The Berkshire men had been very valiant at Senlac, and their Sheriff Godric and many of the Thanes of the shire had been killed there. But now the chief man who was left in those parts was one Wigod of Wallingford, who had been King Edward's cup-bearer. He submitted to William at once and received him; so William's army was able to cross the river, partly by a ford and partly by a bridge, without anybody withstanding them. So when William gave away the lands of so many Englishmen to Normans and other strangers, Wigod and his kinsfolk kept their lands, and his daughters were married to Normans.

Meanwhile London still held out. The commander of the troops in the city was named Esegar. He was the son of Æthelstan, the son of Tofig the Proud, and he had been Staller both to King Edward and to King Harold. His father had, as you will remember, lost his estate at Waltham, but Esegar had large estates in different parts of the country, and he was one of the chief men in England. He was now Sheriff of the Middle-Saxons, which most likely accounts for his commanding in London. He had fought at Senlac, and he had been so badly wounded there that he could not walk, but was carried about in a litter. So you see that he could not have been one of those who fled just at the end of the battle. I should think that he must have been one of those who were left for dead, and carried off among the dead bodies. Esegar kept up the spirits of the citizens as long as he could; but at last, we are told, though it seems a very strange story, that he told them that, as William's power was increasing every day, their only hope was to send and make a feigned submission, that so, I suppose, they might gain time. But William took the messenger in by his show of power and by his gifts and his kind way of talking. So when the messenger came back, he gave the citizens such an account that they agreed to surrender in spite of Esegar. However this may be, about this time they certainly did agree to submit, and Edgar the King-elect, and Archbishop Ealdred, and some other Bishops, and the best men of London, and many Thanes from other parts, met the Duke at Berkhampstead, and swore oaths to him and gave hostages; and the Duke

1

This story comes from the Latin poem of Bishop Guy of Amiens. There can be no doubt that by "Ansgardus" he means Esegar.

promised to be good lord to them, and yet the Chronicles say that he let his army harry the land as before. So he came on to London, and on Midwinter-Day, that is Christmas Day, he was crowned in King Edward's new church, the West Minster. Some say that he refused to be crowned by Stigand because he was not a lawful Archbishop; others say that Stigand refused to crown him because he was not a lawful King. I should like to believe this last story if I could, but it is only found in later writers, and it seems from Bishop Guy of Amiens that Stigand was actually one of the Bishops who took part in the coronation. But the actual celebrant, as it is called, the Bishop who anointed the King and put the Crown on his head, was Archbishop Ealdred of York, who thus crowned two Kings, and two such different Kings, in one year. The church was full of people, Normans and English, and some Norman horsemen were set to keep guard outside. Then Geoffrey Bishop of Coutances got up and said to the Normans in French, "Will ye that William your Duke be crowned King of the English?" Then Archbishop Ealdred spoke to the English in English, saying, "Will ye that William Duke of the Normans be crowned King of the English ?" So all the people, both Normans and English, clapped their hands and shouted "Yea, yea." So there was a great noise in the church. And the Normans who were set outside fancied, or pretended to fancy, that somebody was hurting the Duke. If so, one would have thought the right thing would have been to run into the church and help him, but instead of that they began to set fire to the houses round about. So the people began to run out of the church, some trying to put out the fire and some trying to plunder in the confusion. So Duke William was left with hardly anybody in the church except the Bishops. Then he swore the oath of the old Kings, to do justice and mercy and to rule his people as well as any King had ever ruled them. Then Archbishop Ealdred anointed him and put the Crown on his head, and he became King of the English.

Thus it was that Duke William came into England and overthrew King Harold at Senlac and became King in his stead. And now I will bring my History to an end for the

present. I have now gone through all that we can strictly call Old-English History, the history of the times when everything. in England was purely English, before the Normans came and gradually brought in so many new words into our language and so many new ideas into our laws. These early times are times which I wish you specially to attend to and to remember about, because they are times which are so often neglected and so often misunderstood. And yet the right understanding of them is most needful, if only for the right understanding of the times that come after. And I think you will see by this time that the history of those times is most important in itself, and that, if we only take care rightly to distinguish between true history and legend, it can be made both as useful and as pleasant to read as the history of any other time. Surely there is no time which we ought to care to know more about than about the beginnings of our own nation and of all that belongs to us, and the deeds of those of our Kings who were most truly Englishmen. So now that I have brought this time to an end, it seems a good point to stop at, at any rate for a while. For I do not say that I may not some day begin again and tell you, if not the whole History of England, which would be rather too long a business, yet at any rate something about William himself and the times soon after him, down to the time when the changes which were caused by the Norman Conquest were fully brought about. But there are two things which I wish you specially to remark and to remember now. The first is that William was not called the Conqueror because he overcame King Harold in battle and got the Crown by force. To conquer means to purchase, and to purchase means in law to get property by any means other than regular descent, whether it is by bequest, or by paying money, or in any other way. William, you know, said that Edward had left him the Crown; so he took it by conquest or purchase. Still, though this is the first meaning of the word Conqueror, and the meaning in which the word was first applied to William, still it is quite true to call him William the Conqueror in the other sense also, for he did conquer the land with the sword, and got it in no other way. And besides Willelmus Conquæstor, we also in some old books find him called Willelmus Triumphator, and there can be no

doubt at all what that means. So you may very well call him William the Conqueror in either sense. The other thing that I wish you to remember is that at the time when William was crowned, he had not as yet conquered all the land by a great deal. But now that he was crowned we must call him King William instead of Duke William, though you see that he had as yet possession only of the south-eastern part of the country, and it was a long time yet before he became really King over the whole land. Still he was the King, chosen, crowned and anointed, if not by the real will of the people like Harold, at any rate with their outward consent. And no one ever was

able to drive him out of the land, and the Crown of England has ever since been held by his descendants, though in the direct male line it did not go beyond his own sons. And though William professed to hold the Crown, not by force of arms, but by right, and though it is quite a mistake to think that he tried to root out the old laws and language of England, yet very great changes in laws and language and everything else followed step by step after his coming in. It was not merely because the King himself was a stranger, but because he found means step by step to give all the greatest offices in the country to Normans and other strangers, and even to take away the lands of all the chief men of England and to give them to these strangers. And as the followers of William were not men of kindred speech like the followers of Cnut, but men whose speech and habits and feelings about everything were quite unlike those of Englishmen, it is no wonder that quite a new state of things began with his coming. In short, with the crowning of our first King who was altogether a stranger I say that our true Old-English History ends, and I will therefore end my tory, at least for a while.

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