CHAPTER V--HAROLD'S OATH TO WILLIAM--A.D. 1064?



The lord of Normandy and Maine could now stop and reckon his
chances of becoming lord of England also. While our authorities
enable us to put together a fairly full account of both Norman and
English events, they throw no light on the way in which men in
either land looked at events in the other. Yet we might give much
to know what William and Harold at this time thought of one
another. Nothing had as yet happened to make the two great rivals
either national or personal enemies. England and Normandy were at
peace, and the great duke and the great earl had most likely had no
personal dealings with one another. They were rivals in the sense
that each looked forward to succeed to the English crown whenever
the reigning king should die. But neither had as yet put forward
his claim in any shape that the other could look on as any formal
wrong to himself. If William and Harold had ever met, it could
have been only during Harold's journey in Gaul. Whatever
negotiations Harold made during that journey were negotiations
unfriendly to William; still he may, in the course of that journey,
have visited Normandy as well as France or Anjou. It is hard to
avoid the thought that the tale of Harold's visit to William, of
his oath to William, arose out of something that happened on
Harold's way back from his Roman pilgrimage. To that journey we
can give an approximate date. Of any other journey we have no date
and no certain detail. We can say only that the fact that no
English writer makes any mention of any such visit, of any such
oath, is, under the circumstances, the strongest proof that the
story of the visit and the oath has some kind of foundation. Yet