Note 64 — PART II HISTORICAL STUDIES

What security, it may be asked, could they obtain for the terms they seem to have exacted? Bold as it may seem, I would here venture to read between the lines, and to make the suggestion—it is nothing more—that when there issued from the gates 'the clergy of the city, bearing their sacred books and other holy things' (as Mr Freeman rendered the words of Orderic), the real object of their coming forth was to make the king swear upon their relics64 to the observance of the terms they had obtained. It was indeed the irony of fate if William, who was ever insisting on the breach of Harold's oath, was driven, by the force of circumstances, to take such an oath himself.