tered the French territory, and began to waste every thing around him with fire and sword. The city of Mantes having been taken by surprise was fired in every quarter, and the inhabitants put to the sword, William himself, glutting his vengeance by personally superintending the troops employed in the service. Whilst thus employed, his horse, chancing to tread on some burning embers, suddenly reared, and threw the king on the pommel of the saddle. The bruise produced a rupture, accompanied with fever and inflammation, which proved fatal in six weeks. He was carried to Rouen, where he languished until the 9th of September 1087. Early on the morning of that day, he was awakened by the sound of a bell, and, inquiring what it meant, was informed that it tolled the hour of prime in the church of St Mary. "Then," said he, stretching out his arms, "I commend my soul to my lady, the mother of God, that by her holy prayers she may reconcile me to her beloved Son," and as he spoke, he expired.19 From the events which followed his death, the reader may form some idea of the confused and unsettled state of society. His medical and other attendants, who had passed the night with him, seeing that he was dead, hastily mounted their horses, and rode off to take care of their property. His serving-men and vassals imitated the selfish conduct of their superiors, and having rifled the house, hurried away with their booty, leaving the royal corpse almost naked on the floor of the apartment. The citizens of Rouen were in consternation at the tidings, and hastened to prepare for the coming storm by concealing their effects, or turning them into money. "O secular pomp!" exclaims Ordericus, whose narrative we have followed in relating the particulars of William's death, and who was twelve years old when that event occurred,-"O secular pomp! How despicable art thou, because how vain and transient! Justly art thou compared to the bubbles raised by rain; for, like them, thou swellest for a moment, to vanish into nothing. Survey this most potent hero, whom lately a hundred thousand knights were eager to serve, and whom nature dreaded, now lying for hours on the naked ground, spoiled, and abandoned by every one!" William was in his 63d year when he died. He was of ordinary stature, but possessed of such prodigious strength, that it is said that sitting on horseback, he could draw the string of a bow, which no other man could bend even on foot. Hunting formed his favourite amusement, and to gratify it, vast tracts of England were withdrawn from cultivation and converted into deer-ranges. His character partook largely both of the vices and virtues of a semi-barbarous age. Bold, decisive, and indefatigable, opposition roused him to the utmost energy of action; ambitious, he trampled on every right, human and divine, that opposed his path to supreme power; educated in a strict observance of religious duties, he was in some things eminently religious according to the notions of the times, he built many monasteries, and endowed others, he also invited the best-informed ecclesiastics into his dominions, and filled the churches with able and discreet pastors, when such could be procured. To the demand of homage made upon him by Gregory VII. he returned an absolute refusal, but he maintained a friendly correspondence with that pontiff till his death in 1085. Encouraged by the 19 Ord. Vital. p. 661. hope of reward from William Rufus, who appeared disposed to honour his father's memory, a sort of literary competition arose among the Latin versifiers of England and Normandy, in the composition of an epitaph to be engraven on William's shrine. The pieces composed on this occasion were as fulsome and lying as most of their species in more refined times. Perhaps two lines from the chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, would have made a more fitting epitaph than any which were offered. They run thus: There was in kyng William's days warre and sorrowe eynow, Hereward Le Wake. Of all the Anglo-Saxon warriors who distinguished themselves by their determined opposition to the Normans, Hereward le Wake was the most celebrated and most successful. His memory was long dear to the people of England, who handed down the fame of his exploits from generation to generation in their traditionary songs. His father, the lord of Born in Lincolnshire, unable to restrain the turbulent temper which he manifested even in early youth, had procured an order for his banishment from Edward the Confessor. The youth submitted to the royal mandate, backed as it was by paternal authority; and soon earned in foreign lands the praise of a fearless and irresistible warrior. He was in Flanders at the period of the conquest; but no sooner did he hear that his father was dead, and that his paternal lands had been given to a foreigner, than he returned in haste to his native country, and, having procured the gift of knighthood from his uncle Brand, abbot of Peterborough-without which he was not entitled, according to the usages of the time, to command others-collected the vassals of his family, and drove the Norman who had insulted his mother, and usurped her inheritance, from his ancestral possessions. The fame of his exploit drew fresh adherents to his standard, and Hereward soon found himself at the head of a band of followers whose valour and hardiment, aided by the natural fastnesses of his retreat in the Isle of Ely, enabled him to set at defiance the whole power of the Conqueror. The Saxon abbot of Peterborough died before the close of the year 1069, and thus escaped the chastisement which his blessing the sword of an enemy to the Normans would probably have drawn upon him. William gave the vacant abbey to Turauld, a foreign monk, who had already rendered himself famous by his military propensities, and was probably thought a fit neighbour for Hereward. Turauld, nothing. daunted by the prospect before him, set out with a guard of one hundred and sixty French horsemen to take possession of his new benefice, and had already reached Stamford, when the indefatigable Hereward appeared at the gates of the golden city, as Peterborough was then called, and finding the monks little resolved to defend it against the new abbot and his men-at-arms, set fire to the town, carried off all the treasures of the monastery, and gave it also to the flames. Turauld, the better to 1 Ingulf. 70. protect himself against such a daring foe, devoted sixty-two hydes of land on the domains of his abbey to the support of a body of military retainers. With the assistance of Ive Taillebois, the Norman commander of the district, he undertook a military expedition against Hereward; but the expedition terminated most disastrously for the militant churchman; for whilst Taillebois went into the forest which formed the defence of the Saxons on one side, Hereward went out on the other, and surprising the abbot and his party, who lingered in the rear afraid to expose themselves to the chances of war, he made them all prisoners, and kept them in the fens which surrounded his retreat, until they had purchased their ransom with a sum of 3000 marks. Meanwhile the Danish fleet again arrived at the isle of Ely, and were welcomed by the refugees as friends and liberators. Morcar, also, and most of the exiles from Scotland, joined the party of Hereward. Prudence now compelled William to pursue energetic measures against the man whom he had at first affected to despise. He purchased the retreat of the Danes with gold, and then invested the camp of the refugees on all sides with his fleet and army. To facilitate their movements, he also constructed bridges and solid roads across the marshes. But Hereward and his companions, by incessant irruptions on all sides, so impeded the labour of the besiegers, that the conqueror of England despaired of being able to subdue this little handful of men; and at last listened to the sage recommendation of Taillebois, who, attributing the success of the Saxons to the assistance of Satan, advised the king to employ a sorceress who, by the superior efficacy of her spells, might defeat those of the English magicians. The sorceress was procured, and placed in great state in a lofty wooden tower, from which she could overlook the operations of the soldiers and labourers. But Hereward seizing a favourable opportunity, set fire to the dry reeds in the neighbourhood: the wind spread the conflagration, and enveloped the enchantress and her guards in a circle of smoke and fire which destroyed them all. This was not the only success of the insurgents. Notwithstanding the immense superiority of the king's forces, Hereward's incessant activity baffled his every effort for many months, and would have kept the whole Norman power at bay for a longer period, had not treachery seconded the efforts of the assailants. There was in the isle of Ely a convent of monks, who, unable longer to endure the miseries of famine, sent to William's camp, and offered to point out to him a path by which he might cross the morass which protected the camp of the insurgents, provided he would guarantee to them the possession of their property. The offer was accepted, and the Norman troops, guided by the treacherous monks, penetrated unexpectedly into Hereward's camp, where they killed a thousand of the English, and compelled the rest to lay down their arms. All surrendered except Hereward and a small band of determined followers, who cut their way through their assailants into the lowlands of Lincoln. Here some Saxon fishermen, who carried their fish for sale every day to a Norman garrison in the neighbourhood, received their fugitive countrymen into their boats, and hid them under heaps of straw. The boats approached the Norman station as usual, and the garrison knowing the fishermen by sight, made their purchase of fish without suspicion, and quietly sat down to their meal. But while thus engaged, Hereward and his followers rising up from their concealment, rushed upon them with their battle-axes, and massacred nearly all of them. This coup-de-main was not the last exploit of the English guerilla captain; wherever he went, he avenged the fate of his countrymen by similar deeds, until at last, says Ingulphus, "after great battles, and a thousand dangers frequently braved and nobly terminated, as well against the king of England, as against his earls, barons, prefects, and presidents, which are yet sung in our streets, and after having fully avenged his mother's wrongs with his own powerful right hand,—he obtained the king's pardon, and his paternal inheritance, and so ended his days in peace, and was very lately buried with his wife nigh to our monastery." A different fate awaited his companions who were captured in the camp of Ely. Some were allowed to ransom themselves; others suffered death; and others were set at large after having been cruelly maimed and mutilated. Stigand was condemned to perpetual imprisonment. Egelwin, bishop of Durham, was confined at Abingdon, where, a few months afterwards, he died either of hunger voluntarily induced, or in consequence of forced privation. The treachery of the monks of Ely received its reward. Forty men-at-arms occupied their convent as a military post, and lived in it at their expense. The monks offered a sum of 700 marks to be relieved of the charge of maintaining such a body of soldiers; their offer was accepted, but on weighing the silver, a single drachm was found to be wanting, and the circumstance was made a pretext for extorting 300 marks more from them. Finally, royal commissioners were sent, who took away from the convent whatever valuables remained, and divided the abbey-lands into military fiefs. The monks made bitter protestations against this treatment, which no one regarded. They invoked pity on their convent,-once, said they, the fairest among the daughters of Zion, now captive and suffering,—but not a tear of sympathy was shed for them, nor a single hand raised in their cause. William Rufus. CROWNED A. D. 1087.-DIED A. D. 1100. THE Conqueror left three sons by his queen Matilda. Robert, the eldest of these, was acknowledged duke of Normandy immediately on his father's death, and satisfied with the acquisition of the ducal coronet, allowed his second brother, William, surnamed Rufus, from the colour of his hair, to claim the English crown, in virtue of his father's nomination in his favour when on his death-bed. His cause was warmly espoused by Archbishop Lanfranc who had been his preceptor in his youth, and while the barons of Normandy were yet deliberating on the succession, Rufus was crowned at Westminster by that prelate, assisted by the archbishop of York and many of the chief nobility. The third and remaining son of the Conqueror was named Henry. He had received only a portion of five thousand pounds from his father, which did not satisfy his ambition, but necessity compelled him to submit at least for Jealous of foreign informed a plan for debrother of Normandy, Robert received their the present to the arrangement. William had predicted that his halfbrother Odo would prove a turbulent subject to his successor. The prediction was soon verified. Odo was a man of considerable talents and great energy; the stormy arena of politics suited him better than the retiring and pacific habits of the cloister. fluence, and particularly detesting Lanfranc, he throning William of England, and elevating his whose ear he possessed, to the English throne. proposals with favour, and the conspirators departed to raise the standard of rebellion in their respective baronies in that kingdom,—Odo in Kent, William bishop of Durham in Northumberland, Geoffry of Coutances in Somerset, Roger Montgomery in Shropshire, Hugh Bigod in Norfolk, and Hugh de Grentmesnil in the county of Leicester. In this emergency William owed the preservation of his crown to his English subjects, whom he succeeded by fair promises in collecting around his banner to the number of 30,000. With these, and such Norman barons as adhered to him, he took the field, and in one campaign en tirely suppressed his enemies. Odo, himself, was taken at Rochester, and with difficulty escaped death from the hands of the enraged English. By the suppression of this rebellion, Rufus was firmly established on the throne of England, and enabled to carry his arms into Normandy; but in the hour of his prosperity he forgot the promises which he had made to his English subjects, and renewed some of his most oppressive exactions. The interference of the Norman barons and French monarch effected a reconciliation betwixt the two brothers. A pacification was entered into, which provided that on the death of either, the survivor should inherit his dominions; that the king of England should, in the meantime, retain possession of the fortresses which he had acquired in Normandy, but indemnify his brother by an equivalent in England; and that the late attainders of Robert's partisans in that country should be reversed. The principal sufferers by this treaty were Edgar the etheling, and Prince Henry, the Conqueror's youngest son. William's Saxon subjects also looked upon it as a violation of the promises which he had given them when soliciting their aid against Robert's partisans, and the flame of resistance burst forth with new fury in every place where Saxons, united in a body, and not reduced to the last degree of slavery, were placed under Norman chiefs or governors. These chiefs, whether clergy or laity, were animated by one spirit, and differed in their habiliments alone. Alike under the coat of mail and the priestly cape, there was ever the same foreign conqueror, harsh, proud, avaricious, who regarded the natives of England only as so many beasts of burden, and exacted from them the meanest services without scruple or remorse. Jean de la Ville, bishop of Wells, formerly a physician at Tours, pulled down the houses of the canons of his church, to build himself a palace of the materials. Renouf Flambard, bishop of Lincoln, once a footman in the service of the duke of Normandy, plundered the inhabitants of his diocese to such an extent that, says an old historian, they coveted death rather than to live under his authority. The Norman bishops marched to the altar like counts to their military reviews, fenced round with lances: and passed day after day in gambling. 1 Chron. Sax. 193.-Ord. Vital 665. 2 Chron. Sax. 197.- Al. Bev. 138.-Flor. Urg. 664. |