and moved with celerity equal, says the author, to a bird flying through the air, or an arrow from a cross-bow; but some allowance,
we presume, must be made for the poetical figure: he then adds, "At times, two of them thus furnished agree to start opposite one to another, at a great distance; they meet, elevate their poles, attack, and strike each other, when one or both of them fall, and not without some bodily hurt; and, even after their fall, are carried a great distance from each other, by the rapidity of the motion, and whatever part of the head comes upon the ice it is sure to be laid bare."
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The meetings of the King and his Wise Men for the consideration of state affairs were continued at the great festivals, and that held at Christmas in 1085 is memorable on account of the resolution then passed to make the Domesday survey, in reference to which Freeman says: "One of the greatest acts of William's reign, and that by which we come to know more about England in his time than from any other source, was done in the assembly held at Gloucester at the Christmas of 1085. Then the King had, as the Chronicle says, 'very deep speech with his Wise Men.' This 'deep speech' in English is in French parlement; and so we see how our assemblies came by their later name. And the end of the deep speech was that commissioners were sent through all England, save only the Bishopric of Durham and the earldom of Northumberland, to make a survey of the land. They were to set down by whom every piece of land, great and small, was held then, by whom it was held in King Edward's day, what it was worth now, and what it had been worth in King Edward's day. All this was written in a book kept at Winchester, which men called Domesday Book. It is a most wonderful record, and tells us more of the state of England just at that moment than we know of it for a long time before or after."
The Domesday Book was completed in 1086, and the following046 year (1087) William the Conqueror died, and his son, William
Rufus, succeeded him.
The Coronation of William the Red
took place at Westminster on September 26, 1087, Archbishop Lanfranc officiating. The King kept his first Christmas sumptuously at Westminster, and, Freeman says, "it seems to have been then that he gave back the earldom of Kent to his uncle, Bishop Odo." The character of the Royal Christmases degenerated during the reign of Rufus, whose licentiousness fouled the festivities. In the latter part of his reign Rufus reared the spacious hall at Westminster, where so many Royal Christmases were afterwards kept, and which Pope calls
"Rufus's roaring hall."
westminster hall.
It is a magnificent relic of the profuse hospitality of former times. Richard the Second heightened its walls and added its noble roof of British oak, which shows the excellence of the wood carving of that period. Although Sir Charles Barry has shortened the Hall of its former proportions to fit it as a vestibule to the New Houses of Parliament, it is still a noble and spacious building, and one cannot walk through it without in imagination recalling some of the Royal Christmases and other stately scenes which have been witnessed there. The last of these festal glories was the coronation of George the047 Fourth, which took place in 1821. This grand old hall at Westminster was the theatre of Rufus's feasting and revelry; but, vast as the edifice then was, it did not equal the ideas of the extravagant monarch. An old chronicler states that one of the King's courtiers, having observed that the building was too large for the purposes of its construction, Rufus replied, "This halle is not begge enough by one half, and is but a bedchamber in comparison of that I mind to make." Yet this hall was for centuries the largest of its kind in Europe, and in it the Christmas feasts were magnificently kept.
After a reign of thirteen years the vicious life of William Rufus met with a tragical close. His dead body was found by peasants in a glade of the New Forest with the arrow either of a hunter or an assassin in his breast. Sir Walter Tyrrel, a Norman knight, who had been hunting with the king just before his death, fled to Normandy immediately afterwards, and was suspected of being a regicide. The body of Rufus was buried in Winchester Cathedral.
Christmas in the Reign of Henry I.
Henry the First's Christmas festival at Windsor, in 1126, was a memorable one. In that year Henry's daughter Matilda became a wid-ow by the death of her husband, Henry V. of Germany, and King Henry determined to appoint her his successor to the throne of England and the Dukedom of Normandy. On Christmas Day, 1126, a general assembly of the nobles and higher ecclesiastics of the kingdom was held at Windsor for the purpose of declaring the Empress Matilda (as she was still called) the legitimate successor of Henry I., and the clergy and Norman barons of both countries swore allegiance to her in the event of the king's death. This appointment of Matilda was made by Henry in consequence of the calamity which occurred just before Christmas, in 1120, when he lost his much-loved son, Prince William--the only male legitimate issue of Henry--through the wreck of La Blanche Nef (the White Ship). On board the vessel were Prince William, his half-brother Richard, and Henry's natural daughter the Countess of Perche, as well as about a hundred and forty young noblemen of the most distinguished families in England and Normandy, all of whom were lost in their passage home, only a few hours after the safe arrival of the king in England. Henry is said to have swooned at the intelligence, and was never afterwards seen to smile. He had returned home anticipating a joyous Christmas festival, a season of glad tidings, but he was closely followed by this sad news of the death of the heir apparent. The incident has called forth one of the most beautiful poems of Mrs. Hemans, from which we quote two verses:--
"The bark that held a prince went down,
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048The sweeping waves rolled on;
And what was England's glorious crown
To him that wept a son?
He lived--for life may long be borne, Ere sorrow break its chain:
Why comes not death to those who mourn? He never smiled again!
He sat where festal bowls went round, He heard the minstrel sing;
He saw the tourney's victor crowned, Amidst the kingly ring;
A murmur of the restless deep as blent with every strain,
A voice of winds that would not sleep,-- He never smiled again!"
In 1127 Henry invited the king of the Scots to Windsor to join in the royal celebration of Christmas, but the festivities were marred by an unseemly quarrel between the two primates. Thurstan, Archbishop of York, encroaching upon the privileges of his brother
of Canterbury (William de Corbeuil), insisted upon placing the crown upon the king's head ere he set out for church. This the partisans of Canterbury would not allow, settling the matter by turning Thurstan's chaplain and followers out of doors, and thereby causing such strife between the heads of the Church that they both set off to Rome to lay their grievances before the Pope. And, subsequently, appeals to Rome became frequent, until a satisfactory adjustment of the powers and privileges of the two archbishops was arrived at. The Archbishop of Canterbury was acknowledged Primate of all England and Metropolitan; but, while the privilege of crowning the sovereign was reserved for the Archbishop of Canterbury, that of crowning the Queen Consort was given to the Archbishop of York.
Strange Old Stories of Christmastide.
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