distinct unwillingness to take human life except in fair fighting on the battle-field.  No blood was shed after the victory of Val-es-dunes; one rebel died in bonds; the others underwent no harder punishment than payment of fines, giving of hostages, and destruction of their castles.  These castles were not as yet the vast and elaborate structures which arose in after days.  A single strong square tower, or even a defence of wood on a steep mound surrounded by a ditch, was enough to make its owner dangerous.  The possession of these strongholds made every baron able at once to defy his prince and to make himself a scourge to his neighbours.  Every season of anarchy is marked by the building of castles; every return of order brings with it their overthrow as a necessary condition of peace.

Thus, in his lonely and troubled childhood, William had been schooled for the rule of men.  He had now, in the rule of a smaller dominion, in warfare and conquest on a smaller scale, to be schooled for the conquest and the rule of a greater dominion.  William had the gifts of a born ruler, and he was in no way disposed to abuse them.  We know his rule in Normandy only through the language of panegyric; but the facts speak for themselves.  He made Normandy peaceful and flourishing, more peaceful and flourishing perhaps than any other state of the European mainland.  He is set before us as in everything a wise and beneficent ruler, the protector of the poor and helpless, the patron of commerce and of all that might profit his dominions.  For defensive wars, for wars waged as the faithful man of his overlord, we cannot blame him.  But his main duty lay at home.  He still had revolts to put down, and he put them down.  But to put them down was the first of good works.  He had to keep the peace of the land, to put some cheek on the unruly wills of those turbulent barons on whom only an arm like his could put any cheek.  He had, in the language of his day, to do justice, to visit wrong with sure and speedy punishment, whoever was the wrong-doer.  If a ruler did this first of duties well, much was easily forgiven him in other ways.  But William had as yet little to be forgiven.  Throughout life he steadily practised some unusual virtues.  His strict attention to religion was always marked.  And his religion was not that mere lavish bounty to the Church which was consistent with any amount of cruelty or license.  William’s religion really influenced his life, public and private.  He set an unusual example of a princely household governed according to the rules of morality, and he dealt with ecclesiastical matters in the spirit of a true reformer.  He did not, like so many princes of his age, make ecclesiastical preferments a source of corrupt gain, but promoted good men from all quarters.  His own education is not likely to have received much attention; it is not clear whether he had mastered the rarer art of writing or the more usual one of