CHAPTER XIII.

THE INTERregnum. OCTOBER 1-DECEMBER 25, 1066.

You will understand quite well that, though Duke William had won the great battle, and though King Harold was dead, that did not at once make the Duke King of the English. You know by this time that in those days a man who was chosen King, where the Kingdom was elective, or who succeeded by right of birth, where the Kingdom was hereditary, still was not fully King till he was crowned, generally by the chief Bishop of the country. Such a man's birth or election gave him a right to claim to be crowned King, but he was not King till he was crowned. So Duke William, though he gave out that he alone had a right to be King of the English, still did not call himself King after he had won the battle any more than he did before. And it was not yet at all clear that he ever would be King. He had, after all, only won one battle, and got possession of part of one shire. You know that both Swegen and Cnut had to do a great deal more than this before they were Kings over the whole land. And no doubt, had there been one man in the land like Harold or Edmund or Alfred, Duke William would have had to fight many another battle, and perhaps he never would have been King at all. You remember all the battles which Edmund fought, even when England was quite worn out with all the wretchedness of the reign of Æthelred. England was far better able to resist now than she was then. But she had now no leader, any more than in Æthelred's time. There was nobody now left like Harold or Edmund. Gyrth and Leofwine were dead as well as their brother, and Waltheof

And

and Hereward, who afterwards did such great things, had not yet been heard of as great captains. So, after the battle of Senlac, William never again met Englishmen in a pitched battle. But he was very far from getting possession of the land all at once. It took him about five years really to conquer the whole Kingdom, even after he had been crowned King. Still he had never again to meet the whole nation, or any large part of it, in battle. Men resisted and revolted here and there, this shire or that town, and they often fought very bravely and gave William a good deal of trouble to overcome them. But there was no general resistance of the whole nation, because there was no one man worthy to lead the nation. So of course the land was conquered bit by bit. I want you particularly to bear in mind that England was conquered only in this gradual way, even after William was crowned King, and that, till he was crowned, he did not profess to be King at all.

But

I told you that Edwin and Morkere, the two Earls, the King's brothers-in-law, betrayed King Harold and kept away from the battle. As soon as they heard the news of his death, they came to London, and took their sister the Lady Ealdgyth, the King's widow, and sent her away to Chester. Then the Archbishops Ealdred and Stigand, and the Earls Edwin and Morkere, and the citizens and the sailors of London, and such of the other Wise Men as could be got together, met to choose a King. If they had known what traitors the two Earls were, the wisest thing they could have done, as one of the Chroniclers says, would have been to choose William at once. they naturally thought that, with all the force of Northumberland and most part of that of Mercia, they could still resist. So they chose young Edgar the Ætheling. Of course Edgar was quite unfit to be the leader of the nation at such a time; but there was nobody else to choose, unless they had chosen Edwin, as he seems to have hoped. There was nobody else in the old royal family; Harold's brothers were dead, and though he had left three sons, they seem to have been mere youths, and so were no better than Edgar. So young Edgar was chosen King, but it does not seem that he was ever crowned. And Edwin and Morkere promised to be faithful to him and to go and fight for him against Duke William. So the citizens of

London and all the men who were at all brave and true of heart made ready to go out and fight. But the Earls forsook them and went away with their men to their Earldoms. I suppose that they did not care to fight for a West-Saxon King, whether he were Harold or Edgar, and perhaps they fancied that they might be able to divide the Kingdom with William, as had been done in the time of Edmund and Cnut. They perhaps thought that William would think it enough to be King in Wessex, and would leave them to be Kings north of the Thames, instead of being merely Earls under Harold or Edgar. Anyhow they were thorough traitors, first to Edward, then to Harold, then to Edgar, and afterwards to William also. They kept faith with nobody, and in the end they were punished as they deserved.

Meanwhile Duke William first went back to Hastings, and left a garrison in the fort which he had built there. He waited there some days thinking that people would come in and submit to him, but nobody came. So he set out to conquer the country, bit by bit. First he went to Romney. It seems that some of his people had been there already; perhaps one or more of the ships had gone astray and got on shore there. At all events there had been a fight between some of his men and the men of Romney, in which many were killed on both sides, but in the end the English had driven the Frenchmen away. So Duke William now, we are told, took from the men of Romney what penalty or satisfaction he chose for the men whom they had killed, as if he had been making them pay a wergild. I suppose this means that he put them all to death. Then he went on, still along the coast, as far as Dover. Here was one of the very few castles which were then in England; it had most likely been built by Harold himself. So Dover was thought to be stronger than any other place, and many people from all parts round about had come into the town for safety. The castle was strong and stood on the cliff; but the commanders of the garrison were cowardly, and surrendered at once. So some of the Normans, who had hoped to have the plundering of the town, got angry, and set fire to some of the houses, and a good deal was burned. But the Duke paid the owners of

the houses for what they had lost. You may here see his crafty policy. As he gave himself out to be the lawful heir to the Crown, his plan was to treat everybody who opposed him as a traitor, and everybody who submitted to him as a loyal subject fulfilling his duty. So you see he was harsh at Romney and gentle at Dover. He then caused the castle to be further strengthened. He stayed some time at Dover, because many of his army fell ill-from eating fresh meat, it is said. Meanwhile the fear of him went abroad. "The powerful metropolis," we read in William of Poitiers, "trembled." Now what place do you think is meant by "the powerful metropolis"? Perhaps some of you will at once say, London, because I dare say you have often heard people who like to use long words call London "the metropolis." But the place here meant is Canterbury. Some of you have learned Greek enough to know that Metropolis (unтрóπоλiç) means the mother-city. When a Greek city sent out a colony, the city whence the colonists went was called the metropolis, as we now talk about the mother-country. And in ecclesiastical language Metropolis means an Archbishop's see, and in England at least very rightly. For Canterbury and York were the first churches planted in the south and north of England respectively, and all the other churches of England are in a manner colonies of one or other of those two, so that the churches of Canterbury and York are rightly called Metropolitan churches and their Bishops Archbishops and Metropolitans. But no place in England1 is in any sense, ecclesiastical or civil, a colony of London. London is the capital, the head-town, the largest town and the seat of government, but not, in any strictness of speech, the Metropolis. Yet I have known people who ought to know better call Saint Paul's church in London "the metropolitan cathedral,” instead of Christ Church at Canterbury or Saint Peter's at York. So Canterbury was the metropolis which trembled; we shall hear about London presently. So Duke William set out, and received the submission of the citizens of Canterbury and the rest of the men of Kent at a place called the Broken Tower,

1 But London is, in the strict Greek sense, the metropolis of Derry in Ireland, to which London sent a colony in the time of King James the First, whence it is called Londonderry.

which seems to have been not far from Canterbury. There is a story told how the Kentishmen came to meet William in arms, and how they hid themselves and their arms with branches of trees, so that they looked like a walking wood. Then suddenly they threw aside the branches, and stood before him as an army ready for battle. Then the Duke was afraid, and he and the Kentishmen came to an agreement, that they would submit to him, but only on condition of having all their ancient laws and customs confirmed to them. And this is the reason why so many old laws and customs still remain in Kent, which have gone out of use in the rest of England. I think you will see how unlikely a story this is in itself, and there are other reasons why it cannot be true. It is one of those stories which, as I have so often told you, go the round of the world. It is the same story which you will find in Shakespere's play of Macbeth, about Birnam wood going to Dunsinane. There is no authority for it at all, and in truth Kent submitted much more easily than many other parts of the Kingdom. It is no wonder that it did so; the Kentishmen had been among the foremost at Senlac, and no doubt all the bravest men of the shire had been killed, and had left hardly any strength to withstand William. It is indeed quite true that William did not abolish the old laws in Kent, but that is because he did not do so anywhere, nor is there anything to show that he treated Kent either better or worse than the rest of the Kingdom.

While Duke William was at or near Canterbury, he fell sick, which hindered him from marching on for a whole month. But he was not idle even during his sickness. About this time he heard that Edgar the Ætheling had been chosen King in London. Now the Duke's great object was of course to get London into his hands, and also Winchester. Now Winchester had been given as her dower to the Lady Edith, the widow of King Edward and sister of King Harold. Now as William professed to have come into the land as the heir and kinsman of Edward, it was of course his policy to show all respect to his widow. It is indeed not quite certain that Edith was not on William's side; it is quite possible that she, like her husband, had been bewitched by the Frenchmen. And it is quite certain that, in