were opposed to the scheme.
They thought it very likely to end in disaster and defeat; and they
denied that their feudal obligation to furnish men for their sovereign's
wars was binding to the extent of requiring them to go out of the
country, and beyond the sea, to prosecute his claims to the throne of
another kingdom.

Others, on the other hand, among the members of William's assembly, were
strongly disposed to favor the plan. They were more ardent or more
courageous than the rest, or perhaps their position and circumstances
were such that they had more to hope from the success of the enterprise
than they, or less to fear from its failure. Thus there was great
diversity of opinion; and as the parliamentary system of rules, by which
a body of turbulent men, in modern times, are kept in some semblance of
organization and order during a debate, had not then been developed, the
meeting of these Norman deliberators was, for a time, a scene of uproar
and confusion. The members gathered in groups, each speaker getting
around him as many as he could obtain to listen to his harangue; the
more quiet and passive portion of the assembly moving to and fro, from
group to group, as they were attracted by the earnestness and eloquence
of the different speakers, or by their approval of the sentiments which
they heard them expressing. The scene, in fact, was like that presented
in exciting times by a political caucus in America, before it is called
to order by the chairman.

Fitzosborne, the confidential friend and counselor, who has already been
mentioned as the one who ventured to accost the duke at the time when
the tidings of Edward's death and of Harold's accession first reached
him, now seeing that any thing like definite and harmonious action on
the part of this tumultuous assembly was out of the question, went to
the duke, and proposed to him to give up the assembly as such, and make
the best terms and arrangements that he could with the constituent
elements of it, individually and severally. He would himself, he
said, furnish forty ships, manned, equipped, and provisioned; and he
recommended to the duke to call each of the others into his presence,
and ask them what they were individually willing to do. The duke adopted
this plan, and it was wonderfully successful. Those who were first
invited made large offers, and their offers were immediately registered
in form by the proper officers. Each one who followed was emulous of t