The Pope, Alexander the Second, placing his ghostly terrors at the disposal of William, declared Harold an usurper, and William the lawful heir. Thus early had Englishmen to remember Rome for a disservice. It then remained only for William to collect his forces for an invasion of England. He set about the work with business-like promptitude and a settled determination which, by comparison, make the great Napoleon’s projected invasion of over seven hundred years later seem like the wayward fancy of an infant. The forests of Normandy were felled and converted into timber, and all the summer of 1066 thousands of shipwrights were busily employed in Norman havens building the vast fleet designed to invade our shores. When we form a mind’s-eye picture of a fleet, we necessarily visualise nowadays something very different from the flotilla prepared by the Duke of Normandy for the invasion of England; but we must go far back, beyond even the small ships with which Edward the First waged war in foreign parts, if we would see what William’s navy, made of the green timber that had been growing six months before, was like. His “ships” numbered, according to the lowest computation, six hundred and ninety-six: according to the highest, there were over three thousand; but if we turn to the indisputable evidence of the famous Bayeux Tapestry it will be seen that they were craft more in the nature of galleys—open boats with one mast. The same want of exact figures meets the inquirer who seeks to learn the number of that invading army. Contemporary chroniclers are at great variance, the numbers, by their accounts, ranging from 14,000 up to 60,000. From February onwards to September those craft were building and that army collecting. Meanwhile King Harold was not idle. He had long been skilled in warfare, and was as able a general as William himself, and by sea and land he was gathering a force together that in all human probability would have annihilated the Norman host had it not been for the happening that at this juncture divided his attention.