ainst his united brothers, and that he
abandoned Mount St. Michael, and wandered about--as poor and forlorn as
other scholars have been sometimes known to be.

The Scotch became unquiet in the Red King's time, and were twice
defeated--the second time, with the loss of their King, Malcolm, and his
son. The Welsh became unquiet too. Against them, Rufus was less
successful; for they fought among their native mountains, and did great
execution on the King's troops. Robert of Normandy became unquiet too;
and, complaining that his brother the King did not faithfully perform his
part of their agreement, took up arms, and obtained assistance from the
King of France, whom Rufus, in the end, bought off with vast sums of
money. England became unquiet too. Lord Mowbray, the powerful Earl of
Northumberland, headed a great conspiracy to depose the King, and to
place upon the throne, STEPHEN, the Conqueror's near relative. The plot
was discovered; all the chief conspirators were seized; some were fined,
some were put in prison, some were put to death. The Earl of
Northumberland himself was shut up in a dungeon beneath Windsor Castle,
where he died, an old man, thirty long years afterwards. The Priests in
England were more unquiet than any other class or power; for the Red King
treated them with such small ceremony that he refused to appoint new
bishops or archbishops when the old ones died, but kept all the wealth
belonging to those offices in his own hands. In return for this, the
Priests wrote his life when he was dead, and abused him well. I am
inclined to think, myself, that there was little to choose between the
Priests and the Red King; that both sides were greedy and designing; and
that they were fairly matched.

The Red King was false of heart, selfish, covetous, and mean. He had a
worthy minister in his favourite, Ralph, nicknamed--for almost every
famous person had a nickname in those rough days--Flambard, or the
Firebrand. Once, the King being ill, became penitent, and made ANSELM, a
foreign priest and a good man, Archbishop of Canterbury. But he no
sooner got well again than he repented of his repentance, and persisted
in wrongfully keeping to himself some of the wealth belonging to the
archbishopric. This led to violent disputes, which were aggravated by
there being in Rome at that time two rival Popes; each of whom declared
he was the only real original infallible Pope, who couldn't make a
mistake. At las