people [s]. But though every thing bore the face of joy and
festivity, and William himself treated his new courtiers with great
appearance of kindness, it was impossible altogether to prevent the
insolence of the Normans; and the English nobles derived little
satisfaction from those entertainments, where they considered
themselves as led in triumph by their ostentatious conqueror.
[FN [r] P. 211, 212. [s] As the historian chiefly insists on the
silver plate, his panegyric on the English magnificence shows only how
incompetent a judge he was of the matter. Silver was then of ten
times the value, and was more than twenty times more rare than at
present; and consequently, of all species of luxury, plate must have
been the rarest.]

[MN 1067. Discontents of the English.]
In England affairs took still a worse turn during the absence of the
sovereign. Discontents and complaints multiplied every where; secret
conspiracies were entered into against the government; hostilities
were already begun in many places; and every thing seemed to menace a
revolution, as rapid as that which had placed William on the throne.
The historian above-mentioned, who is a panegyrist of his master,
throws the blame entirely on the fickle and mutinous disposition of
the English, and highly celebrates the justice and lenity of Odo's and
Fitz-Osberne's administration [t]. But other historians, with more
probability, impute the cause chiefly to the Normans, who, despising a
people that had so easily submitted to the yoke, envying their riches,
and grudging the restraints imposed upon their own rapine, were
desirous of provoking them to a rebellion, by which they expected to
acquire new confiscations and forfeitures, and to gratify those
unbounded hopes which they had formed in entering on this enterprise
[u].
[FN [t] P. 212. [u] Order. Vital. p. 507.]

It is evident that the chief reason of this alteration in the
sentiments of the English must be ascribed to the departure of
William, who was alone able to curb the violence of his captains and
to overawe the mutinies of the people. Nothing indeed appears more
strange, than that this prince, in less than three months after the
conquest of a great, warlike, and turbulent nation, should absent
himself in order to revisit his own country, which remained in
profound tranquillity, and was not menaced by any of its neighbours;
and should so long leave his jealous subjects at the mercy of an
insolen