His remains were taken for interment to St. Stephen's church, which he
had built in the city of Caen, Normandy. As they were preparing to
let down the body into the grave, a man suddenly stepped forward and
forbade the burial. William, he said, had taken the land, on which
the church stood, from his father by violence. He demanded payment.
The corpse was left on the bier, and inquiry instituted, and not until
the debt was discharged was the body lowered to its last resting
place.
"Thus," says the old chronicle, "he who had been a powerful king, and
the lord of so many territories, possessed not then of all his lands
more than seven feet of earth," and not even that unttil the cash was
paid for it. But William's bones were not to rest when finally laid
in the grave, for less than five centuries later (1532) the French
Protestants dug them up and scattered them.