single march. While some of the rebel
barons rotted in the Duke's dungeons and some were driven into exile, the
land settled down into a peace which gave room for a quick upgrowth of
wealth and culture. Learning and education found their centre in the
school of Bec, which the teaching of a Lombard scholar, Lanfranc, raised
in a few years into the most famous school of Christendom. Lanfranc's
first contact with William, if it showed the Duke's imperious temper,
showed too his marvellous insight into men. In a strife with the Papacy
which William provoked by his marriage with Matilda, a daughter of the
Count of Flanders, Lanfranc took the side of Rome. His opposition was met
by a sentence of banishment, and the Prior had hardly set out on a lame
horse, the only one his house could afford, when he was overtaken by the
Duke, impatient that he should quit Normandy. "Give me a better horse and
I shall go the quicker," replied the imperturbable Lombard, and William's
wrath passed into laughter and good will. From that hour Lanfranc became
his minister and counsellor, whether for affairs in the duchy itself or
for the more daring schemes of ambition which opened up across the
Channel.

[Sidenote: William and England]

William's hopes of the English crown are said to have been revived by a
storm which threw Harold, while cruising in the Channel, on the coast of
Ponthieu. Its count sold him to the Duke; and as the price of return to
England William forced him to swear on the relics of saints to support
his claim to its throne. But, true or no, the oath told little on
Harold's course. As the childless King drew to his grave one obstacle
after another was cleared from the earl's path. His brother Tostig had
become his most dangerous rival; but a revolt of the Northumbrians drove
Tostig to Flanders, and the earl was able to win over the Mercian house
of Leofric to his cause by owning Morkere, the brother of the Mercian
Earl Eadwine, as his brother's successor. His aim was in fact attained
without a struggle. In the opening of 1066 the nobles and bishops who
gathered round the death-bed of the Confessor passed quietly from it to
the election and coronation of Harold. But at Eouen the news was welcomed
with a burst of furious passion, and the Duke of Normandy at once
prepared to enforce his claim by arms. William did not claim the Crown.
He claimed simply the right which he afterwards used when his sword had
won it of presenting hims