assistance in those parts, to oppose the king: but failing of this connexion, he excited Philip king of France against his father. Wherefore, disappointed of his paternal blessing and inheritance, at his death, he missed England, retaining with difficulty the duchy of Normandy: and pawning even this, at the expiration of nine years, to his brother William, he joined the expedition into Asia, with the other Christians. From thence, at the end of four years, he returned with credit for his military exploits; and without difficulty sat himself down in Normandy, because his brother William being recently dead, king Henry, unsettled on account of his fresh-acquired power, deemed it enough to retain England under his command: but as I must speak of this in another place, I will here pursue the relation I had begun concerning the sons of William the Great.
Richard afforded his noble father hopes of his future greatness; a fine youth and of aspiring disposition, considering his age: but an untimely death quickly withered the bud of this promising flower. They relate that while hunting deer in the New-forest, he contracted a disorder from a stream of infected air. This is the place which William his father, desolating the towns and destroying the churches for more than thirty miles, had appropriated for the nurture and refuge of wild beasts;[1] a dreadful spectacle, indeed, that where before had existed human intercourse and the worship of God, there deer, and goats, and other animals of that kind, should now range unrestrained, and these not subjected to the general service of mankind. Hence it is truly asserted that, in this very forest, William his son, and his grandson Richard, son of Robert, earl of Normandy, by the severe judgment of God, met their deaths, one by a wound in the breast by an arrow, the other by a wound in the neck, or as some say, from being suspended by the jaws on the branch of a tree, as his horse passed beneath it.
His daughters were five; first, Cecilia, abbess of Caen, who still survives: the second, Constantia, married to Alan
- ↑ Some MSS. omit from "a dreadful spectacle," to the end of the paragraph, and substitute thus, "Here he willingly passed his time, here he delighted to follow the chase, I will not say for days but even months together. Here, too, many accidents befell the royal race, which the recent recollection of the inhabitants supplies to inquirers."
