OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR; восто வங்க NOW FIRST PUBLISHED FROM Official Records and other Authentic Documents. BY THOMAS ROSCOE, ESQ. "Some Kings the name of Conquerors have assumed; LONDON: HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER. MDCCCXLVI. INTRODUCTION. WHILE History is occupied with the public deeds of the great and the mighty of the earth, and with the consequences which result from them, it is the province of Biography to penetrate into the inmost recesses of their souls; to explore the peculiarities of individual disposition, character, and way of thinking; to study the influence of external circumstances upon these; to search out the real motives of actions; to follow its subject into the privacy of domestic and social life; and to draw a faithful picture alike of his virtues and his vices, his excellences and his failings, his passions, propensities, and eccentricities—in short, of every trait by which he is distinguished from the rest of mankind. The observant reader need scarcely be reminded how often trivial circumstances and expressions afford a clearer insight into the real motives, views, characters, and dispositions of men than could ever be obtained from the mere consideration of their public conduct. Hence the sagacious biographer, extending his re searches to minute details, may chance to discover truths which elude the eye of the historian, content with the great outlines of general facts. The "Lives of the Kings of England," written with such impressions, will therefore, it is hoped, prove a valuable auxiliary to those readers who, fond of tracing effects up to their true causes, are desirous of ascertaining the real share contributed by each of the British Sovereigns to those results which have conferred on our country and nation their present proud pre-eminence in power, prosperity, freedom, and glory. To such as seek amusement only, they may prove equally acceptable, as a connected record of the sayings and doings of personages, many of them ranking foremost as models of chivalry, and most of them enjoying the highest renown among the politicians and the warriors of their own times. The series commences with the Norman Conquest, when History begins to shake off the legends which cling to her when narrating the lives of even the most eminent of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs, and which are still strikingly exemplified in the sculptured frieze in the chapel of Edward the Confessor, in Westminster Abbey. If the conquest of England by the Normans stamped its characteristics with startling distinctness upon both English and European history, the stern commanding figure of the Conqueror towers in no less bold relief above all his contemporaries, as well as all the royal |