“I knew it,” he replied, in calm but hollow tones; “I knew it, and I did forewarn you, how that your visit to the Norman should bring misery on you, and ruin on our country! As I forewarned you, so has it come to pass! So shall it come to pass hereafter, till all hath been fulfilled: God only grant that I live not to see it!” THE NORMAN’S VENGEANCE. “God and good angels fight on _William’s_ side, And _Harold_ fall in height of all his pride.”--SHAKSPERE. Edward the Confessor was dead; and dying, had bequeathed the crown of merry England to Harold, son of Godwin, destined, alas! to be the last prince of the Saxon race who should possess the throne of the fair island. The oath which he had sworn to William, duke of Normandy, engaging to assist him in obtaining that same realm, which had now fallen to himself, alike by testament of the late king, and by election of the people, dwelt not in the new monarch’s bosom! Selfishness and ambition, aided, perhaps, and strengthened by the suggestions of a sincere patriotism, that whispered to his soul the baseness of surrendering his countrymen, their lives, their liberties, their fortunes, and his loved native land, into the stern hands of a foreign ruler, determined him to brave the worst, rather than keep the oath, which, with its wonted sophistry, self-interest was ready to represent involuntary and of no avail. Not long, however, was he allowed to flatter himself with hopes that the tempest, excited by his own weak duplicity, might possibly blow over. The storm-clouds were already charged with thunder destined to burst almost at once on his devoted head. The cry of warfare had gone forth through Christendom; the pope had launched the dreadful bolt of interdict and excommunication against the perjured Saxon, and all who should adhere to him in his extremity; nay, more, had actually granted to the Norman duke, by virtue of his holy office as God’s vicegerent and dispenser of all dignities on earth, the sovereignty of the disputed islands. In token of his perfect approbation of the justice of his cause, the Roman pontiff had sent, moreover, to the duke, a ring of gold, containing an inestimable relic, a lock of hair from the thrice-mitred temples of St. Peter, the first Roman bishop; a consecrated banner blest by himself--the same which had been reared, in token of the greatness and supremacy of holy church, by those bold Normans, Raoul and William of Montreuil, above the captured battlements of every tower and castle through the bright kingdom of Campania. Thus doubly armed, once by the justice of his cause, and yet more strongly by the sanction of the church, the bold duke hesitated not to strive by force of arms to gain that rich inheritance, which he had hoped to win by the more easy agency of guile and of persuasion.