[Illustration: Battle of Hastings.] CHAPTER XIV. WILLIAM I.—1066 to 1087. How William the First made cruel and oppressive laws; how he took the land from the English and gave it to the Norman barons, and how he caused Domesday Book to be written. A great change was made in England after the Duke of Normandy became king. All the Normans spoke French, and the English spoke their own language; so at first they could not understand one another. By degrees the Normans learnt English; and some of their French words got into our language; but the old English was for the most part the same as that which you and I speak and write now. The Normans were used to live in finer and larger houses than the English. So when they came to England they laughed at the long low wooden houses they found, and built high castles of stone for themselves, and made chimneys in their rooms, with the hearth on one side, instead of in the middle of the floor, as I told you the English had it in King Athelstane’s time. There was one law the Normans made, which vexed the English very much. In the old times, anybody who found a wild animal, such as a deer, or a hare, or a partridge, or pheasant, in his fields or garden, or even in the woods, might kill it, and bring it home for his family to eat. But when the Normans came, they would not allow anybody but themselves, or some of the English noblemen, to hunt and kill wild animals; and if they found a poor person doing so, they used either to put out his eyes, to cut off his hand, or to make him pay a great deal of money; and this they called “The Forest Law.” I must say I think the new King William behaved very cruelly about this. He was so fond of hunting himself, although he would not let the poor Saxons hunt, that he turned the people out of a great many villages in Hampshire, and pulled down their houses, and spoilt their gardens, to make a great forest for himself and the Norman barons to hunt in, and that part of the country is still called “The New Forest.” There was another rule which William made, and which the English did not like, but I am not sure whether it was wrong; and as he made the Normans obey it, as well as the English, it was fair at least. I must tell you what it was; he made everybody put out their fires at eight o’clock at night, at the ringing of a church bell, which was called the Curfew Bell. Now, though it might have been of use to some people to keep a fire later, yet, as almost all the houses, both in the towns and the country, were built of wood, it was much safer for everybody to put out the fire early.