WILLIAM, otherwise the Bastard of Failaise, sat in his ducal castle at Rouen and meditated on the weakness and perfidy of kings. He was fully as strong as his Capetian overlord on the East, and he had put that monarch firmly in his place on several occasions, taking bits of disputed territory to prove it. But fendal law was still in the eleventh century: William never thought of aspiring to the crown of France. His ambition lay in another direction.

The realm of England, precariously united under the bewildering succession of Saxon Aelfreds and Aelfrics and Aedmonds, had been reduced to a sorry state by the Danish invasion. A Danish king had ruled it for years, and when the Saxon line regained the throne, Danish influence and Danish families still dictated to the country. Edward, called the Confessor, was a good man and later a canonized Saint, but a Danish earl and his sons dominated the king and wracked the land with their ambitions enterprises. The succession was obscured. There was Harold, who finally obtained it; there was Edward the Aetheling ("the exile") who prudently remained in far-off Hungary, and there was William, Duke of Normandy.

Belloc doubly underscores William's legitimate claim to the English throne, based on the intermarriage of the Houses of Normandy and England. It was as good a claim as any, except that it was obscured by William's bastardy. That had been no bar to his Norman succession. But William's strongest claim was the oath of Harold, obtained from the Englishman during his sojourn at the court of Normandy while Edward was still living. This is the traditional view of William's claim. Belloc emphasizes it by dilating upon the nature of the feudal oath. Harold had become William's "man", and his repudiation of his own oath by taking the English crown for himself alienated feudal sympathy and put European public opinion, such as it was, squarely behind William.

It is unnecessary to assure the addicts of Belloc biographies that this one charges along with the same speed and color as the rest, with the same impatient snorts at contrary opinions. It is not up to the standards of "Wolsey" and "Richelieu" and "Robespierre" because it is a much shorter work, and forms part of a popular biographical series of somewhat less than scholarly pretensions. But the Belloc flavor is only limited, not essentially impaired.

There is, of course, the usual hearty enthusiasm for the Catholic Church and its efficacy as a unifying force in Europe during the lusty ages. And finally there is at its best the Belloc predilection for military history. In a sense, the whole book is an excuse for the bellicose English to write the tactical and strategic history of the Battle of Hastings (whose alternate title of "Senlac" he rejects). it is thrilling and exciting reading, even for a modern anti-war demonstrator. Harold, damned by the author for his fendal perfidy, draws his admiration for his generalship. He held the heights, and it was a hard day's work for the Norman spearmen, archers, and axemen to win the issue.

There is a marvellously succinct account of the ducal government in Normandy, its approach to genuine monarchy, and the extension of the system to England.

The book is recommended without qualification to Belloc enthusiasts and to those with a taste for military history its appeal to others depends upon their attitude toward the historical work of the "third cleverest man in London."