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WILLIAM OF NORMANDY,

SURNAMED CLITO.

AMONG the Norman warriors, who, with their swords, won lordships in Southern Italy, few maintained greater feudal state than the Count of Conversano. His castle, situated among olive-groves near the Adriatic, was a magnificent abode, and furnished with all the means. and appliances that rendered feudal life tolerable and pleasant. Moreover, the Count was blessed with a daughter named Sybil, who was regarded as the fairest nymph in Christendom.

At this castle of Conversano, about the time when William Rufus was killed in the New Forest, a wandering knight arrived as a guest, and proved to be Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy. This prince, who was the eldest son of William the Conqueror, having just taken part in the siege of Jerusalem, and performed prodigies of valour at its capture, was welcomed with enthusiasm. Duke Robert was charmed with his host the Count, and everything about him—with his minstrels and jongleurs, his swift hounds, mettled hawks, and high-spirited horses; and he was charmed above

all with the Count's daughter, Sybil. The crusading hero was on the verge of fifty, and the Italian lady still in her teens; but his rank as a Duke and his fame as a champion of the Cross were fascinations not to be resisted; so Curthose led the fair Sybil to the altar, and carried her in triumph to Rouen.

Proud of his bride, gratified with his reception in Normandy, and utterly reckless as to time and money, the Duke, instead of prosecuting his claims on the crown which his younger brother had just seized, expended the whole of his wife's fortune in pageants and festivals, and appeared most happy while showing her in public, and marking the admiration she excited.

But Curthose's domestic felicity was of short duration. Sybil, in 1102, breathed her last, leaving an infant son, born at Rouen, named William, surnamed Clito, or the Royal Heir, destined to endure strange vicissitudes, and doomed to be carried off by death at a time when he seemed on the point of subduing fortune.

When Clito was still a babe in the cradle, his father, allured by promises of support from the Norman barons, invaded England. A sanguinary conflict seemed inevitable; but the craft of Beauclerc prevailed, and, after the brothers had indulged in a fraternal embrace, Curthose, ever ready to sacrifice the future to the present, was bribed to return to his ducal court. Easy and imprudent, Robert allowed his substance to be devoured by crowds of minstrels, favourites, and women much fairer than honest. Matters soon reached

a crisis, and everything went wrong in Normandy. The Duke's poverty was such that he had frequently to lie in bed all day for want of clothes befitting his rank; and, with no one to hold the reins of government, the country became the scene of such disorder, that the chief men invited interference.

Henry Beauclerc was the last man from whom Curthose, after renouncing his pretensions to the English crown, had cause to expect harsh treatment. Quite the reverse. When Henry, a prince without land and without money, seized Mont St. Michel in Normandy, he was there besieged by his brothers, and pressed so hard for want of water, that he sent messengers to request the free enjoyment of that which belongs to all men. Robert generously ordered his soldiers to allow those of Henry to supply themselves, and Rufus, who hardly knew what compassion was, swore and stammered. "You show great skill in warfare," said the Red King; "you, who supply your enemy with drink; you have now only to furnish him with meat too." "How should I leave a brother to die of thirst?" asked Curthose mildly; "what other brother have we, if we should lose him?" But when Henry became King of England, and wanted to be Duke of Normandy, all this vanished from his memory. "Thou art a lord in title," said he, "but not in reality; for they scorn who should obey thee. Cede to me thy duchy."

Curthose declined to comply with this request, and

Beauclerc without scruple landed in Normandy with a formidable force. He encountered his brother's army before the walls of Tenchebray, and a severe conflict took place. Curthose resisted his fate with chivalrous valour; but at length he was conquered, taken prisoner, conducted to England, and committed to the Castle of Cardiff.

When first brought to England, Curthose was allowed some slight freedom, and permitted to walk about the woods and fields on the banks of the Severn. One day, however, while musing over his hard fate, the old spirit of adventure took possession of him; and no wonder. The Severn flowed onwards; the salmon leaped in its silver tide; the heron perched on its grassy margin; the eagle soared over the Castle of Cardiff; the very beings whom the conquest had made serfs on their own glebe appeared happy in comparison with the son and heir of the Conqueror. His plight was more than flesh and blood could bear; so he seized a horse, and rode off at a pace which seemed to defy pursuit.

But Curthose found that this was one of those occasions on which the race is not to the swift. His steed floundered in a morass; and the fugitive, being secured, was subjected to a more rigorous durance. Indeed, it is asserted that Beauclerc, in the plenitude of his power, caused his brother to be deprived of sight, by holding a burning hot brass basin before the miserable captive's eyes.

When the catastrophe of Curthose was accomplished, his son, William Clito, was at Falaise; and at that town the boy fell into the hands of his victorious uncle. Clito was then only five years old, harmless as a dove, and the very picture of innocence. Nevertheless, Beauclerc foresaw that, as years passed on, the son of the Conqueror's heir would be used as an instrument to curb his ambition; and the desire to remove such a being from his path must have been strong within a man who was, in all respects, the reverse of scrupulous. But the blue-eyed child, when brought into his presence, wept piteously, and sobbed as if his heart would break; and Henry shrank from rudely parting the soul and body of a being so defenceless. After a struggle, Beauclerc's good angel saved him from adding infanticide to that long list of enormities which made the Anglo-Saxons regard him as the most wicked of men, and gave rise to the memorable expression, "Royalty is Crime." Feeling, doubtless, as if the eyes of his Maker, his neighbour, and posterity, were upon him at the moment, the King of England ordered his little. nephew to be removed, and gave him into the charge of Helie de St. Saen, a Norman baron whose fidelity he believed could be relied on, and whose character for probity was such as to preclude suspicion of foul play in the event of the young Prince coming to an untimely end.

was,

Helie de St. Saen, rough and ready of hand as he had a tender heart under his chain armour; and