was regarded with much favor.

Free coinage was now discussed, and mints established. Wool was the
principal export, and fine cloths were taken in exchange from the
Continent. Women spun for their own households, and the term spinster
was introduced.

The monasteries carefully concealed everything in the way of education,
and even the nobility could not have stood a civil service examination.

The clergy were skilled in music, painting, and sculpture, and loved to
paint on china, or do sign-work and carriage painting for the nobility.
St. Dunstan was quite an artist, and painted portraits which even now
remind one strangely of human beings.

[Illustration: ST. DUNSTAN WAS NOTED FOR THIS KIND OF THING.]

Edgar Atheling, the legal successor of Harold, saw at a glance that
William the Conqueror had come to stay, and so he yielded to the
Norman, as shown in the accompanying steel engraving copied from a piece
of tapestry now in possession of the author, and which descended to him,
through no fault of his own, from the Normans, who for years ruled
England with great skill, and from whose loins he sprang.

[Illustration: EDGAR ATHELING AND THE NOBILITY OFFER SUBMISSION TO
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.]

William was crowned on Christmas Day at Westminster Abbey as the new
sovereign. It was more difficult to change a sovereign in those days
than at present, but that is neither here nor there.