the younger Ralph, and Isabel, after a long widowhood, withdrew as a penitent to atone for the errors of her youth, one would think of her later days also, in a life of religion.[1]
Orderic's picture of Normandy.
His English feelings.
It is after recording the war of Conches and the sack
of Rouen that the monk of Saint Evroul takes up his
parable to set forth the general wretchedness of Normandy
in the blackest colours with which the pictures
of Hebrew prophets and Latin poets could furnish him.
And it is Orderic the Englishman[2] that speaks. In his
Norman cell he never forgot that he first drew breath by
the banks of the Severn. In his eyes the woes of Normandy
were the righteous punishment for the wrongs of
England. The proud people who had gloried in their
conquest, who had slain or driven out the native sons of
the land, who had taken to themselves their possessions
and commands, were now themselves bowed down with
sorrows. The wealth which they had stolen from others
served now not to their delight but to their torment.[3]
Normandy, like Babylon, had now to drink of the same
cup of tribulation, of which she had given others to
drink even to drunkenness. A Fury without a curb
raged through the land, and smote down its inhabitants.
- [Footnote: Orderic disposes of the dead bodies of the Count and the Countess;
"Comitissa nempe defuncta prius apud Nogionem quiescit; comes vero, postmodum apoplexia percussus, sine viatico decessit, et cadaver ejus cum patre suo Fontinellæ computrescit."]
- ↑ See above, p. 233.
- ↑ See N. C. vol. iv. p. 496.
- ↑ Ord. Vit. 691 A, B. "Ecce quibus ærumnis superba profligatur Normannia, quæ nimis olim victa gloriabatur Anglia, et naturalibus regni filiis trucidatis sive fugatis usurpabat eorum possessiones et imperia. Ecce massam divitiarum quas aliis rapuit eisque pollens ad suam perniciem insolentur tumuit, nunc non ad delectamentum sui sed potius ad tormentum miserabiliter distrahit." He has an earlier reflexion to the same effect (664 B); "Sic proceres Neustriæ . . . patriam divitiis opulentam propriis viribus vicissim exspoliaverunt, opesque quas Anglis aliisque gentibus violenter rapuerunt merito latrociniis et rapinis perdiderunt."
