=Source.=--Florence of Worcester, _Chronicon_, ed. Thorpe, vol. ii., p.
44.
On 4 August ... William the younger, king of the English, while
hunting in the New Forest, which is called Ytene in the language of
the English, was struck by an arrow carelessly aimed by a Frenchman,
Walter, surnamed Tyrel, and died; and his body was carried to
Winchester and buried in the old minster in the church of St. Peter.
His fate astonished none, for popular report affirmed it to proceed
from the great strength and vengeance of God. For in ancient times,
to wit, in the days of king Edward and other kings of England,
his predecessors, the same district flourished exceedingly with
God-fearing inhabitants and with churches; but, at the command of king
William the elder, the men were driven away, the houses pulled down,
the churches destroyed and the land given over to the habitation only
of deer; and that was the cause, so folk believed, of the mischance.
For Richard, brother of the same William the younger, had perished in
the same forest some time before, and a little while afterward his
nephew, Richard, son of Robert duke of the Normans, was struck, while
hunting, by an arrow shot by one of his knights, and perished. In the
place where the king fell a church had stood in former times, but, as
we said before, it was destroyed in the time of his father.
In the days of the same king ... there were many portents in the sun,
the moon and the stars; the sea, too, often overflowed the shore and
drowned men and beasts, and swept away many towns and houses; in the
county of Berkshire, before his death, blood flowed from a well for
three weeks; the devil also showed himself to many Normans in horrible
shape in the woods, and spoke with them touching the king and Ranulf
(Flambard) and certain other persons. And no wonder, for in their time
almost all legal justice was silenced, and in causes before the courts
money alone swayed the powers that were. In truth at that time many
obeyed the king’s will rather than justice, and Ranulf, contrary to
ecclesiastical law and the rule of his order (for he was a priest),
took from the king at farm first abbeys, and then bishoprics, the
prelates whereof were lately dead, and paid to him yearly therefrom
large sums of money. His ingenuity and shrewdness were so active
and in a short time became so useful, that the king appointed him
justiciar and collector of the whole realm. In the enjoyment of such
wide powers, everywhere throughout England he exacted fines from the
rich and wealthy, despoiling them of their possessions and lands; and
incessantly burdened the poor with heavy and unjust taxes, and in many
ways, both before he received his bishopric and after, oppressed great
and small alike, and that too, until the king’s death.