le, at the same time, for at least one
benefit to the land in the famous institution of the "Truce of God,"
which was fully confirmed later on, and proclaimed that from Wednesday
evening until Monday morning in every week the poor and weak were to
be free from the oppressions of their overlords and from the tyranny
of private war. And a still more valuable result of the prevalent
religious enthusiasm was the gradual drawing together of Normandy and
the Papal See which had its greatest outcome in the "Crusade" against
England.

But William had much to do in his own Duchy before he could find time
for any extension of his dominions. At Val-es-Dunes he fought his
first pitched battle, crying the "Dex Aie" of the Normans as he swept
the rebellious barons, under Guy of Burgundy, off the field. Then
feeling more secure in his own power, after he had taken Alencon and
Domfront and laid his iron hand on Maine, while Anjou and Brittany
were too bent upon intestine strife to trouble him, he pacified the
continual quarrels with Flanders by taking Matilda the daughter of its
Count Baldwin as his wife. Descended from the stock of Wessex, of
Burgundy, and of Italy, with the blood of Charlemagne in her veins,
Matilda was beautiful, virtuous and accomplished, and worthy to be the
mate of one who set an example of domestic purity to all the princes
of his time. What had been politic at first became a marriage of
affection afterwards, strengthened no doubt by the opposition that at
first arose. For the Duke's Uncle Mauger objected to the match as
being within the forbidden degrees of relationship, and the Pope at
the Council of Rheims actually pronounced against it. But now came the
first-fruits of the policy which had already shown signs of drawing
together Normandy and the Papacy. For it only needed a little pressure
on the part of the Guiscards in Apulia to secure the consent of the
Papal Legate to the banishment of Mauger to the Channel Islands, which
he appears to have richly deserved for many other reasons, if Wace be
right in his indictment; and after four years of waiting, Matilda was
married to the Duke in the Cathedral of Rouen by the new Bishop
Maurilius who finished the new church that was consecrated in 1063.
Another objection to the marriage received very different treatment.
For in Lanfranc of Bec William had recognised the clever Italian who
would be useful in Council as much as in the Church, and it was
through Lanfranc