then introduced, are still used in our courts of law; and the French element was permanently grafted on our language.

After the battle of Hastings, the Saxons made one last effort by the proclamation of EDGAR ATHELING, the son of Edward the Outlaw; but the rapid advance of William struck terror into the bravest, and Edgar himself came into his camp and made submission. William was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmasday, by Aldred archbishop of York. The ceremony was attended by the Saxon as well as Norman nobles, and both peoples accepted the new king with acclamations. But the cry alarmed the Norman soldiers without, and a tumult, which was hardly appeased by William's own exertions, threw a fearful augury over the concord of the day.

The first acts of William's reign, however, increased the confidence of his subjects, while they secured his own power. Justice was impartially administered. No suspicion was shown even towards the Saxon prince who had claimed the throne; and, except the estates of Harold and his most conspicuous adherents, most of the property of the Saxons remained undisturbed. London and the other cities had their liberties confirmed, while they were disarmed and citadels were built to overawe them, of which the Tower of London" is an example.

It seemed that all would have gone well if William had continued to watch with his own eye over the change that was taking place. But in 1067 he ventured on a visit to Normandy, and his absence was fatal. As a measure of precaution he took with him Edgar Atheling and others of the chief Saxons, leaving the government in the hands of his half-brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux, and William Fitz-Osborne, earl of Hereford. They began to build great castles, and showed other marks of distrust, which the Saxons were not slow to return. Open hostilities soon broke out; and William hastened back in alarm and anger. Henceforth he treated the Saxons as conquered and implacable enemies. His active movements quelled a powerful conspiracy between the sons of Harold, the earls Edwin and Morcar, and Cospatric earl of Northumberland, who were encouraged by the kings of North Wales, Scotland, and Denmark. William took York, and drove Cospatric, with Edgar Atheling, into Scotland; and he received the homage of Malcolm king of Scotland, for Cumberland (A.D. 1068).

Next year, 1069, the Danes landed in the Humber, and Edgar Atheling returned from Scotland. York was taken by assault, and the garrison of 3000 Normans put to the sword; and the insurrection became more determined than the last. But William's activity again prevailed. The Danes were bought off. Waltheof, a leading

Saxon, submitted to William, who rewarded him richly. Malcolm was too late in the field; and Edgar Atheling fled back to Scotland. William now laid waste the land between the Humber and the Tees, at a sacrifice of 100,000 lives; a barbarity which was perhaps designed as a defence against the Scots and Danes quite as much as for revenge.

Then followed unsparing confiscations, which enlarged the domains of the crown, enriched the Norman nobles, and drove many of the noblest Saxons from their country. Some of these exiles, entering into the service of the Greek emperor at Constantinople, formed, with Danes and other Northmen, the celebrated body-guard called the Varangians. Those who remained at home were deprived of all offices in the state and in the church. The zeal of William in filling up ecclesiastical dignities with Normans was seconded by the pope, whose legate assembled a council at Winchester, in 1070, by which the primate Stigand was deposed, with all the other AngloSaxon prelates except Wulstan of Worcester, while the plunder of the Saxon monasteries enriched the royal coffers. Lanfranc, the successor to the see of Canterbury, has gained high renown for his piety and learning, as well as for his success in compelling the archbishop of York to acknowledge the primacy of Canterbury.

Meanwhile the Anglo-Saxon cause was maintained by its last defender, HEREWARD, in his "Camp of Refuge" amidst the fens that protected the Isle of Ely. Here he was joined by his brothers and Harold's old comrades, the earls Morcar and Edwin. William gathered a fleet of flat-bottomed boats, and at the same time made a causeway across the fens, and so forced the Saxons to surrender. Hereward alone cut his way through the enemy, and, after further exploits, inspired William with such respect that he restored his estate, and received him into favour. Morcar died in prison; Edwin was killed; and Edgar Atheling himself submitted to the conqueror, and retired with a pension to Rouen.

The conquest of England was now complete; but discontents arose among the Norman nobles, and a formidable conspiracy was headed by Roger, earl of Hereford, son of William's trusted comrade Fitz-Osborne, with the concurrence of the Saxon earl Waltheof, whose services to William had been rewarded with the hand of his niece Judith, as well as with the earldoms of Huntingdon, Northampton, and Northumberland. Under a feeling of misgiving Waltheof revealed the plot to Judith, who betrayed it to William. The result was a premature attempt, which was easily put down. Hereford was imprisoned, and lost his estate; while Waltheof, the Englishman, though far less guilty, suffered death (1075). The traitress Judith soon had her reward in contempt and misery.

Meanwhile William's power in Normandy was threatened by the rebellion of his eldest son Robert, who levied open war against him, and on one occasion almost killed his father with his own hand. The sound of William's voice, under his closed helmet, calling for help, revealed him to his son, who was struck with remorse, and asked for pardon. William not only forgave him, but intrusted him with a command against Malcolm king of Scotland (1079).

The peace of England was no further disturbed during William's reign except by forays of the Welsh, who were compelled to pay compensation, and a more serious inroad of the Danes, which led to the revival of the odious Danegelt, 1085.

In 1086 a grand ceremony was held at Salisbury, which has left a lasting record to our own day. All the freeholders of the kingdom took the oath of fealty to William as their feudal lord; and the great record of the landed estates of the kingdom was finished, which bears the name of Domesday Book. It describes the divisions and products of the various properties in the land. It registers 283,000 persons, from which basis the whole population is reckoned at about a million.

This crowning act of William's government was his last. Incensed by the inroads of certain French barons upon Normandy, and offended by some personal sarcasms of the French king Philip, he led an army into l'Isle de France, burning and destroying on every side. His rage brought its own retribution. As he was viewing the ruins of Mantes, which his followers had just burnt, his horse, stepping on some hot ashes, plunged violently, and bruised him against the pommel of his saddle. His advanced age and his state of body rendered the hurt mortal. On his deathbed he testified his remorse for his acts of violence and tyranny by gifts to the church and pardons to prisoners; and so he died, in the monastery of St. Gervas, in the 61st year of his age, the 54th of his reign over Normandy, and the 21st from his conquest of England, A.D. 1087. He was buried in the church of St. Stephen at Caen.

The character of William the Conqueror is best seen in the work he achieved. To conquer a kingdom, and to establish in it a foreign dynasty, amidst the resentment of the natives and the jealousies of his own subjects, was a task requiring great military ability, capacity for government, and ascendency over the minds of men. To such qualities William united a determined will and an unscrupulous conscience. He could, however, treat his enemies with generosity, and he attempted to govern at first without those acts of tyranny and cruelty which made the Norman Conquest so disastrous to the English. But, when once he began this course, he pursued it in a spirit of wanton insult, as well as unrelenting injury, till the Saxons became as despised as they were miserable.

There were two outward signs of their degradation, which were perhaps more keenly felt than their exclusion from all posts of power and honour. The one was ever before their eyes in the castles of the Norman barons.

The other consisted in the new

and severe forest laws, which deprived them of all share in the sport, for the sake of which their lands were laid waste. The most memorable instance was that of the "New Forest," which William

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formed in the neighbourhood of his palace at Winchester, at the cost of numerous villages and churches. Mutilation was the penalty for killing game; while that of homicide was a moderate fine.

The curfew (i. e. couvre feu) bell, on the ringing of which fires had to be extinguished at sunset in summer, and about eight o'clock in winter, is often mentioned as a badge of servitude. It was a Norman custom, as a precaution against fire.

But, in its lasting results, the Norman Conquest was an incalculable benefit to England. It gave her a strong government in place of the effete Saxon dynasty. It placed around the throne a body of nobles whose very pride and jealousy were soon to prove the means of extorting the people's liberties; and it brought England into a relation with the Continent, which, in spite of long and desolating wars, raised her at length to the rank of an European power.

William left three sons, Robert, William, and Henry, his second son, Richard, having been killed while hunting in the New Forest. He left to Robert his duchy of Normandy and Maine; to Henry he gave 5000 pounds of silver; bequeathing the crown of England to William.