]
William was crowned on Christmas Day at Westminster Abbey as the new
sovereign. It was more difficult to change a sovereign in those days
than at present, but that is neither here nor there.
The people were so glad over the coronation that they overdid it, and
their ghoulish glee alarmed the regular Norman army, the impression
getting out that the Anglo-Saxons were rebellious, when as a matter of
fact they were merely exhilarated, having tanked too often with the
tankard.
William the Conqueror now disarmed the city of London, and tipping a
number of the nobles, got them to wait on him. He rewarded his Norman
followers, however, with the contraband estates of the conquered, and
thus kept up his conking for years after peace had been declared.
But the people did not forget that they were there first, and so, while
William was in Normandy, in the year 1067 A.D., hostilities broke out.
People who had been foreclosed and ejected from their lands united to
shoot the Norman usurper, and it was not uncommon for a Norman, while
busy usurping, to receive an arrow in some vital place, and have to give
up sedentary pursuits, perhaps, for weeks afterwards.
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