Kent had done its full share in the national defence on the hill near
Hastings, and was not to be blamed if, when all England remained supine and
inactive, its villagers refused to throw away their lives uselessly. The
duke was detained by sickness for a month near Canterbury, and there
received the submission of Kent and Sussex, and also that of the great
ecclesiastical city of Winchester; but the spirit of resistance in London
still burned brightly, and William was indisposed to risk the loss that
would be incurred by an assault upon its walls. He, therefore, moved round
in a wide circle, wasting the land, plundering and destroying, till the
citizens, convinced that resistance could only bring destruction upon
themselves and their city, and in spite of the efforts of their wounded
sheriff, sent an embassy to the duke at Berkhampstead to submit and do
homage to him.
Not London alone was represented by this embassy. The young king, elected
but uncrowned, was with it; two archbishops, two bishops, and many of the
chief men in England accompanied it, and although they were not the
spokesmen of any Witan, they might be said fairly to represent London and
Southern England.
Deserted by the North, without a leader, and seeing their land exposed to
wholesale ravages, the South and West Saxons were scarcely to be blamed for
preferring submission to destruction. They doubtless thought that William,
the wise ruler of Normandy, would make a far better king than the boy they
had chosen, who was himself almost as much a foreigner as William, save
that there was a strain of English royal blood in his veins.
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