The Saxons lost the battle of Hastings. Here, however, they left no blot on their name. The old historian Daniel justly, as well as forcibly, remarks, “Thus was tried, by the great assize of God’s judgment in battle, the right of power between the English and Norman nations; a battle the most memorable of all others; and, however miserably lost, yet most nobly fought on the part of England.” The death of Harold, and the absence of any other competitor, opened the way for William to the throne. Presenting himself to the nobles of the land, assembled in London, he was in due form elected to the vacant throne, and was crowned by Aldred Archbishop of York, on Mid-winter’s day. William never claimed the English crown by right of conquest. His quarrel was with Harold, not with the English people, and he denounced him as interfering with his just claims. The _Saxon Chronicle_ expressly asserts that “Before the Archbishop would set the crown upon his head, he required of him a pledge upon Christ’s book, and also swore him, that he would govern this nation as well as any king before him had at the best done, if they would be faithful to him.” He never claimed to be the Conqueror of England in the ordinary sense of the word. In his first charter to Westminster Abbey, he founds his right to the crown upon the grant of his relative Edward the Confessor. The _Domesday Book_ was not compiled until near the close of William’s reign (about the year 1086), yet in it he is not spoken of as a conqueror. “Throughout the _Survey_,” says Sir Henry Ellis, “Harold is constantly spoken of as the usurper of the realm: ‘quando regnum _invasit_.’ Once only is it said ‘quando _regnabat_.’ Of William it is as constantly said, ‘postquam _venit_ in Angliam,’ after he came to England. Once only does the expression occur, ‘W. rex _conquisivit_ Angliam,’ when he conquered or acquired England.”[111] But whatever were William’s rights and original intentions, it was impossible that he could long reign over England as a constitutional monarch. It was not likely that the great chiefs who survived the battle of Hastings would long submit to the rule of a stranger--hosts of foreigners would necessarily be introduced into the court, and this, as in the reign of the Confessor, would be a continual source of heartburning and jealousy--and, above all, the followers of the King were to be rewarded, and this could only be done by depriving the Saxon noblemen of their patrimonies. When William won the battle of Hastings, he bid farewell to peace for ever. His subsequent history was a continued series of entanglements and broils. One chieftain after another, one district and then another, became restless under his rule; each he crushed in succession. At length he became in the strict sense of the word the Conqueror. He ruled by the sword alone. His own Norman barons, and even his brother Odo, felt the weight of his iron hand; but it fell with peculiar force upon his native-born subjects.