Roger de Toesny refused allegiance to begin with, and with loud expressions of his scorn of the Bastard, began to lay waste his neighbors' lands as if they, too, had been Saracens and merited any sort of punishment. We first hear the name of De Beaumont, famous enough ever since, in an account of a battle which some of Roger's outraged victims waged against him. Grantmesnil, too, is a name that we shall know very well by and by, when William has gone over to England with his Norman lords. Normandy never got over its excitement and apparent astonishment at William's presence and claims; but even in his boyhood he was the leader of a party. "So lively and spirited was he, that it seemed to all a marvel," says one of the old chroniclers, with enthusiasm. When he began to take deep interest in his affairs, the news of revolts and disorderliness in the country moved him to violent fits of irritation, but he soon learned to hide these instinctively, and the chronicle goes on to say that he "had welling up in his child's heart all the vigor of a man to teach the Normans to forbear from all acts of irregularity." In this outbreak against de Toesny he found an irresistible temptation to assert his mastery, and boy as he was, he really made himself felt; De Toesny was killed in the fierce little battle, and his death gave a temporary relief from such uprisings; but William comes more and more to the front, and all Normandy takes sides either for or against him. This was no insignificant pretender, but one to be feared; his guardians and faithful men who had held to him for good or bad reasons, were mostly put out of the way [Pg199] by their enemies, and there was nobody at last who could lead the Bastard's men to battle better than he could himself.