In accordance with this command, Matilda built the beautiful Abbaye aux Dames at Caen, where her eldest daughter, Cecile, afterward took the veil, and William founded, at the same place, the Abbey of St. Stephen, of which Lanfranc was the first abbot. But fair as were the proportions of that exquisite building, noble as were its clustered columns, and rich as were the zigzag mouldings of its deep arches, its foundation was insecure, for it was on iniquity. It stood on ground violently taken from a number of poor people; and where could the blessing of Heaven have been? Twenty-three years afterward a grave was dug in the noble choir of St. Stephen’s Church, and William’s corpse was carried through the porch, followed by a long train of nobles, knights, and clergy, but by not one of his numerous children. The requiem was chanted, and orations were made in praise of the Duke of Normandy, the King and Conqueror of England, the founder of abbeys, the builder of churches, when suddenly the cry of “Ha Ro!”--the Norman appeal for justice--was heard, and a man in mean garments stood forth, and spoke thus: “Clerks and Bishops, this ground is mine. Here was my father’s hearth. The man whom you praise wrested it from me to build this church. I sold it not. I made no grant of it. It is my right, and I claim it. In the name of Rollo, the founder of his family, and of our laws, I forbid you to lay the body of the spoiler therein, or to cover it with my earth.” The Bishops were obliged to promise satisfaction to the man, and to pay him on the spot sixty pence as the price of the Conqueror’s grave. But, even then, his bones were not permitted to rest in peace. In the course of the civil wars of France, his tomb was twice broken open by the Huguenots, the first time rifled of the royal ornaments in which he had been arrayed, and the second, the spoilers, disappointed of their expected prize, cast out the mouldering bones, and dispersed them. CAMEO IV. EARL GODWIN. (1012-1052.) _Kings of England_. 1013. Swein. 1014. Knut. 1015. Ethelred the Unready (restored). 1016. Edmund Ironside. 1018. Knut. 1036. Harold I. 1039. Harthaknut. 1041. Edward the Confessor. The Danish conquest of England, although the power of the kings of that nation continued but a short time, made great changes in the condition of the country. The customs and laws that had hitherto been observed only in the lands granted by Alfred to the Danes, spread into almost all the kingdom, and the civilization which the great king had striven so hard to introduce was well-nigh swept away.