England,--a man bold, fierce, ambitious, full of craft, imperious, and
without faith, but well versed in all affairs, vigilant, and courageous.
To him he joined William Fitz-Osbern, his justiciary, a person of
consummate prudence and great integrity. But not depending on this
disposition, to secure his conquest, as well as to display its
importance abroad, under a pretence of honor, he carried with him all
the chiefs of the English nobility, the popular Earls Edwin and Morcar,
and, what was of most importance, Edgar Atheling, the last branch of the
royal stock of the Anglo-Saxon kings, and infinitely dear to all the
people.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1607.]

The king managed his affairs abroad with great address, and covered, all
his negotiations for the security of his Norman dominions under the
magnificence of continual feasting and unremitted diversion, which,
without an appearance of design, displayed his wealth and power, and by
that means facilitated his measures. But whilst he was thus employed,
his absence from England gave an opportunity to several humors to break
out, which the late change had bred, but which the amazement likewise
produced by that violent change, and the presence of their conqueror,
wise, vigilant, and severe, had hitherto repressed. The ancient line of
their kings displaced, the only thread on which it hung carried out of
the kingdom and ready to be cut off by the jealousy of a merciless
usurper, their liberties none by being precarious, and the daily
insolencies and rapine of the Normans intolerable,--these discontents
were increased by the tyranny and rapaciousness of the regent, and they
were fomented from abroad by Eustace, Count of Boulogne. But the people,
though ready to rise in all parts, were destitute of leaders, and the
insurrections actually made were not carried on in concert, nor directed