Nearly all the rest who were present ran to the fire, some to extinguish it, others to steal and pillage in the midst of the consternation.

William terminated the ceremony by taking the usual oath of Saxon kings at their coronation, adding thereto, as of his own motion, a promise to treat the English people according to their own laws and as well as they had ever been treated by the best of their own kings.

Then he went forth from the church King of England.
We will pursue no farther the life of William the Conqueror: for henceforth it belongs to the history of England, not of France.

We have entered, so far as he was concerned, into pretty long details, because we were bound to get a fair understanding of the event and of the man; not only because of their lustre at the time, but especially because of the serious and long-felt consequences entailed upon France, England, and, we may say, Europe.

We do not care just now to trace out those consequences in all their bearings; but we would like to mark out with precision their chief features, inasmuch as they exercised, for centuries, a determining influence upon the destinies of two great nations, and upon the course of modern civilization.
As to France, the consequences of the conquest of England by the Normans were clearly pernicious, and they have not yet entirely disappeared.