[43] Wace, Roman de Rou, ii, p. 449.
[44] The foregoing details have been drawn from Ordericus (iv, pp. 162-163) and from Wace (Roman de Rou, ii, pp. 449-454), the only writers who report this episode with any fulness. They are not in complete accord, yet on the whole they confirm and support one another to a remarkable degree. Ordericus endeavors to justify the king at every point. Wace, on the other hand, sees the king’s action in its true light, but he adds many details which are probably imaginative. Ordericus makes no mention of the part played by the queen; but Wace makes this a leading feature of the episode. Can this be mere embroidery on the brief statement of William of Malmesbury: “Porro ille, quasi cum fortuna certaret utrum plus illa daret an ipse dispergeret, sola voluntate reginae tacite postulantis comperta, tantam massam argenti benignus in perpetuum ignovit; acclines foeminei fastus preces pro magno exosculatus; erat enim eius in baptismo filiola”? G. R., ii, p. 462.
[45] Ibid., p. 474. The same notion finds expression in Wace, not as a fact, but as a current opinion. Roman de Rou, ii, p. 448.
[46] Even Ordericus Vitalis cannot conceal it.
[47] Roman de Rou, ii, p. 451.
[48] Ordericus, iv, p. 163.
[49] Haskins, pp. 286-287, no. 3.
[50] Cf. supra, p. 127, and n. 30.
[51] Supra, p. 144.
[52] Ordericus, iv, p. 192.