art of writing or the more usual one of reading; but both his
promotion of learned churchmen and the care given to the education
of some of his children show that he at least valued the best
attainments of his time. Had William's whole life been spent in
the duties of a Norman duke, ruling his duchy wisely, defending it
manfully, the world might never have known him for one of its
foremost men, but his life on that narrower field would have been
useful and honourable almost without a drawback. It was the fatal
temptation of princes, the temptation to territorial
aggrandizement, which enabled him fully to show the powers that
were in him, but which at the same time led to his moral
degradation. The defender of his own land became the invader of
other lands, and the invader could not fail often to sink into the
oppressor. Each step in his career as Conqueror was a step
downwards. Maine was a neighbouring land, a land of the same
speech, a land which, if the feelings of the time could have
allowed a willing union, would certainly have lost nothing by an
union with Normandy. England, a land apart, a land of speech,
laws, and feelings, utterly unlike those of any part of Gaul, was
in another case. There the Conqueror was driven to be the
oppressor. Wrong, as ever, was punished by leading to further
wrong.

With the two fields, nearer and more distant, narrower and wider,
on which William was to appear as Conqueror he has as yet nothing
to do. It is vain to guess at what moment the thought of the
English succession may have entered his mind or that of his
advisers. When William began his real reign after Val-es-dunes,
Norman influence was high in England. Edward the Confessor had
spent his youth among his Norman kinsfolk; he loved Norman ways and