A very unaccountable step in so wise a body for their own concernments, as the clergy of those times is looked upon to have been; and although perhaps the fact be not worth recording, it may serve as a lesson to all assemblies never to trust the execution of a law in the hands of those who will find it more to their interests to see it broken than observed.
1132.
The Empress Maud was now happily delivered of a son, who was afterwards King of England by the name of Henry the Second: and the King calling a Parliament, had the oath of fealty repeated by the nobles and clergy to her and her issue, which in the compass of three years they all broke or forgot.
1134.
I think it may deserve a place in this history to mention the last scene of Duke Robert's life, who, either through the poorness or greatness of spirit, having outlived the loss of his honour, his dominions, his liberty, his eyesight, and his only son, was at last forced to sink under the load of eighty years, and must be allowed for the greatest example either of insensibility or contempt of earthly things, that ever appeared in a sovereign or private person.

He was a prince hardly equalled by any in his time for valour, conduct, and courtesy; but his ruin began from the easiness of his nature, which whoever knew how to manage, were sure to be refused nothing they could ask.

By such profusion he was reduced to those unhappy expedients of remitting his rights for a pension, of pawning his towns, and multiplying taxes, which brought him into hatred and contempt with his subjects; neither do I think any virtue so little commendable in a sovereign as that of liberality, where it exceeds what his ordinary revenues can supply; where it passes those bounds, his subjects must all be oppressed to shew his bounty to a few flatterers, or he must sell his towns, or basely renounce his rights, by becoming pensioner to some powerful prince in the neighbourhood; all which we have lived to see performed by a late monarch in our own time and country.
1135.
Since the reduction of Normandy to the King's obedience, he found it necessary for his affairs to spend in that duchy some part of his time almost every year, and a little before the death of Robert he made his last voyage there.

It was observable in this prince, that having some years past very narrowly escaped shipwreck in his passage from Normandy into England, the sense of his danger had made very deep impressions on his mind, which he discovered by a great reformation in his life, by redressing several grievances, and doing many acts of piety; and to shew the steadiness of his resolutions, he kept them to the last, making a progress through most parts of Normandy, treating his subjects in all places with great familiarity and kindness, granting their petitions, easing their taxes, and, in a word, giving all possible marks of a religious, wise, and gracious prince.
Returning to St.Denys le Ferment from his progress a little indisposed, he there fell into a fever upon a surfeit of lamprey, which in a few days ended his life.

His body was conveyed to England, and buried at Reading in the abbey-church himself had founded.
It is hard to affirm anything peculiar of this prince's character; those authors who have attempted it mentioning very little but what was common to him with thousands of other men; neither have they recorded any of those personal circumstances or passages, which only can discover such qualities of the mind as most distinguish one man from another.