nt which every one could understand.
During the whole of the spring and the summer ships for the invasion
of England were being built in the Norman harbours.

[Illustration: Normans feasting; with Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, saying
grace. (From the Bayeux Tapestry.)]

[Illustration: Harold swearing upon the Relics. (From the Bayeux
Tapestry.)]

22. =Stamford Bridge. 1066.=--All through the summer Harold was
watching for his rival's coming. The military organisation of England,
however, was inferior to that of Normandy. The Norman barons and their
vassals were always ready for war, and they could support on their
estates the foreign adventurers who were placed under their orders
till the time of battle came. Harold had his house-carls, the constant
guard of picked troops which had been instituted by Cnut, and his
thegns, who, like the Norman barons, were bound to serve their lord
in war. The greater part of his force, however, was composed of the
peasants of the fyrd, and when September came they must needs be sent
home to attend to their harvest, which seems to have been late this
year. Scarcely were they gone when Harold received news that his
brother Tostig, angry with him for having consented to his deposition
from the North-humbrian earldom, had allied himself to Harold
Hardrada, the fierce sea-rover, who was king of Norway, and that the
two, with a mighty host, after wasting the Yorkshire coast, had sailed
up the Humber. The two Northern Earls, Eadwine and Morkere, were hard
pressed. Harold had not long before married their sister, and,
whatever might be the risk, he was bound as the king of all England to
aid them. Marching swiftly northwards with his house-carls and the
thegns who joined him on the way, he hastened to their succour. On
the way worse tidings reached him. The Earls had been defeated, and
York had agreed to submit to the Norsemen. Harold hurried on the
faster, and came upon the invaders unawares as they lay heedlessly on
both sides of the Derwent at Stamford Bridge. Those on the western
side, unprepared as they were, were soon overpowered. One brave
Norseman, like Horatius and his comrades in the Roman legend, kept the
narrow bridge against the army, till an Englishman crept under it and
stabbed him from below through a gap in the woodwork. The battle
rolled across the Derwent, and when evening came Harold Hardrada, and
Tostig himself, with the bulk of the invaders, had been slain. For the
last time