[Illustration:  St. Dunstan was noted for this kind of thing.]

Edgar Atheling, the legal successor of Harold, saw at a glance that William the Conqueror had come to stay, and so he yielded to the Norman, as shown in the accompanying steel engraving copied from a piece of tapestry now in possession of the author, and which descended to him, through no fault of his own, from the Normans, who for years ruled England with great skill, and from whose loins he sprang.

[Illustration:  Edgar Atheling and the nobility Offer submission to William the conqueror.]

William was crowned on Christmas Day at Westminster Abbey as the new sovereign.  It was more difficult to change a sovereign in those days than at present, but that is neither here nor there.

The people were so glad over the coronation that they overdid it, and their ghoulish glee alarmed the regular Norman army, the impression getting out that the Anglo-Saxons were rebellious, when as a matter of fact they were merely exhilarated, having tanked too often with the tankard.

William the Conqueror now disarmed the city of London, and tipping a number of the nobles, got them to wait on him.  He rewarded his Norman followers, however, with the contraband estates of the conquered, and thus kept up his conking for years after peace had been declared.

But the people did not forget that they were there first, and so, while William was in Normandy, in the year 1067 A.D., hostilities broke out.  People who had been foreclosed and ejected from their lands united to shoot the Norman usurper, and it was not uncommon for a Norman, while busy usurping, to receive an arrow in some vital place, and have to give up sedentary pursuits, perhaps, for weeks afterwards.

[Illustration:  Saxons introducing the yoke in Scotland.]

In 1068 A.D., Edgar Atheling, Sweyn of Denmark, Malcolm of Scotland, and the sons of Harold banded together to drive out the Norman.  Malcolm was a brave man, and had, it is said, captured so many Anglo-Saxons and brought them back to Scotland, that they had a very refining influence on that country, introducing the study of the yoke among other things with moderate success.

[Illustration:  William was fond of hunting.]

William hastily returned from Normandy, and made short work of the rebellion.  The following year another outbreak occurring in Northumberland, William mischievously laid waste sixty miles of fertile country, and wilfully slaughtered one hundred thousand people,—­men, women, and children.  And yet we have among us those who point with pride to their Norman lineage when they ought to be at work supporting their families.

In 1070 the Archbishop of Canterbury was degraded from his position, and a Milanese monk on his Milan knees succeeded him.  The Saxons became serfs, and the Normans used the school tax to build large, repulsive castles in which to woo the handcuffed Anglo-Saxon maiden at their leisure.  An Anglo-Saxon maiden without a rope ladder in the pocket of her basque was a rare sight.  Many very thrilling stories are written of those days, and bring a good price.