[Sidenote: _Polydor._] There be that write, how the inconstancie of the English people by their oft rebellions occasioned the king to be so rough and rigorous against them; wheras (of his naturall disposition and proper inclination) he was rather gentle and courteous than sharpe and cruell. But sith he continued his extremitie euen to his last daies, we may rather beléeue, that although from his childhood he shewed some tokens of clemencie, bountie, and liberalitie; yet by following the wars, and practising to reigne with sternenesse, he became so inured therewith, that those peaceable vertues were quite altered in him, and in maner clearelie quenched. He was indued with a certeine stoutnesse of courage and skill in feats of warre, which good hap euer followed: he was frée from lecherous lusts, without suspicion of bodilie vices, quicke of wit, desirous of honor, painefull, watchfull, and able to tolerate heat and cold, though he were tall of stature, and verie grosse of bodie. Toward the end of his daies he waxed verie deuout, and became desirous to aduance the state of the church, insomuch that he builded thrée abbeies in three seuerall places, endowing them with faire lands and large possessions, one at the place where he vanquished king Harold, fiue miles from Hastings, which he named Battell, of the field there fought: the other at Celby in Yorkeshire: and the third in Normandie at Caen, where his wife Quéene Maud had builded a nunnerie, which Maud died in the yéere 1084, before the decease of the king hir husband. [Sidenote: They gaue him an hundred pound, saith _Hen. Marle._] After his death, his bodie was buried in Caen, in S. Stephans church; but before it could be committed to the ground, the executors were constreined to agree with the lord of the soile where the church stood, which (as he said) the king in his life time had iniuriouslie taken from him, and gaue him a great summe of monie to release his title. ¶ By this we may consider the great miserie of mans estate, in that so mightie a prince could not haue so much ground after his death as to couer his dead corps, without dooing iniurie to another. This also may be a speciall lesson for all men, and namelie for princes, noblemen, and gentlemen, who oftentimes to enlarge their owne commodities, doo not regard what wrong they offer to the inferiour sort.