ents, and crucifixes crested with
jewels, the silken garments for men and women, the rings, necklaces,
bracelets, wrought delicately in gold and resplendent in gems, inspired
the Continental barbarians with rapture, and in their imaginations made
England appear the Dorado of those times." One of the writers of that
day states that "incredible treasures in gold and silver were sent from
the plunder of England to the Pope, together with costly ornaments,
which would have been held in the highest estimation even at Byzantium,
then universally regarded as the most opulent city in the world." All
this implies that the Saxon aristocracy were very rich, and it is far
from unlikely that it was the desire to preserve their property that led
them to offer so little resistance to William,--a fatally mistaken
course, for the invading adventurers had entered England in search of
other men's property, and were not to be kept quiet by the quietness of
the owners thereof. The aristocracy alone could afford such plunder as
that described, and that so much of it was obtained shows how extensive
must have been the spoliation, and how thoroughly Saxon nobles were
stripped of their possessions by the low-born ragamuffins who were
induced by William's recruiting sergeants to enlist under his black
banner.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] An Account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and
Ireland, by J. J. Worsaae, Sec. I. p. 6.

[C] "What we call purchase, _perquisitio_," says Blackstone, "the
feudists called conquest, _conquisitio_; both denoting any means of
acquiring an estate out of the common course of inheritance. And this is
still the proper phrase in the law of Scotland, as it was among the
Norman jurists, who styled the first purchaser (that is, him who bought
the estate into the family which at present owns it) the conqueror, or
_conquereur_, which seems to be all that was meant by the appellation
which was given to William the Norman." Had Harold been victorious at
Hastings, he would, according to the feudists, have been the Conqueror;
that is, the man who brought England into his family.

[D] The History of Normandy and of England, Vol. I. pp. 703, 704. One of
the greatest historical works of a country and an age singularly rich in
historical literature, but incomplete, like the works of Macaulay,
Niebuhr, and Arnold, and the last work of Prescott. The third and fourth
volumes, posthumously published in 1864,--Sir Francis died