In this same year 1080 a synod of the Norman Church was held, the Truce of God again renewed which we heard of years ago.  The forms of outrage on which the Truce was meant to put a cheek, and which the strong hand of William had put down more thoroughly than the Truce would do, had clearly begun again during the confusions caused by the rebellion of Robert.

The two next years, 1081-1082, William was in England.  His home sorrows were now pressing heavily on him.  His eldest son was a rebel and an exile; about this time his second son died in the New Forest; according to one version, his daughter, the betrothed of Edwin, who had never forgotten her English lover, was now promised to the Spanish King Alfonso, and died—­in answer to her own prayers—­before the marriage was celebrated.  And now the partner of William’s life was taken from him four years after his one difference with her.  On November 3, 1083, Matilda died after a long sickness, to her husband’s lasting grief.  She was buried in her own church at Caen, and churches in England received gifts from William on behalf of her soul.

The mourner had soon again to play the warrior.  Nearly the whole of William’s few remaining years were spent in a struggle which in earlier times he would surely have ended in a day.  Maine, city and county, did not call for a third conquest; but a single baron of Maine defied William’s power, and a single castle of Maine held out against him for three years.  Hubert, Viscount of Beaumont and Fresnay, revolted on some slight quarrel.  The siege of his castle of Sainte-Susanne went on from the death of Matilda till the last year but one of William’s reign.  The tale is full of picturesque detail; but William had little personal share in it.  The best captains of Normandy tried their strength in vain against this one donjon on its rock.  William at last made peace with the subject who was too strong for him.  Hubert came to England and received the King’s pardon.  Practically the pardon was the other way.

Thus for the last eleven years of his life William ceased to be the Conqueror.  Engaged only in small enterprises, he was unsuccessful in all.  One last success was indeed in store for him; but that was to be purchased with his own life.  As he turned away in defeat from this castle and that, as he felt the full bitterness of domestic sorrow, he may have thought, as others thought for him, that the curse of Waltheof, the curse of the New Forest, was ever tracking his steps.  If so, his crimes were done in England, and their vengeance came in Normandy.  In England there was no further room for his mission as Conqueror; he had no longer foes to overcome.  He had an act of justice to do, and he did it.  He had his kingdom to guard, and he guarded it.  He had to take the great step which should make his kingdom one for ever; and he had, perhaps without fully knowing what he did, to bid the picture of his reign be painted for all time as no reign before or after has been painted.