Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/254

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of Montgomery and Shrewsbury, the father of the lord of Bellême, might almost rank as their peer. As a prince rather than as a mere baron, Earl Roger took to arms. The border-fortresses on the frontier ground of Normandy, Maine, and Perche were all put into a state of defence. Alençon, by the border stream, was again, as in the days when its burghers mocked the Tanner's grandson, garrisoned against his son and successor. Bellême itself, the cradle of the house of Talvas—the Rock of Mabel, bearing the name of her who had united the houses of Talvas and Montgomery, and whose blood had been the price of its possession—Saint-Cenery on its peninsula by the Sarthe, another of the spoils of Mabel's bloody policy—all these border strongholds, together with a crowd of others lying more distinctly within the Norman dominions, had again become hostile spots where the Duke of the Normans was defied.

The episcopal gaoler of Bayeux, in his character of chief counsellor of Duke Robert, is described as keeping his feeble nephew somewhat in awe. But his counsels, it is added, were sometimes followed, sometimes despised. Now that all Normandy was in a blaze of civil war, Odo came to Rouen, and had an audience of the Duke, seemingly in an assembly of his nobles. If our guide is to be trusted, Robert, who had no love for hearing sermons even from the lips of his father, was now condemned to hear a sermon of no small length from the perhaps even readier lips of his uncle. Odo