Rufus had no trouble in securing the public approval of his death. He
was the third of his race to perish in the New Forest, the scene of the
Conqueror's cruelty to his people. He was a thick-set man with a red
face, a debauchee of the deepest dye, mean in money matters, and as full
of rum and mendacity as Sitting Bull, the former Regent of the Sioux
Nation. He died at the age of forty-three years, having reigned and cut
up in a shameful manner for thirteen years.

Robert having gone to the Holy Land, Henry I. was crowned at
Westminster. He was educated to a higher degree than William, and knew
the multiplication table up to seven times seven, but he was highly
immoral, and an armed chaperon stood between him and common decency.

He also made rapid strides as a liar, and even his own grocer would not
trust him. He successfully fainted when he heard of his son's death,
1120 A.D.

His reign closed in 1135, when Stephen, a grandson of the Conqueror,
with the aid of a shoe-horn assumed the crown of England, and, placing a
large damp towel in it, proceeded to reign. He began at once to swap
patronage for kind words, and every noble was as ignoble as a
phenomenal thirst and unbridled lust could make him. Every farm had a
stone jail on it, in charge of a noble jailer. Feudal castles, full of
malaria and surrounded by insanitary moats and poor plumbing, echoed the
cry of the captive and the bacchanalian song of the noble. The country
was made desolate by duly authorized robbers, who, under the Crusaders'
standard, prevented the maturity of the spring chicken and hushed the
still, small voice of the roast pig in death.