Duke Robert was not fated to enjoy a captivity so mild. He had suffered defeat on the 14th of October, 1106, the anniversary of the day when forty years previously his father had won the battle of Hastings. "God thus disposing," says the Chronicle, "that Normandy became subject to England on the same day that England had become subject to Normandy." Ralph Flambard had regained his bishopric of Durham by giving up to the king the town and fortress of Lisieux; but Robert had been conveyed to England, and lodged in the castle of Cardiff, in Wales, which had recently been conquered by the Normans. He enjoyed there a certain amount of liberty, and hunted in the surrounding forest. One day he leaped upon his horse and took to flight. He was not well acquainted with the way; his horse sank into a bog. He was captured and taken back to his prison. When the king was acquainted with this attempt at escape, he ordered that the prisoner's eyes should be burnt out by means of a bason of red-hot iron. The captivity of the unhappy duke became complete; but his robust constitution withstood all these misfortunes. He lived twenty-eight years in his prison, blind and alone, without news of the son whom he had left a child in Normandy, and preserving to the last the dignified pride of his race. One day some new clothes were brought to him from the king; Robert handled them and discovered that one of them was unript at the seam. He was told that Henry had tried on the doublet and had found it too small for him. The duke threw all the clothes to a distance, exclaiming, "So then my brother, or rather my traitor, that cowardly clerk who has dismembered and deprived me of sight, holds me now in such contempt--I who was once held in such honor and renown--that he makes me alms of his old clothes as to a valet!" {129} Robert was nearly eighty years of age when he died in 1135, some months before his brother, King Henry. He had survived in his captivity and suffering almost all the chief warriors with whom he had fought before Jerusalem.