PUTE ABOUT
INVESTITURES.--REVOLT OF PRINCE ROBERT.--DOMESDAY-BOOK.--THE NEW
FOREST.--WAR WITH FRANCE.--DEATH AND CHARACTER OF WILLIAM THE
CONQUEROR.

[MN 1066. Consequences of the battle of Hastings.]
Nothing could exceed the consternation which seized the English, when
they received intelligence of the unfortunate battle of Hastings, the
death of their king, the slaughter of their principal nobility and of
their bravest warriors, and the rout and dispersion of the remainder.
But though the loss which they had sustained in that fatal action was
considerable, it might have been repaired by a great nation; where the
people were generally armed, and where there resided so many powerful
noblemen in every province, who could have assembled their retainers,
and have obliged the Duke of Normandy to divide his army, and probably
to waste it in a variety of actions and rencounters. It was thus that
the kingdom had formerly resisted, for many years, its invaders, and
had been gradually subdued, by the continued efforts of the Romans,
Saxons, and Danes; and equal difficulties might have been apprehended
by William in this bold and hazardous enterprise. But there were
several vices in the Anglo-Saxon constitution, which rendered it
difficult for the English to defend their liberties in so critical an
emergency. The people had in a great measure lost all national pride
and spirit, by their recent and long subjection to the Danes; and as
Canute had, in the course of his administration, much abated the
rigours of conquest, and had governed them equitably by their own
laws, they regarded with the less terror the ignominy of a foreign
yoke, and deemed the inconveniences of submission less formidable than
those of bloodshed, war, and resistance. Their attachment also to the
ancient royal family had been much weakened by their habits of
submission to the Danish princes, and by their late election of
Harold, or their acquiescence in his usurpation. And as they had long
been accustomed to regard Edgar Atheling, the only heir of the Saxon
line, as unfit to govern them even in times of order and tranquillity,
they could entertain small hopes of his being able to repair such
great losses as they had sustained, or to withstand the victorious
arms of the Duke of Normandy.

That they might not, however, be altogether wanting to themselves in
this extreme necessity, the English took some steps towards adjusting
their disjointed govern