properly observed his appointed charge, and did not break silence, though roused with anger." In the twenty-eighth year of his dukedom, he died, having ordered his body to be buried at the door of the church, where it would be subjected to the feet of such as passed by, and to the spouts of water which streamed from above. In our time, however, William, third abbat of that place, regarding this as disgraceful, removed the long-continued reproach, and taking up the body, placed it before the high altar. He had a brother, Robert, whom he made archbishop of Rouen, though by this he tarnished his reputation. For he, cruelly abusing this honour, at first, committed many crimes and many atrocious acts; but growing in years, he certainly wiped off some of them by his very liberal almsgiving. After Richard, his son of the same name obtained the principality, but lived scarcely a year. A vague opinion indeed has prevailed, that, by the connivance of his brother Robert, whom Richard the second begat on Judith, daughter of Conan, earl of Brittany, a certain woman, skilled in poisons, took the young man off. In atonement for his privity to this transaction he departed for Jerusalem, after the seventh year of his earldom; venturing on an undertaking very meritorious at that time, by commencing, with few followers, a journey, exposed to incursions of barbarians, and strange, by reason of the customs of the Saracens. He persevered nevertheless, and did not stop, but safely completed the whole distance, and purchasing admission at a high price, with bare feet, and full of tears, he worshipped at that glory of the Christians, the sepulchre of our Lord. Conciliating the favour of God, as we believe, by this labour, on his return homewards he ended his days at Nice, a city of Bithynia; cut off, as it is said, by poison. This was administered by his servant Ralph, surnamed Mowin, who had wrought himself up to the commission of this crime, from a hope of obtaining the dukedom. But on his return to Normandy, the matter becoming known to all, he was detested as a monster, and retired to perpetual exile. To Robert succeeded William, his son, then a child, of whom as I shall have to speak hereafter, I shall now return to my narrative.
In the meantime Sweyn, as I have before related, oppressed England with rapine and with slaughter: the in-
