There were Hugo de Montfort and Roger de Beaumont, famous in council
as in the field, and already grey with fame. There was Henri, Sire de
Ferrers, whose name is supposed to have arisen from the vast forges
that burned around his castle, on the anvils of which were welded the
arms impenetrable in every field. There was Raoul de Tancarville, the
old tutor of William, hereditary Chamberlain of the Norman Counts; and
Geoffroi de Mandeville, and Tonstain the Fair, whose name still
preserved, amidst the general corruption of appellations, the evidence
of his Danish birth; and Hugo de Grantmesnil, lately returned from
exile; and Humphrey de Bohun, whose old castle in Carcutan may yet be
seen; and St. John, and Lacie, and D'Aincourt, of broad lands between
the Maine and the Oise; and William de Montfichet, and Roger,
nicknamed "Bigod," and Roger de Mortemer; and many more, whose fame
lives in another land than that of Neustria! There, too, were the
chief prelates and abbots of a church that since William's accession
had risen into repute with Rome and with Learning, unequalled on this
side the Alps; their white aubes over their gorgeous robes; Lanfranc,
and the Bishop of Coutance, and the Abbot of Bec, and foremost of all
in rank, but not in learning, Odo of Bayeux.

So great the assemblage of Quens and prelates, that there was small
room in the courtyard for the lesser knights and chiefs, who yet
hustled each other, with loss of Norman dignity, for a sight of the
lion which guarded England. And still, amidst all those men of mark
and might, Harold, simple and calm, looked as he had looked on his
war-ship in the Thames, the man who could lead them all!

From those, indeed, who were fortunate enough to see him as he passed
up by the side of William, as tall as the Duke, and no less erect--of