Page:The Normans in European History.djvu/77

 Rh In the last year of his life he made me his nephew a knight at the age of seventeen in the city of Angers, at the feast of Pentecost, in the year of the Incarnation 1060, and granted me Saintonge and the city of Saintes because of a quarrel he had with Peter of Didonne. In this same year King Henry died on the nativity of St. John, and my uncle Geoffrey on the third day after Martinmas came to a good end. For in the night which preceded his death, laying aside all care of knighthood and secular things, he became a monk in the monastery of St. Nicholas, which his father and he had built with much devotion and endowed with their goods.

The great source of conflict between William and Geoffrey was the intervening county of Maine, whence the Angevins had gained possession of the Norman fortresses of Domfront and Alençon, and it was not till after Geoffrey's death, in 1063, that the capture of its chief city, LeMans, completed that union of Normandy and Maine which was to last through the greater part of Norman history. The conquest of Maine was the first fruit of William's work as conqueror.

With William's suzerain, the king of France, relations were more complicated. Legally there could be no question that the duke of Normandy was the feudal vassal of the French king and as such bound to the obligations of loyalty and service which flowed from his oath of homage and fealty. Actually, in the society of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, such bonds were freely and frequently broken, yet they were not thrown off. Here, as in many other phases of mediæval life,