they belonged, and he levied large sums of money from every one against whom he could find any pretence of any sort. After that, he crossed the sea to Normandy. Now, therefore, in requital of their sins, the ancient nobility of the English began to decay under its oppression, and the souls of the nobles, in accordance with the prophecy of the blessed Edward, drew sorrowful sighs from the bottom of their hearts. King William probers in his ways, and founds two convents. A.D. 1085. King William, after he had banished nearly the whole of the nobility of England, gave full vent to his tyrannical temper, and became savage and inhuman, having no affection for anything but wild animals, for the sake of which he mutilated, and plundered, and imprisoned, and executed men. He enriched Normandy, he subdued and made himself master of Maine, and reduced Brittany to submit to his authority, and he united Scotland to England. He was a most sagacious confiscator of the possessions of robbers and banditti, and a merciless condemner of the men themselves. So that merchants, and foreigners, and travellers could travel throughout the whole length and breadth of England without injury, even if they had been seen to be loaded with treasures of gold ; though at all previous times every wood abounded with wolves and highwaymen. For the English of noble and generous birth being expelled from their possessions, and being ashamed to beg, and not knowing how to dig, lurked in the woods with their sons and brothers, thirsting only for booty and plunder, as they were deprived of hunting, and had no other means of obtaining food. This year, king William gave the bishopric of Dorchester to a man named Remigius, a monk of Feschamp, by whose salutary warnings the king was taught, for the atonement of his transgressions, to found two monasteries, one in honour of Saint Martin, in England, where the battle had been fought, and to which he gave the name of Battle, as has been said before. The other monastery he founded in Normandy, at Caen, in honour of Saint Stephen, the protomartyr, and he ordered it to be consecrated. By queen Matilda he had several children, namely, Robert and Richard, William and Henry, from whom afterwards the Une of the kings of England descended.