Social structure

Meanwhile, the body of King Henry was still unburied in Normandy. He had died on the first day of December [1135]. His body was brought to Rouen, and there his entrails, brain, and eyes were buried together. The remainder of the corpse was cut all around with knives, sprinkled with a great deal of salt, and wrapped in oxhides, to stop the strong, pervasive stench, which was already causing the deaths of those who watched over it. It even killed the man who had been hired for a great sum of money to cut off the head with an axe and extract the stinking brain, although he had wrapped himself in linen cloths around his head: so he got no benefit from his fee. He was the last of many whom King Henry put to death.