An able general, strong in battle and still stronger in strategy and craft, a skilful diplomat, a born ruler of men, William was yet greater in the combination of vision, patience, and masterful will which make the statesman, and the results of his statesmanship are writ large on the page of English history. To his contemporaries his most striking characteristic was his pitiless strength and inflexible will, and if they had been familiar with Nietzsche’s theory of the ‘overman,’ they would certainly have placed him in that class. Stark and stern and wrathful, the author of the Anglo-Saxon _Chronicle_ approaches him, as Freeman well says,[23] “with downcast eyes and bated breath, as if he were hardly dealing with a man of like passions with himself but were rather drawing the portrait of a being of another nature.” This, the most adequate characterization of the _Uebermensch_ of the eleventh century, runs as follows:[24] If any would know what manner of man king William was, the glory that he obtained, and of how many lands he was lord; then will we describe him as we have known him, we, who have looked upon him and who once lived in his court. This king William, of whom we are speaking, 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 towards those who withstood his will. He founded a noble monastery on the spot where God permitted him to conquer England, and he established monks in it, and he made it very rich. In his days the great monastery at Canterbury was built, and many others also throughout England; moreover this land was filled with monks who lived after the rule of St. Benedict; and such was the state of religion in his days that all that would might observe that which was prescribed by their respective orders. King William was also held in much reverence: he wore his crown three times every year when he was in England: at Easter he wore it at Winchester, at Pentecost at Westminster, and at Christmas at Gloucester. And at these times, all the men of England were with him, archbishops, bishops, abbots, and earls, thanes, and knights. So also, was he a very stern and a 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 abbots from their offices, and he imprisoned thanes, and at length he spared not his own brother Odo. This Odo was a very powerful bishop in Normandy, his see was that of Bayeux, and he was foremost to serve the king. He had an earldom in England, and when William was in Normandy he was the first man in this country, and him did he cast into prison. Amongst other things the good order that William established is