collisions between King and Parliament by the ingenious conventional device of a body of men who shall be in name the ministers of the Crown, but in truth the ministers of one House of Parliament.  We do not understand our own political history, still less can we understand the position and the statesmanship of the Conqueror, unless we fully take in what the English constitution in the eleventh century really was, how very modern-sounding are some of its doctrines, some of its forms.  Statesmen of our own day might do well to study the meagre records of the Gemot of 1047.  There is the earliest recorded instance of a debate on a question of foreign policy.  Earl Godwine proposes to give help to Denmark, then at war with Norway.  He is outvoted on the motion of Earl Leofric, the man of moderate politics, who appears as leader of the party of non-intervention.  It may be that in some things we have not always advanced in the space of eight hundred years.

The negotiations of William with his own subjects, with foreign powers, and with the Pope, are hard to arrange in order.  Several negotiations were doubtless going on at the same time.  The embassy to Harold would of course come first of all.  Till his demand had been made and refused, William could make no appeal elsewhere.  We know not whether the embassy was sent before or after Harold’s journey to Northumberland, before or after his marriage with Ealdgyth.  If Harold was already married, the demand that he should marry William’s daughter could have been meant only in mockery.  Indeed, the whole embassy was so far meant in mockery that it was sent without any expectation that its demands would be listened to.  It was sent to put Harold, from William’s point of view, more thoroughly in the wrong, and to strengthen William’s case against him.  It would therefore be sent at the first moment; the only statement, from a very poor authority certainly, makes the embassy come on the tenth day after Edward’s death.  Next after the embassy would come William’s appeal to his own subjects, though Lanfranc might well be pleading at Rome while William was pleading at Lillebonne.  The Duke first consulted a select company, who promised their own services, but declined to pledge any one else.  It was held that no Norman was bound to follow the Duke in an attempt to win for himself a crown beyond the sea.  But voluntary help was soon ready.  A meeting of the whole baronage of Normandy was held at Lillebonne.  The assembly declined any obligation which could be turned into a precedent, and passed no general vote at all.  But the barons were won over one by one, and each promised help in men and ships according to his means.