[Sidenote: _Polydor._] There be that write, how the inconstancie of
the English people by their oft rebellions occasioned the king to be
so rough and rigorous against them; wheras (of his naturall
disposition and proper inclination) he was rather gentle and courteous
than sharpe and cruell. But sith he continued his extremitie euen to
his last daies, we may rather bel?eue, that although from his
childhood he shewed some tokens of clemencie, bountie, and
liberalitie; yet by following the wars, and practising to reigne with
sternenesse, he became so inured therewith, that those peaceable
vertues were quite altered in him, and in maner clearelie quenched. He
was indued with a certeine stoutnesse of courage and skill in feats of
warre, which good hap euer followed: he was fr?e from lecherous lusts,
without suspicion of bodilie vices, quicke of wit, desirous of honor,
painefull, watchfull, and able to tolerate heat and cold, though he
were tall of stature, and verie grosse of bodie.
Toward the end of his daies he waxed verie deuout, and became desirous
to aduance the state of the church, insomuch that he builded thr?e
abbeies in three seuerall places, endowing them with faire lands and
large possessions, one at the place where he vanquished king Harold,
fiue miles from Hastings, which he named Battell, of the field there
fought: the other at Celby in Yorkeshire: and the third in Normandie at
Caen, where his wife Qu?ene Maud had builded a nunnerie, which Maud died
in the y?ere 1084, before the decease of the king hir husband.
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