He was even prevailed on, though not without reluctance, to consent, with his dying breath, to release his brother Odo, against whom he was extremely incensed.

He left Normandy and Maine to his eldest son, Robert: he wrote to Lanfranc, desiring him to crown William king of England; he bequeathed to Henry nothing but the possessions of his mother, Matilda; but foretold that he would one day surpass both his brothers in power and opulence.

He expired in the sixty-third year of his age, in the twenty-first year of his reign over England, and in the fifty-fourth of that over Normandy.
Few princes have been more fortunate than this great monarch, or were better entitled to grandeur and prosperity, from the abilities and the vigor of mind which he displayed in all his conduct.

His spirit was bold and enterprising, yet guided by prudence; his ambition, which was exorbitant, and lay little under the restraints of justice, still less under those of humanity, ever submitted to the dictates of sound policy.
Born in an age when the minds of men were intractable, and unacquainted with submission, he was yet able to direct them to his purposes, and, partly from the ascendant of his vehement character, partly from art and dissimulation, to establish an unlimited authority.

Though not insensible to generosity, he was hardened against compassion; and he seemed equally ostentatious and equally ambitious of show and parade in his clemency and in his severity.