to have done himself, and tried to keep strangers out

of the country.

But King Edward, who had been kindly treated in Normandy, when the Danes drove him out of England, had brought a great many Normans home with him; and when they saw how pleasant England was, and what plenty of corn, and cattle, and deer there was in it, and how healthy and strong the people grew, they determined to try and get the kingdom for their duke as soon as Edward was dead. And they told the duke what they thought of, and he came from Normandy to see King Edward, and to get him to promise that he should be king of England, as King Edward had no son.

Now I think this was not right, because Edward had a relation who ought to have been king, and his name was Edgar, and he was called the Atheling, which means the Prince.

Perhaps if Edward the Confessor had taken pains to get the great men in England to promise to take care of Edgar Atheling, and make him king, they would have done so; but as they found he wanted to give England to the Duke of Normandy, a great many of them said it would be better to have an English earl for a king, because the English earl would be glad to protect his own countrymen, but that a Duke of Normandy would most likely take their houses and lands and give them to the Normans. So they agreed that Harold, the son of Earl Godwin, who was called the under-king, as I told you before, should be the real king after Edward's death.

In the mean time King Edward was busy in building Westminster Abbey, and encouraging Norman bishops and soldiers to come to England, where he gave them some of the best places to live in.

I must tell you, however, of one very useful thing that was done in the reign of Edward. He found that some part of England was ruled by laws made by King Alfred or the Saxon kings, before his time, and some parts by laws made by the Danes, and that the people could not agree about these laws; so he ordered some wise men to collect all these laws together, and to read them over, and to take the best Saxon laws, and the best Danish laws, and put them into one book, that all the people might be governed by the same law.

King Edward died after he had reigned twentytwo years in England, and the English gave the kingdom to Harold the under-king. But he had a very short reign. As soon as it was known in the North of England that Edward was dead, Harold's brother, Tostig, wished to be king of that part of the country, and so to divide England into two separate countries. But the other English people did not choose this, and so they joined Harold, and went to battle against Tostig, who was soon killed, and Harold might have been king of all England.

But while Harold was in the North the Duke of Normandy came over to England with a great number of ships full of soldiers, and landed in Sussex. As soon as Harold heard of this, he went with his army to drive the Normans away; but he was too late, they had got into the country; and in a great battle fought near Hastings, Harold, the English king, was killed, and the Duke of Normandy made himself king of England.

I do not think the English would have allowed Duke William to be king so easily, if he had not told them that Edward the Confessor had promised that he should be king, and persuaded them that the

prince Edgar Atheling, who, as I told you, ought to have been king after Edward, was too silly ever to govern the kingdom well.

But after the English Harold was killed, and Edgar Atheling, with his sister, had gone to Scotland, to escape from the Normans, the English thought it

better to submit to William, who had ruled his own country so wisely, that they hoped he would be a good king in England.

CHAPTER XIV.

WILLIAM I.-1066 to 1087.

How the English language was formed; how William the First made cruel and oppressive laws; how he took the land from the Saxons and gave it to the Norman barons; and how he caused Doomsday Book to be written.

A GREAT change was made in England after the Duke of Normandy became king.

All the Normans spoke French, and the English spoke the old Saxon language; so at first they could not understand one another. By degrees the English learnt a little French, and the Normans learnt a little Saxon, and then they mixed both together, and made the language called English, which you and I speak and write now.

The Normans were used to live in finer and larger houses than the Saxon English. So when they came to England they laughed at the long low wooden houses they found, and built high castles of stone for themselves, and made chimneys in their rooms, with the hearth on one side, instead of in the middle of the floor, as I told you the Saxons did in king Athelstane's time.

There was one law the Normans made, which vexed the English very much.

In the Saxon times, any body who found a wild animal, such as a deer, or a hare, or a partridge, or a pheasant, in his fields or garden, or even in the woods, might kill it, and bring it home for his family. to eat. But when the Normans came, they would not allow any body but themselves, or some of the