The English were in a strait disadvantageous place, so that many, discouraged with their ill ordering, scarce having room where to stand, slipped away before the onset, the rest in close order, with their battleaxes and shields, made an impenetrable squadron: the king himself with his brothers on foot stood by the royal standard, wherein the figure of a man fighting was inwoven with gold and precious stones. The Norman foot, most bowmen, made the foremost front, on either side wings of horse somewhat behind. The duke arming, and his corslet given him on the wrong side, said pleasantly, "The strength of my dukedom will be turned now into a kingdom." Then the whole army singing the song of Rowland, the remembrance of whose exploits might hearten them, imploring lastly divine help, the battle began; and was fought sorely on either side but the main body of English foot by no means would be broken, till the duke, causing his men to feign flight, drew them out with desire of pursuit into open disorder, then turned suddenly upon them so routed by themselves, which wrought their overthrow; yet so they died not unmanfully, but turning oft upon their enemies, by the advantage of an upper ground, beat them down by heaps, and filled up a great ditch with their carcases. Thus hung the victory wavering on either side from the third hour of day to evening; when Harold having maintained the fight with unspeakable courage and personal valour, shot into the head with an arrow, fell at length, and left his soldiers without heart longer to withstand the unwearied enemy. With Harold fell also his two brothers, Leofwin and Girtha, with them greatest part of the English nobility. His body lying dead a knight or soldier wounding on the thigh, was by the duke presently turned out of military service. Of Normans and French were slain no small number; the duke himself that day not a little hazarded his person, having had three choice horses killed under him. Victory obtained, and his dead carefully buried, the English also by permission, he sent the body of Harold to his mother without ransom, though she offered very much to redeem it; which having received she buried at Waltham, in a church built there by Harold. In the mean while, Edwin and Morca, who had withdrawn themselves from Harold, hearing of his death, came to London; sending Aldgith the queen

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their sister with all speed to West-chester. Aldred the archbishop of York, and many of the nobles, with the Londoners, would have set up Edgar the right heir, and prepared themselves to fight for him; but Morcar and Edgar not liking the choice, who each of them expected to have been chosen before him, withdrew their forces, and returned home. Duke William, contrary to his former resolution, (if Florent of Worcester, and they who follow him, say true,) wasting, burning, and slaying all in his way; or rather, as saith Malmsbury, not in hostile but in regal manner, came up to London, met at Barcham by Edgar, with the nobles, bishops, citizens, and at length Edwin and Morcar, who all submitted to him, gave hostages and swore fidelity, he to them promised peace and defence; yet permitted his men the while to burn and make prey. Coming to London with all his army, he was on Christmas-day solemnly crowned in the great church at Westminster, by Aldred archbishop of York, having first given his oath at the altar, in presence of all the people, to defend the church, well govern the people, maintain right law, prohibit rapine, and unjust judgment. Thus the English, while they agreed not about the choice of their native king, were constrained to take the yoke of an outlandish conqueror. With what minds and by what course of life they had fitted themselves for this servitude, William of Malmsbury spares not to lay open. Not a few years before the Normans came, the clergy, though in Edward the Confessor's days, had lost all good literature and religion, scarce able to read and understand their Latin service; he was a miracle to others, who knew his grammar. The monks went clad in fine stuffs, and made no difference what they eat; which though in itself no fault, yet to their consciences was irreligious. The great men, given to gluttony and dissolute life, made a prey of the common people, abusing their daughters whom they had in service, then turning them off to the stews; the meaner sort tippling together night and day, spent all they had in drunkenness, attended with other vices which effeminate men's minds. Whence it came to pass, that carried on with fury and rashness more than any true fortitude or skill of war, they gave to William their conqueror so easy a conquest. Not but that some few

4 Sim. Dun,

of all sorts were much better among them; but such was the generality. And as the long suffering of God permits bad men to enjoy prosperous days with the good, so his severity ofttimes exempts not good men from their share in evil times with the bad.

If these were the causes of such misery and thraldom to those our ancestors, with what better close can be concluded, than here in fit season to remember this age in the midst of her security, to fear from like vices, without amendment, the revolution of like calamities?

END OF THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN.

BRIEF HISTORY OF MOSCOVIA,

AND OF OTHER LESS KNOWN COUNTRIES LYING EASTWARD OF RUSSIA AS FAR AS CATHAY.

GATHERED FROM THE WRITINGS OF SEVERAL EYEWITNESSES. [FIRST PUBLISHED, 1682.]

THE PREFACE.

THE study of geography is both profitable and delightful: but the writers thereof, though some of them exact enough in setting down longitudes and latitudes, yet in those other relations of manners, religion, government, and such like, accounted geographical, have for the most part missed their proportions. Some too brief and deficient satisfy not: others too voluminous and impertinent cloy and weary out the reader, while they tell long stories of absurd superstitions, ceremonies, quaint habits, and other petty circumstances little to the purpose. Whereby that which is useful, and only worth observation, in such a wood of words, is either overslipped, or soon forgotten; which perhaps brought into the mind of some men more learned and judicious, who had not the leisure or purpose to write an entire geography, yet at least to assay something in the description of one or two countries, which might be as a pattern or example to render others more cautious hereafter, who intended the whole work. And this, perhaps, induced Paulus Jovius to describe only Moscovy and Britain. Some such thoughts, many years since, led me at a vacant time to attempt the like argument, and I began with Moscovy, as being the most northern region of Europe reputed civil; and the more northern parts thereof first discovered by English voyagers. Wherein I saw I had

by much the advantage of Jovius. What was scattered in many volumes, and observed at several times by eyewitnesses,

with no cursory pains I laid together, to save the reader a far longer travail of wandering through so many desert authors; who yet with some delight drew me after them, from the eastern bounds of Russia to the walls of Cathay, in several late journies made thither overland by Russians, who describe the countries in their way far otherwise than our common geographers. From proceeding further, other occasions diverted me. This Essay, such as it is, was thought by some, who knew of it, not amiss to be published; that so many things remarkable, dispersed before, now brought under one view, might not hazard to be otherwise lost, nor the labour lost of collecting them.

MOSCOVIA, OR RELATIONS OF MOSCOVIA, &c.

CHAP. I.-A BRIEF DESCRIPTION.

THE empire of Moscovia, or as others call it Russia, is bounded on the north with Lapland and the ocean; southward by the Crim Tartar; on the west by Lithuania, Livonia, and Poland; on the east by the river Ob, or Oby, and the Nagayan Tartars, on the Volga as far as Astracan.

The north parts of this country are so barren, that the inhabitants fetch their corn a thousand miles ;' and so cold in winter, that the very sap of their woodfuel burning on the fire freezes at the brand's end, where it drops. The mariners, which were left on shipboard in the first English voyage thither, in going up only from the cabins to the hatches, had their breath so congealed by the cold, that they fell down as it were stifled. The bay of St. Nicholas, where they first put in, lieth in sixty-four degrees; called so from the abbey there built of wood, wherein are twenty monks, unlearned, as then they found them, and great drunkards: their church is fair, full of images and tapers. There are besides but six houses, whereof one built by the English. In the bay over against the abbey is Rose Island, full of damask and red roses, violets and wild rosemary; the isle is in circuit seven or eight 1 Hack. 258. 2 Ibid. vol. i. 248. 3 Ibid. 376. + Ibid. 365.

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