of their former King. They sent for
Harold's mistress, Edith, surnamed "the Fair," and "the Swan-necked," to
aid them. The eye of love proved keener than the eye of gratitude, and
the Saxon lady even in that Aceldama knew her Harold.

The King's mother now sought the victorious Norman, and begged the dead
body of her son. But William at first answered, in his wrath and the
hardness of his heart, that a man who had been false to his word and his
religion should have no other sepulchre than the sand of the shore. He
added, with a sneer: "Harold mounted guard on the coast while he was
alive; he may continue his guard now he is dead." The taunt was an
unintentional eulogy; and a grave washed by the spray of the Sussex
waves would have been the noblest burial-place for the martyr of Saxon
freedom. But Harold's mother was urgent in her lamentations and her
prayers; the Conqueror relented: like Achilles, he gave up the dead body
of his fallen foe to a parent's supplications, and the remains of King
Harold were deposited with regal honors in Waltham Abbey.

On Christmas Day in the same year William the Conqueror was crowned, at
London, King of England.

TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND

"THE TURNING-POINT OF THE MIDDLE AGES:"

HENRY IV BEGS FOR MERCY AT CANOSSA

A.D. 1073-1085

ARTHUR R. PENNINGTON

ARTAUD DE MONTOR

(If during the pontificate of Innocent III [1198-1216] the papal power
attained its greatest height, yet under one of his predecessors the
chair of St. Peter became a throne of almost absolute supremacy. This
mighty pontiff, Gregory VII, whose real name, Hildebrand, indicates his
German descent, was born--the son of a carpenter--in Tuscany, about
1020. He became a monk of the Benedictine order, and was educated at the
abbey of Cluny in France. In 1044 he went to Rome, called by a papal
election, and there saw abuses which from that moment he fixed his mind
upon striving to abolish. In 1048 he was again in Rome and soon rose to
the rank of cardinal.

For many years Hildebrand was the real director of papal policy, and
long before his election as pope, in 1073, he worked to accomplish the
reforms that distinguish his pontificate, which continued till his
death, in 1085.

As a part of the Holy Roman Empire, Italy held a dual relation to the
emperor and the pope. Between the Roman pontiffs and the secular heads
of the Empire the struggle for supremacy had been long and often bitter.
At the time of Hildebr