the saddle, as to bring on a violent access of fever.1 Being unable to remount his horse after an accident which must have appeared to him like a retributive chastisement for the barbarous deed in which he was engaged, he was conveyed in a litter to Rouen, where, perceiving he drew near his end, he began to experience some compunctious visitings of conscience for the crimes and oppressions of which he had been guilty.

In the first place, he ordered large sums to be distributed to the poor, and applied to the building of churches, especially those which he had recently burned at Mantes; next he set all the Saxon prisoners at liberty whom he had detained in his Norman prisons, especially Morcar and Ulnoth, the brother of Harold, who had remained in captivity from his childhood, when he was given in hostage by Earl Godwin to Edward the Confessor; and the heart of the dying monarch being deeply touched with remorse, he confessed that he had done Morcar much wrong, and bitterly bewailed the blood he had shed in England, and the desolation and woe he had caused in Hampshire, for the sake of planting the New Forest, protesting "that having so misused that fair and beautiful land, he dared not appoint a successor to it, but left the disposal of that matter in the hands of God." He had, however, taken some pains, by writing a letter to Lanfranc, expressive of his earnest wish that William Rufus should succeed him in his regal dignity, to secure the crown of England to this his favourite son, for whom he called as soon as he had concluded his edifying

1 Malmsbury. Higden.

2 See William's Deathbed Confession in Speed.

acknowledgments of the errors of his past life, and sealing the letter with his own seal, he put it into the hands of the prince, and bade him hasten to England with all speed, and deliver it to the archbishop. He then blessed him with a farewell kiss, and dismissed him.

When the Conqueror had settled his temporal affairs, he caused himself to be removed to Hermentrude, a pleasant village near Rouen,1 that he might be more at liberty to prepare himself for death. On the 9th of September the awful change which he awaited took place. Hearing the sound of the great bell in the metropolitan church of St. Gervis near Rouen, William, raising his exhausted frame from the supporting pillows, asked "what it meant ?"2

One of his attendants replying, "that it then rang prime to our lady," the dying monarch, lifting his eyes to heaven, and spreading abroad his hands, exclaimed, "I commend myself to that blessed lady, Mary the mother of God, that she by her holy intercession may reconcile me to her most dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ ;" and with these words expired, in the sixty fourth year of his age, 1087, after a reign of fifty-two years in Normandy, and twenty-one in England.

His eldest son, Robert, was absent in Germany at the time of his death;3 William was on his voyage to England; and Henry, who had taken charge of his obsequies, having suddenly departed on some self-interested business, and all the great officers of the court having dispersed themselves, some to offer their homage to Robert, and

1 Eadmer.

3 Odericus Vitalis.

2 Odericus Vitalis. Malmsbury. Brompton.

others to William, the inferior servants of the household, with some of their rapacious confederates, took the opportunity of plundering the house where their sovereign had just breathed his last, of all the money, plate, wearing apparel, hangings, and precious furniture; they even stripped the person of the royal dead, and left his body naked upon the floor.1

Every one appeared struck with consternation and dismay, and neither the proper officers of state nor the sons of the deceased king issuing the necessary orders respecting the funeral, the remains of the Conqueror were left wholly neglected, till Herlewin, a poor country knight, but in all probability the same Herlewin who married his mother Arlotta, undertook to convey the royal corpse to Caen at his own cost, for interment in the Abbey of St. Stephen, where it was met by prince Henry and a procession of monks. Scarcely, however, had the burial rites commenced, when there was a terrible alarm of fire in that quarter of the town; and as there was great danger of the devouring element communicating to the cloisters of St. Stephen, the monks, who were far more concerned for the preservation of their stately abbey than for the lifeless remains of the munificent founder, scampered out of the church without the slightest regard to decency, or the remonstrances of prince Henry and the faithful Herlewin. The example of the ecclesiastics was followed by the secular attendants, so that the hearse of the mighty William was in a manner wholly deserted, till the con

1 Odericus Vitalis. Brompton. Malmsbury. Speed.

2 Ibid.

2

flagration was suppressed. The monks then re-entered the holy fane and proceeded with the solemnity, if so it might be called; but the interruptions and accidents with which it had been marked were not yet ended, for when the funeral sermon was finished, the stone coffin set in the grave which had been dug in the chancel between the choir and the altar, and the body was ready to be laid therein, Anselm Fitz-Arthur, a Norman gentleman, stood forth and forbade the interment: "This spot," said he, "was the site of my father's house, which this dead duke took violently from him, and here upon part of mine inheritance founded this church. This ground I therefore challenge, and I charge ye all, as ye shall answer it at the great and dreadful day of judgment, that ye lay not the bones of the despoiler on the hearth of my fathers."3

The effect of this bold appeal of a solitary individual was an instant pause in the burial rite of the deceased sovereign. The claims of Anselm Fitz-Arthur were examined and his rights recognised by Prince Henry, who prevailed upon the lawful owner of the soil to accept sixty shillings as the price of the grave, and to suffer the interment of his royal father to proceed, on the condition of his pledging himself to pay the full value of the rest of the land. The compensation was stipulated between Anselm Fitz-Arthur and Prince Henry, standing on either side the grave, on the verge of which the un

1 Odericus Vitalis. Speed. Brompton. Malmsbury.

buried remains of the Conqueror rested while the agreement was ratified in the presence of the mourners and assistant priests and monks, whereby Henry promised to pay, and Fitz-Arthur to receive, one hundred pounds of silver as the purchase of the ground on which William had, thirty-five years previously, wrongfully founded the Abbey of St. Stephen's, to purchase a dispensation from the Pope for his marriage with his cousin Matilda of Flanders.

The bargain having been struck, and the payment of the sixty shillings earnest-money for the occupation of the seven feet of earth, which was required for the last abode of the Conqueror of England, being tendered by the prince and received by Fitz-Arthur, forming altogether a strange interlude in a royal funeral, the obsequies were suffered to proceed. According to some historians, an accident occurred in placing the lid on the stone coffin, that was attended with such unpleasant results that mourners, monks, and assistant priests, after vainly censing the chancel with additional clouds of incense, fled the church a second time before the interment was completed. This tale, nasmuch as it was refuted by the appearance of the royal remains when the grave was opened upwards of four hundred and fifty years afterwards, we are disposed to regard as a piece of mingled marvellousness and malice on the part of the Saxon chroniclers, who have taken evident pleasure in enlarging on all the mischances and humiliations which befel the unconscious clay of their great national adversary in its passage to the tomb; and surely so singular a chapter 1 See Speed's Chronicle.