not kept so good watch as the king.  Harold Hardrada harried the Yorkshire coast; he sailed up the Ouse, and landed without resistance.  At last the earls met him in arms and were defeated by the Northmen at Fulford near York.  Four days later York capitulated, and agreed to receive Harold Hardrada as king.  Meanwhile the news reached Harold of England; he got together his housecarls and such other troops as could be mustered at the moment, and by a march of almost incredible speed he was able to save the city and all northern England.  The fight of Stamfordbridge, the defeat and death of the most famous warrior of the North, was the last and greatest success of Harold of England.  But his northward march had left southern England utterly unprotected.  Had the south wind delayed a little longer, he might, before the second enemy came, have been again on the South-Saxon coast.  As it was, three days after Stamfordbridge, while Harold of England was still at York, William of Normandy landed without opposition at Pevensey.

Thus wonderfully had an easy path into England been opened for William.  The Norwegian invasion had come at the best moment for his purposes, and the result had been what he must have wished.  With one Harold he must fight, and to fight with Harold of England was clearly best for his ends.  His work would not have been done, if another had stepped in to chastise the perjurer.  Now that he was in England, it became a trial of generalship between him and Harold.  William’s policy was to provoke Harold to fight at once.  It was perhaps Harold’s policy—­so at least thought Gyrth—­to follow yet more thoroughly William’s own example in the French invasions.  Let him watch and follow the enemy, let him avoid all action, and even lay waste the land between London and the south coast, and the strength of the invaders would gradually be worn out.  But it might have been hard to enforce such a policy on men whose hearts were stirred by the invasion, and one part of whom, the King’s own thegns and housecarls, were eager to follow up their victory over the Northern with a yet mightier victory over the Norman.  And Harold spoke as an English king should speak, when he answered that he would never lay waste a single rood of English ground, that he would never harm the lands or the goods of the men who had chosen him to be their king.  In the trial of skill between the two commanders, each to some extent carried his point.  William’s havoc of a large part of Sussex compelled Harold to march at once to give battle.  But Harold was able to give battle at a place of his own choosing, thoroughly suited for the kind of warfare which he had to wage.