[Footnote 45:  Henry was at that time besieging a castle on the frontiers of Normandy. [D.S.]]

[Footnote 46:  Five weeks at the most; a month, saith Brompton. [D.S.]]

[Footnote 47:  At Hostreham, saith Gervase.  This place is not easy to be found; however, it must be on the Sussex or Hampshire coast, because the King went directly from the place of his landing to Winchester.  Carte says he landed December 8th, near Hurst Castle in the New Forest. [D.S.]]

For the further settling of the kingdom, after the long distractions in the preceding reign, he seized on all the castles which remained undestroyed since the last peace between him and King Stephen; whereof some he demolished, and trusted others to the government of persons in whom he could confide.

But that which most contributed to the quiet of the realm, and the general satisfaction of his subjects, was a proclamation published, commanding all foreigners to leave England, enforced with a most effectual clause, whereby a day was fixed, after which it should be capital for any of them to appear; among these was William d’Ypres Earl of Kent, whose possessions the King seized into his own hands.

These foreigners, generally called Flemings by the writers of the English story, were a sort of vagabond soldiers of fortune, who in those ages, under several denominations, infested other parts of Europe as well as England:  they were a mixed people, natives of Arragon, Navarre, Biscay, Brabant, and other parts of Spain and Flanders.  They were ready to be hired to whatever prince thought fit to employ them, but always upon condition to have full liberty of plunder and spoil.  Nor was it an easy matter to get rid of them, when there was no further need of their service.  In England they were always hated by the people, and by this prince in particular, whose continual enemies they had been.

After the expulsion of these foreigners, and the forcing a few refractory lords to a surrender of their castles, King Henry, like a wise prince, began to consider that a time of settled peace was the fittest juncture to recover the rights of the crown, which had been lost by the war.  He therefore resumed, by his royal authority, all crown lands that had been alienated by his predecessor; alleging that they were unalienable in themselves, and besides, that the grants were void, as coming from an usurper.  Whether such proceedings are agreeable with justice, I shall not examine; but certainly a prince cannot better consult his own safety than by disabling those whom he renders discontent, which is effectually done no other way but by depriving them of their possessions.

  1156.