memory was cherished.  According to him, Harold formally laid the matter before the Witan, and they unanimously voted that the oath—­more, in his version, than a mere oath of homage—­was not binding.  It is not likely that such a vote was ever formally passed, but its terms would only express what every Englishman would feel.  The oath, whatever its terms, had given William a great advantage; but every Englishman would argue both that the oath, whatever its terms, could not hinder the English nation from offering Harold the crown, and that it could not bind Harold to refuse the crown if it should be so offered.

CHAPTER VI—­THE NEGOTIATIONS OF DUKE WILLIAM—­JANUARY-OCTOBER 1066

If the time that has been suggested was the real time of Harold’s oath to William, its fulfilment became a practical question in little more than a year.  How the year 1065 passed in Normandy we have no record; in England its later months saw the revolt of Northumberland against Harold’s brother Tostig, and the reconciliation which Harold made between the revolters and the king to the damage of his brother’s interests.  Then came Edward’s sickness, of which he died on January 5, 1066.  He had on his deathbed recommended Harold to the assembled Witan as his successor in the kingdom.  The candidate was at once elected.  Whether William, Edgar, or any other, was spoken of we know not; but as to the recommendation of Edward and the consequent election of Harold the English writers are express.  The next day Edward was buried, and Harold was crowned in regular form by Ealdred Archbishop of York in Edward’s new church at Westminster.  Northumberland refused to acknowledge him; but the malcontents were won over by the coming of the king and his friend Saint Wulfstan Bishop of Worcester.  It was most likely now, as a seal of this reconciliation, that Harold married Ealdgyth, the sister of the two northern earls Edwin and Morkere, and the widow of the Welsh king Gruffydd.  He doubtless hoped in this way to win the loyalty of the earls and their followers.

The accession of Harold was perfectly regular according to English law.  In later times endless fables arose; but the Norman writers of the time do not deny the facts of the recommendation, election, and coronation.  They slur them over, or, while admitting the mere facts, they represent each act as in some way invalid.  No writer near the time asserts a deathbed nomination of William; they speak only of a nomination at some earlier time.  But some Norman writers represent Harold as crowned by Stigand Archbishop of Canterbury.  This was not, in the ideas of those times, a trifling question.  A coronation was then not a mere pageant; it was the actual admission to the kingly office.  Till his crowning and anointing, the claimant of the crown was like a bishop-elect before his consecration.  He had, by birth or election, the sole right to become