nts of his death; the one, which we hope is
true, that he ended his days in peace; the other, that his Norman
neighbours fell upon him as he was sleeping in the open air; that
he awoke in time to defend himself, and slew fifteen men-at-arms
and a Breton knight ere he succumbed to numbers-the chief of the
troop, named Asselin, swearing, as he cut the head from the corpse,
that he had never seen so valiant a man. It was long a popular
saying amongst the English, and amongst the Normans that, had there
been four such as he, the Conquest could not have been accomplished.

The fate of those who submitted, or were taken in the Camp of
Refuge, was pitiable; many had their hands cut off, or their eyes
put out, and with cruel mockery were set "free;" the leaders were
imprisoned in all parts of England.

Egelwin, Bishop of Durham, was sent to Abingdon, where within a few
months he died of hunger, either voluntary or enforced; while
Archbishop Stigand was condemned to perpetual imprisonment.

xxiii Lanfranc.

This noted ecclesiastic was a native of Pavia; he was bred up to
the law, and, coming to France, established a school at Avranches,
which was attended by pupils of the highest rank.

On a journey to Rouen he was robbed and left bound in a wood, where
some peasants found him, and brought him for shelter to the Abbey
of Bec, recently founded by Herluin. Here he felt himself called to
the monastic life, and became a monk at Bec, which sprang up
rapidly under him into a school no less of literature than of
piety, where William often retired to make spiritual retreats, and
where an intimacy sprang up between them. He became successively
Prior of Bec and abbot of William's new foundation of St. Stephen's
at Caen. His influence with the Pope procured the papal sanction
for the invasion of England; and afterwards, in 1070, the
Archbishopric of Canterbury was pressed upon him by William, which
he held until his death in 1089, in the eighty-fourth year of his
age.

In some respects he dealt harshly with the English clergy, and
connived at their wholesale deprivation. We must own, in
extenuation, that their lives and conduct had not been such as to
do honour to God, that they were said to be the most ignorant
clergy in Europe; and that the sins of the nation under their
guidance were owned, even by the English, to have brought the heavy
judgment of the Conquest upon them. Otherwise, Lanfranc was a
protector of the oppressed, in