Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/381

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kingdom by strength of arms, his youngest brother again became a ruler of men by a nobler title. Whatever was the date or the length of Henry's day of distress, it came to an end about the time of the restoration of Carlisle. No call could be more honourable than that which again set him in a place of power. Among the many victims of Robert of Bellême were the people of Domfront, the old conquest of William the Great. The castle had passed into the hands of the tyrant, and grievous was the oppression which Domfront and the coasts thereof suffered at his hands. The inhabitants, under the lead of a chief man of the place, Harecher or Archard by name, rose in revolt, and chose the banished Count of the Côtentin as their lord and defender against the common enemy of mankind. In company with this local patriot, Henry came to Domfront; he accepted the offered lordship, and entered into the closest relations with those who had chosen him. He bound himself to respect all their local customs, and never to give them over to any other master. Henry kept his word; amidst all changes, he clave to Domfront for the rest of his days as a specially cherished possession.

It was indeed, both in its position and in its associations, a noble starting-point for one who had to carve out a dominion for himself by his wits or by his sword. It was a place of happy omen for a son of William the Conqueror, as the place where his father first began to deserve that title, his first possession beyond the elder bounds of his own duchy. Henry was now lord of the rocky peninsula, which, impregnable as it had once been deemed, had yielded to the terror of his father's name, and where the donjon of his father's rearing opened its doors to receive his greatest son as a prince and a deliverer. On one side, the Varenne flowed