camp, and submitted to him. Edgar, the
insignificant son of Edmund Ironside, was pro-
claimed King by others, but nothing came of it.
He fled to Scotland afterwards, where his sister,
who was young and beautiful, married the Scot-
tish King. Edgar himself was not important
enough for anybody to care much about him.
On Christmas Day, William was crowned in
Westminster Abbey, under the title of William
the First ; but he is best known as William
the Conqueror. It was a strange coronation.
One of the bishops who performed the ceremony
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
asked the Normans, in French, if they would
have Duke William for their king? They an-
swered Yes. Another of the bishops put the
same question to the Saxons, in English. They
too answered Yes, with a loud shout. The
noise being heard by a guard of Norman horse-
soldiers outside, was mistaken for resistance on
the part of the English. The guard instantly
set fire to the neighbouring houses, and a tumult
ensued ; in the midst of which the King, being
left alone in the Abbey, with a few priests (and
they all being in a terrible fright together), was
hurriedly crowned. When the crown was placed
upon his head, he swore to govern the English
as well as the best of their own monarchs. I
dare say you think, as I do, that if we except
the Great Alfred, he might pretty easily have
done that.
Numbers of the English nobles had been
killed in the last disastrous battle. Their estates,
and the estates of all the nobles who had fought
against him there, King William seized upon,
and gave to his own Norman knights and nobles.
Many great English families of the present time
acquired their English lands in this way, and
are very proud of it.
But what is got by force must be maintained
by force. These nobles were obliged to build
castles all over England, to defend their new
property; and, do what he would, the King
could neither soothe nor quell the nation as he
wished. He gradually introduced the Norman
language and the Norman customs ; yet, for a
long time the great body of the English remained
sullen and revengeful. On his going over to
Normandy, to visit his subjects there, the op-
pressions of his half-brother Odo, whom he left
in charge of his English kingdom, drove the
people mad. The men of Kent even invited
over, to take possession of Dover, their old
enemy Count Eustace of Boulogne, who had led
the fray when the Dover man was slain at his
own fireside. The men of Hereford, aided by
the Welsh, and commanded by a chief named
Edric the Wild, drove the Normans out of
their country. Some of those who had been
dispossessed of their lands, banded together in
the North of England ; some, in Scotland ;
some, in the thick woods and marshes ; and
whensoever they could fall upon the Normans,
or upon the English who had submitted to the
Normans, they fought, despoiled, and murdered,
like the desperate outlaws that they were.
Conspiracies were set on foot for a general
massacre of the Normans, like the old massacre
of the Danes. In short, the English were in a
murderous mood all through the kingdom,
King William, fearing he might lose his
conquest, came back, and tried to pacify the
London people by soft words. He then set
forth to repress the country people by stern
deeds. Among the towns which he besieged,
and where he killed and maimed the inhabitants
without any distinction, sparing none, young or
old, armed or unarmed, were Oxford, Warwick,
Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, York.
In all these places, and in many others, fire and
sword worked their utmost horrors, and made
the land dreadful to behold. The streams and
rivers were discoloured with blood ; the sky was
blackened with smoke ; the fields were wastes
of ashes ; the waysides were heaped up with
dead. Such are the fatal results of conquest
and ambition ! Although William was a harsh
and angry man, I do not suppose that he deli-
berately meant to work this shocking ruin, when
he invaded England. But what he had got by
the strong hand, he could only keep by the
strong hand, and in so doing he made England
a great grave.
Two sons of Harold, by name Edmund and
Godwin, came over from Ireland, with some
ships, against the Normans, but were defeated.
This was scarcely done, when the outlaws in the
woods so harassed York, that the Governor sent
to the King for help. The King despatched a
general and a large force to occupy the town of
Durham. The Bishop of that place met the
general outside the town, and warned- him not
to enter, as he would be in danger there. The
general cared nothing for the warning, and went
in with all his men. That night, on every hill
within sight of Durham, signal fires were seen to
blaze. When the morning dawned, the English,
who had assembled in great strength, forced the
gates, rushed into the town, and slew the Nor-
mans every one. The English afterwards be-
sought the Danes to come and help them. The
Danes came, with two hundred and forty ships.
The outlawed nobles joined them; they cap-
tured York, and drove the Normans out of that
city. Then, William bribed the Danes to go
away ; and took such vengeance on the English,
that all the former fire and sword, smoke and
ashes, death and ruin, were nothing compared
with it. In melancholy songs, and doleful stories,
it was still sung and told by cottage fires on
winter evenings, a hundred years afterwards,
how, in those dreadful days of the Normans,
there was not, from the River Humber to the
River Tyne, one inhabited village left, nor one
cultivated field — how there was nothing but a
dismal ruin, where the human creatures and the
beasts lay dead together.
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.
23
The outlaws had, at this time, what they called
a Camp of Refuge, in the midst of the fens of
Cambridgeshire. Protected by those marshy
grounds which were difficult of approach, they
lay among the reeds and rushes, and were hidden
by the mists that rose up from the watery earth.
Now, there also was, at that time, over the sea
in Flanders, an Englishman named Hereward,
whose father had died in his absence, and whose
property had been given to a Norman. When
he heard of this wrong that had been done him
(from such of the exiled English as chanced to
wander into that country), he longed for revenge ;
and joining the outlaws in their camp of refuge,
became their commander. He was so good a
soldier, that the Normans supposed him to be
aided by enchantment. William, even after he
had made a road three miles in length across
the Cambridgeshire marshes, on purpose to
attack this supposed enchanter, thought it neces-
sary to engage an old lady, who pretended to be
a sorceress, to come and do a little enchantment
in the royal cause. For this purpose she was
pushed on before the troops in a wooden tower ;
but Hereward very soon disposed of this unfor-
tunate sorceress, by burning her, tower and all.
The monks of the convent of Ely near at hand,
however, who were fond of good living, and who
found it very uncomfortable to have the country
blockaded and their supplies of meat and drink
cut off, showed the King a secret way of sur-
prising the camp. So Hereward was soon de-
feated. Whether he afterwards died quietly, or
whether he was killed after killing sixteen of the
men who attacked him (as some old rhymes
relate that he did), I cannot say. His defeat
put an end to the Camp of Refuge ; and, very
soon afterwards, the King, victorious both in
Scotland and in England, quelled the last re-
bellious English noble. He then surrounded
himself with Norman lords, enriched by the
property of English nobles ; had a great survey
made of all the land in England, which was
entered as the property of its new owners, on a
roll called Doomsday Book ; obliged the people
to put out their fires and candles at a certain
hour every night, on the ringing of a bell which
was called The Curfew ; introduced the Norman
dresses and manners ; made the Normans mas-
ters everywhere, and the English, servants ;
turned out the English bishops, and put Nor-
mans in their places ; and showed himself to be
the Conqueror indeed.
But, even with his own Normans, he had a
restless life. They were always hungering and
thirsting for the riches of the English ; and the
more he gave, the more they wanted. His
priests were as greedy as his soldiers. We know
of only one Norman who plainly told his master,
the King, that he had come with him to England
to do his duty as a faithful servant, and that
property taken by force from other men had no
charms for him. His name was Guilbert. We
should not forget his' name, for it is good to
remember and to honour honest men.
Besides all these troubles, William the Con-
queror was troubled by quarrels among his sons.
He had three living. Robert, called Curt-
hose, because of his short legs ; William, called
Rufus or the Red, from the colour of his hair ;
and Henry, fond of learning, and called, in the
Norman language, Beauclerc, or Fine-Scholar.
When Robert grew up, he asked of his father
the government of Normandy, which he had
nominally possessed, as a child, under his
mother, Matilda. The King refusing to grant
it, Robert became jealous and discontented ;
and happening one day, while in this temper, to
be ridiculed by his brothers, who threw water on
him from a balcony as he was walking before
the door, he drew his sword, rushed up-stairs,
and was only prevented by the King himself
from putting them to death. That same night,
he hotly departed with some followers from his
father's court, and endeavoured to take the
Castle of Rouen by surprise. Failing in this,
he shut himself up in another Castle in Nor-
mandy, which the King besieged, and where
Robert one day unhorsed and nearly killed him
without knowing who he was. His submission
when he discovered his father, and the inter-
cession of the queen and others, reconciled
them ; but not soundly ; for Robert soon strayed
abroad, and went from court to court with his
complaints. He was a gay, careless, thought-
less fellow, spending all he got on musicians
and dancers ; but his mother loved him, and
often, against the King's command, supplied
him with money through a messenger named
Samson. At length the incensed King swore
he would tear out Samson's eyes ; and Samson,
thinking that his only hope of safety was in
becoming a monk, became one, went on such
errands no more, and kept his eyes in his head.
All this time, from the turbulent day of his
strange coronation, the Conqueror had been
struggling, you see, at any cost of cruelty and
bloodshed, to maintain what he had seized. All
his reign, he struggled still, with the same object
ever before him. He was a stern bold man,
and he succeeded in it.
He loved money, and was particular in his
eating, but he had only leisure to indulge one
other passion, and that was his love of hunting.
24
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
He carried it to such a height that he ordered
whole villages and towns to be swept away to
make forests for the deer. Not satisfied with
sixty-eight Royal Forests, he laid waste an im-
mense district, to form another in Hampshire,
called the New Forest. The many thousands
of miserable peasants who saw their little houses
pulled down, and themselves and children turned
into the open country without a shelter, de-
tested him for his merciless addition to their
many sufferings ; and when, in the twenty-first
year of his reign (which proved to be the last),
he went over to Rouen, England was as full of
hatred against him, as if every leaf on every tree
in all his Royal Forests had been a curse upon
his head. In the New Forest, his son Richard
(for he had four sons) had been gored to death
by a Stag; and the people said that this so
cruelly-made Forest would yet be fatal to others
of the Conqueror's race.
He was engaged in a dispute with the King
of France about some territory. While he stayed
at Rouen, negotiating with that King, he kept
his bed and took medicines : being advised by
his physicians to do so, on account of having
grown to an unwieldy size. Word being brought
to him that the King of France made light of
this, and joked about it, he swore in a great
rage that he should rue his jests. He assembled
his army, marched into the disputed territory,
burnt— his old way ! — the vines, the crops, and
fruit, and set the town of Mantes on fire. But,
in an evil hour; for, as he rode over the hot
ruins, his horse, setting his hoofs upon some
burning embers, started, threw him forward
against the pommel of the saddle, and gave him
a mortal hurt. For six weeks he lay dying in a
monastery near Rouen, and then made his will,
giving England to William, Normandy to Robert,
and five thousand pounds to Henry. And now,
his violent deeds lay heavy on his mind. He
ordered money to be given to many English
churches and monasteries, and — which was much
better repentance — released his prisoners of
state, some of whom had been confined in his
dungeons twenty years.
It was a September morning, and the sun
was rising, when the King was awakened from
slumber by the sound of a church bell. " What
bell is that ? " he faintly asked. They told him
it was the bell of the chapel of Saint Mary. " I
commend my soul," said he, " to Mary ! " and
died.
Think of his name, The Conqueror, and then
consider how he lay in death ! The moment he
was dead, his physicians, priests, and nobles, not
knowing what contest for the throne might now
take place, or what might happen in it, hastened
away, each man for himself and his own pro-
perty ; the mercenary servants of the court
began to rob and plunder; the body of the
King, in the indecent strife, was rolled from the
bed, and lay alone, for hours, upon the ground.
O Conqueror, of whom so many great names
are proud now, of whom so many great names
thought nothing then, it were better to have
conquered one true heart, than England !
By-and-by, the priests came.creeping in with
prayers and candles ; and a good knight, named
Herluin, undertook (which no one else would
do) to convey the body to Caen, in Normandy, in
order that it might be buried in St. Stephen's
church there, which the Conqueror had founded.
But fire, of which he had made such bad use in
his life, seemed to follow him of itself in death.
A great conflagration broke out in the town
when the body was placed in the church ; and
those present running out to extinguish the
flames, it was once again left alone.
It was not even buried in peace. It was
about to be let down, in its Royal robes, into a
tomb near the high altar, in presence of a great
concourse of people, when a loud voice in the
crowd cried out, " This ground is mine ! Upon
it, stood my father's house. This King despoiled
me of both ground and house to build this
church. In the great name of God, I here
forbid his body to be covered with the earth
that is my right ! " The priests and bishops
present, knowing the speaker's right, and know-
ing that the King had often denied him justice,
paid him down sixty shillings for the grave.
Even then, the corpse was not at rest. The
tomb was too small, and they tried to force it
in. It broke, a dreadful smell arose, the people
hurried out into the air, and, for the third time,
it was left alone.
Where were the Conqueror's three sons, that
they were not at their father's burial ? Robert
was lounging among minstrels, dancers, and
gamesters, in Fiance or Germany. Henry
was carrying his five thousand pounds safely
away in a convenient chest he had got made.
William the Red was hurrying to England, to-
lay hands upon the Royal treasure and the
crown.
CHAPTER IX.
ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE SECOND, CALLED
KUFUS.
WILLIAM THE RED, in breathless haste,
secured the three great forts of Dover,
Pevensey, and Hastings, and made with hot
WILLIAM THE SECOND.
speed for Winchester, where the Royal treasure
was kept. The treasurer delivering him the
keys, he found that it amounted to sixty thou-
sand pounds in silver, besides gold and jewels.
Possessed of this wealth, he soon persuaded
the Archbishop of Canterbury to crown him,
and became William the Second, King of Eng-
land.
Rufus was no sooner on the throne, than he
ordered into prison again the unhappy state
captives whom his father had set free, and
directed a goldsmith to ornament his father's
tomb profusely with gold and silver. It would
have been more dutiful in him to have attended
the sick Conqueror when he was dying ; but
England, itself, like this Red King, who once
governed it, has sometimes made expensive
tombs for dead men whom it treated shabbily
Avhen they were alive.
The King's brother, Robert of Normandy,
seeming quite content to be only Duke of that
country; and the King's other brother, Fine-
Scholar, being quiet enough with his five thou-
sand pounds in a chest ; the King flattered him-
self, we may suppose, with the hope of an easy
reign. But easy reigns were difficult to have in
those days. The turbulent Bishop Odo (who
had blessed the Norman army at the Battle of
Hastings, and who, I dare say, took all the
credit of the victory to himself) soon began, in
concert with some powerful Norman nobles, to
trouble the Red King.
The truth seems to be that this bishop and
his friends, who had lands in England and
lands in Normandy, wished to hold both under
one Sovereign ; and greatly preferred a thought-
less good-natured person, such as Robert was,
to Rufus ; who, though far from being an ami-
able man in any respect, was keen, and not to
be imposed upon. They declared in Robert's
favour, and retired to their castles (those castles
were very troublesome to kings) in a sullen
humour. The Red King, seeing the Normans
thus falling from him, revenged himself upon
them by appealing to the English ; to whom he
made a variety of promises, which he never
meant to perform — in particular, promises to
soften the cruelty of the Forest Laws ; and who,
in return, so aided him with their valour, that
Odo was besieged in the Castle of Rochester,
and forced to abandon it, and to depart from
England for ever ; whereupon the other rebel-
lious Norman nobles were soon reduced and
scattered.
Then, the Red King went over to Normandy,
where the people suffered greatly under the
loose rule of Duke Robert. The King's object
was to seize upon the Duke's dominions. This,
the Duke, of course, prepared to resist ; and
miserable war between the two brothers seemed
inevitable, when the powerful nobles on both
sides, who had seen so much of war, interfered
to prevent it. A treaty was made. Each of the
two brothers agreed to give up something of his
claims, and that the longer-liver of the two
should inherit all the dominions of the other.
When they had come to this loving understand-
ing, they embraced and joined their forces
against Fine-Scholar ; who had bought some
territory of Robert with a part of his five thou-
sand pounds, and was considered a dangerous
individual in consequence.
St. Michael's Mount, in Normandy (there is
another St. Michael's Mount, in Cornwall,
wonderfully like it), was then, as it is now, a
strong place perched upon the top of a high
rock, around which, when the tide is in, the sea
flows, leaving no road to the mainland. In this
place, Fine-Scholar shut himself up with bis
soldiers, and here he was closely besieged by
his two brothers. At one time, when he was
reduced to great distress for want of water, the
generous Robert not only permitted his men to
get water, but sent Fine-Scholar wine from his
own table ; and, on being remonstrated with by
the Red King, said, " What ! shall we let our
own brother die of thirst ? Where shall we get
another, when he is gone ? " At another time,
the Red King riding alone on the shore of the
bay, looking up at the Castle, was taken by two
of Fine-Scholar's men, one of whom was about
to kill him, when he cried out, " Hold, knave !
I am the King of England ! " The story says
that the soldier raised him from the ground
respectfully and humbly, and that the King
took him into his service. The story may or
may not be true ; but at any rate it is true that
Fine-Scholar could not hold out against his
united brothers, and that he abandoned Mount
St. Michael, and wandered about — as poor and
forlorn as other scholars have been sometimes
known to be.
The Scotch became unquiet in the Red
King's time, and were twice defeated — the
second time, with the loss of their King, Mal-
colm, and his son. The Welsh became unquiet
too. Against them, Rufus was less successful ;
for they fought among their native mountains,
and did great execution on the King's troops.
Robert of Normandy became unquiet too ; and
complaining that his brother the King did not
faithfully perform his part of their agreement,
took up arms, and obtained assistance from the
King of France, whom Rufus, in the end,
26
A CHILD 'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
bought off with vast sums of money. England
became unquiet too. Lord Mowbray, the power-
ful Earl of Northumberland,, headed a great
conspiracy to depose the King, and to place
upon the throne, Stephen, the Conqueror's
near relative. The plot was discovered ; all
the chief conspirators were seized ; some were
fined, some were put in prison, some were put
to death. The Earl of Northumberland him-
self was shut up in a dungeon beneath Windsor
Castle, where he died, an old man, thirty long
years afterwards. The Priests in England were
more unquiet than any other class or power ; for
the Red King treated them with such small
ceremony that he refused to appoint new
bishops or archbishops when the old ones died,
but kept all the wealth belonging to those
offices in his own hands. In return for this,
the Priests wrote his life when he was dead,
and abused him well. I am inclined to think,
myself, that there was little to choose between
the Priests and the Red King ; that both sides
were greedy and designing ; and that they were
fairly matched.
The Red King was false of heart, selfish,
covetous, and mean. He had a worthy minister
in his favourite, Ralph, nicknamed — for almost
every famous person had a nickname in those
rough days — Flarnbard, or the Firebrand. Once,
the King being ill, became penitent, and made
Anselm, a foreign priest and a good man, Arch-
bishop of Canterbury. But he no sooner got
well again than he repented of his repentance,
and persisted in wrongfully keeping to himself
some of the wealth belonging to the arch-
bishopric. This led to violent disputes, which
were aggravated by there being in Rome at that
time two rival Popes ; each of whom declared
he was the only real original infallible Pope,
who couldn't make a mistake. At last, Anselm,
knowing the Red King's character, and not feel-
ing himself safe in England, asked leave to
return abroad. The Red King gladly gave it ;
for he knew that as soon as Anselm was gone,
he could begin to store up all the Canterbury
money again, for his own use.
By such means, and by taxing and oppressing
the English people in every possible way, the
Red King became very rich. When he wanted
money for any purpose* he raised it by some
means or other, and cared nothing for the in-
justice he did, or the misery he caused. Having
the opportunity of buying from Robert the whole
duchy of Normandy for five years, he taxed the
English people more than ever, and made the
very convents sell their plate and valuables to
supply him with the means to make the pur-
chase. But he was as quick and eager in putting
down revolt as he was in raising money ; for, a
part of the Norman people objecting — very
naturally, I think — to being sold in this way, he
headed an army against them with all the speed
and energy of his father. He was so impatient,
that he embarked for Normandy in a great gale
of wind. And when the sailors told him it was
dangerous to go to sea in such angry weather, he
replied, " Hoist sail and away ! Did you ever
hear of a king who was drowned ? "
You will wonder how it was that even the
careless Robert came to sell his dominions. It
happened thus. It had long been the custom
for many English people to make journeys to
Jerusalem, which were called pilgrimages, in
order that they might pray beside the tomb of
Our Saviour there. Jerusalem belonging to the
Turks, and the Turks hating Christianity, these
Christian travellers were often insulted and ill-
used. The pilgrims bore it patiently for some
time, but at length a remarkable man, of great
earnestness and eloquence, called Peter the