[294] “For an account of the earls of Anjou consult the Gesta Consulum Andegavensium, auctore Monacho Benedictino Majoris Monasterii (apud Acherium, tom, iii.)”—Hardy.
[295] To carry a saddle was a punishment of extreme ignominy for certain crimes. See another instance in W. Gemeticensis, Du Chesne, p. 259, and Du Cange, in voce “Sella;” who very justly supposes the disgrace to arise from the offender acknowledging himself a brute, and putting himself entirely in the power of the person he had offended.
[296] “From this passage it is clear that Foulques IV. was still the reigning earl of Anjou, which therefore proves that Malmesbury had finished this work before 1129, in which year Geoffrey le Bel, better known as Geoffrey Plantagenet, son of Foulques, became earl of Anjou.”—Hardy.
[297] Terent. Andr. iv. 1.
[298] “These words seem to imply that the Great Council of the kingdom had never agreed to any settlement of the crown on the duke; and without such sanction no oath made by Harold in favour of William would have been binding.”—Hardy.
[299] Some copies omit from “it is wonderful,” to “But,” and substitute as follows:— ... “that in the course of a very few years, many, if not all, things were seen changed in either order. The former became, in some respects, more dull but more liberal: the latter, more prudent in every thing, but more penurious; yet both, in defending their country, valiant in battle, provident in counsel; prepared to advance their own fortune, and to depress that of their enemies.”
[300] This passage enables us to ascertain nearly the year in which William of Malmesbury’s work was written.
[301] “There are two places called St. Valeri; one in Picardy, situated at the mouth of the Somme, and formerly called Leugonaus; the other is a large sea-port town, situated in Normandy, in the diocese of Rouen, and was formerly called S. Valeri les Plains, but now S. Valeri en Caux. It seems to be the former place to which Malmesbury here refers, ‘In Pontivo apud S. Walericum in ancoris congrue stare fecit,’ writes William of Jumièges.”—Hardy.
[302] This was said in allusion to the feudal investiture, or formal act of taking possession of an estate by the delivery of certain symbols. “This story, however, is rendered a little suspicious by these words being in exact conformity with those of Cæsar, when he stumbled and fell at his landing in Africa, Teneo te, Africa. The silence of William of Poitou, who was the duke’s chaplain, and with him at his landing, makes the truth of it still more doubtful.”—Hardy.
[303] “Whatever may have been the conqueror’s orders, to restrain his army from plundering, it is conclusive, from the Domesday Survey, that they were of no avail. The whole of the country, in the neighbourhood of Hastings, appears to have been laid waste. Sir Henry Ellis, in the last edition of his General Introduction to Domesday, observes, that the destruction occasioned by the conqueror’s army on its first arrival, is apparent more particularly under Hollington, Bexhill, &c. The value of each manor is given as it stood in the reign of the conqueror; afterwards it is said, ‘vastatum fuit;’ and then follows the value at the time of the survey. The situation of those manors evidently shows their devastated state to have been owing to the army marching over it; and this clearly evinces another circumstance relating to the invasion, which is, that William did not land his army at one particular spot, at Bulwerhithe, or Hastings, as is supposed,—but at all the several proper places for landing along the coast, from Bexhill to Winchelsea.”—Hardy.