76 PAPERS, ETC. 
competent judges of the good or evil of monastie institu» 
tions, unless we take into consideration the circumstances 
of the times in which they existed ; for it may frequently 
be, as I believe it to have been in this ease, that what 
would have been worse than useless in modern days was 
peeuliarly adapted to the circumstances and wants of au 
earlier period. Nor should we forget that “the evil that 
men do lives after them, and the good is oft interred with 
their bones,” especially when the witnesses on whose au- 
thority we form our opinions of them were, in most cases, 
personally interested in encouraging a hostile feeling to- 
wards them. 
We learn then, from Doomsday-Book, that in the time 
of King Edward—that is, before the Norman Conquest— 
Earl Harold held Old Cleave, and shortly after the 
Conquest it was the property of the family of Romare, or 
De Romara, of whom William de Romara was created 
Earl of Lincoln, by King Stephen, in the year 1141. The 
total defeat of the Saxons at Hastings, together with the 
death of Harold and his brothers, inflieted so fatal a stroke 
on the power of England, that we are in the habit of sup- 
posing that the conquest was then finally completed, and 
that the Normans from that hour became undisputed 
masters of the island ; but this was certainly not the case. 
The Saxons, though worsted on all sides, were not con- 
quered. At Hastings, in the Isle of Ely, in Northumber- 
land, and elsewhere, they maintained a desperate, though 
unayailing, resistance. 'The sons of Harold invaded this 
very coast of Somerset, in the reign of William Rufus ; 
and a modern historian holds that the bands of outlaws 
who infested the forests in all parts of England were not 
robbers, but desperate men, who carried on a national 
warfare against the invaders, even as late as the beginning 
