later into English prose. Its popularity is attested by fifteen complete manuscripts,
averaging 1,200 lines.
Maureen B.M.Boulton
Allen, Hope Emily. “The Manuel des pechiez and the Scholastic Prologue.” Romanic Review
8(1917):434–62.
Arnould, Émile-Jules François. Le manuel des péchés: étude de littérature religieuse anglo-
normande. Paris: Droz, 1940.
Laird, Charlton “Character and Growth of the Manuel des pechiez.” Traditio 4(1946):253–306.
WILLIAM
. See also GUILHEM; GUILLAUME
WILLIAM I THE CONQUEROR
(1028–1087). Prior to his conquest of England in 1066, William I had been duke of
Normandy. Prime factors behind the success of the Conquest had been the stability he
had established in Normandy and the freedom from attack that the duchy had enjoyed
since the deaths of Geoffroi Martel of Anjou and the Capetian king Henry I. Such
stability and safety could not have been predicted in 1035, when William, then called
“the Bastard” because of his illegitimate birth, inherited the duchy at age seven from his
father, Robert I the Magnificent. The young duke survived several internal challenges and
through successful military campaigns and judicious alliances was able to assert his
authority in the duchy and in relation to the other powers of northern France. He
conquered Maine and established Norman hegemony over eastern Brittany. One of his
earliest and most important triumphs outside the duchy was not a military one at all, but
marriage to Matilda (d. 1083), daughter of Count Baudouin I of Flanders. The 1050/51
marriage, though initially forbidden by the papacy on grounds of consanguinity, allied
William with the richest princi-pality in northern France and related him through
marriage to both the German emperors and the kings of France. Matilda bore him three
sons and four daughters before 1066 and seems to have been a supportive and valuable
companion. She founded La Trinité, a convent for nuns, near William’s Saint-Étienne in
Caen, and it is in these abbey churches that the two are buried.
William I’s conquest of England established a cross-Channel dominion that altered the
balance of power in northern France. William’s rivals were quick to exploit his
difficulties in ruling the far-flung, multifrontier Anglo-Norman empire, and he would
spend the rest of his life fighting off a powerful alliance of French princes. Maine
rebelled in 1069, and rebels there invited Foulques le Rechin of Anjou to be their count.
William and King Philip 1 of France supported rival claimants in the succession crisis in
The Encyclopedia 1845