king; it was the coronation that made him king.  And as the ceremony took the form of an ecclesiastical sacrament, its validity might seem to depend on the lawful position of the officiating bishop.  In England to perform that ceremony was the right and duty of the Archbishop of Canterbury; but the canonical position of Stigand was doubtful.  He had been appointed on the flight of Robert; he had received the pallium, the badge of arch-episcopal rank, only from the usurping Benedict the Tenth.  It was therefore good policy in Harold to be crowned by Ealdred, to whose position there was no objection.  This is the only difference of fact between the English and Norman versions at this stage.  And the difference is easily explained.  At William’s coronation the king walked to the altar between the two archbishops, but it was Ealdred who actually performed the ceremony.  Harold’s coronation doubtless followed the same order.  But if Stigand took any part in that coronation, it was easy to give out that he took that special part on which the validity of the rite depended.

Still, if Harold’s accession was perfectly lawful, it was none the less strange and unusual.  Except the Danish kings chosen under more or less of compulsion, he was the first king who did not belong to the West-Saxon kingly house.  Such a choice could be justified only on the ground that that house contained no qualified candidate.  Its only known members were the children of the AEtheling Edward, young Edgar and his sisters.  Now Edgar would certainly have been passed by in favour of any better qualified member of the kingly house, as his father had been passed by in favour of King Edward.  And the same principle would, as things stood, justify passing him by in favour of a qualified candidate not of the kingly house.  But Edgar’s right to the crown is never spoken of till a generation or two later, when the doctrines of hereditary right had gained much greater strength, and when Henry the Second, great-grandson through his mother of Edgar’s sister Margaret, insisted on his descent from the old kings.  This distinction is important, because Harold is often called an usurper, as keeping out Edgar the heir by birth.  But those who called him an usurper at the time called him so as keeping out William the heir by bequest.  William’s own election was out of the question.  He was no more of the English kingly house than Harold; he was a foreigner and an utter stranger.  Had Englishmen been minded to choose a foreigner, they doubtless would have chosen Swegen of Denmark.  He had found supporters when Edward was chosen; he was afterwards appealed to to deliver England from William.  He was no more of the English kingly house than Harold or William; but he was grandson of a man who had reigned over England, Northumberland might have preferred him to Harold; any part of England would have preferred him to William.  In fact any choice that could have been made must have had