1066 in the same sufferings, and in the same prosperity, had united the English into one people, Battle Abbey became the proud and pleasurable monument of antient prowess and glory. Not so when raised: it was intended far less as a trophy of victory and exultation, than as the retreat of sadness and repentance. Where the heather had been burned, it shot up again: and where the elastic herbage had been trampled Traditions of in the battle strife, it sprung up afresh; away the Abbey. but men said, that whenever the fertilizing rain watered the ground, you might see the crumbly soil resume the colour of recent gore. Report exaggerates the most common events, still more those affecting the imagination or the feelings; but the fact is positively affirmed, and there is no reason to doubt, that there was a period when it was substantially true. Chemical analysis can no more account for the singularly indelible stain, resulting from the vital fluid, than for any of the other mysterious properties imparted to it; and we, in our own times, have witnessed the same appearance. WILLIAM RETURNS TO CHAPTER IX. NORMANDY-HIS TRIUMPHANT RECEP TION OPPRESSIONS EXERCISED IN ENGLAND BY ODO OF ΤΟ ENGLAND-REBELLION COPSI-WILLIAM IN ENGLAND. RETURNS of Normandy Duke's absence. 81. DURING these transactions, William had Government been providently preparing for his return to Nor- during the mandy. It must have been a source of great internal comfort to him, always to be able to place entire confidence in Matilda. No Sovereign ever appears to have been more happy in his wife. During his absence, she had governed the Duchy with entire prudence, assisted by the advice of Roger de Montgomery, the Norman of the Normans, and Ralph de Beaumont. Robert, young as he was, had been associated to her in the government of the Duchy, of which he had been declared the heir; and William had no reason to fear the extinction of his male lineage, there being two stout and healthy brothers, William and Richard, in whom the old family name was revived. Nevertheless, William, fully conscious of the chances to which Normandy was exposed, whe 1067 William's conduct towards the line. 410 POLICY TOWARDS THE SAXON ther on the side of Anjou or of France, could not think it safe to remain away after the great effort, which must, in some degree, have exhausted the Duchy; and the cautions with which he had made his arrangements, enabled him to do so consistently, with the foresight of the statesman and of the general. In all William's conduct towards the English, Saxon Royal Whilst going to the very verge of rigour, he had avoided all measures which could be construed into an affront to the feelings of the higher classes. To the late royal family he paid, consistently, great respect and honour. Winchester was occupied by him like London; but Editha remained there so long as she lived, in tranquillity and honour. Githa, Godwin's widow, continued as yet to enjoy her great possessions. Agatha, the widow of Edward the Outlaw, and mother of the Atheling, remained under William's protection with her daughters, Margaret and Cristina; foreign names, and bespeaking the place of their nativity-the eldest being even then as remarkable for her beauty as she was afterwards for her talents and her piety. It was commonly reported that her kinsman, Edward the Confessor, had promised her in marriage to Malcolm Canmore, king of the Picts and Scots; and that he had covenanted to give or confirm the Lothians as her dowry. If such a betrothal really had taken place, May Margaret must have been in her earliest infancy. This circum stance in itself would not render the story incredible; but no heed was taken of it by William; and the Hungarian mother and her daughters resided probably at Romsey in Hampshire, where Cristina afterwards professed. 1067 England. In order to supply his place by an effective Regents for government, William appointed Odo his brother and Fitz-Osbern, regents of the kingdom during his absence, associating also Grandmesnil in some of the powers of administration. They would watch, and vigilantly, against all who were to be coerced by the sword; but those who were to be dealt with more gently, William gradually and quietly brought closer and closer about his court and person; as well those who might become the unwilling agents, as the active causes of resistance. Of these, the first was the Atheling, always treated by him with kindness and affection. Notwithstanding the slur which Stigand. had been cast upon Stigand's character, William continued to treat the primate and metropolitan of the British Islands with all the outward veneration appertaining to his high dignity, though inwardly there was none whose " perfidy" the king more feared. Agelnoth, the "Satrap" of Canterbury, was also under suspicion. Every effort was made by William to conciliate Edwin and Morcar; they had fully yielded, and William had promised his daughter, probably Constance, in marriage to the elder of these brothers, as the reward of having obtained 1067 William's Saxon cortège. His triumph in Normandy. the apparently cordial submission of the younger. Waltheof also was much courted by William, and the subsequent marriage of the Anglo-Danish chieftain with Judith, the Conqueror's niece, shews how intimate was the alliance which had been formed. Yet, notwithstanding this, all were more or less dreaded by William; and when he took them with him, and embarked at Pevensey, although they ostensibly appeared as his visitors, they probably were themselves aware that they were taken as hostages, if not as prisoners. Thus they proceeded through Kent, indignantly pacified: thus through Sussex, wasted and desolated, a desolation from which the country did not recover even till the conclusion of William's reign. Thus they passed the lake of blood, and the rising walls of the expiatory monastery; thus they reached Pevensey, where William had landed as the Duke of Normandy, where he had defied the adverse omen, and where he now embarked to return to his own land as a triumphant king. 8 2. William's progress in Normandy, through town and burgh, and more particularly his entry into Rouen, was celebrated by the people, animated by all the contagion of enthusiasm. They compare him to those Roman Emperors whom they idealized as the types of human grandeur. Beloved as Vespasian, admired as Pompey;-but above all they paralleled him to the hero, who, in the romantic traditions of the |