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But that then Ethelred and Alfred the Atheling had made a great effort, winning a mighty victory on Ashdown Heath, slaying Bagsac the king and both the Sidracs, Harald and Osbern the jarls, Frene, and many more with them. Nine battles had they fought that year and last. "How hear you of this?" I said.
Alan Rufus of Britanny was Earl of Richmondshire; Odo of Champagne, Earl of Holderness; and Ralph of Guader, who was to share in the downfall of Roger Fitz Osbern, Earl of Norfolk.
But victims were also found among those guardians of the young duke whose faithful discharge of their duties shows that the Norman nobility was not wholly corrupt. One indeed was a foreign prince, Alan Count of the Bretons, a grandson of Richard the Fearless through a daughter. Two others, the seneschal Osbern and Gilbert Count of Eu, were irregular kinsmen of the duke.
The four archiepiscopal biographies by Osbern, the three by Eadmer, Malmesbury's lives of Aldhelm and Wulstan, the larger collection of works by Giraldus Cambrensis, Chaundler's biographies of Wykeham and Bekington, and the collection of smaller documents which accompanied these, formed a more valuable contribution to our ecclesiastical history than had up to Wharton's time ever been made.
That Sweyn Ulffson, his kinsman, or Osbern, his brother, will surely land there within the year with a mighty host? And that if there be one man in England of wit enough, and knowledge enough of war, to lead the armies of England, the Frenchman may be driven into the sea Is there any here who understands English?" "None but ourselves." "And Canute's nephew sit on Canute's throne?"
William Fitz Osbern was the son of the duke's guardian, who had been murdered for his fidelity during William's minority, and they had been boys together, as we are expressly told. He was appointed to be responsible for Winchester and to hold what might be called the marches, towards the unoccupied north and west. Very probably at this time also he was made Earl of Hereford?
From this he was never released. The family of William's devoted guardian, Osbern, and of his no less devoted friend, William Fitz Osbern, disappears from English history with the fall of this imprudent representative, but not from the country.
Ode had to keep Kent against attacks from the continent; William Fitz- Osbern had to keep Herefordshire against the Welsh and the independent English. This last shire had its own local warfare. William's authority did not yet reach over all the shires beyond London and Hereford; but Harold had allowed some of Edward's Norman favourites to keep power there.
'I rely much on you, said he; 'lead your men thitherward and attack them from that side. William, the son of Osbern the seneschal, a right good vassal, shall go with you and help in the attack, and you shall have the men of Boilogne and Poix and all my soldiers.
On the eve of his departure he confided the care of his new kingdom to two of his followers whom he believed the most devoted to himself, the south-east to his half brother Odo, and the north to William Fitz Osbern.