380V iliiam the Conquerors Accesston 
Norman: knights, who siguvalized them- 
selves, fills six pages. Odo, bishop of 
‘Bayeux, did wonders. He is described 
as clothed in a haubergeon, with a white 
shirt underneath, riding upon a white 
horse, and a baton in hishand. He was 
the brother of William. | All the circum- 
stances related by Vahe, conform to the 
famous Bayeux tapestry, worked by 
Maud, wife of the Conqueror. 
Harold, who had an eye put out by an 
arrow, at the commencement of the bat- 
tle, and afterwards was wounded in the 
thigh, continued to fight, till at last he 
was killed, [Our historians represent him 
as not wounded by the arrow, till the 
close of the battle; that in the thigh, 
being inflicted after death, by a das- 
tardly soldier, whom William punished. 
Translator. ] 
Vace highly extols the valour of Wil- 
diam. He had two horses killed under 
him. After the complete defeat of his 
enemies, he wished to sleep upon the 
field of battle; but it was represented to 
him, that among the wounded, with whom 
the field was strewed, some might have* 
strength enough left to peignard him in 
the night. When he was disarmed, all 
his arms were found broken, through the 
blows struck upon them. 
[The passages which follow, are pre- 
cisely similar to the published accounts, 
and therefore are not given. | 
William had just burned the town of 
Mantes, and wished to cross it io the 
midst of the ruins. They occasioned his 
horse to fall, and the king was wounded 
by the pommel of the saddle. Many 
historians ascribe his death to the con- 
sequences of that wound. Vace only 
says, that, upon his return to Rouen, he 
fell sick, and feeling his end approach, 
he disposed of his dominions, giving Nor- 
mandy to Robert, his eldestson; Eng- 
land to. William, who was the second; 
and to Henry, the third, 5,000 pounds, 
His disorder increasing, he died after six 
weeks illness. Vace makes him sixty- 
four years old: probably from’ copying 
Orderic Vitalis, but he was only sixty. 
[That excelient historian, Malmesbury, 
(De W. is) says only fifty-nine. Zvans- 
lator. | 
Before his death, William liberated all 
the prisoners: of this number, for four 
vears, was his brother Odo, bishop of 
Bayeux,who had been of much service to 
himat the battle of Hastings, but had re- 
fused to give him any account of the 
revenues of England, the administration 
ef which had beea cenaded te him, Wil 
= 
theCrown of England. [May} , 
* 
to 
ham had been obliged to arrest him him-= 
self, nobody daring to lay hands upon a 
bishop. But, said the king, J arrest you, 
as Eurl of Kent, by which distinction 
Willam thought to preserve the respect 
due to the episcopal authority. 
As soon as the king was dead, the peo-- 
ple about him abandoned him to pillage 
the moveables, before he was put into 
the cofiin. This custom of carrymg off 
the moveables of great men, at the in- 
stant of their decease, subsisted a long 
while, especially in relation to bishops, 
and evento popes. William was huried 
at Caen, as he had ordered, in the church 
of the Abbey of St. Stephen, which he 
had founded.. His tomb, destroyed by 
the protestants in 1562, was repaired in 
1642. 
Vace does not forget the well-known 
fact, concerning the opposition, made to 
his burial, by a person named Asceliny 
who pretended, that the part of the 
church, where they had prepared the bu- 
rial of William, was, in his fief, and had 
been forcibly seized by that prince. 
This clamour excited a great tumult. Is 
is commonly considered, as the origin of 
the “ Cry of Haro,” a cry still usual in 
Normandy, to re-demand a thing taken 
by violence, and to obtain immiediate 
restitution through the judge. By this 
formula, they say, the plaintiff invokes 
Row (Rollo) chief of the Norman dy- 
nasty. Paulus Emilius, a modern writer,, 
is generally quoted for the guarantee of 
this etymion, and I do not believe that it 
had beer suggested before him. [The 
cry existsin Jersey and Guernsey; the 
relics which we retain of the duehy of 
Normandy, which was wrested by France 
from Jolin, some centuries betore the 
existence of Paulus Emilius. See Falle 
p. 14. Ha! is the exclamation of a per- 
son suffering. Ro, the abbreviated name 
of the prince; so the custom is men- 
tioned in the Chron. de Normandie 
i. xxvi. See too Rouitlié, Grand Cous- 
tumier de Normandie, fol. Ixxvi.. * Tor- 
rien, Commentaires du Droict, &c. au 
Pays et Duché de Normandie, liv. vii. 
ch. xi. De Reb. ‘gest. Francor. 1. in.— 
Masseville, tiist. Somm. de Normandie 
pi. 1.3, p. 224. Transtator.| The 
poem uf Vace, and other writers, near 
the time, when the fact happened, say: 
nothing which may support the, opinion 
of Paulus Emelius. ‘“ [ forbid all,” cried 
Ascelin. Here is no mention of Row: it 
is the ‘ecclesiastical authority to which 
Ascelin appealed. [M. Brequigny for. 
got, that the deunquent was the cae 
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