Spread of vice and evil fashions.
Weakness of the spiritual power.
In other respects also Normandy suddenly changed
from what it had been under the great King-duke.
William the Great, strict to austerity in his private life,
careful in the observance of all religious duties, a zealous
supporter of ecclesiastical discipline, had made his duchy
into a kind of paradise in ecclesiastical eyes. All this
was now swept away. The same flood of foolish and
vicious fashions which overspread England overspread
Normandy also. There is nothing to convict Robert
personally of the special vices of Rufus; but the life of
the unmarried Duke was very unlike the life of his
father. And vice of the grossest kind, the vices of
Rufus himself, stalked forth into broad daylight, unabashed
and unpunished.[1] The ecclesiastical power, no
longer supported by the secular arm, was too weak to
restrain or to chastise.[2] As every form of violence, so
every form of licentiousness, had its full swing in the
Normandy of Robert Curthose.
Building of castles.
The Conqueror keeps garrisons in the castles of the nobles.
Instances at Evreux,
But, above all, this time stood out, like all times of anarchy, as a time of building and strengthening of castles. One of the means by which the Conqueror had maintained the peace of the land had been by keeping garrisons of his own in the castles of such of his nobles as were likely to be dangerous. He had followed this wise policy with the castle of Evreux, the stronghold of his kinsman Count William. He had followed it with the crowd of castles which, as the inheritance of his
- [Footnote: nullis sceleribus frænum, immo omnibus additum calcar ea tempestate
Normannia querebatur." Of Robert's bounty he goes on to say that he would give any sum for a hawk or a dog; "Hujus autem pietatis sororculam eam fuisse patet largitatem, quæ accipitrem, sive canem argenti summa quantalibet comparabat."]
