udal, though
somewhat less precisely so here than in Normandy. Men's allegiance
was not given to any such vague unity as England, but to a feudal
lord, in whose quarrel they were bound to fight, in whose victory they
shared, and in whose defeat they suffered. The quarrel between King
Harold and Duke William was in no sense of the word a national
quarrel but a personal dispute in which the feudal adherents of both
parties were necessarily involved, the gage being the crown and spoil
of England. This is at once obvious when we remember that the ground
of William's claim to the throne was a promise received from King
Edward personally, unconfirmed by council or witan, but endorsed for
his own part by Harold when shipwreck had placed him in Duke William's
power. Such were the true elements of the dispute.

It is true that the society of that time was, as I have said, all of
one piece both in England and in Gaul, but it is certain that in
England that society was less precisely organised, less conscious of
itself, less logical in its structure, in a word less real and more
barbarous than that of the Normans. The victory of Duke William meant
that the sluggish English system would be replaced or at any rate
reinvigorated by an energy and an intelligence foreign to it, without
which it might seem certain that civilisation here would have fallen
into utter decay or have perished altogether. The service of Duke
William then, while not so great as that of Caesar and certainly far
less than that of St Augustine, was of the same kind; he rescued
England from barbarism and brought us back into the full light of
Europe. The campaign in which that great service was achieved divides
itself into two parts, the first of which comes to an end with the
decisive action at Hastings which gave Duke William the crown; the
second consists of three great fighting marches, the result of which
was the conquest of England. I am only here concerned with the first
part of that campaign, and more especially with the great engagement
which was fought out upon the hill-top which the ruins of Battle Abbey
still mark. Let us consider this.

Harold, the second son of Earl Godwin, was crowned King of England at
Westminster upon the feast of the Epiphany in the year 1066. When Duke
William heard of it he was both angry and amazed, and at once began to
call up his feudatories to lend him aid to enforce his claim to the
Crown of England against King Harold.