Page:Historyoffranc00yong.djvu/39

 II.] EARLIER KINGS. i$ evening till Monday morning, as well as in Lent, Advent, and the greater festivals, nor might fortifications be worked at in the meantime, unless they had been begun a fortnight before. The bounds of sanctuary around churches, convents, and burying-grounds were marked, and all injury to ecclesiastics, women, or peasants was forbidden. A sort of police was established by the clergy to enforce these rules, which were proclaimed everywhere but in the county of Paris, where Henry chose to think them an interference with his rights. Of course the truce was often broken ; but it did something towards lessening the atrocities which the law had no power to prevent. At the same time there was growing up among the warriors a belief in a certain standard of honour in warfare, which came to be known as chivalry. This in the course of the next three centuries came to bind the knight by a code of rules of courtesy and honour towards all of his own degree, but unfortunately took no heed to those outside it, so that a man might call himself a true knight and yet be a brutal ruffian towards burghers and peasants. A feudal army was made up of counts, barons, and their sons, who, if without inheritance, swelled the train of some noble, and there was also a certain number of men- at-arms, consisting of the stronger men of the baron's villeinage and the warlike of the burgher class. 8. Minority of William the Conqueror, 1035. — In 1035 the Norman duke Robert set off on a pilgrimage, after causing his barons to do homage to his son William, the child of a woman of low station, who could have been set aside for a bride of higher rank. Dying at Nicasa, Robert left the boy at eight years old beset with danger from every kinsman who could lay claim to his duchy, till his whole character was welded into a wonderful com- pound of daring, shrewdness, and resolution. The old friendship between Normandy and France had died out ; the French hated the Normans, and the French kings began to remember that the Norman settlement had cut them off from the sea. The undefended state of Nor- mandy tempted King Henry to play the part of Lewis IV. by Richard the Fearless, but he could only waste the country of Hiesnies, and take possession of the castle of Tillieres. The loyal Normans were too strong for him, so that he knighted the young duke and received his homage ; and when, in 1047, Neal, Viscontit of the C6- tentin, revolted, Henry joined his forces with those of