"William the Conqueror" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beauty, and yet rude and simple as became its national character, bears witness to the prolonged importance attained in Europe by this incident in the history of Charlemagne. Three centuries later the comrades of William the Conqueror, marching to battle at Hastings for the possession of England, struck up The Song of Roland "to prepare themselves for victory or death," says M. Vitel, in his vivid estimate and able translation of this poetical monument of the manners and first impulses towards chivalry of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... when a man lives altogether in the country, as I do, it seems to signify so much more. But if you go back to old county families, Lady Chiltern, the Spooners have been here pretty nearly as long as the Pallisers,—if not longer. The Desponders, from whom we come, came over with William the Conqueror." ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... of Lord Byron that he was prouder of being a descendant of those Byrons of Normandy, who accompanied William the Conqueror into England, than of having been the author of "Childe Harold." The remark is not altogether unfounded, for the pride of ancestry was a feature of his character; and justly so, for his line was honourably known on the fields of Cressy, Bosworth, and Marston Moor; and in the faithful ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... William the Conqueror did not oust the prudent Abbot whom he found in office at Evesham. A favourite at the court of Edward the Confessor, Abbot Agelwy stood high also in Harold's regard, and was not only unmolested when William took up the ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... at Dives, in 1066 A.D., had been anything like what it was at Havre the other day, when I wanted to cross over to Dives, WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR would never have sailed from that place for the invasion of England. Dull as he might have found Dives, yet I am sure the Conquering Hero would have preferred returning to Paris, to risking the discomfort of the crossing. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... sought and secured the acquaintance of Rudyard Kipling, whose alert mind was at once keenly interested in what Bok was trying to do. He was willing to co-operate, with the result that Bok secured the author's new story, William the Conqueror. When Bok read the manuscript, he was delighted; he had for some time been reading Kipling's work with enthusiasm, and he saw at once that here was one of the ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... Price—then rose to assert the rights of his fatherland, and his speeches are as admirable for their knowledge as their spirit. "The submitting of 1500 freeholders to the will of a Dutch lord was," as he sarcastically declared, "putting them in a worse posture than their former estate, when under William the Conqueror and his Norman lords. England must not be tributary to strangers—we must, like patriots, stand by our country—otherwise, when God shall send us a Prince of Wales, he may have such a present of a crown made him as a Pope did to King John, who was surnamed Sans-terre, and was by ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of the tolling bells of this great cathedral, aye, almost within the shadow of its turrets, was born, in Seventeen Hundred Eighty, Elizabeth Gurney. Her line of ancestry traced directly back to the De Gournays who came with William the Conqueror, and laid the foundations of this church and of England's civilization. To the sensitive, imaginative girl this sacred temple, replete with history, fading off into storied song and curious legend, meant much. She haunted its solemn transepts, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... act is laid in the drawing-room of the Viscount Squanderfield"—is not that a fine name for the character? "On the left, his lordship is seated, pointing with complacent pride to his family tree, which has its roots in William the Conqueror. But his rent roll had been squandered, the gouty foot suggesting whither some of it has gone; and to restore his fortunes he is about to marry his heir to the daughter of a rich alderman. The latter is seated awkwardly at the table, holding the marriage ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... of the Commons from that of the King and Lords. In the 'Oceana' other theories of government are discussed before Harrington elaborates his own, and English history appears under disguise of names, William the Conqueror being called Turbo; King John, Adoxus; Richard II., Dicotome; Henry VII., Panurgus; Henry VIII., Coraunus; Queen Elizabeth, Parthenia; James I., Morpheus; and Oliver Cromwell, Olphaus Megaletor. Scotland is Marpesia, and Ireland, Panopaea. A careful edition ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... north-westerly breeze [Corus], he was at length enabled to set sail with no fewer than eight hundred vessels. Never throughout history has so large a navy threatened our shores. The most numerous of the Danish expeditions contained less than four hundred ships, William the Conqueror's less than seven hundred;[101] the Spanish ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... Farm, in the parish of Upavon, in the county of Wilts, on the 6th day of Nov. 1773, and am descended from as ancient and respectable a family as any in that county, my forefather having arrived in England with, and attended William the Conqueror, as a colonel in that army, with which he successfully invaded this country. He became possessed of very considerable estates in the counties of Wilts and Somerset, which passed from father to son, down to the period of the civil wars ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... journalistic touch may have manufactured the other five. The tale of King Harold being shot through the eye at the Battle of Hastings may have arisen from a reporter's using the figurative expression that William the Conqueror "put his eye out." Nor, after reading the account of the landing of the Austrian children, can I believe the tale of the minstrel Taillifer who sprang into the water to lead the Normans in landing. And as for the time-honoured phrases, "Take away that bauble!" and "England expects ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... Prince Henry, son of William the Conqueror, afterwards Henry I., that is so frequently recorded in the old chronicles that it is doubtless authentic. The following version of the incident is taken from Hayward's Life of William ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... William the Conqueror people dined at eleven A.M. or was it ten? Then, as civilisation advanced, the dinner hour stole forward. In the time of the Georges it reached four o'clock. In Ireland, the most conservative country on earth, some people even ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... ancestors of these different races originally lived together on these Asiatic plains "within the same fences, and separate from the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races," is (to quote the words of Max Mueller), "a fact as firmly established as that the Normans of William the Conqueror were ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... of Normandy, the son of William the Conqueror, was fighting against the Turks, and laying siege to the famous city of Antioch, which was expected to be relieved by the Saracens, St. George appeared with an innumerable army, coming down from the hills, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... The Normans had gotten the worst, if it had not been for a stratagem they invented, which got them the day. In this engagement Harold was killed, and William Duke of Normandy became King of England, under the name of William the Conqueror. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... only letters upon their spoons, instead of birds and beasts, arms with daggers, and legs with spurs, were delighted to discover, on application at the Heralds' Office, that one of their ancestors had undoubtedly exercised the functions of a groom in the establishment of William the Conqueror, and that they were consequently entitled to bear upon their arms a stable-bucket azure, between two horses current, and to wear as their crest a curry-comb in base argent, between two wisps of hay proper, they and their descendants, according to the law of arms. But the luxury was expensive: ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... calamity (April 5th, 1086), Maurice, chaplain and chancellor to William the Conqueror, had been consecrated Bishop of London by Lanfranc. Unlike most of William's nominees to bishoprics, Maurice's moral character was disreputable; but he was a man of energy, and he set to work at once to rebuild his cathedral, ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... its title-page with a motto from Shakespeare. Christiania Aftenbladet for July 19, 1828, reprints Carl Bagger's clever poem on Shakespeare's reputed love-affair with "Fanny," an adventure which got him into trouble and gave rise to the bon-mot, "William the Conqueror ruled before Richard III." The poem was reprinted from Kjoebenhavns Flyvende Post (1828); we shall speak of it again in connection with our ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... of discord to seek countenance in some great figure of history, under whose aegis he might shelter the advocacy of his views. Looking about for a theme, several crossed his mind. He thought of Ireland, but that was too burning a subject; of William the Conqueror, of Simon de Montfort, the Norsemen, the Cid; but these may have seemed to him too remote. Why, ask patriotic Scotsmen, did he not take up his and their favourite Knox? But Knox's life had been fairly handled by M'Crie, and Carlyle would have found it hard to ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... walls, broad moats, outer and inner wards, protected gateways, drawbridges and other tactical devices, conveys an impression of power. On the Bishop-hill side of the river there remains the mound (Baile Hill) on which the other castle was erected by order of William the Conqueror. The whole city is enclosed by defensive works consisting of an embattled wall on a mound, with a moat or protecting ditch running parallel to it. At intervals along the walls there are towers. Where the four main roads enter the city ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... the Game Laws of William the Conqueror. The first Game Act was passed in 1496, and the one in force at the time of Addison's writing in the reign of Anne. By these enactments a man was qualified to take out a licence to kill game by his birth or estate. The usual qualification was the possession of ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... the repetition, on a smaller scale, of the Affghan tragedy. The proximate cause of the rupture was the refusal of the Ameers to permit the clearing away of their shikargahs, or hunting-grounds, which were guarded with a rigid jealousy, paralleled only by the forest laws of William the Conqueror, and extended for many miles along the banks of the Indus, in a broad belt of impenetrable jungle, at once impeding the navigation by preventing the tracking of boats, and presenting dangerous facilities for ambush. To these cherished game-preserves the Ameers clung with a desperate pertinacity, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... found himself in prison. The king sent him, on the day of Christ's Passion, a robe of silk and rarest ermine. The caged baron made a roaring fire, and cast the robe into it. "By the light of God," said William the Conqueror, for that was his wicked oath, "he shall never leave ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards
... was the object of those favoring unity, but with more decision than in 1848, to place the group of German states under Prussia's imperial direction. The accession of a new king, William I, who was already in advance called William the Conqueror, was likely to bring this project to a successful issue. The future German emperor's predecessor, Frederick William IV, with the same ambition as his brother, had too many prejudices and too much ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... means to infer that it was lately restored, or that the date itself was a later addition, is not quite clear. The characters of the inscription Planche pointed out correspond in form with those at the time of William the Conqueror, and as sepulchral effigies are uncommon until the middle of the twelfth century, the presumption is in its favour; still it is somewhat pathetic to find that the evidence which serves to connect this otherwise unknown monument ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... what? two old towers that don't match, {105a} and a portcullis that (people say) opens only upon fast-days. Charlecote Hall, I could have told her sweet Highness, was built by those Lucys who came over with Julius Caesar and William the Conqueror, with cross and scallop-shell ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... will have his idols both of wood and stone—wood for dwelling, and stone for worship; at PONT AUDEMER, the simple domestic architecture of the middle ages, and at LISIEUX, the more ornate and luxurious; passing on to CAEN, he will have (in ecclesiastical architecture) the memorial churches of William the Conqueror, and, in the neighbouring city of BAYEUX (in one building), examples of the 'early,' as well as the more elaborate, gothic of the ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... below St. Paul's, was built by a certain Baynard who came in the train of William the Conqueror. It was rebuilt by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and was finally consumed in ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... son of Simon, Earl of Hunting don, and Maud, grand-niece of William the Conqueror. After the death of her first husband, Maud married David, King of Scotland, one of the sons of St. Margaret. The early life of the young Walthen was consequently spent at the Scottish Court, where ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... first time to the House of Commons to listen to the proceedings from the gallery and here is an abstract from his diary at that period: "Went to Houses of Parliament. Very much disappointed with them. . . . I will not say I eyed the assembly in the spirit in which William the Conqueror eyed England on his visit to Edward the Confessor—as the region of his future domain. O Vanity!" A country youth without money, without prospects, sitting in the exclusive Parliament House of the most exclusive nation ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... family of the Beauchamps, with Robert Curtoys sonne of William the Conqueror, made a voyage to Ierusalem 1096. Hol. pag. 22. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... of community study has been the social survey, with a history which antedates its recent developments. Yet the survey movement from the Domesday Survey, initiated in 1085 by William the Conqueror, to the recent Study of Methods of Americanization by the Carnegie Corporation, has been based upon an implicit or explicit recognition of the interrelations of the community and its constituent groups. The Domesday Survey, although ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... pinnacled tower that rises above the desecrated lower portions of the building. In this tower hangs the curfew-bell, which is rung at 6 a.m. and 8 p.m., a custom, according to one writer, 'that has continued ever since the time of William the Conqueror.' ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... kingdom of his own, ruled it with all the sternness of King Harold, hanging all robbers that fell into his hands, and making his kingdom so secure that the peasants could leave their tools in the fields at night without fear of loss. Five generations after him came to the throne William the Conqueror, who won himself ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... a sercoat cutt at the breast, which hung loose and shorter than the vest six inches. The breeches the Spanish cut, and buskins some of cloth, some of leather, but of the same colour as the vest or garment; of never the like fashion since William the Conqueror." It is represented in a portrait of Lord Arlington, by Sir P. Lely, formerly belonging to Lord de Clifford, and engraved in Lodge's "Portraits." Louis XIV. ordered his servants to wear ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... to believe of this account is doubtful. Mr. Markham has shown us that the languages of all the interior tribes were related. We know how difficult it is to compel a conquered people by law to learn a foreign language. William the Conqueror made an unsuccessful attempt to compel the Anglo-saxons to learn French—it ended by his followers learning English. Are we to believe that a tribe of Peruvian Indians were successful in spreading their language over a wide extent ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... of the Normans, in the tenth century, supplied new elements to the Romance Wallon. They adopted it as their language, and stamped upon it the impress of their own genius. It thus became Norman-French. In 1066, William the Conqueror introduced it into England, and enforced its use among his new subjects by rigorous laws; thus the popular French became there the language of the court and of the educated classes, while it was still the vulgar dialect ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... accounted so ignominious among the Saxons as to merit this disgraceful epithet. Even William the Conqueror, hated as he was by them, continued to draw a considerable army of Anglo-Saxons to his standard, by threatening to stigmatize those who staid at home, as nidering. Bartholinus, I think, mentions a similar phrase which had like influence on the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... here is the most select show in the fair! Here is amusement and instruction combined! Here is nothing to offend the moral and artistic taste! You may see here Abraham offering up Aaron, and Henry IV. in prison; Cain and Abel in the Garden of Eden, and William the Conqueror driving out ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... Englishman subtle and fond of lawsuits, I say, "There is a Norman, who came in with William the Conqueror." When I see a man good-natured and polite, "That is one who came with the Plantagenets;" a brutal character, "That is a Dane:"—for your Nation, Monsieur, as well as your Language, is a medley ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... solder would melt; but Uncle Silas he had a noble brass warming-pan which he thought considerable of, because it belonged to one of his ancesters with a long wooden handle that come over from England with William the Conqueror in the Mayflower or one of them early ships and was hid away up garret with a lot of other old pots and things that was valuable, not on account of being any account, because they warn't, but on account of them being relicts, you know, and we snaked her out, private, and took her down ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the Romans Gilds Burghs Charter of William the Conqueror Reflections Subsequent Charters City divided into Wards Civic Hospitality The Quo Warranto Case Restoration of ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... that it has many times been made the subject of weighty consideration. A well-known English amateur, the Honourable E. J. Lowell, has stated that popular tradition has credited it as the handiwork of Matilda, Queen of William the Conqueror, who worked it to commemorate his glorious achievements. If this be really so, the queen was probably assisted largely by the ladies of her court, as the extensive work, measuring some hundred and sixty odd feet, could hardly have been accomplished single-handed. Professor Freeman assigns ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... embarking and disembarking them with celerity. Omens were resorted to for keeping up the enthusiasm which the presence of the First Consul naturally inspired. A Roman battle-axe was said to be found when they removed the earth to pitch Bonaparte's tent or barrack; and medals of William the Conqueror were produced, as having been dug up upon the same honoured spot. These were pleasant bodings, yet perhaps did not altogether, in the minds of the soldiers, counterbalance the sense of insecurity impressed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... DEATH OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.—It was while William the Conqueror, angry with the king of the French, was burning Mantes, in the border-land between Normandy and France, that, by the stumbling of his horse in the ashes, he was thrown forward upon the iron ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... who continue to be reckoned among the most estimable and most respected families of the county of Cork. The Hon. Elizabeth St. Leger, daughter to Lord Doneraile, was descended from Robert de St. Leger, who accompanied William the Conqueror to England, and cousin to the General St. Leger who instituted the Doncaster St. Leger race. When a young girl she was seized with a desire to see the mysteries of the initiation of a Mason which were about to be celebrated at her father's house. The generally-received tradition ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... business; J. J. Little & Co.'s printing-house; William the Conqueror's reign; Houghton, Mifflin, ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... which, as history tells us, an order of hereditary knights came near being constituted out of the king quellers of the Revolution. And besides, there were the patents of nobility of German counts and barons, Spanish grandees, and English peers, from the worm-eaten instruments signed by William the Conqueror down to the bran-new parchment of the latest lord who has received his honors from the ...
— Earth's Holocaust (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the castle of Mont Orgueil was still more closely inspected, the Queen walking up to it and visiting one of its batteries, with a view across the bay to the neighbouring coast of France. Mont Orgueil is said to have been occupied by Robert of Normandy, the unfortunate son of William the Conqueror. Her Majesty heard that it had not yet been taken, but found this was an error, though it was true the island of Guernsey had never ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... New England, and enduring stone and plaster took the place of timber and shingles. But the churches, small and fabulously ancient, affected him most. He placed his hand on stones which had been set in place before William the Conqueror landed in England, and this physical survival seemed to bring into his actual presence the long succession of all the intervening ages. These structures, still so solid and serviceable, had witnessed ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... usually treated as tapestry, and there seems to be no special reason for departing from the custom. Some authorities state that the Bayeux tapestry was made by the Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I., while others consider it the achievement of Queen Matilda, the wife of William the Conqueror. She is recorded to have sat quietly awaiting her lord's coming while she embroidered this quaint souvenir of his prowess in conquest. A veritable mediaeval Penelope, it is claimed that she directed her ladies in this work, which is thoroughly Saxon in feeling ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... the host of Crusaders from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, England, and even far-off Ireland, were many renowned princes, prelates, and nobles: Adhemar, Bishop of Puy, the Pope's legate; Robert, Duke of Normandy, the heroic and reckless son of William the Conqueror; Count Robert of Paris, wild and ferocious; the gallant Count of Flanders; Stephen of Blois, Count of Chartres; and the pure and perfect ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... quaintly and beautifully reminds us of the old couvre-feu bell of the days of William the Conqueror, a custom still kept up in many of the towns and hamlets of England, and some of our own towns and cities; and until recently the nine-o'clock bell greeted the ears of Bostonians, year in and year out. And who does not remember the sweet ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... presided over the lodges; but after his decease, we know little of the state of the masons in Britain, except that they were governed by Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 960, and Edward the Confessor in 1041. But in 1066, William the Conqueror appointed Gondulph, Bishop of Rochester, to preside over the society. In 1100, Henry the First patronised them; and in 1135, during the reign of Stephen, the society was under the command of Gilbert de Clare, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... (they are to be discerned even on the crutches), is laid in the house of an earl, who, with his gouty foot swathed in flannels, seems with a superb—if somewhat stiff-jointed—dignity to be addressing certain pompous observations respecting himself and his pedigree (dating from William the Conqueror) to a sober-looking personage opposite, who, horn-spectacles on nose, is peering at the endorsement of the "Marriage Settlem^t of the R^t Hon^ble. Lord Vincent [Squanderfield]."[24] This second figure, ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... "And it's one of the slowest growin' of all forest trees. I calculate that every inch of diameter represents at the very least ten years of growth. Eight feet equal ninety-six inches; an' that means nine hundred and sixty years. So you see the tree was quite a hundred years old at the time when William the Conqueror was ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... Westminster Hall, Pantheon. The Palace of St. James was Alma; Hampton Court, Convallium; Windsor, Mount Celia. By Hemisna, Harrington meant the river Trent. Past sovereigns of England he renamed for Oceana: William the Conqueror became Turbo; King John, Adoxus; Richard II, Dicotome; Henry VII, Panurgus; Henry VIII, Coraunus; Elizabeth, Parthenia; James I, Morpheus. He referred to Hobbes as Leviathan; and to Francis Bacon, as Verulamius. Oliver ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... received from a correspondent, which had perplexed him sadly. It was written in Norman French, in very ancient characters, and so faded and mouldered away as to be almost illegible. It was apparently an old Norman drinking song, that might have been brought over by one of William the Conqueror's carousing followers. The writing was just legible enough to keep a keen antiquity-hunter on a doubtful chase; here and there he would be completely thrown out, and then there would be a few words so plainly written ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... the water comes down at Lodore, there is a pencil-factory that has been there since the days of William the Conqueror. The wife of Coleridge used to work there and get money that supported her philosopher-husband and their children. Southey lived near, and became Poet Laureate of England through the right exercise of Keswick pencils; Wordsworth ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... numerous occasions obtruded his genealogical tree in such a manner as to render necessary some acquaintance with his family and lineage. The family of Boswell, or Bosville, dates from the Normans who came with William the Conqueror to Hastings. Entering Scotland in the days of the sore saint, David I., they had spread over Berwickshire and established themselves, at least in one branch, at Balmuto in Fife. A descendant of the family, Thomas Boswell, occupies in the genealogy of the biographer the position of prominence ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... the Western Mediterranean, and North Africa before settling at the Norman Court of Palermo. Roger, the most civilised prince in Christendom, the final product of the great race of Robert Guiscard and William the Conqueror, valued Edrisi at his proper worth, refused to part with him, and employed men in every part of the world to collect materials for his study. Thus the Moor gained, not only for the Moslem world but for Southern Europe as well, an approximate knowledge even of Norway, ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... period from William the Conqueror to John, says: "The amercement in criminal and common pleas, which were wont to be imposed during this first period and afterwards, were of so many several sorts, that it is not easy to place them under ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... extinct.' The port was magnificent—of the year '64—and I felt oracular. 'Hence the use of bastards. Robert the Devil from the top of his tower falls in love with the laundrywoman bleaching linen on the green, and in natural course William the Conqueror sees the light ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... to Nietzsche in kind, and pointed him out as the product of "tired sheets," to use the phrase of Shakespeare. Wagner might have said, "Yes, I am a member of that elect class to which belong William the Conqueror, Leonardo da Vinci, Erasmus, the Empress Josephine, Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln!" But he didn't—he did better—he said nothing. Wagner had the pride that scorned a defense—he realized his priceless birthright, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... Roscommon to Boyle, across more than one-half the length of this long county, from Roscommon to French Park, the country is so completely emptied of inhabitants that one can drive a distance of five miles at once without seeing a human habitation except a herd's hut. The country is as empty as if William the Conqueror had marched ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... the Jews would reject Christ, kept back this one Tribe to be in readiness to receive Him, and so they did. At the destruction of Jerusalem they escaped, and after centuries of wanderings turn up as the proud and haughty Normans. Finally they unite with the other Tribes under William the Conqueror. A proper insight into the work and mission of Benjamin will greatly aid one in interpreting the New Testament. He was set apart as a missionary Tribe, and at once set to work to spread the Gospel of Jesus. Most of the disciples were Benjaminites. Then, after 800 years of fellowship with ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... With William the Conqueror, you know — or maybe it was William Penn. But it couldn't have been William Penn, could it? For she went to New Jersey — Orange, N.J. Was it William of Orange? More than likely ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... Hugh; "I don't think I ever saw a tapestry room. Oh," he added, as a sudden recollection struck him, "is it like what that queen long ago worked about the battles and all that? I mean all about William the Conqueror." ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... doesn't understand English," thought Alice; "I daresay it's a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror." So she began again, "ou est ma chatte?" which was the first sentence in her French lesson book. The Mouse gave a sudden leap out of the water, and seemed to quiver all over with fright. "Oh, I beg your pardon!" cried Alice hastily, afraid ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... watching anxiously for the first glimpse of an armed band appearing at the edge of the meadows. The chateau must have been a fine feudal fortress in its time and has sheltered many great personages. William the Conqueror, of course—he has apparently lived in every chateau and sailed from every harbour in this part of Normandy—Charles IX, Catherine de Medicis, and the Montgomery who killed ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... was first introduced into Britain by the Anglo-Saxons, was brought to a fixed and permanent state by the Normans—followers of William the Conqueror; and, when the time came for treachery to summon the Norman knights to Irish soil, the devoted island found herself face to face with an iron system which at that period crushed and weighed down ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... a palm-tree-the symbol, as we shall see, in America, of Aztlan, or Atlantis. We have but to compare the pictures of the ships upon these ancient razor-knives with the accompanying representations of a Roman galley and a ship of William the Conqueror's time, to see that there can be no question that they represented the galleys of that remote age. They are doubtless faithful portraits of the great vessels which Plato described as filling the ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... on us in their great struggle for reform. Our Duke Richard-Sans-Peur, in 966, turned the old canons out of the Mount in order to bring here the highest influence of the time, the Benedictine monks of Monte Cassino. Richard II, grandfather of William the Conqueror, began this Abbey Church in 1020, and helped Abbot Hildebert to build it. When William the Conqueror in 1066 set out to conquer England, Pope Alexander II stood behind him and blessed his banner. From that moment our ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... catalogue, of those virtues or qualities which make a man happy in himself, and which conduce to the happiness of those about him, in a greater or lesser sphere of agency. The degree and the frequency in which each of these virtues manifested themselves, in the successive reigns from William the Conqueror inclusively, were to be illustrated by apposite quotations from the works of contemporary writers, not only of historians and chroniclers, but of the poets, romance writers, and theologians, not omitting the correspondence between literary men, the laws and regulations, civil ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... always been quiet and old-fashioned and sleepy. Once it was a royal manor, and contained a royal residence. William the Conqueror held Woking in demesne himself, and it passed through the hands of every king until James I, who gave it to one of his foresters, Sir Edward Zouch. Sir Edward had to pay something for his privilege. He held the manor on condition ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... vivid. Those who know the difficulty of describing anything impressively in a few words will realize the excellence of this portraiture of William the Conqueror:— ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... Meditations among the Tombs; and its special peculiarity is that the words, owing to some feature, never really analysed, linger in the mind long after the sentences of the Shorter Catechism have become blurred. Collier is strong in tropes—a highly-dangerous feature. It is no doubt true, as he says, that William the Conqueror ruled with a rod of iron, but when a boy, after reading this metaphor, asserts that that sovereign ruled his subjects with a long iron pole, you begin to question the utility of historical study. "Joy-bells pealed and bonfires blazed," is a phrase of ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... you're right about them old times, Corney," admitted McHale, with an innocent face. "I meant a little later than that. This here McHale was with William the Conqueror at the ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... confiscation:—In Ireland, he says, confiscation is justified by the appeal to wrongs inflicted a century ago; in England the theorems of "absolute political ethics" are in danger of being employed to make this generation of land-owners responsible for the misdeeds of William the Conqueror and his ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... receiving historical knowledge was to fight over again the personages who did injury to our honour as a nation, then shake hands and be proud of them. 'For where we ain't quite successful we're cunning,' he said; 'and we not being able to get rid of William the Conqueror, because he's got a will of his own and he won't budge, why, we takes and makes him one of ourselves; and no disgrace in that, I should hope! He paid us a compliment, don't you see, Master Harry? he wanted to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were no dates in "mystery:" Mark even at seven years, such was the fate of intelligent precocity, had already had to grapple with a few conspicuous dates in the immense tale of humanity. He knew for instance that William the Conqueror landed in 1066, and that St. Augustine landed in 596, and that Julius Caesar landed, but he could never remember exactly when. The last time he was asked that date, he had countered with a request to ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... interested in archaeology, just now anyway," interrupted Brent. "And it's nothing to me in connection with this matter if your old charter was signed by William the Conqueror or Edward the Confessor. ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... general tone. Addressing the Irish National Literary Society, of Loughrea, Miss Gonne said that she must "contradict Lord Wolseley in his statement that England was never insulted by invasion since the days of William the Conqueror. It would be deeply interesting to the men and women of Connaught to hear once again how a gallant body of French troops, fighting in the name of Liberty and Ireland, had conquered nearly the whole of that province at a time when England had in her service in Ireland no less ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... the invasion of the Franks, could possibly have been spoken, or even understood in Gaul: admitting these premises, I say, it necessarily follows, that the language introduced into England under Alfred, and afterwards more universally established by Edward the Confessor, and William the Conqueror, must have been an emanation of the Romance, very near akin to that of the abovementioned oath, and consequently to that which is now spoken in ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.
... not care a straw; so that if, as I suspect, your exile arises from some quarrel with your government—which, being foreign, he takes for granted must be insupportable—he would but consider you as he would a Saxon who fled from the iron hand of William the Conqueror, or a Lancastrian expelled by the Yorkists in ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... repulsed by the inhabitants in a similar attempt, who took vengeance on their im-placable enemy by a general massacre on the feast of St. Brice. In the civil commotions under the Saxon prince, Oxford had again its full share of the evils of war. After the death of Harold, William the Conqueror was bravely opposed by the citizens in his attempt to enter Oxford, which effecting by force, he was so much exas- perated at their attachment to Harold, that he bestowed the government of the town on Robert ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... I think, are a very old family. Titbottom says they date from the deluge. But I thought people of English descent preferred to stop with William the Conqueror, who ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... had, by the way, been playing the part of Richard III. While Will was engaged in illicit dalliance, the message was brought (what a moment for bringing messages!) that Richard III was at the door, and Will "caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard III. Shakespeare's name William." (My italics.) Mr. Greenwood argues that if "Shakspere the player was known to the world as the author of the plays of Shakespeare, it does seem extremely remarkable" that Manningham ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... Father-in-law, William the Conqueror, king of Great Britain, aid-de-camp, Henry the Eighth, attorney-at-law, somebody else,[Footnote: In such expressions as everybody else's business, the possessive sign is removed from the noun and attached to the adjective. (See Lesson lai.) The possessive sign should generally be placed ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... is the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066. That is fixed beyond a doubt, so that the precious cloth cannot trail its ends any further back into antiquity than that event. However, even the most insatiable antiquarian of European specialties is smilingly content with ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... Conqueror is another of the pious patterns he recommends, 'who would suffer nothing,' he says, 'to be determined in any ecclesiastical causes without leave and authority first had from him.'... His present majesty is not William the Conqueror; and can no more by our constitution rule absolutely either in Church or State than he would if he could: his will and pleasure is indeed a law to all his subjects; not in a conquering sense, but because his will and pleasure is only that the laws of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... sometimes produced merely by different forms of danger within the same sphere. Sea-captains often attach an exaggerated sense of peril to small boats; Conde confessed himself a coward in a street-fight; and William the Conqueror is said to have trembled exceedingly (rehementer tremens) during the disturbance which interrupted his coronation. It was probably from the same cause, that Mrs. Inchbald, the most fearless of actresses, was once entirely overcome by timidity on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... hundred kings, and in one day broken the sceptre for which an existence of fourteen centuries had procured a religious and fanatical veneration. On that day they threw down the gauntlet before astonished Europe; and William the Conqueror, when he burnt his fleet, did not place himself with more audaciousness between victory and death. Without money, without credit, without arms, artillery, saltpetre, and armies; betrayed by Dumorier; Valenciennes being taken by the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... of mine," said Crosbie. "That's natural to all of us. One of my ancestors came over with William the Conqueror. I think he was one of the assistant ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... reception, until his church was sufficiently advanced to permit of its removal thither. It was visited by large numbers of pilgrims, and many important personages were among them. Of these may be mentioned William the Conqueror, Henry III. (1255), Edward II. (1322), and Henry VI. (1448). The shrine was destroyed soon after the surrender of the monastery to the Crown, in 1540, when the body was buried beneath the place where its former receptacle ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... Yankees at Oyster Bay. Such was that list of warlike worthies heretofore enumerated, beginning with the Van Wycks, the Van Dycks, and the Ten Eycks, and extending to the Rutgers, the Bensons, the Brinkerhoffs, and the Schermerhorns; a roll equal to the Doomsday Book of William the Conqueror, and establishing the heroic origin of many an ancient aristocratical Dutch family. These, after all, are the only legitimate nobility and lords of the soil; these are the real "beavers of the Manhattoes;" and much does it grieve me in modern ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... of England, a descendant of William the Conqueror, having died without leaving any children, his brother John made ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae
... time of the invasion of England by William the Conqueror, the Normans wore their hair very short. Harold, in his progress towards Hastings, sent forward spies to view the strength and number of the enemy. They reported, amongst other things, on their return, that "the host ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Paul burnt.] month of July. The church of St. Paul, London, and all things which were in it, with great part of the city, were consumed by fire; in the time of Maurice bishop of London, and in the reign of the first king of the Normans, William the Conqueror who founded the Monasteries of Battle in Sussex, where himself had fought, and Bermondsey near London. In the year of our Lord one thousand cxxxij, the ides of [Sidenote: Most part of London burnt.] ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... prevalent, and to treat their memory with becoming honour. Such arms were also in a sense necessary to their descendants for the purposes of quartering. No proof can be shown that the arms said to have been borne by WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR are not of this order—made for him, that is, and attributed to him in after times, but of which he himself had no knowledge. These arms, No. 22, differ from the true Royal Insignia of England only in there being two, instead ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... Perhaps you don't know, Polly,"—and Fanny's mamma drew herself up to her extreme height; it was impossible for her to loll back in her chair when talking of her family,—"that we are related to the Earl of Cavendish who owns the old estate in England, and we go back to William the Conqueror; that is, Fanny ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... Edward in 1066 the royal demesnes naturally passed to his successor and kinsman, William the Conqueror, and in due course to the successive Norman kings of ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... man was William the Conqueror? Tall of stature, endowed with tremendous strength, and brave even to desperation, he seemed an embodiment of the old viking spirit. "No knight under heaven," men said truly, "was William's peer." A savage temper and a harsh, forbidding countenance ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... Germany about the settlement which they expect after this war. I am sorry to say I am stating nothing but the bare, brutal truth. I do not say that the Kaiser will sit on the throne of England if he should win. I do not say that he will impose his laws and his language on this country as did William the Conqueror. I do not say that you will hear the tramp, the noisy tramp of the goose step in the cities of the Empire. [Laughter.] I do not say that Death's Head Hussars will be patrolling our highways. I do not say that a visitor, let us say, to Aberdaron, will have to ask ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... white with the red cross of Saint George (patron saint of England) extending to the edges of the flag and a yellow equal-armed cross of William the Conqueror superimposed ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Langland and Wyclif, and had been persecuted by Elizabeth; but persecution served only to increase its numbers and determination. Though the Puritans were never a majority in England, they soon ruled the land with a firmness it had not known since the days of William the Conqueror. They were primarily men of conscience, and no institution can stand before strong men whose conscience says the institution is wrong. That is why the degenerate theaters were not reformed but abolished; that is why ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... of the race which come only by observation of a long historic development, in a wide range of climate, in great variety of social position, Jefferson could, as he confesses, know almost nothing,—for the same reason that the keenest observer of William the Conqueror's Norman robbers and Saxon swineherds would have failed to foretell the great dominant race which has come from them by free growth and good culture. But, on the other hand, of all that comes by observation of the daily life of the black race, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... p. 118. For the Bayeau tapestry, see Bruce, Bayeux Tapestry Elucidated, plate vii and p. 86; also Guillemin, World of Comets, p. 24. There is a large photographic copy, in the South Kensington Museum at London, of the original, wrought, as is generally believed, by the wife of William the Conqueror and her ladies, and is still preserved in ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... William the Conqueror, crosses at Wallingford, 37; his choice of Windsor Hill, 65; exchanges Windsor with monks of Westminster, 69; builds Tower of London, 82; anointed at ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... Em, The Millers Daughter of Manchester: With the loue of William the Conqueror. As it was sundty [sic] times publiquely acted in the Honourable Citie of London, by the right Honourable the Lord Strange his Seruants. London, Printed for Iohn Wright, and are to be sold at his shop at the signe of the Bible in Guilt-spur ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... granted by king Edward the first to the Barons of the Cinque portes, in the sixt yeere of his reigne 1278. for their good seruices done vnto him by sea, wherein is mention of their former ancient Charters from Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror, William Rufus, Henry the second, king Richard the first, king Iohn, and Henry the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... of illustrations. And the manner in which the People of England lived during the Reign of William the Conqueror. An interesting Narrative. 6d. ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... illustrious family of Stewart without an ancestor beyond Walter the son of Allan, who is alluded to in the text. The researches of our late learned antiquary detected in this Walter, the descendant of Allan, the son of Flaald, who obtained from William the Conqueror the Castle of Oswestry in Shropshire, and was the father of an illustrious line of English nobles, by his first son, William, and by his second son, Walter, the progenitor of the royal family ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... his vitals were being devoured by seven worms. Such a diagnosis would ruin a modern physician. The modern physician tells his patient that he is ill because every drop of his blood is swarming with a million microbes; and the patient believes him abjectly and instantly. Had a bishop told William the Conqueror that the sun was seventy-seven miles distant from the earth, William would have believed him not only out of respect for the Church, but because he would have felt that seventy-seven miles was the proper ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... above it by tradition was one of the great factors of the Revolution, and perfectly explains why, after its triumph, the first class despoiled the vanquished of their wealth. They behaved as conquerors—like William the Conqueror, who, after the conquest of England, distributed the ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... illustrates this master trait of his character. Burbage, we are told, when playing Richard III., arranged with a lady in the audience to visit her after the performance. Shakespeare overheard the rendezvous, anticipated his fellow's visit, and met Burbage on his arrival with the jibe that "William the Conqueror came before Richard III." The lightness is no doubt as characteristic of Shakespeare as the ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris |
