Transcribed from the 1913 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR

BY
EDWARD A. FREEMAN
D.C.L., LL.D.

REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S SQUARE, LONDON

1913

First Edition printed March 1888.
Reprinted July 1888, 1890, 1894, 1898, 1903, 1907, 1913

PREFACE

This small volume, written as the first of a series, is meant to fill quite another place from the Short History of the Norman Conquest, by the same author. That was a narrative of events reaching over a considerable time. This is the portrait of a man in his personal character, a man whose life takes up only a part of the time treated of in the other work. We have now to look on William as one who, though stranger and conqueror, is yet worthily entitled to a place on the list of English statesmen. There is perhaps no man before or after him whose personal character and personal will have had so direct an effect on the course which the laws and constitution of England have taken since his time. Norman as a Conqueror, as a statesman he is English, and, on this side of him at least, he worthily begins the series.