A.D. 1135. DEATH OF KING HESKY. 225 five years and three months, on the first day of December; relative to whom one of our writers says :— " King Henry is dead ! the glory once, now the grief of the world. The Deities lament the death of their fellow divinity : Mercury, his inferior in eloquence, Apollo, in strength of mind, Jupiter, in command, and Mars, in might ; all bewail him. Janus, hie inferior in caution, Alcides, in prowess, Pallas, in arms, Minerva, in arts; all bewail him. England, who, springing from her eradle, had shone exalted on high beneath the sceptre of this divinity, now sinks in shade. She, with her king, Normandy, with her duke, waxes faint ; the one nurtured him as a child, the other lost him as a man." This happened in the year from the arrival of the Britons in England, two thousand two hundred and sixty-five ; from the arrival of the Normans, sixty-nine ; from the beginning of the world, five thousand three hundred and seventeen f% in the year of grace, eleven hundred and thirty-five. On the decease of the great king Henry, as is generally the case after death, the judgment of the people was freely pronounced upon him. Some asserted that he shone resplendent in . three particulars ; supreme wisdom, victory, and riches. . In wisdom, because he was considered most profound in counsel, remarkable for foresight, and distinguished for eloquence. In victory, because, besides other exploits which he had successfully performed, according to the laws of warfare, he had overcome the king of the Franks. In riches, because in that respect he far outstripped his predecessors. Others again, animated by opposite feelings, charged him with three vices ; excessive avarice, inasmuch as, while he was wealthy, in order that he might render all his relatives poor, greedily gaping for their riches, he laid ίψίά of everything, with the hooks of informers, by means of taxes and exactions ; cruelty, inasmuch as he put out the eyes of his kinsman, the earl of Moretuil, whom he had thrown into prison, (a horrid erime, which was not known until death had revealed the king's secrets) ; other instances were eited besides, which we will omit ; and sensuality, beeauso after the manner of king Solomon, he was continually a slave to his passion for the female sex. 82 This is clearly wrong, both according to our present reckoning, and his own previous mode of calculation, which places the first year of the Christian era iu the year froin the beginning of the world 4204. VOL. I. Q