William, it can be seen, was thorough in his methods, both in war and peace, and through this very thoroughness he won the respect if not the affection of his new subjects. Ever since the death of Cnut the Dane, England had suffered either from actual civil war or from a weak ruler who allowed his nobles to quarrel and oppress the rest of the nation. As a result of the Norman Conquest the bulk of the population found that they had gained one tyrant instead of many; and how they appreciated the change is shown by the way, all through Norman times, the middle and lower classes would help their foreign king against his turbulent baronage. This is what a monk, an Anglo-Saxon, and therefore by race an enemy of the Conqueror, wrote about him in his chronicle: ‘If any would know what manner of man King William was ... then will we describe him as we have known him.... This King William ... was a very wise and a great man, and more honoured and more powerful than any of his predecessors. He was mild to those good men who loved God, but severe beyond measure to those who withstood his will.... So also he was a very stern and wrathful man, so that none durst do anything against his will, and he kept in prison those Earls who acted against his pleasure. He removed bishops from their sees ... and at length he spared not his own brother Odo. ‘Amongst other things the good order that William established must not be forgotten; it was such that any man who was himself aught might travel over the kingdom with a bosom full of gold unmolested, and no man durst kill another, however great the injury he might have received from him.’ A few lines farther on the chronicler, having mentioned the peace that William gave, sadly relates the tyranny that was the price he extorted in exchange: ‘Truly there was much trouble in these times and very great distress; he caused castles to be built and oppressed the poor.... He was given to avarice and greedily loved gain. He made large forests for the deer, and enacted laws therewith, so that whoever killed a hart or a hind should be blinded ..., he loved the tall stags as if he were their father. He also appointed concerning the hares that they should go free. The rich complained and the poor murmured, but he was so sturdy that he recked nought of them; they must will all that the king willed if they would live.... Alas that any man should so exalt himself.... May Almighty God show mercy to his soul!’ The monk wrote after September 1087, when the Conqueror lay dead. Not in any Viking glory of battle against a national foe had he passed to his fathers, but in sordid struggle with his eldest son Robert who, aided by the French king, had rebelled against him. His crown was at once seized by his second son William Rufus, and with him the line of Norman kings was firmly established on the English throne.