discontented; and happening one day, while in this temper, to be
ridiculed by his brothers, who threw water on him from a balcony as
he was walking before the door, he drew his sword, rushed upstairs,
and was only prevented by the King himself from putting
them to death. That same night, he hotly departed with some
followers from his father’s court, and endeavoured to take the
Castle of Rouen by surprise. Failing in this, he shut himself up
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Dickens, Charles – A Child’s History of England
in another Castle in Normandy, which the King besieged, and where
Robert one day unhorsed and nearly killed him without knowing who
he was. His submission when he discovered his father, and the
intercession of the queen and others, reconciled them; but not
soundly; for Robert soon strayed abroad, and went from court to
court with his complaints. He was a gay, careless, thoughtless
fellow, spending all he got on musicians and dancers; but his
mother loved him, and often, against the King’s command, supplied
him with money through a messenger named SAMSON. At length the
incensed King swore he would tear out Samson’s eyes; and Samson,
thinking that his only hope of safety was in becoming a monk,
became one, went on such errands no more, and kept his eyes in his
head.
All this time, from the turbulent day of his strange coronation,
the Conqueror had been struggling, you see, at any cost of cruelty
and bloodshed, to maintain what he had seized. All his reign, he
struggled still, with the same object ever before him. He was a
stern, bold man, and he succeeded in it.
He loved money, and was particular in his eating, but he had only
leisure to indulge one other passion, and that was his love of
hunting. He carried it to such a height that he ordered whole
villages and towns to be swept away to make forests for the deer.
Not satisfied with sixty-eight Royal Forests, he laid waste an
immense district, to form another in Hampshire, called the New
Forest. The many thousands of miserable peasants who saw their
little houses pulled down, and themselves and children turned into
the open country without a shelter, detested him for his merciless
addition to their many sufferings; and when, in the twenty-first
year of his reign (which proved to be the last), he went over to
Rouen, England was as full of hatred against him, as if every leaf
on every tree in all his Royal Forests had been a curse upon his
head. In the New Forest, his son Richard (for he had four sons)
had been gored to death by a Stag; and the people said that this so
cruelly-made Forest would yet be fatal to others of the Conqueror’s
race.
He was engaged in a dispute with the King of France about some
territory. While he stayed at Rouen, negotiating with that King,
he kept his bed and took medicines: being advised by his
physicians to do so, on account of having grown to an unwieldy
size. Word being brought to him that the King of France made light
of this, and joked about it, he swore in a great rage that he
should rue his jests. He assembled his army, marched into the
disputed territory, burnt – his old way! – the vines, the crops,
and fruit, and set the town of Mantes on fire. But, in an evil
hour; for, as he rode over the hot ruins, his horse, setting his
hoofs upon some burning embers, started, threw him forward against
the pommel of the saddle, and gave him a mortal hurt. For six
weeks he lay dying in a monastery near Rouen, and then made his
will, giving England to William, Normandy to Robert, and five
thousand pounds to Henry. And now, his violent deeds lay heavy on
his mind. He ordered money to be given to many English churches
and monasteries, and – which was much better repentance – released
his prisoners of state, some of whom had been confined in his
dungeons twenty years.
It was a September morning, and the sun was rising, when the King