Courtship of William the Conqueror
The following extract from the life of the wife of the Conqueror is exceedingly curious as characteristic of the manners of a semi-civilized age and nation:—
“After some years of delay, William appears to have become desperate, and, if we may trust to the evidence of the ‘Chronicle of Ingerbe,’ he waylaid Matilda in the streets of Bruges as she was returning from mass, seized her, rolled her in the dirt, spoiled her rich array; and, not content with these outrages, struck her repeatedly, then rode off at full speed. This Teutonic method of courtship, according to our author, brought the affair to a crisis: for Matilda, either convinced of the strength of William’s passion by the violence of his behaviour, or afraid of encountering a second beating, consented to become his wife. How he ever presumed to enter her presence again after such enormities the chronicler sayeth not, and we are at a loss to imagine.”