desirable prize, and resolving to seize it on the first opportunity. This man, one of the bloodiest tyrants in history, was,—so much for his blood,—a bastard, the son of one Harlotta, a tanner's daughter, of the town of Falaize, whence, it is said, comes our word, harlot. Determined to possess himself of England, by hook or by crook, he asserted that Edward the Confessor had made him his heir by will. Such will, however, he never produced on any occasion. It was, there is little question, an utter falsehood to begin with. The next step was by treachery. He seized on Harold, the son of the great Saxon Earl Godwin, who was the probable successor to the throne; for though standing only as brother-in-law to the king, he had the love of the people, and the real heir, Edgar the Atheling, was an imbecile. He compelled Harold, by a trick worthy of the man and the age, to swear to allow and to support his claims to the throne, on a concealed chest of dead men's bones, or, in other words, on the relics of saints, in which those barbarous times had wonderful faith. Having thus struck a superstitious terror into Harold's soul, his last step was force. On the death of the Confessor, he armed himself for invasion, and was clamorously supported by the whole hungry body of the nobility. It is curious and characteristic that, at a parliament composed of all classes of people-warriors, priests, merchants, farmers, and others-which he called together at Lillebonne, to grant him supplies for this great enterprise, the commons, who would have to pay for it, cried out vehemently against it, but their voice was overborne by the obstreperous soldiers and priests. These were mad with desire at once of plunder and revenge; for after William's visit to England, they had accumulated there in such swarms, and had grown to such a nuisance, that the whole people rose with one accord, under the great Earl Godwin, and chased them from the land. The greatest offenders, indeed, Robert, archbishop of Canterbury, and William, bishop of London, fled with the wildest precipitancy, arming their retainers, and fighting their way loaded with spoils, to the coast. Others took refuge in castles and fortresses which were commanded by their countrymen; but the Wittenagemot, or Parliament, met, with Godwin at their head, and pronounced a judgment of outlawry against the whole brood of Normans and French, so that they were speedily expelled or destroyed.

On fire with the remembrance of their ignominious expulsion, they crowded to William's standard like wolves at the call of winter; but they were not altogether sufficient for his mighty enterprise. The ambitious William, says Thierry,* looked far

* Histoire de la Conquête de l'Angleterre.

beyond the confines of Normandy for soldiers of fortune to assist him in his great attempt. He had his ban of war published in all the neighbouring countries; he offered good pay to every tall, robust man who would serve him with the lance, the sword, or the cross-bow. A multitude flocked to him from all parts, from far and near, from the north and the south. They came from Maine and Anjou, from Poitou and Bretagne; from the country of the French king and from Flanders; from Aquitaine and from Burgundy; from Piedmont, beyond the Alps, and from the banks of the Rhine. Adventurers by profession, the idle, the dissipated, the profligate, the enfans perdus of Europe hurried at the summons.* Of these some were knights and chiefs in war, others simple foot soldiers; some demanded regular pay in money, others merely their passage across the channel, and all the booty they might take. Some demanded territory in England, a domain, a castle, a town; while others, again, simply wished to receive a rich Saxon lady in marriage. All the wild wishes, all the pretensions of human avarice were awakened into activity. William repulsed no one, but promised and pleased all as far as he could."

While STRENGTH was thus preparing itself, CUNNING was not the less busy. Robert of Canterbury, who had been obliged so hastily to fly out of England for his life; Lanfranc, afterwards so famous as primate of England, and other priests, had been to Rome to procure the sanction of the Pope, and this great head of the House of Cunning, always ready to give away that which did not belong to him, gave him a bull to seize on England on condition that it should be held as a fief of the church. He sent the adventurers also a consecrated banner, and a ring, said to contain a hair of St. Peter. Thus armed with the powers of superstition, the priests everywhere preached up this great crusade against unhappy England, and thousands flocked from all quarters of Europe to the call.

Such was the first band of adventurers assembled to invade this country. These had, as we see, no claim to style themselves exclusively Normans, but were the sweeping and refuse of all Europe. But we shall presently find that even these were exchanged, such of them as did not fall in battle, for others of a still lower grade and character. Before, however, proceeding further, we must notice a remarkable fact, and that is, that the Conqueror, though pretending a will of the Confessor in his favour, did not come hither as one seeking his own, but in the old character of a Dane,

* Chronique de Normandie.

avowing himself and his countrymen as Danes, and that he was come, not only with the old object of the Danes, plunder, but to avenge the injuries of their forefathers, the Danes. This is the speech put by the "Chroniclers" into his mouth as he rode to the front of his army, and was about to commence the decisive battle of Hastings: 66 Make up your minds to fight valiantly, and slay your enemies. A great booty is before us; for if we conquer we shall all be rich. What I gain, you will gain; if I take this land you will have it in lots amongst you. Know ye, however, that I am not come hither solely to take what is my due, but also to avenge our whole nation for the felonies, perjuries, and treacheries of these English. They massacred our kinsmen, the Danes-men, women, and children, on the night of St. Bryce. They murdered the knights and good men who accompanied prince Alfred from Normandy, and made my cousin Alfred expire in tortures. Before you is the son of that Earl Godwin who was charged with these murders. Let us forward and punish him, with God to our aid!"

This is every way a most remarkable speech, and one which ought never to be forgotten by Englishmen. It proclaims to them, in most unequivocal language, that great truth which I shall have only too frequent occasion in the course of this volume to illustrate that the aristocracy of England hold their property and privileges by the right of conquest, and that we, the people, are in fact to this day the slaves not only of conquest, but of a Danish conquest. The battle of Hastings was in truth but the final and successful close of those many efforts of the Danes, through whole ages, in which they were repeatedly repulsed, but from which they never desisted, to make themselves masters of this island. Their conduct agreed with their characters. The moment they set foot in the country, they resumed the old Danish ravages,pillaging, burning, and destroying. They overrun the country on all sides of their landing-place, plundered and slaughtered the people, and ransacked the churches. After the battle of Hastings, in which the brave Harold was unfortunately slain, and the only effective leader of the English thus lost to them, the Conqueror continued his route; not like one come to enter on a possession, but like his "kinsmen, the Danes," making his way with the most horrible devastations and carnage. He massacred the inhabitants of Romney and burned their houses; set fire to Dover; appeared before London; but not being able at once to take it, burned down Southwark, and went away through Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, and Berkshire, with his army, burning and destroying the helpless and innocent people like a very devil. From

Hertfordshire he went towards London again, burning and massacreing the population, and plundering as before.*

There is nothing in the history of the world more atrocious than the career of this Frenchified Dane, this bastard of pure blood. Even his coronation was a scene of horror and carnage. When a shout was made in Westminster Abbey as the crown was about to be put upon his head, his soldiers without, suspecting some treachery, instantly set fire to the houses around. There arose a dreadful scene of massacre and plunder, the rapacious soldiers of the Conqueror, says the historian, giving but slight proofs of that superiority in civilisation which has so generally been challenged for the Normans.+

The Conqueror was no sooner crowned than he began to put in action his great plan, that of parcelling out, as he had promised, the country to his followers. For this purpose, he for awhile pretended great mildness towards the English, and declared that he would rule them with more indulgence and mercy than any of their former kings had done. By this means he disarmed the fears of the people; many of their great lords came in and swore allegiance, instead of banding against him; and he employed this time in building fortresses, and making his position strong, His greedy followers, who did not enter into his far-stretching plots, were clamorous for immediate possessions. A huge army of monks and priests had flocked over after the army of conquest, and devoured him with demands for lands, abbeys, churches, and dignities. The artful Norman gratified them so far as to move the indignation of the ravaged people, and put them into a temper for an outbreak which might furnish them with an excuse for that wholesale and universal devastation and robbery which he planned. Having taken this step, he then withdrew to Normandy, there to show to his subjects the heaps of wealth which he and his followers had gathered in England; and taking along with him the most eminent of the English princes and nobles, to gratify the pride of himself and nation with seeing them in a sort of splendid captivity in his train. Part of the affluent spoil, together with the banner of Harold taken in the battle of Hastings, he sent to the Pope, whose spiritual arms had so much contributed to his success; and a vast amount of other riches was distributed amongst the monasteries and churches.

This was sufficient to spread the fire of emulation through the whole of the Continent, and insure him as great a crop of adventurers as the measures which he contemplated might demand.

* Roger Hoveden, Saxon Chronicle.

+ Ordericus Vitalis; Saxon Chron.; William of Newbury; Guil. Pictav.

In the mean time he had not merely withdrawn as it were to lure the unwary English into the temptation to revolt, but he had left behind him his half-brother, Odo, bishop of Bayeaux, whom he made Earl of Hereford, a warrior-priest of a particularly haughty and unscrupulous character, as his viceroy, with a number of his barons as a council. These men, who, according to the Conqueror's plan, were to vex and insult the people to the pitch of desperation, seem to have done their work very effectually. They fleeced the natives without mercy. Their soldiers ranged far and wide, committing, without any restraint or check from their superiors, the most unheard-of outrages. They plundered the houses of all classes, high and low, and offered the grossest insults to the women. The sufferers cried for help and justice in vain, till, growing desperate, they formed conspiracies, and rose in vengeance in various parts on their oppressors. The Normans became dreadfully alarmed, and sent the most urgent entreaties to William to return. But the wily Conqueror lay still. He knew that he had with him all the English leaders who could alone enable the people to make successful head against him, and his cue was to allow the insurrections to become rife and general enough to afford a plea for that ample vengeance that he wished to take. That once arrived at, he passed over again to England, and soon commenced the general war of extermination and confiscation against his English subjects, which enabled him to make himself literally the conqueror of every yard of British ground, and to parcel it out amongst his Norman followers.

To trace at length this war of extermination would be to write a volume of the most unmitigated horrors which ever blackened the page of history. The spirit of the English rose with its ancient valour against their ruthless oppressors, and it required seven years of the most determined and bloody executions to crush them to passive obedience. To every quarter of the island he had successively to march his fierce army, and wherever he came he made a wilderness of the country. In the west of England, in Wales, and on the east coast, where the brave Saxon Hereward, lord of Born, made a gallant resistance till he was betrayed by the monks of Ely, William left lasting traces of his desolating campaigns. But it was in the north of England, especially in Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland, that the most dreadful tempest of his fury fell. Thrice he traversed these regions with fire and sword, and once more committed them to the tender mercies of his brother Bishop Odo.

The descriptions of this laying waste of the north of England by all the old chroniclers, Norman and French as well as English, are most horrifying, at the same time that there is nothing in