that, their provisions being gone, "no man could keep them there any longer." The men went to their homes, and the ships were sent up to London, many being lost on the passage. It is just possible that Edward's abolition of the Danegeld or Heregeld—re-established later, but not under Harold—may have had an influence, concerning which we know nothing definite, upon the condition of the English fleet at the moment of the Norman invasion; but it is still more likely that the king's departure from Kent to put down the troubles in Yorkshire, coupled with the fact that the seamen had been on continuous service for the unusually long period of five or six months, accounts for everything. They were not prepared nor accustomed to remain from home for so great a time; the harvest may have been spoiling in the fields, and, what more natural than that, when the royal eye was withdrawn from the fleet, the men should quit it?
The loss, no matter the explanation of it, of the command of the Channel, was very dangerous, as it must always be, to England; but it cannot be shown, either that Harold underrated the importance of having a fleet, or that he did not do all that lay in his power to hold his fleet together, while he was in the south. That Harold fought two great battles ashore, one near York and the other near Hastings, within three weeks, having been wounded in the first, and having, between the first and the second, crossed with a large army the rugged and almost roadless England of that day, is a proof, not only of extraordinary energy, but also of the terrible nature of the difficulties with which this gallant prince was harassed. Even had he, in his brief and stormy reign, failed to do half what he did, he could scarcely have been reproached.
The new conquerors of England were, with the Danes and the Saxons who had preceded them, the children of the common stock of northern pirates, assuredly the strongest stock that ever influenced the destinies of the world. But, as Professor James Rowley[1] puts it, the Normans had been advanced in civilisation some stages further than the others by a few generations of residence in the land of a more humanised people, and in the neighbourhood of settled states.
He continues: "Their marvellous efficiency in their palmy days is probably explained by their having kept their native hardiness of character—their moral muscularity, as we may call it—and their
- ↑ In 'Dict. of Eng. Hist.,' p. 766.
