Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/250

He asks a loan of Henry.

Henry buys the Côtentin and Avranchin. without the means of giving or paying any more. He asked Henry for a gift or a loan. The scholar-prince was wary, and refused to throw his money away into the bottomless pit of Robert's extravagance.^[1] The Duke then proposed to sell him some part of his dominions. At this proposal Henry caught gladly, and a bargain was struck. For a payment of three thousand pounds, Henry became master of a noble principality in the western part of the Norman duchy. The conquest of William Longsword,^[2] the colony of Harold Blaatand,^[3] the whole land from the fortress of Saint James to the haven of Cherbourg, the land of Coutances and Avranches, the castle and abbey of Saint Saviour,^[4] and the house that was castle and abbey in one, the house of Saint Michael in Peril of the Sea—all this became the dominion of Henry, now known as Count of the Côtentin. With these territories he received the superiority over a formidable vassal; he became lord over the Norman possessions of Earl Hugh of Chester.^[5] Thus the English-born son of the Norman Conqueror held for his first dominion no contemptible portion of his father's duchy, as ruler of the Danish land which in earlier days had beaten back an English invasion.^[6] In that land, under

1. Ord. Vit. 665 C. "Opes quas habebat militibus ubertim distribuit, et tironum multitudinem pro spe et cupidine munerum sibi connexuit. Deficiente ærario Henricum fratrem suum, ut de thesauro sibi daret, requisivit. Quod ille omnino facere noluit."
2. N. C. vol. i. p. 170.
3. Ib. vol. i. p. 191.
4. Ib. vol. ii. p. 249.
5. The purchase is thus described by Orderic (ib.); "Henricus duci tria millia librarum argenti erogavit, et ab eo totum Constantinum pagum, quæ tertia Normanniæ pars est, recepit. Sic Henricus Abrincas et Constantiam, Montemque sancti Michaëlis in periculo maris, totumque fundum Hugonis Cestrensis consulis, quod in Neustria possidebat, primitus obtinuit." This of course does not mean any disseisin of Earl Hugh, but only the transfer of his homage from Robert to Henry. For other versions of the transaction, see Appendix I.
6. See N. C. vol. i. p. 302.