With Senlac perished the militia system of the Saxon rulers of England. The new-comers had brought with them the elements, though not the completion, of the feudal system that was to follow and be the outcome of the Norman Conquest. As a matter of fact, the invading army that William led was only after all a gathering of armed men under leaders of sorts. Its very origin prevented the full organisation which means a real or regular army. Mercenaries, men who had never before the war met the chiefs who were to lead them, in rare cases religious enthusiasts, who believed that the cause of the Pope and the Normans was the cause of God, mere soldiers of fortune, who thought from the fair English land they might obtain fortune even more than fame;--these were the men who were to break up the Saxon kingdom, still existent more or less, and were to weld into one homogeneous whole the English race. Never has the end better justified the means. Never have the means themselves in 1066 been more ignoble. The Norman host as men had scarcely a redeeming feature. To count descent from them, is to count often enough from the meanest social ancestry, though age has made it venerable and respected. Some of the noblest of English families trace, or rather claim, descent from men of the lowest origin, who rose from such a place as that of “Hugo the Dapifer,” to be the rulers of England and replace Saxon jarls whose descent was more distinct, and on whom the Norman parvenu looked down. It cannot be too definitely expressed that to “have come in with the Conquest” is only a confession that those who use the expression are ignoring the fact that many a Saxon thane could show a family title far deeper set in the history of England than any of the men who usurped and trampled on those whose pedigree went back to the days of Æscesdune, before the soldiers of fortune of the Duke of Normandy had emerged from their original obscurity. [Illustration: _Battle of Hastings_ (_From Bayeux Tapestry_).] None the less the new invaders were “men,” and had a “man” to govern them, while William, the king by right of everything that in those days made kingcraft, ruled. “Stark was he,” says the English Chronicler, “to men that withstood him; none dared resist his will. Earls that did aught against his bidding he cast into bonds; bishops he stripped of their bishopricks and abbots of their abbacies. But stern as his rule was, it gave peace unto the land.”