lord imply treason to the old one.  Harold, delivered by William from Guy’s dungeon, would be eager to do for William any act of friendship.  The homage would be little more than binding himself in the strongest form so to do.  The relation of homage could be made to mean anything or nothing, as might be convenient.  The man might often understand it in one sense and the lord in another.  If Harold became the man of William, he would look on the act as little more than an expression of good will and gratitude towards his benefactor, his future father-in-law, his commander in the Breton war.  He would not look on it as forbidding him to accept the English crown if it were offered to him.  Harold, the man of Duke William, might become a king, if he could, just as William, the man of King Philip, might become a king, if he could.  As things went in those days, both the homage and the promise of marriage were capable of being looked on very lightly.

But it was not in the temper or in the circumstances of William to put any such easy meaning on either promise.  The oath might, if needful, be construed very strictly, and William was disposed to construe it very strictly.  Harold had not promised William a crown, which was not his to promise; but he had promised to do that which might be held to forbid him to take a crown which William held to be his own.  If the man owed his lord any duty at all, it was surely his duty not to thwart his lord’s wishes in such a matter.  If therefore, when the vacancy of the throne came, Harold took the crown himself, or even failed to promote William’s claim to it, William might argue that he had not rightly discharged the duty of a man to his lord.  He could make an appeal to the world against the new king, as a perjured man, who had failed to help his lord in the matter where his lord most needed his help.  And, if the oath really had been taken on relics of special holiness, he could further appeal to the religious feelings of the time against the man who had done despite to the saints.  If he should be driven to claim the crown by arms, he could give the war the character of a crusade.  All this in the end William did, and all this, we may be sure, he looked forward to doing, when he caused Harold to become his man.  The mere obligation of homage would, in the skilful hands of William and Lanfranc, be quite enough to work on men’s minds, as William wished to work on them.  To Harold meanwhile and to those in England who heard the story, the engagement would not seem to carry any of these consequences.  The mere homage then, which Harold could hardly refuse, would answer William’s purpose nearly as well as any of these fuller obligations which Harold would surely have refused.  And when a man older than William engaged to marry William’s child-daughter, we must bear in mind the lightness with which such promises were made.  William could not seriously expect that this engagement would be kept, if anything