The body, enbalmed after royal custom, was brought down the river Seine to Caen, and there consigned to the earth, a large assembly of the clergy attending, but few of the laity. Here might be seen the wretchedness of earthly vicissitude; for that man who was formerly the glory of all Europe, and more powerful than any of his predecessors, could not find a place of everlasting rest, without contention. For a certain knight, to whose patrimony the place pertained, loudly exclaiming at the robbery, forbade his burial: saying, that the ground belonged to himself by paternal right; and that the king had no claim to rest in a place which he had forcibly invaded. Whereupon, at the desire of Henry, the only one of his sons who was present, a hundred pounds of silver[1] were paid to this brawler, and quieted his audacious claim: for at that time, Robert his elder born was in France, carrying on a war against his own country: William had sailed for England, ere the king had well breathed his last; thinking it more advantageous to look to his future benefit, than to be present at the funeral of his father. Moreover, in the dispersion of money, neither slow, nor sparing, he brought forth from its secret hoard, all that treasure which had been accumulated at Winchester, during a reign of so many years: to the monasteries he gave a piece of gold; to each parish church five shillings in silver: to every county a hundred pounds to be divided to each poor man severally. He also very splendidly adorned the tomb of his father, with a large mass of gold and silver and the refulgence of precious stones.
At this time lived Berengar, the heresiarch of Tours, who denied, that the bread and wine, when placed on the altar and consecrated by the priest, were, as the holy church affirms, the real and substantial body of the Lord. Already was the whole of Gaul infected with this his doctrine, disseminated by means of poor scholars, whom he allured by daily hire. On this account pope Leo, of holiest memory, alarmed for the catholic faith, calling a council against him at Vercelli, dispersed the darkness of this misty error, by the effulgence of evangelical testimony. But when, after his death, the poison of heresy again burst forth from the bosoms of some worthless people where it had long been nurtured, Hildebrand, in councils, when he was archdeacon, at Tours,
- ↑ Sixty shillings down, and as much more afterwards. Orderic. Vital.
