r of strictness in religion, were introduced or promoted
by the court of Rome. Gregory, while he was throwing all Europe into
combustion by his violence and impostures, affected an anxious care for
the purity of manners; and even the chaste pleasures of the marriage bed
were inconsistent, in his opinion, with the sanctity of the sacerdotal
character. He had issued a decree prohibiting the marriage of priests,
excommunicating all clergymen who retained their wives, declaring such
unlawful commerce to be fornication, and rendering it criminal in the
laity to attend divine worship, when such profane priests officiated at
the altar.[*]

[* Hoveden, p. 455, 457. Flor. Wigorn. p. 638
Spel. Concil fol, 13, A. D. 1078.]

This point was a great object in the politics of the Roman pontiffs; and
it cost them infinitely more pains to establish it than the propagation
of any speculative absurdity which they had ever attempted to introduce.
Many synods were summoned in different parts of Europe before it was
finally settled; and it was there constantly remarked, that the
younger clergymen complied cheerfully with the pope's decrees in this
particular, and that the chief reluctance appeared in those who were
more advanced in years; an event so little consonant to men's natural
expectations, that it could not fail to be glossed on even in that blind
and superstitious age. William allowed the pope's legate to assemble, in
his absence a synod at Winchester, in order to establish the celibacy of
the clergy; but the church of England could not yet be carried the whole
length expected. The synod was content with decreeing, that the bishops
should not thenceforth ordain any priests or deacons without exacting
from them a promise of celibacy; but they enacted that none, except
those who belonged to collegiate or cathedral churches, should be
obliged to separate from their wives.

The king passed some years in Normandy; but his long residence there
was not entirely owing to his declared preference of that duchy: his
presence was also necessary for composing those disturbances which
had arisen in that favorite territory, and which had even originally
proceeded from his own family. Robert, his eldest son, surnamed Gambaron
or Courthose, from his short legs, was a prince who inherited all
the bravery of his family and nation; but without that policy and
dissimulation by which his father was so much distinguished, and which,
no less t