Young Folks History of England | Page 8

up his camp while Harold was away in
the North, fighting with a runaway brother of his own, who had brought
the Norwegians to attack Yorkshire. Harold had just won a great battle
over these enemies when he heard that William and his Normans had
landed, and he had to hurry the whole length of England to meet them.
Many of the English would not join him, because they did not want him
for their king. But though his army was not large, it was very brave.
When he reached Sussex, he placed all his men on the top of a low hill,
near Hastings, and caused them to make a fence all round, with a ditch
before it, and in the middle was his own standard, with a fighting man
embroidered upon it. Then the Normans rode up on their war-horses to
attack him, one brave knight going first, singing. The war-horses
stumbled in the ditch, and the long spears of the English killed both
men and horses. Then William ordered his archers to shoot their arrows

high in the air. They came down like hail into the faces and on the
heads of the English. Harold himself was pierced by one in the eye. The
Normans charged the fence again, and broke through; and, by the time
night came on, Harold himself and all his brave Englishmen were dead.
They did not flee away; they all staid, and were killed, fighting to the
last; and only then was Harold's standard of the fighting man rooted up,
and William's standard--a cross, which had been blessed by the
Pope--planted instead of it. So ended the battle of Hastings, in the year
1066.
The land has had a great many "conquests" hitherto--the Roman
conquest, the English conquest, and now the Norman conquest. But
there have been no more since; and the kings and queens have gone on
in one long line ever since, from William of Normandy down to Queen
Victoria.

CHAPTER VII
.
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. A.D. 1066--1087.
The king who had conquered England was a brave, strong man, who
had been used to fighting and struggling ever since he was a young
child.
He really feared God, and was in many ways a good man; but it had not
been right of him to come and take another people's country by force;
and the having done one wrong thing often makes people grow worse
and worse. Many of the English were unwilling to have William as
their king, and his Norman friends were angry that he would not let
them have more of the English lands, nor break the English laws. So
they were often rising up against him; and each time he had to put them
down he grew more harsh and stern. He did not want to be cruel; but he
did many cruel things, because it was the only way to keep England.
When the people of Northumberland rose against him, and tried to get
back the old set of kings, he had the whole country wasted with fire and
sword, till hardly a town or village was left standing. He did this to
punish the Northumbrians, and frighten the rest. But he did another
thing that was worse, because it was only for his own amusement. In
Hampshire, near his castle of Winchester, there was a great space of

heathy ground, and holly copse and beeches and oaks above it, with
deer and boars running wild in the glades--a beautiful place for hunting,
only that there were so many villages in it that the creatures were
disturbed and killed. William liked hunting more than anything
else--his people said he loved the high deer as if he was their
father,--and to keep the place clear for them, he turned out all the
inhabitants, and pulled down their houses, and made laws against any
one killing his game. The place he thus cleared is still called the New
Forest, though it is a thousand years old.
An old Norman law that the English grumbled about very much was,
that as soon as a bell was rung, at eight o'clock every evening, everyone
was to put out candle and fire, and go to bed. The bell was called the
curfew, and many old churches ring it still.
William caused a great list to be made of all the lands in the country,
and who held them. We have this list still, and it is called Domesday
Book. It shows that a great deal had been taken from the English and
given to the Normans. The king built castles, with immensely thick,
strong walls, and loop-hole windows, whence to shoot arrows; and here
he placed his Normans to keep the English down. But the Normans
were even more unruly than