idents, wherein William enhanced his character, already great, for
personal valor. In an ambuscade laid for him by Geoffrey Martel he lost
some of his best knights, "whereat he was so wroth," says a chronicle,
"that he galloped down with such force upon Geoffrey, and struck him in
such wise with his sword that he dinted his helm, cut through his hood,
lopped off his car, and with the same blow felled him to earth. But the
count was lifted up and remounted, and so fled away."

William made rapid advances both as prince and as man. Without being
austere in his private life, he was regular in his habits, and patronized
order and respectability in his household as well as in his dominions.
He resolved to marry to his own honor, and to the promotion of his
greatness. Baldwin the Debonnair, count of Flanders, one of the most
powerful lords of the day, had a daughter, "Matilda, beautiful,
well-informed, firm in the faith, a model of virtue and modesty."
William asked her hand in marriage. Matilda refused, saying, "I would
rather be veiled nun than given in marriage to a bastard." Hurt as he
was, William did not give up. He was even more persevering than
susceptible; but he knew that he must get still greater, and make an
impression upon a young girl's imagination by the splendor of his fame
and power. Some years later, being firmly established in Normandy,
dreaded by all his neighbors, and already showing some foreshadowings of
his design upon England, he renewed his matrimonial quest in Flanders,
but after so strange a fashion that, in spite of contemporary testimony,
several of the modern historians, in their zeal, even at so distant a
period, for observance of the proprieties, reject as fabulous the story
which is here related on the authority of the most detailed account
amongst all the chronicles which contain it. "A little after that Duke
William had heard how the damsel had made answer, he took of his folk,
and went privily to Lille, where the duke of Flanders and his wife and
his daughter then were. He entered into the hall, and, passing on, as if
to do some business, went into the countess's chamber, and there found
the damsel daughter of Count Baldwin. He took her by the tresses,
dragged her round the chamber, trampled her under foot, and did beat her
soundly. Then he strode forth from the chamber, leaped upon his horse,
which was being held for him before the hall, struck in his spurs, and
went his way.