The Abbey of Battle.
Completion of the building.
Consecration of the church. February 11, 1094. place was no longer a wilderness or a camp, no longer the hill of the hoar apple-tree, no longer bristling with the thickset lines of battle, no longer heaped with the corpses of the conquerors and the conquered. The height which had once been fenced in by the palisade of the English host was now fenced in by the precinct wall of a vast monastery; its buildings, overhanging the hill side, covered the spot where Gyrth had fallen by the hand of William;[1] its church, fresh from the hands of the craftsman, covered the ground which had beheld the last act of the day of slaughter; its high altar, blazing doubtless with all the skill of Otto and Theodoric,[2] marked the spot where Harold, struck by the bolt from heaven, had fallen between the Dragon and the Standard. After so many years had passed since the Conqueror had bidden that the memorial of the Conquest should rise on that spot and on no other, the minster of Saint Martin of the Place of Battle stood ready for consecration. Moved by the prayer of Abbot Gausbert, prompted too by his own reverence for the memory and the bidding of his father, William the younger bade that his father's church should at once be hallowed in his own presence.[3] On a Saturday then in the month of February, in the twenty-eighth year since the awful Saturday of Saint Calixtus, the two who were so unequally yoked together to draw the plough of the Church of England made their way to the place of Battle. A crowd of nobles and commons came together to the sight; and with them, besides the Primate, were seven
- ↑ See N. C. vol. iv. p. 404.
- ↑ Ib. 401.
- ↑ In the Battle Chronicle (40) the consecration is naturally an event of great importance. But here too the presence of the King and so great a company is accounted for by their presence in the neighbourhood or other grounds; "Cumque jam operis fabricæ peroptata advenisset perfectio, rege quibusdam causis obortis eandem provinciam cum multis optimatibus forte adeunte, ex instinctu ejusdem abbatis, paterni memor edicti, eandem dedicari basilicam decrevit."
