nimous in
urging him to resent the perjury and injury. He sent to Harold a
messenger charged to say, "William, duke of the Normans, doth recall to
thee the oath thou swarest to him with thy mouth and with thy hand, on
real and saintly relics." "It is true," answered Harold, "that I swore,
but on compulsion; I promised what did not belong to me; my kingship is
not mine own; I cannot put it off from me without the consent of the
country. I cannot any the more, without the consent of the country,
espouse a foreigner. As for my sister, whom the duke claims for one of
his chieftains, she died within the year; if he will, I will send him the
corpse." William replied without any violence, claiming the conditions
sworn, and especially Harold's marriage with his daughter Adele. For all
answer to this summons Harold married a Saxon, sister of two powerful
Saxon chieftains; Edwin and Morkar. There was an open rupture; and
William swore that "within the year he would go and claim, at the sword's
point, payment of what was due to him, on the very spot where Harold
thought himself to be most firm on his feet."

And he set himself to the work. But, being as far-sighted as he was
ambitious, he resolved to secure for his enterprise the sanction of
religious authority and the formal assent of the Estates of Normandy.
Not that he had any inclination to subordinate his power to that of the
Pope. Five years previously, Robert de Grandmesnil, abbot of St. Evroul,
with whom William had got embroiled, had claimed to re-enter his
monastery as master by virtue solely of an order from Pope Nicholas II.
"I will listen to the legates of the Pope, the common father of the
faithful," said William, "if they come to me to speak of the Christian
faith and religion; but if a monk of my Estates permit himself a single
word beyond his place, I will have him hanged by his cowl from the
highest oak of the nearest forest." When, in 1000, he denounced to Pope
Alexander II. the perjury of Harold, asking him at the same time to do
him justice, he made no scruple about promising that, if the Pope
authorized him to right himself by war, he would bring back the kingdom
of England to obedience to the Holy See. He had Lanfranc for his
negotiator with the court of Rome, and Pope Alexander II. had for chief
counsellor the celebrated monk Hildebrand, who was destined to succeed
him under the name of Gregory VII. The opportunity of extending the
empire of the