written by unfriendly Chroniclers, who have good reasons for suppressing the truth. The story reads at the very first glance too much like a romance. In the first place, we have no less than three dreams, which are always effects rather than causes—after-thoughts rather than prophecies, well fitted to suit the superstition of the times, and to deceive the crowd. Then, too, we find the old device of the armourer craving the King to take six brand-new arrows, by one of which at the hand of his friend he is fated to fall on the very spot which his father had laid waste, and where he is said to have destroyed a church.
It may of course be urged that all this is in accordance with what we know of the eternal power of the moral laws, that the sins of the fathers are ever visited upon the sons to the third and fourth generations, and that time ever completes the full circle of retribution. But the flaw is, that this special judgment
Let us look, too, at the events of his reign. Crime after crime crowds upon us. His first act was to imprison those whom his father had set free. He loaded the Forest haws with fresh horrors. Impartial in his cruelty, he plundered both castle and monastery (The Chronicle, Ed. Thorpe, vol. i. p. 364). He burnt out the eyes of the inhabitants of Canterbury, who had taken the part of the monks of St Augustin's. At the very mention of his approach the people fled (Eadmer: Hist. Nov., lib. iv. p. 94). Unable himself to be everywhere, his favourites, Robert d'Ouilly harried the middle, and Odineau d'Omfreville the north of England; whilst his Minister, Ralph Flambard, committed such excesses that the people prayed for death as their only deliverance (Annal. Eccles. Winton., in Wharton's Anglia Sacra, tom. i. p. 295).
As The Chronicle impressively says, "In his days all right fell, and all wrong in the sight of God and of the world rose." Norman and English, friend and foe, priest and layman, were united by one common bond of hatred against the tyrant. It could only be expected that as his life was, so his death would be; that he would be betrayed by his companions, and in his utmost need deserted by his friends.
