[501] Vet. An. 294. “Ad regem Anglorum se contulit, ejusque liberalitate levamen maximum suæ persecutionis accepit.”
[502] The story is told in Vet. An. 294. Howel stayed four months in England; ib. 295.
[503] Ib. 297.
[504] A great number of grants and privileges are reckoned up in Vet. An. 298. Among them several exemptions were granted to the episcopal lordship of Coulaines, a place of which we shall hear again.
[505] According to Orderic (684 A) the people of Maine found him “divitiis et sensu et virtute inopem.” The Biographer (299) calls him “propter inconstantiam suam bonis omnibus infestus,” and says that he went away, “omnibus quæ habere poterat in pecuniam redactis.”
[506] Ord. Vit. 684 A.
[507] Orderic (u. s.) graphically sets forth the fears of one who was “inscius inter gnaros et timidus inter animosos milites consul constitutus.” He and his countrymen are “Allobroges,” which seems odd; the men of Maine are “Cisalpini.”
[508] Ord. Vit. 684 A. See vol. i. p. 277. According to Helias or Orderic, the reconciled princes could muster a hundred thousand men. It was, so Helias is made to think, chiefly for the conquest of Maine that Rufus had crossed the sea.
[509] Ord. Vit. u. s.
[510] Ib. “Me quoque libertatis amor nihilominus stimulat, et hereditatis avitæ rectitudo dimicandi pro illa fiduciam in Deo mihi suppeditat.”