masters, excited repeated commotions among the sunken people, whose noblest defenders had been basely carried off, and who thus manifested a disposition which, under better guidance, and supported by the secular and ecclesiastical aristocracy, might have freed the land of the foreign intruders. Of the wealthier class many fled, some in the hope of one day returning, provided a miracle, or the energy of others, should restore them to their inheritances; some to solicit aid from the Danes against the Normans; others for ever, seeking a new home, where valour and hatred of the Normans would insure them both pay and booty. Of the first-mentioned many sought refuge in Flanders, while many turned to the home of their forefathers, the Saxon lands on the banks of the Elbe. History makes mention of a count of Stade, the son of a noble Saxon lady who had fled thither'. The Scottish cloisters of the Continent gave shelter to many a fugitive2. To the last-mentioned class belong those AngloSaxons who fled to Constantinople, where they found a welcome reception, and by the emperor Alexius Comnenus I., who feared their too immediate neighbourhood, were settled first at Chevetot (Kibotus near Helenopolis) on the opposite shore of the Sea of Marmora, but were afterwards employed by that prince against Robert Guiscard and the Normans of Apulia, for the deliverance of his realm from those dangerous enemies who had invaded it. The Normans recognised their bitterest foes3, and not in vain directed their shafts against them. They were, nevertheless, forced to abandon the country, and a body of Anglo-Saxons, with some Danes and other Væringer, whom we find at an earlier period in the

1 Frederic, who in the year 1095 possessed the county of Stade, was grandson and son of two ladies, who, departing in a vessel from England, were there driven on land. For an account of their posterity see Alberti Stadensis Chronica, edit. Reineccii, p. 153 sq.

2 Chron. S. Martini Colon. in Monum. Hist. Germ. t. ii.

3 Ord. Vital. p. 508. (Maseres, p. 204.) Comp. also Torfæus, P. iii. lib. vi. c. 3. Anna Comnena, v. Villehardouin, lxxxix.

Greek service, maintained, as a body-guard, under the denomination of Ingloi, with powerful arm, bright battle-axes and harness, the Grecian emperors in that consideration and security, which the enervated race of their own subjects was incapable of affording. While the fate of these brave Saxons in the East, who, warring with a more than janissaries' valour and Swiss fidelity, thus proving themselves the firmest support of the throne, claims our warmest sympathy, we cannot forbear reflecting on the wonderful complications of worldly affairs, through which to fugitives from a fallen state, one infinitely more vast, as well as more rotten, was indebted for its preservation. Wonderful, too, does it appear that the last emigration of the Anglo-Saxons was destined to protect the brightest spot of the ancient world against a European race which, if not the most distinguished, was high-minded and susceptible of the most refined civilization, that it might one day fall a prey to the most obtusely barbarous of Asiatic hordes1.

Equally fallacious were the hopes of those Anglo-Saxons who strove to obtain foreign aid for the liberation of their country. In France not even the faintest prospect of support presented itself; the king of France had already proved his indifference or weakness, in tamely witnessing the aggrandizement of his most dangerous vassal. The German emperor, Henry IV., was too deeply engaged in warfare with the Slavic nations, and still more deeply in the frivolities and sensual pleasures of a court, to see in a conqueror, who did not immediately endanger his own frontiers, the violator of the peace of Europe; although those Norman adventurers, who beset Europe at almost every point, threatened to make

1 Some interesting particulars relating to the Anglo-Saxons at Constantinople are contained in the Chronicon ab Origine Mundi ad a. 1218;' MS. in the rich and valuable collection of sir Thomas Phillipps at Middlehill, where it stands as No 1880. It was formerly No 785 of Meermann's collection, and is the work of a Præmonstratensian born in England, from which the editors of the Recueil des Historiens de la France (t. xiii. p. 677, and t. xviii. p. 702), have extracted some passages relating to France.

a Normandy of all that portion of the globe. William, too, was vigilant, and indefatigable in engaging in his interest some of the most influential men at the imperial court, for which object the means, irresistible in those times, were supplied him from the wealth of his newly acquired dominion. The chief counsellor of the emperor, Adalbert, archbishop of Bremen, was, by his largesses, bribed to intrigue for the security of the munificent conqueror, and it must have proved an easy task to suppress an excitement in the imperial court against William, to him who, for the same object, did not shrink from the attempt to influence his friend, the Danish king, Svend Estrithson', although the inclination of that prince lay in the opposite direction. With Svend, nevertheless, the representations of the Anglo-Saxons found a favourable reception. The nephew of Cnut the Great had not attempted to claim from its Anglo-Saxon rulers the kingdom of England as his inheritance; though the death of Harold brought to maturity the thought, to which the death of Eadward must have given birth, of asserting his pretension to the throne of his uncle and his deceased childless cousin. But after vainly waiting till the despair of the Anglo-Saxons and their intense hatred of the Normans should work wonders in his favour, the Danish monarch contented himself with sending one of his nobles to William, to demand his homage for his realm of England, the investiture of which he was not unwilling to grant him, in consideration of a yearly tribute. William, instead of angrily or scornfully refusing this demand, listened to the envoy with all the sly serenity characteristic of the Normans; nor was it enough to lull the envoy by feastings and presents; a costly embassy, composed of

Adam Brem. lib. iv. c. 16. Both Turner and Lingard unaccountably call this prince Sveno Tiuffveskegg, confounding him with Svend Tveskiæg (Sveinn Tjúguskégg) the father of Cnut, who died in 1014. The prince here spoken of was Cnut's nephew, the son of his sister Estrith, married to Ulf Jarl. See Engl. under the A. S. Kings, ii. pp. 181, 208.-T. 2 Guil. Pictav. p. 212 (Maseres, p. 163).

four men of eminence, among whom was Ægelsine, abbot of St. Augustine's at Canterbury, on whom king Eadward had formerly bestowed the abbey of Ramsey, embarked, as soon as the season permitted, for Seeland, charged with an abundance of fair promises as well as valuable presents, which could not fail of convincing king Svend and his court of the wealth and power, and also of the good will of the possessor of the claimed fief. To Olaf, king of Norway, William likewise sent an embassy, in a vessel freighted by Norwegian merchants at Grimsby, who must have found it no difficult task to obtain from the natural foe of Harold the rejection of the solicitations of the Anglo-Saxons, and to conclude a treaty of friendship between the two sovereigns 1.

The Anglo-Saxons were thus left to their own resources and to the aid of their neighbours, the Welsh. Eadric, surnamed the Forester2, could no longer endure the yoke of the stranger he attacked the garrison of Hereford, by whom and the hated Richard fitz Scrob his lands had frequently been ravaged, and, in conjunction with Blethgent and Rithwalon, kings of the Welsh, having laid waste the county of Hereford as far as the bridge of the river Lug, returned with an immense booty3. An insurrection raised by Meredith and Ithel, sons of Griffith ap Llewelyn, in North Wales, prevented the British princes from following up this advantage+. William was not slow to prize the valour of the bold Forester, and preferred gaining him as a friend to overcoming him as an enemy; we, consequently, find the only Anglo-Saxon, who had defeated and chastised the Normans, in possession, at a later period, of extensive landed estates 5.

But the Anglo-Saxons found an unexpected ally in the dis

1 Knyghton, col. 2343; Langebek, iii. pp. 252 sq. Ellis, Introd. to Domesd. ii. pp. 98 sqq. Hist. Rames. c. 119. Sim. Dunelm. a. 1074. 2 Ord. Vital. pp. 506, 514 (Maseres, pp. 195, 223), where he is called Edricus Guilda.-T.

3 Flor. Wigorn. a. 1067.

4 Powel, History of Wales, p. 101.

5 See Domesday under the name of Eadric.

content of several Norman and French nobles, whose private interest they considered not to have been sufficiently consulted by William in his distribution of lands in England. Of these one of the most dissatisfied was Eustace, the powerful count of Boulogne, the brother-in-law of the late king Eadward, who, as the smallest reward for the auxiliaries he had supplied, as well as for the personal service he had rendered to the duke in the field of Senlac, expected at least to receive the town of Dover, which had once before slipped through his hands'. A moment was chosen, when the commanders of that fortress, bishop Odo and Hugh of Montfort, together with the best men of the garrison, had passed the Thames, for crossing the Channel in the stillness of the night, and with a body of French and Kentish men proceeding to Dover. There, however, they met with more precaution and more determined valour than they expected. Count Eustace was indebted for his life, as he had been twenty-six years before, to the swiftness of his horse, his knowledge of the road, and a vessel in readiness to receive him. His grandson, a brave youth, fell into the hands of the pursuing garrison. The king caused his faithless friend and vassal to be cited before a court composed of Normans and Anglo-Saxons, and the heavy charge to be brought against him, which admitted of no defence. All his fiefs in William's states were, consequently, confiscated; to whose policy, however, which sought to gain over those who evinced the courage to oppose him, it appeared more advisable to reconcile his hot-headed, daring companion in arms, and propitiate him with new in

vestitures2.

By another tribunal, that of popular hatred, fell earl Copsi, whose reasons for siding with the Normans were regarded by

1 See Engl. under the A. S. Kings, ii. pp. 247, 249.

2 Both his widow, Ida, and his son, Eustace, received lands in England. See Ord. Vital. p. 523 (Maseres, p. 256) and Ellis, Introd. to Domesd. i. pp. 384, 416.