condition that all his followers were fully pardoned. This the
King very faithfully promised, but Robert was no sooner gone than
he began to punish them.
Among them was the Earl of Shrewsbury, who, on being summoned by
the King to answer to five-and-forty accusations, rode away to one
of his strong castles, shut himself up therein, called around him
his tenants and vassals, and fought for his liberty, but was
defeated and banished. Robert, with all his faults, was so true to
his word, that when he first heard of this nobleman having risen
against his brother, he laid waste the Earl of Shrewsbury’s estates
in Normandy, to show the King that he would favour no breach of
their treaty. Finding, on better information, afterwards, that the
Earl’s only crime was having been his friend, he came over to
England, in his old thoughtless, warm-hearted way, to intercede
with the King, and remind him of the solemn promise to pardon all
his followers.
This confidence might have put the false King to the blush, but it
did not. Pretending to be very friendly, he so surrounded his
brother with spies and traps, that Robert, who was quite in his
power, had nothing for it but to renounce his pension and escape
while he could. Getting home to Normandy, and understanding the
King better now, he naturally allied himself with his old friend
the Earl of Shrewsbury, who had still thirty castles in that
country. This was exactly what Henry wanted. He immediately
declared that Robert had broken the treaty, and next year invaded
Normandy.
He pretended that he came to deliver the Normans, at their own
request, from his brother’s misrule. There is reason to fear that
his misrule was bad enough; for his beautiful wife had died,
leaving him with an infant son, and his court was again so
careless, dissipated, and ill-regulated, that it was said he
sometimes lay in bed of a day for want of clothes to put on – his
attendants having stolen all his dresses. But he headed his army
like a brave prince and a gallant soldier, though he had the
misfortune to be taken prisoner by King Henry, with four hundred of
his Knights. Among them was poor harmless Edgar Atheling, who
loved Robert well. Edgar was not important enough to be severe
with. The King afterwards gave him a small pension, which he lived
upon and died upon, in peace, among the quiet woods and fields of
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Dickens, Charles – A Child’s History of England
England.
And Robert – poor, kind, generous, wasteful, heedless Robert, with
so many faults, and yet with virtues that might have made a better
and a happier man – what was the end of him? If the King had had
the magnanimity to say with a kind air, ‘Brother, tell me, before
these noblemen, that from this time you will be my faithful
follower and friend, and never raise your hand against me or my
forces more!’ he might have trusted Robert to the death. But the
King was not a magnanimous man. He sentenced his brother to be
confined for life in one of the Royal Castles. In the beginning of
his imprisonment, he was allowed to ride out, guarded; but he one
day broke away from his guard and galloped of. He had the evil
fortune to ride into a swamp, where his horse stuck fast and he was
taken. When the King heard of it he ordered him to be blinded,
which was done by putting a red-hot metal basin on his eyes.
And so, in darkness and in prison, many years, he thought of all
his past life, of the time he had wasted, of the treasure he had
squandered, of the opportunities he had lost, of the youth he had
thrown away, of the talents he had neglected. Sometimes, on fine
autumn mornings, he would sit and think of the old hunting parties
in the free Forest, where he had been the foremost and the gayest.
Sometimes, in the still nights, he would wake, and mourn for the
many nights that had stolen past him at the gaming-table;
sometimes, would seem to hear, upon the melancholy wind, the old