Gifts to Battle Abbey.
Gifts to the poor. divine service was not forgotten.[1] And, above all, the special foundation of his father, the Abbey of the Battle, received choicer gifts than any, the royal mantle of the departed King among them.[2] Every upland church, every one at all events on the royal lordships, received sixty pennies.[3] Moreover a hundred pounds in money was sent into each shire to be given away in alms to the poor for William's soul.[4] Such a gift might be bountiful in a small shire like Bedford, where many Englishmen still kept their own; but it would go but a little way, even after eighteen years, to undo the work of the great harrying of Yorkshire. Meanwhile Robert, already received as Duke of the Normans, was doing the same pious work among the poor and the churches of his duchy.[5] The dutiful son and the rebel were both doing their best for the welfare of their father in the other world.
The Christmas Assembly. 1087-1088. From Winchester the new King went back to Westminster, and there he held the Christmas feast and assembly. It was attended by the two archbishops and by several other bishops, among whom the saint
- ↑ Florence brings in the books in a list of gifts which is longer than that of the Chronicler; "Cruces, altaria, scrinia, textos, candelabra, situlas, fistulas, ac ornamenta varia gemmis, auro, argento, lapidibusque pretiosis, redimita, per ecclesias digniores ac monasteria jussit dividi."
- ↑ Chron. de Bello, 40. "Regni diadema suscepit. Quod adeptus, paterni mandati non immemor, patris pallium regale et feretrum unde supra meminimus, cum ccc^{tis} philacteriis, sanctorum pignorum excellentia gloriosis, ecclesiæ beati Martini quantocius delegavit, quæ simul apud Bellum viii Kalendas Novembris suscepta sunt."
- ↑ The Chronicler says, "to ælcen cyrcean uppe land lx. pæǹ." But Florence limits it; "ecclesiis in civitatibus vel villis suis per singulas denarios lx. dari."
- ↑ Chron. Petrib. 1087. "Into ælcere scire man seonde hundred punda feos, to dælanne earme mannan for his saule."
- ↑ Flor. Wig. 1087. "Ejus quoque germanus Rotbertus in Normanniam reversus, thesauros quos invenerat monasteriis, ecclesiis, pauperibus, pro anima patris sui largiter divisit."
