that Conan of Britanny took this moment for bringing up his own
forgotten pretensions to the Norman duchy. If William was going to
win England, let him give up Normandy to him. He presently, the
tale goes, died of a strange form of poisoning, in which it is
implied that William had a hand. This is the story of Walter and
Biota over again. It is perhaps enough to say that the Breton
writers know nothing of the tale.

But the great negotiation of all was with the Papal court. We
might have thought that the envoy would be Lanfranc, so well
skilled in Roman ways; but William perhaps needed him as a constant
adviser by his own person. Gilbert, Archdeacon of Lisieux, was
sent to Pope Alexander. No application could better suit papal
interests than the one that was now made; but there were some moral
difficulties. Not a few of the cardinals, Hildebrand tells us
himself, argued, not without strong language towards Hildebrand,
that the Church had nothing to do with such matters, and that it
was sinful to encourage a claim which could not be enforced without
bloodshed. But with many, with Hildebrand among them, the notion
of the Church as a party or a power came before all thoughts of its
higher duties. One side was carefully heard; the other seems not
to have been heard at all. We hear of no summons to Harold, and
the King of the English could not have pleaded at the Pope's bar
without acknowledging that his case was at least doubtful. The
judgement of Alexander or of Hildebrand was given for William.
Harold was declared to be an usurper, perhaps declared
excommunicated. The right to the English crown was declared to be
in the Duke of the Normans, and William was solemnly blessed in the
enterprise in which he was at once to win his own rights, to
chastise the wrong-doer, to reform the spiritual state of the