PROMOTIONS OF THE KING'S FRIENDS.

161

east of the Tamar is now recognized as a foreign land. CHAP. VII. Odda was a special favourite of the monks, and is spoken of as a man of good and clean life, who in the end became a monk himself. The third Earldom, that of East-Anglia, hitherto held by Harold, was bestowed on Ælfgar, the son Ælfgar. of Leofric, of whom we hear for the first time during these commotions. He had himself, it would seem, played a prominent part in them,3 and one would wish to believe. that his promotion was the reward of acts of his own, rather than of his father's seeming desertion of the patriotic cause. Among churchmen, Spearhafoc, who had through- Spearhafoc out the summer and autumn held the see of London with- deposed, out consecration, had now to give up his doubtful possession. The Bishoprick was then given to a Norman and Wilnamed William, a chaplain of the King's. A man might Bishop of

liam made

London.

now go from the Straits of Dover to the Humber, over 1051.
Kentish, East-Saxon, and Danish ground, without once, in
the course of his journey, going out of the spiritual juris-
diction of Norman Prelates. It is due however to Bishop
William to say that he bears a very different character in
our history from either his Metropolitan Robert or his fel-
low-suffragan Ulf. Banished for a while, he was restored
when the patriotic party was in the height of its power-
a distinct witness in his favour, perhaps a witness against
his English competitor. William kept his Bishoprick for

1 Chron. Wig. 1056. "Se was to munece gehadod ær his ende. god man and clæne and swide ædele." Cf. Chron. Ab. and Fl. Wig. in anno. Florence seems to translate "clane" by "virginitatis custos." He built the present church of Deerhurst (see vol. i. p. 387), as an offering for the soul of his brother Elfric. See Earle, p. 345.

2 Chron. Petrib. 1048. Will. Malms. ii. 199. "Comitatus ejus [Haroldi] attributus Elgaro, Leofrici filio, viro industrio; quem ille suscipiens tunc rexit nobiliter, reverso restituit libenter."

* The Biographer (401, 2) mentions his coming to Gloucester along with his father and Siward. See above, p. 122.

Chron. Wig. 1052. Petrib. 1048. Flor. Wig. 1051.

CHAP. VII. many years, and lived to welcome his namesake and native prince to the throne of England. But he had not to wait for so distant an opportunity of displaying his new honours in the eyes of his natural sovereign. While Godwine dwelt William to as an exile at Bruges, while Harold was planning schemes England. of vengeance in the friendly court of Dublin, William the Bastard first set foot on the shores of England.1

Visit of
Duke

1051.

We are thus at last brought face to face with the two great actors in our history. Harold has already appeared before us. We have seen him raised at an early age to the highest rank open to a subject; we have seen him, in the cause of his country, deprived of his honours and driven to take refuge in a foreign land. His great rival we have as yet heard of only at a distance; he now comes directly on the field. There can be no doubt that William's visit to England forms a stage, and a most important one, among the immediate causes of the Norman Conquest. I pause then, at this point, to take up the thread of Norman history, and to give a sketch of the birth, the childhood, the early reign, of the man who, in the year of Godwine's banishment, saw, for the first time, the land which, fifteen years later, he was to claim as his own.

1 Chron. Wig. 1052. Flor. Wig. 1051.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE EARLY YEARS OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.1
A.D. 1028-1051.

§ 1. Birth, Character, and Accession of William.

A.D. 1028-1035.

ILLIAM, King of the English and Duke of the Character Normans, bears a name which must for ever stand forth among the foremost of mankind. No man that ever

1 In this Chapter I have had of course mainly to depend on the Norman writers as my authorities. The Latin writers are to be found in the great collection of Duchèsne. The first place is of course due to William of Poitiers. His Gesta Guillelmi has every advantage which can belong to the writings of a well-informed contemporary. But the work is disfigured by his constant spirit of violent partizanship (see above, p. 4). He must therefore be always followed with great caution, and in all purely English matters he is utterly untrustworthy. The beginning of his work is lost, so that we have no account from him of his hero's birth and childhood. William Calculus, a monk of Jumièges, according to Orderic (Prol. ad Lib. iii. p. 458), abridged Dudo, and continued the History of Normandy, through the reigns of Richard the Good, Richard the Third, Robert, and of William himself down to the Battle of Senlac (Ord. Vit. 618 D), presenting his work to William himself. This portion of the existing work ends at lib. vii. c. 42. He seems afterwards to have added the account of William's death (vii. 44), in which William of Poitiers and Guy of Amiens are spoken of. An eighth book, together with many interpolations in the earlier books, were added by a later hand, apparently by Robert of Torigny, Abbot of Saint Michael's Mount, commonly called Robert de Monte (see Pertz, vi. 475). William of Jumièges begins to be a contemporary writer in William's reign; with perhaps smaller opportunities of information than William of Poitiers, he is less violently prejudiced, and his work is of great value. His narrative forms the groundwork of the poetical history in the Roman de Rou. Its author, Robert Wace, Canon of Bayeux in the time of Henry the Second, seems to have been a really honest and painstaking inquirer, and I do not look on his work as being any the less trustworthy

and greatness of WILLIAM.