The Journal of the British Archaeological Association (Volume 137) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE JOURNAL JUNE 1865. THE EARLS OF EAST ANGLIA. BY J. R. I-l.cill:, ESQ., ROUGE CROIX, HON. SEC. At our Congress in the adjoining county of Norfolk, under the presidency of the Earl of Albemarle, in 1857, I had the honour to read some observations on a remarkable companion and victim of William the Conqueror, well known to readers of English history as Raoul de Gael; generally represented by ancient as well as modern historians as an adventurer, who was munificently rewarded for his services at Hastings by the gift of the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, and the hand of the daughter of William Fitz Osborne, the powerful Earl of Hereford; and branded as an ungrateful traitor, who speedily repaid his benefactor by organising a conspiracy against him, for the which he justly forfeited lands and honours, and saved his life only by an ignominious flight, to terminate it in obscurity, poverty, and exile. I trust I was successful in proving the falsehood, misrepresentation, and exaggeration of these statements; originally promulgated, probably, by party feeling, and repeated without examination by modern historians. Instead of his being an adventurer, a mere soldier of fortune, it is clear that he was the son and heir of Radulphus, or Ralph, " the great Earl," as he was sometimes called, whose mother was Goda, the sister of King Edward the Confessor; that he had a legitimate claim to the earldom of East Anglia, as successor to his father; and that, like many other nobles and 185 13 knights in the army of the Conqueror, he fought to win back his own lands and dignities from Saxon usurpers and intruders; that the faithless monarch was truly the ungrateful traitor, and the conspiracy the natural consequence of his crimes. I gladly avail myself of this opportunity t...