WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.

believe, that, in so extraordinary a step, he was chap.guided by! a concealed policy; and that, though jv,he had thought proper at first to allure the people ic«r.to submission by the semblance of a legal adminis-tration, he found, that he could neither satisfybis rapacious captains, nor secure his unstablegovernment, without farther exerting the rightsof conquest, and seizing the possestions of theEnglish. In order to have a pretext for this violence,he endeavoured, without discovering his intentions,

( to provoke and allure them into insurrections,which, he thought, could never prove dangerous,

|Whde he detained all the principal nobility inNormandy, while a great and victorious armywas quartered in England , and while he himselfwas so near to suppress any tumult or rebellion.

But as no ancient writer has ascribed this tyrannicalpurpose to William, it scarcely seems allowable,from conjecture alone, to throw such an imputationupon him.

But whether we are to account for that measure Their insut-from the king’s vanity or from his polifcy, it was reaions -the immediate cause of all the calamities whichthe English endured during this and the subsequentreigns, and gave rife to those mutual jealousiesand animosities between them and the Normans,which were never appeased , till a long tract of Gtime had gradually united the two nations, andmade them one people. The inhabitants of Kent,who had first submitted to the Conqueror, werethe first that attempted to throw off the yoke;and in confederacy with Eustace, count of Bologne,