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William the Conqueror   /wˈɪljəm ðə kˈɑŋkərər/   Listen
William the Conqueror

noun
1.
Duke of Normandy who led the Norman invasion of England and became the first Norman to be King of England; he defeated Harold II at the battle of Hastings in 1066 and introduced many Norman customs into England (1027-1087).  Synonym: William I.






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"William the Conqueror" Quotes from Famous Books



... Edward's visit, William the Conqueror's messengers came before the chief men of Exeter demanding their submission. But the citizens sent back the lofty answer that 'they would acknowledge William as Emperor of Britain; they would not receive him as their ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... said to date from the Norman Conquest, so we may say that in Japan its rise was simultaneous with the ascendency of Yoritomo, late in the twelfth century. As, however, in England, we find the social elements of feudalism far back in the period previous to William the Conqueror, so, too, the germs of feudalism in Japan had been long existent before the period ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... wards, protected gateways, drawbridges and other tactical devices, conveys an impression of power. On the Bishop-hill side of the river there remains the mound (Baile Hill) on which the other castle was erected by order of William the Conqueror. The whole city is enclosed by defensive works consisting of an embattled wall on a mound, with a moat or protecting ditch running parallel to it. At intervals along the walls there are towers. Where the four main roads enter ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson

... it's one of the slowest growin' of all forest trees. I calculate that every inch of diameter represents at the very least ten years of growth. Eight feet equal ninety-six inches; an' that means nine hundred and sixty years. So you see the tree was quite a hundred years old at the time when William the Conqueror ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... often met him coming from school, and questioned him about his grammar and logic, and always gave him three or four pieces of money, and then sent him to the royal larder to refresh himself—two forms of kindness that a school-boy never forgets. Ingulphus afterward became the secretary of William the Conqueror. In his day there was no glazing to this cloister, and the rain, wind, and snow must have swept pitilessly over the novices turning and spelling out their manuscripts. They had, indeed, a carpet of hay or rushes, and ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... his Biographia Dramatica, that he was "a writer or compiler of plays, who lived in the reigns of Charles II. and his two successors." He was descended from the family of the Ravenscrofts, in Flintshire; a family, as he himself, in a dedication asserts, so ancient that when William the Conqueror came into England, one of his nobles ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere

... The Mahometan doctors still dispute, whether Mecca was reduced by force or consent, (Abulfeda, p. 107, et Gagnier ad locum;) and this verbal controversy is of as much moment as our own about William the Conqueror.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... horseback, and mountaineers at sea. Nay, the same effect is sometimes produced merely by different forms of danger within the same sphere. Sea-captains often attach an exaggerated sense of peril to small boats; Conde confessed himself a coward in a street-fight; and William the Conqueror is said to have trembled exceedingly (rehementer tremens) during the disturbance which interrupted his coronation. It was probably from the same cause, that Mrs. Inchbald, the most fearless of actresses, was once entirely overcome by timidity on assuming ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... glistening in the brook, made her the mother of William the Conqueror," says Palgrave's "History of Normandy and England." "Had she not thus fascinated Duke Robert the Liberal, of Normandy, Harold would not have fallen at Hastings, no Anglo-Norman dynasty could ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... the porch, with the little chap beside him, and they gravely watched the gulls circling over the water. Yves is very big and rough looking, and his black beard is impressive. He gives one rather the idea of what the men must have been, who manned the ships of William the Conqueror, than the notion of a conventional Frenchman. Yet there is in him something very soft and tender, which appears when he looks at that child, with deep dark eyes that always seem to behold things beyond the ordinary ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick

... this: A number of centuries ago, a certain prince from France—or rather from Normandy, which is a part of France—came over to England with an army and conquered the country. His name was William; and on account of his conquest of England, he received the name of William the Conqueror. He parcelled out a great portion of the land, and all the offices and powers of government, among the nobles and generals that came with him; and they and their descendants have held the property and the power to the present ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott

... effective blaze. For Ham, whose face revealed as little of what went on back of his eyes as an Indian's, was the dreamer, too, though his dreams were cut to a different pattern. As he dealt in visions, so William the Conqueror may have dealt when a boy in his father's bakeshop; so Napoleon may have dreamed before the world had heard his name. The younger lad dreamed as the hasheesh-eater, for the vague and iridescent glory of visioning, but the elder dreamed otherwise, ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... to detest it," said Peggy, laughing. "Julius Caesar, and William the Conqueror, and all those people used to bore me dreadfully, though Margaret did her very best to make them interesting; didn't ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards

... stone—wood for dwelling, and stone for worship; at PONT AUDEMER, the simple domestic architecture of the middle ages, and at LISIEUX, the more ornate and luxurious; passing on to CAEN, he will have (in ecclesiastical architecture) the memorial churches of William the Conqueror, and, in the neighbouring city of BAYEUX (in one building), examples of the 'early,' as well as the more elaborate, gothic of ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn

... of the invasion of England by William the Conqueror, the Normans wore their hair very short. Harold, in his progress towards Hastings, sent forward spies to view the strength and number of the enemy. They reported, amongst other things, on their return, that "the host ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... descendant of a family of that name, who came to England with William the Conqueror—and settled under grants from the crown in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire—three separate branches of the family having received the honor of ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... Flood it had all to be begun over again,' said Ivinghoe. 'Let me see, Methuselah lived about as long as from William the Conqueror till now. I think he might have got to steam ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... shall feel much obliged for references to the early seals of the English branch of the family of De Burgh, descended from Harlowen De Burgh, and Arlotta, mother of William the Conqueror, especially of that English branch whose armorial bearings were—Or a cross gules: also for information whether the practice, in reference to the spelling of names, was such as to render Barow, of the latter part of the fifteenth century, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various

... was himself half Norman and half English, says that the Normans had become very effeminate in his time, and that after the death of William the Conqueror sodomy was common both in England and Normandy. Guillaume de Nangis, in his chronicle for about 1120, speaking of the two sons of Henry and the company of young nobles who went down with them, in the White Ship, states that nearly all were considered to be sodomists, and Henry of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... possession of landed estates and manorial privileges in the county of Durham, such as were enjoyed only by those, or their descendants, who had come over from Normandy with the Conqueror, or fought under his standard. When William the Conqueror laid waste the whole country north of the Humber, in punishment of the insurrection of the Northumbrians, he apportioned the estates among his followers, and advanced Normans and other foreigners to the principal ecclesiastical ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... stone. In the next century it was burned, but rebuilt by another pious prince, and probably repaired by yet another after the Danes took the city a hundred years later. It was then in a good state to be destroyed by that devout William the Conqueror, who came to take the Saxon world in its sins of guttling and guzzling. The first Norman archbishop reconstructed or restored the church, and then it began to rise and to spread in glory—nave, transepts, and choir, ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells

... the prejudices of his station, took advantage of the weakness of the country, after it had been torn by civil war, usurped supreme power, and became the most arbitrary monarch England had seen since William the Conqueror. No one doubts his genius, and it seems strange that any one should doubt his ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... to be no special reason for departing from the custom. Some authorities state that the Bayeux tapestry was made by the Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I., while others consider it the achievement of Queen Matilda, the wife of William the Conqueror. She is recorded to have sat quietly awaiting her lord's coming while she embroidered this quaint souvenir of his prowess in conquest. A veritable mediaeval Penelope, it is claimed that she directed her ladies in this work, which is thoroughly Saxon in feeling and ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... I fear. However, Heaven bless her, she is too soft to say 'nay.' But those Jesuits are so smooth-tongued to women. 'Gad, they threaten damnation with such an irresistible air, that they are as much like William the Conqueror as Edward the Confessor. Ha! master Aubrey, have you become amorous of the old Jacobite, that you sigh over his crabbed writing, as if it ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Question. Who was WILLIAM the Conqueror? Answer. The Managing Director of an Exploration Company composed of the most ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 18, 1893 • Various

... were as conspicuous as his abilities. Two years before the Memorial was burnt, his Historia Anglo-Scotica, purporting to give an impartial history of the events that occurred between England and Scotland from William the Conqueror to Queen Elizabeth, was burnt at Edinburgh (June 30th, 1703). It was dedicated to Sir Edward Seymour, one of the Queen's Commissioners for the Union, and a High Churchman; and as it also expressed the hope that the Union would afford the Scotch ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer

... represent a palm-tree-the symbol, as we shall see, in America, of Aztlan, or Atlantis. We have but to compare the pictures of the ships upon these ancient razor-knives with the accompanying representations of a Roman galley and a ship of William the Conqueror's time, to see that there can be no question that they represented the galleys of that remote age. They are doubtless faithful portraits of the great vessels which Plato described as filling ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... running down the English in public after that—except to say that they couldn't be simple and natural if they tried; and that they affected a ridiculous accent when they spoke French—not Josselin and Maurice, but all the others he had ever met. As if plain French, which had been good enough for William the Conqueror, wasn't good enough for the subjects ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... about your tariffs,' I said, 'but when I get to Cape Town I write home for money, and I turn in every cent my board'll cost your country to any ten-century-old department that's been ordained to take it since William the Conqueror came along.' ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... Irishman. Gilbert was a friend of the famous thinker and ecclesiastical statesman, Anselm, who was archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. The two men met each other for the first time at Rouen, probably in 1087, when Anselm was called thither to the deathbed of William the Conqueror. Twenty years later, Gilbert, then bishop of Limerick, wrote a letter of congratulation to Anselm on his victory over Henry I. in the controversy concerning investiture (August 1107). In his reply Anselm intimates that the ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor

... cloister garth from the tomb he had there set up for its temporary reception, until his church was sufficiently advanced to permit of its removal thither. It was visited by large numbers of pilgrims, and many important personages were among them. Of these may be mentioned William the Conqueror, Henry III. (1255), Edward II. (1322), and Henry VI. (1448). The shrine was destroyed soon after the surrender of the monastery to the Crown, in 1540, when the body was buried beneath the place where its former receptacle had stood. There have since this time been traditions ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate

... received from a correspondent, which perplexed him sadly. It was written in Norman-French in very ancient characters, and so faded and mouldered away as to be almost illegible. It was apparently an old Norman drinking song, that might have been brought over by one of William the Conqueror's carousing followers. The writing was just legible enough to keep a keen antiquity hunter on a doubtful chase; here and there he would be completely thrown out, and then there would be a few words so plainly written as to put him ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... Cooper for a wedding gift to his only living daughter, Ann, when she married George Pomeroy, grandson of Gen. Seth Pomeroy and lineal descendant of that Sir Ralph de Pomeroy who came to England with William the Conqueror. In this quaint gable appear the intertwined letters G.A.P.C.—the initials of the bridegroom and bride,—with the date ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips

... the fine old beasts I shot,' he said, looking back, a grandfather and a quiet English gentleman, to the old wild hunting days; and if, as the chroniclers tell us, William the Conqueror 'loved the high deer as if he were their father,' so his nineteenth-century namesake had a warm corner in his heart for the lion and the buffalo, and the great, clumsy, fierce rhinoceros, against which he matched himself ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... not in condition for writing, I left the study, but I couldn't hold in—had to do something; so I spent eight hours in the sun with a yardstick, measuring off the reigns of the English kings on the roads in these grounds, from William the Conqueror to 1883, calculating to invent an open-air game which shall fill the children's heads with dates without study. I give each king's reign one foot of space to the year and drive one stake in the ground to mark the beginning ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... boyish tenor voice. He is the son of an English nobleman who has a Welsh estate, upon which he passes a portion of his time, and can trace his lineage back to one of the Norman adventurers who came over with William the Conqueror. For an example of an older aristocracy than this, however, observe the ancient couple sitting near us in the shadow of a cliff-rock, the wife with a high-bridged nose and puffs of gray hair on her temples, the husband with an easy-fitting hat and a coat-collar which rolls so high as to give the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... was founded in 1078, by William the Conqueror, for the purpose of protecting and controlling the city. To make room for his chief buildings he removed two bastions of the old wall of London, and encroached slightly upon the civic boundaries. ...
— Authorised Guide to the Tower of London • W. J. Loftie

... Then came William the Conqueror, a Norman, Then William the Second, his son; Then Henry and Stephen and Henry, Then Richard ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... time, an act of parliament, made in the reign of William the Conqueror, was pleaded in the case of the Abbey of St. Edmund's Bury, and judicially allowed by the court. Hence it appears that parliaments or general councils are coeval ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various

... the Roses. I am sure that he sets more store by a direct and authentic descent from one of the company of the Mayflower than the Englishman does by an equally direct and authentic line back to the days of William the Conqueror. Incidentally it may be said that the American will talk more about it. But while in America all classes exist, they are not fenced apart, as in England, in fact any more than they are in theory. The American people (pace the leaders of the ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... the great Cluniac Priory of St. Pancras, at Lewes. It is well-known that the original founders, in 1078, were William de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, of a great Norman family, and his wife Gundred, the daughter of William the Conqueror and his Queen Matilda; that they pulled down an old wooden church to replace it by a stone one, and that after their deaths in 1085 and 1088, they were buried in the chapter-house of their Priory. So effectual, however, ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... was anxious that the boy should be christened Roger de Dickey, after her mother's great progenitor, who was said to have come over with William the Conqueror, but whether in the capacity of a lacquey or a lord-in-waiting was never, and perhaps never will be, determined. (Opposed by Agamemnon, on the ground that ill-natured people would be sure to dispense with the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various

... Jean, shady boulevards, and public gardens enhance the attraction which the town derives from an abundance of fine churches and old houses. Hardly any remains of its once extensive ramparts and towers are now to be seen; but the castle, founded by William the Conqueror and completed by Henry I., is still employed as barracks, though in a greatly altered condition. St Pierre, the most beautiful church in Caen, stands at the northern extremity of the rue St Jean, in the centre of the town. In the main, its architecture is Gothic, but the choir and the apsidal ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... altar was unearthed in the neighbourhood. The monastery which stood here, like that on Holy Island, was, in later times, inhabited by Benedictine monks, who were under the authority of the Prior of Tynemouth. William the Conqueror gave the then Prior the right to collect the tithes of ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry

... chap raised his eyebrows at the question, and glanced round as if apologizing to each massive pillar in turn. Well, he said, he would hardly call the hall modern, as it had been built by William the Conqueror, but perhaps the lady might be used to older things at home. With that, he turned on an indignant heel, and led us out to the courtyard where wretched Edward II.'s brother, the Duke of Kent, was executed. He has the same old trick of being "sorry to say" whenever he has anything tragic or gruesome ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... of the constituents required for the growth of that particular tree or trees. This I believe to be one of the fallacies handed down from past ages, taken for granted, and never questioned. Nowhere does the English oak grow better than where it grew when William the Conqueror found it at the time he invaded Britain. Where do you find white pines growing better than in parts of New England where this tree has grown from time immemorial? Where can you find young redwoods growing more thriftily than among their giant ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various

... because they were poorer, and depended more entirely upon plunder for their subsistence. There was but little difference of race between the peoples on the opposite side of the border. Both were largely of mixed Danish and Anglo-Saxon blood; for, when William the Conqueror carried fire and sword through Northumbria, great numbers of the inhabitants moved north, and settled in the district beyond the reach of the ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty

... Danish a a rau, help me, a cry raised by the Normans in flying from a king of Denmark, named Roux, who made himself duke of Normandy. The haro had anciently such vast power, that a poor man of the city of Caen, named Asselin, in virtue thereof, arrested the corpse of William the Conqueror, in the middle of the funeral procession, till such time as his son Henry had paid the value of the land in question, which was that whereon the chapel was built wherein he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various

... much: for how then can we have a still softer form in Danish Leicester itself? Probably we shall be nearer the truth if we say that these are late names; for Northumberland was a desert long after the great harrying by William the Conqueror; and by the time it was repeopled, Chester had become the recognised English form, so that it would naturally be employed by the new occupants of the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... red cross of Saint George (patron saint of England) extending to the edges of the flag and a yellow equal-armed cross of William the Conqueror superimposed ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... William the Conqueror,[578] relates that the Normans were as much struck on the Conqueror's return into Normandy with the splendid embroidered garments of the Saxon nobles, as with the beauty of the Saxon youth. Queen Matilda, who evidently appreciated ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... geographer travelled through Spain, France, the Western Mediterranean, and North Africa before settling at the Norman Court of Palermo. Roger, the most civilised prince in Christendom, the final product of the great race of Robert Guiscard and William the Conqueror, valued Edrisi at his proper worth, refused to part with him, and employed men in every part of the world to collect materials for his study. Thus the Moor gained, not only for the Moslem world but for Southern Europe as well, an approximate knowledge even of Norway, ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... several families of the name of Fenton, yet they are all branches from one flock, which is a very antient and opulent family: Our author's mother being immediately descended from one Mare, an officer in William the Conqueror's army. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... 1501."—Constables Miscellany, Vol. xx, p. 147. The Saxon alphabet was mostly Roman. Not more than one quarter of the letters have other forms. But the changes, though few, give to a printed page a very different appearance. Under William the Conqueror, this alphabet was superseded by the modern Gothic, Old English, or Black letter; which, in its turn, happily gave place to the present Roman. The Germans still use a type similar to the Old English, but not ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... Alfred[39], and that Oxford was a place of study in the time of Edward the Confessor (1041-66). If one may quote a book now considered to be 'a monkish forgery and an exploded authority,' Ingulfus, who was Abbot of Croyland, in the Isle of Ely, under William the Conqueror, says of himself that he was educated first at Westminster, and then passed to Oxford, where he made proficiency in such books of Aristotle as were then accessible to students,[40] and in the first two books of Tully's Rhetoric.—Malden, On the ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... there are many persons who bear that name, it is not conferred upon them to indicate any qualities, or any thing which belongs to them in common; and can not be said to be affirmed of them in any sense at all, consequently not in the same sense. "The king who succeeded William the Conqueror," is also an individual name. For, that there can not be more than one person of whom it can be truly affirmed, is implied in the meaning of the words. Even "the king," when the occasion or the context defines the individual ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... and disembarking them with celerity. Omens were resorted to for keeping up the enthusiasm which the presence of the First Consul naturally inspired. A Roman battle-axe was said to be found when they removed the earth to pitch Bonaparte's tent or barrack; and medals of William the Conqueror were produced, as having been dug up upon the same honoured spot. These were pleasant bodings, yet perhaps did not altogether, in the minds of the soldiers, counterbalance the sense of insecurity impressed on them by the prospect of being packed together ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various

... not care a straw; so that if, as I suspect, your exile arises from some quarrel with your government—which, being foreign, he takes for granted must be insupportable—he would but consider you as he would a Saxon who fled from the iron hand of William the Conqueror, or a Lancastrian expelled by the Yorkists in ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... manor of Berry was given by William the Conqueror to one of his Normans, Ralph de la Pomerai, who built on it the castle which still bears his name, and in whose family it continued till the reign of Edward VI. when it was sold by Sir Thomas Pomeroy to Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, from ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... trace their descent from men who came over with William the Conqueror: a poor eight centuries is a thing to be proud of. There may be older families in France, Italy, and elsewhere. Duke K'ung traces his, through a line of which every scion appears more of less in history, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... difference, and when a man lives altogether in the country, as I do, it seems to signify so much more. But if you go back to old county families, Lady Chiltern, the Spooners have been here pretty nearly as long as the Pallisers,—if not longer. The Desponders, from whom we come, came over with William the Conqueror." ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... flowers, with flowers than with animals, with animals than with men; the work of the architect less than of the bishop; first transformation of art, all impressed with theocratic and military discipline, taking root in the Lower Empire, and stopping with the time of William the Conqueror. Impossible to place our Cathedral in that other family of lofty, aerial churches, rich in painted windows and sculpture; pointed in form, bold in attitude; communal and bourgeois as political symbols; free, capricious, lawless, as a work of art; second transformation ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... to treat their memory with becoming honour. Such arms were also in a sense necessary to their descendants for the purposes of quartering. No proof can be shown that the arms said to have been borne by WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR are not of this order—made for him, that is, and attributed to him in after times, but of which he himself had no knowledge. These arms, No. 22, differ from the true Royal Insignia of England only in there being two, instead of three, lions displayed upon the ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell

... of Prince Henry, son of William the Conqueror, afterwards Henry I., that is so frequently recorded in the old chronicles that it is doubtless authentic. The following version of the incident is taken from Hayward's Life of William the Conqueror, ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... Long before William the Conqueror, there dwelt a man in the Isle of Ely, named Thomas Hickathrift, a poor laboring man, but so strong that he was able to do in one day the ordinary work of two. He had an only son, whom he christened Thomas, after his own name. The old man put his ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... means to infer that it was lately restored, or that the date itself was a later addition, is not quite clear. The characters of the inscription Planche pointed out correspond in form with those at the time of William the Conqueror, and as sepulchral effigies are uncommon until the middle of the twelfth century, the presumption is in its favour; still it is somewhat pathetic to find that the evidence which serves to connect this otherwise unknown monument with the famous St. Osmund, the greatest figure, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White

... Dr. Russell's courier assisted in obtaining conveyances for the whole of our party, and we were soon rolling away in the direction of Mantes-la-Jolie, famous as the town where William the Conqueror, whilst bent on pillage and destruction, received the injuries which caused his death. Here we had to report ourselves to the German Commander, who, to the general consternation, began by refusing its permission to proceed. He did so because most of the safe-conducts ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... doesn't understand English," thought Alice; "I daresay it's a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror." (For, with all her knowledge of history, Alice had no very clear notion how long ago anything had happened.) So she began again: "Ou est ma chatte?" which was the first sentence in her French lesson-book. The Mouse ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll

... ii, 29. Touching the ceremony of visiting the tomb of the Bishop of London, to whom the citizens were indebted for the charter of William the Conqueror, see chap. i, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... said Mrs. Warren. "I come of a very hold family. My ancestors come hover with William the Conqueror." ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade

... favour. They stopped her at Warwick—to see what? two old towers that don't match, {105a} and a portcullis that (people say) opens only upon fast-days. Charlecote Hall, I could have told her sweet Highness, was built by those Lucys who came over with Julius Caesar and William the Conqueror, with cross and scallop-shell ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... too much might be said for the scope and limits of this paper: brief mention must suffice. It is the old capital of the island. The remains of a Roman villa were discovered about a dozen years since; the old church dates from the time of William the Conqueror; and the grand old castle, connected with almost every era of English history, had for its nucleus a Saxon stronghold, which succeeded a Roman fortress, as that in turn succeeded a Celtic camp. The ruin covers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... merchant, and yet are received by weight, and not by tale, in the same manner as ingots of gold and bars of silver are at present. The revenues of the ancient Saxon kings of England are said to have been paid, not in money, but in kind, that is, in victuals and provisions of all sorts. William the Conqueror introduced the custom of paying them in money. This money, however, was for a long time, received at the exchequer, by weight, and ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... Squire the story to tell Of his riches and high descent, As it fell into one rosy shell of an ear Out of its mate it went; How one grim old ancestor into the land With William the Conqueror came, She thought, the sweet, of a conqueror She ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley

... reason my father would oft-times affirm, there was not an oath from the great and tremendous oath of William the conqueror (By the splendour of God) down to the lowest oath of a scavenger (Damn your eyes) which was not to be found in Ernulphus.—In short, he would add—I defy a man ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... three oak trees in Donnington Park near Newbury. Not one of them is now, I believe, in existence. There is an oak tree in Windsor Forest above 1000 years old. In the hollow of this tree twenty people might be accommodated with standing room. It is called King's Oak: it was William the Conqueror's favorite tree. Herne's Oak in Windsor Park, is said by some to be still standing, but it is described as ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... century that the inhabitants of Arques were, partly from the convenience of the fisheries, and partly from the advantages of the salt trade, induced to form this settlement. Whatever date may be assigned to the foundation of Dieppe, it is frequently contended that William the Conqueror embarked here for the invasion of England, and it seems undoubted that he sailed hence for his new kingdom in the next year, agreeably to the following passage from Ordericus Vitalis, (p. 509) by which you will observe, that the river had at that time ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... before the invasion of the Franks, could possibly have been spoken, or even understood in Gaul: admitting these premises, I say, it necessarily follows, that the language introduced into England under Alfred, and afterwards more universally established by Edward the Confessor, and William the Conqueror, must have been an emanation of the Romance, very near akin to that of the abovementioned oath, and consequently to that which is now spoken ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.

... the home of Becky Sharp," I answered. Becky Sharp was as much a part of English history to me as Henry VIII or Anne Boleyn or William the Conqueror. When my husband and I were alone he said: "I think they have picked out No. 21 Curzon Street as the house where Becky Sharp is supposed to have lived. But what a funny thing for you to want to ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown

... birthplace of Giraldus Cambrensis. (This is again a geographical indication which should be borne in mind.) Cadivor himself appears to have been on friendly terms with the Normans; he is said to have entertained William the Conqueror on his visit to St David's in 1080, while every reference we have to Bledri shows him in ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... you should be introduced in proper form to the famous Bayeux tapestry. Know then, in as few words as possible, that this celebrated piece of tapestry represents chiefly the Invasion of England by William the Conqueror, and the subsequent death of Harold at the battle of Hastings. It measures about 214 English feet in length, by about nineteen inches in width; and is supposed to have been worked under the particular superintendence and direction of Matilda, the wife of the Conqueror. It was ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... a book about old English games; not games of chance, but games for holidays and parties. I was glancing through it in my car on the way here from the shop. It's most interesting. Why, some of the games it tells about were played in England before William the Conqueror landed; at least so the author claims. Did you ever hear of a game called Shoe the Wild Mare? It was very popular in Queen Elizabeth's day. The ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... "for that it seemed exceeding profitable and commodious, because situate so near the Thames, the wood fit for game, and many other particulars lying there, meet and necessary for kings—yea, a place very convenient for his reception," William the Conqueror prevailed upon Abbot Edwin to accept in exchange for it Wakendune and Feringes, in Essex, together with three other tenements in Colchester; and having obtained possession of the coveted hill, he forthwith began to erect a castle upon it—occupying a space of about ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Westminster Hall, Pantheon. The Palace of St. James was Alma; Hampton Court, Convallium; Windsor, Mount Celia. By Hemisna, Harrington meant the river Trent. Past sovereigns of England he renamed for Oceana: William the Conqueror became Turbo; King John, Adoxus; Richard II, Dicotome; Henry VII, Panurgus; Henry VIII, Coraunus; Elizabeth, Parthenia; James I, Morpheus. He referred to Hobbes as Leviathan; and to Francis Bacon, as Verulamius. Oliver Cromwell ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... small hereditary estate, which, according to the tradition of the village where it lies, was bounded by the same hedges and ditches in William the Conqueror's time that it is at present, and has been delivered down from father to son whole and entire, without the loss or acquisition of a single field or meadow, during the space of six hundred years. There runs a story in the family, that before my birth my mother dreamt that she ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others

... have been particular in stating these facts, as they illustrate the history of races, especially of those races which composed the people of Virginia at the date of the Revolution; and it is something to know, that a descendant of one of those men, who, under William the Conqueror, wrested the empire of England from the successor of Alfred, and trod down beneath their iron hoofs the Anglo-Saxon people, aided in rescuing the colony of Virginia from the tyranny of George the Third, the inheritor of the blood as well as of the ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby

... said Jerry. "Well, they ought to have been ashamed of themselves. I don't care how high Mont Blanc is nor when William the Conqueror ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... son, the second Count of Flanders, married Elfrida, the daughter of Alfred. From this union descended the Conqueror's wife Matilda. Thus the present royal family of England can trace a direct descent through William the Conqueror, Alfred, and Charlemagne, and is allied by blood, remotely indeed, with most of the reigning ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... rather heavily, in spite of the companionship of William the Conqueror and Hereward the Saxon, of assisting the children in a wet day game of romps, and of shewing Dora and Winifred the contents of the box they had admired the day before. Helen and Lucy were sitting at work very comfortably ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... kingdom, who held it, and what it was distinctly: a vast work for an age of ignorance and time of confusion, which has been neglected in more civilized nations and settled times. It was called the Roll of Winton, and served as a model of a work of the same kind made by William the Conqueror. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... gallantry, until his regiment was surprised and cut to pieces by Poyntz, Cromwell's enterprising and successful general of cavalry. The defeated Cavalier escaped from the field of battle, and, like a true descendant of William the Conqueror, disdaining submission, threw himself into his own castellated mansion, which was attacked and defended in a siege of that irregular kind which caused the destruction of so many baronial residences during the course of those unhappy ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... Thimbleby, on his marriage with the heiress of Godfrey Hilton, whose ancestor, Sir Geoffrey Hilton, Knight, had obtained it in 1419, by his marriage with an heiress of the Luterels, several of whom were called to Parliament, as Barons, in the 13th century. This was one of fifteen manors given by William the Conqueror to Ralph Paganel; and with the heiress of his family it passed, by marriage, to Sir Andrew Luterel, Knight. The Thymblebyes would seem to have taken their patronymic from the village of that name (part of which now forms a portion of the Woodhall Spa parish), ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... Charter, originally written in Saxon, and granted by William the Conqueror to the Inhabitants ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various

... the Cohue Royale to the porch of the church. The Jurats in their red robes, the officers, sailors, and marines, added colour to the pageant. The coffin was covered by the flag of Jersey with the arms of William the Conqueror in the canton. Of the crowd some were curious, some stoical; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Harald Sigurdson (Hardrada) and his son Prince Olaf, who was their second cousin on their mother's side,[7] in an attack on England; and, after Harald's death, and his army's defeat by King Harold Godwinson of England at Stamford Bridge, in September 1066, (three days before William the Conqueror landed at Pevensey) the two Orkney jarls were taken prisoner, but, along with Prince Olaf, they were released. On their return to Orkney, Paul asked the Archbishop of York to consecrate a cleric of Orkney ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray

... Dean as to have got the better of all enemies in the Close. And his daughter was Marchioness of Brotherton. She would be Mary to him, and would administer to his little comforts when men descended from the comrades of William the Conqueror would treat her with semi-regal respect. He told himself that he was sure ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... fatal influence of sea power. Romans, Saxons, Danes swept down upon England from the sea. By building a fleet, King Alfred, said to have been the true father of the British navy, kept back the Danes. It was the dispersion of the English fleet by reason of the lateness of the season that enabled William the Conqueror, in the small open vessels interestingly pictured in the Bayeux tapestry, to win a footing on the ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... feather wagged over his hat-brim. As I rode up he greeted me with a jovial brotherly curse, and hoped—showing me his letter—that we kept good drink at the Castle. 'And if so,' he added, 'your little William the Conqueror may keep me so long as he has a ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... the fire that evening, and Jone was asleep on a settee of the days of yore, and Mr. Poplington had gone to bed, being tired, my soul went back to the olden time, and, looking out through the little window in the fireplace, I fancied I could see William the Conqueror and the King of the Danes sneaking along the little street under the eaves of the thatched roofs, until I was so worked up that I was on the point of shouting, "Fly! oh, Saxon!" when the door opened and the maid who waited on us at the table put her head ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton

... of one of the most ancient families in the kingdom, and can trace his ancestors without interruption, from the days of William the Conqueror. His political career has been eventful, and perhaps has cost him more, both in pocket and person, than any Member of Parliament now existing. He took his seat in the House of Commons at an early age, and first rendered himself popular by his strenuous opposition to a bill purporting ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... favoring unity, but with more decision than in 1848, to place the group of German states under Prussia's imperial direction. The accession of a new king, William I, who was already in advance called William the Conqueror, was likely to bring this project to a successful issue. The future German emperor's predecessor, Frederick William IV, with the same ambition as his brother, had too many prejudices and too much confusion ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... Of Faire Em, The Millers Daughter of Manchester: With the loue of William the Conqueror. As it was sundty [sic] times publiquely acted in the Honourable Citie of London, by the right Honourable the Lord Strange his Seruants. London, Printed for Iohn Wright, and are to be sold at his shop at the ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg

... went their way, they, whose great-great-grandfathers had served the same master and whose great-great-great-grandchildren would still serve him. What should we think of a lord who we knew was already adult in the time of William the Conqueror, and who remained still vigorous and all-powerful in that of George V? One, moreover, who commanded almost infinite knowledge to which we were denied the key? We might tremble before him and look ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... said of Lord Byron that he was prouder of being a descendant of those Byrons of Normandy, who accompanied William the Conqueror into England, than of having been the author of "Childe Harold." The remark is not altogether unfounded, for the pride of ancestry was a feature of his character; and justly so, for his line was honourably known ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... an Englishman subtle and fond of lawsuits, I say, "There is a Norman, who came in with William the Conqueror." When I see a man good-natured and polite, "That is one who came with the Plantagenets;" a brutal character, "That is a Dane:"—for your Nation, Monsieur, as well as your Language, is ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... was in his prime about 1070. In that year he joined a party of Danes who appeared in England, attacked Peterborough and sacked the abbey there, and afterward took refuge in the Isle of Ely. Here he was besieged by William the Conqueror, and was finally forced to yield to the Norman. He thus came to stand for the defeated Saxon race, and his name has been passed down as that of the darling hero of the Saxons. For his splendid defence of Ely they forgave his final surrender to Duke William; they attributed to him all the virtues ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... race of conquerors arose, whose government, like that of William the Conqueror, was founded in power, and the sword assumed the name of a sceptre. Governments thus established last as long as the power to support them lasts; but that they might avail themselves of every engine in their favor, they united fraud to force, and set up an idol which ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... had a notebook, a little purple and gold one, like a doubled-over pansy. As Mr. Douglas (laughing at himself because he was not experienced as a guide) rattled off all the information he could remember about Roman foundations—a sack by the Danes; William the Conqueror, and William Rufus, and a British fort older than the time of the Romans—she would scribble bits down hastily. But Mr. Norman took no notes, and when he saw her writing, he looked ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... Manningham in his Diary, March 13, 1602, that Burbage, who had been playing Richard III, was overheard by Shakespeare making an appointment with a lady in the audience. When the tragedian arrived at the rendez-vous, he found Shakespeare in possession; and on knocking was answered that "William the Conqueror was ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... shook his head. "It would break 'is 'eart. Them pots was being used when William the Conqueror was a boy." ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... your correspondents if they know how this Comte d'Anjou, became entitled to it? He appears, from the date, to be the same Geoffrey who is the ancestor of our Plantagenets, as the Comte d'Anjou, contemporary with William the Conqueror, was named Fulk. If it can be proved that this Count received this addition from his martial prowess, I shall be strongly tempted to return to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various

... dreams could have ever hoped to ascertain; during which, also, I endeavoured to convince an unknown, but agreeable lady on my left that I did not play polo, whereat, it seemed, her eight brothers were experts; and that Omar Khayyam was a contemporary not of the Prophet Isaiah, but of William the Conqueror. As for the setting—I am not an observant man—but I had an impression of much gold and silver and rare flora on the table, great gold frames enclosing (I doubt not) costly pictures on the walls, many desirable jewels on undesirable bosoms, strong ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... When William the Conqueror received the submission of the City he gave the citizens a Charter—their first Charter—of freedom. There can be no doubt that the Charter was the price demanded by the citizens and willingly paid by the Conqueror in return for their submission. The following ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... you, Charles; your description is short, and very much to the purpose. The Channel Islands, I believe, were attached to England, as the private property of William the Conqueror: the French have made several unsuccessful attempts to gain possession of them. The natives are Norman, and the language Norman-French. These islands enjoy a political constitution of their own; exemption from all duties, and various privileges ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... nature of things, it found it impossible to do away with them altogether, it tried to mitigate their horrors, to limit their field of operation, to diminish their savagery. If the kingly authority was flouted, save perhaps when a sturdy ruler like William the Conqueror in England, or Hugh Capet in France, showed that there was a man at the helm, who meant to rule and was not afraid to quell rebellious earls and make them obey, there was one power these mail-clad warriors respected. ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... he traced a pedigree to parents who came to America in the Mayflower. One of the Englishmen here coughed, and vouchsafed the fact that he traced a lineage to Oliver Cromwell. A little pause followed, and the other guest spat, muzzled his modesty and said he traced to William the Conqueror. Disraeli, with great deliberation, made a hieroglyphic on the tablecloth with his fork and said, "And I trace a pedigree to Moses, who walked and talked with God on Mount Sinai, fifteen centuries before ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... battle joined. The Normans had gotten the worst, if it had not been for a stratagem they invented, which got them the day. In this engagement Harold was killed, and William Duke of Normandy became King of England, under the name of William the Conqueror. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... against a hundred thousand Crotonienses, and seeing now no way but one, they must all die, [6685]thought they would not depart unrevenged, and thereupon desperately giving an assault, conquered their enemies. Nec alia causa victoriae, (saith Justin mine author) quam quod desperaverant. William the Conqueror, when he first landed in England, sent back his ships, that his soldiers might have no hope of retiring back. [6686]Bodine excuseth his countrymen's overthrow at that famous battle at Agincourt, in Henry the Fifth his time, (cui simile, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... and more from the strict grammatical standards of the classical Anglo-Saxon. It is a most valuable historical monument, and some passages of it are written with great vividness, notably the sketch of William the Conqueror put down in the year of his death (1086) by one who had "looked upon him and at another time dwelt in his court." {17} "He who was before a rich king, and lord of many a land, he had not then of all his land but a piece of seven feet. . . . Likewise he was a very stark man and a terrible, so ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... year before this calamity (April 5th, 1086), Maurice, chaplain and chancellor to William the Conqueror, had been consecrated Bishop of London by Lanfranc. Unlike most of William's nominees to bishoprics, Maurice's moral character was disreputable; but he was a man of energy, and he set to work at once to rebuild ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham

... back by Lee, in the life of his father, to Launcelot Lee, of London, in France, who accompanied William the Conqueror to England. After the battle of Hastings, which subjected England to the sway of the Normans, Launcelot Lee, like others, was rewarded by lands wrested from the subdued Saxons. His estate lay in Essex, and this is all that is known concerning him. ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... I am from Amiens in France. I am now called Peter; was formerly a soldier, followed William the Conqueror to Hastings, and took part in the invasion of England. I returned to my own country, and became a school teacher. I could, however, obtain no peace in my soul, but entered a convent. In the solitude of my cell, I reflected on what I heard from my brother monks in the chapter. It was ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... world and that of Sesostris or Anaximander? Geological deposits, the washing away of mountains, and the change of river-courses are certainly but trifling in such an account. But an Argonautic expedition, a Trojan siege, a Jewish exodus, Nomadic invasions, and the names of Hanno, Caesar, William the Conqueror, and Columbus, suggest an explanation. It is the flux of human life which must account for the flowing outline of the earth's geography. As with the terrestrial, so with the celestial. The heavens change by a subtiler movement than the precession of the equinoxes. In Job, "Behold the height of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... into the scale of the Commons from that of the King and Lords. In the 'Oceana' other theories of government are discussed before Harrington elaborates his own, and English history appears under disguise of names, William the Conqueror being called Turbo; King John, Adoxus; Richard II., Dicotome; Henry VII., Panurgus; Henry VIII., Coraunus; Queen Elizabeth, Parthenia; James I., Morpheus; and Oliver Cromwell, Olphaus Megaletor. Scotland is Marpesia, and Ireland, Panopaea. A careful edition of Harrington's 'Oceana' ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... wisdom. Roger had his father's recklessness in action; he rebelled against his own king, and found himself in prison. The king sent him, on the day of Christ's Passion, a robe of silk and rarest ermine. The caged baron made a roaring fire, and cast the robe into it. "By the light of God," said William the Conqueror, for that was his wicked oath, "he shall never ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards

... often possessed rights in respect to the gallows and its victims. William the Conqueror invested the Abbot of Battle Abbey with authority to save the life of any malefactor he might find about to be executed, and whose life he wished to spare. In the days of Edward I. the Abbot of Peterborough set up a gallows at Collingham, Nottinghamshire, and ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews

... considered the first port in precedency, which would not probably have been the case, if it had been one of the latest privileged. The charter of Edward I. mentions immunities granted to the Cinque Ports by William the Conqueror; and, what is still more to the purpose, because it carries back their origin to the Saxon times, is, that King John, in his charter, says, that the Barons of the Cinque Ports had in their possession, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various

... at Dives, in 1066 A.D., had been anything like what it was at Havre the other day, when I wanted to cross over to Dives, WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR would never have sailed from that place for the invasion of England. Dull as he might have found Dives, yet I am sure the Conquering Hero would have preferred returning to Paris, to risking the discomfort of the crossing. By the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various

... no doubt that at least one Chuzzlewit came over with William the Conqueror. It does not appear that this illustrious ancestor 'came over' that monarch, to employ the vulgar phrase, at any subsequent period; inasmuch as the Family do not seem to have been ever greatly distinguished by the possession of ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... cut off from the thought-currents of the great world and stranded on the island-specks of the great ocean, as the Polynesians have been for a period of centuries that would count back to the times of William the Conqueror or Charlemagne, with only such outfit of the world's goods as might survive a 3,000-mile voyage in frail canoes, reenforced by such flotsam of the world's metallic stores as the tides of ocean might chance to bring ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... first time to the House of Commons to listen to the proceedings from the gallery and here is an abstract from his diary at that period: "Went to Houses of Parliament. Very much disappointed with them. . . . I will not say I eyed the assembly in the spirit in which William the Conqueror eyed England on his visit to Edward the Confessor—as the region of his future domain. O Vanity!" A country youth without money, without prospects, sitting in the exclusive Parliament House of the most exclusive ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot

... not have taken him for a man of learning, yet he gave me a great piece of information; a thing quite new to me, though I have lived here so many years. We are distinguished in history, it seems, and at one time both William the Conqueror and that ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... year, lion, wolf, thief, Englishman. 2. Write the possessive case of: James, Dickens, his sister Mary, Miss Austen, the Prince of Wales, Frederick the Great, Harper and Brothers, father-in-law, Charles, Jones, William the Conqueror, Henry the Eighth, ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler

... Plabbin's "Guide to Hampshire," lay in the heart of the forest. Built in the days of William the Conqueror, 1066, and William Rufus, 1087, by Sir Francis Budde, it had been inhabited by none but Buddes of each successive generation. Madcap Moll's great-grandfather, Lord Edmund Budde,[4] added a tower here and there when he felt inclined, while her uncle Robert Budde—known from ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... was the English national weapon in early times. It was originally used by the Norse tribes, and was brought into Western Europe by Rollo, first Duke of Normandy, a direct ancestor of William the Conqueror. When the Normans invaded England they carried the long-bow with them, and as the Saxons had no weapon so powerful, they readily adopted it. The proper length of the long-bow, which was made of yew or ash, was the height of the archer who used it. The largest ones, ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... 167.).—I believe that Waltheof (or Wallef, as he is always styled in Doomsday Book) never appeared at the court of William the Conqueror in the character of an envoy; but in 1067, little better than six months after the first landing of the Normans, we find him, in conjunction with Edgar Atheling and others, accompanying the Conqueror in his ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various

... the Earl's family who had settled in England, was Richard, son of the Norman Earl Brien, a direct descendant of Robert "the Devil," Duke of Normandy, father of William the Conqueror. In return for services at the battle of Hastings, and general assistance in conquering the Saxon, this family obtained a large grant of land in England, and took the title of Earl of Clare from one of their ninety-five lordships ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... of the best examples seem to suffer from a deficiency of ornament. The large and well-known churches at Caen, St. Etienne, otherwise the Abbaye aux Hommes—interesting to Englishmen as having been founded by William the Conqueror immediately after the Conquest—and the Trinite, or Abbaye aux Dames, are excellent examples of early Norman architecture, but the student must not forget that additions have been made to them, which, if they add to their beauty, at the same time alter their character. ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... ear to ear, and then from the back to the forehead; sometimes it is represented as encircling a cap or helm, and sometimes without. William the Conqueror and his successor wore it on a cap adorned with points, and with "labels hanging at each ear[12];" the Plantagenets a diadem ornamented with fleurs de lis or strawberry leaves, between which were small globes raised, or points rather lower than the leaves; Richard III. or ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip

... Norman reigns which assembled at Christmas and the other great festivals, were in appearance a continuation of the Witenagemots, but the power of the barons became very formal in the presence of such despotic monarchs as William the Conqueror and his sons. At the Christmas festival all the prelates and nobles of the kingdom were, by their tenures, obliged to attend their sovereign to assist in the administration of justice and in deliberation on the great affairs of the kingdom. On these occasions the King wore his crown, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... very day. A Roman wall can even yet be traced near some parts of the ditch. The Tower is mentioned in the Saxon Chronicle in a way not incompatible with the fact of a Saxon stronghold having stood upon this spot. The buildings as we have them now in block and plan were commenced by William the Conqueror; and the series of apartments in Caesar's tower—hall, gallery, council-chamber, chapel—were built in the early Norman reigns, and used as a royal residence by all our Norman kings. What can Europe show to compare against such ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... I. He was son of Thomas Cokaine, esq; and descended from a very ancient family at Ambourne in the Peak of Derbyshire; born in the year 1608, and educated at both the universities[1]. Mr. Langbaine observes, that Sir Aston's predecessors had some evidence to prove themselves allied to William the Conqueror, and in those days lived at Hemmingham Castle in Essex. He was a fellow-commoner at Trinity College in Cambridge, as he himself confesseth in one of his books. After he had left the university, he went to the Inns of Court, where continuing awhile for fashion's sake, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... jury reminded them that "they were the great palladium of British Liberty—that it was their province to deal with the facts, the judge with the law—that they formed one of the great institutions of their country, and that they came in with William the Conqueror." Adams at the end of his summing up said: "Gentlemen, you will want to retire to consider your verdict, and as it seems you came in with the Conqueror you can now ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... effect is one of great richness and magnificence. This screen consists of a central doorway into the choir, and of fifteen niches with rich canopies and bases, seven to the north, and eight to the south, of the central doorway. The niches are filled with statues of the Kings of England from William the Conqueror to Henry VI. The statue of Henry VI. alone is modern. It has been said that the original statue of this king was regarded with so much reverence as to have aroused the anger of the iconoclasts of the Reformation. ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock

... common resemblance to that now spoken in Wales, Ireland, and the Highlands of Scotland; and which, notwithstanding the authorities to the contrary, he firmly believed was introduced first into his country by William the Conqueror. Indeed, he insisted that he had twice debated this point with the learned critic, Easley, (whom he styled the New York executioner of literature,) and beat him with ease; for though Easley was a man of profound knowledge and erudition, he was not a ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... Gleawan-ceastre, became one of the chief cities of the Mercian kingdom. Alfred held a Witan in the town in 896. Athelstan—the reputed founder of St. John's church—died in it in 940. King Edgar resided there in 965. Hardicanute and Edward the Confessor both held Witans here, but William the Conqueror must always be the central figure in the long line of notable men connected with Gloucester. It was in Gloucester that he spent his Christmas vacations when he could, and it was in the Chapter-House that he took "deep speech" ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse

... was originally intended should be regarded with thankfulness. It is a thousand times better for the development of the mind to speculate about the motives of acquaintances, or to philosophize on the shortcomings of the maid-of-all-work, than to babble off the dates of the Sovereigns from William the Conqueror, or to construe Horace's Odes without taking in a syllable of ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... may be quoted relates to Sherborne Castle. According to the traditionary accounts handed down, it appears that Osmund, one of William the Conqueror's knights, who had been rewarded, among other possessions, with the castle and barony of Sherborne, in the decline of life determined to resign his temporal honours, and to devote himself exclusively to religion. In pursuance of this object, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... small boy often comes under the dominion of beasts who are not just. But even if masters were all that could be desired, think of the amount of perfectly useless knowledge that a small boy is expected to acquire. How happy was the small boy of 1065 compared with the small boy of 1893. When William the Conqueror, with a man's usual heedlessness of the comfort of small boys, came over in 1066 and popularised that date, he inaugurated a long succession of useless dates that the small boy is compelled to learn. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various



Words linked to "William the Conqueror" :   King of Great Britain, King of England



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