s
extremely incensed. He left Normandy and Maine to his eldest son
Robert: he wrote to Lanfranc, desiring him to crown William King of
England: he bequeathed to Henry nothing but the possessions of his
mother Matilda; but foretold that he would one day surpass both his
brothers in power and opulence. He expired in the sixty-third year of
his age, in the twenty-first year of his reign over England, and in
the fifty-fourth of that over Normandy.

[MN 9th Sept. Death and character of William the Conqueror.]
Few princes have been more fortunate than this great monarch, or were
better entitled to grandeur and prosperity, from the abilities and the
vigour of mind which he displayed in all his conduct. His spirit was
bold and enterprising, yet guided by prudence: his ambition, which was
exorbitant, and lay little under the restraints of justice, still less
under those of humanity, ever submitted to the dictates of sound
policy. Born in an age when the minds of men were intractable and
unacquainted with submission, he was yet able to direct them to his
purposes; and partly from the ascendant of his vehement character,
partly from art and dissimulation, to establish an unlimited
authority. Though not insensible to generosity, he was hardened
against compassion; and he seemed equally ostentatious and equally
ambitious of show and parade in his clemency and in his severity. The
maxims of his administration were austere; but might have been useful,
had they been solely employed to preserve order in an established
government [x]; they were ill calculated for softening the rigours
which, under the most gentle management, are inseparable from
conquest. His attempt against England was the last great enterprise
of the kind which, during the course of seven hundred years, has fully
succeeded in Europe; and the force of his genius broke through those
limits, which first the feudal institutions, then the refined policy
of princes, have fixed to the several states of Christendom. Though
he rendered himself infinitely odious to his English subjects, he
transmitted his power to his posterity, and the throne is still filled
by his descendants: a proof, that the foundations which he laid were
firm and solid, and that, amidst all his violence, while he seemed
only to gratify the present passion, he had still an eye towards
futurity.
[FN [x] M. West. p. 230. Anglia Sacra, vol. i. p. 258.]

Some writers have been desirous of refusing