Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/632

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ever. He at least gave the land the advantage of a strong rule; he kept the luxury of oppression to himself. The lesser scourges of mankind were thoroughly put down. We hear no more of that private warfare which had torn the land in pieces in the days of Robert. William recalled many of the lavish grants of Robert; what his father had held, he would hold. Even in ecclesiastical matters Rufus is not painted in such dark colours in Normandy as he is in England. He is not charged with keeping ecclesiastical benefices vacant in order that he might enjoy their revenues. He found two great abbeys vacant, those of Jumièges and Saint Peter-on-Dives; and he at once supplied them with abbots. They were abbots of his own choosing, but it is not said that they bought their places. Tancard, the new abbot of Jumièges, may lie under some suspicion, as a few years after he was deposed on account of a shameful quarrel with his monks. Saint Peter's was vacant, not by the death, but by the deposition and banishment—unjust we are told—of its abbot Fulk. William appointed a monk of Jumièges called Etard or Walter, who ruled well, we are told, for eleven years, till Fulk came back with letters from the Pope, on which his successor cheerfully made way for him again. No Norman bishopric was vacant at the time of William's entry, nor did any become vacant for more than a year. Then in the midst of events which are to be told hereafter, the news came