To say, “He did his best,” is the noblest epitaph we can give any man, and none should grudge Harold posthumous honour. We “Englishmen,” as we may still call ourselves, are not yet so indisputably the masters of the world that we can afford to disregard our national heroes, and Harold’s statue, of appropriate heroic size, surely should stand prominently over Hastings, to show newer generations how we can honour even endeavour that has won to no position, and that we can remember even our defeated heroes. The Conqueror, as we must call him, despite his studied avoidance of that title, inimical to his “legal” claim, fully redeemed his vow to build a great abbey upon the field of battle. He built the Abbey, which he dedicated to St. Martin of the Place of Battle, on the place where so many had been slain to satisfy his ambition, rearing the High Altar, the holiest spot, on the exact position where Harold had fallen. William Faber, that _Fabricius_, or smith, turned monk, who was present at the great battle, and had been at the Duke’s side when he vowed the Abbey here, would, when it came to the actual building of it, have chosen another site; for here, he urged, on the hill-top, water was lacking. Let him and his brethren from the Abbey of Marmoutiers build in the valley, where the springs were never dry. But this suggestion outraged the Conqueror’s sense of the dramatic fitness of things, which, as we have already seen in his selection of Harold’s seashore resting-place, was a very keen sense indeed. No: he would build upon the actual field of battle, or not at all; and if the Almighty spared his life, wine should be more plentiful in that Abbey than water elsewhere. Battle Abbey very soon began to rise on that field of blood. The King of England, as he was now become, spent money freely on it from his treasury; ship-loads of the fine building-stone of Caen came continually across Channel from Normandy, until, by one of those miraculous dreams dreamt at need in those times, a bed of stone was discovered, and a quarry opened, in the neighbourhood. The rising Abbey was richly endowed with manors far and near, and was made the centre of a three miles’ circuit exempted from all other jurisdictions, ecclesiastical or civil. Its abbots, moreover, were mitred and seated in the councils of the realm, and beside holding the privilege of sanctuary, theirs were the rights of free warren, inquest, and treasure-trove. Were they merciful men and pitiful, then those dispositions could be humoured to the full, for they were given the prerogative of pardoning any criminal they met on his way to execution: a prerogative that meant much in those days, when execution was done upon criminals for a large variety of offences.