For looking southward over the
often steep escarpment, always between three and five hundred feet
over the sea plain, we may see Pevensey Castle, the landing, Hastings,
the port, and at last come to Battle, the scene of the fight that gave
England to the Norman for our enormous good and glory and honour.
I say that the struggle for the English crown between Duke William of
Normandy and Harold, King of England, was in no sense of the word a
national struggle; on the contrary, it was a personal question fought
and decided by the Duke of Normandy and his men, and Harold and his
men. Indeed the society of that time was altogether innocent of any
impulse which could be called national. That society, all of one piece
as it was, both in England and in Gaul, was wholly Feudal, though
somewhat less precisely so here than in Normandy. Men's allegiance
was not given to any such vague unity as England, but to a feudal
lord, in whose quarrel they were bound to fight, in whose victory they
shared, and in whose defeat they suffered. The quarrel between King
Harold and Duke William was in no sense of the word a national
quarrel but a personal dispute in which the feudal adherents of both
parties were necessarily involved, the gage being the crown and spoil
of England.
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