Britain ... - Blue-Lite

424 NOTES TO THE VARANGIAN.
" By the resurrection and glory of the Deity," was William's
constant oath.
(!*)
Now, driven for ever thence, doth naked roam
The dreary woods, and in their winter caves
Companion with the wolf. . . . . p. 278.
Sharon Turner says the facts which Ordericus relates of the
miseries of the English, remind us of the sufferings occasioned
by the French Revolution. "The most ancient and opulent
families (English) were reduced to indigence ; they pined for
want on the very estates which had descended to them through
a long line of illustrious ancestors." Russell's Hist. Eng.
Ingulphus refuses to give a description of the horrible barbarities
practised by his countrymen on the Saxons, because,
he it
says, could not be credited by succeeding times.
" In a word, a feudal baron was a king in miniature, and a
barony was a little kingdom." Dr. Henry.
" When the Anglo-Saxon nobles fled with their families to
the woods, and sought subsistence by rapine, the districts
which they could pervade became so unsafe, that every man
was obliged to fortify his house like a besieged castle every
night and j prayers were said by the elder of the family on the
shutting of the doors and windows, as in a tempest at sea."
Mid. Ages.
The deeds of the Norman barons, from whom some English
families are weak enough to pride themselves for being descended,
may be found recorded in Huntington, William of Newhery,
William of Tyre, and many other of the old chroniclers.
Ignorant, bloody, and despotic as a negro king in the wilds of
Africa, their castles were literally dens of robbers, from which
they continually darted forth to plunder and destroy. One of
these wretches was in the habit of carrying a concealed sword,
with which he used, when in the humour, to stab, with loud
shouts of laughter, any defenceless person he met ; yet such
was the extent of his power and the daring ferocity of his
character, that he was applauded and admired. We read of
another who would thrust out the eyes of children with his
thumb, and impale alive both men and women against whom
he entertained any dislike. Speed tells of one of the Earls of
Warren, who scooped out with his thumb the eyes of his own
son, a child, in the castle of Wareham.
Another of these earl-fiends, a Breton lord, named Giles de
Laval, Marechal de Ritz, (the origin, one might imagine, of the
tale of Blue Beard,) at so late a period as 1449, was accused of
sorcery, and of having sold himself to the devil to obtain that