were so great, that they were nowise
discouraged, even when they heard of Harold's great victory over the
Norwegians; they seemed rather to wait with impatience for the arrival
of the enemy.
[FN [q] Higden, p. 285. Order. Vitalis, p. 500. Matth. Paris, edit.
Paris., anno 1644, p. 2.]

The victory of Harold, though great and honourable, had proved in the
main prejudicial to his interests, and may be regarded as the
immediate cause of his ruin. He lost many of his bravest officers and
soldiers in the action: and he disgusted the rest by refusing to
distribute the Norwegian spoils among them: a conduct which was little
agreeable to his usual generosity of temper; but which his desire of
sparing the people, in the war that impended over him from the Duke of
Normandy, had probably occasioned. He hastened, by quick marches, to
reach this new invader; but though he was reinforced at London and
other places with fresh troops, he found himself also weakened by the
desertion of his old soldiers, who, from fatigue and discontent,
secretly withdrew from their colours. His brother Gurth, a man of
bravery and conduct, began to entertain apprehensions of the event;
and remonstrated with the king, that it would be better policy to
prolong the war; at least, to spare his own person in the action. He
urged to him, that the desperate situation of the Duke of Normandy
made it requisite for that prince to bring matters to a speedy
decision, and put his whole fortune on the issue of a battle; but that
the King of England, in his own country, beloved by his subjects,
provided with every supply, had more certain and less dangerous means
of ensuring to himself the victory; that the Norman troops, elated on
the one hand with the highest hopes, and seeing, on the other, no
resource in case of a discomfiture, would fight to the last extremity;
and being the flower of all the warriors of the continent, must be
regarded as formidable to the English: that if their first fire, which
is always the most dangerous, were allowed to languish for want of
action; if they were harassed with small skirmishes, straitened in
provisions, and fatigued with the bad weather and deep roads during
the winter season which was approaching, they must fall an easy and a
bloodless prey to their enemy: that if a general action were delayed,
the English, sensible of the imminent danger to which their
properties, as well as liberties, were exposed from those rapaciou