Directly the coronation ceremony was over, the Mass was celebrated. Then all adjourned to the Palace hard by, and a great banquet was held on this Twelfth Night, the last day of the Christmas festival, into which so many and varied scenes had been crowded. Little had those members of the Witan dreamt when they set out from their homes, of all that would have have happened ere they returned—Christmas festivities and meetings of the Council; the consecration of the new church; the death of King Edward; the choosing of King Harold; the burying of the old king and the crowning of the new, all had followed one after the other in those short wintry days. And the Abbey itself had been the centre round which all these events had taken place. It could never sink back into being a mere Benedictine monastery of seventy monks, attached to the Church King Edward had built. A greater future lay before it, and I doubt not that the Abbot Eadwine, shrewd man that he was, conscious of the charter which gave him and his successors a peculiar independence, rested well satisfied on that old Christmas night. *CHAPTER III* *SAXONS AND NORMANS AT WESTMINSTER* "Cynge Harold lytel stilnesse gehed." King Harold, like King Edward, spent much more time in London, and consequently at Westminster, than any of his predecessors had done, though not for the same reason. Edward was reluctant to leave the building in which he took so deep an interest; Harold, knowing full well the unsettled state of the kingdom he had to defend, held that London, "guarded alike by strong walls and the strong hearts of its citizens," was the best starting-point for any expedition he might be called on to undertake. So instead of spending the Easter Feast at Winchester, as had been a long-established custom, he came to Westminster and there assembled the Witan Gemot. He had faithfully carried out every request made to him by the dying King Edward. In every way his position was stronger than it had been three months before, and this Easter festival saw him at the zenith of his power. Suddenly a sign appeared from Heaven, which brought terror and desolation to the hearts of men. The Easter hymns were still being sung in the Abbey, when "the sky became ablaze with a mighty mass of flame, which some called a comet." This appearance brought about a state of panic in those days of superstition. First one interpreter and then another stood up to declare what it might portend, and to prophesy of terrible events about to be accomplished. One and all said the same, the sword of the Lord was drawn by this token, and who should tell where it was destined to fall?