The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Advertisement.
• Biographical Notice of M. Augustin Thierry.
• Introduction.
• History of the Conquest of England By the Normans.
• Book I.: From the Establishment of the Britons to the Ninth Century. Bc 55—ad 787
• Book II.: From the First Landing of the Danes In England to the End of Their Domination. 787—1048.
• Book III.: From the Insurrection of the English People Against the Norman Favourites of King Edward, to the Battle of Hastings. 1048—1066.
• Book IV.: From the Battle of Hastings to the Taking of Chester, the Last City Conquered By the Normans. 1066—1070.
• Book V.: From the Formation of the Camp of Refuge In the Isle of Ely, to the Execution of the Last Saxon Chief. 1070—1076.
• Book VI.: From the Quarrel Between King William and His Eldest Son Robert, to the Last Visit of William to the Continent. 1077—1087.
• Book VII.: From the Death of William the Conqueror, to the Last General Conspiracy of the English Against the Normans. 1087—1137.
• Appendix.
• No. I. (page 10.): Arymes Prydyn Vawr.
• No. II. (page 18.): Decree of the Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian, Relative to the Subjection of the Bishops of Gaul to the Pope of Rome. ( Ad 445.)
• No. III. (page 22.): Conference of the Catholic and Arian Bishops For the Conversion of the King of the Burgundians.
• No. IV. (page 44.): Speech of a Northumbrain Chief.
• No. V. (page 75.): National Song of the Anglo-saxons, On the Victory of Brunanburgh.
• No. VI. (page 164.): ‘song Composed In Brittany On the Departure of a Young’ Breton Follower of the Normans, and On His Shipwreck. 1
• No. VII. (page 175.): Poetical Narrative of the Battle of Hastings.
• No. VIII. (page 179.): Letter From M. Augustin Thierry to M. De La Fontenelle De Vaudore, Corresponding Member of the Institute.
• No. IX. (page 182.): The Valiant Courage and Policy of the Kentishmen Which Overcame William the Conqueror, Who Sought to Take From Them Their Ancient Laws and Customs, Which They Retain to This Day. 1
• No. X. (p. 185.): Details of the Surrender of London, Extracted From a Contemporary Poem, Attributed to Guy, Bishop of Amiens. 1
• No. XI. (page 190.): Names of the Provinces and Principal Towns of England As Given In the Saxon Chronicles.
• No. XII. (page 197.): Ancient List of the Conquerors of England.
• Note From the Abbe De La Rue’s Work, Recherches Sur La Tapisserie De Bayeux. Caen, 1824.
• No. XIII. (page 205.): Enumeration of the Lands of Brihtrik, Possessed By Queen Matilda. 1
• No. XIV. (page 206.): Narrative of the Imprisonment of the Saxon Brihtrik. 1
• No. XV. (page 227.): Extract From Domesday-book Relative to the State of the Towns Immediately After the Conquest. 1
• No. XVI. (page 263.): Narrative of the Exploits and Death of Hereward. 1

BOOK V.

FROM THE FORMATION OF THE CAMP OF REFUGE IN THE ISLE OF ELY, TO THE EXECUTION OF THE LAST SAXON CHIEF.

1070—1076.

The whole country of the Anglo-Saxons was conquered, from the Tweed to Cape Cornwall, from the English Channel to the Severn, and the conquered population was overrun in every direction by the army of the conquerors. There were no longer any free provinces, no longer masses of men in military organization; there were only a few scattered remains of the defeated armies and garrisons, soldiers who had no chiefs, chiefs without followers. War was now continued against them in the form of individual persecution; the most prominent were tried and condemned with some show of form; the remainder were handed over to the discretion of the foreign soldiers, who made them serfs on their domains,1 or massacred them, with circumstances which an ancient historian declines to detail, as incredible and monstrous to relate.2 Those who retained any means of emigration proceeded to the ports of Wales or Scotland, and embarked thence, as the old annals express it, to carry their grief and misery through foreign lands.3 Denmark, Norway, and the countries where the Teutonic language was spoken, were generally the goal of these emigrations; but English fugitives were also seen journeying to the south, and soliciting an asylum among nations of an entirely different language.

The rumour of the high favour which the Scandinavian guard of the emperors enjoyed at Constantinople, induced a certain number of young men to seek their fortune in that direction. They assembled under the command of Siward, the late chief of Gloucestershire, sailed along the coast of Spain, and landed in Sicily, whence they addressed a proposition to the imperial court,4 and were, in accordance with it, incorporated in the select troop which, under the German name of Varings, guarded the chamber of the emperors, and had the custody of the keys of the towns in which they were quartered, and at times of that of the public treasure. The Varings, or as the Greeks pronounced it, Varangs, were in general Danes, Swedes, or Germans; they allowed their hair to grow in the northern fashion, and their principal weapon was the great double-bladed axe, which they ordinarily bore on the right shoulder. This body, whose aspect was truly formidable, had for centuries been renowned for their strict discipline and inflexible fidelity. The example of the first Saxons who enrolled themselves in it was followed by others, and ultimately the body of Varings was almost entirely formed of Englishmen, or, as the Greeks, in their still classic idiom called them, of Barbarians from the island of Britain.1 The Anglo-Saxon tongue, or a dialect compounded of Saxon and Danish, became, to the exclusion of Greek, the official language of these guards of the imperial palace; it was in this language that they received the orders of their chiefs, and that they themselves addressed to the emperor, on high festival days, their felicitations and their homage.2

Of the Saxons who could not or would not emigrate, many sought refuge in the forests with their families, and, if they were rich and powerful, with their servants and vassals.3 The roads along which the Norman convoys passed were infested by their armed bands; they resumed from the conquerors in detail that which the conquerors had taken from them in mass, and thus obtained ransom for their heritages, or revenged by assassination the massacre of their countrymen.4 These refugees are called brigands by the historians favourable to the conquest,5 who in their narratives treat them as men wilfully and wickedly armed against lawful order. “Every day,” say they, “were committed infinite thefts and homicides, instigated by the innate wickedness of the natives, and the immense riches of this kingdom;”1 but the natives thought they had a right to recover as best they might these riches of which they had been deprived; and if they became robbers, it was only, in their opinion, to obtain their own property. The order against which they rose, the law which they violated, had no sanction in their eyes; and thus the English word outlaw2 thenceforth lost in the mouth of the subjugated people its once unfavourable meaning, so much so, that the old tales, the popular legends and romances of the English, have spread a sort of poetic colouring over the person of the proscribed men, and the wandering and free life they led in the greenwood.3 In these romances, the outlaw is ever the most joyous, the bravest of men;4 he is king in the forest, and fears not the king of the country.

It was more especially the north country, which had most energetically resisted the invaders, that became the land of these armed wanderers, of this last protest of the conquered. The vast forests of Yorkshire were the abode of a numerous band, who had for their chief a man named Sweyn, son of Sigg.5 In the midland counties and near London, even under the walls of the Norman castles, there were formed many of these troops, who, rejecting slavery to the last, say the historians of the time, took up their dwelling in the desert.6 Their encounters with the conquerors were always sanguinary, and whenever they appeared in some inhabited place, it was a pretext for the foreigner to redouble his tyranny; he punished the unarmed for the trouble occasioned him by the armed; and the latter, in their turn, frequently paid formidable visits to those who were pointed out to them as friends of the Normans. Thus the country was kept in a state of perpetual terror. To the danger of perishing by the sword of the foreigner, who thought himself a demigod among brutes, who understood neither prayer nor explanation nor excuse proffered him in the tongue of the conquered, was added that of being regarded as a traitor or lukewarm patriot by the free Saxons, frantic with despair as the Normans were with pride.1 Thus no man dared to walk alone, even on his own grounds around his own house; the abode of every Englishman who had sworn peace and given hostages to the conqueror was closed and fortified like a town in a state of siege.2 It was filled with weapons of every description, bows and arrows, axes, maces, poniards, and iron forks; the doors were furnished with bolts and bars. When the hour of rest arrived, at the moment of closing up everything, the head of the family arose and repeated aloud the prayers which were said at sea on the approach of a storm; he concluded thus: “The Lord bless us and help us;” and all present answered Amen. This custom subsisted in England for more than two centuries after the conquest.3

In the northern part of Cambridgeshire, there is a vast extent of low and marshy land, intersected in every direction by rivers. All the waters from the centre of England, which do not flow into the Thames or the Trent, empty themselves into these marshes, which in the latter end of autumn overflow, cover the land, and are charged with fogs and vapours. A portion of this damp and swampy country was then, as now, called the Isle of Ely; another the Isle of Thorney, a third the Isle of Croyland. This district, almost a moving bog, impracticable for cavalry and for soldiers heavily armed, had more than once served as a refuge for the Saxons in the time of the Danish conquest; towards the close of the year 1069, it became the rendezvous of several bands of patriots from various quarters, assembling against the Normans.4 Former chieftains, now dispossessed of their lands, successively repaired hither with their clients, some by land, others by water, by the mouths of the rivers. They here constructed entrenchments of earth and wood, and established an extensive armed station, which took the name of the camp of refuge.1 The foreigners at first hesitated to attack them amidst their rushes and willows, and thus gave them time to transmit messages in every direction, at home and abroad, to the friends of old England. Become powerful, they undertook a partisan war by land and by sea, or, as the conquerors called it, robbery and piracy.

Every day, to the camp of these “robbers,” these “pirates” in the good cause, came some Saxon of rank, layman or priest, bringing with him the last remnant of his fortune or the contribution of his church; among them were Eghelrik, bishop of Lindisfarn, and Sithrik, abbot of a monastery in Devonshire. The Normans charged them with outraging religion and dishonouring the holy church, in abandoning themselves to this infamous career;2 but these interested reproaches did not stay them. The example of the insurgent prelates encouraged many men, and the ascendancy which they exercised over all minds, for good as for evil, became favourable to the patriotic cause. The churchmen, hitherto lukewarm in that cause, rallied there with zeal. Many of them, it is true, had already nobly devoted themselves to their country’s cause, but the mass had applied to the conquerors the apostolic precept of submission to the powers that be.3 The conquest had, in general, treated them somewhat better than the rest of the nation; all their lands had not been taken; the asylum of their habitations had not been everywhere violated. In the vast halls of the monasteries, whither the Norman spies had not yet penetrated, the Saxon laymen could assemble in great numbers, and, under the pretext of pursuing their religious exercises, could freely converse and conspire. They brought with them the money that had escaped the grasping perquisitions of the conquerors, and deposited it in the treasury of the sanctuary, for the support of the national cause, or the subsistence of their children, should they themselves perish in the struggle. Sometimes the abbot of the monastery removed the gold plates and precious stones with which the Saxon kings had adorned the altars and reliquaries, thus disposing of their gifts for the salvation of the country which they themselves had loved in their lives. Brave and faithful messengers conveyed the produce of these common contributions, through the Norman posts, to the camp of refuge,1 but these patriotic operations did not long remain secret. King William, by the counsel of William Fitz-Osbern, his seneschal, soon ordered perquisitions in all the convents of England, and removed all the money that the rich English had deposited there, with most of the vases, reliquaries, and precious ornaments.2 He also took from the churches, where they had been deposited, the charters which contained the false promises of clemency and justice made by the foreign king when his victory was yet uncertain.3 This vast spoliation took place in the Lent, which, in the ancient calendar, terminated the year 1070; and in the octave of Easter there arrived in England, pursuant to William’s application to that effect, three legates from the apostolic see; Ermenfroy, bishop of Sion, and the cardinals John and Peter. The Conqueror founded great designs upon the presence of these representatives of his ally, pope Alexander, and he kept them with him a whole year, honouring them, says an old historian, as though they were angels of God.4 Amidst the famine which was sweeping off the English by thousands, brilliant festivals were celebrated in the fortified palace of Winchester. There the Roman cardinals, again placing the crown upon the head of the Norman king, effaced the futile malediction which the archbishop of York, Eldred, had fulminated against him.5

After these entertainments there was held at Winchester an assembly of all the foreigners, laymen or priests, who had realized a great fortune by the spoliation of the English.6 The Saxon bishops were summoned to attend, in the name of the authority of the Roman church, by circulars, the haughty style of which was calculated to warn them what the result of this great council, as it was called, would be with regard to them. “The church of Rome,” said the envoys, “has the right to superintend the conduct of all Christians; and it more especially behoves her to make inquiry into your deportment and manner of life; you whom she has instructed in the faith of Christ, and to remedy the decline among you of that faith which you hold from her. It is to exercise over you this salutary inspection that we, the ministers of the blessed apostle Peter, and authorized representatives of our lord the pope Alexander, have resolved to hold a council with you, to seek out and uproot the evil things that pullulate in the vineyard of the Lord, and to plant others in their place, profitable to the body and the soul.”1

The real meaning of these mystic words was, that the new king, in concert with the pope, had resolved to get rid of the whole body of the high clergy of English race; the legates gave a sort of religious colour to this political operation. Such was their mission, and the first prelate whom they struck was the archbishop of Canterbury, Stigand, the same who had marched in arms against the foreigner, and refused to crown him king. But these his actual offences were not mentioned; the decree of ecclesiastical degradation was based upon other causes, upon an honester pretext, as an ancient historian expresses it.2 The ordination of Stigand was annulled, first because he had assumed the archbishopric of Canterbury in the life-time of archbishop Robert, exiled by the English people; secondly, because he had celebrated mass in the pallium of the said Robert; and finally, because he had received his own pallium from Benedict, declared antipope and excommunicated by the church.3

When the friend of king Harold and of his country had been, in the ecclesiastical language, struck by the axe of correction as a barren tree,4 his lands were divided between king William, the bishop of Bayeux, the king’s brother, and Adeliza, wife of Hugh de Grantmesnil, who, doubtless conciliated by this handsome present, came to inhabit England, and brought her husband back with her.1 The English bishops, to whom no canonical objection could be found, were none the less struck. Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, Eghelmar, bishop of East Anglia, Eghelrik, bishop of Sussex, and other prelates, with the abbots of the principal monasteries, were deposed nearly at the same time. At the moment of pronouncing sentence upon each, each was compelled to swear upon the gospel that he regarded himself as deprived of his dignity for ever, and that, whoever his successor might be, he would do nothing to disparage him, by protesting against him.2 The deprived bishops were conducted either to a fortress, or to a monastery, which was to serve as a prison. Those who had formerly been monks, were forcibly re-cloistered in their old monasteries, and it was officially announced that, disgusted with the bustle and noise of the world, they had been anxious to rejoin the companions of their youth.3

Several members of the high Saxon clergy found means to escape this fate; archbishop Stigand and the bishop of Lincoln both fled to Scotland; Eghelsig, abbot of Saint Augustin, sailed to Denmark, and remained there, although demanded by the Conqueror, as the king’s fugitive.4 Eghelwin, bishop of Durham, upon the point of leaving also for exile, solemnly cursed the aggressors of his country, and declared them separated from the communion of Christians, in the grave and sombre formula by which this separation was pronounced.5 But his words fell harmless upon the Norman king: William had priests to gainsay the Saxon priests, as he had swords to break the Saxon swords.

Lanfranc, that monk of Lombard origin whom we have seen playing the part of negotiator at the court of Rome, still lived in Normandy, greatly renowned for his learning as a jurist, and still equally beloved by the pope and the new king.1 Him the legate of Alexander II. proposed as successor of Stigand in the archbishopric of Canterbury, and William fully approved the choice, in the hope that the ability of Lanfranc would greatly contribute to consolidate the conquest. Queen Matilda and the Norman lords hastened his departure for England, where he was joyfully received by the Normans, who hypocritically celebrated his arrival as that of “an institutor sent from God to reform the evil habits of the English.”2 Lanfranc was named archbishop by the election of the king and his barons, contrary to the ancient custom of the Anglo-Saxon church, where the prelates were elected by the body of the clergy, and the abbots by the monks.3 This custom was one of those which the conquest could not permit to remain, for all the religious, as well as the civil power, was to pass from the natives to the conquerors.

When archbishop Lanfranc made his first entry into the metropolis transferred to his sway, he was seized with a profound sentiment of sadness on seeing the state to which the Normans had reduced it. The church of Christ at Canterbury was devastated by pillage and conflagration, and the high altar, despoiled of its ornaments, was well nigh buried under a heap of rubbish.4

At the feast of Pentecost, a second council was held at Windsor, and Thomas, one of the king’s chaplains, was named archbishop of York, in the place of the Saxon Eldred, who had died of grief. Thomas, like Lanfranc, found his metropolitan church destroyed by fire, with its ornaments, charters, titles, and privileges; he found the territory of his diocese ravaged, and the Normans, who inhabited it, so saddened by the spectacle of their own devastations, that they even hesitated to settle on the lands which they had taken.5 Thomas took possession of all the domains of the church of York, but, whether from disgust or terror, no man, Norman or Saxon, would rent them.1

The pope sent his own pallium to Lanfranc, in token of investiture, and loaded him with flatteries. “I long for you,” he said, “and am only consoled for your absence by reflecting on the happy fruits which England will derive from your care.”2 It was thus that, viewed from a distance, the hideous operations of the conquest appeared under agreeable colours. The mission of Lanfranc to England, his real and avowed mission, was to make religion subservient to the enslavement of the English, to complete, says an old narrator, the ruin of the conquered nation, by the mutual embraces of royalty and the priesthood.3 The more effectually to realize this object, the archbishop of Canterbury proposed to the Conqueror a new plan of ecclesiastical constitution, a plan as favourable to the ambition of the prelate as to the stability of the conquest. “It is necessary,” said Lanfranc to king William, “that there should be in England but one religious chief, in order that the royalty you have conquered may be maintained in all its integrity. It is necessary that the church of York, the church of the land of rebellion, though ruled by a Norman, should become subject to that of Kent; it is necessary, above all, that the archbishop of York shall not enjoy the prerogative of crowning the kings of England, lest some day, voluntarily, or on compulsion, he lend his ministration to some Saxon or Dane, elected by the revolted English.”4

The church of Kent or Canterbury was, as we have already seen, the first church founded by the missionaries from Rome among the yet pagan Saxons; upon this priority in point of time had been established the vague idea of a kind of hierarchal pre-eminence, but without any effective supremacy having resulted from it, either for the church of Kent or for those who governed it. The metropolitan see of York had remained its equal, both conjointly exercising the chief superintendence over all the bishoprics of England.1 It was this order of things that archbishop Lanfranc undertook to reduce to absolute unity; a new thing, say the historians of the period, a thing unheard of before the reign of the Normans.2 He ransacked the archives for every possible privilege, however ambiguous, of every pope that had so evinced his affection for the church of Canterbury, the eldest daughter of papacy in Britain. He established the axiom that the law should proceed whence the faith had proceeded, and that as Kent was subject to Rome, because from Rome it had received Christianity, so York ought to be hierarchally subject to Kent.3

Thomas, the Norman archbishop of York, whose personal independence this policy tended to destroy, was not sufficiently devoted to the cause of the conquest to agree, without opposition, to this new constitution.4 He requested his colleague Lanfranc to cite some authentic titles in support of his pretensions. This was an embarrassing demand; but Lanfranc eluded it by assuring him that good and valid acts and titles would not be wanting if, unfortunately, they had not all perished four years before in the burning of his church.5 This evasive answer terminated the dispute, aided, indeed, by certain official warnings, which the indiscreet adversary of king William’s confident received, and which signified to him that if, for the peace and unity of the kingdom, he did not submit to receive the law from his colleague, and to acknowledge that the see of York had never been the equal of the other metropolitan see, he and all his relations would be banished not only from England, but from Normandy.6 Thomas insisted no further, but did his duty as a faithful son of the conquest; he resigned into the hands of Lanfranc all the power which his predecessors had exercised south of the Humber, and, making a solemn profession of obedience and fidelity, retained only the name of archbishop; for Lanfranc, with the title of primate, concentrated in his own person all its rights.1 In the language of the conquerors, he became, by the grace of God, father of all the churches; in the language of the conquered, all the churches fell under his yoke and were his tributaries.2 He expelled whom he chose, replacing them with Normans, Frenchmen, men of Lorraine, men of every country and every race, provided they were not English;3 and it is to be remarked, that in the general dispossessing of the former prelates of England, those of foreign birth who had been naturalized in the country were spared; for example, Hermann, Guis, and Walter or Gualtier, all three men of Lorraine, who retained the bishoprics of Wells, Sherborne, and Hereford.

Most of the bishoprics and abbeys were employed, as had formerly been the property of the rich, the liberty of the poor, and the beauty of the women, in paying the debts of the conquest. One Remi, formerly a monk at Fecamp, received the bishopric of Lincoln for a vessel and twenty armed men whom he had brought, in 1066, to the rendezvous of the Norman troops.4 This man and the other prelates come from beyond seas—a spiritual arriere-ban—everywhere expelled the monks who, according to a custom peculiar to England, lived upon the domains of the episcopal churches; and king William thanked them for this, holding, says a contemporary writer, that monks of English race could only bear him ill will.5 A class of adventurers, priests in name only, poured down upon the prelacies, archdeaconries, and deaneries of England,6 carrying with them the spirit of violence and rapine, the haughty and domineering manners of the foreign ruler; many of them became noted for their splendid ostentation and their disorderly life—several for their infamous actions.7 Robert de Limoges, bishop of Lichfield, pillaged the monastery of Coventry; he took the houses and goods of the monks who inhabited it, forced open their caskets and their coffers, and ultimately pulled down their houses, to build with the materials an episcopal palace, the cost of furnishing which was defrayed by melting down the gold and silver ornaments that decorated the church.1 The same Robert made a decree forbidding the Saxon priests the use of nourishing food and instructive books, fearing, say the historians, lest good eating and learning might render them too strong and too bold against their bishop.2

Nearly all the Norman bishops disdained to inhabit the ancient capitals of their dioceses, which were, for the most part, petty towns, and transferred their residences to places better adapted for the luxurious enjoyment of life; it was thus that Coventry, Lincoln, Chester, Salisbury, and Thetford, became episcopal towns.3 In general, the churchmen introduced by the invasion were a new affliction for England; and their tyranny, which assailed consciences, was even more odious than the brute force of the men of the sword. In some cases, indeed, the Norman abbots also wielded the sword, though only against unarmed monks; more than one English convent was the scene of military executions. In that governed by one Turauld or Torauld, of Fecamp, the abbot was accustomed to cry, “A moi, mes hommes d’armes,” whenever his monks resisted him in any point of ecclesiastical discipline. His warlike exploits in this way became so noted, that the Conqueror thought himself called upon to punish him, and, a singular mode of chastisement, sent him to rule the abbey of Peterborough in Northamptonshire, a post dangerous from its vicinity to the Saxon camp of refuge, “but very fit,” said William, “for an abbot who is so good a soldier.”4 Delivered from this formidable chief, the monks were none the better off; for in his place they received one Guerin de Lire, who, in the words of an ancient narrative, took the last crown from their purses, to gain for himself the renown of wealth among those who had once seen him poor.1 This Guerin had the bodies of his predecessors, the abbots of English race, dug up, and threw their bones out of doors.2

Whilst these things were going on in England, fame was publishing abroad by the pens of hired priests, or priests who wished to be hired, that William, the powerful, the victorious, the pious, had civilized that country, until then barbarous, and revived Christianity there, until then greatly neglected.3 The truth, however, was not wholly stifled: the cries of the oppressed reached even to Rome; and in that Roman court, accused by contemporary historians of being so venal,4 there were some conscientious men who denounced the revolution operating in England, as odious and contrary to the ecclesiastical laws. The degradation in a body of the Saxon bishops and the principal abbots, and the intrusion of Normans into their places, was warmly censured.5 But the death of Alexander II., and the accession, under the name of Gregory VII., of that archdeacon Hildebrand who, as we have seen, had displayed so much zeal in favour of the invasion, reduced well nigh to silence the impeachers of the new church founded by the Norman conquest. Her canonical legitimacy ceased to be questioned, and two individuals only, Thomas, archbishop of York, and Remi, bishop of Lincoln, were cited before the pontifical court, the one because he was the son of a priest, the other because he had bought the episcopal dignity with money.6

Lanfranc accompanied them to Rome, laden with presents for the pope and principal citizens. All three largely distributed the gold of the English in the city of the apostles, and thus acquired great renown.7 This conduct smoothed all difficulties for them; the affair of the two Norman prelates was privately arranged, and, instead of an investigation into their conduct, there was merely an arranged scene, in which both returned to the pope, in sign of obedience, their ring and pastoral staff; then Lanfranc pleaded their cause, proving that they were useful, nay, very necessary to the new king and to the arrangements of the kingdom;1 and the pope answered: “Decide the affair as thou thinkest fit; thou art the father of that country; I place the two pastoral rods2 at thy disposition.” Lanfranc took them and returned them to Remi and Thomas; then having himself received from Gregory VII. the confirmation of his title of primate of all England, he departed with his companions.

Thus the churches of the English continued to be handed over without obstacle, and by the consent of the Roman church, to priests of every nation. The prelate of foreign race delivered his homilies to a Saxon auditory in the French language, and because they listened patiently, from fear or apathy, grew elated with the power of his discourse, which, he said, miraculously insinuated itself into the ears of the barbarians.3 A sort of shame, and the desire to exhibit to the Christian world something different from this ridiculous spectacle, induced William to seek some ecclesiastic whom the opinion of the period extolled, from afar, for the austerity of his monastic life. Such was Guimond, a monk of the abbey of La Croix-Saint-Leufroi, in Normandy; the king invited him to cross the sea, and he at once obeyed the order of his temporal lord. On his arrival, the Conqueror told him that he designed to retain him there, and to raise him to a high ecclesiastical dignity: this is the monk’s answer, if we may believe an historian only a few years posterior:4

“Many motives lead me to avoid ecclesiastical dignities and power; I will not enumerate them all. I shall only say that I do not conceive how it were possible for me worthily to be the religious chief of men whose manners and language I do not understand, and whose fathers, brothers, and dear friends have died under your sword, or have been disinherited, banished, imprisoned, or cruelly enslaved by you. Search the Holy Scriptures, and see whether any law there permits the pastor of God’s flock to be violently imposed on it by the will of an enemy. That which you have forcibly acquired by war, at the cost of the blood of so many men, can you without sin share it with me, with those who, like me, have sworn to despise the outer world, and who, for the love of Christ, have renounced the goods of this world? It is the law of all monks to abstain from rapine, and to accept of no share of any spoil, even as an offering to the altar; for as the Scriptures say, he that offereth in sacrifice the goods of the poor, acteth as one who sacrificeth the son in the presence of the father. When I recal to mind these divine precepts, I feel terrified; your England seems to me a vast prey; and I fear to touch either her or her treasures, as I should fear to touch a burning brasier.”1

The monk of Saint Leufroi again crossed the sea, and returned to his cloister; but the report soon spread that he had exalted the poverty of the monks above the wealth of the prelates; had, in the very teeth of the king and his barons, denounced the acquisition of England as plunder; and had treated as spoliators and intruders all the bishops and abbots installed in that country against the will of the English. His words displeased many who, not desiring to imitate him, calumniated him, and succeeded, by their intrigues, in driving him from the country. Guimond went to Rome, and thence to Apulia, to one of the towns conquered and possessed by the Normans.2

The hatred which the clergy of the conquest bore to the native English extended even to the saints of English race, and in more than one place their tombs were opened and their bones scattered abroad.3 Whatever had formerly been an object of veneration with the country, was regarded by the new comers as base and despicable.4 But the violent aversion with which the English saints inspired the Normans was based upon political considerations, apart from their general contempt for all that the conquered people respected. In many instances, religious veneration had been, with the English, but a reflection of patriotism, and among the saints then invoked in England, several had become such for dying by the hands of the enemy, in the time of the Danish invasions; as Elfeg, archbishop of Canterbury, and Edmund, king of East Anglia. Such saints as these would necessarily give umbrage to the new invaders; for their worship kept alive the spirit of revolt, and hallowed old memories of courage and independence. The foreign prelates, accordingly, with archbishop Lanfranc at their head, did not long delay to proclaim that the Saxon saints were not true saints, nor the Saxon martyrs true martyrs.1

Guerin de Lire attacked Saint Adhelm; Lanfranc undertook to degrade Saint Elfeg, by lessening the merits of his so fine and so patriotic death. “That which constitutes martyrdom,” said the primate, “is the cause and not the death; I see in this saint of yours, merely a man who was killed by the pagans in default of a ransom which he could not pay himself, and with which he would not burden others.”2 Perhaps with analogous views, and to give a new direction to the mind of the English, he seized, throughout England, the copies of the Bible, and corrected them with his own hand, on the pretext that Saxon ignorance had theretofore corrupted the text; but all did not credit this broad assertion, and Lanfranc, notwithstanding his renown for virtue and learning, incurred in his own time the reproach of having falsified the Sacred Books.3

Violence done to popular conviction, reasonable or superstitious, often arouses the courage of the oppressed more than the loss even of liberty and property. The insults lavished upon objects of long-established devotion, the sufferings of the bishops, a sort of fanatic hatred to the religious innovations of the conquest, strongly agitated men’s minds, and became the mobile of a great conspiracy, which extended over all England.1 Many priests engaged in it, and three prelates were its chiefs: Frithrik, abbot of Saint Albans; Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester, the only man of English race who retained a bishopric; and Walter, bishop of Hereford, a Fleming, the only foreigner who, a bishop prior to the conquest, had remained faithful to the cause of his adopted country.2 The name of the young king Edgar was again pronounced; popular songs were circulated in which he was called the beautiful, the brave, the darling of England.3 The two brothers Edwin and Morkar quitted the court of the Norman for the second time. The city of London, hitherto peaceable and resigned to the foreign yoke, began to be turbulent, and, as the old historians express it, in a language unfortunately somewhat vague, to face king William.4

To meet this new peril, William resorted to the means he had more than once found successful, promises and lies. Frithrik and the other insurgent chiefs, invited by him to Berkhamsted, to treat of peace, repaired to that ill-omened place, where, for the first time, Saxon hands had, in sign of subjection, touched the armed hand of the conqueror. They found the king there, with his bosom-friend and councillor the primate Lanfranc. Both affected towards them an air of gentleness and good faith;5 and there was a long discussion upon their respective and mutual interests, which terminated in an accommodation. All the relics of the church of Saint Alban had been brought to the place of conference; an open missal was laid upon these relics, at the page of the gospel for the day; and king William, placing himself in the position in which he had formerly placed Harold, swore, by the holy relics and by the sacred gospels, inviolably to observe the good and ancient laws which the holy and pious kings of England, and above all, king Edward, had theretofore established.6 The abbot Frithrik and the other English, satisfied with this concession, repaid William’s oath with the oath of fidelity sworn to their ancient kings, and then separated, dissolving the great association they had formed for the deliverance of the country.1 Bishop Wulfstan was sent into Cheshire to calm the excitement of the people there, and to make a pastoral visitation which no Norman prelate dared undertake.2

These good and ancient laws, these laws of king Edward, the mere promise of which sufficed to allay insurrections, were not a particular code or system of written provisions; by these words was understood simply the mild and popular administration which had existed in England in the time of the national kings. During the Danish domination, the English, in their prayers to the Conqueror, demanded, under the name of the laws of Ethelred, the destruction of the odious rule of the conquest; to demand the laws of Edward, under the Norman domination, was to make the same prayer, a futile prayer, which, notwithstanding his promises, the new conqueror could not grant. Even had he honestly maintained all the legal practices of the olden time, and enforced their observance to the letter by his foreign judges, they would not have borne their former fruits. There was an entire error in terms in the demand thus made by the English nation; for it was not the absence of its ancient criminal or civil laws that rendered its situation so disastrous, but the destruction of its independence and of its existence as a nation.3 Neither William nor his successors ever manifested any particular hatred to the Saxon legislation, civil or criminal; they allowed it to be observed in various points, and the Saxons were none the better for this concession. They left the rates of fines for theft and murder committed upon the English to vary as before the conquest, according to the division of the great provinces;4 they allowed the Saxon, accused of murder or robbery, to justify himself, as by the old custom, by the ordeal of red hot iron and boiling water; while the Frenchman, accused by a Saxon, appealed to single combat, or if the accused declined the combat, freed himself by oath, according to the law of Normandy.1 This difference of procedure, operating altogether against the conquered population, did not disappear until a century and a half later, when the decrees of the Roman church had everywhere prohibited the ordeal of fire and water.2

Moreover, among the ancient Saxon laws there were some which were especially favourable to the conquest; such as that which rendered the inhabitants of each hundred responsible for every offence committed in the hundred, the perpetrator of which was unknown3 —a law well adapted, in the hands of the conquerors, to spread terror throughout the country. As to these laws, it was the interest of the Conqueror to maintain them, and as to those which related to their private transactions, their preservation was a matter of indifference to him. He accordingly fulfilled the promise he had made to the Saxon conspirators, without troubling himself as to whether they put a different construction upon that promise. He summoned before him, at London, twelve men from each county, who declared upon oath, to the best of their knowledge and belief, the ancient laws and customs of the country, omitting nothing, and adding nothing.4 What they said was formed into a sort of code, in the French idiom of the time, the only legal language acknowledged by the government of the conquest. The Norman heralds then went throughout the country, announcing, to the sound of the horn, “the laws which king William granted to all the people of England, the same that king Edward his cousin observed before him.”5

The laws of Edward were published, but the times of Edward did not return for England, and the chiefs of the patriotic movement were the first to experience the futility of this concession. From the moment their league was dissolved, they were persecuted to extremity by the power they had constrained to treat with them.1 Bishop Walter fled to Wales; the Norman soldiers were ordered to pursue him into that country, over which the dominion of William did not extend; but the prelate escaped them, favoured by the forests and mountains. King Edgar, perceiving that snares were laid for him, again fled to Scotland. Bishop Wulfstan, a man of feeble mind and character, gave all the securities required from him, and thus found favour with the Conqueror; he offered the abbot of Saint Alban’s to obtain pardon for him at the same price; but Frithrik was too proud to accept it on such terms. He assembled all his monks in the great hall, and taking leave of them with emotion: “My brothers, my friends,” he said, “this is the hour in which, as the holy Scriptures tell us, we must flee from one city to another before our persecutors.” Taking with him provisions and some books, he proceeded to the isle of Ely and the camp of refuge, where he died shortly afterwards.2

King William, irritated at this flight of a man whom he thought dangerous, directed all his fury against the monastery of Saint Alban. He seized its domains, cut down its woods, and resolved to destroy it utterly.3 But the primate Lanfranc severely reproached him for this purpose, and, by dint of persuasion, secured the preservation of the abbey, and permission to place in it an abbot of his own choice. Lanfranc had brought with him to England a young man named Paul, who passed for his son, and upon him he bestowed the vacant abbey.4 The first administrative act of the new abbot was to demolish the tombs of all his predecessors, whom he denounced as brutes and idiots, because they were of English race. Paul sent over to Normandy for his relations, among whom he distributed the offices and part of the property of his church. “They were all,” says an ancient historian, “men without the slightest literary culture, and ignoble in their manners to a degree which it is impossible to describe.”5

The reader must now turn his attention to the isle of Ely, that land of marsh and rushes, as the chroniclers term it, which was the last refuge of Anglo-Saxon independence.1 Archbishop Stigand and bishop Eghelwin quitted Scotland for this place.2 Edwin and Morkar, after having wandered for some time in the forests and country districts, also came there with other chiefs.3 The king, who had just succeeded by his craft alone in dissolving the conspiracy of the patriot priests, essayed craft once more, ere he employed force against the Saxons of the camp of Ely. Morkar was for the third time the dupe of his false professions; he allowed himself to be persuaded to quit the camp of refuge for the court,4 but he had scarce set foot beyond the entrenchments raised by his companions than he was seized and put in irons, in a fortress the keeper of which was Roger, the founder and proprietor of the castle of Beaumont in Normandy.5 Edwin also quitted the isle of Ely, not to submit like his brother, but to attempt his deliverance. For six months he sought aid and collected friends in England, Scotland and Wales; but at the moment when he found himself strong enough to attempt his enterprise, two traitors sold him to the Normans. He defended himself for a long time with twenty knights against greatly superior forces. The final combat took place near the coast of the North Sea, towards which the Saxon chief was retreating, in the hope of finding some means of embarking there; but he was stopped by a brook which the rising tide had swollen. Overcome by numbers, he fell; his enemies cut off his head, and carried it to the Conqueror,6 who was touched, and wept, say some historians, over the fate of a man whom he loved, and whom he would fain have attached to his fortune.

Such was the lot of Edwin and Morkar, the sons of Alfgar, and brothers-in-law of king Harold, both victims to the cause which they had several times abandoned. Their sister, Lucy, shared the fate of all the Englishwomen who were left without a protector. She was given in marriage to Ivo Taille-Bois, the chief of the Angevin auxiliaries, who received with her all the ancient domains of the family of Alfgar.1 The bulk of these were situated about Spalding, towards the borders of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, in the marshy country called Holland, near the camp of refuge. Ivo Taille-Bois settled in this place; he became for the farmers of the ancient domain what in the Saxon language was called the hlaford, and, by contraction, the lord of the land.2 This name ordinarily signified loaf-giver, distributor of bread, and in old England designated the head of a large house, him whose table fed many men. But other ideas, ideas of dominion and servitude, were substituted for this honourable signification, when the men of the conquest received from the natives the title of lords. The foreign lord was a master; the inhabitants of the domain trembled in his presence, and approached with terror his manor or hall, as the Saxons called it; an abode once hospitable, whose door was ever open, whose fire ever lit; but now fortified, walled, embattled, garrisoned with men-at-arms and soldiers, at once a citadel for the master and a prison for the neighbourhood.

“Thus,” says a contemporary, “all the inhabitants of the lowlands were careful always to appear with great humility before Ivo Taille-Bois, and never to address him but on one knee; but although they rendered him every possible honour, and paid him all they owed him and more in rents and services, on his part he had for them neither affability nor kindness. On the contrary, he vexed them, tormented them, tortured them, imprisoned them, overwhelmed them with compulsory labour, and by his daily cruelties obliged most of them to sell the little they still possessed, and to seek other countries.3 By a diabolical instinct, he delighted to do evil for evil’s sake; he often set his dogs upon the cattle of the poor people, drove the domestic animals into the marshes, drowned them in the lakes, or mutilated them in various ways, and rendered them incapable of service, by breaking their limbs or their backs.”4

Some of the English monks of the abbey of Croyland lived near Spalding, in a chapel of ease which the monastery possessed just at the gates of this formidable Angevin. He made them, even more than the rest of the neighbourhood, feel the effects of his destructive mania against all that was Saxon, or that belonged to Saxons.1 He lamed their horses and cattle, killed their sheep and poultry, overwhelmed their farmers with exactions, and assailed their servants on the roads with sticks or swords. The monks tried the effect of supplications and offers; they made presents to his attendants; “they tried all and suffered all,” says the contemporary history; “then, seeing that their efforts were thrown away, and that the malice of the tyrant and his people only increased, they took with them the sacred vessels, their beds and their books, leaving their house in the hands of the all-powerful God, and shaking the dust from their feet against the sons of eternal fire, they returned to Croyland.”2 Ivo Taille-Bois, rejoicing at their departure, promptly sent a messenger to Angers, his native town, requesting to have monks sent him, to whom he offered a good house, large enough for a prior and five monks, amply furnished, and well provided with lands and farms.

The French monks passed the Channel and took possession of the succursal of Croyland. The abbot, who happened to be an Englishman, was bold enough to address a complaint to the king’s council against the Angevin chief; but Ivo Taille-Bois was fully acquitted, and even congratulated upon all he had done in the way of pillage, outrage, and murders. “These foreigners mutually supported each other,” says the ancient historian; “they formed a close league, one backing the other, as, upon the dragon’s back, scale is joined to scale.”3

There was at this time in Flanders a Saxon named Hereward, long settled in that country, to whom some English emigrants, flying their native land, after having lost all they had possessed there, announced that his father was dead, that his paternal heritage was the property of a Norman, and that his aged mother had suffered and was still suffering infinite indignities and vexations. On hearing this, Hereward departed for England, and arrived without suspicion at the place formerly inhabited by his family; he made himself known to such of his relations and friends as had survived the invasion, induced them to assemble in arms, and at their head attacked the Norman who had insulted his mother and taken possession of his inheritance. Hereward expelled him and took his place; but compelled, for his own safety, not to limit himself to this one exploit, he maintained a partisan warfare in the vicinity of his dwelling, and encountered the governors of the neighbouring fortresses and towns in numerous engagements, wherein he signalized himself by his extraordinary bravery, skill, and personal strength. The report of his great deeds spread over England, and the eyes of the conquered turned towards him with a sentiment of hope; upon his adventures and in his praise, popular songs, now lost, were composed and sung in the streets, in the very ears of the conquerors, with impunity, thanks to their ignorance of the English idiom.1

The inheritance regained from the Normans by the Saxon Hereward was situated at Brunn, now Bourn, in the south of Lincolnshire, near the abbey of Croyland, and not far from that of Peterborough and from the isles of Ely and Thorney: the insurgents of these districts did not delay to open a correspondence with the bands commanded by the brave partisan chief. Struck with his renown and his talents, they invited him to join them and to be their captain; and Hereward, yielding to their intreaties, passed over to the camp of refuge with all his companions.2 Before assuming the command of men, several of whom were members of the high Saxon militia, a sort of brotherhood or corporation in arms, authorized by the ancient laws of the country, he was desirous of joining that body, so as to become, to use the expression of the contemporary authors, a right war-man.3

The institution of a superior class among those who devoted themselves to arms, and of ceremonies without which none could be admitted into this military order, had been propagated throughout the rest of Europe by the Germanic tribes who dismembered the Roman empire. This custom existed in Gaul, and in the Romane language of that country a member of this high militia was called cavalier or chevalier, because mounted warriors were then, throughout Gaul, and generally upon the continent, the principal strength of armies. It was not so in England; the perfection of equestrian skill went as nothing in the idea there entertained of a perfect war-man; the two only elements of this idea were youth and strength, and in the Saxon tongue, they called knit, that is to say, young man, him whom the French, the Normans, the southern Gauls, and even the Germans, called horseman.1

Notwithstanding this difference, the ceremonies by which a warrior was admitted into the high national militia in England and upon the Continent, were exactly the same; the aspirant had to confess in the evening, watch in a church during the whole night, and in the morning, at the hour of mass, lay his sword upon the altar, receive it again from the hands of the officiating priest, and communicate after receiving it. Every combatant who had gone through these formalities was thenceforward reputed a right war-man, and capable of assuming any grade of command.2 It was in this manner that a warrior was made a knight in France and throughout Gaul, except in Normandy, where, by a vestige of the Danish customs, the investiture of knighthood took place under forms more military and less religious. The Normans, indeed, had a saying, that he who had had his sword girded on by a priest was not a true knight, but a degenerate burgess.3 This sneer was applied to the Saxon Hereward, when the knights with whom he had often crossed swords learned that he had gone to the monastery of Peterborough to receive the military baldric from the hands of a Saxon abbot. There was, however, in this, on the part of the Normans, something more than their habitual aversion for the rites which connected the priesthood with chivalry; they were indignant that an English rebel should obtain, in any way whatever, the right to style himself a knight equally with themselves. Their pride of conquerors seems, on this occasion, to have been more deeply wounded than their point of honour, as warriors, was with the religious ceremony; for they themselves afterwards submitted to this ceremony, and accorded to the bishops the right of conferring knighthood.1

The monastery of Peterborough was at this time governed by the same Brand who, after his election by the monks of the abbey, had sought from Edgar the confirmation of his title of abbot. A man of a lofty and indomitable spirit, he had not attempted, in any way, to conciliate the favour of king William. In performing for a rebel chief the ceremonial of blessing of arms, he gave a second example of patriotic courage and of contempt for the foreign power. His fate was inevitable, but death removed him from this world ere the Norman soldiers came in the king’s name to seize him; it was upon his decease there was sent, as his successor, the Norman Turauld, the fighting monk, who has been already spoken of. Turauld, bringing with him an hundred and sixty well armed soldiers, stopped at Stamford, some leagues from Peterborough, and thence sent scouts to observe the position of the English refugees, and to ascertain the exact obstacles that he should have to encounter in taking possession of the abbey.2 On their part, the refugees, informed of the approach of the Norman, made a descent upon the monastery, and finding the monks not at all resolved to defend themselves against the abbot and his soldiers, carried away with them all the valuables they could find, crosses, chalices, stuffs, and transported them by water to their quarters, that they might, as they said, have hostages for the fidelity of the convent.3 The convent was not faithful, and admitted the foreigners without any resistance.

Turauld installed himself as abbot, and appropriated sixty-two hides of the land of his church for the payment or fee of his soldiers.4 The Angevin Ivo Taille-Bois, viscount of Spalding, soon proposed to his neighbour, the abbot, an expedition against Hereward and the camp of the Saxons. Turauld appeared to receive the proposition with delight, but as his courage was less decided against armed men than against monks, he allowed the Angevin viscount to advance alone to reconnoitre among the forests of willows which served as the Saxon intrenchment, and himself remained at a distance behind, with some Normans of high rank.1 As Ivo entered the wood on one side, Hereward quitted it on the other, attacked the abbot and his Normans unexpectedly, seized them and kept them in his marshes until they paid a ransom of thirty thousand marks of silver.2

Meantime, the Danish fleet, which, after having passed the winter of 1069 in the mouth of the Humber, had returned in the spring without fighting a single battle, and thus occasioned the second capture of York, had arrived in Denmark. Its chiefs, on their return, were ill received by king Swen, whose orders they had disobeyed in allowing themselves to be gained over by William. The indignant king banished his brother Osbiorn, and, himself assuming the command of the fleet, sailed for Britain;3 he entered the Humber, and on the first rumour of his approach the inhabitants of the surrounding country again rose, came to meet the Danes, and formed an alliance with them. But in this country, so devastated, so intimidated by military executions, there were not sufficient means to undertake an efficacious resistance. The Danish king returned home, while his captains and warriors, continuing their route towards the south, entered Boston Wash, and, by the mouth of the Ouse and the Glen, reached the isle of Ely. The refugees received them as liberators and friends.4

As soon as king William was informed of the appearance of the Danish fleet, he sent, in all haste, messages and presents to king Swen in Denmark; and this king, who but just before had punished his brother for having betrayed the Saxons, himself gained over, it is not known how—for many things are obscure in the history of these times—betrayed them in his turn.5 The Danes at Ely received orders to return home; they were not content with simply obeying the order, but carried off with them part of the treasure of the insurgents, and, among other things, the sacred vessels, crosses, and other ornaments of the abbey of Peterborough. Then, as in 1069, the Norman king assembled all his forces against the deserted Saxons. The camp of refuge was invested by land and by water, and the assailants constructed on every side dykes and causeways over the marshes. Hereward and the other chiefs, among whom were distinguished Siward Beorn, the companion of the flight of king Edgar, resisted bravely for some time. William commenced on the western side, across the waters covered with willows and rushes, a road which was to be three thousand paces long;1 but his workmen were constantly harassed and disturbed in their labours.

Hereward made attacks so sudden, he employed stratagems so wholly unforeseen, that the Normans, struck with superstitious fear, attributed his success to the aid of the evil one. Thinking to fight him with his own weapons, they had recourse to magic; Ivo Taille-Bois, appointed by the king to superintend the works, sent for a witch, who was to disconcert by her enchantments all the warlike devices of the Saxons.2 The magician was placed in a wooden tower at the head of the works in progress; but at the moment when the soldiers and pioneers were confidently advancing, Hereward sallied out from the side, and, firing the forest of osiers which covered the marsh, destroyed in the flames the sorceress and most of the soldiers and Norman workmen3 who were with her.

This was not the only success of the insurgents; despite the superiority in numbers of the enemy, they stayed them by dint of address and activity. For several months, the isle of Ely was entirely blockaded, like a town in a state of siege, and received no provisions from without. There was in the isle a monastery, whose inmates, unable to endure the hunger and misery of the siege, sent to the king’s camp and offered to show him a passage, if he would promise to leave them in possession of their property. The offer was accepted, and two Norman lords, Gilbert de Clare and Guillaume de Garenne, plighted their faith for the execution of this treaty.1 Thanks to the treachery of the monks of Ely, the royal troops penetrated suddenly into the island, killed a thousand English, and closely surrounding the camp of refuge, forced the remainder to lay down their arms.2 All surrendered with the exception of Hereward, who, with a few followers, daring to the last, retreated by paths into which the Normans did not venture to follow him.3

Passing from marsh to marsh, he gained the lowlands of Lincolnshire, where some Saxon fishermen, who carried fish every day to the adjacent Norman station, received him and his companions in their boats, and concealed them under heaps of straw. The boats approached the station as usual; the chief and his soldiers, knowing the fishermen by sight, conceived no alarm or suspicion; they prepared their dinner, and began tranquilly to eat it under their tents. Hereward and his friends rushed, axe in hand, upon the foreigners, who were taken wholly by surprise, and killed a great number of them. The rest fled, quitting their post, and leaving their horses ready saddled, which the English seized.4

This daring action was not the last exploit of the great partisan captain. He appeared at various points with his band newly recruited, and lay in ambush for the Normans, to whom he never gave quarter, resolved, says a contemporary author, that his old companions should not die unavenged.5 He had with him an hundred men, well armed and of inflexible fidelity, among whom were distinguished as the bravest and most devoted, Winter, his brother-in-arms; Gheri, his cousin; Alfrik, Godwin, Leofwin, Torkill, Siward, and another Siward, surnamed the Red.6 If one of these, says an old poet, met three Normans, he refused not the combat; and as for the chief, he often fought with seven Normans at a time.7 It appears that the glory of Hereward, so dear to every Saxon heart, gained for him the love of a lady named Alswithe, who had retained her large property, probably because her family had early declared for the new king. She offered her hand to the insurgent chief, in admiration of his courage; he accepted it, and then, dreading his continued exposure to dangerous adventures, she employed all her influence to induce him to live tranquilly, and to make his peace with the Conqueror.1

Hereward, who loved her, yielded to her intreaties, and, as the phrase ran, accepted the king’s peace. But this peace could only be a truce; despite William’s oath, and perhaps by his orders, the Normans soon sought to rid themselves of the formidable Saxon chief. His house was several times attacked; and one day that he was sleeping in the open air after dinner, a troop of armed men, among whom were several Bretons, surprised and surrounded him. He was without his coat of mail, and his only weapons were a sword and a short pike, with which the Saxons were always armed. Suddenly awakened by the noise, he arose, and, unintimidated by their number, exclaimed: “Felon traitors, the king has given me his peace; if you seek my goods or my life, by God, you shall pay for them dearly!”2

And at these words, Hereward thrust his lance with such force against a knight who stood facing him, that it pierced his heart through his hauberk. Notwithstanding numerous wounds, he continued to thrust with his pike while it lasted; he then drew his sword; and this weapon breaking on the helmet of one of his enemies, he still fought with the pommel. Fifteen Normans, says the tradition, had already fallen around him, when he received at once four lancethrusts.3 He had still sufficient strength to remain on his knees, and in this position seizing a buckler which lay beside him, he struck Raoul de Dol, a Breton knight, so fiercely in the face, that he fell back dead; but at the same moment Hereward himself expired. The chief of the troop, named Asselin, cut off his head, swearing by the virtue of God that in his life he had never seen so valiant a man. It was afterwards a popular saying among the Saxons, and even among the Normans, that if there had been four such as he in England, the French would never have entered it, and that had he not died in this manner, one day or another he would have driven them all out.1

Thus was destroyed, in the year 1072, the camp of Ely, which had shed a moment’s gleaming hope of liberty over five counties. Long after the dispersion of the brave men who had sought refuge in it, there were found in this nook of marshy land traces of their entrenchments and the remains of a wooden fortress, which the local population called Hereward’s castle.2 Many of those who submitted had their hands cut off or their eyes put out, and in this condition, with cruel mockery, the Conqueror set them free;3 others were imprisoned in fortresses in every part of England. Archbishop Stigand was condemned to perpetual seclusion; Eghelwin, bishop of Durham, accused by the Normans of having stolen the treasures of his church, because he had employed them in maintaining the patriotic cause, was imprisoned at Abingdon, where, a few months after, he died of hunger.4 Another bishop, Eghelrik, was shut up in Westminster abbey, for having, as the sentence pronounced against him by the foreign judges set forth, broken the public peace and exercised piracy. But the judgment of the English, the popular opinion of his case, were far different; he was praised so long as he lived, and after his death was honoured as a saint. Fathers taught their children to implore his intercession; and a century afterwards, pilgrims still visited his tomb.1

The treachery of the monks of Ely soon received its recompence; forty soldiers occupied their convent as a military post, and lived at free quarters. Every morning the butler had to distribute to them provisions and pay in the great hall of the cloister.2 The monks complained bitterly of the violation of the treaty they had concluded with the king, and were answered that it was necessary to guard the isle of Ely.3 They then offered seven hundred marks to be exempted from the charge of maintaining the foreign soldiers; and this sum, which they obtained by despoiling their church, was carried to the Norman Picot, the royal viscount at Cambridge. The viscount had the money weighed, and finding that by chance the weight was an ounce short, he formally accused the monks of seeking to defraud the king, and condemned them, by his court, to pay three hundred marks more, as a penalty for the offence.4 After the payment of the thousand marks, came the royal commissioners, who carried off from the abbey of Ely everything of value, and drew up a survey of the lands of the abbey, for the purpose of dividing it into fiefs.5 The monks poured forth complaints to which no one listened; they invoked pity for their church, once the most beautiful, they said, among the daughters of Jerusalem, and now suffering and oppressed.6 But not a tear flowed, not a hand was armed in their cause.

After the entire defeat and dispersion of the refugees of the Isle of Ely, the Norman army and fleet proceeded towards the northern counties, to make a sort of battue there, and prevent the formation of new assemblies. Passing the Tweed, for the first time, they entered the territory of Scotland, to arrest all the English emigrants there, and terrify king Malcolm, who had just before made a hostile incursion into Northumberland.1 The emigrants escaped their search, and the king of Scotland would not deliver them up to the Normans; but, intimidated by the presence of troops better disciplined and better armed than his own, he came to meet king William in a peaceful attitude, touched his hand in sign of friendship, promised that William’s enemies should be his also, and freely acknowledged himself his vassal and liege-man.2

William returned, content with having thus deprived the Saxon cause of its last support; on his way back he was received at Durham by bishop Vaulcher, a man of Lorraine, whom the Normans had instituted in the place of Eghelwin, degraded by them, and condemned, as we have seen, to perpetual imprisonment. It appears that the mournful fate of the Saxon prelate had excited throughout the country a violent animosity to the successor elected by the foreigners. Although the city of Durham, standing upon an eminence, was strong by its position, Vaulcher did not consider himself safe there from the enmity of the Northumbrians. At his request, say the chronicles, the king built a citadel upon the topmost height of the place, where the bishop could dwell with his people secure from any attack.3

This bishop, after his consecration at Winchester, had been accompanied to York by a numerous escort of Norman knights, and, in this city, the Saxon Gospatrick, who had purchased for a large sum the government of the country beyond the Tyne, came to meet the bishop and conduct him to Durham. This service rendered to the cause of the conquest did not efface from the Conqueror’s mind the fact that Gospatrick was an Englishman, and had been a patriot: no obsequiousness could remove that original stain. In the same year, king William deprived the Saxon of the dignity he had purchased, without making him any restitution, and the reason he alleged was, that Gospatrick had fought at the siege of York, and taken part in the insurrection in which Robert de Comine had fallen.4 Filled with the same grief and the same remorse that had formerly attacked archbishop Eldred, Gospatrick quitted England for ever, and settled in Scotland, where his family long endured, honoured and opulent.1 The government, or to use the Norman phrase the earldom, of Northumberland was then given to Waltheof, son of Siward, who, like his predecessor, had fought in the Saxon ranks at the siege of York, but whose fatal hour had not yet arrived.

After this series of successful expeditions, king William, finding in England prostrate depression—happy peace the conquerors styled it—ventured upon a new journey to Gaul, whither he was called by intestine disorders and resistance to his authority. The count of Maine, shut up, so to speak, between two much more powerful states, Normandy and Anjou, seemed destined alternately to fall under the suzerainty of the one or the other. But notwithstanding the disadvantage of position and inferiority of forces, the Manceaux often struggled vigorously for the re-establishment of their national independence; so that it was said of them in the eleventh century, that they were of a rugged, haughty, and disobedient temperament.2 Some years before his invasion of England, William was acknowledged suzerain of Maine by Herbert, count of that country, the great enemy of the Angevin power, and whose nocturnal incursions against the towns and villages of Anjou had procured for him the singular and striking surname of Eveille-Chiens (Wake-dog). As vassals of the duke of Normandy, the Manceaux readily furnished their contingent of horse and archers; but when they found him occupied with the cares and embarrassments of the conquest, they conceived the idea of emancipating themselves from the Norman domination. Nobles, war-men, burgesses, every class of the population, concurred in the patriotic work; the castles guarded by Norman troops were attacked and taken one after another; Turgis de Tracy and Guillaume de la Ferté, who commanded the citadel of Mans, surrendered it, and left the country, with all such of their countrymen as had escaped the popular vengeance.3

The impulse given to the people by this insurrection did not cease when Maine had been restored to its national lords; a revolution of a new kind now broke out in the capital town. After having fought for the independence of the country, the citizens of Mans, on their return home, began to find the government of their count harassing and vexatious, and grew angry at many things which they had hitherto tolerated. At the first heavy tax that was imposed upon them, they rose, and binding themselves together by the oath of mutual support, formed what in the language of the time was called a commune.1

The bishop of Mans, the nobles of the town, and Geofroi de Mayenne, guardian of the reigning count, were compelled to take the oath of the commune, and to confirm by this oath the new laws published against their own power; but several of the nobles around refused their adhesion, and the citizens, to compel them to it, proceeded to attack their castles and manorhouses. They marched upon these expeditions in parishes, the men of each parish being preceded by its own cross and banner; but despite this religious display, they fought furiously, passionately, cruelly, as ever happens in political troubles. They were reproached with carrying on war during Lent and in Passion week; with too severely and too summarily executing justice on their enemies, hanging some and mutilating others, without any regard to the rank of persons.2 Hated by nearly all the seigneurs of the country, the commune of Mans, at a period when these institutions were yet rare, obstinately defended its liberty. An act of treachery, which placed Count Geofroi de Mayenne in possession of the citadel, compelled the citizens to fight in the streets, and to set fire to their own houses, to advance the operations of the siege. They did this with that valorous self-devotion which, half a century later, was displayed so strikingly in the great communes of France.3

It was during this struggle between feudal power and civic liberty, that the king of England prepared to invade Maine, and impose his suzerainty upon both of the rival parties. Skilful in profiting by occasion, he ordered the enrolment of all the English who chose to serve him for pay; he calculated that, in the misery to which most of them were reduced, they would be tempted by the booty which the war seemed to promise. Men who had not house or home, the remnant of the partisan bands, and even chieftains who had distinguished themselves in the camp of refuge, assembled under the Norman banner, without ceasing to hate the Normans. They rejoiced at the idea of going to combat men who, though the enemies of king William, seemed to them, by the similarity of language, of the same race with him. Without asking whether it had been willingly or on compulsion that the Manceaux had, seven years before, taken part in the conquest, they marched against them in the train of the Conqueror, as to an act of national vengeance. From their first entry into the country, they gave themselves up, with a sort of frenzy, to every species of devastation and rapine, tearing up the vines, cutting down the trees, burning the villages; in a word, doing to Maine all the evil they would fain have done to Normandy.1

The terror caused by their excesses contributed more than the bravery of the Norman knights, or even the presence of king William, to the submission of the country. The fortresses and castles surrendered, for the most part, before the first assault, and the principal citizens of Mans brought the keys of their town to the king in his camp on the banks of the Sarthe. They took the oath of allegiance to him as to their legitimate lord, and in return, William promised them the preservation of their ancient franchises, but it would appear, without consenting to the maintenance of the commune. The army then returned to England, where the Saxon soldiers landed, laden with booty; but these ill acquired riches were fatal to many of them in exciting the envy and cupidity of the Normans.2

While these events were taking place, king Edgar went from Scotland to Flanders, to negotiate with the earl of that country, the political rival, although the relation of William, some aid for the Saxon cause, now more hopeless than ever; his efforts meeting with little success, he returned to Scotland, where he was surprised to receive a friendly message from the king of France, Philip, the first of that name.1 Philip, alarmed at the successes of the Norman king in Maine, had resolved, by assisting the Saxons, to raise up obstacles in his way, which should render him less active on the other side of the Channel; he invited Edgar to come to him, and aid him in his counsels; he promised him a fortress at Montreuil, at once near England, upon which he might thence make a descent, and near Normandy, which he might ravage. Edgar accepted his proposal, and arranged everything for his journey to France. King Malcolm, his brother-in-law, become the liegeman and vassal of William, could not, without breaking his faith, supply the Saxon with soldiers for this enterprise; he contented himself with secretly giving him money, and, as was the custom of the period, distributing arms and clothes among his companions.2

Edgar set sail, but had hardly got out of sight of land when his vessels were dispersed and driven on shore by a violent tempest. Some were dashed to pieces on the northern coasts of England, and their crews became prisoners to the Normans; the others sunk. The king and the principal personages who were with him escaped these two dangers, and returned to Scotland, having lost all, some on foot and the rest poorly mounted, says the contemporary chronicle. After this misfortune, Malcolm advised his brother to struggle no longer against fate, and for a third time to seek peace of the Conqueror. Edgar, allowing himself to be persuaded, sent a message across the Channel to king William, who invited him to join him in Normandy; on his way he traversed all England, escorted by the chiefs and Norman governors of the counties, and entertained in their castles. At the court of Rouen, where he remained eleven years, he lived in the king’s palace, wore his uniform, and occupied himself more with dogs and horses than with political interests;3 but, at the end of these eleven years, he experienced a sentiment of regret, and returned to England to dwell among his countrymen;4 he afterwards returned once more to Normandy, and passed the remainder as he had passed the former part of his life, in utter irresolution, taking no determinate course, the sport of events, a man without energy and without pride.1

The sad destiny of the English seemed to be irretrievably fixed. In the absence of all opposition, the calm of entire hopelessness reigned throughout the land. The foreign merchants fearlessly displayed in the towns and villages, stuffs and weapons fabricated on the continent, which they exchanged for the booty of the conquest.2 A man might then travel, says the contemporary history, having with him his weight in gold, and get none but good words addressed to him.3 The Norman soldier, more at ease in the possession of his share of land or money, less disturbed by midnight alarms, less frequently obliged to sleep in his hauberk, became less violent and less malevolent. The conquered themselves had some moments of repose;4 the English women no longer feared for their chastity: many of them, who had sought refuge in the nunneries, and had taken the veil as a protection against the brutality of the conquerors,5 becoming weary of this enforced retirement, wished to return to their friends and families. But it was not so easy for the Saxon women to quit the cloister as it had been to enter it. The Norman prelates held the keys of the monasteries, as the Norman barons held those of the towns; and it was deemed necessary for these sovereign masters of the souls and bodies of the English to deliberate, in solemn assembly, upon the question of setting free the Saxon women who had become nuns against their inclination, and solely from necessity. Archbishop Lanfranc presided at this council, at which were present all the bishops nominated by king William, several abbots from Normandy, and other personages of high rank. The opinion of the primate was, that the English women who, to preserve their chastity, had bought the convent as an asylum, ought not to be punished for having obeyed the holy precepts, and that the doors of the cloisters ought to be thrown open for all who so desired.6 This opinion prevailed in the Norman council, less, perhaps, because it was the most humane, than because it proceeded from the confident and intimate friend of king William; the women who had still a family or a protector regained their liberty.

About the same time, William Fitz-Osbern died a violent death in Flanders, where a love affair had involved him in political intrigues.1 The eldest of his sons, who bore the same name with himself, inherited his lands in Normandy, and Roger, the youngest, had the domains conquered in England, with the earldom of Hereford. He took upon himself the charge of providing for and portioning his young sister, named Emma, and negotiated a marriage for her with Rault de Gael, a Breton seigneur, who had become earl of Norfolk.2 For some reason or other, this alliance was displeasing to the king, who sent from Normandy an express order not to conclude it; but the parties paid no heed to this prohibition, and on the day fixed for the ceremony the bride was conducted to Norwich, where was celebrated, says the Saxon chronicler, a marriage that proved fatal to all who were present at it.3 Bishops and Norman barons were there, Saxons, friends of the Normans, and even several Welshmen, invited by the earl of Hereford; Waltheof, son of Siward, husband of one of the king’s nieces, and earl of Huntingdon, Northampton, and Northumberland, prominently figured throughout the affair.4

After a sumptuous repast, whereat the wine flowed in abundance, the tongues of the guests became loosened. Roger de Hereford loudly censured the refusal of king William to sanction this union between his sister and the earl of Norfolk; he complained of this as an insult to the memory of his father, the man to whom the Bastard, he said, undoubtedly owed his conquest and his kingdom.5 The Saxons, who had received from William other and far more cruel outrages, vehemently applauded the invectives of the Norman earl; and all present becoming gradually excited, there arose a tumult of execration against the conqueror of England.6

“He is a bastard, a man of low birth,” said the Normans; “he may call himself king, but ’tis clearly seen that he is not made for one, and that he is not agreeable in the sight of God.”1 “He poisoned,” cried the Bretons, “he poisoned Cona, the brave earl of Brittany, for whom our country still mourns.”—“He invaded the noble land of England,” exclaimed the Saxons in their turn; “he massacred the legitimate heirs, or obliged them to expatriate themselves.” “And those who came in his train or to his assistance,” cried the foreigners; “those who raised him higher than any of his predecessors have not been honoured by him as they ought to have been; he is ungrateful to the brave men who have shed their blood in his service. What has he given to us, the conquerors who are covered with wounds? Sterile and devastated tracts of land; and when he sees our fiefs improving, he deprives us of them.”—“’Tis true, ’tis true!” tumultuously exclaimed all the guests: “he is odious to all, and his death would gladden the hearts of all.”

One of the two Norman earls then arose, and addressing Waltheof: “Brave man,” he said, “this is the moment; this is for thee the hour of vengeance and fortune. Join us, and we will re-establish the kingdom of England, in every respect as it was in the time of king Edward. One of us three shall be king, the other two shall command under him, and all the lordships of the kingdom shall be held of us. William is occupied beyond sea with interminable affairs; we are satisfied that he will not again cross the Channel. Now, brave warrior, adopt this plan; ’tis the best for thee, thy family, and thy crushed and fallen nation.”2 New acclamations arose at these words; earls Roger and Raulf, several bishops and abbots, and a great number of Norman barons and Saxon warriors, bound themselves by oath against king William.3 Waltheof, after a resistance which proved his distaste for this strange association, allowed himself to be persuaded, and joined the conspiracy. Roger de Hereford hastened to his province to collect his friends, and engaged in his cause many of the Welsh of the borders, who joined him, either for pay, or out of hatred to the Conqueror, who menaced their independence.4 As soon as earl Roger had assembled his forces, he marched towards the east, where the other conspirators awaited him.

But when about to pass the Severn at the bridge of Worcester, he found that formidable preparations had been made to stop him; and ere he could find another passage, the Norman Ours, viscount of Worcester, and bishop Wulfstan, still faithful to king William, directed troops upon various points of the east bank of the river. Eghelwig, the courtier-abbot, who had become the servant of the foreigners against his countrymen, induced the population of Gloucestershire to obey the call of the royal chiefs, rather than the proclamations and promises of the Norman conspirators.1 They accordingly assembled under the banner of count Gualtier de Lacy against Roger de Here ford and his Welshmen, whose cause did not seem to them so clearly identical with the national cause. Of two parties, both almost equally indifferent to them, they adopted that which appeared to involve the least danger, and served king William, whom they hated more than death. In his absence, the primate Lanfranc, under the title of royal lieutenant, administered affairs;2 he hastily despatched troops from London and Westminster to the county in which Roger was held in check, and at the same time hurled a sentence of excommunication against him, couched in the following terms:

“Since thou hast departed from the rules of conduct observed by thy father, hast renounced the faith that he all his life preserved towards his lord, and which gained him such great riches, in virtue of my canonical authority I curse thee, excommunicate thee, and exclude thee from the threshold of the church and the society of the faithful.”3

Lanfranc also wrote to the king in Normandy, to inform him of the revolt, and his hope of soon putting an end to it. “It were with great pleasure,” said he, “and as a messenger from God himself, that we should see you again among us. Do not, however, hasten to cross the sea; for it were shame to us were you obliged to come and assist us in destroying a handful of traitors and robbers.”4 The former epithet would seem to have been directed at the Normans who followed earl Roger, and the second at the numerous Saxons in the army of Raulf de Gaël, encamped near Cambridge, or who, encouraged by the presence of this army, began to rise in the maritime towns of the east, and to renew their old negotiations with the Danes.1

The king of Denmark once more promised to send troops against king William; but, before the arrival of these succours, the army of the earl of Norfolk was attacked by Eudes, bishop of Bayeux, Geoffroy, bishop of Coutances, and earl William de Warenne, with superior forces. The battle was fought in a place which is called by the ancient historians Fagadon.2 The Norman and Saxon conspirators were completely defeated, and it is related that the conquerors cut off the right foot of every prisoner, of whatever rank or nation.3 Raulf de Gaël escaped, and hastened to shut himself up in his citadel of Norwich, whence he soon afterwards sailed to seek assistance from his friends in Brittany, leaving his castle in the charge of his bride and his vassals.4 The daughter of William Fitz-Osbern made protracted resistance to the attacks of the royal officers, and only capitulated under the pressure of famine.5 The men-at-arms who defended the fortress submitted, upon condition of having their lives granted them, if they quitted England within forty days. “Glory to God in the highest,” wrote the primate Lanfrance to William; “your kingdom is freed from the filthy Bretons.” Many of the men of this nation, who had come as auxiliaries or adventurers to the conquest, now involved in the disgrace of Raulf de Gaël, lost the lands they had taken from the English.6 While the friends of Raulf were thus conquered and dispersed, those of Roger de Hereford were defeated in the west, and their chief made prisoner.

Before returning to England to enjoy this new triumph, king William made a hostile incursion into the territory of his neighbours the Bretons, in pursuit of earl Raulf de Gaël, and under this pretext to attempt the conquest of a portion of the country, the constant aim of the ambition and policy of his ancestors. But after vainly besieging the town of Dol, he retreated before the army of the duke of Brittany, who marched against him, supported by the king of France.1 Then crossing the Channel, he came to London at Christmas, to preside over the great council of Norman barons, and to judge the authors and accomplices of the late conspiracy. Raulf de Gaël, absent and contumacious, was deprived of all his estates; Roger de Hereford appeared, and was condemned to lose his lands and to pass his life in a fortress.2 In the depths of his prison, his proud and indomitable spirit often made him brave with insults the king whom he had not been able to dethrone. One day, during Easter, William, according to the custom of the court of Normandy, sent to him, as though he were free, a complete suit of precious stuff, a coat and mantle of silk, and a jacket trimmed with foreign furs.3 Roger examined these rich vestments with an air of satisfaction; he then had a great fire lighted, and cast them all into it. The king, who did not expect to have his gifts received in this manner, was fiercely angered, and swore, by the splendour of God (his favourite oath), that the man who thus insulted him should never quit his prison.4

After having narrated the deplorable story of this son of the most powerful man next to the king, and who had most urgently persuaded William to undertake the conquest, the historian, born in England though of foreign race, touched by the misery of his native land, exclaims with a kind of patriotic enthusiasm: “Where is now this William Fitz-Osbern, viceroy, earl of Hereford, seneschal of Normandy and England? He who was the first and greatest oppressor of the English, who, through ambition and avarice, encouraged the fatal enterprise in which so many thousands of men perished; he fell in his turn, and received his just reward. He who killed so many men with the sword, died by the sword, and after his death, the spirit of discord made his son and his son-in-law revolt against their lord and kinsman. The race of William Fitz-Osbern has been uprooted from England, so that now there is not a corner in which it can set foot.”5

The royal vengeance extended to all who had been present at the wedding feast at Norwich; and the city itself was assailed with indiscriminating revenge.1 Infinite oppressions ruined the Saxon inhabitants, and compelled numbers of them to emigrate into Suffolk, around Beccles and Halesworth. Here three Normans, Roger Bigot, Richard de Saint Clair and William de Noyers, seized them, and made serfs of them, although they were too poor to be a beneficial acquisition.2 Other Saxons, and the Welsh, taken prisoners with arms in their hands, on the banks of the Severn, had their eyes put out and their limbs mutilated, or were hung upon gibbets, by order of the Norman earls, prelates, barons and knights, assembled at the court of the king.3

Meanwhile, a fleet of two hundred ships left Denmark, commanded by one of the sons of king Swen, who had again become the friend of the English, and approached the eastern coast; but when the Danes learned what had passed, they dared not fight the Normans, and turned their helms towards Flanders.4 Waltheof was accused of having invited them over; he denied the charge, but the Norman woman whom he had received in marriage from king William became his denouncer, and bore witness against him.5 The votes of the assembly or of the court (as it was then called) were divided as to the sentence which should be passed upon the Saxon chief. Some were for death, as for a revolted Englishman, others for perpetual imprisonment, as for a disloyal officer of the king.6 The discussion lasted for nearly a year, during which time Waltheof was confined in the royal fortress of Winchester. At last his enemies prevailed, and in one of the courts which was held three times a year, sentence of death was pronounced.7 Contemporary English writers accuse Judith, the niece of the king, married to Waltheof against her will, of having desired and urged the sentence which was to widow her and to set her at liberty.1 Moreover, many Normans aspired to the three earldoms possessed by the Saxon chief; and Ivo Taille-Bois, whose lands joined his, and who desired to annex them, was one of the most eager for his destruction.2 Lastly, the king, to whom Waltheof was no longer useful, rejoiced at a pretext for getting rid of him; if we may believe the old chroniclers, he had long entertained this desire.3

Early in the morning, while the people of Winchester still slept, the Normans conducted the Saxon chief beyond the walls of the city. Waltheof walked to execution, attired in his costume as earl, the outer portions of which he distributed among the priests and poor people who followed him, and whom the Normans allowed to approach, on account of their limited number and wholly peaceful aspect. Coming to an eminence at a short distance from the walls, the soldiers stopped, and the Saxon, prostrating himself, with his face to the ground, prayed in under tones for some minutes; the Normans, fearing lest delay should spread the news of the execution through the city, and a rising take place to save Waltheof, said to him impatiently: “Rise, that we may fulfil our orders.” As a last request, he asked them to await until he had said the Lord’s Prayer, for himself and for them. They consented, and Waltheof, rising from his prostrate attitude, but remaining on his knees, began to say, in a loud voice: “Our Father, which art in heaven,” but at the first words of the verse: “and lead us not into temptation,” the executioner, whoperhaps saw the early rays of the coming day, would wait no longer, and, suddenly drawing his large sword, decapitated the condemned man with a single blow.4 His body was thrown into a hole dug between two roads, and hastily covered with earth.5

Having been unable to save the life of Waltheof, the Saxons went into mourning for his death, and honoured him with the name of “martyr,” which they had just awarded on the same grounds to bishop Eghelwin, who had died of hunger in a Norman dungeon.6 “They sought,” says a contemporary, “to efface his memory from this world, but they did not succeed, for we firmly believe that he is in heaven with the blessed.”1 It was reported among the serfs and towns-people of England, that after fifteen days interment, the body of the last chief of the English race, when removed by the monks of Croyland, had appeared intact and sprinkled with fresh blood.2 Other miracles, propagated in like manner by patriotic superstition, were operated, it was said, at the tomb of Waltheof, erected, with the king’s permission in the chapel of the abbey of which he had been patron.3 The news of these prodigies affrighted the Norman widow of the decapitated chief. To appease the soul of him she had betrayed, and whose death she had occasioned, she repaired to Croyland to the tomb of Waltheof, and offered a silken cloth, which she placed on the sepulchre. The chronicles of the time relate that an invisible arm repelled her offering, and that men saw the piece of stuff raised and cast to a distance, as if by a violent gust of wind.4

Wulfketel, the abbot of Croyland, an Englishman, hastened to make known these miraculous events, by narrating them in the Saxon language from the pulpit of his church. But the Normans did not long permit him to continue his preaching in peace, and he was accused of idolatry before a council held in London. The assembled bishops and earls degraded him from his ecclesiastical dignity, and sent him, as a simple monk, far from his friends, to the abbey of Glastonbury, ruled by a Norman named Toustain, conspicuous among all the abbots of the conquest for his hard and ferocious disposition.5 This example, however, did not cast down the popular superstition: founded upon national regrets, it disappeared only with those regrets, when the sons of the Saxons had forgotten the old cause for which their ancestors had suffered. But this period did not arrive so speedily as the conquerors desired; and forty years after the death of Waltheof, when the government of the monastery of Croyland had passed through a succession of foreign abbots, under the authority of one Geoffroy, a native of Orleans, miracles again began to be worked at the tomb of the last Saxon chief. People of English race came in crowds to visit his sepulchre, the monks of Norman origin, who occupied the abbey, ridiculing their fervour and abusing them and the object of their worship, calling the latter a felon traitor, justly punished with death.1

The widow of Waltheof inherited all his possessions, and even the lands which he had given in full and entire possession to the abbey of Croyland were resumed and given to her.2 Judith hoped to share this vast inheritance with a husband of her own choice; but she was mistaken; the same power that had disposed of her hand to gain over a Saxon, now proposed to employ it in repaying the services of a Frenchman. Without consulting his niece any more than on the former occasion, king William offered the possessions of Waltheof to one Simon, from the town of Senlis, a brave knight, but lame and ill-formed. Judith expressed an utter contempt for the man and refused the match: the Conqueror, little accustomed to make his policy yield to the fancies of a woman, gave to Simon de Senlis the earldom of Northampton, and the whole inheritance of Waltheof, without his widow, who thus lost the fruit of her treachery. Left alone with two children, she led an obscure and mournful life in a remote corner of England. The Normans despised her because she had become poor; the Saxons abhorred her as an infamous traitor; and the old historians of English race exhibit a degree of joy in relating her years of desolation and sorrow.3

The execution of Waltheof completed the prostration of the conquered nation. It would seem that the people had not lost all hope, so long as they saw one of their countrymen invested with great power, even though under foreign authority. After the death of the son of Siward, there was not in England, of all those invested with honours and political functions, one single man born in the country who did not look upon the natives as enemies or brute-beasts. All religious authority had also passed into the hands of men of foreign race, and of the old Saxon prelates there remained only Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester.1 He was a simple, weak-minded man, incapable of even a daring thought, and who, as we have seen above, after a momentary impulse of patriotic enthusiasm, became heartily reconciled with the conquerors. He had since rendered them important services; he had made pastoral visitations and proclaimed the amnisties of the king in the provinces still in commotion; he had marched in person against Roger de Hereford, on the banks of the Severn: but he was of English race: his day came, as that of others had come.

In the year 1076, Wulfstan was cited before a council of Norman bishops and lords, assembled in the church of Westminster, and presided over by king William and archbishop Lanfranc. The assembly unanimously declared that the Saxon prelate was incapable of exercising the episcopal functions in England, by reason of his not being able to speak French.2 In virtue of this singular judgment, the king and archbishop ordered the condemned prelate to resign the staff and ring,3 the ensigns of his dignity. Astonishment and indignation at being so ill rewarded inspired Wulfstan with an energy entirely new to him; he rose, and holding his pastoral staff in his hand, walked straight to the tomb of king Edward, who was buried in this church; there, stopping and addressing the dead man, in the English tongue, he said: “Thou, Edward, gavest me this staff; to thee I return it and confide it.”4 Then turning towards the Normans: “I received this from a better man than any of you; I return it to him, take it from him if you can.”5 As he pronounced these last words, the Saxon energetically struck the tombstone with the end of the pastoral staff. His air and this unexpected action produced on the assembly an impression of utter astonishment, mingled with superstitious fear: the king and the primate did not repeat their demand, and permitted the last English bishop to retain his staff and his office.1

The popular imagination converted this affair into a prodigy, and the report spread that the pastoral staff of Wulfstan, when he struck the stone with it, had penetrated deep into it, as into soft earth, and that no one had been able to withdraw it but the Saxon himself, when the foreigners had revoked their sentence.2 After the death of Wulfstan, who was succeeded in his see by a canon of Bayeux, named Samson, the English honoured him, as they had done Waltheof and Eghelwin, with the title of saint.3 It was so with almost all those who, eminent for dignity and character, suffered death or persecution for the cause of Anglo-Saxon nationality.

All this seems somewhat strange to us of the present day; for oppressed nations have lost the custom of making saints of their defenders and friends; they have strength of mind enough to preserve the remembrance of those whom they have loved, without surrounding their names with a superstitious glory. But whatever the difference between our patriotic manners and those of the men who have preceded us on the earth, let this difference inspire us neither with anger nor with contempt towards them. The grand thought of human independence was revealed to them as to us; they environed it with their favourite symbols; they assembled around it all that they deemed noblest, and made it religious as we make it poetical. It is the same conviction and the same enthusiasm expressed in a different manner; the same inclination to immortalize those who have devoted their life to the good of their fellow-creatures.

[1 ] Chron. Sax. Frag., ex Autog. Biblioth. S. Germani, apud Script. rer Gallic. et Francic., xi. 216.

[2 ] Historia Eliensis, apud rer. Angl. Script., iii. 516.

[3 ] Joh. de Fordun, Scoti-chronicon, lib. v. cap. xi. p. 404.

[4 ] Torfæus, Hist. rer. Norveg, iii. 386.

[1 ] Stritterus, Memoriæ populorum Septent. ex Scriptis Hist. Byzant. Digestæ., iv. 431.

[2 ]Ib.—Order. Vital., lib. iv. p. 508.

[3 ] Matth. Paris, Vitæ Abbat. S. Albani, i. 29.

[4 ] Pro amissis patrum suorum praædiis et occisis parentibus et compatriotis. (Order. Vital., ut sup. p. 512.)

[5 ] Latrones, latruncuii, sicarii.

[1 ] Leland, Collectanea, p. 42.

[2 ]Ut-lage, in Saxon orthography; in Latin, Ut-lagus.

[5 ] Quidam princeps latronum. (Hist. Monast. Selebiensis, apud Labbe, Nova Biblioth. MSS. i. 603.)

[6 ] Matth. Paris, ut sup.

[1 ] Vecordes e superbia efficiebantur. (Order. Vital., ut sup. p. 523.)

[2 ] Matth. Paris, ut sup. p. 46.

[3 ] Id. ib.

[4 ] Thom. Rudborne, Hist. Major Winton; Anglia Sacra, i. 256; Ingulf., Hist. Croyland, i. 71.

[1 ] Castra refugii. (Thom. Rudborne, Loco citato.) Matth. Westmon., p. 227.

[2 ] Willelm. Malmesb., lib. ii. p. 256.

[3 ] Præcepto apostoli dicentis: Deum timete., regem honorificate. (Order. Vital., lib. iv. p. 509.)

[1 ] Thomas Eliensis, Hist. Eliensis; Anglia Sacra, i. 609.

[2 ] Hist. Eliensis, apud rer. Anglic. Script. (Gale) iii. 516. Chron. Sax. Frag., apud Lye, sub anno 1071.

[3 ] Cum chartis in quarum libertatibus nobiles Angliæ confidebent, et quas rex, in arcto positus, observaturum se juraverat. (Matth. Westm., p. 226.)

[4 ] Order. Vital., ut sup. p. 516.

[5 ] Vita Lanfranci, apud Script. rer. Gallic. et Francic., xiv. 52.

[6 ] Several Norman prelates were present at the ceremony. (See Wilkins, Concilia Magnæ Britan., i. 322, et seq.)

[1 ] Wilkins, ut sup. 323.

[2 ] Honestam de ipso voluit habere ultionem. (Walt. Hemingford, Chron., apud Rer. Anglic. Script. (Gale) ii. 468.)

[3 ] Florent. Wigorn., Chron., p. 636.

[4 ] Hemingford, ut sup. p. 458.

[1 ] Domesday Book, i. fol. 142, verso; ii. p. 142 and 288.

[2 ] Episcopatum reddidit, se amplius non habiturum, nec successori calumneam aut damnum illaturum, jurejurando . . . firmavit. (Lanfranci, Opera, p. 301.)

[3 ] Dehinc ad monasterium, in quo ab infantia nutritus monachus fuerat, repedavit. (Ib.) Alderedus . . . abbas Abbendoniæ . . . in captione ponitur. (Hist. cænob. Abbendon; Anglia Sacra, i. 168.) Usque ad finem vitæ custodiæ mancipatos. (Hist. Eliensis, ut sup. p. 516) In ergastulo carceris ferro adstrictus. (Ib. p. 512.)

[4 ] Helsini, Legatio in Daniam, apud Script. rer. Danic., iii. 285.

[5 ] Zelum Dei habens, exulavit spontaneus ab Anglia, volens oppressores vinculo excommunicationis innodare. (Matth. West., p. 226.)

[1 ] Vita Lanfranci, ut sup. p. 31. Lanfranci, Opera, p. 299.

[2 ] Order. Vital., ut sup. p. 520.

[3 ] Regis et omnium optimatum ejus benevola electione. (ib. p. 519.) Successio priorum dunelmensis ecclesiæ; Anglia Sacra, i. 785.

[4 ] Eadmer, Hist., p. 7.

[5 ] Thomas Stubbs, Acta pontif. Eborac., apud Hist. Angl. Script. (Selden), ii. col. 1708.

[1 ] Thomas Stubbs, Acta pontif. Eborac. apud Hist. Angl. Script. (Selden) ii. col. 1708.

[2 ] Lanfranci, Opera; Notæ et Observ., p. 337.

[3 ] Gervas. Cantuar., Imag. de discordiis inter Monac. Dorobor et Archiepiscop. Baldewinum, apud Hist. Angl. Script., (Selden) ii. col. 1333.

[4 ] Stubbs, ut sup. col. 1706.

[1 ] Duo metropolitani, non solum potestate, dignitate, et officio, sed suffraganeorum numero pares. (Stubbs, ut sup. col. 1705.)

[2 ] Eadmer, ut sup. p. 3.

[3 ] Lanfranci, Opera, p. 378.

[4 ] Eboracensis ecclesiæ antistes adversum me palam murmuravit, clam detraxit,...calumniam suscitavit. (Lanfranci, Epistolæ, apud Wilkins, Concilia Magnæ Brit., i. 326.)

[5 ] Lanfranci, Opera, p. 302.

[6 ] Stubbs, ut sup. col. 1706.

[1 ] Thomas Rudborne, ut sup. p. 253. Ab universis Angliæ episcopis, prius ab aliis sacratis professiones petiit et accepit. (Henric. Knyghton, ut sup. lib. i. col. 2345.)

[2 ] Lanfranci, Opera, p. 306. Gervas. Cantuar, ut sup.

[3 ] Tantum tunc Anglicos abominati sunt, ut...multo minus habiles aliegenæ de quacumque alia natione, quæ sub cælo est, extitissent, gratenter assumerentur. (Ingulf., p. 70.)

[4 ] Willelm. Malmesb., de Gestis. Pontif. lib. iii. p. 290. Eadmer, p. 7.

[5 ] Ingulf., p. 86.

[6 ] Order. Vital., lib. iv. p. 523.

[7 ] Willelm. Malmesb., ut sup. p. 377.

[1 ] Lanfranci, Opera, p. 315. Additam. ad Hist. Veterem Lichfeldensem; Anglia Sacra, i. 445.

[2 ] Knyghton, ut sup. lib. ii. col. 2352.

[3 ] Lanfranci, Op., p. 338. Chron. Sax., in notis.

[4 ] Quia majis se agit militem quam abbatem. (Willelm. Malmesb., lib. v. p. 372.)

[1 ] Idoneus monachorum marsupia evacuare, undecunque nummos rapere, ut, apud cos, qui eam olim pauperem vidissent, compararet jactantiam. (Willelm. Malmesb., ut sup. lib. v. p. 372.)

[2 ] Id., de Vita Adhelmi episcopi Scireburnensis; Anglia Sacra, ii. 142.

[3 ] Hist. Francicæ Frag., apud Script. rer. Gallic. et Francic., xi. 162.

[4 ] Radulph de Diceto, Imag. Histor., apud Script. rer. Gallic., &c., xiii. 202.

[5 ] Prisci Abbates, quos canonicæ leges non damnabant, secularis comminatione potestatis terrebantur, et sine synodali discussione de sedibus suis injuste fugabantur. (Order. Vital., lib. iv. p. 523.) Eadmer, p. 6, 7.

[6 ] Knyghton, ut sup. col. 2348.

[7 ] Order. Vital., ut sup. p. 548.

[1 ] Eadmer, p. 7.

[2 ] Id. ib.

[3 ] Qui, licet latinè vel gallicè loquentem, illum minimè intelligerent, tamen, intendentes ad illum, virtute verbi Dei...ad lacrymas multoties compuncti. (Petrus Blesensis, Ingulf. Continuat., apud Rer. Anglic. Script., (Gale) i. 115.)

[4 ] Order. Vital., lib. iv. p. 524.

[1 ] Order. Vital., lib. iv. p. 525.

[2 ]Ib. p. 526.

[3 ] Typho quodam et nausea sanctorum corporum. (Willelm. Malmesb., de Gest. &c., lib. v. p. 372.)

[4 ] Eadmer, p. 126.

[1 ] Angli, interquos vivimus, quosdam sibi instituerunt sanctos, quorum incerta sunt merita. (Johan. Sarisburiensis, de Vitâ Anselmi Archiep. Cantuar.; Anglia Sacra, ii. 162.)

[2 ] Id. ib.

[3 ] Quæ rudis simplicitas anglicana corruperat ab Antiquo. (Chron., sub anno 1089; Anglia Sacra, i. 55. note a.)

[1 ] Matth. Paris, Vitæ Abbat. S. Alban., i. 48.

[2 ]Ib. p. 47.

[3 ] Speciosissimum et fortissimum...unde in Angliam tale exiit eulogium:

• “Ædgar, Ethelinge,
• Engelondes dereling.”—
• (Ib. p. 48.)

[5 ]Ib. 48.

[6 ]Ib.

[1 ] Matth. Paris. Vitæ Abbat. S. Albani, i. 48.

[2 ] Willeim. Malmesb., ad Vita S. Wulfstani, lib. i. cap. i.; Anglia Sacra, ii. 256.

[3 ] Its requirent estre tenus et gouvernez comme le roy Edouart les avoit gouvernez. (Chron. de Normandie, xiii. 239.)

[4 ] Si home occit altre ... xx. lib. en Merchenelae et xxv. lib. en Westsaxenlae. (Leges Willelmi Regis; Ingulf., p. 89.)

[1 ] Leges Willelmi Regis; Joh. Bromton, col. 289.

[2 ] Selden, Notæ ad Eadmeri Hist., p. 204.

[3 ] Borhs, frith-borhs, borhs-holders. (See Cancianus, Leges Antiq. Barbar., iv. pp. 273, 338, 340.

[4 ] Thomas Rudborne, Hist. Maj. Winton; Anglia Sacra, i. 259.

[5 ] Ces sount les leis et les custumes que li reis Will. grentat a tut le puple de Engleterre ... iceles mesmes que li reis Edward sun cosin tint devant lui. (Leges Will. Regis; Ingulf., p. 88.)

[1 ] Tyrannus inexorabilis, quos non poterat confœderatos et congregatos superare, singulos dispersos ac semotos ... studuit ... infestare ... et subpeditare. (Matt. Paris, Vitæ Abbat. S. Albani, i. 48.)

[2 ]Ib. p. 49.

[3 ]Ib.

[4 ]Ib. Selden, ut sup. p. 196.

[5 ] Matth. Paris, p. 52.

[1 ] Chron. Saxon., (Gibson) p. 176.

[2 ] Thom. Eliensis, Hist. Eliensis; Anglia Sacra, i. 609.

[3 ] Chron. Saxon., p. 181.

[4 ] Order. Vital., lib. iv. p. 521.

[5 ]Ib.—Beaumont-le-Roger, départment de l’Eure.

[6 ]Ib.

[1 ] Dugdale, Monast. Anglic., i. 306.

[2 ] Ingulf., p. 71.

[3 ] Sed torquens et tribulans, angeus et angarians, incarceians et excrucians, ac quotidie novis servitiis onerans, plurimos omnia sua vendere, acalias patrias petere, crudeliter compellebat. (Ib.)

[4 ]Ib.

[1 ] In ejus januis . . . tota die . . . conversantes, tanta tyrannide debacchatur. (Ib.)

[2 ] Ingulf., p. 71.

[3 ]Ib. 72.

[1 ] Ingulf., p. 70. See Appendix XVI.

[2 ]Ib. 71.

[3 ] Necdum militari more balteo legitimè se accinctum . . . legitimæ militiæ . . . legitimum militem. (Ib. 70.)

[1 ] Al. Knight, or Cild, al. Child. The Germans in like manner, before they adopted the term Reiter or Ritter, employed the word Hild or Held.

[2 ] Ingulf., p. 70.

[3 ] . . . socordem equitem et quiritem degenerem . . . (Ib.)

[1 ] Sharon Turner, i. 140.

[2 ] Chron. Sax., p. 177.

[3 ]Ib.

[4 ] Ex lib. Hugonis monachi Petriburgensis; Leland, Collectanea, i. 14.

[1 ] Sed venerabilis abbas, ac majores proceres angustias sylvarum ingredi formidantes...(Petri Blesensis, Ingulfi Continuat.) ut sup. p. 125.

[2 ]Ib.

[3 ] Florent. Wigorn. Chron., p. 636.

[4 ] Chron. Saxon., p. 176.

[5 ]Ib. 177.

[1 ] Ubi adductis instrumentis et structuris lignorum et lapidum et ex omni genere struis, aggregationem in palude, viam licet nimis sibi perinutilem et angustam, straverunt. (De Gestis Herwardi Saxonis, Chron. Anglo-Norm., ii. 57.)

[2 ] Petri Blesensis, Ingulf. Contin., ut sup. p. 124, 125.

[3 ] Id. ib. Et stridor flammarum crepidantibus virgis virgultorum cum arboribus salicum terribiliter insonuit. (De Gestis Herwardi, ut sup. p. 76.)

[1 ] De Gestis Herwardi, ut sup., p. 78.

[2 ] Stow, Annals, (Lond., 1631) p. 114.

[3 ] Chron. Saxon., p. 181.

[4 ] Chron. de Geoffroy Gaymar; Chron. Anglo Normandes, i. 19.

[5 ] Matth Paris, i. 7. Ingulf., p. 71.

[6 ] De Gestis Herwardi, ut sup. p. 52.

• Et sil eust eu od lui trois,
• Mar i entrassent li François;
• Et s’il ne fust issi occis,
• Tous les chaçast for del pais.—
• (Ib. 27.)

[1 ] The violent death of Hereward, respecting which the Latin Chronicles are silent, is attested by an ancient roll of the genealogy of the Seigneurs de Brunne: “Qui Hugo, dum semel cum præfato Herewardo apud Huntyngdone hospitatus fuisset, orta inter eos gravi contencione, maligno spiritu instigante, ipsum Herewardum miserabiliter peremit.” (Chron. Anglo-Normandes, ii. pref. 14.)

[2 ] Matth. Paris, i. 7.

[3 ] Florent. Wigorn. Chron., p. 637.

[4 ] ...inædia spontanea seu coacto. (Hist. Episcop. Dunelm.; Anglia Sacra, i. 703.)

[1 ] Willelm. Malmesb., de Gestis, &c. ut sup. lib. iii. p. 277.

[2 ] Thom. Eliensis. Hist. Eliensis; Anglia Sacra, i. 612.

[3 ] Ob custodiam. (ib.)

[4 ] Stow, Annals, p. 114.

[5 ] Thom. Eliensis, ut sup. p. 610.

[6 ] Hist. Eliensis, apud Rer. Anglic. Script., (Gale) iii. 501.

[1 ] Matth. Westmon., p. 227. Matth. Paris, i. 7.

[2 ]Ib. p. 6, 7.

[3 ] Roger de Hoveden, p. 454.

[4 ] Id. ib.—Dugdale, Monast., i. 41.

[1 ] Roger de Hoveden, p. 424. Dugdale, Baronage.

[2 ] Order. Vital., p. 531.

[3 ]Ib. 532.

[1 ] Gest. pontif. cenoman, apud Script. rer. Gallic. et Francic., xii. 540.

[2 ] Id. ib.

[3 ] Id. ib. See Lettres sur l’Histoire de France, letter xiii. et seq.

[1 ] ...Omnem provinciam debiliorem simul et pauperiorem multo post tempore reliquerunt. (Matth. Paris, i. 8.)

[2 ] Order. Vital., lib. iv. ut sup. p. 533. Gesta pontif. Cen., ut suv. p. 539.

[1 ] Chron. Saxon. Frag., sub anno 1075.

[2 ]Ib.

[3 ]Ib.—Willelm. Malmesb., de Gestis, &c., p. 103.

[4 ] Annales Waverleienses, sub anno 1086, apud Rer. Anglic. Script., (Gale) ii. 133.

[1 ] Willelm. Malmesb., ut sup.

[2 ] Order. Vital., p. 520.

[3 ] Matth. Westmon., p. 229.

[4 ] Order. Vital., ut sup.

[5 ] Eadmer, p. 57.

[6 ] Id. ib.

[1 ] Willelm. Malmesb., p. 105.

[2 ] Chron. Sax., p. 182.

[3 ]Ib.

[4 ] Matth. Paris, i. 9.

[5 ] Willelm. Melmesb., de Gest., &c., p. 104.

[6 ] Matth. Paris, i. 9.

[1 ] Order. Vitalis, p. 534.

[2 ] Id. ib.

[3 ] Willelm. Malmesb., ut sup.

[4 ] Chron. Saxon., p. 182.

[1 ] Script. rer. Danic., iii. 207.

[2 ] Lanfrancus erat princeps et custos Angliæ. (Vita Lanfranci; Lanfranc. Opera, p. 15.

[3 ] Lanfranc. Opera, p. 321.

[4 ]Ib. 317.

[1 ] Order. Vital., p. 535. Matth. Paris, i. 9.

[2 ] Order. Vital., p. 535.

[3 ]Ib.

[4 ] Matth. Paris, i. 9.

[5 ]Ib.

[6 ] Lanfranc. Opera, p. 318.

[1 ] Order. Vital., p. 544.

[2 ] Alured. Beverlac., ut sup. p. 134.

[3 ] Order. Vital., p. 535.

[4 ]Ib. 536.

[5 ] Id. ib.

[1 ] Chron. Saxon., p. 183.

[2 ] De Burgensibus qui manserunt in burgo de Norwic, abierunt et manent in Beecles...xxii. et vi. in Humilgar..., et dimiserunt burgum...In terra Rog. Bigot i. et sub W. de Noies i., et Ricardus de St. Cler i. Isti fugienteset alii remanentes, omnino sunt vastati, partim propter forisfacturas Rodulfi comitis, partim propter arsuram, partim propter geltum regis, partim propter Walerannum. (Domesd. B., ii. 117.)

[3 ] Matth. Paris, i. 9. Chron. Saxon., p. 183.

[4 ] Id. ib.

[5 ] Johan. de Fordun, Scoti-chronicon, lib. vi. p. 510. Order. Vital., lib. iv. p. 536.

[6 ] Secundum leges Normannorum. (ib. 535.)

[7 ]Ib. 536.

[1 ] Ingulf., p. 72.

[2 ]Ib.

[3 ] Joh de Fordun, p. 509.

[4 ] Order. Vital., ut sup.

[5 ] Matthew Paris, i. 9.

[6 ] Order. Vital., p. 537; Cædes Walthiofi Iarli, cap. ci.; Snorre, Heimskringla, iii. 169.

[1 ] Florent. Wigorn. Chron., p. 639.

[2 ] Order. Vital., ut sup.

[3 ]Ib. Quorum auditis rumoribus Angli lætati sunt. (Vita et Passio Waldevi comitis; Chron. Anglo-Normandes, ii. 119.)

[4 ] Ingulf., p. 72. Vita et Passio Waldevi, ut sup. p. 118.

[5 ] Ingulf., ut sup. p. 78.

[1 ] Order. Vital., lib. iv. p. 543.

[2 ] Domesday Book, i. fol. 152. verso, 202 recto. 228 recto. Ingulf., ut sup.

[3 ] Justo Dei judicio multum despecta, odio omnibus habita, per diversa loca et latibula diu fovet. (Ingulf., p. 73.)

[1 ] Joh. Bromton, ut sup. col. 975.

[2 ] Annales Burtonienses, apud rer. Anglic. Script., (Gale) i. 264. Matth. Paris, i. 20. H. Knyghton, ut sup. col. 2368.

[3 ] Joh. Bromton, ut sup. col. 976.

[4 ] Iidem, ib.

[5 ] H. Knyghton, ut sup.

[1 ] Matth. Paris. Vitæ Abbatum S. Albani, i. 49.

[2 ] Knyghton, ut sup.

[3 ] Annal. Burton., ut sup. p. 247.