In hot haste, Harold, Godwin’s son, marched back to London, calling upon his nobles and relatives, Edwin and Morcar amongst the number, to join him; but the two latter held back. Then Harold, having gathered the men of London and Kent and many of the country folk to his standard, marched to meet William, and, reaching Senlac, “lay there on the hillside by a hoar-apple tree.” Gurt, his brother, prayed him to retire again on London, after wasting the country between William and that place, so that the latter could get neither fodder for his horses nor food for his men. Good advice, doubtless, as Harold himself admitted, adding, however, “I was made King to cherish this folk. How shall I lay waste this land of theirs? Nor does it befit an English King to turn from his foes.” Every one knows the story of the “feasting” English and the “praying” Normans, though whether it be true or not, who shall say? Just as every one knows how went the day on the “bloody heights of Senlac, where, after the attack had been made by a Norman minstrel, who rode up against the English singing a war song of Charlemagne, the last Saxon King, his two brothers, the flower of English fighting men and nobles to a great multitude fell.” William refused the body of slain Harold to his mother, who pleaded for it, even if she paid its weight in gold; but when Edith Swan’s-neck, whom Harold had loved, found it beneath a heap of slain, the Norman conqueror, his chivalry and perhaps even his sentiment touched, gave it to her, telling them to bury it on the face of the cliff with the words, “He kept the shore well while he lived, let him keep it now he is dead.” Though this is the supreme historical event connected with Hastings, many times during the reigns of our Norman Kings was the place to witness the assemblage of huge bodies of fighting men. Here in 1094 were gathered at the command of William Rufus no less than 20,000 men for the avowed purpose of transhipment to Normandy. They were, however, disbanded, and the men were deprived by agents of the King of the pay of ten shillings given them, “which great sum in all was duly forwarded to the King, at whose behest it had been filched!” A truly Royal piece of chicanery.