Note 695 — Chapter XII · THE LATER REIGN OF WILLIAM IN NORMANDY.[159] 1051–1066. (continued 3)

William of Poitiers goes back to the grant of Charles the Simple, who gave Britanny to Rolf “in servitium perpetuum.” (See vol. i. p. 191.) But he allows the constant revolts of the Breton Counts; “Comites Britannici e jugo Normannicæ dominationis cervicem omnino solvere numquam valuerunt, etsi multoties id conati totâ vi obluctando.” So William of Malmesbury (iii. 236) speaks of William as “Britanniam ut hæreditarium solum calumnians.”