The body lay in the great hall, where he had so recently feasted his retainers after the return from Stamford Bridge.  Six large tapers burned around it, and watchers were there both by day and night.

There his people crowded to gaze upon the sternly composed features for the last time; there knelt in prayer his disconsolate widow, her son and daughter:  they scarcely ever left the hallowed remains until the hour came when, amidst the lamentations of the whole population, the body of the gallant Edmund was borne to the tomb in that chapel of St. Cuthbert, where those gallant ancestors whose story we have told in former chronicles awaited him—­“earth to earth, and dust to dust.”

It was a touching procession.  The body was borne by the chief tenants yet living, and surrounded by chanting monks, whose solemn “Domine refugium nostrum” fell with awful yet consoling effect upon the ears of the multitude.  The churls and thralls, sadly thinned by the sword, followed behind their lady and her two children, Wilfred and Edith.

They placed the bier before the high altar while the requiem mass was sung, six monks kneeling beside it, three on each side, with lighted tapers.  Then the coffin was sprinkled with hallowed water, perfumed with sweet incense, and borne to its last resting place in the chapel of St. Cuthbert, where they laid him by the side of his father, Alfgar the Dane.

“Ego sum resurrectio et vita, dixit Dominus—­I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord.”

CHAPTER III.  THE WEDDING OF THE HAWK AND THE DOVE.

It was a feature peculiar to the Norman Conquest, that while its real injustice and disregard of moral right could hardly be surpassed in the annals of warfare, the conquerors strove to give to every act of violence and wrong the technical sanction of law and the appearance of equity.

This was easily done:  first, by assuming that William was the lawful successor of Edward the Confessor, and that all who had opposed him were therefore in the position of conquered rebels; and secondly, since the Pope had excommunicated Harold, and sanctioned the invasion, by treating all his aiders and abettors as heretics or schismatics.

Generally these harsh doctrines were pushed to their legitimate consequences in cruel wrong inflicted upon an innocent people, and the Anglo-Saxon thanes and nobles who survived the first years of conquest were reduced to serfdom or beggary; but there were exceptions.  William doubtless intended at first to govern justly, and strove to unite the two nations—­English and Norman; therefore, when the occasion offered, he bade his knights and barons who aspired to an English estate marry the widows or daughters of the dispossessed thanes, and so reconcile the conflicting interests.  Hence the blood of the old Anglo-Saxon lords flows in many a family proud of its unblemished descent from the horde of pirates and robbers, whom a century and a half in France had turned into the polished Normans.