received the Norman envoys who came to treat for a marriage between their duke and Matilda very courteously, and expressed great satisfaction at the proposed alliance; but when he spoke of it to the damsel his daughter, she replied with infinite disdain, that she would not have a bastard for her husband.

The earl softened the coarse terms in which Matilda had signified her rejection of Duke William, and excused her as well as he could to the Norman deputies; it was not long, however, before William was informed of what Matilda had really said. He was peculiarly sensitive on the painful subject of his illegitimacy, and no one ever taunted him with it unpunished. Neither the rank nor the soft sex of the fair offender availed to protect her from his vengeance. In a transport of fury he mounted his horse, and, attended only by a few of his people, rode privately to Lille, where the court of Flanders then was. He alighted at the palace gates, entered the hall of presence alone, passed boldly through it, strode unquestioned through the state apartments of the Earl of Flanders, and burst into the countess's chamber, where he found the damsel, her daughter, whom he seized by her long tresses, and as she, of course, struggled to escape from his ruffian-grasp, dragged her by them about the chamber, struck her repeatedly, and flung her on the ground at his feet. After the perpetration of these outrages, he made his way back to the spot where his squire held his horse in readiness, sprang to the saddle, and setting spurs to the good steed, distanced all pursuit.*

In after days, when the quarrel was adjusted, and the bold duke had won his bride, in the midst of the rejoicings at the nuptial feast the Earl of Flanders, waxing merry, asked his daughter, laughingly, how it happened that she had so easily been brought to consent at last to a marriage which she had so scornfully refused in the first instance. "Because," replied Matilda, pleasantly, "I did not know the duke so well then as I do now; for" continued she, "he must be a man of great courage and high daring who could venture to come and beat me in my own father's palace."

Agnes Strickland's Queens of England, New Edition, vol. i., p. 24.

FORMATION OF THE NEW FOREST.

The Normans, as well as the ancient Saxons, were passionately fond of the chase, and none more so than the conqueror. Not content with those large forests which former kings possessed in all parts of England, he resolved to make a new forest near Winchester, the usual place of his residence. For that purpose he laid waste the country for an extent of thirty miles, expelled the inhabitants from their houses, seized their property, demolished thirtysix churches, besides convents, and made the sufferers no compen

* Although the Norman, French, and Flemish chroniclers differ as to the place where William the Conqueror perpetrated this rude personal assault on his fair cousin, and relate the manner of it with some few variations, they all agree to the fact that he felled her to the ground by the violence of his blows.

sation for the injury; at the same time he enacted new laws, by I which he prohibited all his subjects from hunting in any of his forests, and ordained the most dreadful penalties for their violation. The killing of a deer or a boar, or even a hare, was punished with the loss of the delinquent's eyes; and that, too, at a time when the killing of a man could be atoned for by paying a moderate composition. Hume vol. i., p. 277,

THE FEUDAL LAW.

The conqueror divided all the lands, with very few exceptions, besides the royal demesnes, into baronies; these baronies were again let out to knights or vassals, who paid the lord the same submission in peace or war which he himself paid to his sovereign. The whole kingdom contained about 700 chief tenants, and 60,215 knights-fees; none of the natives were admitted into the first rank, but were glad to be received into the second, and thus be the dependants of some powerful Norman. Hume, vol. i., p. 253.

ELEVATION OF THE NORMANS.

The man who had passed the sea with the quilted cassock, and black wooden bow of the foot-soldier, now appeared to the astonished eyes of the new recruits who came after him, mounted on a war-horse, and bearing the military baldrick. He who had arrived as a poor knight soon lifted his banner (as it was then expressed) and commanded a company, whose rallying-cry was his own name. The herdsman of Normandy, and the weavers of Flanders, with a little courage and good fortune, soon became in England men of consequence-illustrious barons; and their names, ignoble and obscure on one shore of the Straits, became noble and glorious on the other. The servants of the Norman man-at-arms, his lance-bearer, his esquire, became gentlemen in England; they were men of consequence and consideration when placed in comparison with the Saxon, who had himself once enjoyed wealth and titles, but who was now oppressed by the sword of the invader, was expelled from the home of his fathers, and had not where to lay his head. This natural and general nobility of all the conquerors increased in the same ratio as the authority or personal importance of each. In the new nobility, after the style and kingly title of William, was classed the dignity of the governor of a province, as count or earl; next to him that of his lieutenant, as vicecount or viscount; and then the rank of the warriors, whether as barons, knights, esquires, or serjeants-at-arms; of unequal grades of nobility, but all reported to be noble, whether by right of their victory, or by their foreign extraction. Thierry's History, p. 77.

DEGRADATION OF THE SAXONS.

Contumely was wantonly added to oppression; and the unfortunate natives were universally reduced to such a state of meanness and poverty, that for ages the English name became a term

of reproach, and several generations elapsed before one single family of Saxon pedigree was raised to any considerable honours, or could so much as attain the rank of baron of the realm. Hume, vol. i., p. 288.

DOOMSDAY-BOOK.

It consists of two volumes, a greater and a less. The first is a large folio, written in 382 double pages of vellum, in a small but plain character; each page having a double column. Some of the capital letters and principal passages are touched with red ink, and some have strokes of red ink run across, as if scratched out. This volume contains the description of 31 countries. The other volume is a quarto, written upon 450 double pages of vellum, but in a single column, and on a large and in a fair character. It contains the counties of Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, part of the county of Rutland, including that of Northampton, and part of Lincolnshire in the counties of York and Chester.

Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. vi.

This survey was begun in the year 1080, and finished in 1086. It was made by verdict or presentment of juries, or certain persons sworn in every hundred, wapentake, or county, before commissioners, consisting of the greatest earls or bishops, who inquired into, and described as well the possessions and customs of the king as of his great men. They noted what and how much arable land, pasture, meadow, and wood every man had, and what was the extent and value of them in the time of Edward the Confessor, and at the time of making the survey. This survey was made by counties, hundreds, towns, or manors, hides, half-hides, virgates, and acres of land, meadow, pasture, and wood. Also they noted what mills and fisheries, and, in some counties, what and how many freemen, socmen, villains, bordars, servants, young cattle, sheep, hogs, working horses, &c., in every town and manor, and who they belonged to. Always setting down the king's name first, then the bishops, abbots, and all the great men that held of the king in chief. Brady, pp. 205-206.

Yet this is not so exact a survey as some historians would represent it; the monks of Croyland, in Lincolnshire, evaded giving an accurate account, and many towns and cities then in existence were altogether omitted. Rapin, vol. i., p. 177.

THE CURFEW.

William, knowing how ill the English stood affected to him, resolved to take all possible measures to screen himself from their resentment; for that purpose he took two precautions which were equally insupportable to them. The first was to take away their arms, the second to forbid them any lights in their houses after eight o'clock, at which hour a bell was rung to warn them to put

out their fire and candle, under the penalty of a great fine for e every offence.* Rapin, vol. i., p. 171.

DEATH OF THE CONQUEROR.

William met with the accident which caused his death at the storming of the city of Mantes.† He had roused himself from a sick bed to execute a terrible vengeance on the French border, for the ribald joke which his old antagonist, the King of France, had passed on his malady; and, in pursuance of his declaration "that he would set all France in a blaze at his uprising," he ordered the city to be fired. While he was with savage fury encouraging his soldiers to pursue the work of destruction to which he had incited them, his horse chancing to set his foot on a piece of burning timber started, and occasioned his lord so severe an injury from the pummel of the saddle as to bring on a violent access of fever. Being unable to remount his horse, he was conveyed on a litter to Rouen, where, perceiving he drew near his end, he began to experience some compunctious visitings of conscience for the crimes and oppressions of which he had been guilty, and endeavoured to make some self-deceiving reparation for his wrongs. In the first place, he ordered large sums to be distributed to the poor, and likewise for the building of churches, especially those which he had recently burnt at Mantes. Next, he set all Saxon prisoners at liberty whom he had detained in his Norman prisons; among them were Morcar, and Alnoth, the brother of Harold, who had remained in captivity from his childhood, when he was given in hostage by Earl Godwin to Edward the Confessor. The heart of the dying monarch being deeply touched with remorse, he confessed that he

The curfew-bell is still rung at Bingley, in Yorkshire; Blackburn, in Lancashire; Bromyard, in Herefordshire; Walton-on-the-Wolds, Woodstock, Bampton, and Witney, Oxon; Stow, in Gloucestershire; Chertsey, in Surrey; Penrith, in Cumberland; Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Morpeth, in Northumberland; Exeter Cathedral; Winchester; Over, near Winsford, Cheshire.

It is generally used as a signal to shopkeepers for shutting up their shops, and to farmers for "looking up" their cattle for the night.

The practice is to toll the bell thirty strokes, and after a short interval to toll eight more; the latter being to denote the hour. At Bromyard, in Herefordshire, the bell is tolled at nine instead of eight o'clock. At Woodstock it is tolled at halfpast eight; and at some places in Oxon and Gloucestershire it is also tolled at four in the morning. Notes and Queries, p.312.

+ Surnamed, from its charming situation, La jolie. This town, which played so important a part in all the civil wars of France, is one of the most interesting objects to the steamboat traveller from Rouen to Paris: its picturesque stone houses, gothic church (founded by Jeanne de France), and venerable ruins of St. Maclou, raised by the dying command of the conqueror on the ashes of the sacred edifice he burned, awake a host of recollections of ancient Normandy-Le beau pays— whose praises her troubadours have so eloquently sung.

William, who was become corpulent, had been detained in bed some time by sickness, upon which Philip expressed his surprise that his brother of England should be so long in being delivered of his big belly. The king sent him word that as soon as he was up he would present so many lights at Notre Dame, as would, perchance, give little pleasure to the King of France-alluding to the practice a that time of women, after childbirth, offering up lights in the church.

Hume, vol. i., p. 250.

had done Morcar much wrong: he bitterly bewailed the blood he had shed in England, and the desolation and woe he had caused in Hampshire for the sake of planting the New Forest, protesting, "that having so misused that fair and beautiful land, he dared not appoint a successor to it, but left the disposal of that matter to the hands of God." He had, however, taken some pains, by writing a letter to Lanfranc, expressive of his earnest wish that William Rufus should succeed him in his regal dignity, and to secure the crown of England to this his favourite son-for whom he called as soon as he had concluded his deathbed confessions—and sealing the letter with his own seal, he put it into the hands of the prince, bidding him hasten to England with all speed, and deliver it to the archbishop, blessed him with a farewell kiss, and dismissed him.

When the conqueror had settled his temporal affairs, he caused himself to be removed to Hermentrude, a pleasant village near Rouen, that he might be more at liberty to prepare himself for death.*

On the 9th of September the awful change which awaited him took place. Hearing the sound of the great bell in the metropolitan Church of St. Gervase, near Rouen,† William, raising his exhausted frame from the supporting pillows, asked "What it meant?" one of his attendants replying "that it then rang prime to our Lady;" the dying monarch, lifting his eyes to heaven, and spreading abroad his hands, exclaimed, "I commend myself to that blessed Lady Mary, the mother of God, that she, by her holy intercession, may reconcile me to her most dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and with these words he expired.

The eldest son, Robert, was absent in Germany at the time of his death; William on his voyage to England; Henry, who had taken charge of his obsequies, suddenly departed on some selfinterested business; and all the great officers of the court having dispersed themselves, some to offer their homage to Robert, and others to William; the inferior servants of the household, with some of their rapacious confederates, took the opportunity of plundering the house where their sovereign had just breathed his last, of all the money, plate, wearing apparel, hangings, and precious furniture; they even stripped the person of the royal dead, and left his body naked upon the floor. Every one appeared struck with consternation and dismay,§ and neither the proper officers of

* He was carried sick to Rouen, and from thence to a monastery (St. Gervaise) without the walls of the city, the noise of which he could not bear. Here he languished six weeks, surrounded by physicians and priests. Thierry.

†Thierry says it was the Church of St. Mary.

To secure the payment of £5,000 in silver left him by the conqueror's will, rightly judging that, unless he forestalled his elder brethren in taking possession of his bequest, his chance of receiving it would be but small.

§ Each one went about as chance directed, asking advice of his wife, his friends, or of whomsever he first met; eac!: had his goods concealed or conveyed away, and some strove to sell theirs at a Ks. At length some of the clergy, both priests and morts, having recovered the use of their faculties, arranged a procession clad