w
greeted the King of the English host: and clear and full, and practised
in the storm of popular assemblies, went his voice down the listening
lines.

"This day, O friends and Englishmen, sons of our common land--this day ye
fight for liberty. The Count of the Normans hath, I know, a mighty army;
I disguise not its strength. That army he hath collected together, by
promising to each man a share in the spoils of England. Already, in his
court and his camp, he hath parcelled out the lands of this kingdom; and
fierce are the robbers who fight for the hope of plunder! But he cannot
offer to his greatest chief boons nobler than those I offer to my meanest
freeman--liberty, and right, and law, in the soil of his fathers! Ye
have heard of the miseries endured in the old time under the Dane, but
they were slight indeed to those which ye may expect from the Norman.
The Dane was kindred to us in language and in law, and who now can tell
Saxon from Dane? But yon men would rule ye in a language ye know not, by
a law that claims the crown as the right of the sword, and divides the
land among the hirelings of an army. We baptized the Dane, and the
Church tamed his fierce soul into peace; but yon men make the Church
itself their ally, and march to carnage under the banner profaned to the
foulest of human wrongs! Outscourings of all nations, they come against
you: Ye fight as brothers under the eyes of your fathers and chosen
chiefs; ye fight for the women ye would save from the ravisher; ye fight
for the children ye would guard from eternal bondage; ye fight for the
altars which yon banner now darkens! Foreign priest is a tyrant as
ruthless and stern as ye shall find foreign baron and king! Let no man
dream of retreat; every inch of ground that ye yield is the soil of your
native land. For me, on this field I peril all. Think that mine eye is
upon you wherever ye are. If a line waver or shrink, ye shall hear in
the midst the voice of your King. Hold fast to your ranks, remember,
such amongst you as fought with me against Hardrada,--remember that it
was not till the Norsemen lost, by rash sallies, their serried array,
that our arms prevailed against them. Be warned by their fatal error,
break not the form of the battle; and I tell you on the faith of a
soldier who never yet hath left field without victory,--that ye cannot be
beaten. While I speak, the winds swell the sails of the Norse ships,
bearing home the corpse of H