himself very likely of Norman origin, describes this cunning and revengeful race, despising their own inheritance in the hope of winning a greater elsewhere, eager for gain and eager for power, quick to imitate whatever they see, at once lavish and greedy; given to hunting and hawking and delighting in horses and accoutrements and fine clothing, yet ready when occasion demands to bear labor and hunger and cold; skilful in flattery and the use of fine words, but unbridled unless held down firmly by the yoke of justice.[1] Turn then to the northern writers of the following century: William of Malmesbury, who describes the fierce onslaughts of the Normans, inured to war and scarcely able to live without it, their stratagems and breaches of faith and their envy of both equals and superiors;[2] or the English monk Ordericus, who spent his life among them in Normandy and who says:—
The race of the Normans is unconquered and ready for any wild deed unless restrained by a strong ruler. In whatever gathering they find themselves they always seek to dominate, and in the heat of their ambition they are often led to violate their obligations. All this the French and Bretons and Flemings and other neighbors have frequently felt; this the Italians and the Lombards, the Angles and Saxons, have also learned to their undoing.[3]
A little later it is the Norman poet Wace who tells, through the mouth of the dying William the Con-
