muster-roll called. To a fourth of the names no answer was returned.
Among the dead were many of the noblest lords and bravest knights of
Normandy. Yet there were hungry nobles enough left to absorb all the
fairest domains of Saxon England, and they crowded eagerly around the
duke, pressing on him their claims. A new roll was prepared, containing
the names of the noblemen and gentlemen who had survived the bloody
fight. This was afterwards deposited in Battle Abbey, which William had
built upon the hill where Harold made his gallant stand.

The body of the slain king was not easily to be found. Harold's aged
mother, who had lost three brave sons in the battle, offered Duke
William its weight in gold for the body of the king. Two monks sought
for it, but in vain. The Norman soldiers had despoiled the dead, and the
body of a king could not be told among that heap of naked corpses. In
the end the monks sent for Editha, a beautiful maiden to whom Harold had
been warmly attached, and begged her to search for her slain lover.

Editha, the "swan-necked," as some chroniclers term her, groped, with
eyes half-blinded with tears, through that heap of mutilated dead, her
soul filled with horror, yet seeking on and on until at length her
love-true eyes saw and knew the face of the king. Harold's body was
taken to Waltham Abbey, on the river Lea, a place he had loved when
alive. Here he was interred, his tomb bearing the simple inscription,
placed there by the monks of Waltham, "Here lies the unfortunate
Harold!"




_HEREWARD THE WAKE._