Speech of Odo.
Reasons for preferring Robert to William.
Comparison of the elder and younger William.
These arguments of Norman speakers are given us
without the names of any ringleaders. We may suspect
that the real speaker, in the idea of the reporter, was
no other than the Bishop of Bayeux.[1] We hear of him
more distinctly on English ground, haranguing his
accomplices somewhat to the same effect; only the
union of the two states is not so distinctly spoken of.
It may be that such a way of putting the case would
not sound well in the ears of men who, if not Englishmen,
were at least the chief men of England, and who
might not be specially attracted by the prospect of
another conquest of England, now that England was
theirs. The chief business of the Bishop's speech is to
compare the characters of the two brothers between
whom they had to choose, and further to compare the
new King with the King who was gone. The speaker
seems to start from the assumption that, in the interests
of those to whom he spoke, it was to be wished that
the ruler whom they were formally to acknowledge
should be practically no ruler at all. William the Great
had not been a prince to their minds; William the Red
was not likely to be a prince to their minds either.
Robert was just the man for their purpose. Under
Robert, mild and careless, they would be able to do
as they pleased; under the stern and active William
they would soon find that they had a master. The
argument that follows is really the noblest tribute that
could be paid to the memory of the Conqueror. It sets
him before us, in a portrait drawn by one who, if a
brother, was also an enemy, as a king who did justice
and made peace, and who did his work without shedding
- [Footnote: et inconsideratus, valde gavisus est promissis inutilibus, seseque spopondit
eis, si inchoarent, affaturum in omnibus, et collaturum mox efficax auxilium ad perpetrandum tam clarum fecimus."]
- ↑ See Appendix B.
