, Edgar could not possibly stand, and that submission to
himself was only a question of time. He therefore chose a
roundabout course through those south-eastern shires which were
wholly without means of resisting him. He marched from
Sussex into Kent, harrying the land as he went, to frighten the
people into submission. The men of Romney had before the
battle cut in pieces a party of Normans who had fallen into their
hands, most likely by sea. William took some undescribed
vengeance for their slaughter. Dover and its castle, the
castle which, in some accounts, Harold had sworn to surrender to
William, yielded without a blow. Here then he was
gracious. When some of his unruly followers set fire to the
houses of the town, William made good the losses of their
owners. Canterbury submitted; from thence, by a bold
stroke, he sent messengers who received the submission of
Winchester. He marched on, ravaging as he went, to the
immediate neighbourhood of London, but keeping ever on the right
bank of the Thames. But a gallant sally of the citizens was
repulsed by the Normans, and the suburb of Southwark was
burned. William marched along the river to
Wallingford. Here he crossed, receiving for the first time
the active support of an Englishman of high rank, Wiggod of
Wallingford, sheriff of Oxfordshire. He became one of a
small class of Englishmen who were received to William’s
fullest favour, and kept at least as high a position under him as
they had held before. William still kept on, marching and
harrying, to the north of London, as he had before done to the
south. The city was to be isolated within a cordon of
wasted lands. His policy succeeded. As no succours
came from the North, the hearts of those who had chosen them a
king failed at the approach of his rival. At Berkhampstead
Edgar himself, with several bishops and chief men, came to make
their submission. They offered the crown to William, and,
after some debate, he accepted it. But before he came in
person, he took means to secure the city. The beginnings of
the fortress were now laid which, in the course of
William’s reign, grew into the mighty Tower of London.</p>
<p>It may seem strange that when his great object was at last
within his grasp, William should have made his acceptance of it a
matter of debate. He claims the crown as his right; the
crown is offered to him; and yet he doubts about taking it.
Ought he, he asks, to take the crown of a kingdom of which he has
not as yet full possession? At that time the territory of
which William had even military possession could not have
stretched much to the north-west of a line drawn from Winchester
to Norwich. Outside that line men were, as William is made
to say, still in rebellion. His scruples were come over by
an orator who was neither Norman nor English, but one of his
foreign followers, Haimer Viscount of Thouars. The debate
was most likely got up at William’s bidding, but it was not
got up without a motive. William, ever seeking outward
legality, seeking to do things peaceably when they could be done
peaceably, seeking for means to put every possible enemy in the
wrong, wished to make his acceptance of the English crown as
formally regular as might be. Strong as he held his claim
to be by the gift of Edward, it would be better to be, if not
strictly chosen, at least peacefully accepted, by the chief men
of England. It might some day serve his purpose to say that
the crown had been offered to him, and that he had accepted it
only after a debate in which the chief speaker was an impartial
stranger. Having gained this point more, William set out
from Berkhampstead, already, in outward form, King-elect of the
English.</p>
<p>The rite which was to change him from king-elect into full
king took place in Eadward’s church of Westminster on
Christmas day, 1066, somewhat more than two months after the
great battle, somewhat less than twelve months after the death of
Edward and the coronation of Harold. Nothing that was
needed for a lawful crowning was lacking. The consent of
the people, the oath of the king, the anointing by the hands of a
lawful metropolitan, all were there. Ealdred acted as the
actual celebrant, while Stigand took the second place in the
ceremony. But this outward harmony between the nation and
its new king was marred by an unhappy accident. Norman
horsemen stationed outside the church mistook the shout with
which the people accepted the new king for the shout of men who
were doing him damage. But instead of going to his help,
they began, in true Norman fashion, to set fire to the
neighbouring houses. The havoc and plunder that followed
disturbed the solemnities of the day and were a bad omen for the
new reign. It was no personal fault of William’s; in
putting himself in the hands of subjects of such new and doubtful
loyalty, he needed men near at hand whom he could trust.
But then it was his doing that England had to receive a king who
needed foreign soldiers to guard him.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>William was now lawful King of the English, so far as outward
ceremonies could make him so. But he knew well how far he
was from having won real kingly authority over the whole
kingdom. Hardly a third part of the land was in his
obedience. He had still, as he doubtless knew, to win his
realm with the edge of the sword. But he could now go forth
to further conquests, not as a foreign invader, but as the king
of the land, putting down rebellion among his own subjects.
If the men of Northumberland should refuse to receive him, he
could tell them that he was their lawful king, anointed by their
own archbishop. It was sound policy to act as king of the
whole land, to exercise a semblance of authority where he had
none in fact. And in truth he was king of the whole land,
so far as there was no other king. The unconquered parts of
the land were in no mood to submit; but they could not agree on
any common plan of resistance under any common leader. Some
were still for Edgar, some for Harold’s sons, some for
Swegen of Denmark. Edwin and Morkere doubtless were for
themselves. If one common leader could have been found even
now, the throne of the foreign king would have been in no small
danger. But no such leader came: men stood still, or
resisted piecemeal, so the land was conquered piecemeal, and that
under cover of being brought under the obedience of its lawful
king.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>Now that the Norman duke has become an English king, his
career as an English statesman strictly begins, and a wonderful
career it is. Its main principle was to respect formal
legality wherever he could. All William’s purposes
were to be carried out, as far as possible, under cover of strict
adherence to the law of the land of which he had become the
lawful ruler. He had sworn at his crowning to keep the laws
of the land, and to rule his kingdom as well as any king that had
gone before him. And assuredly he meant to keep his
oath. But a foreign king, at the head of a foreign army,
and who had his foreign followers to reward, could keep that oath
only in its letter and not in its spirit. But it is
wonderful how nearly he came to keep it in the letter. He
contrived to do his most oppressive acts, to deprive Englishmen
of their lands and offices, and to part them out among strangers,
under cover of English law. He could do this. A
smaller man would either have failed to carry out his purposes at
all, or he could have carried them out only by reckless
violence. When we examine the administration of William
more in detail, we shall see that its effects in the long run
were rather to preserve than to destroy our ancient
institutions. He knew the strength of legal fictions; by
legal fictions he conquered and he ruled. But every legal
fiction is outward homage to the principle of law, an outward
protest against unlawful violence. That England underwent a
Norman Conquest did in the end only make her the more truly
England. But that this could be was because that conquest
was wrought by the Bastard of Falaise and by none other.</p>
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