e are
strikingly conspicuous, and, amongst them, the large hand and foot common
with all the Germanic tribes.

NOTE (R)

The Interment of Harold.

Here we are met by evidences of the most contradictory character.
According to most of the English writers, the body of Harold was given by
William to Githa, without ransom, and buried at Waltham. There is even a
story told of the generosity of the Conqueror, in cashiering a soldier
who gashed the corpse of the dead hero. This last, however, seems to
apply to some other Saxon, and not to Harold. But William of Poitiers,
who was the Duke's own chaplain, and whose narration of the battle
appears to contain more internal evidence of accuracy than the rest of
his chronicle, expressly says, that William refused Githa's offer of its
weight in gold for the supposed corpse of Harold, and ordered it to be
buried on the beach, with the taunt quoted in the text of this work--"Let
him guard the coast which he madly occupied;" and on the pretext that
one, whose cupidity and avarice had been the cause that so many men were
slaughtered and lay unsepultured, was not worthy himself of a tomb.
Orderic confirms this account, and says the body was given to William
Mallet, for that purpose. [299]

Certainly William de Poitiers ought to have known best; and the
probability of his story is to a certain degree borne out by the
uncertainty as to Harold's positive interment, which long prevailed, and
which even gave rise to a story related by Giraldus Cambrensis (and to be
found also in the Harleian MSS.), that Harold survived the battle, became
a monk in Chester, and before he died had a long and secret interview
with Henry the First. Such a legend, however absurd, could scarcely have
gained any credit if (as the usual story runs) Harold had been formally
buried, in the presence of many of the Norman barons, in Waltham
Abbey--but would very easily creep into belief, if his body had been
carelessly consigned to a Norman knight, to be buried privately by the
sea-shore.

The story of Osgood and Ailred, the childemaister (schoolmaster in the
monastery), as related by Palgrave, and used in this romance, is recorded
in a MS. of Waltham Abbey, and was written somewhere about fifty or sixty
years after the event--say at the beginning of the twelfth century.
These two monks followed Harold to the field, placed themselves so as to
watch its results, offered ten marks for the body, obtained permis