Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/98

84 disorder. At last the wind became favourable, and enabled them to sail along the coast, till they reached St. Valari. There were, however, several vessels lost in this short passage; and as the wind again proved contrary, the army began to imagine that Heaven had declared against them, and that, notwithstanding the Pope's benediction, they were destined to certain destruction. These bold warriors, who despised real dangers, were very subject to the dread of imaginary ones; and many of them began to mutiny, some of them even to desert their colours; when the duke, in order to support their drooping hopes, ordered a procession to be made with the relics of St. Valari, prayers to be said for more favourable weather.

The wind instantly changed; and as this incident happened on the eve of the feast of St. Michael, the tutelar saint of Normandy, the soldiers, fancying they saw the hand of Heaven in all these concurring circumstances, set out with the greatest alacrity. They met with no opposition on their passage. A great fleet, which Harold had assembled, and which had cruised all the summer off the Isle of Wight, had been dismissed on his receiving false intelligence that William, discouraged by contrary winds and other accidents, had laid aside his preparations. The Norman armament, proceeding in great order, arrived, without any material loss, at Pevensey, in Sussex, and the army quietly disembarked. The duke himself, as he leaped on shore, happened to stumble and fall; but had the presence of mind, it is said, to turn the omen to his advantage, by declaring aloud that he had taken possession of the country; and a soldier, running to a neighbouring cottage, plucked a handful of thatch, and brought it to his leader.

"What is this?" demanded William, for the moment not comprehending the meaning of the man. "Seizin," was the reply.

It was received with a loud shout by the army—seizin being the act by which, according to the feudal laws, a tenant paid homage to his sovereign for his fief.

The joy and alacrity of the duke and his soldiers were so great, that even the intelligence of Harold's victory over the Norwegians, and the death of Tostig, did not dismay them; they seemed rather to entertain greater confidence in a speedy conquest.



The victory of Harold, though great and honourable, had proved in the main prejudicial to his interests, and may be regarded as the immediate cause of his ruin. He lost many of his bravest officers and soldiers in the action; and he disgusted the rest by refusing to distribute the Norwegian spoils among them—a conduct which was little agreeable to his usual generosity of temper, but which his desire of sparing the people, in the war that impended over him from