Beer, beer, glorious beer; Fill yourself right up to ’ere. Up with the sale of it, Down with a pail of it, Glorious, glorious beer. Up with the trade of it, Drink till you’re made of it, and so forth, in a style eminently calculated to win the hearts of my lords Ardilaun, Iveagh, Hindlip, and Burton. But the Saxon mead, which may still be discovered in remote parts of the country as the home-brewed “metheglin,” a sweet and sickly liquor made from honey, is a heady drink, a great deal more likely to result in a splitting headache the next morning than the clearer brew of the barley; and the Norman libellers would have us believe that, because of that matutinal headache, and an enlarged vision which led the English to see two, or three, Normans for every one—and to strike at the ones that were not there—they lost the Battle of Hastings. The historical facts do not quite fit in with that view. Doubtless the English and the Norman methods of passing the battle-eve were different. For one thing, the Norman wolf was posing, until he almost deceived himself, as the injured party, and one fighting the battle of religion as well as of personal wrongs; and he acted fully up to those parts. The English, on the other hand, were elated with their recent victory in the north, and felt a not unnatural confidence in their ability to repeat it. Therefore, they went into battle with less solemnity than the Normans. But we nowhere read that the English battle-axes were swung with the less terrible effect because of the revels which may or may not have passed overnight in the English camp, and nothing seems more certain than that victory only fell to the Normans because of the mistaken warlike ardour of a portion of the English army, which broke its ranks in order to pursue a panic-stricken section of the Norman array, and thus afforded William’s cavalry a footing on that bitterly contested hill of Senlac. XLII The battle began about nine o’clock in the morning, the Norman army marching from Hastings by the spot where Crowhurst Park is now seen, to Telham Hill, the “Hetheland” of the chroniclers. Here the Norman knights put on their armour, and here William made his vow that if victory were given him he would build a great abbey on the spot where he saw the emblazoned English banner of the Fighting Man flung proudly upon the morning breeze. His army then advanced to the attack, the archers on foot in the front rank, the swordsmen behind them, and in the rear the cavalry. William himself was armed with an iron mace, the weapon also carried by his brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux.