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Pearsall Surname Project
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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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battle
at Soissons,
where Robert paid the penalty with his life. Hugh the Great, his son,
might well have aspired to the crown. But now, as through his life, he
preferred the less dangerous position of the king-maker, and Rudolf of
Burgundy, his brother-in-law, accepted the dangerous post. Charles the
Simple, trusting himself to the plighted troth of Herbert of Vermandois, and placing himself in his power, was
faithlessly seized and kept prisoner, with one short interval, until his
death. In revenge, Rollo ravaged the country of the Duke of Paris, and a
long war of four years ensued, generally to the advantage of the Norman
duke. [The Normans of Europe, by Rev. A. H. Johnson, M.A., N. Y., 1899,
page 41.]
This,
though it did not open the prison to the royal captive, added two
important acquisitions to the Norman territory. Bessin,
the district round Bayeux, was granted to
Rollo, as well as the land
of Maine. The claim
to the latter was left for Rollo's successors to enforce, but of the
former he gained immediate possession, and it henceforth formed the most
important portion of the duchy. A Saxon colony had existed there since
the later days of the Roman empire, and
it alone of the Teutonic settlements had resisted the absorbing influence
of the Romance element. Now, reinforced by the new settlement of a kindred
race, it maintained its Teutonic character and speech. In the reign of
Rollo's successor it formed the nucleus of a rebellion of the
non-Romanized element of the duchy against the other which had then
become thoroughly French. To it his grandson was sent to learn the pure
language, and incidentally the religion and customs of his fathers, and
to this day it retains many features of its Saxon and Scandinavian
origin. The annexation of the Bessin was the
last exploit of Rollo. Shortly afterwards, at the demand of his people,
in 923, he resigned, though unwillingly, in favor of his son. Five years
more, it is said, he lived, and then the old man of fourscore and odd
years-years teeming with deeds of strange contrast, or stranger import to
future times-disappears from history. As we stand over his tomb in the
chapel of St. Romains at Rouen,
strange are the thoughts which flit across our mind. Here lies the once
dread Viking, the pillager of France; then one of the most powerful of
her sons, a duke, a legislator; the father of his people, the progenitor
of a long line of dukes and kings. When all is told, we know but little
of him. To recall all the events of his varied life is now beyond the
power of man; but the best proof of his power and his genius is, that it
was his life that inspired a canon of his own town of Bayeux to write one
of the earliest romances of modern Europe, and that while all other
settlements of the race in France and Germany rapidly disappeared, his
alone has lasted on and deeply affected the future ages.
SECTION
2.
*1.
EYNOR or EINAR, 4th Earl of the Orkneys, son of Rognvald,
Chapter 2, Section 1.
We
have already stated by what measures Harald Harfager, after having united all the petty kingdoms
of Norway
under his sceptre, sought to extirpate piracy
in the Northern seas, and to reclaim his people from habits, which,
though they nourished the spirit of liberty and independence, were the
principal obstacles
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