such a mass of business, you yet snatch some hours to yourself, for the purpose either of reading, or of hearing others. Justly do you regulate, indeed, your exalted rank in life, neither omitting the toils of war for literature, nor contemning literature, as some do, for military service. Here, also, the excess of your learning appears; for, whilst you love books, you manifest how deeply you have drunk of the scream. For many things, indeed, are eagerly desired when not possessed, but no person will love philosophy, who shall not have imbibed it thoroughly. The fame of your justice reaches even our parts; for a false sentence has never been extorted from you, either by elevation of rank, or by scantiness of fortune. The person who wishes to subvert justice, finds in your breast nothing conducive to his design, either by the offering of presents, or by the charm of favour. Your munificence and disregard of money, is amply shown by the monastery of Tewkesbury; from which, as I hear, you not only do not extort presents but even return its voluntary offerings. You must be well aware, how noble such a proceeding is, more especially at the present time how much it redounds to your glory among men, how productive of the favour of God. Happy, then, according to Plato, is the republic whose ruler is a philosopher, whose Sovereign delights not in gifts. More could I add on such subjects, did not the suspicion of flattery on my part, and commendable modesty on yours, restrain my tongue. In truth, my design was, not to pass by in silence the things I have uttered, in order that, by my agency, your worth might reach posterity; and that it may continue to proceed from virtue to virtue. Moreover, it was long since my intention, at the instance of certain persons, to subjoin to this work, whatever I may deem of importance, according to the successive years: but it appears advisable rather to form another volume of such matters, than to be perpetually adding to that already completed. Nor can any one say,

that I engage in a superfluous work, if I record the transactions of the most celebrated among the kings of his time. Indeed my lowly condition is much indebted to his greatness, and will be still more so, were it for nothing else, than his being able to pride himself on such a son.* For, Terentii Andria, i. 1.

;

when he had most auspiciously begotten, he first commanded you to be instructed, not superficially, as plainly appears at the present day, in science; he next made you master of a most princely fortune; and, at this moment he reposes his paternal regards upon you. Let this volume then, whatever its merits or defects, be altogether dedicated to your fame; in the next my life and my history will terminate together Farther, kindly accept this my offering, that I, whose judg ment has not erred in its choice, may be gratified by the good wishes of my patron.

480

THE MODERN HISTORY.

PREFACE,

ADDRESSED TO ROBERT, EARL OF GLOUCESTER.

To his most loving lord, Robert, son of king Henry, and eari of Gloucester, William, librarian of Malmesbury, wishes, after completing his victorious course on earth, eternal triumph in heaven. Many of the transactions of your father, of glorious memory, I have not omitted to record, both in the fifth book of my Regal History, and in those three smaller volumes, which I have intituled Chronicles.* Your highness is now desirous that those events which, through the miraculous power of God, have taken place in modern time, in England, should be transmitted to posterity: truly, like all your other desires, a most noble one. For what more concerns the advancement of virtue; what more conduces to justice; than to recognize the divine favour towards good men, and his vengeance upon the wicked? What, too, can be more grateful, than to commit to the page of history, the exploits of brave men, by whose example others may shake off their indolence, and take up arms in defence of their country? As this task is committed to my pen, I think the narrative will proceed with exacter order, if, going back a little, I trace the series of years from the return of the empress into England, after the death of her husband. First, therefore, invoking the help of God, as is fitting, and purposing to write the truth, without listening to enmity, or sacrificing to favour, I shall begin as follows.

* What these were is unknown, as it is believed there is no MS. of them now to be met with.

BOOK I.

In the twenty-sixth year of Henry king of England, which was A.D. 1126, Henry, emperor of Germany, to whom Matilda the aforesaid king's daughter had been married, died* in the very bloom of his life and of his conquests. Our king was at that time residing in Normandy, to quell whatever tumults might arise in those parts. As soon as he heard of the death of his son-in-law, he recalled his daughter by honourable messengers despatched for that purpose. The empress, as they say, returned with reluctance, as she had become habituated to the country which was her dowry, and had large possessions there. It is well known, that several princes of Lorraine and Lombardy came, during succeeding years, repeatedly into England, to demand her as their sovereign; but they lost the fruit of their labours, the king designing; by the marriage of his daughter, to procure peace between himself and the earl of Anjou. He was certainly, in an extraordinary degree, the greatest of all kings in the memory either of ourselves, or of our fathers: and yet nevertheless, he ever, in some measure, dreaded the power of the earls of Anjou. Hence it arose, that he broke off and annulled the espousals which William, his nephew, afterwards earl of Flanders, was said to be about to contract with the daughter of Fulco, earl of Anjou, who was afterwards king of Jerusalem. Hence, too, it arose, that he united a daughter of the same earl to his son William, while yet a stripling; and hence it was, that he married his daughter, of whom we began to speak, after her imperial match, to a son of the same Fulco, as my narrative will proceed to disclose.

In the twenty-seventh year of his reign, in the month of September, king Henry came to England, bringing his daughter with him. But, at the ensuing Christmas, convening a great number of the clergy and nobility at London, he gave the county of Salop to his wife, the daughter of the earl of Louvain, whom he had married after the death of Matilda. Distressed that this lady had no issue, and fearing

"The emperor Henry V. died on the 23rd of May, ▲ D. 1125; and in September, A.D. 1126, king Henry returned from Normandy, with his daughte the empss."-HARDY.

lest she should be perpetually childless, with well-founded anxiety, he turned his thoughts on a successor to the kingdom. On which subject, having held much previous and long-continued deliberation, he now at this council compelled all the nobility of England, as well as the bishops and abbats, to make oath, that, if he should die without male issue, they would, without delay or hesitation, accept his daughter Matilda, the late empress, as their sovereign: observing, how prejudicially to the country fate had snatched away his son William, to whom the kingdom by right had pertained: and, that his daughter still survived, to whom alone the legitimate succession belonged, from her grandfather, uncle, and father, who were kings; as well as from her maternal descent for many ages back: inasmuch as from Egbert, king of the West Saxons, who first subdued or expelled the other kings of the island, in the year of the incarnation 800,* through a line of fourteen kings, down to A.D. 1043, in which king Edward, who lies at Westminster, was elevated to the throne, the line of royal blood did never fail, nor falter in the succession.f Moreover, Edward, the last, and at the same time the most noble, of that stock, had united‡ Margaret, his grand-niece by his brother Edmund Ironside, to Malcolm, king of Scotland, whose daughter Matilda, as was well known, was the empress's mother. All therefore, in this council, who were considered as persons of any note, took the oath and first of all William, archbishop of Canterbury; next the other bishops, and the abbats in like manner. The first of the laity, who swore, was David, king of Scotland, uncle of the empress; then Stephen, earl of Moreton and Boulogne, nephew of king Henry by his sister Adala; then Robert, the king's son, who was born to him before he came to the throne, and whom he had created earl of Gloucester, § bestowing on him

"The union of the kingdoms under Egbert did not take place for several years after his accession in 802."-HARDY.

This must be understood with the exception of Canute and his sons, between Edmund Ironside, and Edward the Confessor.

Here seems a mistake. Margaret was given to Malcolm by her brother Edgar Atheling, while in exile in Scotland, A.D. 1067. See the Saxon Chronicle.

§ "Robert was created earl of Gloucester in the year 1119. On the Pipe-roll, 31 Hen. I., this entry occurs: 'Glæcecestrescire. Et comiti Glæc. xxii. numero pro parte sua comitatus.'"-HARDY.