needed no guidance till they reached the site of the abbey, when they halted of their own accord. This was at once accepted as a proof that it was the divine will that the church should be erected there, and the work was begun at once, the crucifix meanwhile working many miracles in the temporary shelter in which it was housed. After the death of Tovi the estate of Waltham was forfeited by his son Athelstan to King Edward the Confessor, who gave it to his brother-in-law Harold. The Saxon earl, who was a very devout {58} Catholic, considered the church unworthy of the priceless treasure it enshrined, and he lost no time in having it pulled down, to replace it with a stately building that was consecrated in 1060. To it he often went to pray, the last time on the eve of the battle of Senlac, when it was popularly believed that the sad issue of the struggle was foreshadowed by a significant omen, for as the king prostrated himself before the miraculous crucifix the figure of the Lord bent its head, and gazed into the suppliant's face with an expression of infinite sorrow. But a few days afterwards the dead body of the last of the Saxon kings was brought to the abbey he had loved so well, and buried in front of the high altar, whence it is said to have been later removed to a tomb some little distance from the present church. During the reign of Elizabeth this tomb was opened, when it was found to contain the skeleton of a man of great stature, but there is no absolute evidence that it was that of the unfortunate Harold.