He ordered money to be given to many English churches and monasteries, and--which was much better repentance--released his prisoners of state, some of whom had been confined in his dungeons twenty years.
It was a September morning, and the sun was rising, when the King was awakened from slumber by the sound of a church bell.

'What bell is that ?' he faintly asked.

They told him it was the bell of the chapel of Saint Mary.

'I commend my soul,' said he, 'to Mary!' and died.
Think of his name, The Conqueror, and then consider how he lay in death! The moment he was dead, his physicians, priests, and nobles, not knowing what contest for the throne might now take place, or what might happen in it, hastened away, each man for himself and his own property; the mercenary servants of the court began to rob and plunder; the body of the King, in the indecent strife, was rolled from the bed, and lay alone, for hours, upon the ground.

O Conqueror, of whom so many great names are proud now, of whom so many great names thought nothing then, it were better to have conquered one true heart, than England! By-and-by, the priests came creeping in with prayers and candles; and a good knight, named HERLUIN, undertook (which no one else would do) to convey the body to Caen, in Normandy, in order that it might be buried in St.Stephen's church there, which the Conqueror had founded.