The men of Romney had before the battle cut in pieces a party of Normans who had fallen into their hands, most likely by sea.  William took some undescribed vengeance for their slaughter.  Dover and its castle, the castle which, in some accounts, Harold had sworn to surrender to William, yielded without a blow.  Here then he was gracious.  When some of his unruly followers set fire to the houses of the town, William made good the losses of their owners.  Canterbury submitted; from thence, by a bold stroke, he sent messengers who received the submission of Winchester.  He marched on, ravaging as he went, to the immediate neighbourhood of London, but keeping ever on the right bank of the Thames.  But a gallant sally of the citizens was repulsed by the Normans, and the suburb of Southwark was burned.  William marched along the river to Wallingford.  Here he crossed, receiving for the first time the active support of an Englishman of high rank, Wiggod of Wallingford, sheriff of Oxfordshire.  He became one of a small class of Englishmen who were received to William’s fullest favour, and kept at least as high a position under him as they had held before.  William still kept on, marching and harrying, to the north of London, as he had before done to the south.  The city was to be isolated within a cordon of wasted lands.  His policy succeeded.  As no succours came from the North, the hearts of those who had chosen them a king failed at the approach of his rival.  At Berkhampstead Edgar himself, with several bishops and chief men, came to make their submission.  They offered the crown to William, and, after some debate, he accepted it.  But before he came in person, he took means to secure the city.  The beginnings of the fortress were now laid which, in the course of William’s reign, grew into the mighty Tower of London.

It may seem strange that when his great object was at last within his grasp, William should have made his acceptance of it a matter of debate.  He claims the crown as his right; the crown is offered to him; and yet he doubts about taking it.  Ought he, he asks, to take the crown of a kingdom of which he has not as yet full possession?  At that time the territory of which William had even military possession could not have stretched much to the north-west of a line drawn from Winchester to Norwich.  Outside that line men were, as William is made to say, still in rebellion.  His scruples were come over by an orator who was neither Norman nor English, but one of his foreign followers, Haimer Viscount of Thouars.  The debate was most likely got up at William’s bidding, but it was not got up without a motive.  William, ever seeking outward legality, seeking to do things peaceably when they could be done peaceably, seeking for means to put every possible enemy in the wrong, wished to make his acceptance of the English crown as formally regular as might be.  Strong as he held his claim to be by the gift of Edward, it would be better to be, if not strictly chosen, at least peacefully accepted, by the chief men of England.  It might some day serve his purpose to say that the crown had been offered to him, and that he had accepted it only after a debate in which the chief speaker was an impartial stranger.  Having gained this point more, William set out from Berkhampstead, already, in outward form, King-elect of the English.