battle-field. Three hundred amulets of gold and silver, we are told, were enclosed in a feretory in the form of an altar, upon which mass had been daily celebrated from the setting out of the expedition.[1] The duke now called for his horse, and was soon mounted upon a noble charger, a recent present from the King of Spain. William's carriage on this occasion was eulogised by one of his followers, the Viscount of Tours: "Never," said he, "have I seen a man so fairly armed, nor one who rode so gallantly, or bore his arms, or became a hauberk so well; neither any one who bore his lance so gracefully, or sat his horse and manoeuvred him so nobly. There is no other such knight under heaven! A fair count he is, and fair king he will be."[2] The Bayeux Tapestry exhibits the duke holding his baton over his right shoulder; and, by representing him of the same height as the generality of his attendants, disproves the legendary statement of his enormous stature, a notion which probably originated from a misconception of the meaning of the epithet Willelmus Magnus, which some of the Norman historians are fond of applying to him.
There were others too, who, from some remarkable demeanour in preparing for the conflict, attracted the gaze of the whole army. Hardly less conspicuous than the duke himself was his half-brother, the Bishop Odo. While most of the monks and priests withdrew to the neighbouring heights within view, to watch and pray, this valorous churchman, disdaining danger, "drew on a hauberk over a white aube, wide in the body, with the sleeve tight, and sat on a white horse, so that all might recognize him. In his hand he held a mace; and wherever he saw most need, he led up and stationed the knights, and often urged them on to assault and strike the enemy."[3] There, too, was the young knight Toustains Rtz-Rou le Blanc, bearing the sacred gonfanon which the pope had blessed and presented to William. This had been offered, in turn, to Raol de Conches, the hereditary standard-bearer of Normandy, and to Walter Giffard, but declined, by the former on the ground of his desiring the more useful service of the sword, by the latter on account of his bald and hoary head. "I shall be in the
