was the consanguinity of the parties, a point to which it was
incumbent on him, as he maintained--being the head of the Church in
Normandy--particularly to attend. It seems that, notwithstanding
William's negotiations with the pope to obtain a dispensation, the
affair was not fully settled at Rome before the marriage; and very soon
after the celebration of the nuptials, Mauger fulminated an edict of
excommunication against both William and Matilda, for intermarrying
within the degrees of relationship which the canons of the Church
proscribed.

An excommunication, in the Middle Ages, was a terrible calamity. The
person thus condemned was made, so far as such a sentence could effect
it, an outcast from man, and a wretch accursed of Heaven. The most
terrible denunciations were uttered against him, and in the case of a
prince, like that of William, his subjects were all absolved from their
allegiance, and forbidden to succor or defend him. A powerful potentate
like William could maintain himself for a time against the influence and
effects of such a course, but it was pretty sure to work more and more
strongly against him through the superstitions of the people, and to
wear him out in the end.

William resolved to appeal at once to the pope, and to effect, by some
means or other, the object of securing his dispensation. There was a
certain monk, then obscure and unknown, but who afterward became a very
celebrated public character, named Lanfranc, whom, for some reason or
other, William supposed to possess the necessary qualifications for this
mission. He accordingly gave him his instructions and sent him away.
Lanfranc proceeded to Rome, and there he managed the negotiation with
the pope so dexterously as soon to bring it to a conclusion.

The arrangement which he made was this. The pope was to grant the
dispensation and confirm the marriage, thus removing the sentence of
excommunication which the Archbishop Mauger had pronounced, on
condition that William should build and endow a hospital for a hundred
poor persons, and also erect two abbeys, one to be built by himself, for
monks, and one by Matilda, for nuns. Lanfranc agreed to these conditions
on the part of William and Matilda, and they, when they came to be
informed of them, accepted and confirmed them with great joy. The ban of
excommunication was removed; all Normandy acquiesced in the marriage,
and William and Matilda proceeded to form the plans and to superintend