He had vices in his composition, and great ones; but they were the vices of a great mind: ambition, the malady of every extensive genius,--and avarice, the madness of the wise: one chiefly actuated his youth,--the other governed his age. The vices of young and light minds, the joys of wine and the pleasures of love, never reached his aspiring nature. The general run of men he looked on with contempt, and treated with cruelty when they opposed him. Nor was the rigor of his mind to be softened but with the appearance of extraordinary fortitude in his enemies, which, by a sympathy congenial to his own virtues, always excited his admiration and insured his mercy. So that there were often seen in this one man, at the same time, the extremes of a savage cruelty, and a generosity that does honor to human nature. Religion, too, seemed to have a great influence on his mind, from policy, or from better motives; but his religion was displayed in the regularity with which he performed its duties, not in the submission he showed to its ministers, which was never more than what good government required. Yet his choice of a counsellor and favorite was, not according to the mode of the time, out of that order, and a choice that does honor to his memory. This was Lanfranc, a man of great learning for the times, and extraordinary piety. He owed his elevation to William; but though always inviolably faithful, he never was the tool or flatterer of the power which raised him; and the greater freedom he showed, the higher he rose in the confidence of his master. By mixing with the concerns of state he did not lose his religion and conscience, or make them the covers or instruments of ambition; but tempering the fierce policy of a new power by the mild lights of religion, he became a blessing to the country in which he was promoted. The English owed to the virtue of this stranger, and the influence he had on the king, the little remains of liberty they continued to enjoy, and at last such a degree of his confidence as in some sort counterbalanced the severities of the former part of his reign. FOOTNOTES: [72] I have known, myself, great mistakes in calculation by computing, as the produce of every day in the year, that of one extraordinary day. [73] The Bishop of Winchester fined for not putting the king in mind to give a girdle to the Countess of Albemarle.--Robertus de Vallibus debet quinque optimos palafredos, ut rex taceret de uxore Henrici Pinel.--The wife of Hugh do Nevil fined in two hundred hens, that she might lie with, her husband for one night; another, that he might rise from, his infirmity; a third, that he might eat. [74] For some particulars of the condition of the English of this time, vide Eadmer, p. 110. [75] Upon occasion of a ward refused in marriage. Wright thinks the feudal right of marriage not then introduced. CHAPTER III. REIGN OF WILLIAM THE SECOND, SURNAMED RUFUS. [Sidenote: A.D. 1087.]