Meanwhile the Conqueror was advancing, by his own road and after his own fashion.We must remember the effect of the mere slaughter of the great battle.William's own army had suffered severely: he did not leave Hastings till he had received reinforcements from Normandy.But to England the battle meant the loss of the whole force of the south-eastern shires.A large part of England was left helpless.William followed much the same course as he had followed in Maine.A legal claimant of the crown, it was his interest as soon as possible to become a crowned king, and that in his kinsman's church at Westminster.But it was not his interest to march straight on London and demand the crown, sword in hand.He saw that, without the support of the northern earls, Edgar could not possibly stand, and that submission to himself was only a question of time.He therefore chose a roundabout course through those south-eastern shires which were wholly without means of resisting him.He marched from Sussex into Kent, harrying the land as he went, to frighten the people into submission.The men of Romney had before the battle cut in pieces a party of Normans who had fallen into their hands, most likely by sea.William took some undescribed vengeance for their slaughter.Dover and its castle, the castle which, in some accounts, Harold had sworn to surrender to William, yielded without a blow.Here then he was gracious.When some of his unruly followers set fire to the houses of the town, William made good the losses of their owners.Canterbury submitted; from thence, by a bold stroke, he sent messengers who received the submission of Winchester.He marched on, ravaging as he went, to the immediate neighbourhood of London, but keeping ever on the right bank of the Thames.But a gallant sally of the citizens was repulsed by the Normans, and the suburb of Southwark was burned.
William marched along the river to Wallingford.Here he crossed, receiving for the first time the active support of an Englishman of high rank, Wiggod of Wallingford, sheriff of Oxfordshire.He became one of a small class of Englishmen who were received to William's fullest favour, and kept at least as high a position under him as they had held before.William still kept on, marching and harrying, to the north of London, as he had before done to the south.The city was to be isolated within a cordon of wasted lands.His policy succeeded.As no succours came from the North, the hearts of those who had chosen them a king failed at the approach of his rival.At Berkhampstead Edgar himself, with several bishops and chief men, came to make their submission.They offered the crown to William, and, after some debate, he accepted it.But before he came in person, he took means to secure the city.The beginnings of the fortress were now laid which, in the course of William's reign, grew into the mighty Tower of London.
It may seem strange that when his great object was at last within his grasp, William should have made his acceptance of it a matter of debate.He claims the crown as his right; the crown is offered to him; and yet he doubts about taking it.Ought he, he asks, to take the crown of a kingdom of which he has not as yet full possession?
At that time the territory of which William had even military possession could not have stretched much to the north-west of a line drawn from Winchester to Norwich.Outside that line men were, as William is made to say, still in rebellion.His scruples were come over by an orator who was neither Norman nor English, but one of his foreign followers, Haimer Viscount of Thouars.The debate was most likely got up at William's bidding, but it was not got up without a motive.William, ever seeking outward legality, seeking to do things peaceably when they could be done peaceably, seeking for means to put every possible enemy in the wrong, wished to make his acceptance of the English crown as formally regular as might be.
