[196] See N. C. vol. iv. p. 366. While I am revising my text, an account of this tower by Mr. Clark has appeared in the Builder, November 27, 1880.
[197] Chron. Petrib. 1088. “Se cyng mid his here ferde toweard Hrofeceastre, and wendon þæt se bisceop wære þærinne, ac hit wearð þam cynge cuð þæt se bisceop wæs afaren to þam castele on Pefenesea.” Florence helps us to an hexameter in the middle of his prose; “Relatum erat ei ibi esse episcopum Odonem cum omnibus suis et cohortem ultramarinam….
Fama volans dicti pervenit Odonis ad aures,
et cum sociis inito consilio, relinquens Roveceastram, cum paucis adiit castrum fratris sui Roberti Moritanensis comitis quod Pevenessa dicitur.” Are the “cohors ultramarina” those who had come with Eustace and Robert of Bellême?
[198] Flor. Wig. 1088. “Fratrem reperiens, cum ut se teneat hortatur, pollicens se securos ibi posse esse, et dum rex ad expugnandam Roveceastram intenderet, comitem Normanniæ cum magno exercitu venturum, seque suosque liberaturum et magna fautoribus suis dando præmia regnum accepturum.”
[199] Ord. Vit. 666 D. “Statuerat præcursores suos vere redeunte sequi cum multis legionibus militum.”
[200] Cont. Will. Gem. viii. 2. “Quum sui fideles eum exhortarentur ut regnum Angliæ sibi a fratre præreptum velocius armis sibimet restitueret, simplicitate solita et, ut ita dicam, imprudentiæ proxima, respondisse fertur, ‘Per angelos Dei [Gregory’s pun in another form], si essem in Alexandria, exspectarent me Angli, nec ante adventum meum Regem sibi facere auderent. Ipse etiam Willelmus frater meus, quod eum præsumpsisse dicitur, pro capite suo sine mea permissione minime attentaret.’”
[201] Chron. Petrib. 1088. “Betwyx þissum se eorl of Normandige Rodbeard, þes cynges broðer, gaderode swiðe mycel folc, and þohte to gewinnane Englelande mid þæra manna fultume þe wæron innan þisan lande ongean þone cyng, and he sende of his mannan to þisum lande, and wolde cuman himsylf æfter.”
[202] Florence seems here to translate what the Chronicler had said a little before (see above, [p. 67]); “Inito itaque salubri consilio, illum eo usque cum exercitu persequitur, sperans se belli citius finem assequuturum, si ante triumphare posset de principibus malorum prædictorum.”
[203] So I find it called in several papers in the Sussex Archæological Collections. But the local antiquaries seem hardly to have fully grasped the fact that there is a town in Normandy called Laigle, and that the family with which we are concerned took its name from it.