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Surname
History and Genealogy
of the Pearsall Family in England
and America:
Volume I
Front Cover
Inside Front Cover
The Motive
Thanks
Illustrations
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Appendix I
Volume II
Volume III
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CHAPTER FOUR
GUILLAUME,
DUKE OF NORMANDY
Twenty-fourth
in Ancestry
Section 1, Family of
Guillaume.
SECTION
1.
*24.
GUILLAUME, Duke of Normandy, surnamed Longue
Epee, called by the English William Longsword,
son of Rollo, Chapter 3, Section 1, assassinated December 18, 942.
Married, first, to satisfy the desires of his noblemen, "epousee a la maniere de Dannemarck," Esprota,
a daughter of Herbert, the Count of Senlis, and
sister of Bernard, Count of Senlis, surnamed
the Dane. There was at this time a strong Norse spirit manifested in the
Duchy and to have attempted a French or Christian marriage would have
been hazardous to his succession to the Duchy. By this marriage was born
his only child.
1.
*23. RICHARD I, Duke of Normandy,
Chapter 5, Section 1.
He
married second Leutgarda de Vermandois,
second daughter of Herbert II, Count of Vermandois
and de Hildebrant, whom he married with much
magnificence at Rouen.
There were no children by this marriage. [Historie
Genealogique et Chronol.
des Pairs de France, by Anselme, vol. 2, page
464.]
On
the death of Rollo, the first duke of Normandy, his son William Long-Sword
became his successor. William possessed none of those great qualities
which had enabled his father from being a fugitive leader of a band of Vikingar to become the founder of a powerful state.
Having been educated by the monks, the successor of Rollo inclined rather
to a life of monastic seclusion than to the exercise of the active
virtues which could alone enable him to preserve what his heroic father
had acquired. [History of the Northmen, by
Henry Wheaton, Lon-don, 1831, page 287.]
Of
the partial amalgamation of his subjects with the Franks, William Long
Epee was a thorough representative. Born of a Frankish mother, he had
been taught to consider himself a West Frank, and had been brought up as
such. Indeed, his very character, his fickleness, brilliancy, and
impulsiveness, all proclaim his Frankish rather than his Norse descent,
while the legend that he was, in his later days, with difficulty
dissuaded from becoming a monk, shows that he had embraced Christianity
with all the sincerity of which he was capable. As such he was hated by
the Norse party, and the death of Rollo seemed to have encouraged them to
threaten revolt. It is not impossible that the struggle may bear some
analogy to the later dissensions in the northern kingdoms themselves.
There we find Christianity supported by the kings who are aiming at
centralization and organization, while the minor princes fight for
paganism and independence. The result in Normandy was a formidable rebellion
which threatened to overthrow the ducal power, and to confine the French
language and religion to
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