CAMEO VII. THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS. (1066.) THE first night after leaving London, Harold slept at Waltham Abbey, CAMEO VII. and had much conference with the Abbot, who was his friend, and appointed two Monks, named Osgood and Ailric, to attend him closely in the coming battle. On the 12th of October, Harold found himself seven miles from the enemy, and halted his men on Heathfield-hill, near Hastings, the most advantageous ground he could find. On the highest point he planted his standard bearing the figure of a man in armour, and marshalling his Saxons round it, commanded them to entrench themselves within a rampart and ditch, and to plant within them a sort of poles, on the upper part of which, nearly the height of a man from the ground, they interwove a fence of wattled branches, so that while the front rank might pass under to man the rampart, the rear might be sheltered from the arrows of the enemy. These orders given, Harold and Gyrtha rode together to a hill, whence they beheld the Norman camp, when for a moment Harold was so alarmed at the number of their tents that he spoke of returning to London and acting as his mother had advised; but Gyrtha showed him that it was too late; he could not turn back from the very face of the enemy, without being supposed to fly, and thus yielding his kingdom at once. Three Saxons presently came to the brothers who had been seized as spies by the Normans, and by order of William led throughout his camp, and then sent away to report what they had seen. Their story was that the Norman soldiers were all Priests, at which Harold laughed, since they had been deceived by the short-cut locks and smooth chins of the Normans, such as in England were only worn by ecclesiastics, warriors always wearing flowing locks and thick moustaches. Several messages passed between the two camps, William sending offers of honours and wealth to Harold and Gyrtha if they would cease their resistance; but when all were rejected, he sent another herald to defy Harold as a perjured traitor under the ban of the Church; a declaration which so startled the Saxons, that it took strong efforts on the part of the gallant Gyrtha to inspirit them to stand by his brother. Harold at CAMEO VII. This over, William addressed his soldiers from a little hillock, and Morning of put on his armour, hanging round his neck, as a witness of Harold's Hastings. falsehood, one of the relics on which the oath had been taken. He chanced to put on his hawberk with the wrong side before, and seeing some of his men disconcerted, fancying this a token of ill, he told them that it boded that his dukedom should be turned to a kingdom. His horse was a beautiful Spanish barb sent him by the King of Castile, and so gallantly did he ride, that there was a shout of delight from his men, and a cry, "Never was such a Knight under Heaven ! A fair Count he is, and a fair King he will be! Shame on him who fails him." William held in his hand the Pope's banner, and called for the standard-bearer of Normandy; but no one liked to take the charge, fearful of being hindered from gaining distinction by feats of personal prowess. Each elder knight of fame begged to be excused, and at last it was committed to Tunstan the White, a young man probably so called because he had yet to win an achievement for his spotless shield. The army was in three troops, each drawn up in the form of a wedge. the archers forming the point; and the reserve of horse was committed to Bishop Odo, who rode up and down among the men, a hawberk over his rochet and a club in his hand. On went the Normans in the light of the rising sun of the 13th of October, Taillefer, a minstrel-knight, riding first, playing on his harp and singing the war-song of Roland the Paladin. At seven o'clock they were before the Saxon camp, and Fitzosborn and the body under his command dashed up the hill, under a cloud of arrows, shouting "Notre Dame! Dieu aide!" while the Saxons within, crying out "Holy Rood!" cut down with their battle-axes all who gained the rampart, and at length drove them back again. A second onset was equally unsuccessful, and William, observing that the wattled fence protected the Saxons from the arrows, ordered the archers to shoot their arrows no longer point blank, but into the sky, so that they might fall on the heads of the Saxons. Thus directed, these shafts harassed the defenders grievously; and Harold himself was pierced in the left eye, and almost disabled from further exertion in the command. Yet at noon, the Normans had been baffled at every quarter, and William, growing desperate, led a party to attack the entrance of the camp. Again he was repulsed, and driven back on some rough ground, where many horses fell, and among them his own Spanish charger. A cry arose that the Duke was slain: the Normans fled, the Saxons broke out of their camp in pursuit, when William, throwing off his helmet and striking with his lance, recalled his troops, shouting, "Look at me! I live, and by God's grace I will conquer.' All the Saxons who had left the camp were slain, their short battleaxes being unfit to cope with the heavy swords and long lances of their enemies; and taught by this success, William caused some of his troops to CAMEO VII. The Camp feign a flight, draw them beyond the rampart, turn on them and cut them down. The manoeuvre was repeated at different parts of the camp till the rampart was stripped of defenders, and the Normans forced their forced. way into it, cut down the wattled fence, and gave admittance to the host of horse and foot who rushed over the outworks. Yet still the standard floated in the midst of a brave band who "Though thick the shafts as snow, Though charging knights like whirlwinds go, Still fought around their King." All who came near that close-serried ring of stedfast Saxon strength were cut down, and the piles of dead Normans round them were becoming ramparts, when twenty knights bound themselves by an oath that the standard should be taken, spurred their horses against the ranks, and by main force, with the loss of ten of their number, forced an opening. Ere the ranks could close, William and his whole force were charging into the gap made for a moment, trampling down the brave men, slaughtering on all sides, yet still unable to break through to the standard. "Till utter darkness closed her wing O'er their thin host and wounded King." Man by man the noble Saxons were hewn down as the Normans cut their way through them, no more able to drive them back than if they had been the trees of the forest. Gyrtha, the true-hearted and noble, fell under the sword of a Norman knight, Leofwyn lay near him in his blood, yet still Harold's voice was heard cheering on his men, and still his standard streamed above their heads. At sunset, that well-known voice was no longer heard, and the setting sun beheld Tunstan the White perform the crowning achievement of the day, uproot the standard banner of Normandy that the morning beams had seen committed to his charge. Not an earl or thane of Wessex was living; and heaps of slain lay thick on Heathfield hill, and the valley round a very lake of blood. Senlac, or Sanglac, was its old name, and sounded but too appropriate to the French ears of the Conqueror, as in a moment of sorrow for the fearful loss of life he beheld, he vowed that here should stand an Abbey, where prayer should be made for pardon for his sins and for the repose of the souls of the slaughtered. Darkness came on; but the Saxons, retreating under its cover, were still so un daunted that the Normans could hardly venture to move about the field except in considerable parties, and Eustace of Boulogne, while speaking to the Duke, was felled to the earth by a sudden blow. In the morning, Gytha, the widow of Godwin, who had lost four children by the perjury and ambition of one of them, came to entreat permission to bury. Gyrtha and Leofwyn lay near together at the foot of the banner. Harold was sought in vain, till Edith of the Swan neck, a lady he had loved, was brought to help in the melancholy quest. She declared a defaced and mangled corpse to be that of Harold, and it was carried with those of the two brothers to the Abbey of Waltham, CAMEO VII. where it was placed beneath a stone bearing the two sorrowful words "Infelix Harold." Death of Years passed on, and the people had long become accustomed to the Norman yoke, when there was much talk among them of a hermit, who dwelt in a cell not far from the town in the utmost penitence and humility. He was seldom seen, his face was deeply scarred, and he had lost his left eye, and nothing was known of his name or history; but he was deeply revered for his sanctity, and when Henry Beauclerc once visited Chester, he sought a private interview with the mysterious penitent. It is said, that when the hermit lay on his death-bed he owned himself to be Harold, son of Godwin, once King of England for seven months. He had been borne from the bloody hill, between life and death, in the darkness of the evening, by the two faithful monks, Osgood and Ailric, and tended in secret till he recovered from his wounds. Since that time he had been living in penitence and contrition, unknown to and apart from the world, and died at length, trusting that his forty years' repentance might be accepted. If this tale be true, what a warning might not he have bestowed on the young prince Henry, destined to run a like course of perjury and ambition, and to feel it turn back upon him in the dreariness of desolate old age, when "he never smiled again." Had not the penitent Harold more peace at the last than the king Henry? The same story is told of almost every king missed in a lost battle. Arthur, borne away to die at Avalon, and believed to be among the fairies; Rodrigo, the last of the Goths, whose steed Orelio and horned helmet lay on the banks of the river, and whose name was found centuries after on a rude grave-stone, near a hermitage; James IV., whom the Scots by turns hoped to see return from pilgrimage, and pitied as they looked at Lord Home's border tower; the gallant Don Sebastian, the last of the glorious race of Portuguese Kings, never seen after his shout of "Let us die!" in the tumult of Alcaçer, yet long looked for by his loving people-of each in turn the belief has arisen among the subjects who clung to the hope of seeing the beloved prince, and dwelt on the doubt whether his corpse was identified. In the cases of Harold and Rodrigo-generous men tempted into fearful and ruinous crimesone would hope the tale was true, and that the time for repentance was vouchsafed to them; nor are their stories entirely without authority. Harold had three young children, who wandered about under the care of their grandmother, Gytha, at one time finding a shelter in the Holms, those two islets in the British Channel, at another taking refuge in Ireland, whence they at length escaped to Norway, and the daughter married one of the Kings of Novgorod, the beginning of the Empire of Russia. Ulfnoth, the only remaining son of the bold Godwin-sons was the hostage that Edward the Confessor had placed in the hands of the Duke of Normandy; he was seized upon once more by William Rufus, and remained in captivity till his death. The Conqueror kept his vow, and erected the splendid Battle Abbey CAMEO VII. on the field that gave him a kingdom. The high altar stood where Battle Harold's banner had been planted, and the enclosures surrounded every ¦ Abbey. spot where the conflict had raged. They were measured out by the corpses of Normans and Saxons. The Battle-roll, a list of every Norman who had borne arms there, was lodged in the keeping of the Abbot, and contains the names of many a good old English family which has held the same land generation after generation, English now, though then called the Norman spoiler, but it is to be feared that the roll was much tampered with to gratify family vanity. Battle Abbey was one of the greatest and richest foundations. The Abbot was a friar, and according to the unfortunate habit of exempting monasteries from the Bishop's jurisdiction, was subject to no government but the Pope's ; and this led to frequent disputes between the Abbot and the see of Winchester. It was overthrown in the Reformation, and is now a mere ruin; but its beautiful arches still remain to show that better than any other conqueror William knew how to honour a battle-field. There is but one other Battle Abbey in the world, Batalha in Portugal, which covers the plain of Aljubarota, where Joao I. won his kingdom from Castile; and as his wife was a daughter of John of Gaunt, a most noble and highminded princess, it is most probable that she suggested the work after the example of her great ancestor ; nay, when the visitor enters the nave, and is reminded by the architecture of Winchester, it seems as if Philippa of Lancaster might have both proposed the foundation, and sent to England for the plan, to the Architect and Bishop, William of Wykeham. Nor is Battle Abbey the only remaining monument of Hastings. Matilda's own handiwork prepared her thankoffering of tapestry, recording her husband's victory; and this work, done as it was for a gift to Heaven, not a vainglorious record, still endures in the very Cathedral to which she gave it, one of the choicest historical witnesses that have come down to our times. We might be apt to regret that she did not present her work to Battle Abbey where it would have been most appropriate; but as the Puritans would most likely have called it a Popish vestment savouring of idolatry, we are consoled by thinking it probably owes its preservation to her having chosen to give it as a hanging on festival days to the Cathedral at Bayeux, the see of her husband's half brother, Odo, who shared in all the toils and dangers of the expedition, and whom she has taken especial care to represent for the benefit of the townspeople of Bayeux; for wherever we find his broad face, large person, shaven crown, and the chequered red and green suit by which she expressed his wadded garment, his name is always found in large letters; and he is evidently in his full glory when we find him, club in hand, at the beginning of the battle, and these words worked round him: Odo Eps. (episcopus) baculum tenens, confortat pueros. He was one of the bad, warlike Bishops of those irregular times, and brought many disasters on himself by his turbulence and haughtiness. The Bayeux |