Harold disregarded this advice, and was resolved to lead the host himself; he gathered his followers from Kent and Wessex, and marched southward.
CAMEO VII. THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS. (1066.)
The first night after leaving London, Harold slept at Waltham Abbey, and had much conference with the Abbot, who was his friend, and appointed two Monks, named Osgood and Ailric, to attend him closely in the coming battle.
On the 12th of October, Harold found himself seven miles from the enemy, and halted his men on Heathfield-hill, near Hastings, the most advantageous ground he could find.
On the highest point he planted his standard bearing the figure of a man in armor, and marshalling his Saxons round it, commanded them to entrench themselves within a rampart and ditch, and to plant within them a sort of poles, on the upper part of which, nearly the height of a man from the ground, they interwove a fence of wattled branches, so that while the front rank might pass under to man the rampart, the rear might be sheltered from the arrows of the enemy.
These orders given, Harold and Gyrtha rode together to a hill, whence they beheld the Norman camp, when for a moment Harold was so alarmed at the number of their tents that he spoke of returning to London and acting as his mother had advised; but Gyrtha showed him that it was too late; he could not turn back from the very face of the enemy, without being supposed to fly, and thus yielding his kingdom at once.
Three Saxons presently came to the brothers who had been seized as spies by the Normans, and, by order of William, led throughout his camp, and then sent away to report what they had seen. Their story was that the Norman soldiers were all Priests, at which Harold laughed, since they had been deceived by the short-cut locks and smooth chins of the Normans, such as in England were only worn by ecclesiastics, warriors always wearing flowing locks and thick moustaches.
Several messages passed between the two camps, William sending offers of honors and wealth to Harold and Gyrtha if they would cease their resistance; but when all were rejected, he sent another herald to defy Harold as a perjured traitor under the ban of the Church;—a declaration which so startled the Saxons, that it took strong efforts on the part of the gallant Gyrtha to inspirit them to stand by his brother.
This over, William addressed his soldiers from a little hillock, and put on his armor, hanging-round his neck, as a witness of Harold’s falsehood, one of the relics on which the oath had been taken. He chanced to put on his hawberk with the wrong side before, and seeing some of his men disconcerted, fancying this a token of ill, he told them that it boded that his dukedom should be turned to a kingdom.