trembled as he passed.  “So stark and fierce was he,” writes the English chronicler, “that none dared resist his will.”  His very wrath was solitary.  “To no man spake he and no man dared speak to him” when the news reached him of Harold’s seizure of the throne.  It was only when he passed from his palace to the loneliness of the woods that the King’s temper unbent.  “He loved the wild deer as though he had been their father.”

[Sidenote:  His rule]

It was the genius of William which lifted him out of this mere northman into a great general and a great statesman.  The wary strategy of his French campaigns, the organization of his attack upon England, the victory at Senlac, the quick resource, the steady perseverance which achieved the Conquest showed the wide range of his generalship.  His political ability had shown itself from the first moment of his accession to the ducal throne.  William had the instinct of government.  He had hardly reached manhood when Normandy lay peaceful at his feet.  Revolt was crushed.  Disorder was trampled under foot.  The Duke “could never love a robber,” be he baron or knave.  The sternness of his temper stamped itself throughout upon his rule.  “Stark he was to men that withstood him,” says the Chronicler of his English system of government; “so harsh and cruel was he that none dared withstand his will.  Earls that did aught against his bidding he cast into bonds; bishops he stripped of their bishopricks, abbots of their abbacies.  He spared not his own brother:  first he was in the land, but the King cast him into bondage.  If a man would live and hold his lands, need it were he followed the King’s will.”  Stern as such a rule was, its sternness gave rest to the land.  Even amidst the sufferings which necessarily sprang from the circumstances of the Conquest itself, from the erection of castles or the enclosure of forests or the exactions which built up William’s hoard at Winchester, Englishmen were unable to forget “the good peace he made in the land, so that a man might fare over his realm with a bosom full of gold.”  Strange touches too of a humanity far in advance of his age contrasted with this general temper of the Conqueror’s government.  One of the strongest traits in his character was an aversion to shed blood by process of law; he formally abolished the punishment of death, and only a single execution stains the annals of his reign.  An edict yet more honourable to his humanity put an end to the slave-trade which had till then been carried on at the port of Bristol.  The contrast between the ruthlessness and pitifulness of his public acts sprang indeed from a contrast within his temper itself.  The pitiless warrior, the stern and aweful king was a tender and faithful husband, an affectionate father.  The lonely silence of his bearing broke into gracious converse with pure and sacred souls like Anselm.  If William was “stark” to rebel and baron, men noted that he was “mild to those that loved God.”