6.] [**** Order.

Vitalis, p.

503.] [***** Malmsbury (p.

271) says, that he also promised to govern the Normans and English by equal laws; and this addition to the usual oath seems not improbable, considering the circumstances of the time!] The Norman soldiers, who were placed without in order to guard the church, hearing the shouts within, fancied that the English were offering violence to their duke; and they immediately assaulted the populace, and set fire to the neighboring houses.

The alarm was conveyed to the nobility who surrounded the prince; both English and Normans, full of apprehensions, rushed out to secure themselves from the present danger; and it was with difficulty that William himself was able to appease the tumult.[*] The king, thus possessed of the throne by a pretended descination of King Edward, and by an irregular election of the people, but still more by force of arms, retired from London to Berking, in Essex, {1067.} and there received the submissions of all the nobility who had not attended his coronation.