ns.
[194] ORD. VITAL.

[195] Canute made his inferior strength and stature his excuse for not
meeting Edward Ironsides in single combat.

[196] Odo's licentiousness was, at a later period, one of the alleged
causes of his downfall, or rather against his release from the prison to
which he had been consigned. He had a son named John, who distinguished
himself under Henry I.--ORD. VITAL. lib. iv.

[197] William of Poitiers, the contemporary Norman chronicler, says of
Harold, that he was a man to whom imprisonment was more odious than
shipwreck.

[198] In the environs of Bayeux still may perhaps linger the sole
remains of the Scandinavian Normans, apart from the gentry. For
centuries the inhabitants of Bayeux and its vicinity were a class
distinct from the Franco-Normans, or the rest of Neustria; they submitted
with great reluctance to the ducal authority, and retained their old
heathen cry of Thor-aide, instead of Dieu-aide!

[199] Similar was the answer of Goodyn the Bishop of Winchester,
ambassador from Henry VIII. to the French King. To this day the English
entertain the same notion of forts as Harold and Goodyn.

[200] See Mr. Wright's very interesting article on the "Condition of the
English Peasantry," etc., Archaeologia, vol. xxx. pp. 205-244. I must,
however, observe, that one very important fact seems to have been
generally overlooked by all inquirers, or, at least, not sufficiently
enforced, viz., that it was the Norman's contempt for the general mass of
the subject population which more, perhaps, than any other cause, broke
up positive slavery in England. Thus the Norman very soon lost sight of
that distinction the Anglo-Saxons had made between the agricultural ceorl
and the theowe; i.e., between the serf of the soil and the personal
slave. Hence these classes became fused in each other, and were
gradually emancipated by the same circumstances. This, be it remarked,
could never have taken place under the Anglo-Saxon laws, which kept
constantly feeding the class of slaves by adding to it convicted felons
and their children. The subject population became too necessary to the
Norman barons, in their feuds with each other, or their king, to be long
oppressed; and, in the time of Froissart, that worthy chronicler ascribes
the insolence, or high spirit, of le menu peuple to their grand aise, et
abondance de biens.

[201] Twelve o'clock.

[202] Six A.M.

[203] A celebrated antiquary, in h