illiam had no wish to take part in a holy war, but he was
ready to make profit out of those who did. Normandy was the better for
the change. It is true that William oppressed it himself, but he saved
the people from the worse oppression of the barons.

12. =The Last Years of the Red King.=--The remaining years of
William's reign were years of varying success. An English force set up
Eadgar, the son of Malcolm and Margaret, as king of the Scots, and
Eadgar consented to hold his crown as William's vassal. William's
attempts to reduce the Welsh to submission ended in failure, and he
was obliged to content himself with hemming them in with castles. In
=1098= the wicked Robert of Belleme succeeded his brother as earl of
Shrewsbury. Robert robbed and tortured Englishmen as he had robbed and
tortured Normans. He was a great builder of castles, and at
Bridgenorth he raised a fortress as the centre of a group of strong
places which could defy the Welsh and form the basis of his operations
against them. In the same year William captured Le Mans, the capital
of Maine, which had recovered its independence from Robert, which was
held against him by Helie de la Fleche, one of the few unselfish men
of the day. Unlike his father, the Red King often began enterprises
which he did not finish. In =1099= he had all his work to do over
again. He was hunting in the New Forest when he heard that Helie had
regained Le Mans. He rode hard to Southampton, and, leaping on board a
vessel, bade the sailors put to sea. A storm was raging, and the
sailors prayed him to wait till the wind fell. "I never heard," he
answered, "of a king being drowned." The next morning he was in
Normandy. He recovered Le Mans, but returned to England without
conquering Maine.

13. =The Death of the Red King. 1100.=--On August 2, =1100=, the Red
King went out to hunt in the New Forest. In the evening his body was
found pierced by an arrow. Who his slayer was is unknown. The blow may
have been accidental. It is more likely to have been intentional. In
every part of England were men who had good cause to hate William, and
nowhere were his enemies in greater numbers than round the New Forest.
Whoever was his slayer, the body of the tyrant was borne to the
cathedral of Winchester and buried as the corpse of a wild beast,
without funeral rites or weeping eyes. When, after a few years had
passed, the tower above the unhallowed tomb fell in, men said that it
had fallen because