A herald, sent, with a most noble train, bore William’s terms to the new monarch. “William, the duke of Normandy,” he said, boldly, but with all reverence due to his birth and present station, “calls to your memory the oath, which you swore to him by your hand and by your mouth, on good and holy relics!” “True it is,” answered Harold, “that I did so swear; but under force I did so, not by free will of mine! Moreover, I did promise that which ’twas not mine to grant. My royalty belongs not to myself, but to my people, in trust of whom I hold it. I may not yield it but at their demand; let them but second William, and instantly the crown he seeks for shall be his! Farther, without my people’s leave, I may not wed a woman of a stranger race. My sister, whom he would have espoused unto the noblest of his barons--she hath been dead a year. Will he, that I should send her corpse?” A little month elapsed, and during that brief interval, Harold neglected nothing that might preserve the crown he had determined never, except with life, to yield to his fierce rival. A powerful fleet was instantly appointed to cruise upon the Downs, and intercept the French invaders; a mighty army was collected on the coast, and each and all the Saxon landholders, nobles, and thanes, and franklins, bound themselves by strong oaths “never to entertain or truce, or treaty, with the detested Normans, but to die freemen, or freemen to conquer.” A second time the herald came in peace, demanding, in tones fair and moderate, that Harold, if he might not keep _all_ the conditions of his oath, would fulfil part, at least, and wed Alice, his betrothed wife already, the daughter of the puissant duke, who, thereupon, would yield to him, as being his daughter’s dower, all right and title to the crown, which he now claimed as his by heritage. Harold again returned a brief and stern refusal; resolved, that as he would not yield the whole, he would not, by conceding part, risk the alienation of the love--which he possessed in an extraordinary degree--of the whole English people. Then burst the storm at once. From every part of Europe, where the victorious banners of the Normans were spread to the wind of heaven, adventurers flocked to the consecrated standard of their kinsman.