hom every piece of land, great and small, was held then, by whom
it was held in King Edward's day, what it was worth now, and what it
had been worth in King Edward's day. All this was written in a book
kept at Winchester, which men called _Domesday Book_. It is a most
wonderful record, and tells us more of the state of England just at
that moment than we know of it for a long time before or after."

The Domesday Book was completed in 1086, and the following year
(1087) William the Conqueror died, and his son, William Rufus,
succeeded him.

[Illustration: WESTMINSTER HALL.]

THE CORONATION OF WILLIAM THE RED

took place at Westminster on September 26, 1087, Archbishop Lanfranc
officiating. The King kept his first Christmas sumptuously at
Westminster, and, Freeman says, "it seems to have been then that he
gave back the earldom of Kent to his uncle, Bishop Odo." The character
of the Royal Christmases degenerated during the reign of Rufus, whose
licentiousness fouled the festivities. In the latter part of his reign
Rufus reared the spacious hall at Westminster, where so many Royal
Christmases were afterwards kept, and which Pope calls

"Rufus's roaring hall."

It is a magnificent relic of the profuse hospitality of former times.
Richard the Second heightened its walls and added its noble roof of
British oak, which shows the excellence of the wood carving of that
period. Although Sir Charles Barry has shortened the Hall of its
former proportions to fit it as a vestibule to the New Houses of
Parliament, it is still a noble and spacious building, and one cannot
walk through it without in imagination recalling some of the Royal
Christmases and other stately scenes which have been witnessed there.
The last of these festal glories was the coronation of George the
Fourth, which took place in 1821. This grand old hall at Westminster
was the theatre of Rufus's feasting and revelry; but, vast as the
edifice then was, it did not equal the ideas of the extravagant
monarch. An old chronicler states that one of the King's courtiers,
having observed that the building was too large for the purposes of
its construction, Rufus replied, "This halle is not begge enough by
one half, and is but a bedchamber in comparison of that I mind to
make." Yet this hall was for centuries the largest of its kind in
Europe, and in it the Christmas feasts were magnificently kept.

After a reign of thirteen years the vicious life of William Rufus m