particular, whose influence was great over the
people, began to declare in his favour; and as most of the bishops and
dignified clergymen were even then Frenchmen or Normans, the pope's
bull, by which his enterprise was avowed and hallowed, was now openly
insisted on as a reason for general submission. The superior learning
of those prelates, which, during the Confessor's reign, had raised
them above the ignorant Saxons, made their opinions be received with
implicit faith; and a young prince, like Edgar, whose capacity was
deemed so mean, was but ill qualified to resist the impression which
they made on the minds of the people. A repulse which a body of
Londoners received from five hundred Norman horse, renewed in the city
the terror of the great defeat at Hastings; the easy submission of all
the inhabitants of Kent was an additional discouragement to them; the
burning of Southwark before their eyes made them dread a like fate to
their own city; and no man any longer entertained thoughts but of
immediate safety and of self-preservation. Even the Earls Edwin and
Morcar, in despair of making effectual resistance, retired with their
troops to their own provinces; and the people thenceforth disposed
themselves unanimously to yield to the victor. As soon as he passed
the Thames at Wallingford, and reached Berkhamstead, Stigand, the
primate, made submissions to him: before he came within sight of the
city, all the chief nobility, and Edgar Atheling himself, the new-
elected king, came into his camp, and declared their intention of
yielding to his authority [d]. They requested him to mount their
throne, which they now considered as vacant; and declared to him, that
as they had always been ruled by regal power, they desired to follow,
in this particular, the example of their ancestors, and knew of no one
more worthy than himself to hold the reins of government [e].
[FN [d] Hoveden, p. 450. Flor. Wigorn. p. 634. [e] Gul. Pict. p.
205. Ord. Vital. p. 503.]

Though this was the great object to which the duke's enterprise
tended, he feigned to deliberate on the offer; and being desirous at
first of preserving the appearance of a legal administration, he
wished to obtain a more explicit and formal consent of the English
nation [f]: but Almar, of Aquitain, a man equally respected for valour
in the field and for prudence in council, remonstrating with him on
the danger of delay in so critical a conjuncture, he laid aside all