The death of William, almost every reader knows, was occasioned by a hurt
in the belly from the pummel of his saddle, while reducing the town of
Mantes to ashes, at Rouen on Sep. 9, 1086, in the 63rd year of his age and
21st of his reign.
The king's decease was the signal for general consternation throughout the
metropolis of Normandy. The citizens, panic struck, ran to and fro as if
intoxicated, or as if the town were upon the point of being taken by
assault. Each asked counsel of his neighbour, and each anxiously turned
his thoughts to the concealing of his property. When the alarm had in some
measure subsided, the monks and clergy made a solemn procession to the
abbey of St. George, where they offered their prayers for the repose of
the soul of the departed duke: and Archbishop William commanded that the
body should be carried to Caen, to be interred in the church of St.
Stephen, which William had founded. But the lifeless king was now deserted
by all who had participated in his bounty. Every one of his brethren and
relations had left him; nor was there even a servant to be found to
perform the last offices to his departed lord. The care of the obsequies
was finally undertaken by Herluin, a knight of that district, who, moved
by the love of God and the honour of his nation, provided at his own
expense, embalmers and bearers, and a hearse, and conveyed the corpse to
the Seine, whence it was carried by land and water to the place of its
destination.
Upon the arrival of the funeral train at Caen, it was met by Gislebert,
bishop of Evreux, then abbot of St. Stephen's, at the head of his monks,
attended by a numerous throng of clergy and laity; but scarcely had the
bier been brought within the gates, when the report was spread that a
dreadful fire had broken out in another part of the town, and the duke's
remains were a second time deserted. The monks alone remained; and,
fearful and resolute, they bore their founder "with candle, with book, and
with knell," to his last home. Ordericus Vitalis enumerates the principal
prelates and barons assembled upon this occasion; but he makes no mention
of the Conqueror's son Henry, who, according to William of Jumieges, was
the only one worthy of succeeding such a father. Mass had now been
performed, and the body was about to be committed to the ground, "ashes to
ashes, dust to dust," when, previously to this closing part of the
ceremony, Gislebert mounted the pulpit, and delivered an ovation in honour
of the deceased. He praised his valour, which had so widely extended the
limits of the Norman dominion; his ability, which had elevated the nation
to the highest pitch of glory; his equity in the administration of justice;
his firmness in correcting abuses; and his liberality towards the monks
and clergy; then finally addressing the people, he besought them to
intercede with the Almighty for the soul of their prince. At this moment,
one Asselin, an obscure individual, starting from the crowd, exclaimed
with a loud voice, "the ground upon which you are standing was the site of
my father's dwelling. This man, for whom you ask our prayers, took it by
force from my parent; by violence he seized, by violence he retained it;
and, contrary to all law and justice, he built upon it this church,
wherein we are assembled. Publicly, therefore, in the sight of God and man,
do I claim my inheritance, and protest against the body of the plunderer
being covered with my turf." The appeal was attended with instant effect:
bishops and nobles united in their entreaties with Asselin; they admitted
the justice of his claim; they pacified him; they paid him sixty shillings
on the spot by way of recompense for the place of sepulture; and, finally,
they satisfied him for the rest of the land.
But the remarkable incidents doomed to attend upon this burial were not
yet at an end; for at the time when they were laying the corpse in the
sarcophagus, and were bending it with some force, which they were
compelled to do, in consequence of the coffin having been made too short,
the body, which was extremely corpulent, burst, and so intolerable a
stench issued from the grave, that all the perfumes which arose from all
the censers of the priests and acolytes were of no avail; and the rites
were concluded in haste, and the assembly, struck with horror, returned to
their homes.
The latter part of this story accords but ill with what De Bourgueville
relates. We learn from this author, that four hundred and thirty years
subsequent to the death of the Conqueror, a Roman cardinal, attended by an
archbishop and bishop, visited the town of Caen, and that his eminence
having expressed a wish to see the body of the duke, the monks yielded to
his curiosity, the tomb was opened, and the corpse discovered in so
perfect a state that the cardinal caused a portrait to be taken from the
lifeless features. It is not worth while now to inquire into the truth of
this story, or the fidelity of the resemblance. The painting has
disappeared in the course of time: it hung for awhile against the walls of
the church, opposite to the monument, but it was stolen during the tumults
caused by the Huguenots, and was broken into two pieces, in which state De
Bourgueville saw it a few years afterwards, in the hands of a Calvinist,
one Peter Hode, the gaoler at Caen, who used it in the double capacity of
a table and a door. The worthy magistrate states, that he kept the picture,
"because the abbey-church was demolished."
He was himself present at the second violation of the royal tomb, in 1572;
and he gives a piteous account of the transaction. The monument raised to
the memory of the Conqueror, by his son. William Rufus, under the
superintendance of Lanfrane, was a production of much costly and elaborate
workmanship; the shrine, which was placed upon the mausoleum, glittered
with gold and silver and precious stones. To complete the whole, the
effigy of the king had been added to the tomb at some period subsequent to
its original erection. A monument like this naturally excited the rapacity
of a lawless banditti, unrestrained by civil or military force, and
inveterate against every thing that might be regarded as connected with
the Catholic worship. The Calvinists were masters of Caen, and, incited by
the information of what had taken place at Rouen, they resolved to repeat
the same outrages. Under the specious pretext of abolishing idolatrous
worship, they pillaged and ransacked every church and monastery: they
broke the windows and organs, destroyed the images, stole the
ecclesiastical ornaments, sold the shrines, committed pulpits, chests,
books, and whatever was combustible, to the fire; and finally, after
having wreaked their vengeance upon every thing that could be made the
object of it, they went boldly to the town-hall to demand the wages for
their labours. In the course of these outrages the tomb of the Conqueror
at one abbey and that of Matilda, his queen, at the other, were demolished.
And this was not enough; but a few days afterwards, the same band returned,
allured by the hopes of farther plunder. They dug up the coffin: the
hollow stone rang to the strokes of their daggers: the vibration proved
that it was not filled by the corpse, and nothing more was wanting to seal
its destruction.
De Bourgueville, who went to the spot and exerted his eloquence to check
this last act of violence, witnessed the opening of the coffin. It
contained the bones of the king, wrapped up in red taffety, and still in
tolerable preservation; but nothing else. He collected them with care, and
consigned them to one of the monks of the abbey, who kept them in his
chamber, till the Admiral de Chatillon entered Caen at the head of his
mercenaries, on which occasion the whole abbey was plundered, and the
monks put to flight, and the bones lost. "Sad doings these," says De
Bourgueville, "_et bien peu réformez!_" He adds that one of the
thigh-bones was preserved by the Viscount of Falaise, who was there with
him, and begged it from the rioters, and that this bone was longer by four
fingers' breadth than that of a tall man. The bone thus preserved, was
reinterred, after the cessation of the troubles: it is the same that is
alluded to in the inscription, which also informs us that a monument was
raised over it in 1642, but was removed in 1742, it being then considered
as an incumbrance in the choir.
The melancholy end of the Conqueror, the strange occurrences at his
interment, the violation of his grave, the dispersion of his remains, and
the demolition and final removal of his monument, are circumstances
calculated to excite melancholy emotions in the mind of every one,
whatever his condition in life. In all these events, the religious man
traces the hand of retributive justice; the philosopher regards the
nullity of sublunary grandeur; the historian finds matter for serious
reflection; the poet for affecting narrative; and the moralist for his
tale.