ss of his honour, his dominions, his
liberty, his eyesight, and his only son, was at last forced to sink
under the load of eighty years, and must be allowed for the greatest
example either of insensibility or contempt of earthly things, that ever
appeared in a sovereign or private person. He was a prince hardly
equalled by any in his time for valour, conduct, and courtesy; but his
ruin began from the easiness of his nature, which whoever knew how to
manage, were sure to be refused nothing they could ask. By such
profusion he was reduced to those unhappy expedients of remitting his
rights for a pension, of pawning his towns, and multiplying taxes, which
brought him into hatred and contempt with his subjects; neither do I
think any virtue so little commendable in a sovereign as that of
liberality, where it exceeds what his ordinary revenues can supply;
where it passes those bounds, his subjects must all be oppressed to shew
his bounty to a few flatterers, or he must sell his towns, or basely
renounce his rights, by becoming pensioner to some powerful prince in
the neighbourhood; all which we have lived to see performed by a late
monarch in our own time and country.

1135.

Since the reduction of Normandy to the King's obedience, he found it
necessary for his affairs to spend in that duchy some part of his time
almost every year, and a little before the death of Robert he made his
last voyage there. It was observable in this prince, that having some
years past very narrowly escaped shipwreck in his passage from Normandy
into England, the sense of his danger had made very deep impressions on
his mind, which he discovered by a great reformation in his life, by
redressing several grievances, and doing many acts of piety; and to shew
the steadiness of his resolutions, he kept them to the last, making a
progress through most parts of Normandy, treating his subjects in all
places with great familiarity and kindness, granting their petitions,
easing their taxes, and, in a word, giving all possible marks of a
religious, wise, and gracious prince.

Returning to St. Denys le Ferment from his progress a little indisposed,
he there fell into a fever upon a surfeit of lamprey, which in a few
days ended his life. His body was conveyed to England, and buried at
Reading in the abbey-church himself had founded.

It is hard to affirm anything peculiar of this prince's character; those
authors who have attempted it mentioning very litt