The French word “parliament” meant, of course, any general assembly for discussion, and was here used of something earlier than any representative assembly, though these were already springing up in the Spanish March of the Pyrenees, to which district we owe the origin of representative institutions.
[4]. I have never understood why this third messenger should have been confused with Harold himself. The Latin inscription is quite clear: “Here they gave to Harold the Crown of King.” The people holding the axes are not Harold, neither is the man offering the crown, that I can see.
[5]. The Tapestry, of course, does not show Freeman’s famous “Palisade,” and that for an excellent reason. The Palisade never existed outside the imagination of Oxford.
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