f Barnet, Earl Warwick, the king-maker,
slew his horse and fought on foot, he followed the old traditional
customs of Saxon chiefs.

[270] "Devant li Dus alout cantant
De Karlemaine e de Rollant,
Ed 'Olever e des Vassalls
Ki morurent en Ronchevals."
Roman de Rou, Part ii. I. 13, 151.

Much research has been made by French antiquaries, to discover the old
Chant de Roland, but in vain.

[271] W. PICT. Chron. de Nor.

[272] For, as Sir F. Palgrave shrewdly conjectures, upon the
dismemberment of the vast earldom of Wessex, on Harold's accession to the
throne, that portion of it comprising Sussex (the old government of his
grandfather Wolnoth) seems to have been assigned to Gurth.

[273] Harold's birthday was certainly the 14th of October. According to
Mr. Roscoe, in his "Life of William the Conqueror," William was born also
on the 14th of October.

[274] William Pict.

[275] Thus Wace,

"Guert (Gurth) vit Engleiz amenuisier,
Vi K'il n'i ont nul recovrier," etc.

"Gurth saw the English diminish, and that there was no hope to retrieve
the day; the Duke pushed forth with such force, that he reached him, and
struck him with great violence (par grant air). I know not if he died by
the stroke, but it is said that it laid him low."

[276] The suggestions implied in the text will probably be admitted as
correct; when we read in the Saxon annals of the recognition of the dead,
by peculiar marks on their bodies; the obvious, or at least the most
natural explanation of those signs, is to be found in the habit of
puncturing the skin, mentioned by the Malmesbury chronicler.

[277] The contemporary Norman chronicler, William of Poitiers. See Note
(R).

[278] See Note (R).

[279] "Rex magnus parva jacet hic Gulielmus in urna--
Sufficit et magno parva Domus Domino."

From William the Conqueror's epitaph (ap-Gemiticen). His bones are said
to have been disinterred some centuries after his death.

[280] Thomson's Essay on Magna Charta.

[281] Orderic. Vital. lib. 4.

[282] The date of William's marriage has been variously stated in
English and Norman history, but is usually fixed in 1051-2. M. Pluquet,
however, in a note to his edition of the "Roman de Rou," says that the
only authority for the date of that marriage is in the Chronicle of
Tours, and it is there referred to 1053. It would seem that the Papal
excommunication was not actually taken