malice of the people was kindled against him, and when it was known that he had received the murderers into his house, and favoured them as before, they stomached the matter highly." Secret meetings were held at the dead of night, and the Northumbrians, who had lost none of their old spirit, and were absolutely driven to madness, because, among other causes of endearment, Liulf had married the widow of Earl Siward, the mother of the unfortunate Earl Waltheof, resolved to take a sanguinary vengeance. Both parties met by agreement at Gateshead;" the bishop, who protested his innocence of the homicide, in the pomp of power, surrounded by his retainers; the Northumbrians in humble guise, as if to petition their lord for justice, though every man among them carried a sharp weapon hid under his garment. The bishop, alarmed at the number of English that continued to flock to the place of rendezvous, retired with all his retinue into the church. The people then signified in plain terms that, unless he came forth and showed himself, they would fire the place where he stood. As he did not move, the threat was executed. Then, seeing the smoke and flames arising, he caused Gilbert and his accomplices to be thrust out of the church. The people fell with savage joy on the murderers of Liulf, and cut them to pieces. Half-suffocated by the heat and smoke, the bishop himself wrapped the skirts of his gown over his face, and came to the threshold of the door. There seems to have been a moment of hesitation; but a voice was heard among the crowd, saying, "Good rede, short rede! slay ye the bishop!" and the bishop was slain accordingly. The foreigners had nothing left but the alternative of being burned alive or perishing by the sword. The bishop's chaplain seemed to give a preference to the former death, for he lingered long in the burning church; but in the end he was compelled, by the raging fire, to come out, and was also slain and hacked to pieces—“ as he had well deserved," adas an old historian, "being the main promoter of all the mischief that had been done in the country." Of all who had ac

and unhorsed his antagonist. In the voice of the fallen warrior, who shouted for assistance, the prince, who was about to follow up his advantage with a death-stroke, recognized his father, and, instantly dismounting, fell on his knees, craved forgiveness with tears, and helping him to his saddle, saw him safely out of the mêlée, which now thickened. The men who were coming up to the king's assistance, and bringing a second horse for him to mount, were nearly all killed. William rode away to his camp on Robert's horse, smarting with his wound, and still cursing his son, who had so seasonably mounted him.' He relinquished the siege of Gerberoy in despair, and went to Rouen, where, as soon as his temper permitted, his wife and bishops, with many of the Norman nobles, laboured to reconcile him again to Robert. For a long time the iron-hearted king was deaf to their entreaties, or only irritated by them. "Why," cried he, "do you solicit me in favour of a traitor who has seduced my men-my very pupils in war, whom I fed with my own bread, and invested with the knightly arms they wear?" At last he yielded, and Robert, having again knelt and wept before him, received his father's pardon, and accompanied him to England. But even now the reconciliation on the part of the unforgiving king was a mere matter of policy, and Robert, finding no symptoms of returning affection, and fearing for his life or liberty, soon fled for the third time, and never saw his father's face again. His departure was followed by another paternal malediction, which was never revoked. Walcher of Lorraine, installed in A.D. 1080. the bishopric of Durham and his strong castle "on the highest hill," united to his episcopal functions the political and military government of Northumberland. The earl-bishop boasted that he was equally skilful in repressing rebellion with the edge of the sword, and reforming the morals of the English by eloquent discourse. But the Lorrainer was a harsh taskmaster to the English, laying heavy labours and taxes upon them, and permitting the officers under him and his men-at-arms to plunder, insult, and kill them with impunity. Liulf, an Eng-companied the bishop to the tragical meeting at lishman of noble birth, and endeared to the whole province, ventured, on being robbed by some of Walcher's satellites, to lay his complaint before the bishop. Shortly after making this accusation, Liulf was murdered by night in his manorhouse, near the city of Durham, and it was well proved that one Gilbert, and others in the bishop's service, were the perpetrators of the foul deed. "Hereupon," says an old writer, "the

Gateshead, only two were left alive, and these were menials of English birth. Above 100 men, Normans and Flemings, perished with Walcher.

William intrusted to one bishop A.D. 1082. the office of avenging another. His half-brother, Odo, the fierce Bishop of Bayeux, marched to Durham with a numerous army. He found no force on foot to resist him, but he treated the whole country as an insurgent province, and making no distinction of persons, and employing "goat's head;" "ad caput capræ.' 5 Matt. Paris. 6 Holinshed.

4 The name means Florent. Wigorn.

7 Saxon Chronicle.

26

no judicial forms, he beheaded or mutilated all go to Rome, and joined the bishop, with some conthe men he could find in their houses. Some siderable barons, his friends, and much money. persons of property bought their lives by surren- The king was in Normandy when he heard of dering everything they possessed. By this exter- this expedition, and being resolute in his determinating expedition Odo obtained the reputation mination of stopping it, he instantly set sail for of being one of the greatest "dominators of the England. He surprised the aspirant to the popeEnglish;" but it seems to have been the last he dom at the Isle of Wight, seized his treasures, commanded, and disgraced with cruelty, during and summoned him before a council of Norman the reign of William. This churchman, besides barons hastily assembled at that island. Here being Bishop of Bayeux in Normandy, was Earl the king accused his half-brother of "untruth of Kent in England, and held many high offices and sinister dealings "-of having abused his in this island, where he had accumulated enor- power, both as viceroy and judge, and as an earl mous wealth, chiefly by extortion, or a base sell- of the realm-of having maltreated the English ing of justice. For some years a splendid dream beyond measure, to the great danger of the comof ambition, which he thought he could realize mon cause-of having robbed the churches of by means of money, increased his rapacity. There the land-and finally, of having seduced and atwere many instances in those ages of kings be- tempted to carry out of England, and beyond the coming monks, but not one of a Catholic priest Alps, the warriors of the king, who needed their becoming a king. Profane crowns being out of services for the safe keeping of the kingdom, his reach, Odo aspired to a sacred one-to the Having exposed his grievances, William asked tiara-that triple crown of Rome, which gradually the council what such a brother deserved at his obtained, in another shape, a homage more widely hands? No one durst answer. "Arrest him, extended than that paid to the Caesars. His dream then!" cried the king, "and sce that he be well was cherished by the predictions of some Italian looked to!" If they had been backward in proastrologers, who, living in his service, and being nouncing an opinion, they were still more averse well paid, assured him that he would be the suc- to lay hands on a bishop; not one of the council cessor of Gregory VII., the reigning pope. Odo moved, though it was the king that ordered them. opened a correspondence with the Eternal City by William then advanced himself, and seized the means of English and Norman pilgrims who were prelate by his robe. "I am a clerk-a priest,” constantly flocking thither, bought a palace at cried Odo; "I am a minister of the Lord: the Rome, and sent rich presents to the senators. His pope alone has the right of judging me!" But project was not altogether so visionary as it has his brother, without losing his hold, replied, “I been considered by most writers, and we can do not arrest you as Bishop of Bayeux, but as hardly understand why his half-brother, William, Earl of Kent." Odo was carried forthwith to should have checked it, unless indeed his inter- Normandy, and, instead of crossing the Alps and ference proceeded from his desire of getting pos- the Apennines, was shut up in a castle. session of the bishop's wealth. Ten years before the Conqueror invaded England, Robert Guiscard, one of twelve heroic Norman brothers, had acquired the sovereignty of the greater part of those beautiful countries that are now included within the kingdom of Naples. The Norman lance was dreaded in all the rest of Italy, and with a Norman pope established at Rome, the supremacy of that people might have been extended from one end of the peninsula to the other. The Bishop of Bayeux had some reason for counting on the sympathy of his powerful countrymen in the south, the close neighbours of Rome; and the influence of gold had been felt before now in the college of cardinals, and the elections of popes. It is quite certain that a considerable number of the Norman chiefs entered into Odo's views; and when he made up his mind to set out for Italy in person, a brilliant escort was formed for him. "Hugh the Wolf," the famous Earl of Chester, who had a long account of sin to settle-if he considered the butchering of English and Welsh as crimes-was anxious to

Soon after imprisoning his brother, William lost his wife, Matilda, whom he tenderly loved; and after her death it was observed or fancied he Lecame more suspicious, more jealous of the authority of his old companions in arms, and more avaricious than ever. The coming on of old age is, however, enough in itself to account for such a change in such a man. After a lapse of ten years the Danes were again heard of, and their threats of invading England kept William in a state of anxiety for nearly two whole years, and were the cause of his laying fresh burdens upon his English subjects. He revived the odious Danegeld; and because many lands and manors which had been charged with it in the time of the Anglo-Saxon kings had been specially exempted from this tax when he granted them in fief to his nobles, he made up the deficiency by raising it upon the other lands, to the rate of six shillings a-hide. The money he thus obtained, with part of the treasures he had amassed, was

1 Chron. Sax.; Florent.; Malmesb.; Orderic.

employed in hiring and bringing over foreign | wherein he might have gratified a reasonable auxiliaries; for though he could rely on an English army when fighting against Frenchmen, or the people of Normandy, Maine, and Brittany, he could not trust them at home; and he well knew that many of them on the eastern and north-eastern shores would join the Danish invaders heart and hand, instead of opposing them. He therefore collected, as he had done before, men of all nations; and these came across the Channel in such numbers that, according to the chroniclers, people began to wonder how the land could feed so many hungry bellies. These hordes of foreigners sorely oppressed the natives, for William quartered them throughout the country, to be paid as well as supported.

To complete the miseries inflicted upon England at this time, William ordered all the land lying near the sea-coast to be laid waste, so that if the Danes should land, they would find no ready supply of food or forage.'

The Conqueror had often felt the want of a naval force, and knowing that to encourage commerce was the best means of fostering a navy, he repeatedly invited foreigners to frequent his ports, promising that they and their property should be perfectly secure. But he did not live to possess a navy of his own. Another domestic calamity afflicted the latter years of the Conqueror for he saw a violent jealousy growing up between his favourite sons, William and Henry. Robert, his eldest son, continued an exile or fugitive; and Richard, his second son in order of birth (but whom some make illegitimate), had been gored to death by a stag, some years before, as he was hunting in the New Forest; and he was noted by the old English annalists as being the first of several of the Conqueror's progeny that perished in that place—“the justice of God punishing in him his father's dispeopling of that country."

2

Perhaps no single act of the Conqueror inflicted more misery within the limits of its operation, and certainly none has been more bitterly stigmatized, than his seizure and wasting of the lands in IIampshire, to make himself a huntingground. Like most of the great men of the time, who had few other amusements, William was passionately fond of the chase. The AngloSaxon kings had the same taste, and left many royal parks and forests in all parts of England,

1 Saxon Chronicle.

* Other accounts say he was killed by a "pestilent blast" which crossed him while hunting; but, we believe, all fix the scene of his death in the New Forest.

3 Warner, Topographical Remarks on the South-Western Parts of Hampshire.

The late William Stewart Rose, Esq. The office of bowbearer for the New Forest is now, of course, a sinecure, and it is almost purely honorary, the salary being 408. in the year, and

passion; but he was not satisfied with the possession of these, and resolved to have a vast hunting-ground "for his insatiate and superfluous pleasure," in the close neighbourhood of the royal city, Winchester, his favourite place of residence. In an early part of his reign he therefore seized all the south-western part of Hampshire, measuring thirty miles from Salisbury to the sea, and in circumference not much less than ninety miles. This wide district, before called Ytene or Ytchtene (a name yet partially preserved), was to some extent uninhabited, and fit for the purposes of the chase, abounding in sylvan spots and coverts; but it included, at the same time, many fertile and cultivated manors, which he caused to be totally absorbed in the surrounding wilderness, and many towns or villages, with no fewer than thirty-six mother or parish churches, all which he demolished, and drove away the people, making them no compensation. According to the indisputable authority of Doomsday Book, in which we have an account of the state of this territory both before and after its "afforestation," the damage done to private property must have been immense. In an extent of nearly ninety miles in circumference, one hundred and eight places, manors, villages, or hamlets suffered in a greater or less degree.3 Some melancholy traces of these ancient abodes of the Anglo-Saxons are still to be found in the recesses of the New Forest, and have been described by a gentleman' who passed much of his life in and near those woods, and who was the successor in office to Sir Walter Tyrrel, as bowbearer to the king. In many spots, though no ruins are visible above ground, either the line of erections can be traced by the elevation of the soil, or fragments of building materials have been discovered on turning up the surface. The traditional names of places still used by the foresters, such as "Church-place," "Church-moor," "Thomson's Castle," seem to mark the now solitary spots as the sites of ancient buildings where the English people worshipped their God, and dwelt in peace, before they were swept away by the Conqueror; and the same elegant writer we have last referred to suggests that the termination of ham and ton, yet annexed to some woodlands, may be taken as evidence of the former existence of hamlets and towns in the Forest."

one buck in the season. In his oath of office the bow-bearer swears "to be of good behaviour towards his majesty's wild beasts."

5 See notes to The Red King, a spirited poem, by William Stewart Rose, Esq., the royal bow-bearer, in which the manners and costume of the period are carefully preserved. Mr. Rose justly observes, "that this cannot be considered as one of those 'historical doubts,' the solution of which involves nothing beyond the mere disentanglement of an intricate knot. It may

We have entered into these slight details be- | is Voltaire, have professed a disbelief of the early cause some foreign writers, at the head of whom history of the New Forest, and because some

whose churches were destroyed-that made the deep and ineffaceable impression.

At the same time that the Conqueror thus enlarged the field of his own pleasures at the expense of his subjects, he enacted new laws, by which he prohibited hunting in any of his forests, and rendered the penalties more severe than ever had been inflicted for such offences. At this pe riod the killing of a man might be atoned for by payment of a moderate fine or composition; but not so, by the New Forest laws, the slaying of one of the king's beasts of chase. "He ordained," says the Saxon Chronicle, "that whosoever should kill a stag or a deer should have his eyes torn

native writers, including even Dr. Warton, who was "naturally disposed to cling to the traditions of antiquity," fancying there were no existing ruins or traces of such desolation, have doubted whether William destroyed villages, castles, and churches, though that demolition is recorded by chroniclers who wrote a very short time after the event, and is proved beyond the reach of a doubt by Doomsday Book. If any other proof were necessary, it ought to be found in the universal tradition of the people in all ages, that on account of the unusual crimes and cruelties committed there by William, God made the New Forest the death-scene of three princes of his own blood. The seizure of a waste or wholly uninhabited dis-out; wild boars were protected in the same mantrict would have been nothing extraordinary: it was the sufferings of the people, who were driven from their villages-the wrongs done the clergy,

ner as deer, and he even made statutes equally severe to preserve the hares. This savage king loved wild beasts as if he had been their father." These forest laws, which were executed with rigour against the English, caused great misery; for many of them depended on the chase as a chief means of subsistence. By including in his

royal domain all the great forests of England, and insisting on his right to grant or refuse permission to hunt in them, William gave sore offence to many of his Norman nobles, who were as much addicted to the sport as himself, but who were prohibited from keeping sporting dogs, even on their own estates, unless they subjected the poor animals to a mutilation of the fore-paws, that rendered them unfit for hunting. From their first establishment, and through their different gradations of "forest laws" and "gamelaws," these jealous regulations have constantly been one of the most copious sources of dissen-Christ-that he would be churched in Notre sion, litigation, violence, and bloodshed.'

he grew excessively fat; and, spite of his violent exercise, his indulgence in the pleasures of the table had given him considerable rotundity of person. On the score of many grudges, his hatred of the French king was intense; and Philip now drove him to frenzy by saying, as a good joke among his courtiers, that his cousin William was a long while lying-in, but that no doubt there would be a fine churching when he was delivered. On hearing this coarse and insipid jest, the conqueror of England swore by the most terrible of his oaths-by the splendour and birth of