THE NEGOTIATIONS OF DUKE WILLIAM.[752] January–August, 1066

The people of England had made their choice. They had placed the Crown of England upon the head of the foremost man of their own race. Harold, the son of Godwine, the son of Wulfnoth, sat in the kingly seat which had never before received an occupant of other than kingly birth. The news was not slow in reaching the ears of that mighty rival beyond the sea, who had long marked that kingly seat as his own heritage, and who could now complain to the world that his heritage had been torn from him by his own sworn vassal. We cannot doubt that William had long been watching every breeze which could bring tidings from England. The failing health of Eadward was known at Rouen as well as at Westminster,^[753] and William was doubtless ready to put in his claim at the first moment that the throne should be actually vacant. Even after the homage done by Harold, even if we enlarge that homage to the full extent which it assumes in the statements of William’s own laureate, the Duke could hardly have looked forward with any confidence to a peaceful succession to the English Crown. He might well doubt how far he had really bound Harold, and, if he had bound Harold, he had at least not bound England. |Effect on his scheme of the sudden election of Harold.| But William was doubtless ready for every occasion, ready, whatever might happen, with a plausible case to set before the world on his own behalf. His claim was not likely to meet with any acknowledgement in England, but it would at least be a gain for him to be able to say that it had been formally put forth at the right moment. And yet the course which events really took was perhaps, after all, still more to the wily Duke’s advantage. The death, the burial, the coronation, followed so fast upon one another that William had no opportunity of pressing his claim till after the choice of England had been irrevocably made. He might now, if he would, call on the reigning King to descend from an usurped throne; he could not call on the English nation to elect himself to a vacant throne. But he gained thereby an advantage of which the writers in his interest have not been slow to make use, the advantage of being able to represent the reigning King as an intruder. He could speak of him as one placed on the throne by some hasty and irregular act, as one reigning in any case in opposition to William’s own earlier right, perhaps even as reigning without the full and free consent of the English people. It is not to be forgotten that one count which Norman partizans bring against England is that the English people failed in gratitude to the deliverer who came to set them free from a tyrannical usurper.^[754]