of his baronage at the stern justice of his rule found support in the jealousy which his power raised in the states around him, and it was only after two great victories at Mortemer and Varaville and six years of hard fighting that outer and inner foes were alike trodden under foot.  In 1060 William stood first among the princes of France.  Maine submitted to his rule.  Britanny was reduced to obedience by a single march.  While some of the rebel barons rotted in the Duke’s dungeons and some were driven into exile, the land settled down into a peace which gave room for a quick upgrowth of wealth and culture.  Learning and education found their centre in the school of Bec, which the teaching of a Lombard scholar, Lanfranc, raised in a few years into the most famous school of Christendom.  Lanfranc’s first contact with William, if it showed the Duke’s imperious temper, showed too his marvellous insight into men.  In a strife with the Papacy which William provoked by his marriage with Matilda, a daughter of the Count of Flanders, Lanfranc took the side of Rome.  His opposition was met by a sentence of banishment, and the Prior had hardly set out on a lame horse, the only one his house could afford, when he was overtaken by the Duke, impatient that he should quit Normandy.  “Give me a better horse and I shall go the quicker,” replied the imperturbable Lombard, and William’s wrath passed into laughter and good will.  From that hour Lanfranc became his minister and counsellor, whether for affairs in the duchy itself or for the more daring schemes of ambition which opened up across the Channel.

[Sidenote:  William and England]

William’s hopes of the English crown are said to have been revived by a storm which threw Harold, while cruising in the Channel, on the coast of Ponthieu.  Its count sold him to the Duke; and as the price of return to England William forced him to swear on the relics of saints to support his claim to its throne.  But, true or no, the oath told little on Harold’s course.  As the childless King drew to his grave one obstacle after another was cleared from the earl’s path.  His brother Tostig had become his most dangerous rival; but a revolt of the Northumbrians drove Tostig to Flanders, and the earl was able to win over the Mercian house of Leofric to his cause by owning Morkere, the brother of the Mercian Earl Eadwine, as his brother’s successor.  His aim was in fact attained without a struggle.  In the opening of 1066 the nobles and bishops who gathered round the death-bed of the Confessor passed quietly from it to the election and coronation of Harold.  But at Eouen the news was welcomed with a burst of furious passion, and the Duke of Normandy at once prepared to enforce his claim by arms.  William did not claim the Crown.  He claimed simply the right which he afterwards used when his sword had won it of presenting himself for election by the nation, and he believed himself entitled so to present himself by the direct commendation of the Confessor.