CHAPTER XIII.
The Two Williams.
1. King William’s Last War.—The way in which the Conqueror came by his death was hardly worthy of the great deeds of his life. The land between Rouen and Paris, on the rivers Seine and Oise, known as the Vexin, was a land which had long been disputed between Normandy and France. Border quarrels were always going on, and just now there were great complaints of inroads made by the French commanders in Mantes, the chief town of the Vexin, on the lands of various Normans. William made answer by calling on Philip to give up to him the town of Mantes and the whole Vexin. Philip only answered by making jests on William, who was just now keeping quiet at Rouen, seeking by medical treatment to lessen the bulk of his body. Philip said that the King of the English was lying in, and that there would be a great show of candles at his churching. Then King William was very wroth, and swore his most fearful oaths that, when he rose up, he would light a hundred thousand candles at the cost of the French King. So in August 1087, as soon as he was able to get up, he entered the Vexin and harried the land cruelly. He reached Mantes (August 15), entered the town, caused it to be set on fire, and rode about to see the burning. At last his horse stumbled, perhaps on the burning embers; he was thrown forward on the tall bow of his saddle, and received a wound inside which made him give over. He was carried to Rouen, and there lay in the priory of Saint Gervase outside the city.
2. King William’s last Sickness.—He lay there for more than three weeks. The chief prelates of Normandy came about him; some of them were skilful leeches who could tend his body as well as his soul. But they saw that there was no hope, and told him that he must die. He then began to make ready for death. He professed repentance for all his wrong deeds, for the harrying of Northumberland long before and for the burning of Mantes just now. He sent money to make good the destruction at Mantes, and he sent other money to the churches and poor of England. Then he settled the succession to his dominions. He said that by all law Robert must succeed him in Normandy; so it must be; yet he saw what woes would come on the land where Robert should rule. About England he said that he did not dare to make any order; but he wished, if it were God’s will, that William should succeed him, and he sent a letter to Archbishop Lanfranc, praying him to crown William, if he thought it right to do so. To his youngest son Henry he left five thousand pounds in money from his hoard. Robert was far away, and now his other sons left him, William to look after the kingdom, and Henry to look after his money. Then the King bade all the men, Norman and English, whom he had kept in prison to be set free, save only his brother Odo. Him he said he would not set free; he would only be the cause of more mischief if he were let out. But his brother Robert and others prayed hard for him, and at last, much against his will, the King bade that Odo should be set free with the others.
3. King William’s Death and Burial.—At last on September 9, 1087, the great King William, the Conqueror of England, died. There was fear and confusion through all Rouen; men knew not what to do, now that the man who had kept the land in peace was gone. For a while the King’s body lay stripped and forsaken. But at last he was taken to Caen, to be buried in his own minster of Saint Stephen without the walls. Then, when the rites of burial began, one Asselin the son of Arthur rose and said that the ground on which the church was built was his and his father’s, and he forbade that the body should be buried in his soil. So they paid him at once for the grave, and afterwards for the whole estate that he had lost. Then was King William buried, and a shrine of cunning workmanship was made over his grave; but all is now gone.
4. William the Red.—The king who was now to succeed William the Great was his third son William—his second son Richard had died in the New Forest. From his ruddy face he was called William Rufus or the Red, and sometimes the Red King. His character was a strange mixture. He had a large share of his father’s gifts; he was brave, free of hand, and merry of speech; and, when he chose, he could be both a good captain and a good ruler. But he had none of his father’s really great qualities; he was a blasphemer of God and a man of the foulest life; without being so cruel in his own person as some other princes, he was utterly reckless, and cared not how much evil he caused. He was also quite careless of his promises, except when he pledged his word as a good knight; then he kept it faithfully; any one who trusted himself to his personal generosity was always safe. For we have now come to the beginning of what is called chivalry, of which William the Red was one of the first professors. He was proud and self-willed above all men, and he had not, like his father, any steady purpose about any matter. He was always beginning undertakings and not ending them. Yet there is no doubt that he was a man of great natural gifts, if he had chosen to use them better. He made a great impression on the minds of men at the time, and of no king are there more personal stories told.
5. Accession of William Rufus.—It does not seem that William Rufus was ever regularly chosen king. He crossed to England with his father’s letter to Lanfranc, and on September 26, the Archbishop crowned him at Westminster. No one gainsaid his claim; all men bowed to him and sware oaths to him. But it must be remembered that there was really more to be said for either of his brothers than for him. Robert was the eldest son, and was his father’s natural successor in Normandy. And those Normans who wished England and Normandy to stay together, would of course wish to have Robert for king in England. On the other hand, if the English had given up all thought of a king of their own blood, the natural choice for them was Henry. He alone was a real Ætheling, a king’s son born in the land. But neither Robert nor Henry was at hand, and William took the crown quite quietly. He held the Christmas feast at Westminster, and it seems to have been then that he gave back the earldom of Kent to his uncle Bishop Odo.
6. The Rebellion of Odo.—The new king had been only a few months on the throne, when most of the chief Normans openly rebelled against him, meaning to bring in his brother Duke Robert. At the head of the revolt were the King’s two uncles, Count Robert and Bishop Odo. Odo was the first beginner of the whole stir, for he found that he was not, as he had hoped to be, the King’s chief counsellor. Earl Roger of Shrewsbury, Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances, Bishop William of Durham, and others of the great men joined them; but Earl Hugh of Chester, Archbishop Lanfranc and all the other bishops, above all Saint Wulfstan at Worcester, remained faithful. Then the King saw that he had nothing to trust to but the native English. So he called them to his standard, and made promises of good government in every way. Then the people flocked to him from all parts, and he found himself at the head of a great English army. The rebels were now smitten everywhere; specially the King with his Englishmen beat back the troops that Duke Robert sent to land at Pevensey. That is, they beat back a new Norman invasion on the very spot where the Conqueror had landed. Then they took the castle of Rochester, where Odo was, and Odo had to come out with shame and to go back to Normandy; he never saw England again. Many of the rebels lost their lands; but they afterwards got them back again when peace was made between King William and his brother Robert.
7. The End of the Conquest.—William Rufus was very far from keeping the promises of good government which he made to the native English when he needed their help. Yet it would be hard to show that he directly oppressed Englishmen as Englishmen; his reign was rather a time of general misrule, which oppressed all classes, though undoubtedly the native English must have suffered the most. But this war of the year 1088 was the last stage of the Norman Conquest. It was the last time that Englishmen and Normans, as such, met in battle against one another on English soil. And, as far as fighting went, the English had the better. In this war Englishmen, fighting against Normans, kept the crown of England for a Norman King. Thus by this war the Norman Conquest of England was in some sort completed and in some sort undone. It was completed so far as that the Norman house was now firmly established on the English throne. From this time no one thought of driving out the kings who came of the line of the Conqueror. No one thought again of setting up Edgar, though he lived a long time after this; no one thought again of asking for help from Denmark. But the Conquest was undone so far as that all this was done by the English themselves, so far as the Norman King was set on the throne by English hands. At this point then we shall best end our tale of the history of the Conquest, and stop to look at the effects which the Conquest had, both at once and on the later history of England.