rrel was
inflamed to the highest pitch; and Anselm desiring to depart the
kingdom, the king consented.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1100.]

The eyes of all men being now turned towards the great transactions in
the East, William, Duke of Guienne, fired by the success and glory that
attended the holy adventurers, resolved to take the cross; but his
revenues were not sufficient to support the figure his rank required in
this expedition. He applied to the King of England, who, being master of
the purses of his subjects, never wanted money; and he was politician
enough to avail himself of the prodigal, inconsiderate zeal of the times
to lay out this money to great advantage. He acted the part of usurer to
the Croises; and as he had taken Normandy in mortgage from his brother
Robert, having advanced the Duke of Guienne a sum on the same
conditions, he was ready to confirm his bargain by taking possession,
when he was killed in hunting by an accidental stroke of an arrow which
pierced his heart. This accident happened in the New Forest, which his
father with such infinite oppression of the people had made, and in
which they both delighted extremely. In the same forest the Conqueror's
eldest son, a youth of great hopes, had several years before met his
death from the horns of a stag; and these so memorable fates to the same
family and in the same place easily inclined men to think this a
judgment from Heaven: the people consoling themselves under their
sufferings with these equivocal marks of the vengeance of Providence
upon their oppressors.

We have painted this prince in the colors in which he is drawn by all
the writers who lived the nearest to his time. Although the monkish
historians, affected with the partiality of their character, and with
the sense of recent injuries, expressed themselves with passion
concerning him, we have no other guides to follow. Nothing, indeed, in
his life appears to vindicate his character; and it makes strongly for
his disadvantage, that, without any great end of government, he
contradicted the prejudices of the age in which he lived, the general
and common foundation of honor, and thereby made himself obnoxious to
that body of men who had the sole custody of fame, and could alone
transmit his name with glory or disgrace to posterity.

FOOTNOTES:

[76] Maimbourg.

[77] Chron. Sax. 204.

CHAPTER IV.

REIGN OF HENRY I.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1100.]

Henry, the youngest son of the Conqueror