What it was that Harold swore, whether in this specially solemn fashion or in any other, is left equally uncertain.  In any case he engages to marry a daughter of William—­as to which daughter the statements are endless—­and in most versions he engages to do something more.  He becomes the man of William, much as William had become the man of Edward.  He promises to give his sister in marriage to an unnamed Norman baron.  Moreover he promises to secure the kingdom of England for William at Edward’s death.  Perhaps he is himself to hold the kingdom or part of it under William; in any case William is to be the overlord; in the more usual story, William is to be himself the immediate king, with Harold as his highest and most favoured subject.  Meanwhile Harold is to act in William’s interest, to receive a Norman garrison in Dover castle, and to build other castles at other points.  But no two stories agree, and not a few know nothing of anything beyond the promise of marriage.

Now if William really required Harold to swear to all these things, it must have been simply in order to have an occasion against him.  If Harold really swore to all of them, it must have been simply because he felt that he was practically in William’s power, without any serious intention of keeping the oath.  If Harold took any such oath, he undoubtedly broke it; but we may safely say that any guilt on his part lay wholly in taking the oath, not in breaking it.  For he swore to do what he could not do, and what it would have been a crime to do, if he could.  If the King himself could not dispose of the crown, still less could the most powerful subject.  Harold could at most promise William his “vote and interest,” whenever the election came.  But no one can believe that even Harold’s influence could have obtained the crown for William.  His influence lay in his being the embodiment of the national feeling; for him to appear as the supporter of William would have been to lose the crown for himself without gaining it for William.  Others in England and in Scandinavia would have been glad of it.  And the engagements to surrender Dover castle and the like were simply engagements on the part of an English earl to play the traitor against England.  If William really called on Harold to swear to all this, he did so, not with any hope that the oath would be kept, but simply to put his competitor as far as possible in the wrong.  But most likely Harold swore only to something much simpler.  Next to the universal agreement about the marriage comes the very general agreement that Harold became William’s man.  In these two statements we have probably the whole truth.  In those days men took the obligation of homage upon themselves very easily.  Homage was no degradation, even in the highest; a man often did homage to any one from whom he had received any great benefit, and Harold had received a very great benefit from William.  Nor did homage to a new