chosen as the one victim of a prince who never before or after, in Normandy or in England, doomed any man to die on a political charge?  These are questions hard to answer.  It is not enough to say that Waltheof was an Englishman, that it was William’s policy gradually to get rid of Englishmen in high places, and that the time was now come to get rid of the last.  For such a policy forfeiture, or at most imprisonment, would have been enough.  While other Englishmen lost lands, honours, at most liberty, Waltheof alone lost his life by a judicial sentence.  It is likely enough that many Normans hungered for the lands and honours of the one Englishman who still held the highest rank in England.  Still forfeiture without death might have satisfied even them.  But Waltheof was not only earl of three shires; he was husband of the King’s near kinswoman.  We are told that Judith was the enemy and accuser of her husband.  This may have touched William’s one weak point.  Yet he would hardly have swerved from the practice of his whole life to please the bloody caprice of a niece who longed for the death of her husband.  And if Judith longed for Waltheof’s death, it was not from a wish to supply his place with another.  Legend says that she refused a second husband offered her by the King; it is certain that she remained a widow.

Waltheof’s death must thus remain a mystery, an isolated deed of blood unlike anything else in William’s life.  It seems to have been impolitic; it led to no revolt, but it called forth a new burst of English feeling.  Waltheof was deemed the martyr of his people; he received the same popular canonization as more than one English patriot.  Signs and wonders were wrought at his tomb at Crowland, till displays of miraculous power which were so inconsistent with loyalty and good order were straitly forbidden.  The act itself marks a stage in the downward course of William’s character.  In itself, the harrying of Northumberland, the very invasion of England, with all the bloodshed that they caused, might be deemed blacker crimes than the unjust death of a single man.  But as human nature stands, the less crime needs a worse man to do it.  Crime, as ever, led to further crime and was itself the punishment of crime.  In the eyes of William’s contemporaries the death of Waltheof, the blackest act of William’s life, was also its turning-point.  From the day of the martyrdom on Saint Giles’ hill the magic of William’s name and William’s arms passed away.  Unfailing luck no longer waited on him; after Waltheof’s death he never, till his last campaign of all, won a battle or took a town.  In this change of William’s fortunes the men of his own day saw the judgement of God upon his crime.  And in the fact at least they were undoubtedly right.  Henceforth, though William’s real power abides unshaken, the tale of his warfare is chiefly a tale of petty defeats.  The last eleven years of his life would never have won him the name of Conqueror.  But in the higher walk of policy and legislation never was his nobler surname more truly deserved.  Never did William the Great show himself so truly great as in these later years.