"Luxuriant animi rebus plerumque secundis,
Nec facile est aequa commoda mente pati;"
And because
"Non habet unde suum paupertas pascat amorem, . . .
Divitiis alitur luxuriosus amor."
So that their abstinence from that vice, which in their prosperity
they could not resist, may be attributed more justly to their
poverty and state of exile than to their sense of virtue. For they
cannot be said to have repented, when we see them involved in such
an abyss of vices, perjury, theft, robbery, rapine, murders,
fratricides, adultery, and incest, and become every day more
entangled and ensnared in evil-doing; so that the words of the
prophet Hosea may be truly applied to them, "There is no truth, nor
mercy," etc.
Other matters of which they boast are more properly to be
attributed to the diligence and activity of the Norman kings than
to their own merits or power. For previous to the coming of the
Normans, when the English kings contented themselves with the
sovereignty of Britain alone, and employed their whole military
force in the subjugation of this people, they almost wholly
extirpated them; as did king Offa, who by a long and extensive dyke
separated the British from the English; Ethelfrid also, who
demolished the noble city of Legions, (27) and put to death the
monks of the celebrated monastery at Banchor, who had been called
in to promote the success of the Britons by their prayers; and
lastly Harold, who himself on foot, with an army of light-armed
infantry, and conforming to the customary diet of the country, so
bravely penetrated through every part of Wales, that he scarcely
left a man alive in it; and as a memorial of his signal victories
many stones may be found in Wales bearing this inscription:- "HIC
VICTOR FUIT HAROLDUS" - "HERE HAROLD CONQUERED." (28)
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