Danes, Saxons and Normans Part 11

It was now that William determined on a stratagem to lure the Saxons from their intrenchments, and ordered a thousand horse to advance to the redoubts and then retire. His command was skilfully obeyed; and when the Saxons saw their enemies fly as if beaten, they lost the coolness they had hitherto exhibited, and, with their axes hanging from their necks, rushed furiously forth in pursuit.

But brief indeed was their imaginary triumph. Suddenly the Normans halted, faced about, and being joined by another body of cavalry, that had watched the manoeuvre, turned fiercely upon the pursuers with sword and lance, and quickly put them to the rout.

Evening was now approaching; and William, availing himself of the confusion and disorder which the success of his stratagem had created among the Saxons, once more a.s.sailed the redoubts, and this time with success. In rushed horse and foot, hewing down all who opposed them.

In vain the Saxons struggled desperately, overthrowing cavalry and infantry, and continued the combat hand to hand and foot to foot.

Their numbers rapidly diminished; and at length the king and his two brothers were left almost without aid to defend the standard.

No hope now remained for the Saxons, and soon all was over. Harold, previously wounded in the eye, fell to rise no more. Leofwine shared his brother's fate and died by his side; and Gurth, courageously facing the foe, maintained a contest single-handed against a host of knightly adversaries. But William, pushing forward, mace in hand, struck the Saxon hero a blow of irresistible violence, and Gurth fell on the mangled corpses of his kinsmen and countrymen.

Ere this the sun had set, and still the conflict was continued; and the Saxons, vain as were their efforts, maintained an irregular struggle till darkness rendered it impossible to know friend from foe, except by the difference of language. The vanquished islanders then fled in the direction of London. But when the moon rose, the victors fiercely urged the pursuit. The Norman cavalry, flushed with triumph, granted no quarter. Thousands of Saxons, dispersed and despairing, fell by the weapons of pursuers, and thousands more died on the roads of wounds and fatigue.

Meanwhile, William ordered the consecrated standard to be set up where that of the Saxons had fallen, and, pitching his tent on the field of battle, pa.s.sed that October night almost within hearing of the groans of the dying.

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XIX.

THE BODY OF HAROLD.

No sooner did Sunday morning dawn than William, having first evinced his grat.i.tude to Heaven for the victory gained, applied himself to ascertain the extent of his loss. Having vowed to erect on the field of battle an abbey, to be dedicated to St. Martin, the patron saint of the warriors of Gaul, the Conqueror drew up his troops, and called over the names of all who had crossed the sea, from a list made at St.

Valery.

While this roll was being called over, many of the wives and mothers of the Saxons who had armed in the neighbourhood of Hastings to fight for King Harold appeared on the field to search for and bury the bodies of their husbands and sons. William immediately caused the corpses of the men who had fallen on his side to be buried, and gave the Saxons leave to do the same for their countrymen.

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For some time, however, no one had the courage to mention the propriety of giving Christian burial to the Saxon king; and the body of Harold lay on the field without being claimed or sought for. At length Githa, the widow of G.o.dwin, sent to ask the Conqueror's permission to render the last honours to her son, but William sternly refused.

"The mother," said the messengers, "would even give the weight of the body in gold."

"Nevertheless," said William, "the man, false to his word and to his religion, shall have no other sepulchre than the sands of the sh.o.r.e."

William, however, relented. It happened that Harold had founded and enriched the abbey of Waltham, and that the abbot felt himself in duty bound to obtain Christian burial for such a benefactor. Accordingly he deputed OsG.o.d and Ailrik, two Saxon monks, to demand permission to transfer the body of Harold to their church; and the Conqueror granted the permission they asked.

But OsG.o.d and Ailrik found their mission somewhat difficult to fulfil.

So disfigured, in fact, were most of the dead with wounds and bruises, that one could hardly be known from another. In vain the monks sought among the ma.s.s of slain, stripped as they were of armour and clothing.

The monks of Waltham could not recognise the corpse of him whom they sought, and, in their difficulty, they resolved to invoke female aid.

At that time there was living, probably in retirement, a Saxon woman known as Edith the Fair. This woman, who was remarkable for her beauty, and especially for the gracefulness of her neck, which chroniclers have compared to the swan's, had, before Harold's coronation and his marriage with Aldith, been entertained by him as a mistress; and, on being applied to, she consented to a.s.sist the monks in their search. Better acquainted than they were with the features of the man she had loved, Edith was successful in discovering the corpse.

The body of Harold having thus--thanks to the zeal and exertions of the monks--been found, was, with those of his brothers, Gurth and Leofwine, placed at the disposal of their mother, the widowed Githa.

With her consent they were buried in the abbey of Waltham. The Conqueror sent William Mallet, one of his knights, to see the corpse honourably interred; and at the east end of the choir, in a tomb long pointed out as that containing the remains of the Saxon king, were inscribed the words--

"HAROLD INFELIX."

"But here," says Sir Richard Baker, "Giraldus Cambrensis tells a strange story, that Harold was not slain in the battle, but only wounded and lost his left eye, and then escaped by flight to Chester, where he afterwards led a holy anchorite's life in the cell of St.

James, fast by St. John's Church."

XX.

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THE CONQUEROR AND THE KENTISHMEN.

After his victory at Hastings, William remained for some time on the field, waiting for the men of the country to appear at his camp and make their submission. Finding, however, that n.o.body came, he marched along the sea coast, took Dover, and then advanced by the great Roman road towards London.

While pa.s.sing through Kent, the conquerors, for a time, pursued their way without interruption. Suddenly, however, at a place where the road, approaching the Thames, ran through a forest, they found their pa.s.sage disputed by a large body of Kentishmen. Each man carried in his hand a green bough, and at a distance they presented the appearance of a wood in motion.

"This," said the Normans, crossing themselves, "is magic--the work of Satan."

On drawing near, however, the Kentishmen threw the green boughs to the ground, raised their banner, and drew their swords; and William, aware that the men of Kent were not foes to be despised, asked with what intent they came against him in such a fashion.

"We come," cried the men of Kent, "to fight for our liberty, and for the laws we have enjoyed under King Edward."

"Well," answered William, whose object it now was, if possible, to conciliate, "ye shall have your ancient customs and your laws which ye demand, so that ye acknowledge me king of England."

The Kentishmen, on hearing this, consented to lay down their arms, having concluded a treaty by which they agreed to offer no further resistance, on condition that they should be as free as they had before been. William sent forward five hundred hors.e.m.e.n towards London; and learning that the citizens were likely to stand on their defence, he resolved to turn towards the west, and pa.s.sed the Thames at Wallingford.

On reaching Wallingford, which had been regarded by the Saxons as a stronghold of the first importance, William was struck with the capacity of the place, and eager to secure it as one of his strongholds. On this point there was no difficulty. In fact, Wallingford was in possession of a Saxon thane named WiG.o.d, who had neither the will nor the power to resist, but who had an only daughter named Aldith, with no insuperable objection to become the bride of a Norman knight. The Conqueror immediately provided the fair Aldith with a husband, in the person of Robert D'Oyley, one of his favourite warriors; and the marriage ceremony having been performed without any unnecessary delay, D'Oyley was left, in the company of his bride and his father-in-law, to make the castle as strong as possible; while the Conqueror, marching to Berkhampstead, cut off all communication between London and the north, and continued so to hem in the city that the inhabitants became every day more apprehensive of being exposed to the horrors of famine.

XXI.

EDGAR ATHELING.

News of the Norman victory at Hastings speedily reached London; and the city became the scene of commotion and debate. So strong, however, appeared the necessity for doing something decisive, that men calmed themselves to consider their position; and, by way of dealing with the crisis, they resolved on placing the Confessor's crown on the head of Edgar Atheling, the Confessor's kinsman, and the undoubted heir of the Saxon kings.

Atheling was grandson of Edmund Ironsides, and a native of Hungary. In fact, it seems that when Canute the Dane, in 1017, made himself master of England, he found in the kingdom two sons of Ironsides, who bore the names of Edmund and Edward. Wishing, it is said, to have the Saxon princes put to death, but apprehensive of the consequences of ordering their execution, Canute sent them to the King of Sweden, with a request that they might be secretly made away with. Not caring, however, to have the blood of two innocent boys to answer for, the royal Swede sent them to Hungary; and the king of that country, after receiving them with reluctance, reared them with kindness. As time pa.s.sed on, Edmund died without heirs; but Edward, known as The Exile, espousing Agatha, daughter of an Emperor of Germany, became father of a handsome and fair-haired boy, known as Edgar Atheling, and two girls, named Margaret and Christina.

During the reigns of Harold Harefoot and Hardicanute, the son of Ironsides remained forgotten in exile. But the Confessor, in his old age, finding himself childless, and knowing that his end was drawing nigh, turned his thoughts towards his expatriated kinsman, and despatched Aldred, Archbishop of York, to escort the heir of Alfred from the German court. The result was, that Edward the Exile, bringing with him his wife and three children, returned to the country of his ancestors, with high hopes of wearing the crown. But not long after arriving in England he went the way of all flesh, leaving his son much too young to a.s.sert his own rights, and without adherents sufficiently influential to cope successfully with the wealthy and popular chief of the House of G.o.dwin.

At the time when the Confessor drew his last breath, in the Painted Chamber, Edgar Atheling was a boy of ten; and Harold had very little difficulty in excluding him from the throne. It has been a.s.serted, indeed, that, from the earliest period, minors had been set aside, as a matter of course, by the Saxon customs; and that the Atheling's nonage positively disqualified him from wearing the crown.

Nevertheless, the youth, the beauty, the hereditary claims of the boy, won him many friends; and he was much beloved by the people, who, in their loyal affection, called him their darling.

"He is young and handsome," said they, "and descended from the true race, the best race of the country."

It would seem that the Atheling's claims caused Harold considerable uneasiness. In fact, historians state that the son of G.o.dwin was kept in constant dread "of anything being contrived against him in favour of Edgar by those who had a great affection for the ancient royal family." However, Harold, to keep them quiet, showed the boy great respect, gave him the earldom of Oxford, and "took care of his education," says one historian, "as if he would have it thought that he intended to resign the crown to him when he should be of fit age to govern."