Still Harold fought on, and as evening was coming on, it seemed as if he might even yet be able to hold the field. Then William bethought him of another plan, and ordered his archers to shoot into the air, whereby the English were seriously incommoded. One of the falling shafts pierced Harold through the eye, and he was mortally wounded. The battle was to all intents ended when he died; his house-carls were killed at their posts, the light-armed troops fled into the rocks and swamps, inflicting severe losses upon such of their enemies as ventured to pursue them.
Thus did William of Normandy win the great battle of Hastings, which lasted from sunrise to sunset, and which, for the valour displayed by both armies and their leaders, was worthy to decide a contest for a crown. William, in the course of the battle, had three horses killed under him, and lost nearly fifteen thousand men; the loss of the English was probably considerably more.
William, at the height of his success, gave orders for the whole army to fall on their knees, and return God thanks for so signal a victory; after which he caused his tent to be pitched on the field of battle, and spent the residue of the night among the slain. Not less perhaps in gratitude for the past, than in the hope that such a work would procure him heavenly favour for the future, he solemnly vowed that he would erect a splendid abbey on the scene of this his first victory; and when this vow was accomplished, the altar of the abbey church stood on the spot where the standard of Harold had been planted. The holy house thus founded was called Battle Abbey.
On the morrow, he ordered his own dead to be buried, and gave the English peasants leave to do the same office for the others; but William refused to give up Harold's body to his mother, Gytha. An ancient manuscript in the Cottonian library, apparently written at Waltham Abbey about a hundred years after the battle, relates that two monks were deputed by William to search for the body of the king. Unable to distinguish it among the nameless dead by which it was surrounded, they sent for Harold's mistress, Edith, called "The Swan-necked," whose eye of affection was not to be deceived. It was buried under a heap of stones, whence William afterwards permitted it to be removed to Waltham.