Of men's love or hate he recked little.

His grim look, his pride, his silence, his wild outbursts of passion, left William lonely even in his court.

His subjects trembled as he passed.

"So stark and fierce was he," writes the English chronicler, "that none dared resist his will." His very wrath was solitary.

"To no man spake he and no man dared speak to him" when the news reached him of Harold's seizure of the throne.