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in the Middle Ages. 65 coast which Harald had so long defended ; while William of Poictiers informs us, that the same sentiment was expressed in derision by the triumphant Normans : " Dictum est illudendo, oportere situm esse custodem litoris et pelagi, quse cum armis ante vesanus insedit." The concluding words of this passage seem to he purely inferential on the part of the historian, who appears not to have perceived the full intent and significance of the taunt he has recorded ; expressing, as I conceive it must have expressed, all the bitterness inspired by a recent conflict and a hard-won victory. All Europe regarded Harald as a sacrilegious criminal, and he was so stigmatised by historians long after the Norman succession ; even Adam of Bremen, in an incidental allusion to his fate, bestows on him the epithet " vir maleficus ;"* and his burial on the sea-shore " quod accessus maris opcrire solet," was, in the opinion of the foe he had stoutly resisted, the last act of indignity they could offer to his remains. a Lib. ii. c. 26. POSTSCRIPT. In the book of the Customs of London, compiled about the year 1320, it appears that in the liberties of Walter Fitz Walter, the castellan of the city, which constituted the ward of Castle Baynard, the felon convicted of treason was bound to the post fixed in the Thames at Woodwharf to which ships were fastened, for two Sowings and two ebbings of the tide ; but if he was condemned for common larceny, he was taken to the Elms in Smithfield, to be hung like other criminals of that description. Si nul larroun seit pris en son Sokne, il deit aver soun cep [stocks] et souu emprisonement e son sokne. E serra de ilveke menez tauntqe a la Gihale, devaunt le Meire ; e la purverrount son jugement qe lui doit estre done. Mes son jugement ne serra mie pupplie tauntqil viegne en la court le dit Robert e en sa fraunchise. E serra le jugement tiel, sil ad mort deservi par traisoun, qil serra lie au pilier qi estet en Tamise a Wodewharf, la ou horn attaclie lea neefs, deus mountees e deus retretes del ewe. E sil soit dampnez pur comun larcin, e doit estre mene au Humeaus, e suffrir la son jugement, com autres comuns larouns. Liber Custumarum, (preserved at Guildhall,) fol. 80, b. VOL. XXXVIII. K