The Reign of William Rufus and the Accession of Henry the First, Volume 2 (of 2)

THE LAST DAYS OF WILLIAM RUFUS AND THE ACCESSION OF HENRY.
1100–1102.[744]

The last year of the eleventh century had now come. End of the eleventh century. The course of those hundred years had wrought many changes in the world. To our eyes the changes which it had wrought in the isle of Britain seem great and wonderful, and great and wonderful they were. Changes in Britain. 1000–1100. At the beginning of the century Englishmen were struggling for their country and their homes against the invading Dane. The Dane had won the land; he had given us one foreign ruler who became one of ourselves. The days of foreign rule had passed away, only, as the event proved, to pave the way for a foreign rule which was to be far more abiding. A foreign rule which, by adopting national feelings, in some sort deadened them paved the way for a foreign rule which, by seeming for a moment to crush the old life of the nation, really called it up again in new shapes. But the rule of the Norman could not, like the rule of Cnut, itself become national during the life-time of the Conqueror or of his first successor. Internal changes. There was indeed a change between the England of Æthelred and the England of William Rufus. The outward aspect of the land itself must have changed, now that well-nigh every English mound was crowned by its Norman castle, now that well-nigh every English minster was giving way to a successor built after Norman patterns. But, if things had changed, men had changed also. Compare the signatures to a charter of Æthelred and the signatures to a charter of William. The change which had come over the land is marked by the difference between the list of English names among which it may be that some follower of the Norman Lady has crept in, and the list of Norman names among which it may be that some unusually lucky Englishman has contrived to hold his place. Changes in foreign relations. England had thus changed indeed in her internal state; she had changed no less in her relations to other lands. Within her own island she had made what it is no contradiction to speak of as a peaceful conquest made at the sword’s point. Scotland. The elder Eadgar had placed the younger on the Scottish throne as the work of warfare. So far as Eadgar’s work was the political submission of Scotland, its results were but for a moment. So far as it led to the peaceful change of Scotland into a second and separate English kingdom, its results have been indeed abiding. Wales. Towards Wales, amidst much of seeming ill-success, the work of conquest had in truth begun; the Red King had found out the true way to curb those bold spirits which he could not overcome in the field. Fusion of elements in Britain begins. Much indeed had the eleventh century done, in different ways, towards welding the three elements of the isle of Britain into one political whole. Ages had to pass before the work was finished; but it was in the eleventh century, above all, in the reign of Rufus, that it really began. Ireland. Towards the impossible work, forbidden by geography and history, of welding another great island into the same whole, whatever either William may have dreamed—​yet to the Conqueror we may not dare to ascribe mere dreams—​neither had done anything. So far as the two great islands of the Ocean had begun to draw near to one another, it was as yet wholly through the advances which the princes and people of Ireland had made in spiritual things to the Pontiff of the other world, the Patriarch of all the nations beyond the sea.

Britain ceases to be another world. But one great work of the times over which we are casting our eyes was that Britain was now fast ceasing to deserve its ancient name of another world. The earliest and the latest years of the century are each marked by a marriage, by a change of name on the part of the bride, which puts the change before us in a living way. Marriages of Ælfgifu-Emma and Eadgyth-Matilda. A new epoch of intercourse with other lands had begun when, on her marriage with a King of the English of her day, Norman Emma had to become English Ælfgifu. How greatly things had turned the other way was shown when, on her marriage with a King of the English of her day, English Eadgyth had to become Norman Matilda. England becomes part of the Latin world. The land which was to be the realm of Henry and Matilda was, through the chain of events which began with Emma’s marriage, fast changing from the separate world of Æthelred’s day into a part of the larger world of Western Europe, the world of Latinitas, of Latin speech and of learning, the world which, amidst all the struggles of rival Popes and Emperors, still deemed itself the world of Rome. Advance of the Latin world in the eleventh century. And in few ages had that world done more to extend itself than in the age which began with Æthelred and ended with Henry. At the beginning of the century northern Europe was still largely heathen; England was fighting the battle of Christendom against the Danish renegade. Conversion of the North. The Crusade. Now the kingdoms of the North had passed into the Christian fold. The change between the beginning of the century and the end is best marked by saying that before its end the crusades had begun, that the first crusade had been crowned with the greatest of crusading victories. But, in looking at the crusades of the East, the abiding crusade of the West must not be forgotten. The struggle in Spain. Our own Chronicler has not failed to tell us somewhat of the great strife of Christian and Saracen in the south-western peninsula,[745] and if the taking of Toledo was followed by reverses of the Christian arms, it was only by dint of help from Africa. Here is a sign that the tide was turned, and that it was only by such help from beyond the straits, by a new passage of Africa into Europe, that Islam could maintain itself in the once Roman and Gothic land. In the Eastern world, the crusade should not make us forget the causes of the crusade. Decline of the Eastern Empire. At the beginning of the century we saw the Eastern Rome in her full might, the might of Saracenic victories which were already won, of Bulgarian victories which were winning. But now, as the Western Mussulman has to call in help from Africa, so the Eastern Christian has to call in help from Western Europe. Renewed advance. The Christian frontier in Asia has indeed frightfully gone back since the beginning of the century; but it has again begun to advance; Nikaia, Antioch, Jerusalem itself, are restored to the Christian world, and Nikaia is restored, not only to the Christian world but to the obedience of the Eastern Augustus. Sicily. And, by not least memorable change among so many, the great Mediterranean island, the battle-field of Greek and Saracen, has passed away from the rule of either, while remaining the flourishing dwelling-place of both. Sicily has entered within the range of Western Christendom, and Palermo, like Winchester, has entered within the range of Norman dominion. When Æthelred reigned at Winchester and Richard at Rouen, a bishop of Evreux could not have performed the funeral rites of a bishop of Bayeux within the walls and between the havens of the Happy City.

Contradiction in William’s position. The strange thing is that a man who schemed so much, who filled so great a place in the eyes of his own generation, after all did so little. Almost more strange is the way in which he sees all his great plans utterly shattered, and yet seems to feel no shame, no discouragement, no shock to his belief in his own greatness. He comes back really defeated; he has twice won Le Mans, and that is all; but if he has won Le Mans, he cannot win Mayet. So far from winning Paris, he cannot win Chaumont. So far from reigning on the Garonne, he cannot keep even the frontier of the Loir. His defeats not counted defeats. But what would have been counted defeat in any one else does not seem to have been counted defeat in William Rufus. Beaten at all points but one, he still keeps the air of a conqueror; he still seems to be looked on as a conqueror by others. From the beginning to the end, there is a kind of glamour about the Red King and all that he does. He has a kind of sleight of hand which imposes on men’s minds; like the Athenian orator, when he is thrown in the wrestling-match, he makes those who saw his fall believe that he has never fallen.[746] We might even borrow a word from the piebald jargon of modern diplomacy; we might say that the reign of the Red King was the highest recorded effort of prestige.

The year 1100. And now we have entered on the last year of the reign and of the century. Lack of events in its earlier months. It is a year whose earlier months are, within our own range at least, singularly barren of events, while its latter months are full of matter to record. It is a kind of tribute to the importance of William Rufus that there is at once so much to record the moment he is out of the way. When he is gone, a large part of the world feels relief. But about the lack of events earlier in the year there is something strange and solemn. Contrast with the year 1000. The last year of the eleventh century was not marked by that general feeling of awe and wonder and looking forward to judgement which marked the last year of the tenth century. Vague expectations afloat. But, at least within the range of the Red King’s influence, that year seems to have been marked by that vague kind of feeling of a coming something which some of us have felt before the great events of our own times. Whatever may be the cause, it is certain that, as the news of events which have happened sometimes travels with a speed which ordinary means cannot account for,[747] so the approach of events which have not yet happened is sometimes felt in a way which we can account for as little. Coming events do cast their shadows before them, in a fashion which, whether philosophy can explain it or not, history must accept as a fact. And coming events did preeminently cast their shadows before them in the first half of the year 1100. Portents and prophecies. In that age the feeling which weighed on men’s minds naturally took the form of portent and prophecy, of strange sights seen and strange sounds listened to. There is not the slightest ground for thinking that all these tales are mere inventions after the fact, though they were likely enough to be improved in the telling after the fact. The frightful state of things in the land, unparalleled even in those evil times, joined with the feeling of expectation which always attends any marked note of time, be it a fresh week or a fresh millennium—​all worked together to bring about a looking for something to come, partly perhaps in fear, but far more largely in hope. Things could hardly get worse; they might get better. Men’s minds were charged with expectation; every sight, every sound, became an omen; if some men risked prophecies, if some of their prophecies were fulfilled, it was not wonderful. The first half of the year, blank in events, was rich in auguries; in the second half the auguries had largely become facts. In its first months men were saying with hope, “Non diu dominabuntur effeminati.”[748] Before the twelvemonth was out, they were beginning to say with joy, “Hic rex Henricus destruxit impios regni.”[749]

§ 1. The Last Days of William Rufus.
January—​August, 1100.

The three assemblies of 1099–1100. Christmas at Gloucester. 1099–1000. This year the King, occupied by no warfare beyond his realm, was able to hold all the assemblies of the year at their wonted times and in their wonted places.[750] At Christmas William Rufus wore his crown at Gloucester, the place of his momentary repentance and of his wildest insolence. He had there given the staff to Anselm; he had there sent away Malcolm from his court without a hearing. Easter at Winchester. April 1, 1100. At Easter he wore his crown at Winchester, the city which had first received him after the death of his father, where he had first unlocked his father’s treasures, and had put in bonds those whom his father had set free. Pentecost at Westminster. May 20, 1100. At Whitsuntide he wore his crown at Westminster, and again held the assembly and the banquet in the mighty hall of his own rearing. No record of these assemblies. We have no record of the acts of any of these three assemblies. The two former at least may well have been gatherings which came together more for the display of kingly magnificence than for the transaction of any real business of the realm. All things seemed to be as glorious as ever for the defeated of Mayet and Chaumont. In the death of Urban Rufus saw the removal of an enemy, at least of a hindrance in his way. Death of Urban. He had indeed found that Urban could be won to his will by a bribe. Still he was a Pope, a Pope whom he had himself acknowledged, a Pope whom it might be needful to bribe. Better far was it to come back to the happy days before he had been cajoled by Cardinal Walter, before he had been frightened into naming Anselm, the happy days when he was troubled by no archbishop in the land and no pope out of it. Those days were come again. Anselm was far away; Urban was dead; Paschal he had not acknowledged. The last recorded words of Rufus before the day of Lammas and its morrow were those in which he set forth his fixed purpose to use as he would the freedom which was his once more.[751]

But if we have no record of the three assemblies of the year, if we have no traditional sayings of the King, if we have no record of anything that really happened during these months, we can see that great schemes were planned; great preparations were making, which must have been the matter of deep debates at the Pentecostal assembly. Our own Chroniclers are silent; our tidings come from our familiar teacher at Saint Evroul. Continental schemes of Rufus. Though the Red King kept himself so close in his island kingdom, he was planning greater things than ever beyond the sea. He had Normandy to keep and he had Aquitaine to win. For such objects he had need of both gold and steel, and we cannot doubt that in the assembly held at Whitsuntide within the new hall of Westminster King William demanded no small store of both to enable him to carry out the schemes of his overweening pride.

Robert’s return from the crusade. Normandy was to be kept. Duke Robert, the bold crusader, was coming back from the lands where his name, once so despised in his own duchy, had been crowned with unlooked-for glory. He was coming back by the path by which he had gone, through the Norman lands of southern Italy. His marriage with Sibyl of Conversana. And he was coming with a companion whose presence promised something in the way of amendment alike of his private life and of his public government. He brought with him a wife, Sibyl of Conversana, daughter of Geoffrey lord of Brindisi, and grand-niece of Robert Wiscard. His reception in south Italy. He had been welcomed by his southern countrymen with all honours and with precious gifts; both Rogers, the Duke of Apulia and the young Count of Sicily, to be one day the first and all but the most famous of Sicilian kings, were zealous in showing their regard. Character of the Duchess Sibyl. But from the house of the Count of Conversana he took away the most precious gift of all in a woman who is described as uniting all merits and beauties within and without, and who was certainly far better fitted to rule the duchy of Normandy than he was.[752] His funds for buying back the duchy. His father-in-law and his other friends gave him great gifts in money and precious things towards redeeming his dominions from his brother.[753] But William Rufus had no thought of restoring the pledge; he had Normandy in his grasp, and he had no mind to let it go.

William of Aquitaine; his crusade; But besides this, Aquitaine was to be won. It was indeed to be won in a peaceful sort, as far as the engagements of its sovereign went. Duke William of Poitiers, the ally of William of England in his French campaign, was at last ready for his crusade. Strange warrior of the cross, strange comrade for Godfrey or even for Robert, was he who, after his return from the Sepulchre, spared the life of a holy bishop who rebuked him on the ground that he hated him too much to send him to paradise, who brought together the monastic harem at Niort, and who marched to battle with the form of his adulterous mistress painted on his shield.[754] But now he was setting forth for the holy war. Thirty thousand warriors—​the conventional number everywhere—​from Aquitaine, Gascony, and other lands of southern Gaul, were ready, we are told, to follow in his train.[755] He proposes to pledge his duchy to Rufus. But Duke William, like Duke Robert, lacked money. He sent therefore to the master of the hoard which seemed open to all comers, seeking to pledge his duchy, as Robert had pledged his.[756] We cannot help suspecting that some such arrangement had been made at an earlier time, when the two Williams joined their forces together against France; but, if not made then, it was made now. King William readily agreed to an offer which would practically make him master of the greater part of Gaul. He was lord of Normandy; he held himself to be master of Maine; he was about to become lord of Aquitaine. Preparations for occupation of Aquitaine. Maine and Poitou indeed did not march on each other; but Anjou might be won by some means. Fulk could not hold out against a prince who hemmed him in on either side. Either gold or steel would surely open the way to Angers, as well as to Rouen and to Bourdeaux. Prepared for all chances, William was gathering money, gathering ships, gathering men, for a greater work than fruitless attacks on Mayet and Chaumont, for the great task of enlarging his dominion,--our guide says to the Garonne; he should rather have said to the Pyrenees. Robert was to be kept out of Normandy; to restore to the debtor his pledge was the dull virtue of the merchant or the Jew; such duties touched not the honour of the good knight. No man could perform all his promises, and the restoration of Normandy was a promise of the class which needed not to be performed. Aquitaine was to be peacefully bought; but possibly arms might be needed there also. All who should dare to withstand the extension of William’s dominion to the most southern borders of Gaul were to be brought to obedience at the sword’s point.

His alleged designs on the Empire. I have said “dominion;” but the word in the writer whom I follow is Empire.[757] That name, one not unknown to us in the history of Rufus, may have been dropped at random; but it may have been meant to show that mightier schemes still were at work in the restless brain of the Red King. We may couple the phrase with vague hints dropped elsewhere, which show that, whether Rufus really thought of it or not, men gave him credit for dreams of dominion greater even than the supplanting of Fulk of Angers, of William of Poitiers, and of Philip of Paris all at once. The doctrine that Britain was a land fruitful in tyrants was to be carried out on a greater scale than it had been in the days of Carausius or Maximus or the later Constantine. The father had once been looked for at kingly Aachen;[758] the son, so men believed, hoped to march in the steps of Brennus to imperial Rome.[759] He would outdo the glory of all crusaders, of princes of Antioch and kings of Jerusalem. Geoffrey, Bohemund, his own brother, had knelt as vassals in the New Rome; he would sit as an Emperor in the Old. Then he would have no question about acknowledging or not acknowledging popes; he would make them or refuse to make them as he thought good. The patrimony of Saint Peter might be let to farm, along with the estates of Canterbury and Winchester and Salisbury. Whether such thoughts really passed through the mind of William Rufus we can neither affirm nor deny. That men could believe that they were passing through his mind shows that they believed, and rightly, that he was capable of dreaming, of planning, of attempting, anything.

Portents. But while the preparations were making, the portents were gathering. First came a stroke which reads like a rehearsal of his own end. While Robert was coming back with his Sibyl to found a new and legitimate dynasty in the Norman duchy, a blow fell on one of the children of his earlier wanderings.[760] Death of young Richard. May, 1100. One Richard had already fallen in the haunted shades of the New Forest,[761] and his death opened the path for his younger brother to reign at Winchester and Rouen and Le Mans, and to dream of reigning at Dublin, Paris, Poitiers, and Rome. Another Richard, the natural son of Duke Robert, who must have been enrolled in the service of his uncle, was cut off on the same fatal ground early in May, shortly before the Westminster assembly. The King’s knights were hunting the deer in the forest; one of them drew his bow to bring down a stag; the arrow missed the intended victim, and pierced Richard with a stroke which brought him dead to the ground.[762] Great grief followed his fall; his unwitting slayer, to escape from vengeance, fled and became a monk.[763] Young Richard thus died while his uncle was making ready to keep his father out of the dominions which he was pledged to restore. William, natural son of Robert. His brother William, the other son of Robert’s vagrant days, seems to have followed the fortunes of his father, till, after Tinchebrai, he went to Jerusalem and died fighting in the Holy War.[764]

The death of Richard might be a warning. It might be taken as a sign that some special power of destiny hovered over the spot where the dwellings of man and the houses of God had been swept away to make clearer ground for sports where joy is sought for in the wanton infliction of death and suffering. Still it was no portent out of the ordinary course of nature. But portents of this kind too were not lacking. Wonders and apparitions. The pool of blood in Berkshire welled again;[765] the devil was seen openly in many places, showing himself, it would seem, to Normans only, and talking to them of their countrymen the King and the Bishop of Durham.[766] Strange births, stranger unbirths, were told as the news of the day to a visitor from another land.[767] As the day approaches, a crowd of vivid pictures seems to pass before us. Warlike preparations. June-July, 1100. June and July passed amidst preparations for war, but July saw also one great ecclesiastical ceremony. Abbot Serlo’s minster of Gloucester was now near enough to perfection for its consecration to be sought for. Whether all the lofty pillars of the nave were as yet reared or not, at least that massive eastern limb with its surrounding chapels, which may still be seen through the lace-work of later times, was already finished. Consecration of Gloucester Abbey. July 15, 1100. The rite of its hallowing was done by the diocesan Samson and three other bishops, Gundulf of Rochester, Gerard of Hereford, and Hervey the shepherd of the stormy diocese of Bangor. The zeal of the monks and their visitors was stirred up by the ceremony, and the house of Saint Peter at Gloucester became a special seat of vision and prophecy. Vision and prophecies. One godly brother[768] saw in the dreams of the night the Lord sitting on his throne, with the hosts of heaven and the choirs of the saints around him. A fair and stately virgin stood forth and knelt before the Lord. She prayed him to have pity on his people who were ground down beneath the yoke of King William of England. The dreamer trembled, and understood that the suppliant was the holy Church of Christ, calling on her Lord and Saviour to look down on all that her children bore from the lusts and robberies and other evil deeds of the King and his followers.[769] Serlo, filled with holy zeal, set down the vision in writing, and sent the message of warning to the King.[770]

Abbot Fulchered’s sermon at Gloucester. August 1, 1100. But the visions of the night were not all. A more open voice of prophecy, so men deemed, was not lacking. A few days after the monk’s vision, on the day of Lammas, a crowd of all classes was gathered in Saint Peter’s church at Gloucester to keep the feast of Saint Peter-in-Chains.[771] Fulchered, Abbot of Earl Roger’s house at Shrewsbury, once a monk of Earl Roger’s house at Seez, an eloquent preacher of the divine word, was chosen from a crowd of elders[772] to make his discourse to the people. A near neighbour of the terrible son of his own founder, none could know better than he under what woes the land was groaning. Fulchered mounted the pulpit of the newly-hallowed minster, and the spirit of the old prophets came upon him.[773] In glowing words he set forth the sins and sorrows of the time, how England was given as an heritage to be trodden under foot of the ungodly. Lust, greediness, pride, all were rampant, pride which would, if it were possible, trample under foot the very stars of heaven.[774] The words have the ring of the words of Eadward on his deathbed; but Eadward had to tell of coming sorrow, and of only distant deliverance. Fulchered could tell of a deliverance which was nigh, even at the doors. A sudden change was at hand; the men who had ceased to be men should rule no longer.[775] And then in a strain which seems to carry us on to the days of Naseby and Dunbar, he told how the Lord God was coming to judge the open enemies of his spouse. He told how the Almighty would smite Moab and Edom with the sword of vengeance, and overthrow the mountains of Gilboa with a fearful shaking. “Lo,” he went on, “the bow of wrath from on high is bent against the wicked, and the arrow swift to wound is drawn from the quiver. It shall soon smite, and that suddenly; let every man that is wise amend his ways and avoid its stroke.”[776]

Such is the report of Abbot Fulchered’s sermon, as it is told us by one who no doubt set down with a special interest the words of the first prelate of the minster into which the humble church of his own father had grown.[777] The alleged dream of the King. Other stories tell us how on the night of that same Wednesday a more fearful dream than that of the monk of Gloucester disturbed the slumbers of some one. In the earlier version the seer is a monk from beyond sea; in its later form the terrible warning is vouchsafed to the King himself.[778] The story, as usual, puts on fresh details as it grows; but its essential features are the same in its simplest and in its most elaborate shape. The King, with his proud and swelling air, scorning all around him, enters a church. In one version it is a chapel in a forest; in another it is a minster gorgeously adorned. Its walls were robed with velvet and purple, stuffs wrought by the skill of the Greek, and with tapestry where the deeds of past times lived in stitch-work, like the tale of Brihtnoth at Ely and the newer tale of William at Bayeux.[779] Here were goodly books, here were the shrines of saints, gleaming with gold and gems and ivory, a sight such as the eyes of the master and spoiler of so many churches had never rested on. At a second glance all this bravery passed away; the walls and the altar itself stood bare. At a third glance he saw the form of a man lying bare upon the altar. A cannibal desire came on him; he ate, or strove to eat, of the body that lay before him. His victim endured for a while in patience; then his face, hitherto goodly and gentle as of an angel, became stern beyond words, and he spoke—“Is it not enough that thou hast thus far grieved me with so many wrongs? Wilt thou gnaw my very flesh and bones?” One version gives the words another turn; the stern voice answers simply, “Henceforth thou shalt eat of me no more.” Exhortation of Gundulf. In those accounts which make the King the dreamer, Rufus tells the vision to a bishop—​one tale names Gundulf—​who explains the easy parable. The exhortation follows, to mend his ways, to hold a synod and to restore Anselm. The King, in one account, in a momentary fit of penitence, promises to do so. But his better feelings pass away; in defiance of all warnings, he goes forth to hunt on the fatal ground, the scene of the wrong and sacrilege of his father—​in some of these versions the scene of further wrong and sacrilege of his own.

The details of some of these stories I shall discuss elsewhere. If they prove nothing else, they prove at least the deep impression which the Red King’s life and the Red King’s end made on the men of his own days and of the days which followed them. William at Brockenhurst. August 1, 1100. One thing is certain; on the first day of August, while Fulchered was preaching at Gloucester, King William was in the New Forest, with his head-quarters seemingly at Brockenhurst.[780] His companions. He had with him several men whose names are known to us, as Gilbert of Laigle, once so fierce against William’s cause at Rouen, Gilbert and Roger of Clare, the former of whom had won his forgiveness by his timely revelations on the march to Bamburgh.[781] Henry. Henry, Ætheling and Count, if not one of the party, was not far off; he too had, if not his visions, at least his omens.[782] Walter Tirel. But chief among the company, nearest, it would seem, to the King in sportive intercourse, was one who was perhaps his subject in Normandy by birth, perhaps his subject in England by tenure, but whose chief possessions, as well as his feelings, belonged to another land.[783] This was a baron of France, whom we once before heard of in better company, but whom the fame of the Red King’s boundless liberality had led into his service. His father the Dean of Evreux. In days before the stern laws of Hildebrand were strictly enforced, a churchman of high rank, Fulk, Dean of Evreux, was, seemingly by a lawful marriage, the father of a large family. Walter, one of his sons, bore the personal surname of Tirel, Tyrell, in many spellings, pointing perhaps to his skill in drawing the bow. His lordships and marriage. He became, by whatever means, lord of Poix in Ponthieu, and of Achères by the Seine between Pontoise and Poissy; at the former of these lordships, it would seem, he had once been the host of Anselm.[784] He was not, in the days of the Survey at least, a land-owner of much account in England. A small lordship in Essex, held under Richard of Clare, is the only entry under any name by which he can be conceived to be meant. He had married a wife, Adelaide by name, of the great line of Giffard, who seems to have lived till the latter days of King Henry. He was now a near friend of the Red King’s, a special sharer with him in the sports of the forest, so much so that, when legend came to attribute the laying waste of Hampshire to the younger instead of the elder William, Walter Tirel was charged with having been the adviser of the deed.[785]

Gab of the King and Walter Tirel. On the Wednesday of Fulchered’s sermon, the King and his chosen comrade were talking familiarly. Walter fell into that kind of discourse which is called in the Old-French tongue by the expressive words gaber and gab.[786] He began to talk big, to jeer at the King for the small results of his own big talk. But the matter of the discourse sounds a little strange, if it was really uttered at a moment when such great preparations were making for the defence of Normandy, for the purchase of Aquitaine, perhaps for the conquest of Anjou, to say nothing of schemes greater and further off. Walter jeers at the king. The lord of Poix asked the King why he did nothing; with his vast power, why did he not attack some neighbour? Great as the Red King’s power was, Walter is made to speak of it as a good deal greater than the truth, so much so indeed that we can read the speech only as mockery. William’s alleged subjects and allies. All William’s men were ready at his call, the men of Britanny, of Maine,[787] he adds of Anjou. The Flemings held of him—​we have heard of his dealings with their Count;[788] the Burgundians held him for their king; Eustace of Boulogne would do anything at his bidding.[789] Why did he not make war on somebody? Why did he not go forth and conquer some land or other? The King’s answer; he will keep Christmas at Poitiers. The King answers that he means to lead his host as far as the mountains—​the Alps, we may suppose, are meant. He will thence turn back to the West, and will keep his next Christmas feast at Poitiers.[790] Angry words of Walter. The mocking vein of Walter Tirel now turns to anger; he bursts forth in wrathful words. It would be a great matter indeed to go to the mountains and thence back to Poitiers in time for Christmas. Burgundians and French would indeed deserve to die by the worst of deaths, if they became subjects to the English.[791]

Illustrative value of the story. This talk, put into the mouth of the King and his chosen comrade by a writer of the next generation, is in every way remarkable. The King’s boast that he would keep Christmas at Poitiers is found also in an earlier writer, and it is almost implied in his preparations for taking possession of Aquitaine.[792] The words about French and Burgundians becoming subject to the English might sound more in harmony with the next generation; but we have already seen examples which show that, even so soon after the Norman Conquest of England, the English name was beginning to be applied on continental lips to all the subjects of the English crown. The armies of William Rufus were English in the same sense in which the armies of Justinian were Roman. The threat of a King of England, speaking on English ground, to overrun all the provinces of Gaul is conceived as calling forth a feeling of patriotic anger in the lord of Poix and Achères. Yet, while we might have expected such an one to fight valiantly for Ponthieu or the Vexin against a Norman invader, we might also have expected him to be quite indifferent to the fate of Poitiers, indifferent at all events to its transfer from the Aquitanian to the Norman William. The speech is followed by words which imply that the King’s boast was taken more seriously than it was meant, and which almost suggest a plot on Walter’s part for the King’s destruction.[793] In the crowd of conflicting tales with which we are now dealing, we must not insist on any one as a trustworthy statement of undoubted facts; but the dialogue which is put into the mouths of William Rufus and Walter Tirel is almost as remarkable if we look on it as the invention of the rimer himself as if we deem it to have been, in its substance, really spoken by those into whose mouths it is put.

Last day of William Rufus. August 2, 1100. Of the events of the next day we may say thus much with certainty; “Thereafter on the morrow after Lammas day was the King William in hunting from his own men with an arrow offshot, and then to Winchester brought and in the bishopric buried.”[794] Statement of the Chronicle. These words of our own Chronicler state the fact of the King’s death and its manner; they suggest treason, but they do not directly assert it; they name no one man as the doer. Other versions; Walter Tirel mentioned in most. Nearly all the other writers agree in naming Walter Tirel as the man who drew the bow; but they agree also in making his act chance-medley and not wilful murder. Yet it is clear that there were other tales afloat of which we hear merely the echoes. Ralph of Aix. One tradition attributed the blow, not to Walter Tirel, but to a certain Ralph of Aix.[795] As the tale is commonly told, the details of the King’s death could have been known from no mouth but that of Walter himself; The charge denied by Walter. yet it is certain that Walter himself, long after, when he had nothing to hope or fear one way or the other, denied in the most solemn way that he had any share in the deed or any knowledge of it.[796] The words of the Chronicler, though they suggest treason, do not shut out chance-medley; they leave the actor perfectly open. Estimate of the received tale. There is nothing in the received tale which is in the least unlikely; but it is the kind of tale which, even if untrue, might easily grow up. William may have died by accident by the hand of Walter Tirel or of any other. He may also have died by treason by the hand of Walter Tirel or of any other. In this last case there were many reasons why no inquiries should have been made, many reasons why the received tale should be invented or adopted. It was just such a story as was wanted in such a case. It satisfied curiosity by naming a particular actor, while it named an actor who was out of reach, and did not charge even him with any real guilt. In favour of the same story is the statement, which can hardly be an invention, that Walter Tirel fled after the King’s death. But this was a case in which a man who was innocent even of chance-medley might well flee from the fear of a suspicion of treason. And Walter’s own solemn denial may surely go for as much as any mere suspicion against him. Guesses in such a case are easy; the slayer may have been a friend of Henry, a friend of Anselm, a man goaded to despair by oppression—​all such guesses are likely enough in themselves; there is no evidence for any of them. All that can be said is that the words of the Chronicle certainly seem to point out the actor, whether guilty or only unlucky, as belonging to the King’s immediate following. The statement of the Chronicle the only safe one. “The King William was in hunting from his own men by an arrow offshot.” Beyond that we cannot go with certainty. But the number of men of every class who must have felt that they would be the better, if an arrow or any other means of death could be brought to light on the Red King, must have been great indeed. Wonder that he was not killed sooner. The real wonder is, not that the shaft struck him in the thirteenth year of his reign, but that no hand had stricken him long before.

Accounts of the King’s last day. Of the last day of the Red King, Thursday, the second day of August, we have two somewhat minute pictures which belong to different hours of the day. There is no contradiction between the two; the two may be read as an unbroken story; but we have that slight feeling of distrust which cannot fail to arise when it is clear that he who records the events of the afternoon knew nothing of the events of the morning. The details of such a day would be sure to be remembered; for the same reason they ran a special chance of being coloured and embellished. We shall therefore do well to go through the details of the earlier hours of that memorable day as we find them written, not forgetting the needful cautions, but at the same time not forgetting that the tale has much direct evidence for it and has no direct evidence against it.[797]

Morning of August 2. The King then, even according to those who do not assign the specially fearful vision to himself, passed a restless night, disturbed by dreams which, on this milder showing, were ugly enough. William’s dreams. He dreamed that he was bled—​a process which in those days seems to have passed for a kind of amusement—​and that the blood gushed up towards heaven, so as to shut out the light of day.[798] He woke suddenly with the name of our Lady on his lips; he bade a light to be brought, and bade his chamberlains not to leave him.[799] He remained awake till daybreak. Robert Fitz-hamon tells the monk’s dream. Then, according to this version, came Robert Fitz-hamon, entitled to do so as being in his closest confidence,[800] and told him the dream of the monk from beyond sea. William was moved; but he tried to hide his real feelings under the usual guise of mockery; William’s mocking answer. “He is a monk,” he said with his rude laugh, “he is a monk; monklike he dreams for the sake of money; give him a hundred shillings.”[801] Here we see the boasted liberality which recklessly squandered with one hand what was wrung from the groaning people with the other. His disturbance of mind. Seriously disturbed in mind, William doubted whether he should go hunting that morning; his friends urged him to run no risk, lest the dream should come true. His morning. He therefore, to occupy his restless mind, gave the forenoon to serious business;[802] there was enough of it on hand, if he was planning a march to Rome or even a march to Poitiers. The early dinner of those days presently came; he ate and drank more than usual, hoping thus to stifle and drown the thoughts that pressed upon him.[803] In this attempt he seems to have succeeded; after his meal he went forth on his hunting.

He sets forth to hunt. At this point we take up the thread of the other story. The King, after his meal, has regained his spirits, and, surrounded by his followers and flatterers, he is making ready for the chase. The new arrows. He was putting on his boots—​boots doubtless of no small price—​when a smith drew near, offering him six new catapults, arrows, it would seem, designed, not for the long bow, but for the more deadly arbalest or cross-bow.[804] The King joyfully took them; he praised the work of the craftsman; he kept four for himself, and gave two to Walter Tirel. He gives two of them to Walter Tirel. “Tis right,” he said, “that the sharpest arrows should be given to him who knows how to deal deadly strokes with them.”[805] The two went on talking and jesting; the flatterers of the King joined in admiringly. Abbot Serlo’s letter. Suddenly there came a monk from Gloucester charged with a letter from Abbot Serlo. The letter told the dream of the monk, in which the Holy Church had been seen calling on her Lord for vengeance on the evil deeds of the King of the English. The letter was read to the King[806]—​there was a future king not far off who could read letters for himself. William’s mockery. William burst into his bitter laugh; he turned to his favourite comrade; “Walter, do thou do justice, according to these things which thou hast heard.” “So I will, my lord,” answered Walter.[807] Then the King talks more at length about the Abbot’s letter. “I wonder at my lord Serlo’s fancy for writing all this; I always thought him a good old abbot. ’Tis very simple of him, when I have so much business about, to take the trouble to put the dreams of his snoring monks into writing and to send them to me all this way. His sneers at English regard for omens. Does he think I am like the English, who throw up their journey or their business because of the snoring or the dreams of an old woman?”[808] This speech has a genuine sound; it should be noticed as being the only speech put into the mouth of William Rufus which can be construed as expressing any dislike or scorn for his English subjects as such. Yet the words are rather words of good-humoured raillery than expressive of any deeper feeling. The Red King oppressed and despised all men, except his own immediate following. Practically his oppression and scorn must have fallen most heavily on men of native English birth; but there is no sign that he purposely picked them out as objects of any special persecution.

William and his companions go to the hunt. In the version which records this speech the sneer at the English regard for omens are the Red King’s last recorded words. He now mounted his horse and rode into a wooded part of the forest to seek his sport, the sport of those to whom the sufferings of the wearied, wounded, weeping, beast are a source of joy. Count Henry the King’s brother,[809] William of Breteuil, and other nobles, went forth to the hunt, and were scattered about towards different points. The King and Walter Tirel. The King and the lord of Poix kept together, with a few companions, some say; others say that they two only kept together.[810] The King shot by an arrow. The sun was sinking towards the west when an arrow struck the King; he fell, and his reign and life were ended. This is all that we can say with positive certainty. That the arrow came from the bow of Walter Tirel is a feature common to nearly every account; but all the details differ. Various versions. In one highly picturesque version, not only the King and Walter Tirel,[811] but a company of barons are in a thickly wooded part of the forest near a marsh. The herd of deer comes near; the King gets down from his horse to take better aim; the barons get down also, Walter Tirel among them. Walter places himself near an elder-tree, behind an aspen. A great stag passes by; an arrow badly aimed pierces the King; by whose hand it was sent the teller of the tale knew not; but the archers who were there said that the shaft came from the bow of Walter Tirel. Walter fled at once; the King fell. He thrice cried for the Lord’s body. Alleged devotion of the King at the last moment. But there was none to give it to him; the place was a wilderness far from any church. But a hunter took herbs and flowers and made the King eat, deeming this to be a communion. Such a strange kind of figure of the most solemn act of Christian worship was not unknown.[812] Our author charitably hopes that it might be accepted in the case of the Red King, especially as he had received holy bread—​itself a substitute of the same kind—​the Sunday before.

In this version there is no mention of the warning dreams either of the King or of any other person. The scene in the wood follows at once on the boasting discourse with Walter Tirel. Another version; In another version the King has the frightful dream; he receives, and receives in a good spirit, the warning interpretation of the Bishop.[813] His companions, knights and valets, make ready for the chase; they are mounted on their horses; the bows are ready; the dogs are following; the dogs bark; the horns blow; all is ready that could stir up the soul of the hunter. William unwilling to go to the hunt. The King is unwilling to stir; his companions tempt him, entreat him, jeer at him; it is time to set out; he is afraid. He tells them solemnly that he is sick and sad a hundredfold more than they wot of. The end is come; he will not go to the forest. They think that he is mocking, and at last constrain him to come. The chase is described; the King seems to be alone with one unnamed companion. He is shot by accident by a knight unnamed. The King calls on his comrade to shoot; he is frightened as being too near the King. He shoots; the devil guides the barbed arrow so that it glances from a bough, and pierces the King near the heart. He dies penitent. He has just strength enough to bid the knight to flee for his own life, and to pray to God for him who has lost his life by his own folly, and who has been so great a sinner against God. The knight rides off in bitter grief, wishing a hundred times that he had himself been killed instead of the King.

Tenderness towards Rufus in these two versions. In these versions, both written in the Red King’s own tongue, the details are very remarkable. They seem to come from a kind of wish, like the feeling which strewed flowers on the grave of Nero, to make the end of the oppressor and blasphemer one degree less frightful. Other versions know nothing of this conversion at the last moment. In one of them, the two, the King and Walter, are alone; the King shoots at a stag; he hits the beast, but only with a slight wound. Other versions mention Walter Tirel. The stag flies; the King follows him with his eyes, sheltering them with his hand from the sun’s rays. Walter Tirel meanwhile aims at another stag, misses him, and strikes the King. Rufus utters no word; like Harold, he breaks off the shaft of the arrow; he falls on the ground, and dies. Walter comes up, finds him lifeless, and takes to flight.[814] Or again, the stag comes between his two enemies; Walter shoots; the King at the same moment shifts his place; Walter’s arrow flies over the stag’s back, and pierces the King.[815] In another version the arrow, as we have already heard, glances from a tree;[816] in another the King stumbles and falls upon it.[817] In later but not less graphic accounts the string of the King’s bow breaks; the stag stands still in amazement; the King calls to Walter, “Shoot, you devil,” “Shoot, in the devil’s name; shoot, or it will be the worse for you.” Walter shoots; his arrow, perhaps by a straight course, perhaps by glancing against a tree, strikes the King to the heart.[818]

In all these versions the arrow comes from the bow of a known companion, and in all but one that companion is said to be Walter Tirel. In another form of the story the general outline is the same, but the persons are different. Dunstable version. The vision which in the other version is seen at Gloucester is moved to Dunstable, and is seen there by the prior of that house. The change of place is unlucky, as the priory of Dunstable was not yet founded.[819] The dream with new details. The Prince on his throne, and the fair woman complaining of the deeds of William Rufus, are seen, with some differences of detail, but quite a new element is brought in. A man all black and hairy offers five arrows to the Prince on the throne, who gives them back again to him, saying that on the morrow the wrongs of the suppliant woman shall be avenged by one of them. The Prior has the vision explained to him much as in the other versions of the story, but with the addition that, unless the King repented, the woman—​the Church—​would be avenged by one of the arrows on the morrow. The prior of Dunstable warns the King. The Prior starts from his sleep, and midnight as it was, he sets out at once on a journey to the New Forest, as swift and headlong as the King’s own ride to Southampton the year before. He reaches the place at one in the afternoon, and finds the King going forth to hunt. As soon as William sees him, he says that he knows why he is come, and orders forty marks to be given to him. For, it is added, the King, who destroyed other churches throughout all England, had a love for the church of Dunstable and its prior, and had even built the minster there at his own cost. The Prior says that he has come on much greater and weightier matters; he takes the King aside; he tells him his dream, and warns him on no account to go into the forest, but at once to begin to repent and amend his ways. The Prior has hardly ended his discourse when a man, like the man whom he had seen in his dream, comes and offers the King five arrows, like the arrows of the dream. The King shot by Ralph of Aix. The King gives them—​not to Walter Tirol, who is not mentioned, but to Ralph of Aix, to take with him into the forest. The Prior meanwhile prays him not to go, but in vain. He goes into the wood, and is presently shot with one of those arrows by the hand of Ralph. No details are given, nor is it implied whether the King’s death was an act of murder or of chance-medley.

Impression made at the time by the death of Rufus. These varying tales, whose very variety shows the impression which the event made upon men’s minds, may make us glad to come back to the safe statement of the Chronicler, that the Red King was shot from his own men. The place and circumstances of the death of Rufus were such as could not fail to stamp themselves upon men’s minds. We see the proud and godless King, in the height of his pride and godlessness, with his heart puffed up with wilder plans and more swelling boasts than any of his plans and boasts in former years. He goes forth, in defiance of all warning—​for some kernel of truth there must surely be in so many tales of warning—​to take his pleasure in the place which men had already learned to look on as fatal to his house, the place where his brother had died by a mysterious death, where his nephew had died only a few weeks before his own end. He goes forth, after striving first to quiet his restless soul with business, and then to quench all thoughts and all warnings in the wine-cup. In the midst of his sport, he falls, by what hand no man knows for certain. One writer rejoices to tell us how the oppressor of the Church died on the site of one of the churches which had been uprooted to make way for his pleasures.[820] Others rejoice to tell how the King whose life and reign had been that of a wild beast, perished like a beast among the beasts.[821] Its abiding memory. And the impression was not only at the time; it has been abiding. The death of William Rufus is one of those events in English history which are familiar to every memory and come readily to every mouth. His death lives in the thoughts of not a few who have no clear knowledge of his life. The arrow in the New Forest is well known to many who know nothing of the real position of the Red King’s reign in English history. The name of Walter Tirel springs readily to the lips of many on whose ears the names of Randolf Flambard and Robert of Bellême, of Helias of Maine and Malcolm of Scotland, nay the name of Anselm himself, would fall like unwonted sounds. Local traditions. No keener local remembrance can be found than that which binds together the name of Rufus and the name of the New Forest. At the scenes of the great events of his reign, at Rochester and Bamburgh and Le Mans, local memory has passed away, and the presence of the Red King has to be called up by book-learning only. In a word, in popular remembrance William Rufus lives, not in his life but in his death. Nor is this wonderful. Impressive character of the death of Rufus. In the widest survey of his reign, we can only say that his death was the fitting ending of his life; in a life full of striking incident, it is not amazing that the last and most striking incident of all should be the best remembered. Rufus and Charles the First. Of all the endings of kings in our long history, the two most impressive are surely the two that are most opposite. There is the death of the king who fell suddenly in the height of his power, by an unknown hand in the thickest depths of the forest; and there is the death of the king who, fallen from his power, was brought forth to die by the stroke of the headsman, before the windows of his own palace, in the sight of his people and of the sun. The striking nature of the tale is worthy of its long remembrance; but one could almost wish that the name of the supposed actor in the death of Rufus had never attached itself to the story. The words of the Chronicle. The dark words of the Chronicle are in truth more impressive than the tale, true or false, of Walter Tirel. Rufus was shot in his hunting from his own men. That is enough; his day was over. End and character of Rufus. A life was ended, stained with deeds which, in our history at least, stand out without fellow before or after, but a life in which we may here and there see signs of great powers wasted, even of momentary feelings which might have been trained into something nobler. As it is, the career of William the Red is one of which the kindest words that we can say are that he always kept his word when it was plighted in a certain form, and that he was less cruel in his own person than many men of his time, than some better men than himself. Judgement on the reign of Rufus. But, however we judge of the man, there is but one judgement to be passed on the reign. The arrow, by whomsoever shot, set England free from oppression such as she never felt before or after at the hand of a single man.

Alleged final penitence of Rufus. One tale of the death of Rufus, it will be remembered, charitably describes him as seeking at the last for the mercy of the God whom he had so often defied. Others paint him as stubborn to the end, and put the name of the fiend in his mouth as his last words. The other version prevails. The latter version is the one which left its abiding remembrance; it is the one which all men accepted at the time as the true picture of the oppressor whose yoke was broken at that memorable Lammas-tide. Accounts of William’s burial. But the versions which try to assert a repentance for William Rufus at the last moment try also to claim for him a solemn and honourable burial amid the tears of mourning friends. One story goes so far as to place at the head of the assembly the late Bishop of the diocese, Walkelin of Winchester, whose body was already resting in the Old Minster, while the revenues of his see were in the hands of the King. This version gives us a vivid picture of the scene which followed the King’s death.[822] A company of barons gather round the corpse. There were the sons of Richard of Bienfaite, pointedly distinguished, the one as Earl, the other only as Lord.[823] There were Gilbert of Laigle and Robert Fitz-hamon, names familiar to us, and William of Montfichet, a name afterwards well known, but which is not enrolled in Domesday. These lords weep and rend their hair; they beat themselves and wish they were dead; they could never have such another lord. Gilbert of Laigle at last bids them turn from vainly lamenting the lord who could not come back to them to paying the last honours to what was left of him. The huntsmen make a bier; they strew it with flowers and fern; they lay it on two palfreys; they place the corpse on the bier and cover it with the new mantles of Robert Fitz-hamon and William of Montfichet. Then they bear him to the minster of Saint Swithhun, where bishops, abbots, clerks, and monks, a goodly company, are come together. Bishop Walkelin, strange to say, watches by the body of the King till the morning. Then it is buried with such worship, such saying of masses, as no man had ever heard before, such as no man would hear again till the day of doom.

The genuine story. Such is the tale of those who would soften down the story; but the version which bears on it the stamp of truth gives us quite another picture. The King, forsaken by his nobles and companions, lay dead in the forest, as little cared for as his father had been when he lay dead in his chamber at Saint Gervase. Those who had been his comrades in sport hastened hither and thither to their own homes, to guard them against troubles that might arise, now that the land had no longer a ruler. Only a few churls of the neighbourhood, men of the race at whom Rufus had sneered for heeding omens and warnings, were, now that omens and warnings had proved too true, ready to do the last corporal work of mercy to the oppressor. They laid the bleeding body on a rustic wain; they covered it as they could, with coarse cloths, and then took it, dripping blood as it went, to the gates of Winchester. He who had so dearly loved the sports of the woods was himself borne from the woods to the city, like a savage boar pierced through by the hunting-spear.[824] And now took place one of the most wonderful scenes that our history records.[825] Popular canonizations. That history records not a few cases of popular canonization; neither pope nor king could hinder Earl Waltheof and Earl Simon from working signs and wonders on behalf of the folk for whom they had died.[826] Popular excommunication of Rufus. But nowhere else do we read of a popular excommunication. William Rufus, as I have more than once remarked, had never been openly cut off from the communion of the Church. He had died indeed unshriven and unabsolved, but so had many a better man in the endless struggles of those rough days. There was no formal ground for refusing to his corpse or to his soul the rites, the prayers, the offerings, which were the portion of the meanest of the faithful. But a common thought came on the minds of all men that for William Rufus those charitable rites could be of none avail. His foul life, his awful death, was taken as a sign that he was smitten by a higher judgement than that of Popes and Councils. A crowd of all orders, ranks, and sexes, brought together by wonder or pity—​we will not deem that they came in scorn or triumph—​met the humble funeral procession, and followed the royal corpse to the Old Minster. He is buried in the Old Minster without religious rites. The dead man had been a king; the consecrating oil had been poured on his head; his body was therefore allowed to pass within the hallowed walls, and was laid with all speed in a grave beneath the central tower. But in those rites, at once sad and cheerful, which accompany the burial of the lowliest of baptized men, the lord of England and Normandy had no share. No bell was rung; no mass was said; no offerings were made for the soul which was deemed to have passed beyond the reach even of eternal mercy. No man took from the hoard which Rufus had filled by wrong to win the prayers of the poor for him by almsgiving. Men deemed that for him prayer was too late; no scattering abroad of the treasure by the hands of others could atone for the wrong by which the treasure had first been brought together. Many looked on; but few mourned. None wept for him but the mercenaries who received his pay, and the baser partners of his foul vices. They would gladly have torn his slayer in pieces, but he was already far away out of their reach. Thus unwept, unprayed for, a byeword, an astonishment, and a hissing, the Red King lay beneath the pavement of the minster of St. Swithhun. Fall of the tower. 1107. A few years later the tower under which he lay crumbled and fell. Men said that it fell because so foul a corpse lay beneath it.[827]