 CHAPTER XI. PRINCE ROBERTS REBELLION Ambitious men who devote their time and attention through all the early years of life, to their personal and political aggrandizement, have little time to appropriate to the government and education of their children, and their later years are often embittered by the dissipation and vice, or by the unreasonable extractions of their sons. At least it was so in William's case. By the time that his public enemies were subdued and he found himself undisputed master both of his kingdom and his duchy, his peace and happiness were destroyed, and the tranquility of his whole realm was disturbed by a terrible family quarrel. The name of his oldest son was Robert. He was fourteen years old when his father set off on his invasion of England. At that time he was a sort of spoiled child, having been his mother's favorite, and as such always greatly indulged by her. When William went away, it will be recollected that he appointed Matilda regent to govern Normandy during his absence. This boy was also named in the regency, so that he was nominally associated with his mother, and he considered himself doubtless as the more important personage of the two. In a word while William was engaged in England, prosecuting his conquests there, Robert was growing up in Normandy, a vain, self-conceited, and ungovernable young man. His father, in going back and forth between England and Normandy, often came into conflict with his son, as usual in such cases. In those contests Matilda took sides with the son. One second son, whose name was William Rufus, was jealous of his older brother, and was often provoked by the overbearing and imperious spirit which Robert displayed. William Rufus thus naturally adhered to the father's part in the family fate. William Rufus was as rough and turbulent in spirit as Robert, but he had not been so indulged. He possessed therefore more self-control. He knew very well how to suppress his propensities and conceal the unfavorable aspects of his character when in the presence of his father. There was a third brother named Henry. He was of a more quiet and inoffensive character, and avoided taking an active part in the quarrel, except so far as William Rufus led him on. He was William Rufus' friend and companion, and as such Robert considered him as his enemy. All in fact except Matilda were against Robert, who looked down in a haughty and domineering manner as the oldest son and heir is very apt to do in rich in power for families, upon the comparative insignificance of his younger brethren. The king instead of restraining this imperious spirit in his son, as he might perhaps have done by a considerate and kind and at the same time decisive exercise of authority, teased and tormented him by sarcasm and pretty vexations. Among other instances of this he gave him the nickname of short boots, because he was of inferior stature. As Robert was however at this time of full age, he was stung to the quick at having such a stigma attached to him by his father, and his bosom burned with secret sentiments of resentment and revenge. He had beside other causes of complaint against his father more serious still. When he was a very young child, his father, according to the custom of the times, had disposed him to the daughter and heiress of a neighbouring earl, a child like himself. Her name was Margaret. The earldom which this little Margaret was to inherit was Maine. It was on the frontiers of Normandy, and it was a rich and valuable possession. It was a part of the stipulation of the marriage contract that the young bride's domain was to be delivered to the father of the bridegroom to be held by him until the bridegroom should become of age, and the marriage should be fully consummated. In fact, the getting possession of this rich inheritance, with the prospect of holding it so many years, was probably the principal end which William had in view in contracting for a matrimonial union so very premature. If this was in reality William's playing, it resulted in the end even more favourably than he had anticipated, for the little heiress died short time after her inheritance was put into the possession of her father-in-law. There was nobody to demand a restoration of it, and so William continued to hold it until his son, the bridegroom, became of age. Robert then demanded it, contending that it was justly his. William refused to surrender it. He maintained that what had passed between his son in his infancy and the little Margaret was not a marriage, but only a betrothment, a contract for a future marriage, which was to take place when the parties were of age. That since Margaret's death prevented the consummation of the union, Robert was never her husband and could not consequently acquire the rights of a husband. The lance therefore also manifestly he said to remain in the hands of her gargant and whatever rights any other persons might have claiming to succeed Margaret as her natural heirs. It was plain that his son could have no title whatever. However satisfactory this reasoning might be to the mind of William, Robert was only exasperated by it. He looked upon the case as one of extreme injustice and oppression on the part of his father, who not content, he said, with his own enormous possessions must add to them by robbing his own son. In this opinion, Robert's mother Matilda agreed with him. As for William Rufus and Henry, they paid little attention to the argument, but were pleased with the result of it, and highly enjoyed their brother's vexation and chagrin in not being able to get possession of his earldom. There was another very serious subject of dispute between Robert and his father. It has already been stated that when the duke set out on his expedition for the invasion of England, he left Matilda and Robert together in charge of the Duchy. At the commencement of the period of his absence, Robert was very young, and the actual power rested mainly in his mother's hands. As he grew older, however, he began to exercise an increasing influence and control. In fact, as he was himself ambitious and aspiring, and his mother indulgent, the power passed very rapidly into his hands. It was eight years from the time that William left Normandy before his power was so far settled and established in England that he could again take the affairs of his original realm into his hands. He had left Robert at that time a mere boy of fourteen, who, though rude and turbulent in character, was still politically powerless. He found him on his return a man of twenty-two, ruder and more turbulent than before, and in the full possession of political power. This power, too, he found him very unwilling to surrender. In fact, when William came to receive back the province of Normandy again, Robert almost refused to surrender it. He said that his father had always promised him the Duchy of Normandy as his domain as soon as he should become of age, and he claimed now the full fulfillment of his promise. Besides, he said that now that his father was King of England, his former realm was of no consequence to him. It did not add sensibly to his influence or his power, and he might therefore, without suffering any sensible loss himself, grant it to his son. William on his part did not acknowledge the force of either of these arguments. He would not admit that he had ever promised Normandy to his son, and as to voluntarily relinquish any part of his possessions, he had no faith in the policy of a man's giving up his power or his property to his children until they were justly entitled to inherit it by his death. At any rate, he should not do it. He had no idea as he expressed it of putting off his clothes before he was going to bed. The irritation and ill will which these dissensions produced grew deeper and more inveterate every day, though the disagreement had been thus far a private and domestic dispute confined in its influence to the King's immediate household. An occasion however now occurred on which the private family food broke out into an open public quarrel. The circumstances were these. King William had a castle in Normandy at a place called Legle. He was spending some time there in the year 1076 with his court and family. One day William Rufus and Henry were in one of the upper apartments of the castle playing with dice and amusing themselves in company with other young men of the court in various ways. There was a window in the apartment leading out upon a balcony, from which one might look down upon the courtyard of the castle below. Robert was in this courtyard with some of his companions walking there in an irritated state of mind which had been produced by some previous disputes with his brothers. William Rufus looked down from the balcony and saw him, and by way, perhaps of quenching his anger, poured some water down upon him. The deed changed the suppressed and silent irritation in Robert's heart to a perfect frenzy of rage and revenge. He drew his sword and sprang to the staircase. He uttered loud and terrible implications as he went, declaring that he would kill the author of such an insult, even if he was his brother. The courtyard was, of course, immediately filled with shouts and exclamations of alarm, and everybody pressed forward toward the room from which the water had been thrown, some to witness and some to prevent the affray. The king himself, who happened to be in that part of the castle at the time, was one of them number. He reached the apartment just in time to interpose between his sons and prevent the commission of the awful crime of fratricide. As it was, he found it extremely difficult to part the ferocious combatants. It required all his paternal authority and not a little actual force to arrange the affray. He succeeded, however, at length with the help of the bystanders imparting his sons, and Robert, out of breath and pale with impotent rage, was led away. Robert considered his father's taking sides against him in the squirrel, and he declared that he could not and would not endure such treatment any longer. He found some sympathy in the conversation of his mother, to whom he went immediately with bitter complainings. She tried to soothe and quiet his wounded spirit, but he would not be pacified. He spent the afternoon and evening in organizing a party of wild and desperate young men from among the nobles of the court, with a view of raising a rebellion against his father and getting possession of Normandy by force. They kept their designs profoundly secret, but prepared to leave Legle that night to go and seize Chouin, the capital, which they hoped to surprise into a surrender. Accordingly, in the middle of the night the desperate troop mounted their horse and rode away. In the morning the king found that they were gone, and he sent an armed force after them. Their plan of surprising royal failed, the king's detachment overtook them, and after a sharp contest succeeded in capturing a few of the rebels, though Robert himself accompanied by some of the more desperate of his followers escaped over the frontier into a neighboring province, where he sought refuge in the castle of one of his father's enemies. These result as might have been expected filled the mind of Matilda with anxiety and distress. A civil war between her husband and her son was now inevitable, and while every consideration of prudence and of duty required her to expose the father's cause, her maternal love, a principle stronger far, in most cases, than prudence and duty combined, drew her irresistibly toward her son. Robert collected around him all the discontented and desperate spirits of the realm, and for a long time continued to make his father infinite trouble. Matilda, while she forbore to advocate his cause openly in the presence of the king, kept up a secret communication with him. She sent him information and advice from time to time, and sometimes supplies, and was thus technically guilty of a great crime, the crime of maintaining a reasonable correspondence with the rebel. In a moral point of view, however, her conduct may have been entirely right. At any rate, its inference was very salutary, for she did all in her power to restrain both the father and the son, and by the inference which she thus exerted, she doubtless mitigated very much the fierceness of the struggle. Of course, the advantage in such a civil war as this would be fully on the side of the sovereign. William had all the power and resources of the kingdom in his own hands, the army, the towns, the castles, the treasures. Robert had a troupe of wild, desperate, and unmanageable outlaws, without authority, without money, without a sense of justice on their side. He gradually became satisfied that the contest was vain. In proportion as the activity of the hostilities diminished, Matilda became more and more open in her efforts to restrain it, and to allay the animosity on either side. She succeeded finally in inducing Robert to lay down his arms, and then brought about an interview between the parties in hope of a peaceful settlement of the quarrel. It appeared very soon, however, at this interview, that there was no hope of anything like a real and cordial reconciliation. Though both the father and son had become wary of the unnatural war which they had waged against each other, yet the ambitious and selfish desires on both sides, in which the contest had originated, remained unchanged. Robert began the conference by imperiously demanding of his father the fulfilment of his promise to give him the government of Normandy. His father replied by reproaching him with his unnatural and wicked rebellion, and warned him of the danger he incurred in imitating the example of Absalom, of sharing that wretched rebel's fate. History joined that he did not come to meet his father for the sake of hearing a sermon preached. He had had enough of sermons, he said, when he was a boy studying grammar. He wanted his father to do him justice, not preach to him. The king said that he should never divide his dominions while he lived, with any one, and added, notwithstanding what Robert had contemptuously said about sermons, that the scripture declared that a house divided against itself could not stand. He then proceeded to reproach and incriminate the prince in the severest manner for his disloyalty as a subject, and his undutifulness and ingratitude as a sum. It was intolerable, he said, that a son should become the rival and bitterest enemy of his father, when it was to him that he owed not merely all that he enjoyed, but his very existence itself. These reproaches were probably uttered in an imperious and angry manner, and with that spirit of denunciation which only irritates the accused and arouses his resentment, instead of awakening feelings of penitence and contrition. At any rate, the thought of his filial ingratitude, as his father presented it, produced no relenting in Robert's mind. He abruptly terminated the interview and went out of his father's presence in a rage. In spite of all his mother's exertions and entreaties, he resolved to leave the country once more. He said he would rather be in exile and wander homeless in foreign lands, than to remain in his father's court, and be treated in so unjust and ignominious a manner by one who was bound by the strongest possible obligations to be his best and truest friend. Matilda could not induce him to change this determination, and accordingly, taking with him a few of the most desperate and dissolute of his companions, he went northward, crossed the frontier and sought refuge in Flanders. Flanders it will be recollected was Matilda's native land. Her brother was the Earl of Flanders at this time. The Earl received young Robert very cordially, both for his sister's sake and also probably in some degree, as a means of petty hostility against King William, his powerful neighbor, whose glory and good fortune he envied. Robert had not the means or resources necessary for renewing an open war with his father, but his disposition to do this was as strong as ever, and he began immediately to open secret communications and correspondence with all the nobles and barons in Normandy, whom he thought disposed to expose his cause. He succeeded in inducing them to make secret contributions of funds to supply his pecuniary once, of course promising to repay them with the ample grants and rewards, so soon as he should obtain his rights. He maintained similar communications too with Matilda, though she kept them very profoundly secret from her husband. Robert had other friends besides those whom he found thus furtively in Normandy. The King of France himself was much pleased at the breaking out of this terrible fate in the family of his neighbor, who from being his dependent and vassal had become by his conquest of England his great competitor and rival in the estimation of mankind. Philip was disposed to rejoice at any occurrences which tended to tarnish William's glory, or which threatened a division and diminution of his power. He directed his agents therefore both in Normandy and in Flanders to encourage and promote the dissension by every means in their power. He took great care not to commit himself by any opened and positive promises of aid, and yet still he contrived by a thousand indirect means to encourage Robert to expect it. Thus the mischief was widened and extended, while yet nothing effectual was done to would organizing and insurrection. In fact Robert had neither the means nor the mental capacity necessary for maturing and caring into effect any actual plan of rebellion. In the meantime, months passed away and as nothing effectual was done, Robert's adherents in Normandy became gradually discouraged. They ceased their contributions and gradually forgot their absent and incompetent leader. Robert spent his time in dissipation and vice, squandering in feasts and in the company of abandoned men and women the means which his followers sent him to enable him to prepare for the war. And when at last these supplies failed him, he would have been reduced gradually to great distress and destitution, were it not that one faithful and devoted friend still adhered to him, that friend was his mother. Matilda knew very well that whatever she did for her absent son must be done in the most clandestine manner, and this required much strategic gem and contrivance on her part. She was aided however in her efforts at concealment by her husband's absence. He was now for a time in England having been called there by some pressing demands of public duty. He left a great minister of state in charge of Normandy, whose vigilance Matilda thought it would be comparatively easy to elude. She sent to Robert in Flanders first her own private funds, then she employed for this purpose a portion of such public funds as came into her hands. The more she sent however, the more frequent and imperious were Robert's demands for fresh supplies. The resources of a mother, whether great or small, are always soon exhausted by the insatiable requirements of a dissolute and profligate son. When Matilda's money was gone, she sold her jewels, then her more expensive clothes, and finally such objects of value belong into herself or to her husband as could be most easily and privately disposed of. The minister who was very faithful and watchful in the discharge of his duties observed indications that something mysterious was going on. His suspicions were aroused. He watched Matilda's movements and soon discovered the truth. He sent information to William. William could not believe it possible that his minister's surmises could be true, for William was simply a statesman and a soldier, and had very inadequate ideas of the absorbing and uncontrollable power which is exercised by the principle of maternal love. He however determined immediately to take most efficient measures to ascertain the truth. He returned to Normandy, and there he succeeded in intercepting one of Matilda's messenger on his way to Flanders with communications and money for Robert. The name of this messenger was Samson. William seized the money and the letters and sent the messenger to one of his castles to be shut up in a dungeon. Then with the proofs of guilt which he had thus obtained, he went full of astonishment and anger to find Matilda and to upgrade her, as he thought she deserved, for her base and ungrateful betrayal of her husband. The reproaches which he addressed to her were bitter and stern, though they seem to have been spoken in a tone of sorrow rather than of anger. I am sure, he said, I have ever been to you a faithful and devouted husband. I do not know what more you could have desired than I have done. I have loved you with a sincere and true affection. I have honoured you. I have placed you in the highest positions, entrusting you repeatedly with large shares of my own sovereign power. I have confided in you, committing my most essential and vital interests to your charge. And now, this is the return. You employ the very position and power and means which your confiding husband has put into your hands to betray him in the most cruel way and to aid and encourage his worst and most dangerous enemy. To these reproaches Matilda attempted no reply, except to plead the irresistible impetuousity and strength of her maternal love. I could not bear, she said, to leave Robert in distress and suffering while I had any possible means of relieving him. He is my child. I think of him all the time. I love him more than my life. I solemnly declare to you that if he were now dead and I could restore him to life by dying for him, I would most gladly do it. How then do you suppose that I could possibly live here in abundance and luxury while he was wandering homeless in destitution and one and not try to relieve him? Whether it is right or wrong for me to feel so, I do not know. But this I know. I must feel so. I cannot help it. He is our firstborn son. I cannot abandon him. William went away from the presence of Matilda full of resentment and of anger. Of course he could do nothing in respect to her but reproach her, but he determined that the unlucky Samson should suffer severely for the crime. He sent orders to the castle where he lay immured, requiring that his eyes should be put out. Matilda, however, discovered the danger which threatened her messenger in time to send him warning. He contrived to make his escape and fled to a certain monastery which was under Matilda's special patronage and charge. A monastery was, in those days, a sanctuary into which the arms even of the most despotic authority scarcely dared to intrude in pursuit of its victim. To make the safety doubly sure, the Abbot proposed that the trembling fugitive should join their order and become a monk. Samson was willing to do anything to save his life. The operation of putting out the eyes was very generally fatal so that he considered his life at stake. He was accordingly shaven and shorn and closed in the monastic garb. He assumed the vows of the order and entered with his brother monks upon the course of fastings, penances and prayers which pertain to his new vocation, and William left him to pursue it in peace. Things went on worse instead of better after this discovery of the mother's participation in the Councils of the Sum. Either through the aid which his mother had rendered or by other means there seemed to be a strong party in and out of Normandy who were inclined to espouse Robert's cause. His friends at length raised a very considerable army and putting him at the head of it they advanced to attack Rouen. The King greatly alarmed at this danger, collected all the forces that he could command and went to meet his rebel son. William Rufus accompanied his father intending to fight by his side, while Matilda in an agony of terror and distress remained half distracted within her castle walls, as a wife and mother might be expected to be on the approach of a murderous conflict between her husband and her son. The thought that one of them might perhaps be actually killed by the other filled her with dismay. And in fact this dreadful result came very near being realized. Robert in the castle at Legle had barely been prevented from destroying his brother and now on the plain of Arc-Chembré where this battle was fought his father fell and was very near being killed by his hand. In the midst of the fight while the horsemen were impetuously charging each other in various parts of the field, also disguised by their armor that no one could know the individual with whom he was contending, Robert encountered a large and powerful knight and drove his lance through his armor into his arm. Through the shock of the encounter and the faintness produced by the agony of the wound the horsemen fell to the ground and Robert perceived by the voice with which his fallen enemy cried out in his pain and terror that it was his father that he had thus pierced with his steel. At the same moment the wounded father in looking at his victorious antagonist recognized his son. He cursed his unnatural enemy with a bitter and terrible malediction. Robert was shocked and terrified at what he had done. He leaped from his horse, knelt down by the side of his father and called for aid. The king distracted by the anguish of his wound and by the burning indignation and resentment which raid in his bosom against the unnatural hostility which inflicted it, turned away from his son and refused to receive any succor from him. Besides the misfortune of being unhorsed and wounded the battle itself went that day against the king. Robert's army remained masters of the field. William Rufus was wounded too as well as his father. Matilda was overwhelmed with distress and mental anguish at the result. She could not endure the idea of allowing so unnatural and dreadful a struggle to go on. She begged her husband with the most earnest importunities and with many tears to find some way of accommodating the dispute. Her nights were sleepless, her days were spent in weeping, and her health and strength were soon found to be wasting very rapidly away. She was emaciated, van and pale, and it was plain that such distress if long continued would soon bring her to the grave. Matilda's intercessions at length prevailed. The king sent for his son, and after various negotiations some sort of compromise was affected. The armies were disbanded, peace was restored, and Robert and his father once more seemed to be friends. Soon after this William having a campaign to make in the north of England took Robert with him as one of the generals in his army. William the Conqueror by Jacob Abbott Chapter 12 The Conclusion From the time of the battle of Hastings which took place in 1066 to that of William's death which occurred in 1087, there intervened a period of about 20 years during which the great monarch reigned over his extended dominions with a very despotic sway, though not without a large share of the usual dangers, difficulties and struggles attending such a rule. He brought over immense numbers of Normans from Normandy into England and placed all the military and civil power of the empire in their hands, and he relied almost entirely upon the superiority of his physical force for keeping the country in subjugation to his sway. It is true he maintained that he was the rightful heir to the English crown and that consequently the tenure by which he held it was the right of inheritance and not the right of conquest, and he professed to believe that the people of England generally admitted his claim. This was in fact to a considerable extent true. At least there was probably a large part of the population who believed William's right to the crown superior to that of Harold, whom he had deposed. Till as William was by birth and education and language a foreigner, and as all the friends and followers who attended him, and in fact almost the whole of the army, on which he mainly relied for the preservation of his power, were foreigners too, wearing a strange dress and speaking in an unknown tongue. The great mass of the English people could not but feel that they were under a species of foreign subjugation. Quarrels were therefore continually breaking out between them and their Norman masters, resulting in fierce and bloody struggles on their part to get free. These rebellions were always effectually put down, but when quelled in one quarter they soon broke out in another, and they kept William and his forces almost always employed. But William was not a mere warrior. He was well aware that the permanence and stability of his own and his successor's sway in England would depend finally upon the kind of basis on which the civil institutions of the country should rest, and on the proper consolidation and adjustment of the administrative and judicial functions of the realm. In the intervals of his campaigns, therefore, William devoted a great deal of time and attention to this subject, and he evinced a most profound and statesmanlike wisdom and sugesity in his manner of treating it. He had in fact a Herculean task to perform, a double task vis to amalgamate two nations, and also to fuse and merge two languages into one. He was absolutely compelled by the circumstances under which he was placed to grapple with both these vast undertakings. If at the time when in his park at Rouen he first heard of Harold's accession, he had supposed that there was a part in England in his favour, strong enough to allow of his proceeding there alone, or with a small Norman attendance, so that he might rely mainly on the English themselves for his accession to the throne, the formidable difficulties which, as it was, he had subsequently to encounter would all have been saved. But there was no such party. At least there was no evidence that there was one of sufficient strength to justify him in trusting himself to it. It seemed to him, then, that if he undertook to gain possession of the English throne at all, he must rely entirely on the force which he could take with him from Normandy. To make this reliance effectual, the force so taken must be an overwhelming one. Then, if Normans in great numbers were to go to England for the purpose of putting him upon the English throne, they must be rewarded, and so vast a number of candidates for the prizes of honour and wealth could be satisfied only in England and by confiscations there. His possessions in Normandy would obviously be insufficient for such a purpose. It was evident, moreover, that if a large number of Norman adventures were placed in stations of trust and honour, and charged with civil offices and administrative functions all over England, they would form a sort of class by themselves, and would be looked upon with jealousy and envy by the original inhabitants, and that there was no hope of maintaining them safely in their position except by making the class as numerous and as strong as possible. In a word, William saw very clearly that while it would have been very well if it had been possible for him to have brought no Normans to England, it was clearly best since so many must go to contrive every means to swell and increase the number. It was one of those cases where being obliged to go far, it is best to go farther, and William resolved on thoroughly Normanising, so to speak, the whole British realm. This enormous undertaking he accomplished fully and permanently, and the institutions of England, the lines of family descent, the routine of judicial and administrative business, and the very language of the realm, retained the Norman characteristics which he engrafted into them to the present day. It gives us a feeling akin to that of sublimity to find, even in our own land, and in the most remote situations of it, the lingering relics of the revolutions and deeds of these early ages still remaining, like a faint ripple rolling gently upon a beach in a deep and secluded bay, which was set in motion, perhaps at first as one of the mountainous surges of a wintery storm in the most distant seas. For example, if we enter the most humble court in any remote and newly settled country in the American forests, a plain and rustic-looking man will call the equally rustic-looking assembly to order by wrapping his baton the only symbol of his office on the floor and calling out in words mystic and meaningless to him, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. He little thinks that he's obeying a behest of William the Conqueror. He sued eight hundred years ago, ordaining that his native tongue should be employed in the courts of England. The irresistible progress of improvement and reform have gradually displaced the intruding language again, except so far as it has become merged and incorporated with the common language of the country from all the ordinary forms of legal proceedings. It lingers still, however, as it were, on the threshold in this call to order, and as it is harmless there, the spirit of conservatism will perhaps preserve for it this last place of refuge for a thousand years to come, and oh yes will be the phrase for ordaining silence by many generations of officers, who will perhaps never have heard of the authority whose orders they unwittingly obey. The work of incorporating the Norman and English families with one another and fusing the two languages into one required about a century for its full accomplishment, and when at last it was accomplished, the people of England were somewhat puzzled to know whether they ought to feel proud of William's exploits in the conquest of England or humiliated by them. So far as they were themselves descended from the Normans, the conquest was one of the glorious deeds of their ancestors. So far as they were of English parentage, it would seem to be incumbent of them to mourn over their father's defeat. It is obvious that from such species of perplexity as this, there were no escape, and it has accordingly continued to embarrass the successive generations of Englishmen down to the present day. The Norman conquest occupies therefore a very uncertain and equivocal position in English history. The various modern writers who look back or to it now being hardly able to determine whether they are to regard it as a mortifying subjugation which their ancestors suffered, or a glorious victory which they gained. One of the great measures of William's reign, and one in fact for which it has been particularly famous in modern times, was a grand census or registration of the kingdom which the conqueror ordered with a view of having on record a perfect enumeration and description of all the real and personal property in the kingdom. This grand national survey was made in 1078. The result was recorded in two volumes of different sizes which were called the Great and the Little Doomsday Book. These books are still preserved and are to this day of the very highest authority in respect to all questions touching ancient rites of property. One is a folio and the other a quarter volume. The records are written on vellum, in a close abridged and to ordinary readers a perfectly unintelligible character. The language is Latin, but a modern Latin scholar without any means other than an inspection of the work would be utterly unable to decipher it. In fact, though the character is highly wrought and in some respects elegant, the whole style and arrangement of the work is pretty nearly on a par in respect to scientific skill with Queen Emma's designs upon the Bayard tapestry. About a half century ago copies of these works were printed by means of type made to represent the original character, but these printed editions were found unintelligible and useless until copious indexes were prepared and published to accompany them at great expense of time and labor. Some little idea of the character and the style of this celebrated record may be obtained from the following specimen which is as faithful an imitation of the original as any ordinary typography will allow, and here should be an illustration. The passage deciphered and expressed in full stands thus, the letters omitted in the original about being supplied in italics. The English translation is as follows. In Brixton Hundred, the king holds Bermonsai, Earl Harold held it before. At that time it was rated at 13 heights, now at 12. The arable land is eight carocates or plowlands. There is one carocate in Demist and 25 villains, and 33 borders with one carocate. There is a new and handsome church with 20 acres of meadow and woodland for five hogs in Pusnetsch or pastureage time. But we must pass on to the conclusion of the story. About the year 1082, Queen Matilda's health began seriously to decline. She was harassed by a great many anxieties and cares connected with the affairs of state which devolved upon her and arising from the situation of her family. These anxieties produced great dejection of spirits and aggravated if they did not fully cause her bodily disease. She was at this time enormity. One great source of her mental suffering was her anxiety in respect to one of her daughters, who as well as herself was declining in health. Forgetting her own danger in her earnest desires for the welfare of her child, she made a sort of pilgrimage to a monastery which contained the shrine of a certain saint, who as she imagined had power to save her daughter. She laid a rich present on the shrine. She offered before it most earnest prayers imploring with tears of bitter grief the intercession of the saint and manifesting every outward symbol of humility and faith. She took her place in the religious services of the monastery and conformed to its usages as if she had been in the humblest private station. But all was in vain. The health of her beloved daughter continued to fail until at length she died, and Matilda growing herself more feeble and almost broken-hearted through grief shut herself up in the palace at King. It was in the same palace which William had built within his monastery many long years before at the time of their marriage. Matilda looked back to that period and to the buoyant hopes and bright anticipations of power, glory, and happiness which then filled her heart with sadness and sorrow. The power and the glory had been attained and in a measure tenfold greater than she had imagined, but the happiness had never come. Ambition had been contending unceasingly for twenty years among all the branches of her family against domestic peace and love. She possessed herself an aspiring mind, but the principles of maternal and conjugal love were stronger in her heart than those of ambition, and yet she was compelled to see ambition bearing down and destroying love in all its form everywhere around her. Her last days were embitted by the breaking out of new contests between her husband and her son. Matilda sought for peace and comfort in multiplying her religious services and observances. She fasted, she prayed, she interceded for the forgiveness of her sins with many tears. The monks celebrated mass at her bedside and made as she thought by renewing the sacrifice of Christ a fresh propitiation for her sins. William, who was then in Normandy hearing of her forlorn and unhappy condition, came to see her. He arrived just in time to see her die. They conveyed her body from the palace in her husband's monastery at Cain to the convent which she had built. It was received there in solemn state and deposited in the tomb. For centuries afterwards there remained many memorials of her existence and her greatness there, in paintings, embroideries, sacred gifts, and records which have been gradually wasted away by the hand of time. They have not however fully disappeared, for travelers who visit the spot find that many memorials and traditions of Matilda linger there still. William himself did not live many years after the death of his wife. He was several years older than she. In fact, he was now considerably advanced in age. He became extremely corpulent as he grew old, which as he was originally of a large frame made him excessively unwieldy. The inconvenience resulting from this habit of body was not the only evil that attended it. It affected his health and even threatened to end in serious if not fatal disease. While he was thus made comparatively helpless in body by the infirmities of his advancing age, he was nevertheless as active and restless in spirit as ever. It was however no longer the activity of youth and hope and progress which animated him, but rather the fitful uneasiness with which age agitates itself under the vexations, which it sometimes has to endure, or struggles convulsively at the approach of real or imaginary dangers, threatening the possessions which it has been the work of a life to gain. The dangers in William's case were real, not imaginary. He was continually threatened on every side. In fact, the very year before he died, the dissensions between himself and Robert broke out anew, and he was obliged unwieldy and helpless as he was to repair to Normandy at the head of an armed force to quell the disturbances which Robert and his partisans had raised. Robert was countenanced and aided at this time by Philip, the king of France, who had always been King William's jealous and implacable rival. Philip, who as it will be recollected, was very young when William asked his aid at the time of his invasion of England, was now in middle life and at the height of his power. As he had refused William his aid, he was naturally somewhat envious and jealous of his success, and he was always ready to take part against him. He now aided an abetted Robert in his turbulence and in subordination, and ridiculed the helpless infirmities of the aged king. While William was in Normandy, he submitted to a course of medical treatment in the hope of diminishing his excessive corpulency and relieving the disagreeable and dangerous symptoms which attended it. While thus in his physician's hands, he was of course confined to his chamber. Philip in ridicule called it being in the straw. He asked someone who appeared at his court having recently arrived from Normandy whether the old woman of England was still in the straw. Some miserable tale-bearer, such as everywhere, infest society at the present day, who delight in quoting to one friend what they think will excite their anger against another, repeated these words to William. Sick as he was, the sarcasm aroused him to a furious paroxysm of rage. He swore by God's brightness and resurrection that when he got out again he would kindle such fires in Philip's dominions in commemoration of his delivery as should make his realms too hot to hold him. He kept his word, at least so far as respects the kindling of the fires. But the fires instead of making Philip's realms too hot to hold him by a strange, yet just retribution were simply the means of closing forever the mortal career of the hand that kindled them. The circumstances of this final scene of the Great Conqueror's earthly history were these. In the execution of his threat to make Philip's dominions too hot to hold him, William, as soon as he was able to mount his horse, headed an expedition and crossed the frontiers of Normandy and moved forward into the heart of France, laying waste the country as he advanced, with fire and sword. He came soon to the town of Montes, a town upon the Seine, directly on the road to Paris. William's soldiers attacked the town with furious impetuosity, carried it by assault and set it on fire. William followed them in through the gates, glorying in the fulfillment of his threats of vengeance. Some timbers from a burning house had fallen into the street, and burning there had left a smoldering bed of embers, in which the fire was still remaining. William, excited with the feeling of exultation and victory, was riding unguardedly on through the scene of ruin he had made, eschewing orders and shouting in a frantic manner as he went, when he was suddenly stopped by a violent recoil of his horse from the burning embers on which he had stepped, and which had been concealed from view by the ashes which covered them. William unwieldy and comparatively helpless as he was, was thrown with great force upon the pommel of the saddle. He saved himself from falling from the horse, but he immediately found that he had sustained some serious internal injury. He was obliged to dismount and to be conveyed away by a very sudden transition from the dreadful scene of conflagration and vengeance which he had been enacting to the solemn chamber of death. They made a litter for him, and a corpse of strong men was designated to bear the heavy and now helpless burden back to Normandy. They took the suffering monarch to Rouen. The ablest physicians were summoned to his bedside. After examining his case, they concluded that he must die. The tidings threw the unhappy patient into state of extreme anxiety and terror. The recollection of the thousand deeds of selfish ambition and cruelty which he had been perpetrating, he said all his days filled him with remorse. He shrunk back with invincible dread from the hour, now so rapidly approaching, when he was to appear in judgment before God and answer like any common mortal for his crimes. He had been accustomed all his life to consider himself as above all law, superior to all power and beyond the reach of all judicial question, but now his time had come. He who had so often made others tremble, tremble now in his turn, with an acuteness of terror and distress which only the boldest and most high-handed offenders ever feel. He cried bitterly to God for forgiveness and brought the monks around him to help him with incessant prayers. He ordered all the money that he had on hand to be given to the poor. He sent commands to have the churches which he had burned at Mainz rebuilt, and the other injuries which he had affected in his anger repaired. In a word, he gave himself very earnestly to the work of attempting to, by all the means considered most efficacious in those days, to avert and appease the treaded anger of heaven. Of his three oldest sons, Robert was away. The quarrel between him and his father had become irreconcilable, and he would not come to visit him even in his dying hours. William Rufus and Henry were there, and they remained very constantly at their father's bedside, not, however, from a principle of filial affection, but because they wanted to be present when he should express his last wishes in respect to the disposal of his dominion. Such an expression, though oral, would be binding as a will. When at length the king gave his dying directions in respect to the succession, it appeared that after all he considered his right to the English throne as very doubtful in the sight of God. He had, in a former part of his life, promised Normandy to Robert as his inheritance, when he himself should die, and though he had so often refused to surrender it to him while he himself continued to live, he confirmed his title to the succession now. I have promised it to him, he said, and I keep my promise, and yet I know that that will be a miserable country which is subject to his government. He is a proud and foolish nave and can never prosper. As for my kingdom of England, he continued, I bequeth it to no one, for it was not bequeth it to me. I acquired it by force and at the price of blood. I leave it in the hands of God, only wishing that my son William Rufus may have it, for he has been submissive to me in all things. And what do you give me, Father? asked Henry eagerly at this point. I give you, said the king, five thousand pounds from my treasury. But what shall I do with my five thousand pounds, asked Henry, if you do not give me either house or land? Be quiet, my son, rejoin the king, and trust in God. Let your brothers go before you, your turn will come after theirs. The object which had kept the young men at their father's bedside having been now attained, they both withdrew. Henry went to get his money, and William Rufus set off immediately for England to prepare the way for his own accession to the throne as soon as his father should be no more. The king determined to be removed from his castle in Rouen to a monastery which was situated at a short distance from the city without the walls. The noise of the city disturbed him, and besides, he thought he should feel safer to die on sacred ground. He was accordingly removed to the monastery. There, on the tenth of September, he was awakened in the morning by hearing the city bells ringing. He asked what it meant. He was told that the bells were ringing for the morning service at the church of St. Mary. He lifted up his hands, looked to heaven, and said, I commend myself to my Lady Mary, the holy mother of God, and almost immediately expired. The readers of history have frequent occasion to be surprised at the sudden and total change which often takes place at the moment of the death of a mighty sovereign, and even sometimes before his death in the indications of the respect and consideration with which his attendants and followers regard him. In William's case, as has happened in many other cases since, the moment he ceased to breathe, he was utterly abandoned. Everybody fled, carrying with them as they went whatever they could see from the chamber, the arms, the furniture, the dresses, and the plate, for all these articles became there per requisites of the disease of their master. The almost incredible statement is made that the heartless monsters actually stripped the dead body of their sovereign to make sure of all their dues and left it naked on the stone floor while they bore their prices to a place of safety. The body lay in this neglected state for many hours. For the tidings of the great monarch's death, which was so sudden at last, produced as it spread universal excitement and apprehension. No one knew to what changes the event would lead, what wars would follow between the sons, or what insurrections or rebellions might have been secretly formed to break out suddenly when this crisis should have arrived. Thus the whole community were thrown into state of excitement and confusion. The monk and lay brethren of the monastery at length came in, took up the body, and prepared it for burial. Then they brought crosses, tapers, and sensors, and began to offer prayers and to chant requiems for the repose of the soul of the deceased. They sent also the Archbishop of Ruang to know what was to be done with the body. The Archbishop gave orders that it should be taken to Cane and be deposited there in the monastery which William had erected at the time of his marriage. The tale which the ancient historians have told in respect to the interment is still more extraordinary, and more inconsistent with all the ideas we naturally form of the kind of consideration and honor which the remains of so great a potentate would receive at the hands of his household and his officers of state, then the account of his death. It is said that all the members of his household and all his officers immediately after his disease abandoned the town, all eagerly occupied in plans and maneuvers to secure their positions under the new reign. Some went in pursuit of Robert, and some to follow William Rufus. Henry locked up his money in a strongbox, well ironed, and went off with it to find some place of security. There was nobody left to take the neglected body to the grave. At last a countryman was found who undertook to transport the heavy burden from Ruang to Cane. He produced a cart and conveyed it from the monastery to the river where it was put on board a vessel and taken down the Sin to its mouth and thence by sea to Cane. The abbot of St. Stephen's, which was the name of William's monastery there, came with some monks and a procession of the people to accompany the body to the abbey. As this procession was moving along however a fire broke out in the town, and the attendants actuated either by sense of duty require them to aid in extinguishing the flames or by curiosity to witness the conflagration abandon the funeral cottage. The procession was broken up, and the whole multitude clergy and laity went off to the fire, leaving the coffin with its bearers alone. The bearers however went on and conveyed their charge to the church within the abbey walls. When the time arrived for the interment, a great company assembled to witness the ceremonies. Stones had been taken up in the church floor and a grave dug. A stone coffin, a sort of sarcophagus, had been prepared and placed in the grave as a receptacle for the body. When all was ready and the body was about to be let down, a man suddenly came forward from the crowd and arrested the proceedings. He said that the land on which the abbey stood belonged to him, that William had taken forcibly possession of it for the abbey at the time of his marriage, that he the owner had been compelled thus far to submit to this wrong in as much as he had during William's lifetime no means of redress, but now he protested against a spoliation. The land, he said, is mine. It belonged to my father. I have not sold it or forfeited it, nor pledged it nor given it. It is my right. I claim it. In the name of God, I forbid you to put the body of the spoiler there, or to cover him with my ground. When the excitement and surprise which this denunciation had awakened had subsided a little, the bishops called this sudden claimant aside, examined the proofs of his allegations, and found that the case was truly as he stated it. They paid him on the spot, a sum equal to the value of ground enough for a grave, and promised to take immediate measure for the payment of the rest. The remonstrant then consented that the interment might proceed. In attempting to let the body down into the place prepared for it, they found that the sarcophagus was too small. They undertook to force the body in. In attempting this, the coffin was broken, and the body, already through the long delays advanced in decomposition, was burst. The monks brought incense and perfumes, and burned and sprinkled them around the place, but in vain. The church was so offensive that everybody abandoned it at once, except the workmen who remained to fill the grave. While these things were transpiring in Normandy, William Rufus had hastened to England, taking with him the evidences of his father's dying wish that he should succeed him on the English throne. Before he reached headquarters there, he heard of his father's death, and he succeeded in inducing the Norman chieftains to proclaim him king. Robert's friends made an effort to advance his claims, but they could do nothing effectual for him, and so it was soon settled by a treaty between the brothers, that William Rufus should reign in England, while Robert was to content himself with his father's ancient domain of Normandy. End of Chapter 12 The Conclusion And End of William the Conqueror by Jacob Abbott Read by Lars Rolander