At length the
[Sidenote: The Englishmen put to flight.]
Englishmen, perceiuing themselues to be ouermatched and beaten downe
on euerie side, and therevnto greatlie discouraged with slaughter of
their king, began first to giue ground, and after to scatter and to
run away, so that well was he that might then escape by flight. When
[Sidenote: _Chron. de bello_. _Wil. Geme._ The Normans fall
into a ditch.]
they had fought the most part of all that saturday, the Normans
followed the chase with such eger rashnesse, that a great number
of them falling with their horsses and armour into a blind ditch
(shadowed with reed and sedges which grew therein) were smouldered and
pressed to death, yer they could be succoured or get anie reliefe. The
next day the Normans fell to gathering in the spoile of the field,
burieng also the dead bodies of their people that were slaine at the
battell, giuing licence in semblable manner to the Englishmen to doo
[Sidenote: _Giral. Camb._]
the like. Of the death of Harold diuerse report diuerslie, in so
much that Girald Cambrensis saith, that after king Harold had receiued
manie wounds, and lost his left eie, he fled from the field vnto the
citie of Westchester, and liued there long after, an holie life, as an
anchoret in the cell of S.
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