quarrel.  Nor was William, on his side, backward; though prodigal to the highest degree, the resources of his tyranny and extortion were inexhaustible.  He was enabled to enter Normandy once more with a considerable army.  But the opposition, too, was considerable; and the war had probably been spun out to a great length, and had drawn on very bloody consequences, if one of the most extraordinary events which are contained in the history of mankind had not suspended their arms, and drawn, all inferior views, sentiments, and designs into the vortex of one grand project.  This was the Crusade, which, with astonishing success, now began to be preached through all Europe.  This design was then, and it continued long after, the principle which influenced the transactions of that period both at home and abroad; it will, therefore, not be foreign to our subject to trace it to its source.

As the power of the Papacy spread, the see of Rome began to be more and more an object of ambition; the most refined intrigues were put in practice to attain it; and all the princes of Europe interested themselves in the contest.  The election of Pope was not regulated by those prudent dispositions which have since taken place; there were frequent pretences to controvert the validity of the election, and of course several persons at the same time laid claim to that dignity.  Popes and Antipopes arose.  Europe was rent asunder by these disputes, whilst some princes maintained the rights of one party, and some defended the pretensions of the other:  sometimes the prince acknowledged one Pope, whilst his subjects adhered to his rival.  The scandals occasioned by these schisms were infinite; and they threatened a deadly wound to that authority whose greatness had occasioned them.  Princes were taught to know their own power.  That Pope who this day was a suppliant to a monarch to be recognized by him could with an ill grace pretend to govern him with an high hand the next.  The lustre of the Holy See began to be tarnished, when Urban the Second, after a long contest of this nature, was universally acknowledged.  That Pope, sensible by his own experience of the ill consequence of such disputes, sought to turn the minds of the people into another channel, and by exerting it vigorously to give a new strength to the Papal power.  In an age so ignorant, it was very natural that men should think a great deal in religion depended upon the very scene where the work of our Redemption was accomplished.  Pilgrimages to Jerusalem were therefore judged highly meritorious, and became very frequent.  But the country which was the object of them, as well as several of those through which the journey lay, were in the hands of Mahometans, who, against all the rules of humanity and good policy, treated the Christian pilgrims with great indignity.  These, on their return, filled the minds of their neighbors with hatred and resentment against those infidels.  Pope Urban laid hold on this disposition, and encouraged Peter the Hermit, a man visionary, zealous, enthusiastic, and possessed of a warm irregular eloquence adapted to the pitch of his hearers, to preach an expedition for the delivery of the Holy Land.