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One striking incident of this siege, though recorded by Orderic Vitalis only, is so characteristic of the situation in England, at least of that which had just preceded the rebellion of Robert, and bears so great an appearance of truth, that it deserves notice.
Orderic Vitalis records that he had heard that eighteen ladies perished, who were the daughters, sisters, nieces, or wives of kings or earls. Henry is said to have fallen to the ground in a faint when the news was told him, and never to have been the same man again.
For Ebrulfus came of the city or land of Bayeux, and in Chlotocher's day, and long after, the land of Bayeux was still the Otlingua Saxonica, an abiding trace of those harryings and settlements of Sidonius's times, which planted the Saxon on both sides of the Channel. Still, to us Orderic is more than Evroul, even in the form of Eoforwulf.
They penetrated the country as far as Lisieux, treating the churches and servants of God, says Orderic Vitalis, after the manner of the heathen, but were obliged to retreat; and finally, though he had been joined by Matilda, Geoffrey, badly wounded, abandoned this attempt also and returned to Anjou.
The monk Orderic Vitalis, who wrote an account of these events a generation after they occurred, was struck with one characteristic of this insurrection, which the careful observer of any time would hardly fail to notice. He says: "The rebels, although they were so many and abundantly furnished with arms and supplies, did not dare to join battle with the king in his kingdom."
But others were true writers of literature, who told their tales in vivid, stirring words, so that they make these times live again for us. The names of some of the best of these chroniclers are Eadmer, Orderic Vitalis, and William of Malmesbury. By degrees these Norman and Anglo-Norman monks became filled with the spirit of England.
Robert sent home at once a part of his army, but he himself remained in England long enough to witness in some cases the execution by his brother of the provision of the treaty concerning traitors. He took with him, on his return to Normandy, Orderic Vitalis says, William of Warenne and many others disinherited for his sake.
The object of the holy man was to reconcile the brothers, and he made an attempt on the mind of Henry also. But, according to Orderic, the King of the English was able to show that the fault rested wholly with Robert, and that he himself had entered Normandy only from the purest motives. Anyhow arms were to decide. Only on what spot?
And it was the Saint-Evroul of the glass-work that we were thought to have set forth to see, not the Saint-Evroul of Orderic or of Saint Evroul himself. Orderic, son of a French father and an English mother, born by the banks of the Severn ten years after King William came into England, in the year of the martyrdom of Waltheof, was before all things Orderic the Englishman.
Orderic Vitalis, who was living in Normandy at this time, in the monastery of St. Evroul, declares that following this peace, made in the spring of 1113, for five years, Henry governed his kingdom and his duchy on the two sides of the sea with great tranquillity.
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