These bold warriors, who despised real dangers, were very subject to the dread of imaginary ones; and many of them began to mutiny, some of them even to desert their colors, when the duke, in order to support their drooping hopes, ordered a procession to be made with the relics of St.Valori,[*] and prayers to be said for more favorable weather.
[* Higden, p.285.Order Vitalis, p.500.

M.
Paris, edit.

Pai anno 1644, p.

2.] The wind instantly changed; and as this incident happened on the eve of the feast of St.Michael, the tutelar saint of Normandy, the soldiers, fancying they saw the hand of Heaven in all these concurring circumstances, set out with the greatest alacrity: they met with no opposition on their passage.

A great fleet which Harold had assembled, and which had cruised all summer off the Isle of Wight, had been dismissed on his receiving false intelligence that William, discouraged by contrary winds and other accidents, had laid aside his preparations.
The Norman armament, proceeding in great order, arrived, without any material loss, at Pevensey, in Sussex; and the army quietly disembarked.
The duke himself, as he leaped on shore, happened to stumble and fall; but had the presence of mind, it is said, to turn the omen to his advantage, by calling aloud that he had taken possession of the country.
And a soldier, running to a neighboring cottage, plucked some thatch, which, as if giving him seizin of the kingdom, he presented to his general.