The border-land of France and Normandy, the French Vexin, the land of which Mantes is the capital, had always been disputed between kingdom and duchy.  Border wars had been common; just at this time the inroads of the French commanders at Mantes are said to have been specially destructive.  William not only demanded redress from the King, but called for the surrender of the whole Vexin.  What followed is a familiar story.  Philip makes a foolish jest on the bodily state of his great rival, unable just then to carry out his threats.  “The King of the English lies in at Rouen; there will be a great show of candles at his churching.”  As at Alencon in his youth, so now, William, who could pass by real injuries, was stung to the uttermost by personal mockery.  By the splendour of God, when he rose up again, he would light a hundred thousand candles at Philip’s cost.  He kept his word at the cost of Philip’s subjects.  The ballads of the day told how he went forth and gathered the fruits of autumn in the fields and orchards and vineyards of the enemy.  But he did more than gather fruits; the candles of his churching were indeed lighted in the burning streets of Mantes.  The picture of William the Great directing in person mere brutal havoc like this is strange even after the harrying of Northumberland and the making of the New Forest.  Riding to and fro among the flames, bidding his men with glee to heap on the fuel, gladdened at the sight of burning houses and churches, a false step of his horse gave him his death-blow.  Carried to Rouen, to the priory of Saint Gervase near the city, he lingered from August 15 to September 7, and then the reign and life of the Conqueror came to an end.  Forsaken by his children, his body stripped and well nigh forgotten, the loyalty of one honest knight, Herlwin of Conteville, bears his body to his grave in his own church at Caen.  His very grave is disputed—­a dispossessed antecessor claims the ground as his own, and the dead body of the Conqueror has to wait while its last resting-place is bought with money.  Into that resting-place force alone can thrust his bulky frame, and the rites of his burial are as wildly cut short as were the rites of his crowning.  With much striving he had at last won his seven feet of ground; but he was not to keep it for ever.  Religious warfare broke down his tomb and scattered his bones, save one treasured relic.  Civil revolution swept away the one remaining fragment.  And now, while we seek in vain beneath the open sky for the rifled tombs of Harold and of Waltheof, a stone beneath the vault of Saint Stephen’s still tells us where the bones of William once lay but where they lie no longer.