Page:The Normans in European History.djvu/67

Rh reign, we should probably find that much that was distinctive of the Normandy of his son's day can be traced back to his time. More than once in history has a great father been eclipsed by a greater son. The fact should be added, which William's contemporaries never allowed him to forget, that he was an illegitimate son. His mother Arlette was the daughter of a tanner of Falaise, and while it is not clear that Duke Robert was ever married to any one else, his union with Arlette had no higher sanction than the Danish custom of his forefathers. Their son was generally known in his day as William the Bastard, and only the great achievements of his reign succeeded in replacing this, first by William the Great and later by William the Conqueror.

Were it not for the resulting confusion with other great Williams,—one of whom has recently been raised by admiring subjects to the rank of William the Greatest!—there would be a certain advantage in retaining the title of great, in order to remind ourselves that William was not only a conqueror but a great ruler. The greatest secular figure in the Europe of his day, he is also one of the greatest in the line of English sovereigns, whether we judge him by capacity for rule or by the results of his reign, and none has had a more profound effect on the whole current of English history. The late Edward A. Freeman, who devoted five stout volumes to the history of the Norman Conquest and of William, and who never shrank from superlatives, goes still further:—