William had thus, with some difficulty, gained the support of his own subjects; but when he had once gained it, it was a zealous support.  And as the flame spread from one part of Europe to another, the zeal of Normandy would wax keener and keener.  The dealings of William with foreign powers are told us in a confused, piecemeal, and sometimes contradictory way.  We hear that embassies went to the young King Henry of Germany, son of the great Emperor, the friend of England, and also to Swegen of Denmark.  The Norman story runs that both princes promised William their active support.  Yet Swegen, the near kinsman of Harold, was a friend of England, and the same writer who puts this promise into his mouth makes him send troops to help his English cousin.  Young Henry or his advisers could have no motive for helping William; but subjects of the Empire were at least not hindered from joining his banner.  To the French king William perhaps offered the bait of holding the crown of England of him; but Philip is said to have discouraged William’s enterprise as much as he could.  Still he did not hinder French subjects from taking a part in it.  Of the princes who held of the French crown, Eustace of Boulogne, who joined the muster in person, and Guy of Ponthieu, William’s own vassal, who sent his son, seem to have been the only ones who did more than allow the levying of volunteers in their dominions.  A strange tale is told that Conan of Britanny took this moment for bringing up his own forgotten pretensions to the Norman duchy.  If William was going to win England, let him give up Normandy to him.  He presently, the tale goes, died of a strange form of poisoning, in which it is implied that William had a hand.  This is the story of Walter and Biota over again.  It is perhaps enough to say that the Breton writers know nothing of the tale.

But the great negotiation of all was with the Papal court.  We might have thought that the envoy would be Lanfranc, so well skilled in Roman ways; but William perhaps needed him as a constant adviser by his own person.  Gilbert, Archdeacon of Lisieux, was sent to Pope Alexander.  No application could better suit papal interests than the one that was now made; but there were some moral difficulties.  Not a few of the cardinals, Hildebrand tells us himself, argued, not without strong language towards Hildebrand, that the Church had nothing to do with such matters, and that it was sinful to encourage a claim which could not be enforced without bloodshed.  But with many, with Hildebrand among them, the notion of the Church as a party or a power came before all thoughts of its higher duties.  One side was carefully heard; the other seems not to have been heard at all.  We hear of no summons to Harold, and the King of the English could not have pleaded at the Pope’s bar without acknowledging that his case was at least doubtful.  The judgement of Alexander or of Hildebrand was given for William.