as not important enough for anybody to
care much about him.

On Christmas Day, William was crowned in Westminster Abbey, under the
title of WILLIAM THE FIRST; but he is best known as WILLIAM THE
CONQUEROR. It was a strange coronation. One of the bishops who
performed the ceremony asked the Normans, in French, if they would have
Duke William for their king? They answered Yes. Another of the bishops
put the same question to the Saxons, in English. They too answered Yes,
with a loud shout. The noise being heard by a guard of Norman
horse-soldiers outside, was mistaken for resistance on the part of the
English. The guard instantly set fire to the neighbouring houses, and a
tumult ensued; in the midst of which the King, being left alone in the
Abbey, with a few priests (and they all being in a terrible fright
together), was hurriedly crowned. When the crown was placed upon his
head, he swore to govern the English as well as the best of their own
monarchs. I dare say you think, as I do, that if we except the Great
Alfred, he might pretty easily have done that.

Numbers of the English nobles had been killed in the last disastrous
battle. Their estates, and the estates of all the nobles who had fought
against him there, King William seized upon, and gave to his own Norman
knights and nobles. Many great English families of the present time
acquired their English lands in this way, and are very proud of it.

But what is got by force must be maintained by force. These nobles were
obliged to build castles all over England, to defend their new property;
and, do what he would, the King could neither soothe nor quell the nation
as he wished. He gradually introduced the Norman language and the Norman
customs; yet, for a long time the great body of the English remained
sullen and revengeful. On his going over to Normandy, to visit his
subjects there, the oppressions of his half-brother ODO, whom he left in
charge of his English kingdom, drove the people mad. The men of Kent
even invited over, to take possession of Dover, their old enemy Count
Eustace of Boulogne, who had led the fray when the Dover man was slain at
his own fireside. The men of Hereford, aided by the Welsh, and commanded
by a chief named EDRIC THE WILD, drove the Normans out of their country.
Some of those who had been dispossessed of their lands, banded together
in the North of England; some, in Scotland; some, in the thick woods and
marshes; and whens