of its doctrines, some of its forms. Statesmen of our own day
might do well to study the meagre records of the Gemot of 1047.
There is the earliest recorded instance of a debate on a question
of foreign policy. Earl Godwine proposes to give help to Denmark,
then at war with Norway. He is outvoted on the motion of Earl
Leofric, the man of moderate politics, who appears as leader of the
party of non-intervention. It may be that in some things we have
not always advanced in the space of eight hundred years.


The negotiations of William with his own subjects, with foreign
powers, and with the Pope, are hard to arrange in order. Several
negotiations were doubtless going on at the same time. The embassy
to Harold would of course come first of all. Till his demand had
been made and refused, William could make no appeal elsewhere. We
know not whether the embassy was sent before or after Harold's
journey to Northumberland, before or after his marriage with
Ealdgyth. If Harold was already married, the demand that he should
marry William's daughter could have been meant only in mockery.
Indeed, the whole embassy was so far meant in mockery that it was
sent without any expectation that its demands would be listened to.
It was sent to put Harold, from William's point of view, more
thoroughly in the wrong, and to strengthen William's case against
him. It would therefore be sent at the first moment; the only
statement, from a very poor authority certainly, makes the embassy
come on the tenth day after Edward's death. Next after the embassy
would come William's appeal to his own subjects, though Lanfranc
might well be pleading at Rome while William was pleading at
Lillebonne. The Duke first consulted a select company, who
promised their own services, but declined to pledge any one else.