As Lord Hereward had ever been averse to cruelty, and constant in his endeavours to prevent his people being cruel to the prisoners they took in battle, the Normans had no scores of vengeance against him; and when they found that they were not to be gratified by dividing his broad lands among them, as they had long expected to do, they lived in a neighbourly manner with him, and even sought his friendship. Not one of them but allowed that he had been a great warrior; and when the monks of their nation, who had seen much of the war in England with their own eyes, began to chronicle the war and to relate the high emprises of William the Conqueror, maugre their Norman prejudices they paid a tribute of praise and admiration to the military skill, and the indomitable courage, and perseverance of Hereward, the son of Leofric, Lord of Brunn. There were troubles in the land after the year of grace one thousand and seventy-six, but they came not near to Brunn. Twenty-four years after the submission of Hereward, when the Conqueror was in his grave, and his son Rufus had been slain by the arrow of a Norman knight, his other son, Henry the Clerk, ascended the throne, and in so doing he passed the good Charter called the Charter of Liberties, whereby he restored the laws of King Edward the Confessor, and engaged to redress all the grievances of the two preceding reigns. And shortly after his accession to the throne, King Henry still further conciliated his Anglo-Saxon subjects by espousing a Saxon wife, the fair Maud, daughter of Malcolm, King of Scots, and of Margaret the good queen, the relation of King Edward the Confessor, and of the right kingly kin of England. Maud had been sent from Scotland at a very early age and committed to the care of her English aunt Christina, the pious Abbess of Wilton. Many great Norman lords, as Alain the Lord of Richmond, and William de Garenne, Earl of Surrey, had asked her in marriage, but she had refused them all; and even when Henry Beauclerc, a crowned and anointed king, made suit for her hand, and offered to place her by his side on the throne which her ancestors had sat upon for ages, she testified a preference for the quiet religious life she was leading; and it required the representations and entreaties of many noble Saxon friends to make her forego her purpose of entering into religion. “Oh most noble and fair among women,” said these Saxons, “if thou wilt, thou canst restore the ancient honour of England, and be a pledge of reconciliation and friendship; but if thou art obstinate in thy refusal, the enmity between the two races will endure, and the shedding of human blood know no end!” To these representations she yielded; and those Saxons who had advised her lived to see much good to England proceed from the marriage, which was a great step towards that intermixture of the Saxon and Norman races which had been begun many years before, and which we have since seen proceed so rapidly. The