tris nimium
protensa."--Will. Malms: lib: iii.]

[Footnote 17: With the Bayeux Tapestry _cf._ Wace's description. R. de
R., 11588, &c.:

"Une lanterne fist li Dus
Metre en sa nef el mast de sus
... Une wire-wire doree
Ont de coivre en somet levee...."]

[Illustration: HORSES FOR THE ARMY OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR CROSSING
THE CHANNEL (BAYEUX TAPESTRY)]

How the Duke of Rouen conquered England, and how he wrote it in his
Domesday Book, is no immediate concern of ours. By March in the next
year he was back in his own capital, bringing with him, through the
cheering streets, the Prince Edgar, Stigand the Primate, and three of
his greatest earls. There his beloved wife met him, and gave account
of the Duchy she had guarded with Roger of Beaumont in his absence.
There he at once dealt out rewards to the regular and secular clergy
of the city, among which were the lordships of Ottery and of Rovrige
in Devonshire. Meanwhile the Normans were crowding to admire the
trophies of victory. The banners from the battlefield, embroidered
with the Raven of Ragnar, or the Fighting-Man of the dead Harold, and
booty that brought wonder to the eyes even of citizens who had seen
the spoils of Sicily. Nor did the Duke forget in the hour of triumph
to be politic. He sent Lanfranc to the Pope at once, no doubt with
news that Stigand would shortly be supplanted, and that England had
been brought into the fold of Rome. For the warriors that Normandy had
sent to the lands of the south, she was richly repaid in the learned
doctors sent by Italy to the northern countries. Calabria and Sicily
were counterbalanced by the archbishoprics of Lanfranc and of Anselm.
At a synod held in Rouen some six years after his great conquest,
William insisted upon reform in the morals of the Church, upon strict
rules of marriage, on an exact profession of the orthodox faith. He
was not behindhand in performing his part of the profitable bargain
that had been made with Rome.

In 1073 Maine started into revolt under Fulk Rechin,[18] nephew of
Geoffrey of Anjou, and William punished it by reducing Le Mans from a
sovereign commonwealth to a mere privileged municipality. After this
the King of England was constantly in his Duchy, where Robert "Short
Hose," his unruly son, was giving perpetual trouble in Rouen and
elsewhere, as Regent. So imperious were his demands for independence
and immediate provision, that his father's stern refusal roused a