Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/252

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character which was yet newer to him, that of a sharer in his father's conquest, a great land-owner on the other side of the sea. But his luck, which was to shine forth so brightly in after times, forsook him for the present. If Henry ever came into actual possession of his English estates, his tenure of them was short. At some time which is not distinctly marked, the lands which had been Matilda's were again seized by William. They were granted to one of the rising men of the time, one of the few who had been faithful to the King in the late times of trouble, to Robert Fitz-hamon, perhaps already the terror of the southern Cymry. Thus the old possessions of Brihtric passed into the hands of the lord of the castle of Cardiff, the founder of the minster of Tewkesbury. In the next generation the policy of Henry was to win them back, if not for himself, yet for his son.

If the Count of Coutances failed of his objects in England, a worse fate awaited him for a season on his return to Normandy. He had enemies at the court of Duke Robert; first of all, it would seem, his uncle Odo, lately Earl of Kent and still Bishop of Bayeux. He was now driven from his earldom to his bishopric, like a dragon, we are told, with fiery wings cast down to the earth. The tyrant of Bayeux, the worst of prelates—such are the names under which Odo now appears in the pages of our chief guide —had again become Robert's chief counsellor. His counsel seems to have taken the