CHAPTER II--THE EARLY YEARS OF WILLIAM--A.D. 1028-1051



If William's early reign in Normandy was his time of schooling for
his later reign in England, his school was a stern one, and his
schooling began early. His nominal reign began at the age of seven
years, and his personal influence on events began long before he
had reached the usual years of discretion. And the events of his
minority might well harden him, while they could not corrupt him in
the way in which so many princes have been corrupted. His whole
position, political and personal, could not fail to have its effect
in forming the man. He was Duke of the Normans, sixth in
succession from Rolf, the founder of the Norman state. At the time
of his accession, rather more than a hundred and ten years had
passed since plunderers, occasionally settlers, from Scandinavia,
had changed into acknowledged members of the Western or Karolingian
kingdom. The Northmen, changed, name and thing, into NORMANS, were
now in all things members of the Christian and French-speaking
world. But French as the Normans of William's day had become,
their relation to the kings and people of France was not a friendly
one. At the time of the settlement of Rolf, the western kingdom of
the Franks had not yet finally passed to the Duces Francorum at
Paris; Rolf became the man of the Karolingian king at Laon. France
and Normandy were two great duchies, each owning a precarious
supremacy in the king of the West-Franks. On the one hand,
Normandy had been called into being by a frightful dismemberment of
the French duchy, from which the original Norman settlement had
been cut off. France had lost in Rouen one of her greatest cities,