r palace at Caen.--Her distress of
mind.--Matilda's health.--Memorials of her.--William's declining
years.--His fitfulness and discontent.--Philip ridicules
William.--William's rage.--William's threats.--Conflagration of
Mantes.--William's injury.--His great danger.--William's remorse.--His
last acts.--Robert absent.--He receives Normandy.--William Rufus
and Henry.--The king's will.--William's death.--Abandonment of
the body.--Apprehensions of the people.--The body removed to
Caen.--Extraordinary scenes.--The body conveyed to the monastery on
a cart.--The procession broken up.--Scene at the interment.--The
sarcophagus too small.--The body burst.--William Rufus obtains
possession of the English throne.

From the time of the battle of Hastings, which took place in 1066, to
that of William's death, which occurred in 1087, there intervened a
period of about twenty years, during which the great monarch reigned
over his extended dominions with a very despotic sway, though not
without a large share of the usual dangers, difficulties, and struggles
attending such a rule. He brought over immense numbers of Normans from
Normandy into England, and placed all the military and civil power of
the empire in their hands; and he relied almost entirely upon the
superiority of his physical force for keeping the country in subjugation
to his sway. It is true, he maintained that he was the rightful heir to
the English crown, and that, consequently, the tenure by which he held
it was the right of inheritance, and not the right of conquest; and he
professed to believe that the people of England generally admitted his
claim. This was, in fact, to a considerable extent, true. At least
there was probably a large part of the population who believed William's
right to the crown superior to that of Harold, whom he had deposed.
Still, as William was by birth, and education, and language a foreigner,
and as all the friends and followers who attended him, and, in fact,
almost the whole of the army, on which he mainly relied for the
preservation of his power, were foreigners too--wearing a strange dress,
and speaking in an unknown tongue--the great mass of the English people
could not but feel that they were under a species of foreign
subjugation. Quarrels were therefore continually breaking out between
them and their Norman masters, resulting in fierce and bloody struggles,
on their part, to get free. These rebellions were always effectually put
do