misguided islanders, to teach them fuller obedience to the Roman
See and more regular payment of its temporal dues. William gained
his immediate point; but his successors on the English throne paid
the penalty. Hildebrand gained his point for ever, or for as long
a time as men might be willing to accept the Bishop of Rome as a
judge in any matters. The precedent by which Hildebrand, under
another name, took on him to dispose of a higher crown than that of
England was now fully established.

As an outward sign of papal favour, William received a consecrated
banner and a ring containing a hair of Saint Peter. Here was
something for men to fight for. The war was now a holy one. All
who were ready to promote their souls' health by slaughter and
plunder might flock to William's standard, to the standard of Saint
Peter. Men came from most French-speaking lands, the Normans of
Apulia and Sicily being of course not slow to take up the quarrel
of their kinsfolk. But, next to his own Normandy, the lands which
sent most help were Flanders, the land of Matilda, and Britanny,
where the name of the Saxon might still be hateful. We must never
forget that the host of William, the men who won England, the men
who settled in England, were not an exclusively Norman body. Not
Norman, but FRENCH, is the name most commonly opposed to ENGLISH,
as the name of the conquering people. Each Norman severally would
have scorned that name for himself personally; but it was the only
name that could mark the whole of which he and his countrymen
formed a part. Yet, if the Normans were but a part, they were the
greatest and the noblest part; their presence alone redeemed the
enterprise from being a simple enterprise of brigandage. The
Norman Conquest was after all a Norman Conquest; men of other lands
were merely helpers. So far as it was not Norman, it was Italian;