"William the Conqueror" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... distance and the 'sections,' the votes had been long in counting, but they had been counted, and not found wanting. One of these bringers of good tidings might have sat or stood for a statue of William the Conqueror preparing to make France pay dearly for the jest of the French King anent his colossal bulk. He was a man in the prime of life, but he cannot possibly have weighed less than 400 pounds. Yet he moved about alertly, and he had driven over in a light wagon at full speed (the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... out of the king quellers of the Revolution. And besides, there were the patents of nobility of German counts and barons, Spanish grandees, and English peers, from the worm-eaten instruments signed by William the Conqueror down to the bran-new parchment of the latest lord who has received his honors from the ...
— Earth's Holocaust (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of feudalism may be said to date from the Norman Conquest, so we may say that in Japan its rise was simultaneous with the ascendency of Yoritomo, late in the twelfth century. As, however, in England, we find the social elements of feudalism far back in the period previous to William the Conqueror, so, too, the germs of feudalism in Japan had been long existent before the period I ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... palm-tree-the symbol, as we shall see, in America, of Aztlan, or Atlantis. We have but to compare the pictures of the ships upon these ancient razor-knives with the accompanying representations of a Roman galley and a ship of William the Conqueror's time, to see that there can be no question that they represented the galleys of that remote age. They are doubtless faithful portraits of the great vessels which Plato described as ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... every where as they sweep along your path. Beyond the Alleghanies, and south of the great lakes, are vast natural parks, many of them enclosed, and dotted with herds of cattle ranging over them, which will show single trees, and clumps of forest that William the Conqueror would have given a whole fiefdom in his Hampshire spoliations to possess; while, stretching away toward the Gulf of Mexico, new varieties of tree are found, equally imposing, grand, and beautiful, throughout the whole vast range, and in almost every locality, susceptible of the finest possible ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... which hung loose and shorter than the vest six inches. The breeches the Spanish cut, and buskins some of cloth, some of leather, but of the same colour as the vest or garment; of never the like fashion since William the Conqueror." It is represented in a portrait of Lord Arlington, by Sir P. Lely, formerly belonging to Lord de Clifford, and engraved in Lodge's "Portraits." Louis XIV. ordered his servants to wear the dress. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... sought and secured the acquaintance of Rudyard Kipling, whose alert mind was at once keenly interested in what Bok was trying to do. He was willing to co-operate, with the result that Bok secured the author's new story, William the Conqueror. When Bok read the manuscript, he was delighted; he had for some time been reading Kipling's work with enthusiasm, and he saw at once that here was one ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... The Mahometan doctors still dispute, whether Mecca was reduced by force or consent, (Abulfeda, p. 107, et Gagnier ad locum;) and this verbal controversy is of as much moment as our own about William the Conqueror.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... Audley," she said. "I'm the most careless creature in the world; I never did, and never could remember dates, though I do all in my power to impress upon my girls how important it is for their future welfare that they should know when William the Conqueror began to reign, and all that kind of thing. But I haven't the remotest idea when Miss Graham came to me, although I know it was ages ago, for it was the very summer I had my peach-colored silk. But we must consult Tonks—Tonks ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... 1501."—Constables Miscellany, Vol. xx, p. 147. The Saxon alphabet was mostly Roman. Not more than one quarter of the letters have other forms. But the changes, though few, give to a printed page a very different appearance. Under William the Conqueror, this alphabet was superseded by the modern Gothic, Old English, or Black letter; which, in its turn, happily gave place to the present Roman. The Germans still use a type similar to the Old ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... possibly have been spoken, or even understood in Gaul: admitting these premises, I say, it necessarily follows, that the language introduced into England under Alfred, and afterwards more universally established by Edward the Confessor, and William the Conqueror, must have been an emanation of the Romance, very near akin to that of the abovementioned oath, and consequently to that which is now spoken ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.
... had a notebook, a little purple and gold one, like a doubled-over pansy. As Mr. Douglas (laughing at himself because he was not experienced as a guide) rattled off all the information he could remember about Roman foundations—a sack by the Danes; William the Conqueror, and William Rufus, and a British fort older than the time of the Romans—she would scribble bits down hastily. But Mr. Norman took no notes, and when he saw her writing, ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sometimes trace their descent from men who came over with William the Conqueror: a poor eight centuries is a thing to be proud of. There may be older families in France, Italy, and elsewhere. Duke K'ung traces his, through a line of which every scion appears more of less in history, to the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... perfect in its proportions, beautiful and appropriate in its decorations, the frescoes perpetuating some of the most striking scenes in English history, the stained glass windows representing the Kings and Queens of the United Kingdom from the accession of William the Conqueror down to the present reign, the niches filled with effigies of the Barons who wrested Magna Charta from King John, the ceiling glowing with gold and colors presenting different national symbols and devices in most elaborate workmanship and admirable intricacy of design, it is undeniably ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... time of Charlemagne among the French, and from that of William the Conqueror among the English [wrote Adam Smith in 1776], the proportion between the pound, the shilling and the penny, seems to have been uniformly the same as at present, though the value of each has been very different; ...
— The Paper Moneys of Europe - Their Moral and Economic Significance • Francis W. Hirst
... Conquest. At that time it was in possession of landed estates and manorial privileges in the county of Durham, such as were enjoyed only by those, or their descendants, who had come over from Normandy with the Conqueror, or fought under his standard. When William the Conqueror laid waste the whole country north of the Humber, in punishment of the insurrection of the Northumbrians, he apportioned the estates among his followers, and advanced Normans and other foreigners to the principal ecclesiastical ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... Martha could only get smoothed up in education, and know about William the Conqueror, and what causes tides, and could talk a little more and answer back a little smarter like, it would be ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... through the reigns of King Edmund and the Danish Kings. He married Ermenhild, the sister of the famous Leofric, Earl of Coventry and Leicester in the time of Edward the Confessor. His son, Ailwin, Earl of Warwick, was contemporary with King Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror. Turchil, son and heir[376] of Ailwin (Harleian MS., 853, says "grandson"), was Earl at the Conquest. His first wife was the Countess of Perche; his second, Leverunia, grand-daughter of Leofric. In the Conqueror's Survey he is called Vice-Comes rather than Comes, but this seems ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... this account is doubtful. Mr. Markham has shown us that the languages of all the interior tribes were related. We know how difficult it is to compel a conquered people by law to learn a foreign language. William the Conqueror made an unsuccessful attempt to compel the Anglo-saxons to learn French—it ended by his followers learning English. Are we to believe that a tribe of Peruvian Indians were successful in spreading their language over ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... enlargement and beautification was begun by the second Earl in 1802, and has been carried on by its present lord until it is now the most magnificent of all the modern mansions of the nobility. G.F. Watts's heroic equestrian statue of Hugh Lupus, the founder of the family and a nephew of William the Conqueror, challenges admiration as one enters the grounds. There is no great picture gallery in the Hall, for that is at Grosvenor House in London, but the family portraits are here. Let into panels of the ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... Commons to listen to the proceedings from the gallery and here is an abstract from his diary at that period: "Went to Houses of Parliament. Very much disappointed with them. . . . I will not say I eyed the assembly in the spirit in which William the Conqueror eyed England on his visit to Edward the Confessor—as the region of his future domain. O Vanity!" A country youth without money, without prospects, sitting in the exclusive Parliament House of the most exclusive ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... Englishman subtle and fond of lawsuits, I say, "There is a Norman, who came in with William the Conqueror." When I see a man good-natured and polite, "That is one who came with the Plantagenets;" a brutal character, "That is a Dane:"—for your Nation, Monsieur, as well as your Language, is a medley ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... a stronghold of the Saxons in very early times, for it was found in the possession of Edwin of Mercia at the Norman Conquest, and was granted by William the Conqueror to his nephew, Hugh Lupus. In later times Prince Llewelyn was Lord of Hawarden, of which he was dispossessed by his brother, David. It was only after Wales was conquered that Hawarden became an English stronghold, held ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... but I told you that you should come and go and look and know, didn't I? The knight isn't a fairy. He's Sir Richard Dalyngridge, a very old friend of mine. He came over with William the Conqueror, and he wants ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... from its Nomic melody, he should say bore a trite and common resemblance to that now spoken in Wales, Ireland, and the Highlands of Scotland; and which, notwithstanding the authorities to the contrary, he firmly believed was introduced first into his country by William the Conqueror. Indeed, he insisted that he had twice debated this point with the learned critic, Easley, (whom he styled the New York executioner of literature,) and beat him with ease; for though Easley was a man ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... Long before William the Conqueror, there dwelt a man in the Isle of Ely, named Thomas Hickathrift, a poor laboring man, but so strong that he was able to do in one day the ordinary work of two. He had an only son, whom he christened Thomas, after his own name. The old man put his son to ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... wood, carved into fantastic forms, offer a rich harvest to the artist, and those of our own country have amply profited by the innumerable picturesque objects which Rouen presents. The cathedral, built by William the Conqueror, is one of the most interesting monuments of France; the Church of St.-Ouen is at least as beautiful, and there are several others which well repay the visiter for the time he may expend in visiting them. The statue of the ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... has been there since the days of Queen Elizabeth. It had not been opened for years, but a smaller one had been cut in it through which visitors passed. For over 200 years no one had lived in the castle. It was built by the Normans and given by William the Conqueror to one of his Norman Barons. Finally by marriage it became the property of Sir George Vernon, who had two daughters, famous for their beauty. Margaret Vernon married a Stanley, and on the night of ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... was formerly a priory of four black monks, subordinate to the Abbey of St. Alban, in Hertfordshire, to which it was annexed by its founder, Robert de Belvideir, or De Todenci, in the time of William the Conqueror. It was dedicated to St. Mary; and was valued, at the Dissolution, at L104 19s. 10d. per annum. Dr. Stukely, in the year 1726, saw the coffin and bones of the founder, who died in 1088, dug up in the Priory chapel, then a stable and on a stone was inscribed in large letters, with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... by King Harold, and was the last Saxon abbot. He was a native of the Isle of Ely, having been born at Witchford. He naturally took the part of Edgar Atheling—whom he regarded as the rightful heir after Harold was killed—against William the Conqueror. He gave every support to the many who gathered together in the isle as to a fastness, and encouraged the plans of Hereward. When the cause of the English seemed hopeless, the monks endeavoured to persuade the soldiers to surrender; not being successful, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... at Dives, in 1066 A.D., had been anything like what it was at Havre the other day, when I wanted to cross over to Dives, WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR would never have sailed from that place for the invasion of England. Dull as he might have found Dives, yet I am sure the Conquering Hero would have preferred returning to Paris, to risking the discomfort of the crossing. By the way, the appropriate station in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... what it was distinctly; a vast work for an age of ignorance and time of confusion, which has been neglected in more civilized nations and settled times. It was called the "Roll of Winton," and served as a model of a work of the same kind made by William the Conqueror.) The shire he divided into hundreds; the hundreds into tithings; every freeman was obliged to be entered into some tithing, the members of which were mutually bound for each other for the preservation of the peace, and the avoiding theft and rapine. For securing the liberty ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... celebrated the Mass of St. Gregory as that of the Apostle of England. Down to the disruption of the sixteenth century, the double line of its bishops in Canterbury and York, with their suffragans, regarded him as their founder, as much as the royal line deemed itself to descend from William the Conqueror. If Canterbury was Primate of all England and York Primate of England, it was by the appointment of Gregory. And the very civil constitution of England, like the original constitutions of the western kingdoms in general, is the work in no small part of that Church ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... birthplace of Giraldus Cambrensis. (This is again a geographical indication which should be borne in mind.) Cadivor himself appears to have been on friendly terms with the Normans; he is said to have entertained William the Conqueror on his visit to St David's in 1080, while every reference we have to Bledri shows him in close ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... are many persons who bear that name, it is not conferred upon them to indicate any qualities, or any thing which belongs to them in common; and can not be said to be affirmed of them in any sense at all, consequently not in the same sense. "The king who succeeded William the Conqueror," is also an individual name. For, that there can not be more than one person of whom it can be truly affirmed, is implied in the meaning of the words. Even "the king," when the occasion or the context defines the individual of whom it is to be understood, may ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... Faire Em, The Millers Daughter of Manchester: With the loue of William the Conqueror. As it was sundty [sic] times publiquely acted in the Honourable Citie of London, by the right Honourable the Lord Strange his Seruants. London, Printed for Iohn Wright, and are to be sold at his shop at the signe of the Bible in ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... figure of history, under whose aegis he might shelter the advocacy of his views. Looking about for a theme, several crossed his mind. He thought of Ireland, but that was too burning a subject; of William the Conqueror, of Simon de Montfort, the Norsemen, the Cid; but these may have seemed to him too remote. Why, ask patriotic Scotsmen, did he not take up his and their favourite Knox? But Knox's life had been fairly handled by M'Crie, and Carlyle would have found it hard to adjust his treatment of that essentially ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... to the founding of the church and its re-edification in Henry viii.'s time. Among the various portraits is that of Henry viii. himself. Here are also in separate circular compartments, the quarter portraits of our kings, from William the Conqueror to Hen. viii. (and since his day, in continuation to George i.) On the east side is the entire collection of the ancient bishops of the see (quarter lengths, and in circular compartments). A short time back the faces of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... the honourable family of the Beauchamps, with Robert Curtoys sonne of William the Conqueror, made a voyage to Ierusalem 1096. Hol. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... Lord Stafford on the evening of the fourth day, "yonder lies Stafford, and we are near the end of our travel. Behold, on yon mount, called 'Castle Hill,' the place where stood a noble castle built by William the Conqueror. He conferred it upon Robert de Torri who took the name de Stafford from whom, as thou dost well ken, our family hath ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... more. But if you go back to old county families, Lady Chiltern, the Spooners have been here pretty nearly as long as the Pallisers,—if not longer. The Desponders, from whom we come, came over with William the Conqueror." ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... beside him, and they gravely watched the gulls circling over the water. Yves is very big and rough looking, and his black beard is impressive. He gives one rather the idea of what the men must have been, who manned the ships of William the Conqueror, than the notion of a conventional Frenchman. Yet there is in him something very soft and tender, which appears when he looks at that child, with deep dark eyes that always seem to behold things beyond ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... very ancient, as appears by the foundations, and an old brick tower over a deep well, the upper part of which has been used as a dairy. The castle is said to have been built by Earl Waltheof, who, in 1069 married Judith, niece to William the Conqueror, who gave him the earldom of Northampton and Huntingdon for her portion. Matilda or Maud, their only child, after the death of Simon St. Liz, her first husband, married David, first of the name, king of Scotland; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... Eight in the evening, when, by the law of William the Conqueror, all people were, on ringing of a bell, to extinguish fire and candle, and go to rest; hence the word curfew, from ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the invasion of England by William the Conqueror, the Normans wore their hair very short. Harold, in his progress towards Hastings, sent forward spies to view the strength and number of the enemy. They reported, amongst other things, on their return, that "the host did almost seem to be priests, because they had all their face and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... years ago, his defeat and flight to the Scots, his return and triumph over the Romans, and being crowned king of all Britain; the assassination of Oswald king of the Northumbrians; the flaying alive of Osbert; the crowning of Richard III; the siege by William the Conqueror; the siege by Cromwell, and the pomp and splendour with which the different monarchs had been received in York, all appeared to be vividly before me. While we were thus calling to our aid our knowledge of history, ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... appeal to wrongs inflicted a century ago; in England the theorems of "absolute political ethics" are in danger of being employed to make this generation of land-owners responsible for the misdeeds of William the Conqueror and his followers. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... positively known to have been recorded in his lifetime relates that Burbage, when playing Richard III, agreed with a lady in the audience to visit her after the performance; Shakespeare, overhearing the conversation, anticipated the actor's visit, and met Burbage on his arrival with the quip that 'William the Conqueror was before ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Father-in-law, William the Conqueror, king of Great Britain, aid-de-camp, Henry the Eighth, attorney-at-law, somebody else,[Footnote: In such expressions as everybody else's business, the possessive sign is removed from the noun and attached to the adjective. (See Lesson lai.) The possessive sign should generally be placed immediately ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... Aosta, in Italy, 1033, and he died in 1109, at the age of 76. He was therefore the contemporary of Hildebrand, of Lanfranc, of Berenger, of Roscelin, of Henry IV. of Germany, of William the Conqueror, of the Countess Matilda, and of Urban II. He saw the first Crusade, the great quarrel about investitures and the establishment of the Normans in England. Aosta was on the confines of Lombardy and Burgundy, in a mountainous district, amid rich cornfields and fruitful vines ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... the fun is beginning!' exclaimed Pelham, excitedly, 'We must get inside this false bottom; it is full of old letters. I can see that much! Perhaps we shall find a love-letter of William the Conqueror ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... a light boyish tenor voice. He is the son of an English nobleman who has a Welsh estate, upon which he passes a portion of his time, and can trace his lineage back to one of the Norman adventurers who came over with William the Conqueror. For an example of an older aristocracy than this, however, observe the ancient couple sitting near us in the shadow of a cliff-rock, the wife with a high-bridged nose and puffs of gray hair on her temples, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... "It would break 'is 'eart. Them pots was being used when William the Conqueror was ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... X., so that he was never regarded as the rightful possessor of the dignities he enjoyed, the Normans refusing to recognise him except as bishop of Winchester. His wealth attracted the attention of William the Conqueror, and by a Council held at Winchester after Easter 1070, Stigand was deposed. Some reports state that he was cast into prison, where he died of voluntary starvation; and that on his body was found ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... hundredfold poor scepticisms, trivialisms, and constitutional cobwebberies of Dryasdust, you catch any glimpse of a William the Conqueror, a Tancred of Hauteville or suchlike,—do you not discern veritably some rude outline of a true God-made King; whom not the Champion of England cased in tin, but all Nature and the Universe were calling to the throne? It is absolutely necessary that he get ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... to Plabbin's "Guide to Hampshire," lay in the heart of the forest. Built in the days of William the Conqueror, 1066, and William Rufus, 1087, by Sir Francis Budde, it had been inhabited by none but Buddes of each successive generation. Madcap Moll's great-grandfather, Lord Edmund Budde,[4] added a tower here and there when he felt inclined, while her uncle Robert Budde—known from Bournemouth ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... Why, there isn't a field in England that hasn't its own name, sir. I noticed that before I went to sea." He then told Mr. Fountain the names of his three meadows, and curious names they were. Two of them were a good deal older than William the Conqueror. David wrote them on a slip of paper. He then produced a chart. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... of a family of that name, who came to England with William the Conqueror—and settled under grants from the crown in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire—three separate branches of the family having received the honor of knighthood for ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Boy with a shiver. "I hate architecture, and I don't want to know about it, but I can't help picking it up. It is horrid to remember that that arch yonder was built in the time of William the Conqueror. I never look at it without feeling the oppression of the ages come upon me. And when I get into this bigoted Close and think of the heathenish way the people live in it, shutting themselves in from the rest of the citizens with unchristian ideas of their own superiority, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... chiefly of dissertations on the manners, institutions, &c., of Great Britain, as compared with those of Hindustan. He likewise gives an elaborate retrospect of English history, from the Britons downwards; excepting, however, the four centuries from the death of William the Conqueror to the accession of Henry VIII.—an interval which he perhaps considers to have been sufficiently filled up by his disquisitions on the struggles for power between the crown and the barons, and the consequent origin and final constitution of parliament, related in a previous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... in the Normans.' What he contends, and I think rightly, is that William was a conqueror until he had conquered. Then England passed out of his hands. He had wished it to be an autocracy; instead, it developed into a monarchy—'William the Conqueror became William the Conquered.' This is a line that the ordinary historians do not appear to take, though I fancy they imply it when they say that feudalism didn't exist in the time ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... red cross of Saint George (patron saint of England) extending to the edges of the flag and a yellow equal-armed cross of William the Conqueror superimposed on ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the other hand, affirm that the castle at Oxford was built by Robert D'Oiley, who came into England with William the Conqueror; and the Chronicles of Osney Abbey, preserved in the Cottonian library, even ascertain the precise date of this great baron's undertaking, viz. A.D. 1071. No question, therefore, can remain, but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... resorted to for keeping up the enthusiasm which the presence of the First Consul naturally inspired. A Roman battle-axe was said to be found when they removed the earth to pitch Bonaparte's tent or barrack; and medals of William the Conqueror were produced, as having been dug up upon the same honoured spot. These were pleasant bodings, yet perhaps did not altogether, in the minds of the soldiers, counterbalance the sense of insecurity impressed on them by the prospect of being packed together in these miserable chaloupes, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... minds of the people in its original form, and thus to remain. No better evidence could be found for the relationship of Sussex to this great event. All the chapters in Mr. Freeman's great history do not impress the imagination so strongly as this one fact, that William the Conqueror has always been Duke William to the Sussex folk. He was Duke William to the fen folk, too. They fought for their belief and were compelled to accept his kingship. The Sussex folk fought, too, and they handed down their conception of the great ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... the tomb he had there set up for its temporary reception, until his church was sufficiently advanced to permit of its removal thither. It was visited by large numbers of pilgrims, and many important personages were among them. Of these may be mentioned William the Conqueror, Henry III. (1255), Edward II. (1322), and Henry VI. (1448). The shrine was destroyed soon after the surrender of the monastery to the Crown, in 1540, when the body was buried beneath the place where its former receptacle had stood. There have since this time been traditions that the exact ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... new country in the twentieth century we are apt to forget that her seafaring annals may possibly go back to the Vikings of the tenth century, a thousand years ago. Long before William the Conqueror crossed over from France to England the Vikings had been scouring the seas, north, south, east, and west. They reached Constantinople; they colonized Iceland; they discovered Greenland; and there are grounds for ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... no doubt that at least one Chuzzlewit came over with William the Conqueror. It does not appear that this illustrious ancestor 'came over' that monarch, to employ the vulgar phrase, at any subsequent period; inasmuch as the Family do not seem to have been ever greatly distinguished by the possession of landed estate. And it is well known that for the bestowal of ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... matrimony to the mind of everyone. If you do not know what I think about marriage, buy The Kreutzer Sonata. It is not customary to have more than one wife. Consequently, anything which has one in it—as, for instance, the date of WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR—reminds me of marriage, and is, therefore, degrading. Why, the very word "match" suggests marriage: and yet we allow young children to sell whole boxes of them in the streets. Horrible! Do you think our lower orders would become discontented, and strike, if they had not ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... be little sympathy; and centuries of calamities and wrongs had generated a strong antipathy. The relation in which the minority stood to the majority resembled the relation in which the followers of William the Conqueror stood to the Saxon churls, or the relation in which the followers of Cortes stood to the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have been recorded in his lifetime relates that Burbage, when playing Richard III., agreed with a lady in the audience to visit her after the performance; Shakespeare, overhearing the conversation, anticipated the actor's visit and met Burbage on his arrival with the quip that "William the Conqueror was before ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... offer many examples of these varying trees and the lessons they convey. Such a piece of old natural forest almost surrounds my present home, and every time I pass through it I bless the memory of William the Conqueror. Randolph Caldecott, that prince of illustrators of rural life, evidently noticed the characteristic attitudes of trees; look at the sympathetic dejection displayed by the two old pollard willows in his sketch of the maiden all forlorn, in The House that Jack Built. The maiden has her ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... Monmouth wrote, Norman influence in Wales was at its height. In the old days we used to begin English history with William the Conqueror; since Freeman wrote his five thick volumes and proved—not that the Norman Conquest was unimportant—but that it did not involve a breach of continuity, a new start in national life, the pendulum has swung too much the other way, and the tendency of late years ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... The Normans had gotten the worst, if it had not been for a stratagem they invented, which got them the day. In this engagement Harold was killed, and William Duke of Normandy became King of England, under the name of William the Conqueror. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... the Bayeau tapestry, see Bruce, Bayeux Tapestry Elucidated, plate vii and p. 86; also Guillemin, World of Comets, p. 24. There is a large photographic copy, in the South Kensington Museum at London, of the original, wrought, as is generally believed, by the wife of William the Conqueror and her ladies, and is still preserved in the town museum ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... days of William the Conqueror were the shores of Great Britain menaced by such a peril? "There is no difficulty," said Moltke, "in getting an army into England; the trouble would be to get it out again." And, no doubt, Englishmen, fighting ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... or in olden times. "Ancient history'' is distinguished from medieval and modern, generally as meaning before the fall of the western Roman empire. In English legal history, "ancient'' tenure or demesne refers to what was crown property in the time of Edward the Confessor or William the Conqueror. "The Ancient of days'' is a Biblical phrase for God. In the London Inns of Court the senior barristers used to be called "ancients.'' From the 16th to the 18th century the word was also used, by confusion with "ensign,'' i.e; flag or standard-bearer, for that military title, as in the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... no special reason for departing from the custom. Some authorities state that the Bayeux tapestry was made by the Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I., while others consider it the achievement of Queen Matilda, the wife of William the Conqueror. She is recorded to have sat quietly awaiting her lord's coming while she embroidered this quaint souvenir of his prowess in conquest. A veritable mediaeval Penelope, it is claimed that she directed her ladies in this work, which ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... of the period from William the Conqueror to John, says: "The amercement in criminal and common pleas, which were wont to be imposed during this first period and afterwards, were of so many several sorts, that it is not easy to place them under distinct heads. Let them, for methods' sake, be reduced ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... It was the object of those favoring unity, but with more decision than in 1848, to place the group of German states under Prussia's imperial direction. The accession of a new king, William I, who was already in advance called William the Conqueror, was likely to bring this project to a successful issue. The future German emperor's predecessor, Frederick William IV, with the same ambition as his brother, had too many prejudices and too much confusion in his ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... favourite pastime among the kings and nobles, especially about the time of the Norman Conquest. In those days the Game laws were certainly harsh enough—much more so than those of our own time—since William the Conqueror issued an edict punishing with the loss of his eyes any one who should be convicted of killing ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... "strong hand," you say? Hum! History tells us that William the Conqueror wooed his lady with a club, or a battle-axe, or something of the sort, and she consequently liked him the better for it; which was all very natural, and proper of course, in her case, seeing that hers was the ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... intersecting points of the arches, which form the roof of the gateway, were carved faces of stone, said to represent King Harold and William the Conqueror. The exterior wall, of which this tower is the gateway, extends far along the village street, and encloses a very large space, within which stands the mansion, quite secluded from unauthorized visitors, or ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... conquered in the twelfth century. Across the English Channel, on the Continent, the English monarchy retained after 1453, the date of the conclusion of the Hundred Years' War, only the town of Calais out of the many rich French provinces which ever since the time of William the Conqueror (1066- 1087) had been a bone of contention ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... made his appearance in Cheapside; having made his entry into London on a waggon, which landed him and some bales of cloth, all his fortune, in Bishopsgate Street; though if it could be proved that the Normans wore pigtails under William the Conqueror, and Mr. Washington fought against the English under King Richard in Palestine, I am sure some of the present Newcomes would pay the Heralds' Office handsomely, living, as they do, amongst the noblest of the land, and giving entertainments to none but the very ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for the fine old beasts I shot,' he said, looking back, a grandfather and a quiet English gentleman, to the old wild hunting days; and if, as the chroniclers tell us, William the Conqueror 'loved the high deer as if he were their father,' so his nineteenth-century namesake had a warm corner in his heart for the lion and the buffalo, and the great, clumsy, fierce rhinoceros, against which he matched ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... Son's business; J. J. Little & Co.'s printing-house; William the Conqueror's reign; Houghton, Mifflin, and ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... Here is amusement and instruction combined! Here is nothing to offend the moral and artistic taste! You may see here Abraham offering up Aaron, and Henry IV. in prison; Cain and Abel in the Garden of Eden, and William the Conqueror ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... like many others in the north of England, had suffered much in the time of the wars, and had had an eventful history, for after being burnt by the Danes it was restored by Alfred the Great in the year 860, only to be destroyed once more by William the Conqueror in his ruthless march through the northern counties. A survival of Alfred's wise government still existed in the "Wake-man," whose duty it was to blow a horn at nine o'clock each night as a warning against thieves. If a robbery occurred during the night, the inhabitants were taxed with the amount ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... detailed picture of a fen-isle is that in the second part of the Book of Ely; wherein a single knight of all the French army forces his way into the isle of St. Etheldreda, and, hospitably entertained there by Hereward and his English, is sent back safe to William the Conqueror, to tell him of the ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... have his idols both of wood and stone—wood for dwelling, and stone for worship; at PONT AUDEMER, the simple domestic architecture of the middle ages, and at LISIEUX, the more ornate and luxurious; passing on to CAEN, he will have (in ecclesiastical architecture) the memorial churches of William the Conqueror, and, in the neighbouring city of BAYEUX (in one building), examples of the 'early,' as well as the more elaborate, gothic of ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... bill, let us get the bill, and then!" But enough remains to show the general tone. Addressing the Irish National Literary Society, of Loughrea, Miss Gonne said that she must "contradict Lord Wolseley in his statement that England was never insulted by invasion since the days of William the Conqueror. It would be deeply interesting to the men and women of Connaught to hear once again how a gallant body of French troops, fighting in the name of Liberty and Ireland, had conquered nearly the whole of that province at a time when England had in ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... met him coming from school, and questioned him about his grammar and logic, and always gave him three or four pieces of money, and then sent him to the royal larder to refresh himself—two forms of kindness that a school-boy never forgets. Ingulphus afterward became the secretary of William the Conqueror. In his day there was no glazing to this cloister, and the rain, wind, and snow must have swept pitilessly over the novices turning and spelling out their manuscripts. They had, indeed, a carpet of hay or rushes, and mats were laid on the stone benches, but it must have been a ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Sir Alan Swinton with his spear pierced some monarch of the race; and "Alan's Cairn," where a heap of stones was raised as a monument of his hardihood. In the southern part of our island only the nobility and gentry were allowed to hunt this animal; and in the reign of William the Conqueror any one convicted of killing a wild boar in any of the royal demesnes was punished with ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... vengeance on their im-placable enemy by a general massacre on the feast of St. Brice. In the civil commotions under the Saxon prince, Oxford had again its full share of the evils of war. After the death of Harold, William the Conqueror was bravely opposed by the citizens in his attempt to enter Oxford, which effecting by force, he was so much exas- perated at their attachment to Harold, that he bestowed the government of the town ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... trivial causes—among the rest gambling. Henry, the son of William the Conqueror, was playing at chess with Louis, the son of Philip, King of France. The latter, perceiving that he was losing the game got into a passion, and calling Henry the son of a bastard, flung the chess-board into his face. Henry took the chess-board and struck Louis ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... those palliations which charity might urge in extenuation of the king, on the ground of the prejudices of his station, took advantage of the weakness of the country, after it had been torn by civil war, usurped supreme power, and became the most arbitrary monarch England had seen since William the Conqueror. No one doubts his genius, and it seems strange that any one should doubt his ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... this nation in any respect whatsoever. The English legislature had wisely remarked the inconveniences that had formerly resulted from dominions on the continent of Europe; from the Norman territory which William the conqueror brought with him, and held in conjunction with the English throne; and from Anjou, and it's appendages, which fell to Henry the second by hereditary descent. They had seen the nation engaged for near four hundred years together in ruinous wars ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... French critic for "historic origins." Another eminent French critic, M. Vitet,[73] comments upon that famous document of the early poetry of his nation, the Chanson de Roland.[74] It is indeed a most interesting document. The joculator or jongleur Taillefer, who was with William the Conqueror's army at Hastings, marched before the Norman troops, so said the tradition, singing "of Charlemagne and of Roland and of Oliver, and of the vassals who died at Roncevaux"; and it is suggested that in the Chanson de Roland ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... writer were as conspicuous as his abilities. Two years before the Memorial was burnt, his Historia Anglo-Scotica, purporting to give an impartial history of the events that occurred between England and Scotland from William the Conqueror to Queen Elizabeth, was burnt at Edinburgh (June 30th, 1703). It was dedicated to Sir Edward Seymour, one of the Queen's Commissioners for the Union, and a High Churchman; and as it also expressed the hope that the ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... see Mr. Jasper Losely, and asked him down to dinner. After dinner, over 'a bottle of Lafitte, in an exceedingly plain but exceedingly weighty silver jug, which made Jasper's mouth water (I mean the jug), Mr. Fossett, commencing with that somewhat coarse though royal saying of William the Conqueror, with which he had before edified his daughter, assured Jasper that he gave his full consent to the young gentleman's nuptials with Arabella, provided Jasper or his relations would maintain her in a plain respectable way, and wait for her ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... DEATH OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.—It was while William the Conqueror, angry with the king of the French, was burning Mantes, in the border-land between Normandy and France, that, by the stumbling of his horse in the ashes, he was thrown forward upon the iron pommel of his saddle, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher |
