The reign of Eadward the Confessor. 2d ed., rev. 1870

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Clarendon Press, 1870

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Page 169 - He turned a jealous over-lord into an effective ally against his rebellious subjects, and he turned those rebellious subjects into faithful supporters against that jealous over-lord. He came to his Duchy under every disadvantage. At once bastard and minor, with competitors for his coronet arising at every moment, with turbulent barons to hold in check and envious neighbours to guard against, he was throughout the whole of his early life beset by troubles, none of which were of his own making, and...
Page 32 - Bishops over the already half conquered soil of England. . . . These were again only the first instalment of the larger gang who were to win for themselves a more lasting settlement four and twenty years later. In all this the seeds of the Conquest were sowing, or rather, . . . it is now that the Conquest actually begins. The reign of Edward is a period of struggle between natives and foreigners for dominion in...
Page 159 - ... as if he ruled the king and all England ; and his sons were earls and the king's darlings, and his daughter wedded and united to the king: she was brought to Wherwell, and they delivered her to the abbess.
Page 590 - Northumberland. So again Bseda (iv. 3) speaks of Wilfrith as holding " episcopatum Eboracensis ecclesise, necnon et omnium Nordanhymbrorum, sed et Pictorum, quousque rex Osuiu imperium protendere poterat.
Page 169 - He shared indeed in the fierce passions of his race, and in one or two cases his wrath hurried him, or his policy beguiled him, into acts at which humanity shudders. At all stages of his life, if he was debonair to those who would do his will, he was beyond measure stern to all who withstood it.1 Yet when we think of all that he went through, of the treachery and ingratitude which he met with on every side, how his most faithful friends were murdered beside him, how he himself had to flee for his...
Page 165 - JDlfred, and Washington ; he cannot even claim the more mingled fame of Alexander, Charles, and Cnut ; but he has even less in common with the mere enemies of their species, with the Nabuchodonosors, the Swegens, and the Buonapartes, whom God has sent from time to time as simple scourges of a guilty world.
Page 63 - It became during this reign, what it remained during the reign of the Conqueror, the place where the King wore his Crown at the Christmas festival, as he wore it at Winchester at Easter. It was...
Page 140 - ... Swegen and Harold comprised most of south England and included East Anglia, which lay within Harold's earldom, and Herefordshire, which lay within Swegen's (although Oman, p. 614, believes Florence is wrong in saying Swegen's earldom included Herefordshire) . Beverstone, according to Freeman (II, 91) , is " a point on the Cotswolds, not far from the Abbey of Malmesbury, which is still marked by a castle of far later date, the remaining fragments of which form one of the most remarkable antiquities...
Page 191 - They read of the brave times when there was no king in Israel, when every man did that which was right in his own eyes, and sat under his own vine and his own fig-tree, none daring to make him afraid.
Page 166 - William passed to one who shared largely in his mere intellectual gifts, but who had no fellowship in the greater and nobler elements of his character. To appreciate William the Conqueror we have but to cast our glance onwards to William the Red. We shall then understand how men writhing under the scorpions of the son might well look back with regret to the whips of the father. We can understand how, under his godless rule, men might feel kindly towards the memory of one who never wholly cast away...

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