its systematic reduction by settling three of his great barons along its frontier.  It was not till his closing years that William’s unvarying success was troubled by a fresh outbreak of the Norman baronage under his son Robert and by an attack which he was forced to meet in 1087 from France.  Its king mocked at the Conqueror’s unwieldy bulk and at the sickness which bound him to his bed at Rouen.  “King William has as long a lying-in,” laughed Philip, “as a woman behind her curtains.”  “When I get up,” William swore grimly, “I will go to mass in Philip’s land and bring a rich offering for my churching.  I will offer a thousand candles for my fee.  Flaming brands shall they be, and steel shall glitter over the fire they make.”  At harvest-tide town and hamlet flaring into ashes along the French border fulfilled the ruthless vow.  But as the King rode down the steep street of Mantes which he had given to the flames his horse stumbled among the embers, and William was flung heavily against his saddle.  He was borne home to Rouen to die.  The sound of the minster bell woke him at dawn as he lay in the convent of St. Gervais, overlooking the city—­it was the hour of prime—­and stretching out his hands in prayer the King passed quietly away.  Death itself took its colour from the savage solitude of his life.  Priests and nobles fled as the last breath left him, and the Conqueror’s body lay naked and lonely on the floor.

Chapter II
the Norman kings
1085-1154

[Sidenote:  William the Red]

With the death of the Conqueror passed the terror which had held the barons in awe, while the severance of his dominions roused their hopes of successful resistance to the stern rule beneath which they had bowed.  William bequeathed Normandy to his eldest son Robert; but William the Red, his second son, hastened with his father’s ring to England where the influence of Lanfranc secured him the crown.  The baronage seized the opportunity to rise in arms under pretext of supporting the claims of Robert, whose weakness of character gave full scope for the growth of feudal independence; and Bishop Odo, now freed from prison, placed himself at the head of the revolt.  The new King was thrown almost wholly on the loyalty of his English subjects.  But the national stamp which William had given to his kingship told at once.  The English rallied to the royal standard; Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester, the one surviving bishop of English blood, defeated the insurgents in the west; while the King, summoning the freemen of country and town to his host under pain of being branded as “nithing” or worthless, advanced with a large force against Rochester where the barons were concentrated.  A plague which broke out among the garrison forced them to capitulate, and as the prisoners passed through the royal army cries of “gallows and cord” burst from the English ranks.  The failure of a later conspiracy whose aim was to set on the throne