After the slaughters of the late battles, the means of resistance in the Southern counties must have been much diminished, and when Edwin and Morkere completed their treasonable conduct by again withdrawing their troops, and, though they had accepted the election, refused to give practical support to the defence of Wessex, immediate opposition to the Conqueror became hopeless. No further combined action was possible and no other great battle was fought.
[Sidenote: Receives the crown at Berkhampstead.]
Meanwhile William, disappointed in his hopes, proceeded with his own foreign forces to make good his conquest. He determined to subdue the South-eastern counties before he advanced against London. He marched eastward, took Romney, and captured the castle and town of Dover, and had reached Canterbury, when he was seized with an illness which kept him inactive during the whole month of November. Thence he sent an embassy which secured the great town of Winchester, and thence in December he moved to attack the capital, but contented himself with burning the suburb of Southwark, and passed on westward on the southern side of the Thames, which he did not cross till he reached Wallingford, intending to pass northward and thus cut the city off from the unconquered country. With this view he marched to Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire. But his progress had broken the spirit of the Londoners, and he was there met by Eadgar, Ealdred the Archbishop of York, and others, who submitted to him, and offered him the crown. After a feigned rejection of it, till he had further secured the kingdom, he accepted it at the earnest request of his followers, and marching into London, was crowned at Christmas. The ceremony was performed by Ealdred of York in the place of Stigand of Canterbury, whose appointment to the See had not been strictly canonical; it was impossible that William, one of whose professed objects was the reform of the uncanonical Church of England, should receive his crown from the hands of a schismatic. Stigand’s importance as the chief official of the English prevented William from taking immediate steps against him. He was therefore present at the ceremony, but though William thus, and for some time afterwards, temporized with him, his ruin was already determined. The coronation was performed with the usual English ceremonies; the name of the King was proposed for election to those who were present, and the shout of acquiescence excited the alarm of the Norman troops outside the church. They proceeded to set fire to buildings in the neighbourhood; the assembled multitude rushed from the church to extinguish the flames, and William was left almost alone with the officiating ecclesiastics. But the ceremony was completed in the midst of fears and misgivings of those within the Cathedral, and of uproar and confusion without.