Page:A literal translation of the Saxon Chronicle.djvu/255

243 also many great men died in this land: Stigand Bishop of Chichester, and the Abbot of Saint Augustine's, and the Abbots of Bath and of Pershore, and the Lord of them all William King of England, concerning whom we have spoken above.

After his death, his son William, of the same name with his father, took to himself the government, and was consecrated as King in Westminster by Archbishop Lanfranc three days before Michaelmas: and all the men of England acknowledged him, and swore oaths of allegiance to him. This done, the King went to Winchester and examined the treasury, and the hoards which his father had amassed; gold and silver, vessels of plate, palls, gems, and many other valuables that are hard to be numbered.—The King did as his father before he died commanded him; he distributed treasures amongst all the monasteries of England, for the sake of his father's soul: to some he gave ten marks of gold, and to others six, and sixty pennies to every country church, and a hundred pounds of money was sent into every county to be divided among the poor for his soul's sake. And before he died he had also desired that all who had been imprisoned during his reign should be