it that same
approach to a _warlock_ which Gibbon saw to a _wiseacre_ in the surname
of Robert Wiscard. We have also a natural curiosity to know whether
Duke William really had any good reason for banishing him, and thereby
giving the Wiscard another comrade in the Apulian wars. We care more for
the reputation of William the Great than for that of William the
Warling: the accuser of the Warling too was the first recorded
Bigod.[42] That is, he was the first who bore that name as a surname;
for Normans in general were scoffed at by Frenchmen as _bigods_,
_bigots_,--never mind the spelling or the meaning--and also as drinkers
of beer. We have that reverence for a much later Bigod that we had
rather not think that any Bigod told lies; but there is an awkward oath
which an intermediate Bigod took at the time of the election of Stephen.
So we will not venture to go beyond the fact that Duke William gave the
lands of the Warling to his half-brother Robert. We know him on Senlac;
we know him in Cornwall; we know him through all the western lands; we
know him most of all on that Montacute of his founding which once was
Leodgaresburh, scene of the Invention of the Holy Cross of Waltham.[43]

The West-Saxon knew Count Robert only as a spoiler, the Norman of
Mortain knew him as a great ecclesiastical founder. In 1082 he founded
the collegiate church of Saint Evroul "in castro Moretonii" for a Dean
and eight Canons, to whom seven more were added by other benefactors. He
also built or rebuilt the church, and, just as in the case of Harold at
Waltham, the language of the charter seems to imply that he built the
church first and then founded the canons to serve in it. There was a
time--it seems not so very long ago--when Gally Knight had to fight
against people who believed that the present church was of Count
Robert's own building. So to believe was indeed one degree less
grotesque than to believe that the far more advanced church of Coutances
was earlier still. Gally Knight easily saw that there was nothing in the
church which could be of Count Robert's time except the fine Romanesque
doorway on the south side. And even that we should now call too advanced
for Count Robert's own work; we should set it down for the last finish
of a building which doubtless took some time to make complete in all its
parts.

It is common enough in England to find a grand doorway of the twelfth
century left in a church where everything else has been r