The peasants clamored for their right to be equal with their neighbors, and no doubt many a small landholder joined them, who did not wish to swear fealty to his over-lord. In the /Roman de Rou/, an old chronicle which keeps together many traditions about early [Pg095] Normandy that else might have been forgotten, we find one of these piteous harangues. Perhaps it is not authentic, but it gives the spirit of the times so well that it ought to have a place here: "The lords do nothing but evil; we cannot obtain either reason or justice from them; they have all, they take all, eat all, and make us live in poverty and suffering. Every day with us is a day of pain; we gain nought by our labors, there are so many dues and services. Why do we allow ourselves to be thus treated? Let us place ourselves beyond their power; we too are men, we have the same limbs, the same height, the same power of endurance, and we are a hundred to one. Let us swear to defend each other; let us be firmly knit together, and no man shall be lord over us; we shall be free from tolls and taxes, free to fell trees, to take game and fish, and do as we will in all things, in the wood, in the meadow, on the water!" At this time the larger portion of Normandy was what used to be called forest. That word meant something more than woodland; it belonged then to tracts of wild country, woodland and moorland and marshes, and these were the possession of the crown. The peasants had in the old days a right, or a custom at any rate, of behaving as if the forests were their own, but more and more they had been restricted, and the unaccustomed yoke galled them bitterly. Besides their being forbidden to hunt and fish in the forests, the water-ways were closed from them, taxes imposed, and their time and labor demanded on the duke's lands. There had been grants [Pg096] of these free tracts of country to the new nobility, and with the lands the new lords claimed also the service of the peasantry. The people do not appear to have risen against the duke himself, so much as against their immediate oppressors, and it was one of these who was to be their punisher. You remember that Richard the Fearless' mother, Espriota, married, in the troublous times of his boyhood, a rich countryman called Sperling. They had a son called Raoul of Ivry, who seems to have been high in power and favor with the second Richard, his half-brother, and who now entered upon his cruel task with evident liking. He had been brought up among the country-folk, although he stood at this time next to the duke in office.