himself king of England. An iron king he proved, savage, ruthless, the
descendant of a few generations of pirate Norsemen, and himself a pirate
in blood and temper. England strained uneasily under the harsh rein
which he placed upon it, and he harried the country mercilessly, turning
a great area of fertile land into a desert. That he might have a
hunting-park near the royal palace, he laid waste all the land that lay
between Winchester and the sea, planting there, in place of the homes
destroyed and families driven out, what became known as the "New
Forest." Nothing angered the English more than this ruthless act. A law
had been passed that any one caught killing a deer in William's new
hunting-grounds should have his eyes put out. Men prayed for
retribution. It came. The New Forest proved fatal to the race of the
Conqueror. In 1081 his oldest son Richard mortally wounded himself
within its precincts. In May of the year 1100 his grandson Richard, son
of Duke Robert, was killed there by a stray arrow. And, as if to
emphasize more strongly this work of retribution, two months afterwards
William Rufus, the Red King, the son of the Conqueror, was slain in the
same manner within its leafy shades.
William Rufus--William II. of England--was, like all his Norman
ancestors, fond of the chase. When there were no men to be killed, these
fierce old dukes and kings solaced themselves with the slaughter of
beasts. In early summer of the year 1100 the Red King was at Winchester
Castle, on the skirts of the New Forest. Thence he rode to Malwood-Keep,
a favorite hunting-lodge in the forest. Boon companions were with him,
numbers of them, one of them a French knight named Sir Walter Tyrrell,
the king's favorite. Here the days were spent in the delights of the
chase, the nights in feasting and carousing, and all went merrily.
Around them spread far and wide the umbrageous lanes and alleys of the
New Forest, trees of every variety, oaks in greatest number, crowding
the soil. As yet there were no trees of mighty girth. The forest was
young. Few of its trees had more than a quarter-century of growth,
except where more ancient woodland had been included. The place was
solitary, tenanted only by the deer which had replaced man upon its
soil, and by smaller creatures of wing and fur. Barely a human foot trod
there, save when the king's hunting retinue swept through its verdant
aisles and woke its solitary depths with the cheerful notes of the
hunting-horn. The savage laws of the Conqueror kept all others but the
most daring poachers from its aisles.
Such was the stage set for the tragedy which we have to relate. The
story goes that rough jests passed at Malwood-Keep between Tyrrell and
the king, ending in anger, as jests are apt to. William boasted that he
would carry an army through France to the Alps. Tyrrell, heated with
wine, answered that he might find France a net easier to enter than to
escape from. The hearers remembered these bitter words afterwards.
On the night before the fatal day it is said that cries of terror came
from the king's bed-chamber. The attendants rushed thither, only to find
that the monarch had been the victim of nightmare. When morning came he
laughed the incident to scorn, saying that dreams were fit to scare only
old women and children. His companions were not so easily satisfied.
Those were days when all men's souls were open to omens good and bad.
They earnestly advised him not to hunt that day. William jested at their
fears, vowed that no dream should scare him from the chase, yet, uneasy
at heart, perhaps, let the hours pass without calling for his horse.
Midday came. Dinner was served. William ate and drank with unusual
freedom. Wine warmed his blood and drove off his clinging doubts. He
rose from the table and ordered his horse to be brought. The day was
young enough still to strike a deer, he said.
The king was in high spirits. He joked freely with his guests as he
mounted his horse and prepared for the chase. As he sat in his saddle a
woodman presented him six new arrows. He examined them, declared that
they were well made and proper shafts, and put four of them in his
quiver, handing the other two to Walter Tyrrell.
"These are for you," he said. "Good marksmen should have good arms."
Tyrrell took them, thanked William for the gift, and the hunting-party
was about to start, when there appeared a monk who asked to speak with
the king.
"I come from the convent of St. Peter, at Gloucester," he said. "The
abbot bids me give a message to your majesty."
"Abbot Serlon; a good Norman he," said the king. "What would he say?"
"Your majesty," said the monk, with great humility, "he bids me state
that one of his monks has dreamed a dream of evil omen. He deems the
king should know it."
"A dream!" declared the king. "Has he sent you hither to carry shadows?
Well, tell me your dream. Time presses."
"The dream was this. The monk, in his sleep, saw Jesus Christ sitting on
a throne, and at his feet kneeled a woman, who supplicated him in these
words: 'Saviour of the human race, look down with pity on thy people
groaning under the yoke of William.'"
The king greeted this message with a loud laugh.
"Do they take me for an Englishman, with their dreams?" he asked. "Do
they fancy that I am fool enough to give up my plans because a monk
dreams or an old woman sneezes? Go, tell your abbot I have heard his
story. Come, Walter de Poix, to horse!"
The train swept away, leaving the monkish messenger alone, the king's
disdainful laugh still in his ears. With William were his brother Henry,
long at odds with him, now reconciled, William de Breteuil, and several
other nobles. Quickly they vanished among the thickly clustering trees,
and soon broke up into small groups, each of which took its own route
through the forest. Walter Tyrrell alone remained with the king, their
dogs hunting together.
That was the last that was seen of William, the Red King, alive. When
the hunters returned he was not with them. Tyrrell, too, was missing.
What had become of them? Search was made, but neither could be found,
and doubt and trouble of soul pervaded Malwood-Keep.
The shades of night were fast gathering when a poor charcoal-burner,
passing with his cart through the forest, came upon a dead body
stretched bleeding upon the grass. An arrow had pierced its breast.
Lifting it into his cart, wrapped in old linen, he jogged slowly onward,
the blood still dripping and staining the ground as he passed. Not till
he reached the hunting-lodge did he discover that it was the corpse of a
king he had found in the forest depths. The dead body was that of
William II. of England.
Tyrrell had disappeared. In vain they sought him. He was nowhere to be
found. Suspicion rested on him. He had murdered the king, men said, and
fled the land.
Mystery has ever since shrouded the death of the Red King. Tyrrell lived
to tell his tale. It was probably a true one, though many doubted it.
The Frenchman had quarrelled with the king, men said, and had murdered
him from revenge. Just why he should have murdered so powerful a friend
and patron, for a taunt passed in jest, was far from evident.
Tyrrell's story is as follows: He and the king had taken their stations,
opposite one another, waiting the work of the woodsmen who were beating
up the game. Each had an arrow in his cross-bow, his finger on the
trigger, eagerly listening for the distant sounds which would indicate
the coming of game. As they stood thus intent, a large stag suddenly
broke from the bushes and sprang into the space between them.
William drew, but the bow-string broke in his hand. The stag, startled
at the sound, stood confused, looking suspiciously around. The king
signed to Tyrrell to shoot, but the latter, for some reason, did not
obey. William grew impatient, and called out,--
"Shoot, Walter, shoot, in the devil's name!"
Shoot he did. An instant afterwards the king fell without word or moan.
Tyrrell's arrow had struck a tree, and, glancing, pierced the king's
breast; or it may be that an arrow from a more distant bow had struck
him. When Tyrrell reached his side he was dead.
The French knight knew what would follow if he fell into the hands of
the king's companions. He could not hope to make people credit his tale.
Mounting his horse, he rode with all speed through the forest, not
drawing rein till the coast was reached. He had far outridden the news
of the tragedy. Taking ship here, he crossed over in haste to Normandy,
and thence made his way to France, not drawing a breath free from care
till he felt the soil of his native land beneath his feet. Here he lived
to a good age and died in peace, his life diversified by a crusading
visit to the Holy Land.
The end of the Red King resembled that of his father. The Conqueror had
been deserted before he had fairly ceased breathing, his body left half
clad on the bare boards of his chamber, while some of his attendants
rifled the palace, others hastened to offer their services to his son.
The same scenes followed the Red King's death. His body was left in the
charcoal-burner's cart, clotted with blood, to be conveyed to
Winchester, while his brother Henry rode post-haste thither to seize the
royal treasure, and the train of courtiers rode as rapid a course, to
look after their several interests.
Reaching the royal palace, Henry imperiously demanded the keys of the
king's treasure-chamber. Before he received them William de Breteuil
entered, breathless with haste, and bade the keepers not to deliver
them.
"Thou and I," he said to Henry, "ought loyally to keep the faith which
we promised to thy brother, Duke Robert; he has received our oath of
homage, and, absent or present, he has the right."
But what was faith, what an oath, when a crown was the prize? A quarrel
followed; Henry drew his sword; the people around supported him; soon he
had the treasure and the royal regalia; Robert might have the right, he
had the kingdom.
There is tradition connected with the Red King's death. A stirrup hangs
in Lyndhurst Hall, said to be that which he used on that fatal day. The
charcoal-burner was named Purkess. There are Purkesses still in the
village of Minstead, near where William Rufus died. And the story runs
that the earthly possessions of the Purkess family have ever since been
a single horse and cart. A stone marks the spot where the king fell, on
it is the inscription,--
"Here stood the oak-tree on which the arrow, shot by Walter Tyrrell at a
stag, glanced and struck King William II., surnamed Rufus, on the
breast; of which stroke he instantly died on the second of August, 1100.
"That the spot where an event so memorable had happened might not
hereafter be unknown, this stone was set up by John, Lord Delaware, who
had seen the tree growing in this place, anno 1745."
We may end by saying that England was revenged; the retribution for
which her children had prayed had overtaken the race of the pirate
king. That broad domain of Saxon England, which William the Conqueror
had wrested from its owners to make himself a hunting-forest, was
reddened with the blood of two of his sons and a grandson. The hand of
Heaven had fallen on that cruel race. The New Forest was consecrated in
the blood of one of the Norman kings.
_HOW THE WHITE SHIP SAILED._
Henry I., king of England, had made peace with France. Then to Normandy
went the king with a great retinue, that he might have Prince William,
his only and dearly-loved son, acknowledged as his successor by the
Norman nobles and married to the daughter of the Count of Anjou. Both
these things were done; regal was the display, great the rejoicing, and
on the 25th of November, 1120, the king and his followers, with the
prince and his fair young bride, prepared to embark at Barfleur on their
triumphant journey home.
So far all had gone well. Now disaster lowered. Fate had prepared a
tragedy that was to load the king's soul with life-long grief and yield
to English history one of its most pathetic tales.
Of the vessels of the fleet, one of the best was a fifty-oared galley
called "The White Ship," commanded by a certain Thomas Fitzstephen,
whose father had sailed the ship on which William the Conqueror first
came to England's shores. This service Fitzstephen represented to the
king, and begged that he might be equally honored.
"My liege," he said, "my father steered the ship with the golden boy
upon the prow in which your father sailed to conquer England, I beseech
you to grant me the same honor, that of carrying you in the White Ship
to England."
"I am sorry, friend," said the king, "that my vessel is already chosen,
and that I cannot sail with the son of the man who served my father. But
the prince and all his company shall go along with you in the White
Ship, which you may esteem an honor equal to that of carrying me."
By evening of that day the king with his retinue had set sail, with a
fair wind, for England's shores, leaving the prince with his attendants
to follow in Fitzstephen's ship. With the prince were his natural
brother Richard, his sister the countess of Perch, Richard, earl of
Chester, with his wife, the king's niece, together with one hundred and
forty of the flower of the young nobility of England and Normandy,
accompanying whom were many ladies of high descent. The whole number of
persons taking passage on the White Ship, including the crew, were three
hundred.
Prince William was but a boy, and one who did little honor to his
father's love. He was a dissolute youth of eighteen, who had so little
feeling for the English as to have declared that when he came to the
throne he would yoke them to the plough like oxen. Destiny had decided
that the boastful boy should not have the opportunity to carry out this
threat.
"Give three casks of wine, Fitzstephen," he said, "to your crew. My
father, the king, has sailed. What time have we to make merry here and
still reach England with the rest?"
"If we sail at midnight," answered Fitzstephen, "my fifty rowers and the
White Ship shall overtake the swiftest vessel in the king's fleet before
daybreak."
"Then let us be merry," said the prince; "the night is fine, the time
young, let us enjoy it while we may."
Merry enough they were; the prince and his companions danced in the
moonlight on the ship's deck, the sailors emptied their wine-casks, and
when at last they left the harbor there was not a sober sailor on board,
and the captain himself was the worse for wine.
As the ship swept from the port, the young nobles, heated with wine,
hung over the sides and drove away with taunts the priests who had come
to give the usual benediction. Wild youths were they,--the most of
them,--gay, ardent, in the hey-day of life, caring mainly for pleasure,
and with little heed of aught beyond the moment's whim. There seemed
naught to give them care, in sooth. The sea lay smooth beneath them, the
air was mild, the moon poured its soft lustre upon the deck, and
propitious fortune appeared to smile upon the ship as it rushed onward,
under the impulse of its long banks of oars, in haste to overtake the
distant fleet of the king.
All went merrily. Fitzstephen grasped the helm, his soul proud with the
thought that, as his father had borne the Conqueror to England's
strand, he was bearing the pride of younger England, the heir to the
throne. On the deck before him his passengers were gathered in merry
groups, singing, laughing, chatting, the ladies in their rich-lined
mantles, the gentlemen in their bravest attire; while to the sound of
song and merry talk the well-timed fall of the oars and swash of driven
waters made refrain.
They had reached the harbor's mouth. The open ocean lay before them. In
a few minutes more they would be sweeping over the Atlantic's broad
expanse. Suddenly there came a frightful crash; a shock that threw
numbers of the passengers headlong to the deck, and tore the oars from
the rowers' hands; a cry of terror that went up from three hundred
throats. It is said that some of the people in the far-off ships heard
that cry, faint, far, despairing, borne to them over miles of sea, and
asked themselves in wonder what it could portend.
It portended too much wine and too little heed. The vessel, carelessly
steered, had struck upon a rock, the _Catee-raze_, at the harbor's
mouth, with such, violence that a gaping wound was torn in her prow, and
the waters instantly began to rush in.
The White Ship was injured, was filling, would quickly sink. Wild
consternation prevailed. There was but one boat, and that small.
Fitzstephen, sobered by the concussion, hastily lowered it, crowded into
it the prince and a few nobles, and bade them hastily to push off and
row to the land.
"It is not far," he said, "and the sea is smooth. The rest of us must
die."
They obeyed. The boat was pushed off, the oars dropped into the water,
it began to move from the ship. At that moment, amid the cries of horror
and despair on the sinking vessel, came one that met the prince's ear in
piteous appeal. It was the voice of his sister, Marie, the countess of
Perch, crying to him for help.
In that moment of frightful peril Prince William's heart beat true.
"Row back at any risk!" he cried. "My sister must be saved. I cannot
bear to leave her."
They rowed back. But the hope that from that panic-stricken multitude
one woman could be selected was wild. No sooner had the boat reached the
ship's side than dozens madly sprung into it, in such numbers that it
was overturned. At almost the same moment the White Ship went down,
dragging all within reach into her eddying vortex. Death spread its
sombre wings over the spot where, a few brief minutes before, life and
joy had ruled.
When the tossing eddies subsided, the pale moonlight looked down on but
two souls of all that gay and youthful company. These clung to a spar
which had broken loose from the mast and floated on the waves, or to the
top of the mast itself, which stood above the surface.
"Only two of us, out of all that gallant company!" said one of these in
despairing tones. "Who are you, friend and comrade?"
"I am a nobleman, Godfrey, the son of Gilbert de L'Aigle. And you?" he
asked.
"I am Berold, a poor butcher of Rouen," was the answer.
"God be merciful to us both!" they then cried together.
Immediately afterwards they saw a third, who had risen and was swimming
towards them. As he drew near he pushed the wet, clinging hair from his
face, and they saw the white, agonized countenance of Fitzstephen. He
gazed at them with eager eyes; then cast a long, despairing look on the
waters around him.
"Where is the prince?" he asked, in tones that seemed to shudder with
terror.
"Gone! gone!" they cried. "Not one of all on board, except we three, has
risen above the water."
"Woe! woe, to me!" moaned Fitzstephen. He ceased swimming, turned to
them a face ghastly with horror, and then sank beneath the waves, to
join the goodly company whom his negligence had sent to a watery death.
He dared not live to meet the father of his charge.
The two continued to cling to their support. But the water had in it the
November chill, the night was long, the tenderly-reared nobleman lacked
the endurance of his humbler companion. Before day-dawn he said, in
faint accents,--
"I am exhausted and chilled with the cold. I can hold on no longer.
Farewell, good friend! God preserve you!"
He loosed his hold and sank. The butcher of Rouen remained alone.
When day came some fisherman saw this clinging form from the shore,
rowed out, and brought him in, the sole one living of all that goodly
company. A few hours before the pride and hope of Normandy and England
had crowded that noble ship. Now only a base-born butcher survived to
tell the story of disaster, and the stately White Ship, with her noble
freightage, lay buried beneath the waves.
For three days no one dared tell King Henry the dreadful story. Such was
his love for his son that they feared his grief might turn to madness,
and their lives pay the forfeit of their venture. At length a little lad
was sent in to him with the tale. Weeping bitterly, and kneeling at the
king's feet, the child told in broken accents the story which had been
taught him, how the White Ship had gone to the bottom at the mouth of
Barfleur harbor, and all on board been lost save one poor commoner.
Prince William, his son, was dead.
The king heard him to the end, with slowly whitening face and
horror-stricken eyes. At the conclusion of the child's narrative the
monarch fell prostrate to the floor, and lay there long like one
stricken with death. The chronicle of this sad tragedy ends in one short
phrase, which is weighty with its burden of grief,--From that day on
King Henry never smiled again!
_A CONTEST FOR A CROWN._
Terrible was the misery of England. Torn between contending factions,
like a deer between snarling wolves, the people suffered martyrdom,
while thieves and assassins, miscalled soldiers, and brigands, miscalled
nobles, ravaged the land and tortured its inhabitants. Outrage was law,
and death the only refuge from barbarity, and at no time in the history
of England did its people endure such misery as in those years of the
loosening of the reins of justice and mercy which began with 1139
A.D.
It was the autumn of the year named. At every port of England bands of
soldiers were landing, with arms and baggage; along every road leading
from the coast bands of soldiers were marching; in every town bands of
soldiers were mustering; here joining in friendly union, there coming
into hostile contact, for they represented rival parties, and were
speeding to the gathering points of their respective leaders.
All England was in a ferment, men everywhere arming and marching. All
Normandy was in turmoil, soldiers of fortune crowding to every port,
eager to take part in the harrying of the island realm. The Norman
nobles of England were everywhere fortifying their castles, which had
been sternly prohibited by the recent king. Law and authority were for
the time being abrogated, and every man was preparing to fight for his
own hand and his own land. A single day, almost, had divided the Normans
of England into two factions, not yet come to blows, but facing each
other like wild beasts at bay. And England and the English were the prey
craved by both these herds of human wolves.
There were two claimants to the throne: Matilda,--or Maud, as she is
usually named,--daughter of Henry I., and Stephen of Blois, grandson of
William the Conqueror. Henry had named his daughter as his successor;
Stephen seized the throne; the issue was sharply drawn between them.
Each of them had a legal claim to the throne, Stephen's the better, he
being the nearest male heir. No woman had as yet ruled in England.
Maud's mother had been of ancient English descent, which gave her
popularity among the Saxon inhabitants of the land. Stephen was
personally popular, a good-humored, generous prodigal, his very faults
tending to make him a favorite. Yet he was born to be a swordsman, not a
king, and his only idea of royalty was to let the land rule--or misrule
it if preferred--itself, while he enjoyed the pleasures and declined the
toils of kingship.
A few words will suffice to bring the history of those turbulent times
up to the date of the opening of our story. The death of Henry I. was
followed by anarchy in England. His daughter Maud, wife of Geoffry the
Handsome, Count of Anjou, was absent from the land. Stephen, Count of
Blois, and son of Adela, the Conqueror's daughter, was the first to
reach it. Speeding across the Channel, he hurried through England, then
in the turmoil of lawlessness, no noble joining him, no town opening to
him its gates, until London was reached. There the coldness of his route
was replaced by the utmost warmth of welcome. The city poured from its
gates to meet him, hastened to elect him king, swore to defend him with
blood and treasure, and only demanded in return that the new king should
do his utmost to pacify the realm.
Here Stephen failed. He was utterly unfit to govern. While he thought
only of profligate enjoyment, the barons fortified their castles and
became petty kings in their several domains. The great prelates followed
their example. Then, for the first time, did Stephen awake from his
dream of pleasure and attempt to play the king. He seized Roger, Bishop
of Salisbury, and threw him into prison to force him to surrender his
fortresses. This precipitated the trouble that brooded over England. The
king lost the support of the clergy by his violence to their leader,
alienated many of the nobles by his hasty action, and gave Maud the
opportunity for which she had waited. She lost no time in offering
herself to the English as a claimant to the crown.
Her landing was made on the 22d of September, 1139, on the coast of
Sussex. Here she threw herself into Arundel Castle, and quickly
afterwards made her way to Bristol Castle, then held by her
illegitimate brother, Robert, Earl of Gloucester.