Night covered the flight of the English army:  but William was quick to reap the advantage of his victory.  Securing Romney and Dover, he marched by Canterbury upon London.  Faction and intrigue were doing his work for him as he advanced; for Harold’s brothers had fallen with the King on the field of Senlac, and there was none of the house of Godwine to contest the crown.  Of the old royal line there remained but a single boy, Eadgar the AEtheling.  He was chosen king; but the choice gave little strength to the national cause.  The widow of the Confessor surrendered Winchester to the Duke.  The bishops gathered at London inclined to submission.  The citizens themselves faltered as William, passing by their walls, gave Southwark to the flames.  The throne of the boy-king really rested for support on the Earls of Mercia and Northumbria, Eadwine and Morkere; and William, crossing the Thames at Wallingford and marching into Hertfordshire, threatened to cut them off from their earldoms.  The masterly movement forced the Earls to hurry home, and London gave way at once.  Eadgar himself was at the head of the deputation who came to offer the crown to the Norman Duke.  “They bowed to him,” says the English annalist pathetically, “for need.”  They bowed to the Norman as they had bowed to the Dane, and William accepted the crown in the spirit of Cnut.  London indeed was secured by the erection of a fortress which afterwards grew into the Tower, but William desired to reign not as a Conqueror but as a lawful king.  At Christmas he received the crown at Westminster from the hands of Archbishop Ealdred amid shouts of “Yea, Yea,” from his new English subjects.  Fines from the greater landowners atoned for a resistance which now counted as rebellion; but with this exception every measure of the new sovereign showed his desire of ruling as a successor of Eadward or AElfred.  As yet indeed the greater part of England remained quietly aloof from him, and he can hardly be said to have been recognized as king by Northumberland or the greater part of Mercia.  But to the east of a line which stretched from Norwich to Dorsetshire his rule was unquestioned, and over this portion he ruled as an English king.  His soldiers were kept in strict order.  No change was made in law or custom.  The privileges of London were recognized by a royal writ which still remains, the most venerable of its muniments, among the city’s archives.  Peace and order were restored.  William even attempted, though in vain, to learn the English tongue that he might personally administer justice to the suitors in his court.  The kingdom seemed so tranquil that only a few months had passed after the battle of Senlac when leaving England in charge of his brother, Odo Bishop of Bayeux, and his minister, William Fitz-Osbern, the King returned in 1067 for a while to Normandy.  The peace he left was soon indeed disturbed.  Bishop Odo’s tyranny forced the Kentishmen to seek aid from Count Eustace of Boulogne; while the Welsh princes supported