relations towards the king who was at once his chief neighbour and
his overlord.

More doubtful and dangerous still were the relations which the
young duke inherited towards the people of his own duchy and the
kinsfolk of his own house. William was not as yet the Great or the
Conqueror, but he was the Bastard from the beginning. There was
then no generally received doctrine as to the succession to
kingdoms and duchies. Everywhere a single kingly or princely house
supplied, as a rule, candidates for the succession. Everywhere,
even where the elective doctrine was strong, a full-grown son was
always likely to succeed his father. The growth of feudal notions
too had greatly strengthened the hereditary principle. Still no
rule had anywhere been laid down for cases where the late prince
had not left a full-grown son. The question as to legitimate birth
was equally unsettled. Irregular unions of all kinds, though
condemned by the Church, were tolerated in practice, and were
nowhere more common than among the Norman dukes. In truth the
feeling of the kingliness of the stock, the doctrine that the king
should be the son of a king, is better satisfied by the succession
of the late king's bastard son than by sending for some distant
kinsman, claiming perhaps only through females. Still bastardy, if
it was often convenient to forget it, could always be turned
against a man. The succession of a bastard was never likely to be
quite undisputed or his reign to be quite undisturbed.

Now William succeeded to his duchy under the double disadvantage of
being at once bastard and minor. He was born at Falaise in 1027 or
1028, being the son of Robert, afterwards duke, but then only Count
of Hiesmois, by Herleva, commonly called Arletta, the daughter of