by which Duke Robert's army
was almost encompassed; yet they kept their ground awhile, and made
several charges, until at length, perfectly overborne by numbers, they
were utterly defeated. There Duke Robert, doing all the parts of a great
captain, was taken prisoner, together with the Earl of Mortaigne, and
almost his whole army: for being hemmed in on all sides, few of them
could make their escape. Thus, in the space of forty years; Normandy
subdued England, and England Normandy; which are events perhaps hardly
to be paralleled in any other ages or parts of the world.

1107.

The King, having stayed a while to settle the state of Normandy,
returned with his brother into England, whom he sent prisoner to Cardiff
Castle, with orders that he should be favourably used, which, for some
time, were duly observed; until being accused of attempting to make his
escape (whether it were real or feigned) he had his eyes put out with a
burning basin, by the King's express commands; in which miserable
condition he lived for six-and-twenty years.

It is believed the King would hardly have engaged in this unnatural and
invidious war, with so little pretence or provocation, if the Pope had
not openly approved and sanctified his cause, exhorting him to it as a
meritorious action; which seems to have been but an ill return from the
Vicar of CHRIST to a prince who had performed so many brave exploits for
the service of the Church, to the hazard of his person, and ruin of his
fortune. But the very bigoted monks, who have left us their accounts of
those times, do generally agree in heavily taxing the Roman court for
bribery and corruption. And the King had promised to remit his right of
investing bishops, which he performed immediately after his reduction of
Normandy, and was a matter of much more service to the Pope, than all
the achievements of Duke Robert in the Holy Land, whose merits, as well
as pretensions, were now antiquated and out of date.

1109.

About this time the Emperor Henry V. sent to desire Maud, the King's
daughter in marriage, who was then a child about eight years old: that
prince had lately been embroiled in a quarrel with the see of Rome,
which began upon the same subject of investing bishops, but was carried
to great extremities: for invading Italy with a mighty army, he took the
Pope prisoner, forced him to yield to whatever terms he thought fit to
impose, and to take an oath of fidelity to him between his