He had no conception of making a bargain or valuing wares, and a trader could unload his goods on him at any price, and a soldier demand any pay. He wished the price of his clothes to be extravagant, and was disdainful of cheapness. One morning, when he was putting on new boots, he asked the chamberlain how much they had cost, and when he replied “Three shillings,” he shouted indignantly and angrily, “Bastard! how long has the king worn boots at that mean price? go and fetch me a pair worth a mark of silver.” He went, and bringing a much cheaper pair falsely said that they had cost as much as the king had commanded. “Ah!” said the king, “those are fit for the royal majesty.” So the chamberlain used afterwards to charge him what he pleased for his clothes, and bought many a thing for his own benefit. THE REBELLION OF BISHOP ODO (1088). =Source.=--William of Malmesbury, _De gestis regum Anglorum_, ed. Stubbs, vol. ii., p. 360. (Rolls Series.) At the beginning of Spring the first struggle was against Odo, the king’s uncle, bishop of Bayeux. For when, as I have related, on his release from prison, he had established his nephew Robert in the duchy of Normandy, he came to England and received from the king the earldom of Kent; but seeing how all things in England were administered not according to his will as before (for the control of public affairs had been entrusted to William bishop of Durham), he was smitten with jealousy, and himself deserting the king, he intrigued also with many others, urging that Robert was of an easier disposition and had tempered his youthful excesses with great hardships, and therefore deserved the realm; William, on the other hand, carefully brought up as he was, and overbearing and brutal, as his face itself proved, would set at nought all right and justice; soon they would lose the honours so strenuously won; they would have gained nothing by the father’s death, if the son slew those whom the father had imprisoned. These complaints were first made in secret by him and Roger of Montgomery, and by Geoffrey bishop of Coutances, with his nephew Robert earl of Northumberland; afterwards they interchanged letters and plotted openly. Even William bishop of Durham, the king’s confidant, had joined in their treason; a source of grave concern to the king, it is said, because he at once lost a friend and was deprived of supplies from the distant provinces. Thereupon Odo conveyed booty of all kinds to Rochester, laying waste the king’s demesnes in Kent, and especially the lands of the archbishop, against whom he breathed an undying hatred, since, as he alleged, it was by the archbishop’s advice that his brother had cast him into prison. This charge was true enough, for when the elder William had complained to Lanfranc of his brother’s desertion, Lanfranc said, “Seize and imprison him!” “What!” he replied, “he is a clerk.” To which the archbishop rejoined, with playful wit,