s:--

No Wonder is it that Woes befall us, for Well We Wot that
now full many a year men little _care_ what thing they
_dare_ in word or deed; and Sorely has this nation Sinned,
whate'er man Say, with Manifold Sins and with right Manifold
Misdeeds, with Slayings and with Slaughters, with _robbing_
and with _stabbing_, with Grasping _deed_ and hungry
_Greed_, through Christian Treason and through heathen
Treachery, through _guile_ and through _wile_, through
_lawlessness_ and _awelessness_, through Murder of Friends
and Murder of Foes, through broken Troth and broken Truth,
through wedded unchastity and cloistered impurity. Little
they _trow_ of marriage _vow_, as ere this I said: little
they reck the breach of _oath_ or _troth_; swearing and
for-swearing, on every _side_, far and _wide_, Fast and
Feast they hold not, Peace and Pact they keep not, oft and
anon. Thus in this _land_ they _stand_, Foes to Christendom,
Friends to heathendom, Persecutors of Priests, Persecutors
of People, all too many; spurners of godly law and Christian
bond, who Loudly Laugh at the _Teaching_ of God's _Teachers_
and the _Preaching_ of God's _Preachers_, and whatso rightly
to God's rites belongs.

The nation was thus clearly preparing itself from within for the
adoption of the Romance system. Immediately after the Conquest, rimes
begin to appear distinctly, while alliteration begins to die out. An
Anglo-Saxon poem on the character of William the Conqueror, inserted in
the Chronicle under the year of his death, consists of very rude rimes
which may be modernised as follows--

Gold he took by might,
And of great unright,
From his folk with evil deed
For sore little need.
He was on greediness befallen,
And getsomeness he loved withal.
He set a mickle deer frith,
And he laid laws therewith,
That whoso slew hart or hind
Him should man then blinden.
He forbade to slay the harts,
And so eke the boars.
So well he loved the high deer
As if he their father were.
Eke he set by the hares
That they might freely fare.
His rich men mourned it
And the poor men wailed it.
But he was so firmly wrought
That he recked of all nought.
And they must all withal
The king's will follow,
If they wished to live
Or their land have,
Or their goods eke,