[Illustration: KING HAROLD SHOWN IN A MÊLÉE OF FIGHTING-MEN
William, for his part, did well to consider before attacking London. Thirty years before, as he knew perfectly well, another king had ridden to London like himself, only to find the gates shut. Cnut laid siege to London: he was beaten off: he had to divide the kingdom with Edmund Ironside. Not till London admitted him was he truly King of England. William certainly knew this episode in history very well, and understood what it meant. In the north there were Saxon lords who needed nothing more than the support and encouragement of London to raise an army equal to that of Harold’s, and to march south upon him. William, who had many friends in London, therefore waited.
In London there was much running to and fro; much excitement, with angry debates, in those days. The funeral procession, simple and plain, carrying the body of Harold from the field of battle to the Abbey of Waltham, had passed through the City. It must have passed through the City, because there was no other way. The King was dead; who was to succeed him? And some said Edgar Atheling; and some said nay, but William himself—strong as Cnut; just as Cnut; loyal to his people as Cnut.
First they chose the Atheling, but when the great bell of St. Paul’s rang for the Folkmote, to Paul’s Cross all flocked—the craftsmen in their leathern doublets, the merchants in their cloth. All assembled together; all the citizens and freemen of the City, according to a right extending beyond the memory of man, and a custom as old as the City itself, claiming for every man the right of a voice in the management of the City.
Standing above the rest was the Bishop; silent at first amid the uproar, silent and watchful, beside him the Atheling himself, a stripling unable to wield the battle-axe of Harold; beside him, also, the Portreeve, the chief civil officer of the City; behind the Bishop stood his clergy and the canons of St. Paul’s. Outside the throng stood the “men of Rouen” and the “men of Cologne,” who had no voice or vote, but looked on in the deepest anxiety to learn the will of the people.
CHARTER OF THE CITY OF LONDON GIVEN BY WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR]
Then arose an aged craftsman, and after him another, and yet a third, and the burden of their words was the same: “I remember how King Cnut besieged us, and behind our walls we laughed at him.”