family and in the same place easily inclined men to think this a
judgment from Heaven: the people consoling themselves under their
sufferings with these equivocal marks of the vengeance of Providence
upon their oppressors.

We have painted this prince in the colors in which he is drawn by all
the writers who lived the nearest to his time. Although the monkish
historians, affected with the partiality of their character, and with
the sense of recent injuries, expressed themselves with passion
concerning him, we have no other guides to follow. Nothing, indeed, in
his life appears to vindicate his character; and it makes strongly for
his disadvantage, that, without any great end of government, he
contradicted the prejudices of the age in which he lived, the general
and common foundation of honor, and thereby made himself obnoxious to
that body of men who had the sole custody of fame, and could alone
transmit his name with glory or disgrace to posterity.

FOOTNOTES:

[76] Maimbourg.

[77] Chron. Sax. 204.




CHAPTER IV.

REIGN OF HENRY I.