Folding doors open, and display an Altar covered as if for Mass. Choristers, Priests, &c. LANFRANC in front. Lanfranc. Heaven and the saints have heard you! If you change Or break the compact firmness of this vow, Earth, heaven and hell shall join to blast your name. A curse shall weigh upon your sword,—your arm Shrivel beneath it, in the day of battle. Angels shall turn their eyes from off your face, The Battle of Hastings. C. MACFARLANE. William was hunting in the forest near Rouen, with a great company of knights, esquires, and noble dames and damsels, when a messenger just arrived from England accosted him, and announced the death of the Confessor and the coronation of Harold. The bow dropped out of the hand of the Norman duke, and he stood for a space like one petrified. He then fastened and undid his mantle, speaking no word, and looking so troubled and fierce that none durst speak to him. Then throwing himself into a skiff, he crossed the Seine, and went into his palace, still silent. Striding into the great hall, he threw himself into a chair, and, wrapping his head in his mantle, he bent his body towards the earth. The courtiers gazed upon him with amazement and alarm, and asked one another in whispers what this could mean. "Sirs," said William de Breteuil, the seneschal, "ye will soon know the cause 66 of our lord's anxiety." At a few words spoken by the seneschal, the duke recovered from his reverie, removed the mantle from his face, and listened to one of his barons, who advised him to remind Harold of the oaths he had sworn, and demand from him the immediate surrender of the Confessor's crown. Harold replied, that the crown of England was not his to give away. When William the Norman prepared to invade England (which he did forthwith), he had reached the mature age of forty-two. He called to his aid not only his subjects of Normandy, but men from Maine and Anjou, from Poictou and Brittany, from the country of the French king and from Flanders, from Aquitaine and from Burgundy, from Piedmont beyond the Alps, and from the German countries beyond the river Rhine. The idle adventurers of one-half of Europe flocked to his standard. Some of these men demanded regular pay in money, others nothing but a passage across the Channel, and all the booty they might make; some of the chiefs demanded territory in England, while others simply bargained to have a rich English wife allotted to them. William sold beforehand a bishopric in England for a ship and twenty men-at-arms. The pope gave the Conqueror a holy licence to invade England, upon condition that the Norman duke should hold his conquest as a fief of the church; and, together with a bull, a consecrated banner, and a ring of great price, containing one of the hairs of St. Peter, were sent from Rome into Normandy. So formidable an armament had not been collected in Western Europe for many centuries. The total number of vessels amounted to about three thousand, of which six hundred or seven hundred were of a superior order. When the expedition set sail, William led the van in a vessel which had been presented to him for the occasion by his wife Matilda: the vanes of the ship were gilded, the sails were of different bright colours, the three lions—the arms of Normandy-were painted in divers places, and the sculptured figure-head was a child with a bent bow, the arrow seeming ready to fly against the hostile and perjured land of England. The consecrated banner sent from Rome floated at the main-top-mast. This ship sailed faster than all the rest, and in the course of the night it left the whole fleet far astern. Early in the morning the duke ordered a sailor to the mast-head to see if the other ships were coming up. "I can see nothing but the sea and sky,” said the mariner; and thereupon they lay-to. To keep the crew and the soldiers on board in good heart, William ordered them a sumptuous breakfast, with warm wine strongly spiced. After this refection the mariner was again sent aloft, and this time he said he could make out four vessels in the distance; but mounting a third time, he shouted out with a merry voice, "Now I see a forest of masts and sails." Within a few hours the re-united Norman fleet came to anchor on the Sussex coast. At that particular point the coast was flat, and the country behind it marshy and unpicturesque; but a little to the left stood the noble Roman walls and other ancient remains of Pevensey, and a little to the right the bold cliffs and sloping downs of Hastings. As day dawned, Odo, bishop of Bayeux, a half-brother of duke William, celebrated mass in the field on a portable altar, and gave his benediction to the troops, being armed the while in a coat of mail, which he wore under his episcopal rochet; and when the mass and the blessing were over he mounted a very large and white war-horse, took a lance in his hand, and marshalled his brigade of cavalry. William rode a fine Spanish horse, which a rich Norman had brought him on his return from a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Iago in Galicia: he wore suspended round his neck some of those relics upon which Harold had sworn; the pride of the Norman nobility were formed in column behind him; and the standard blessed by the pope was carried at his side by one Tonstain, surnamed "the White," who accepted the honourable but dangerous office after two Norman barons had declined it. Before the onslaught, the duke, from the back of his Spanish steed, harangued the collected host, telling them that a great booty was before them, and that if they could conquer this land, they should have it all in lots among them. Then Taillefer, a gigantic Norman, who was minstrel, juggler, and champion, spurred his horse to the front of the van, and sung with a loud voice the popular ballads which immortalised the valour of Charlemagne and Roland, and all that flower of chivalry that fought in the great fight of Roncesvalles; and as Taillefer sang he performed feats with his sword, throwing it into the air with great force with one hand, and catching it as it fell with the other. The Normans repeated the burden of his song, or cried, "Dieu aide! Dieu aide!" This accomplished champion craved permission to strike the first blow: he ran one Saxon through the body, and threw a second to the ground; but in attacking a third he was himself mortally wounded; and having sung his last war song, he crossed himself and was at peace for ever. The Saxon host remained in their position on the ridge of a hill, fortified by trenches and pallisades: they were marshalled after the fashion of the Danes, shield against shield, presenting an impenetrable front to the enemy's lances; and in response to the "Dieu aide!" or "God is our help!" of the Normans, they shouted, "Christ's rood! The holy rood!" According to ancient privilege, the brave men of Kent stood in the first line, and the burgesses of London formed the body-guard of the sovereign, and were drawn up close round the royal standard. At the foot of this standard stood bold Harold, with his two stout brothers, Gurth and Leofwin, and a few of the noblest and bravest thanes of all England. Many were the checks and reverses, and fearful the losses sustained by the invaders. At one term the pride of the Norman cavalry were driven pell-mell into a deep trench which had been artfully covered over and concealed by the Saxons, and in which men and horses perished in great numbers: and at this disastrous moment the cry was spread that the duke himself was slain, and a panic and headlong flight was begun. William, whose horse had been killed, but who was himself unhurt, mounted a fresh steed, got before the fugitives, and endeavoured to stop them, first by threatening them and striking them with his lance, and then by uncovering his face and head, and crying, "Here I am! Look at me! I am still alive, and will conquer by God's help!" At last, near upon six o'clock of the evening, when the battle had lasted nine hours, and when the sun was setting in the sea beyond the headland of Beachy Head, victory alighted upon the proud crest of the Norman. Harold was shot through the brain by a random arrow, and the foe made a dash and hemmed in the spot, exerting themselves in the most desperate manner to seize the royal Saxon banner. Robert Fitz Ernest had almost grasped it when a Saxon battle-axe laid him low for ever. Twenty Norman knights of name then undertook the task, and the attempt succeeded after ten of their number had perished. The Saxon standard was then lowered, and the consecrated banner sent by the pope from Rome was raised in its stead, in sign of victory. Gurth and Leofwin, the brothers of Harold, died before the standard was taken, and all the hill-side where it stood was covered thick with the Saxon dead and dying. William himself had lost not one but three horses that were killed under him, and at one moment he was well nigh laid prostrate by a blow struck upon his steel cap by a Saxon knight. Scenes of the most striking kind followed closely upon the battle of Hastings. Before leaving Normandy, William had caused a muster-roll to be drawn up, specifying the names and quality of all his followers. The morning after the battle all those who survived it were drawn up in line, and this muster-roll was called over. To a fourth of the names no answer was returned; and among the missing, who were all dead, were many of the noblest lords and bravest knights of Normandy. Those who had been more fortunate gathered round the duke, and, with eager looks and their swords and lance-heads yet wet with the blood of the conquered, demanded possession of the houses and lands of the Saxons. A new roll was prepared, on which were inscribed the names of all the noblemen and gentlemen who had survived; and this roll was deposited in Battle Abbey, which, in the accomplishment of a solemn vow, the Conqueror afterwards erected on the hill which Harold had occupied and so gallantly defended. The high altar of this abbey church stood on the very spot where the standard of the last of our Saxon kings had floated. The aged mother of Harold, who lost three brave sons in the battle of Hastings, offered its weight in gold for the dead body of the king. Two monks, who were allowed by William to search for |