but on compulsion; I promised what did not belong to me; my kingship is not mine own; I cannot put it off from me without the consent of the country. I cannot any the more, without the consent of the country, espouse a foreigner. As for my sister, whom the duke claims for one of his chieftains, she died within the year; if he will, I will send him the corpse.” William replied without any violence, claiming the conditions sworn, and especially Harold’s marriage with his daughter Adele. For all answer to this summons Harold married a Saxon, sister of two powerful Saxon chieftains; Edwin and Morkar. There was an open rupture; and William swore that “within the year he would go and claim, at the sword’s point, payment of what was due to him, on the very spot where Harold thought himself to be most firm on his feet.” And he set himself to the work. But, being as far-sighted as he was ambitious, he resolved to secure for his enterprise the sanction of religious authority and the formal assent of the Estates of Normandy. Not that he had any inclination to subordinate his power to that of the Pope. Five years previously, Robert de Grandmesnil, abbot of St. Evroul, with whom William had got embroiled, had claimed to re-enter his monastery as master by virtue solely of an order from Pope Nicholas II. “I will listen to the legates of the Pope, the common father of the faithful,” said William, “if they come to me to speak of the Christian faith and religion; but if a monk of my Estates permit himself a single word beyond his place, I will have him hanged by his cowl from the highest oak of the nearest forest.” When, in 1000, he denounced to Pope Alexander II. the perjury of Harold, asking him at the same time to do him justice, he made no scruple about promising that, if the Pope authorized him to right himself by war, he would bring back the kingdom of England to obedience to the Holy See. He had Lanfranc for his negotiator with the court of Rome, and Pope Alexander II. had for chief counsellor the celebrated monk Hildebrand, who was destined to succeed him under the name of Gregory VII. The opportunity of extending the empire of the Church was too tempting to be spurned, and her future head too bold not to seize it whatever might be the uncertainty and danger of the issue; and in spite of hesitation on the part of some of the Pope’s advisers, the question was promptly decided in accordance with William’s demand. Harold and his adherents were excommunicated, and, on committing his bull to the hands of William’s messenger, the Pope added a banner of the Roman Church and a ring containing, it is said, a hair of St. Peter set in a diamond.