67 
were few with him,” knelled the doom of the Danish faction 
(Malmesbury). 
I am now about to treat of the so-called battle of Stamford 
Bridge. What are the events which preceded this memo- 
rable battle ? a battle, remember, on which the fate of England 
hinged, a battle which, according as it was lost or won, 
affected the position of the English nation for generations. 
If Harold Sigurdson, the king of Norway, had not landed, 
and in that hard-fought battle slain the best and bravest of 
Harold Godwinson’s (the leader of the Danish faction in 
Wessex) huscarles or standing army, the event would 
probably have been different, when within a few days he met 
and fought with William at Senlac. The raw recruits he 
pressed into his service were not like those favourite 
huscarles who died in that fierce fight, or rather, three 
fights in one, which lasted all that day from early dawn to 
evening close, and found them few in number, but victorious, 
with Harold of Norway and Tosti, the two leaders of the 
Norwegian host, dead, and the main body of the foe discom- 
fited and either flying or slain : a slaughter so great, that in 
after ages the bones of the unburied dead still lay in heaps 
upon that plain. 
Like the leaves of the forest, when summer is green, 
That host in the morning all radiant were seen ; 
Like the leaves of the forest, when autumn has blown, 
That host in the evening lay scattered and strewn. 
Orderic Yitalis (mark this well), a.d. 1141. — “The place 
of battle is easily discovered by travellers, where great heaps 
of the bones of the slain lie there unto this day, to bear 
witness of the prodigious number of both people which fell.” 
What were the steps which led up to this campaign p 
Tosti, seemingly once the favourite of Edward and his wife, 
had been supplanted by Harold and banished. Brother-in- 
