Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/259

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said—though we may guess that the etymology comes rather from the reporter than from the speaker—to have derived the name of their land and city from their currish madness. But there was as yet no open resistance. Of the three chief men in Church and State, Bishop Howel was an active supporter of the Norman connexion, while Geoffrey of Mayenne and Helias of La Flèche were at least not ready openly to throw it off. Geoffrey, who had fought against the Conqueror twenty-five years before, who had betrayed the young commonwealth of Le Mans fifteen years before, must have been now advanced in life; but we shall still hear of him for some years to come. Helias, the chief hero of later wars, was of a younger generation, and now appears for the first time. He was, it will be remembered, the son of John of La Flèche and of Paula the youngest sister of the last Count Herbert. He was therefore, before any other man in the land, the representative of Cenomannian independence, as distinguished both from Norman rule and from Angevin superiority. But his father had, in the Conqueror's second Cenomannian war, remained faithful to the Norman, alike against commonwealth, Lombard, and Angevin. His son for the present followed the same course. Bishop Howel was in any case a zealous Norman partisan; according to one story he was a special nominee of the Conqueror, appointed for the express purpose of helping to keep the people of Maine in order. According to the local historian, he had been appointed Dean of Saint Julian's by his predecessor Arnold, and was, onset up by its men.]