[Sidenote: Movements in Wales.]

[Sidenote: State of Wales.]

[Sidenote: Rhys restored by a fleet from Ireland.]

[Sidenote: Gruffydd’s Irish allies.]

[Sidenote: He attacks Rhuddlan.]

The affair of Bishop William brings us almost to the last days of the

year of the rebellion. But, much earlier in the year, events of some

importance had been happening in other parts of the island. We are

almost tempted to take for granted that so great a stir in northern

England as that which accompanied the banishment of the Bishop of

Durham must have been accompanied or followed by some action on the

part of King Malcolm of Scotland. None such however is spoken of. But

the stirs on the Western border had been taken advantage of by the

enemies of England on that side. We have seen that British allies

played a part on the side of the rebels in the attack on Worcester.

Further north, independent Britons deemed that the time was come for a

renewal of the old border strife. When Earl Hugh of Chester and the

Marquess Robert of Rhuddlan took opposite sides in a civil war, it was

indeed an inviting moment for any of the neighbouring Welsh princes.

The time seems to have been one of even more confusion than usual

among the Britons. The year after the death of the Conqueror is marked

in their annals as a special time of civil warfare, in which allies

were brought by sea from Scotland and Ireland. Rhys the son of Tewdwr,

of whom we have already heard,[338] was driven from his kingdom by the

sons of Bleddyn, and won it again by the help of a fleet from

Ireland.[339] Men were struck by the vast rewards in money and

captives with which he repaid his naval allies, who are spoken of as

if some of them were still heathens.[340] These movements are not

recorded by any English or Norman writer, nor do the Welsh annals

record the event with which Norman and English feeling was more deeply

concerned. But there was clearly a connexion between the two. Gruffydd

the son of Cynan appears in the British annals as an ally of the

restored Rhys,[341] and we now find a King Gruffydd, not only carrying

slaughter by land into the English territory, but appearing in the

more unusual character of the head of a seafaring expedition. We may

feel pretty sure that it was the presence of the allies from

Ireland――both native Irish, it would seem, and Scandinavian

settlers――which combined with the disturbed state of England to lead

Gruffydd to a frightful inroad on the lands of the most cruel enemy of

the Britons, the Marquess Robert. The Welsh King and his allies

marched as far as the new stronghold of Rhuddlan; they burned much and

slew many men, and carried off many prisoners, doubtless for the Irish

slave-market.[342] It was clearly through this doubtless far more

profitable raid on the English territory that Rhys and Gruffydd found

the means of rewarding their Irish and Scandinavian allies.

[Sidenote: Robert of Rhuddlan.]

[Sidenote: His probable change of party.]

[Sidenote: He returns to North Wales.]

[Sidenote: The peninsula of Dwyganwy.]

[Sidenote: The castle of Dwyganwy.]

[Sidenote: Robert at Dwyganwy.]

[Sidenote: Approach of Gruffydd. July 3, 1088.]

[Sidenote: Eagerness of Robert.]

[Sidenote: Death of Robert.]

[Sidenote: His burial at Chester.]

This inroad took place while the civil war in England was going

on,[343] a war in which it must be remembered that other British

warriors had borne their part.[344] While the lands of Rhuddlan were

wasted, the Marquess Robert was busy far away at the siege of

Rochester. This would make us think that, like Earl Roger, he changed

sides early,[345] and that he was now in the royal camp, helping to

besiege Odo and his accomplices. After the surrender of Rochester, the

news of the grievous blow which had been dealt to himself and his

lands brought Robert back to North Wales, wrathful and full of

threats.[346] The enemy must by this time have withdrawn from the

neighbourhood of Rhuddlan; for we now hear of the Marquess in the

north-western corner of the land which he had brought under his rule.

He was now in the peninsula which ends to the north in that vast

headland which, like the other headland which ends the peninsula of

Gower to the west, bears the name of the Orm’s Head.[347] The mountain

itself, thick set with remains which were most likely ancient when

Suetonius passed by to Mona, forms a strong contrast to the flat

ground at its foot which stretches southward towards the tidal mouth

of the Conwy. But that flat ground is broken by several isolated

hills, once doubtless, like the Head itself, islands. Of these the two

most conspicuous, two peaks of no great height but of marked steepness

and ruggedness, rise close together, one almost immediately above the

Conwy shore, the other landwards behind it. They are in fact two peaks

of a single hill, with a dip between the two, as on the Capitoline

hill of Rome. Here was the old British stronghold of Dwyganwy, famous

in early times as the royal seat of Maelgwyn, him who is apostrophized

in the lament of Gildas by the name of the dragon――the _worm_――of the

island.[348] That stronghold had now passed into the hands of the

Marquess Robert, and had been by him strengthened with all the newly

imported skill of Normandy. The castle of Dwyganwy plays a part in

every Welsh war during the next two centuries, and we can hardly fancy

that much of Robert’s work survives in the remains of buildings which

are to be traced on both peaks and in the dip between them. But it is

likely that at all times the habitable part of the castle lay between

the two peaks, while the peaks themselves formed merely military

defences. Here then Robert was keeping his head-quarters in the

opening days of July. At noon on one of the summer days the Marquess

was sleeping――between the peaks, we may fancy, whether in any building

or in the open air. He was roused from his slumber by stirring

tidings. King Gruffydd, at the head of three ships, had entered the

mouth of the Conwy; he had brought his ships to anchor; his pirate

crews had landed and were laying waste the country. The tide ebbed;

the ships stood on the dry land; the followers of Gruffydd spread

themselves far and wide over the flat country, and carried prisoners

and cattle to their ships.[349] The Marquess rose; he climbed the

height immediately above him, a height which looks on the flat land,

the open sea, the estuary now crowned on the other side by Conwy with

its diadem of towers, over the inland hills, and on the Orm’s Head

itself rising in the full view to the northward. He saw beneath him a

sight which might have stirred a more sluggish soul. As King Henry had

looked down on the slaughter of his troops at Varaville,[350] so

Robert, from his fortified post of Dwyganwy, saw his men carried off

in bonds and thrown into the ships along with the sheep.[351] He sent

forth orders for a general gathering, and made ready for an attack on

the plunderers at the head of such men as were with him at the moment.

They were few; they were unarmed; but he called on them to make their

way down the steep hillside and to fall on the plunderers on the shore

before the returning tide enabled them to carry off their booty.[352]

The appeal met with no hearty answer; the followers of the valiant

Marquess pleaded their small numbers and the hard task of making their

way down the steep and rocky height.[353] But Robert was not to be

kept back; he still saw what was doing through the whole of the

peninsular lowlands. He could not bear to let the favourable moment

pass by. Without his cuirass, attended only by a single knight, Osbern

of Orgères, he went down to attack the enemy on the shores of the

estuary.[354] When the Britons saw him alone, with only a single

companion and no defence but his shield, they gathered round him to

overwhelm him with darts and arrows, none daring to attack him with

the sword.[355] He still stood, wounded, with his shield bristling

with missiles, but still defying his enemies. At last his wounds bore

him down. The weight of the encumbered shield was too much for him; he

sank on his knees[356], and commended his soul to God and His Mother.

Then the enemy rushed on him with one accord; they smote off his head

in sight of his followers, and fixed it as a trophy on the mast of one

of the ships.[357] Men saw all this from the hilltop with grief and

rage; but they could give no help. A crowd came together on the shore;

but it was too late; the lord of Rhuddlan was already slain. By this

time the invaders were able to put to sea, and the followers of Robert

were also able to get their ships together and follow them. They

followed in wrath and sorrow, as they saw the head of their chief on

the mast.[358] Gruffydd must have felt himself the weaker. He ordered

the head to be taken down and cast into the sea. On this the pursuers

gave up the chase; they took up the body of the slain Marquess, and,

amidst much grief of Normans and English,[359] buried him in Saint

Werburh’s minster at Chester.[360]

[Sidenote: Connexion of Robert with Saint Evroul.]

[Sidenote: His translation to Saint Evroul.]

[Sidenote: Orderic writes his epitaph.]

[Sidenote: Its character.]

We are well pleased to have preserved to us this living piece of

personal anecdote, which reminds us for a moment of the deaths of

Harold and of Hereward. Its preservation we doubtless owe to the

connexion of Robert of Rhuddlan with the house of Saint Evroul.

Otherwise we might have known no more of the conqueror of North Wales

than we can learn from the entries in Domesday which record his

possessions.[361] But Robert, nephew of Hugh of Grantmesnil, had

enriched his uncle’s foundation with estates in England, and in the

city of Chester itself.[362] He was therefore not allowed to sleep for

ever in the foreign soil of Chester. He had a brother Arnold, a monk

of Saint Evroul, zealous in all things for his house, who had begged

endless gifts for it from his kinsfolk in England, Sicily, and

elsewhere. Some years after Robert’s death, Arnold came to England,

and, by the leave of Bishop Robert of Chester or Coventry――Bishop of

the Mercians in the phrase of the monk who was born in his

diocese――translated the body of Robert to the minster of Saint Evroul.

There a skilful painter, Reginald surnamed Bartholomew――most likely a

monk who had taken the apostolic name on entering religion――was

employed to adorn the tomb of Robert and the arch which sheltered it

with all the devices of his art.[363] And the English monk Vital――we

know him better by his English and worldly name――was set to compose

the epitaph of one who had in some sort, like himself, passed from

Mercia to Saint Evroul.[364] In his history Orderic deemed it his duty

to brand Robert’s dealings with the Welsh as breaches of the natural

law which binds man to man.[365] And it may be that something of the

same feeling peeps out in the words of the epitaph itself, which prays

with unusual fervour for the forgiveness of Robert’s sins.[366] Yet in

the verses which record his acts, his campaigns against the Briton

appear as worthy exploits alongside of his zeal for holy things and

his special love for the house of Ouche. It is not easy to track out

all these exploits, even in the narrative of Orderic himself, much

less in the annals of Robert’s British enemies. But all the mightiest

names of the Cymry are set forth in order, as having felt the might of

the daring Marquess. He had built Rhuddlan and had guarded it against

the fierce people of the land. He had ofttimes crossed beyond Conwy

and Snowdon in arms. He had put King Bleddyn to flight and had won

great spoil from him. He had carried off King Howel as a prisoner in

bonds. He had taken King Gruffydd and had overthrown Trahaern. That

Howel, his former captive, should rejoice at his fall is in no way

wonderful; but the epitaph speaks further of the treachery of a

certain Owen, of which there is no mention in the prose narrative.[367]

In any case Robert of Rhuddlan stands out as one of the mightiest

enemies of the Northern Cymry, and the tale of his end is one of the

most picturesque in this reign of picturesque incidents.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: End of the Norman Conquest.]

[Sidenote: The Conquest confirmed and undone.]

[Sidenote: How far undone.]

[Sidenote: Tendencies to union.]

The rebellion was now over, and the new King was firm upon his throne.

And with the rebellion, the last scene, as we have already said, of

the Norman Conquest was over also. Englishmen and Normans had, for the

last time under those names, met in open fight on English soil.

Whether of the two had won the victory? Such a question might admit of

different answers when the Norman King vanquished the Norman nobility

at the head of the English people. In one sense the Conquest was

confirmed; in another sense it was undone. Men must have felt that the

Conquest was undone, that the _wergeld_ of those who fell

two-and-twenty years back was indeed paid, when the second Norman host

that strove to land on the beach of Pevensey, instead of marching on

to Hastings, to Senlac, to London, and to York, was beaten back from

the English coast by the arms of Englishmen. They must have felt that

it was undone, when the castles on which Englishmen looked as the

darkest badges of bondage were stormed by an English host, gathered

together at the same bidding which had gathered men together to fight

at Sherstone and at Stamfordbridge. He must have been _Nithing_ indeed

who did not feel that the wrongs of many days were paid for, when the

arch-oppressor, the most loathed of all his race, came forth with

downcast looks to meet the jeers and curses of the nation on which he

had trampled. Days like the day of Tunbridge, the day of Pevensey, and

the day of Rochester, are among the days which make the heart of a

nation swell higher for their memory. They were days on which the

Englishman overcame the Norman, days which ruled that he who would

reign over England must reign with the good will of the English

people. The fusion of Normans and English was as yet far from being

brought to perfection; indeed nothing could show more clearly than

those days that the gap between the two nations still yawned in all

its fulness. But nothing did more than the work of those days at once

to fill up the gap and to rule in what way it should be filled up.

Those days showed that the land was still an English land, that the

choice of its ruler rested in the last resort with the true folk of

the land. Those days ruled that Normans and English should become one

people; but they further ruled, if there could be any doubt about the

matter, that they were to become one people by the Normans becoming

Englishmen, not by the English becoming Normans. It is significant

that, in recording the next general rebellion, the Chronicler no

longer marks the traitors as “the richest Frenchmen that were on this

land;” they are simply “the head men here on land who took rede

together against the King.”[368]

[Sidenote: How far confirmed.]

[Sidenote: The Norman dynasty accepted.]

[Sidenote: Acceptance of the Norman nobility in an English character.]

But, if in this way the Conquest was undone, if it was ruled that

England was still to be England, in another way the Conquest was

confirmed. The English people showed that the English crown was still

theirs to bestow; but at the same time they showed that they had no

longer a thought of bestowing it out of the house of their Conqueror.

When the English people came together at the bidding of the

Conqueror’s son, when they willingly plighted their faith to him and

called on him, as King of the English, to trust himself to English

loyalty, they formally accepted the Conquest, so far as it took the

form of a change of dynasty. Men pressed to fight for King William

against the pretender Robert; not a voice was raised for Eadgar or

Wulf or Olaf of Denmark. The stock of the Bastard of Falaise was

received as the _cynecyn_ of England, instead of the stock of Cerdic

and Woden; for there must have been few indeed who remembered that

William the Red, unlike his father, unlike Harold, unlike Cnut, did

come of the stock of Cerdic and Woden by the spindle-side.[369] And,

in admitting the change of dynasty, all was admitted which the change

of dynasty immediately implied. Men who accepted the son could not ask

for the wiping out of the acts of the father. They could not ask for a

new confiscation and a new Domesday the other way. In accepting the

son of the Conqueror, they also accepted the settlement of the

Conqueror. His earls, his bishops, his knights, his grantees of land

from Wight to Cheviot, were accepted as lawful owners of English lands

and offices. But the very acceptance implied that they could hold

English lands and offices only in the character of Englishmen, and

that that character they must now put on.

[Sidenote: Rufus’ breach of his promises.]

[Sidenote: Englishmen not oppressed as such;]

[Sidenote: but the general oppression touches them most.]

[Sidenote: Rufus and the English.]

[Sidenote: The mercenaries.]

[Sidenote: Their favour helps the fusion of races.]

In this way the reign of William Rufus marks a stage in the

developement or recovery of English nationality and freedom. And yet

at the time the days of Rufus must have seemed the darkest of all

days. No reign ever began with brighter promises than the real reign

of William the Red; for we can hardly count his reign as really

beginning till the rebellion was put down. No reign ever became

blacker. No king was ever more distinctly placed on his throne by the

good will of his people. No other king was ever hated as William Rufus

lived to be hated. No other king more utterly and shamefully broke the

promises of good government by which he had gained his crown. And yet

we may doubt whether William Rufus can be fairly set down as an

oppressor of Englishmen, in the sense which those words would bear in

the mouths of a certain school of writers. His reign is rather a reign

of general wrong-doing, a reign of oppression which regarded no

distinctions of race, rank, or order, a time when the mercenary

soldier, of whatever race, did what he thought good, and when all

other men had to put up with what he thought good. In such a state of

things the burthen of oppression would undoubtedly fall by far the

most heavily upon the native English; they would be the class most

open to suffering and least able to obtain redress. The broken

promises of the King had been specially made to them, and they would

feel specially aggrieved and disheartened at his breach of them. Still

the good government which Rufus promised, but which he did not give,

was a good government which would have profited all the King’s men,

French and English, and the lack of it pressed, in its measure, on all

the King’s men, French and English. There is at least nothing to show

that, during the reign of Rufus, Englishmen, as Englishmen, were

formally and purposely picked out as victims. We must further remember

that no legal barrier parted the two races, and that the legal

innovations of the reign of Rufus, as mainly affecting the King’s

military tenants, bore most hardly on a class which was more largely

Norman than English. On the other hand, it is certain that native

Englishmen did sometimes, if rarely, rise to high places, both

ecclesiastical and temporal, in the days of Rufus. Of the many stories

current about this king, not above one or two throw any light on his

relations to the native English class of his subjects. The one saying

of his that bears on the subject savours of good-humoured banter

rather than of dislike or even contempt.[370] On the whole, dark as is

the picture given us of the reign of Rufus, we cannot look on it as

having at all turned back or checked the course of national advance.

When mercenary soldiers have the upper hand, they are sure to be

chosen rather from strangers of any race than from natives of the land

of any race. There is indeed no reason to think that either a native

Englishman or a man of Norman descent born in England would, if he

were strong, brave, and faithful, be shut out from the Red King’s

military family. The eye of Rufus must have been keen enough to mark

many an act of good service done on the shore of Pevensey or beneath

the stronghold of Rochester. But all experience shows that the

tendency of such military families is to recruit themselves anywhere

rather than among the sons of the soil. And nothing draws the sons of

the soil more closely together than the presence of strangers on the

soil. In their presence they learn to forget any mutual grievances

against one another. In after times Normans and English drew together

against Brabançons and Poitevins. We may feel sure that they did so

from the beginning, and that the reign of Rufus really had its share

in making ready the way for the fusion of the two races, by making

both races feel themselves fellow-sufferers in a time of common

wrong-doing.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Sale of ecclesiastical offices.]

[Sidenote: Prolonging of vacancies.]

[Sidenote: Case of Thurstan of Glastonbury.]

[Sidenote: Geoffrey Bishop of Chichester;]

[Sidenote: dies September 25, 1088.]

[Sidenote: Death of Scotland of Saint Augustine’s and Ælfsige of

Bath.]

[Sidenote: Death of Bishop Gisa. 1088.]

[Sidenote: The bishopric of Somerset granted to John of Tours.]

[Sidenote: He removes the see to Bath.]

[Sidenote: Grant of the temporal lordship.]

The rebellion and its suppression, the affairs of the Bishop of

Durham, and the striking episode by the Orm’s Head, fill up the first

stirring year of the Red King. But the year of the rebellion is also

marked by one or two ecclesiastical events, which throw some light on

the state of things in the early days of Rufus, while he still had

Lanfranc to his guide. The great ecclesiastical crimes of the Red King

in his after days were the bestowal of bishoprics and abbeys for

money, and the practice of keeping them vacant for his own profit. Of

these two abuses, the former seems to have been the earlier in date.

The keeping prelacies vacant was one of the devices of Randolf

Flambard, and it could hardly have been brought into play during the

very first year of Rufus. The influence of Lanfranc too would be

powerful to hinder so public an act as the keeping vacant of a

bishopric or abbey; it would be less powerful to hinder a private

transaction on the King’s part which might be done without the

Primate’s knowledge. Add to this, that, while the filling a church or

keeping it vacant was a matter of fact about which there could be no

doubt, the question whether the King had or had not received a bribe

was a matter of surmise and suspicion, even when the surmise and

suspicion happened to be just. It is then not wonderful that we find

Rufus charged with corrupt dealings of this last kind at a very early

stage of his reign. We have seen that Thurstan, the fierce Abbot of

Glastonbury, was, by one of the first acts of Rufus, restored to the

office which he had so unworthily filled, and from which the Conqueror

had so worthily put him aside. And we have seen that it was at least

the general belief that his restoration was brought about by a lavish

gift to the King’s hoard.[371] But three prelacies, two bishoprics and

a great abbey, which either were vacant at the moment of the

Conqueror’s death or which fell vacant very soon after, were filled

without any unreasonable delay. Stigand, Bishop of Chichester, died

about the time of the Conqeror’s death, whether before or after, and

his see was filled by his successor before the end of the year.[372]

Geoffrey’s own tenure was short; he died in the year of the rebellion,

and, as his see did then remain vacant three years, we may set that

down as the beginning of the evil practice.[373] About the same time

died Scotland Abbot of Saint Augustine’s, and the English Ælfsige, who

still kept the abbey of Bath. Not long after died Ælfsige’s diocesan,

the Lotharingian Gisa, who had striven so hard to bring in the

Lotharingian discipline among his canons of Wells.[374] The bishopric

of the Sumorsætan was thus among the first sees which fell to the

disposal of William the Red, and his disposal of it led to one of the

most marked changes in its history. The bishopric was given to John,

called _de Villula_, a physician of Tours, one of the men of eminence

whom the discerning patronage of William the Great had brought from

lands alike beyond his island realm and beyond his continental duchy.

John was a trusty counsellor of the Red King, employed by him in many

affairs, and withal a zealous encourager of learning.[375] But he had

little regard to the traditions and feelings of Englishmen, least of

all to those of the canons of Wells. Like Hermann, Remigius, and other

bishops of his time, he carried out the policy of transferring

episcopal sees to the chief towns of their dioceses. But the way in

which he carried out his scheme, if not exactly like the violent

inroad of Robert of Limesey on the church of Coventry,[376] was at

least like the first designs of Hermann on the church of Malmesbury,

which had been thwarted by the interposition of Earl Harold.[377] The

change was made in a perfectly orderly manner, but by the secular

power only. The abbey of Bath was now vacant by the death of its abbot

Ælfsige. Bishop John procured that the vacant post should be granted

to himself and his successors for the increase of the bishopric of

Somerset. This was done by a royal grant made at Winchester soon after

the suppression of the rebellion, and confirmed somewhat later in a

meeting of the Witan at Dover.[378] John then transferred his

_bishopsettle_ from its older seat at Wells to the church which had

now become his. He next procured a grant of the temporal lordship of

the “old borough,” which was perhaps of less value after its late

burning by Robert of Mowbray.[379] Thus, in the language of the time,

Andrew had to yield to Simon, the younger brother to the elder.[380]

That is, the church of Saint Peter at Bath, with its Benedictine

monks, displaced the church of Saint Andrew at Wells, with its secular

canons freshly instructed in the rule of Chrodegang, as the head

church of the bishopric of Somerset. The line of the independent

abbots of Bath came to an end; their office was merged in the

bishopric, by the new style of Bishop of Bath. Thus the old Roman city

in a corner of the land of the Sumorsætan, which has never claimed the

temporal headship of that land, became for a while the seat of its

chief pastor.

[Sidenote: The change made wholly by the civil authority.]

[Sidenote: Power of bishops.]

[Sidenote: Dislike to the change on the part of the canons of Wells]

[Sidenote: and the monks of Bath.]

[Sidenote: Buildings of John of Tours. 1088-1122.]

[Sidenote: The church of Bath called abbey.]

That so great an ecclesiastical change should be wrought by the

authority of the King and his Witan――perhaps in the first instance by

the King’s authority only――shows clearly how strong an ecclesiastical

supremacy the new king had inherited from his father and his father’s

English predecessors. By the authority of the Great Council of the

realm, but without any licence from Pope or synod, an ancient

ecclesiastical office was abolished, the constitution of one church

was altered, and another was degraded from its rank as an episcopal

see. The change was made, so says the Red King’s charter, for the good

of the Red King’s soul, and for the profit of his kingdom and people.

It is more certain that it was eminently distasteful to both the

ecclesiastical bodies which were immediately concerned. The treatment

which they met with illustrates the absolute power which the bishops

of the eleventh century exercised over their monks and canons, but

which so largely passed away from them in the course of the twelfth.

To the canons of Wells Bishop John was as stern a master or conqueror

as Bishop Robert was to the monks of Coventry. They were deprived of

their revenues, deprived of the common buildings which had been built

for them by Gisa, and left to live how they might in the little town

which had sprung up at the bishop’s gate.[381] To the English monks of

Offa’s house at Bath the new bishop was hardly gentler; he deemed them

dolts and barbarians, and cut short their revenues and allowances. It

was not till he was surrounded by a more enlightened company of monks

of his own choosing that he began to restore something for the relief

of their poor estate.[382] But in his architectural works he was

magnificent. His long reign of thirty-four years allowed him, not only

to begin, but seemingly to finish, the great church of Saint Peter of

Bath, of which a few traces only remain, and the nave only of which is

represented by the present building.[383] And though, since the days

of Ælfsige, there has never been an Abbot of Bath distinct from the

Bishop, yet _abbey_, and not _minster_ or _cathedral_, is the name by

which the church of Bath is always known to this day.[384]

[Sidenote: Disturbances on the appointment of Guy at Saint

Augustine’s.]

[Sidenote: Flight of Guy.]

[Sidenote: Punishment of the rebellious monks.]

[Sidenote: Punishment of the citizens.]

The disturbances at Saint Augustine’s which followed the death of

Abbot Scotland, and the chief features of which have been described

elsewhere, must have taken place earlier in the year. For the

appointment or intrusion of Guy took place while Odo was still acting

as Earl of Kent.[385] But the great outbreak, in which the citizens of

Canterbury took part with the monks against the Abbot, did not happen

till after the death of Lanfranc. Then monks and citizens alike made

an armed attack on Guy, and hard fighting, accompanied by many wounds

and some deaths, was waged between them and the Abbot’s military

following.[386] The Abbot himself escaped only by fleeing to the rival

house of Christ Church. Then came two Bishops, Walkelin of Winchester

and Gundulf of Rochester, accompanied by some lay nobles, with the

King’s orders to punish the offenders. The monks were scourged; but,

by the intercession of the Prior and monks of Christ Church, the

discipline was inflicted privately with no lay eyes to behold.[387]

They were then scattered through different monasteries, and

twenty-four monks of Christ Church, with their sub-prior Anthony as

Prior, were sent to colonize the empty cloister of Saint

Augustine’s.[388] The doom of the citizens was harder; those who were

found guilty of a share in the attack on the Abbot lost their

eyes.[389] The justice of the Red King, stern as it was, thus drew the

distinction for which Thomas of London strove in after days. The lives

and limbs of monastic offenders were sacred.

§ 3. _The Character of William Rufus._

[Sidenote: Death of Lanfranc. May 24, 1089.]

[Sidenote: Its effects.]

[Sidenote: Position of Lanfranc in England and Normandy.]

[Sidenote: His burial at Christ Church.]

The one great event recorded in the year after the rebellion was the

death of Archbishop Lanfranc, an event at once important in itself,

and still more important in the effect which it had on the character

of William Rufus, and in its consequent effect on the general march of

events. The removal of a man who had played so great a part in all

affairs since the earliest days of the Conquest, who had been for so

many years, both before and after the Conquest, the right hand man of

the Conqueror, was in itself no small change. For good or for evil,

the Lombard Primate had left his mark for ever on the Church and realm

of England. One of the abetters of the Conquest, the chief instrument

of the Conqueror, he had found the way to the good will of the

conquered people, with whom and with whose land either his feelings or

his policy led him freely to identify himself.[390] It must never be

forgotten that, if Lanfranc was a stranger in England, he was no less

a stranger in Normandy. As such, he was doubtless better able to act

as a kind of mediator between the Norman King and the English people;

he could do somewhat, if not to lighten the yoke, at least to make it

less galling. In the last events of his life we have seen him act as

one of the leaders in a cause which was at once that of the English

people and of the Norman King. We have seen too some specimens of his

worldly wisdom, of his skill in fence and debate. An ecclesiastical

statesman rather than either a saint or strictly a churchman, it seems

rather a narrow view of him when the national Chronicler sends him out

of the world with the hope that he was gone to the heavenly kingdom,

but with the special character of the venerable father and patron of

monks.[391] His primacy of nearly nineteen years ended in the May of

the year following the rebellion.[392] He was buried in the

metropolitan church of his own rebuilding, and, when his shorter choir

gave way to the grander conceptions of the days of his successor, the

sweet savour that came from his tomb made all men sure that the pious

hope of the Chronicler had been fulfilled.[393]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Change for the worse in the King’s character.]

[Sidenote: Lanfranc’s rebukes of William.]

Lanfranc was borne to his grave amid general sorrow.[394] But the

sorrow might have been yet deeper, if men had known the effect which

his death would have on the character of the King and his reign. Up to

this time the worst features of the character of William Rufus had not

shown themselves in their fulness. As long as his father lived, as

long as Lanfranc lived, he had in some measure kept them in check. We

need not suppose any sudden or violent change. It is the manifest

exaggeration of a writer who had his own reasons for drawing as

favourable a picture as he could of the Red King, when we are told

that, as long as Lanfranc lived, he showed himself, under that

wholesome influence, the perfect model of a ruler.[395] There can be

no doubt that, while Lanfranc yet lived, William Rufus began to cast

aside his fetters, and to look on his monitor with some degree of ill

will. The Primate had already had to rebuke him for breach of the

solemn promises of his coronation, and it was then that he received

the characteristic and memorable answer that no man could keep all his

promises. But there is no reason to doubt that the death of Lanfranc

set Rufus free from the last traces of moral restraint.[396] His

dutiful submission to his father had been the best feature in his

character; and it is clear that some measure of the same feeling

extended itself to the guardian to whose care his father, both in life

and in death, had entrusted him. But now he was no longer under tutors

and governors; there was no longer any man to whom he could in any

sense look up. He was left to his own devices, or to the counsels of

men whose counsels were not likely to improve him. It was not a

wholesome exchange when the authority of Lanfranc and William the

Great was exchanged for the cunning service of Randolf Flambard and

the military companionship of Robert of Bellême.

[Sidenote: Picture of William Rufus.]

[Sidenote: Birth of William Rufus, c. 1060.]

[Sidenote: His outward appearance.]

[Sidenote: His surname of _Rufus_.]

[Sidenote: Rufus in youth.]

[Sidenote: His filial duty.]

[Sidenote: His natural gifts.]

[Sidenote: His conduct during the rebellion.]

[Sidenote: Case of the Bishop of Durham.]

As soon then as Lanfranc was dead, William Rufus burst all bounds, and

the man stood forth as he was, or as his unhappy circumstances had

made him. We may now look at him, physically and morally, as he is

drawn in very elaborate pictures by contemporary hands. William, the

third son of the Conqueror, was born before his father came into

England; but I do not know that there is any evidence to fix the exact

year of his birth. He is spoken of as young[397] at the time of his

accession, and from the date of the marriage of the Conqueror and

Matilda, it would seem likely that their third son would then be about

twenty-seven years of age. He would therefore be hardly thirty at the

time of the death of Lanfranc. The description of his personal

appearance is not specially inviting. In his bodily form he seems,

like his brother Robert,[398] a kind of caricature of his father, as

Rufus, though certainly not Robert, was also in some of his moral and

mental qualities. He was a man of no great stature, of a thick square

frame, with a projecting stomach. His bodily strength was great; his

eye was restless; his speech was stammering, especially when he was

stirred to anger. He lacked the power of speech which had belonged to

his father and had even descended to his elder brother; his pent-up

wrath or merriment, or whatever the momentary passion might be, broke

out in short sharp sentences, often showing some readiness of wit, but

no continued flow of speech. He had the yellow hair of his race, and

the ruddiness of his countenance gave him the surname which has stuck

to him so closely. The second William is yet more emphatically the Red

King than his father is either the Bastard or the Conqueror. Unlike

most other names of the kind, his surname is not only used by

contemporary writers, but it is used by them almost as a proper

name.[399] Up to the time of his accession, he had played no part in

public affairs; in truth he had no opportunity of playing any. The

policy of the Conqueror had kept his sons dependent on himself,

without governments or estates.[400] We have a picture of Rufus in his

youthful days, as the young soldier foremost in every strife, who

deemed himself disgraced, if any other took to his arms before

himself, if he was not the first to challenge an enemy or to overthrow

any enemy that challenged his side.[401] Above all things, he had

shown himself a dutiful son, cleaving steadfastly to his father, both

in peace and war. His filial zeal had been increased after the

rebellion of his brother, when the hope of the succession had begun to

be opened to himself.[402] By his father’s side, in defence of his

father, he had himself received a wound at Gerberoi.[403] Such was his

character beyond the sea; but the one fact known of him in England

before his father’s death is that he had, like most men of his time

who had the chance, possessed himself in some illegal way of a small

amount of ecclesiastical land.[404] It is quite possible that both his

father and Lanfranc may have been deceived as to his real character.

In the stormy times which followed his accession, he had shown the

qualities of an able captain and something more. He had shown great

readiness of spirit, great power of adapting himself to circumstances,

great skill in keeping friends and in winning over enemies. No man

could doubt that the new King of the English had in him the power, if

he chose to use it, of becoming a great and a good ruler. And

assuredly he could not be charged with anything like either cruelty or

breach of faith at any stage of the warfare by which his crown was

made fast to him. If he anywhere showed the cloven foot, it was in the

matter of the Bishop of Durham. Even there we can have no doubt that

he spared a traitor; but he may have been hasty in the earliest stage

of the quarrel; he certainly, in its latter stages, showed signs of

that small personal spite, that disposition to take mean personal

advantages of an enemy, which was so common in the kings of those

days. Still, whatever Lanfranc may have found to rebuke, whatever may

have been the beginnings of evil while the Primate yet lived, no

public act of the new king is as yet recorded which would lead us to

pass any severe sentence upon him, if he is judged according to the

measure of his own times.

[Sidenote: General charges against Rufus.]

[Sidenote: Little personal cruelty;]

[Sidenote: comparison with his father and brother.]

[Sidenote: His profligacy and irreligion.]

[Sidenote: Redeeming features in his character.]

It is indeed remarkable that the pictures of evil-doing which mark the

reign of Rufus from the Chronicle onwards are, except when they take

the form of personal anecdote, mainly of a general kind. Those

pictures, those anecdotes, leave no room to doubt that the reign of

Rufus was a reign of fearful oppression; but his oppression seems to

have consisted more in the unrestrained licence which he allowed to

his followers than in any special deeds of personal cruelty done by

his own hands or by his immediate orders. Rufus certainly did not

share his father’s life-long shrinking from taking human life anywhere

but in battle; but his brother Henry, the model ruler of his time, the

king who made peace for man and deer, is really chargeable with uglier

deeds in his own person than any that can be distinctly proved against

the Red King. We are driven back to our old distinction. The excesses

of the followers of Rufus, the reign of unright and unlaw which they

brought with them, did or threatened harm to every man in his

dominions; the occasional cruelties of Henry hurt only a few people,

while the general strictness of his rule profited every one. What

makes William Rufus stand out personally in so specially hateful a

light is not so much deeds of personal cruelty, as indulgence in the

foulest forms of vice, combined with a form of irreligion which

startled not only saints but ordinary sinners. And the point is that,

hateful as these features in his character were, they did not hinder

the presence of other features which were not hateful in the view of

his own age, of some indeed which are not hateful in the view of any

age.

[Sidenote: His marked personality.]

[Sidenote: Comparison with his father.]

[Sidenote: His alleged firmness of purpose.]

[Sidenote: His caprice.]

[Sidenote: His unfinished campaigns.]

The marked personality of William Rufus, the way in which that

personality stamped itself on the memory of his age, is shown by the

elaborate pictures which we have of his character, and by the crowd of

personal anecdotes by which those pictures are illustrated. Allowing

for the sure tendency of such a character to get worse, we may take

our survey of the Red King as he seemed in men’s eyes when the

restraints of his earlier life were taken away. As long as his father

lived, he had little power to do evil; as long as Lanfranc lived, he

was kept within some kind of bounds by respect for the man to whom he

owed so much. When Lanfranc was gone, he either was corrupted by

prosperity, or else, like Tiberius,[405] his natural character was now

for the first time able to show itself in the absence of restraint.

His character then stood out boldly, and men might compare him with

his father. William the Red may pass for William the Great with all

his nobler qualities, intellectual and moral, left out.[406] He could

be, when he chose, either a great captain or a great ruler; but it was

only by fits and starts that he chose to be either. His memory was

strong; he at least never forgot an injury; he had also a kind of

firmness of purpose; that is, he was earnest in whatever he undertook

for good or for evil, and could not easily be turned from his

will.[407] But he lacked that true steadiness of purpose, that power

of waiting for the right time, that unfailing adaptation of means to

ends, which lends somewhat of moral dignity even to the worst deeds of

his father. The elder William, we may be sure, loved power and loved

success; he loved them as the objects and the rewards of a

well-studied and abiding policy. The younger William rather loved the

excitement of winning them, and the ostentatious display of them when

they were won. Hard as it was for others to turn him from his purpose,

no man was more easily turned from it by his own caprice. No man began

so many things and finished so few of them. His military undertakings

are always ably planned and set on foot with great vigour. But his

campaigns come to an end without any visible cause. After elaborate

preparations and energetic beginnings, the Red King turns away to

something else, often without either any marked success to satisfy him

or any marked defeat to discourage him. If he could not carry his

point at the first rush, he seems to have lacked steadiness to go on.

We have seen what he could do when fighting for his crown at the head

of a loyal nation. He does not show in so favourable a light, even as

a captain, much less as a man, when he was fighting to gratify a

restless ambition at the head of hirelings gathered from every land.

[Sidenote: His “magnanimity.”]

[Sidenote: His boundless pride.]

[Sidenote: His private demeanour.]

[Sidenote: Trick of his chamberlain.]

The two qualities for which he is chiefly praised by the writer who

strives to make the best of him are his magnanimity and his

liberality. The former word must not be taken in its modern English

use. It is reckoned as a virtue; it therefore does not exactly answer

to the older English use of the word “high-minded;” but it perhaps

comes nearer to it than to anything that would be spoken of as

magnanimity now. It was at all events a virtue which easily

degenerated into a vice; the magnanimity of William Rufus changed, it

is allowed, by degrees into needless harshness.[408] The leading

feature of the Red King’s character was a boundless pride and

self-confidence, tempered by occasional fits of that kind of

generosity which is really the offspring of pride. We see little in

him either of real justice or of real mercy; but he held himself too

high to hurt those whom he deemed it beneath him to hurt. His

overweening notion of his own greatness, personal and official, his

belief in the dignity of kings and specially in the dignity of King

William of England, led him, perhaps not to a belief in his star like

Buonaparte, certainly not to a belief in any favouring power, like

Sulla,[409] but to a kind of conviction that neither human strength

nor the powers of nature could or ought to withstand his will. This

high opinion of himself he asserted after his own fashion. The stern

and dignified aspect of his father degenerated in him into the mere

affectation of a lofty bearing, a fierce and threatening look.[410]

This was for the outside world; in the lighter moments of more

familiar intercourse, the grim pleasantry into which the stately

courtesy of his father sometimes relaxed degenerated in him into a

habit of reckless jesting, which took the specially shameless form of

mocking excuses for his own evil deeds.[411] Indeed his boasted

loftiness of spirit sometimes laid him open to be mocked and cheated

by those around him. One of the endless stories about him, stories

which, true or false, mark the character of the man, told how, when

his chamberlain brought him a pair of new boots, he asked the price.

Hearing that they cost three shillings only――a good price, one would

have thought, in the coinage of those times――he bade his officer take

them away as unworthy of a king and bring him a pair worth a mark of

silver. The cunning chamberlain brought a worse pair, which he

professed to have bought at the higher price, and which Rufus

accordingly pronounced to be worthy of a King’s majesty.[412] Such a

tale could not have been believed or invented except of a man in whose

nature true dignity, true greatness of soul, found no place, but who

was puffed up with a feeling of his own importance, which, if it could

sometimes be shaped into the likeness of something nobler, could also

sometimes sink into vanity of the silliest and most childish kind.

[Sidenote: His “liberality.”]

[Sidenote: His wastefulness.]

[Sidenote: His reward to the loyal troops after the rebellion.]

[Sidenote: His extortions.]

[Sidenote: His generally strict government.]

[Sidenote: His lavishness to his mercenaries.]

[Sidenote: Chiefly foreigners.]

[Sidenote: Their wrongdoings.]

[Sidenote: Statute of Henry against them. 1108.]

But the quality for which the Red King was most famous in his own day,

a quality which was, we are told, blazed abroad through all lands,

East and West, was what his own age called his boundless liberality.

The wealth of England was a standing subject of wonder in other lands,

and in the days of Rufus men wondered no less at the lavish way in

which it was scattered abroad by the open hand of her King.[413] But

the liberality of Rufus had no claim to that name in its higher

sense.[414] It was not that kind of liberality which spends

ungrudgingly for good purposes out of stores which have been honestly

come by; it was a liberality which gave for purposes of wrong out of

stores which were brought together by wrong. It was a liberality which

consisted in the most reckless personal waste in matters of daily

life, and which in public affairs took the form of lavish bribes paid

to seduce the subjects of other princes from their allegiance, of

lavish payments to troops of mercenary soldiers, hired for the

oppression of his own dominions and the disquieting of the dominions

of others. It was said of him that the merchant could draw from him

any price for his wares, and that the soldier could draw from him any

pay for his services.[415] The sources which supplied William with his

wealth were of a piece with the objects to which his wealth was

applied; under him the two ideas of liberality and oppression can

never be separated. What was called liberality by the foreign

mercenary was called extortion by the plundered Englishman. The hoard

at Winchester, full as the Conqueror had left it, could not stay full

for ever; it is implied that it was greatly drawn upon by gifts to

those who saved William’s crown and kingdom at Pevensey and

Rochester.[416] This was of a truth the best spent money of the Red

King’s reign; for it rewarded true and honest service, and service

done by the hands of Englishmen. But to fill the hoard again, to keep

it filled amid the constant drain, to keep up with the lavishness of

one to whom prodigality had become part of his nature,[417] needed

every kind of unrighteous extortion. The land was bowed down by what,

in the living speech of our forefathers, was called _ungeld_; money,

that is, wrung from the people by unrede, unright, and unlaw.[418]

Like his father, Rufus was, as a rule, strict in preserving the peace

of the land; his hand was heavy on the murderer and the robber. The

law of his father which forbade the punishment of death[419] was

either formally repealed or allowed to fall into disuse. The robber

was now sent to the gallows; but, when he had got thither, he might

still save his neck by a timely payment to the King’s coffers.[420]

And the sternness of the law which smote offenders who had no such

prevailing plea was relaxed also in favour of all who were in the

immediate service of the King.[421] The chief objects of William’s

boasted liberality were his mercenary soldiers, picked men from all

lands. A strong hand and a ready wit, by whomsoever shown and

howsoever proved, were a passport to the Red King’s service and to his

personal favour.[422] And those who thus won his personal favour were

more likely to be altogether strangers than natives of the land,

whether of the conquering or of the conquered race. We may suspect

that the settled inhabitants of England, whether English or Norman,

knew the King’s mercenaries mainly as a body of aliens who had licence

to do any kind of wrong among them without fear of punishment. The

native Englishman and his Norman neighbour had alike to complain of

the chartered brigands who went through the land, wasting the

substance of those who tilled it, and snatching the food out of the

very mouths of the wretched.[423] A more detailed picture sets before

us how, when the King drew near to any place, men fled from their

houses into the woods, or anywhere else where they could hide

themselves. For the King’s followers, when they were quartered in any

house, carried off, sold, or burned, whatever was in it. They took the

householder’s store of drink to wash the feet of their horses, and

everywhere offered the cruellest of insults to men’s wives and

daughters.[424] And for all this no redress was to be had; the law of

the land and the discipline of the camp had alike become a dead letter

in the case of offenders of this class. The oppressions of the King’s

immediate company were often complained of in better times and under

better kings; but they seem to have reached a greater height under

William Rufus than at any time before or after. We hear of no such

doings under the settled rule of the Conqueror; under Henry they were

checked by a statute of fearful severity.[425] As usual, the picture

of the time cannot be so well drawn in any words as those in which the

native Chronicler draws it in our own tongue. King William “was very

strong and stern over his land and his men and his neighbours, and

very much to be feared, and, through evil men’s rede that to him ever

welcome were, and through his own greediness, he harassed his land

with his army and with _ungeld_. For in his days ilk right fell away,

and ilk unright for God and for world uprose.”[426]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Stricter forest laws.]

[Sidenote: Story of the fifty Englishmen.]

[Sidenote: Why mentioned as Englishmen.]

[Sidenote: Their acquittal by ordeal.]

[Sidenote: The King’s blasphemous comment.]

Thus were the promises with which William Rufus had bought the help of

the English people in his day of danger utterly trampled under foot.

He had promised them good laws and freedom from unrighteous taxes; he

had promised them that they should have again, as in the days of

Cnut,[427] the right of every man to slay the beasts of the field for

his lawful needs. Instead of all this, the reign of the younger

William became, above all other reigns, a reign of _unlaw_ and of

_ungeld_. The savage pleasures of the father, for the sake of which he

had laid waste the homes and fields of Hampshire, were sought after by

the son with a yet keener zest, and were fenced in by a yet sterner

code. In the days of William the Red the man who slew a hart had, what

he had not in the days of William the Great, to pay for his crime with

his life.[428] The working of this stern law is shown in one of the

many stories of William Rufus, a story of which we should like to hear

the end a little more clearly.[429] Fifty men were charged with having

taken, killed, and eaten the King’s deer. We are so generally left to

guess at the nationality of the lesser actors in our story that our

attention is specially called to the marked way in which we are told

that they were men of Old-English birth, once of high rank in the

land, and who had contrived still to keep some remnants of their

ancient wealth.[430] They belonged doubtless to the class of King’s

thegns; if we were told in what shire the tale was laid, Domesday

might help us to their names. This is one of the very few passages

which might suggest the notion that Englishmen, as Englishmen, were

specially picked out for oppression. And it may well be true that the

forest laws pressed with special harshness on native Englishmen; no

man would have so great temptation to offend against them as a

dispossessed Englishman. What is not shown is that a man of Norman

birth who offended in the same way would have fared any better. The

mention of the accused men as Englishmen comes from the teller of the

story only; and he most likely points out the fact in order to explain

what next follows. On their denying the charge, they were sent to the

ordeal of hot iron. Granting that killing a deer was a crime at all,

this was simply the ancient English way of dealing with the alleged

criminal. We are therefore a little surprised when our informant seems

to speak of the appeal to the ordeal as a piece of special

cruelty.[431] The fiery test was gone through; but God, we are told,

took care to save the innocent, and on the third day, when their hands

were formally examined, they were found to be unhurt. The King in his

wrath uttered words of blasphemy. Men said that God was a just judge;

he would believe it no longer. God was no judge of these matters; he

would for the future take them into his own hands.[432] To understand

the full force of such words, we must remember that the ordeal was, in

its own nature, an appeal to the judgement of God in cases when there

was no evidence on which man could found a judgement.[433] What

happened further we are not told; it can hardly be meant that the men

in whose favour the judgement of God was held to have been given were

sent to the gallows all the same.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Special vices of Rufus.]

In this last story the most distinctive feature of the character of

William Rufus comes out. In many of his recorded deeds we see the

picture of an evil man and an evil king, but still of a man and a king

whose deeds might find many parallels in other times and places. But

the story in which he mocks at the ordeal leads us to those other

points in him which give him a place of his own, a place which perhaps

none other in the long roll-call of evil kings can dispute with him.

Other kings have been cruel; others have been lustful; others have

broken their faith with their people, and have said in their hearts

that there was no God. But the Red King stands well nigh alone in

bringing back the foulest vices of heathendom into a Christian land,

and at the same time openly proclaiming himself the personal enemy of

his Maker.

[Sidenote: Contrast between Rufus and his father.]

[Sidenote: Old and new fashions of dress.]

[Sidenote: The pointed shoes.]

[Sidenote: Fashionable vices of the time.]

[Sidenote: Personal crimes of the King.]

It is with regard to his daily life and to the beliefs and objects

which his age looked on as sacred that William Rufus stands out in the

most glaring contrast to his father. William the Great, I need hardly

repeat, was austere in his personal morals and a strict observer of

every outward religious duty. His court was decent; the men who stood

before him kept, we are told, to the modesty of the elder days. Their

clothes were fitted to the form of their bodies, leaving them ready to

run or ride or do anything that was to be done.[434] They shaved their

beards――all save penitents, captives, and pilgrims――and cut their hair

close.[435] But with the death of William, of Pope Gregory, and of

other religious princes, the good old times passed away, and their

decorous fashions were forgotten through all the Western lands.[436]

Then vain and foppish forms of attire came in. The gilded youth of

Normandy and of Norman England began to wear long garments like women,

which hindered walking or acting of any kind; they let their hair grow

long like women; they copied the walk and mien of women.[437] Above

all, their feet were shod with shoes with long curved points, like the

horns of rams or the tails of scorpions. These long and puffed shoes

were the device of a courtier of Rufus, Robert henceforth surnamed the

_Cornard_, and they were further improved by Count Fulk of Anjou, when

he wished to hide the swellings on his gouty feet.[438] The long hair

and the long-pointed shoes serve as special subjects for declamation

among the moral writers of the time.[439] But these unseemly fashions

were only the outward signs of the deeper corruption within. The

courtiers, the minions, of Rufus, forerunners of the minions of the

last Henry of Valois, altogether forsook the law of God and the

customs of their fathers. The day they passed in sleep; the night in

revellings, dicing, and vain talk.[440] Vices before unknown, the

vices of the East, the special sin, as Englishmen then deemed, of the

Norman, were rife among them. And deepest of all in guilt was the Red

King himself. Into the details of the private life of Rufus it is well

not to grope too narrowly. In him England might see on her own soil

the habits of the ancient Greek and the modern Turk. His sins were of

a kind from which his brother Henry, no model of moral perfection, was

deemed to be wholly free, and which he was believed to look upon with

loathing.[441]

[Sidenote: His irreligion.]

[Sidenote: Coming of the Jews.]

[Sidenote: Their position in England.]

[Sidenote: Favour shown to them by Rufus.]

[Sidenote: Comparison with the Sicilian Saracens.]

[Sidenote: William’s vein of mockery.]

Sinners, even of the special type of the Red King, have before now

been zealous supporters of orthodoxy. If William persecuted Anselm,

Constans defended Athanasius. But the foulness of William’s life was

of a piece with his open mockery of everything which other men in his

day held sacred. Whatever else divided Englishman and Norman, they

were at least one in religious doctrine and religious worship. In

matters of dogma Stigand was as orthodox as Lanfranc. But now, among

the endless classes of adventurers whom the Conquest brought to try

their luck in the conquered land, came men of a race whom Normans and

Englishmen alike looked on as cut off from all national and religious

fellowship. In the wake of the Conqueror the Jews of Rouen found their

way to London,[442] and before long we find settlements of the Hebrew

race in the chief cities and boroughs of England, at York, Winchester,

Lincoln, Bristol, Oxford, and even at the gates of the Abbots of Saint

Edmund’s and Saint Alban’s.[443] They came as the King’s special men,

or more truly his special chattels, strangers alike to the Church and

to the commonwealth of England, but strong in the protection of a

master who commonly found it to his interest to defend them against

all others. Hated, feared, and loathed, but far too deeply feared to

be scorned or oppressed, they stalked defiantly among the people of

the land, on whose wants they throve. They lived safe from harm or

insult, save now and then, when popular wrath burst all bounds, and

when their proud mansions and fortified quarters could shelter them no

longer from raging crowds eager to wash out their debts in the blood

of their creditors.[444] The romantic picture of the despised,

trembling, Jew, cringing before every Christian that he meets, is, in

any age of English history, simply a romantic picture. In the days of

Rufus at all events, the Jews of Rouen and London stood erect before

the prince of the land, and they seem to have enjoyed no small share

of his favour and personal familiarity. The presence of the

unbelieving Hebrew supplied the Red King with many opportunities for

mocking at Christianity and its ministers. He is even said to have

shown himself more than once, when it was to his interest so to show

himself, as a kind of missionary of the Hebrew faith. He was not the

only prince of his age who discouraged conversions to Christianity on

the part of distinct races who could be made more useful, if they

remained distinct, and who could in no way be kept so distinct as if

they remained in the position of infidels. Count Roger of Sicily found

that the unbelieving Saracens,[445] and William Rufus found that the

unbelieving Hebrews, were, each in their own way, more profitable to

their several masters than if they had been allowed to lose their

distinct being among their Christian neighbours. But in the whole

dealings of Rufus with the Jews there is a vein of mockery in which,

if Roger shared, it is not recorded. It is true that we do not find

Rufus taking the part of the Jew, except when the Jew made it worth

his while to do so. But when he did take the Jew’s part, he clearly

found a malicious pleasure in taking it. He enjoyed showing favour to

the Jew, because so to do gave annoyance to the Christian.

[Sidenote: Question of William’s scepticism.]

[Sidenote: The dispute between Jews and Christians.]

[Sidenote: Jews turn back again.]

[Sidenote: Story of the convert Stephen and his father.]

[Sidenote: Dispute between Stephen and the King.]

[Sidenote: The King’s compromise with Stephen’s father.]

Whether Rufus was in any strict sense an intellectual sceptic may be

doubted. That he was such cannot be inferred from his bidding in

bitter mockery the Jewish rabbis and the bishops of England to dispute

before him on the tenets of their several creeds, promising to embrace

the faith of the strangers, if they should have the better in the

discussion. The discussion took place in London, most likely when the

prelates were gathered for some Whitsun Gemót. The Christian cause was

supported by several bishops and clerks――one would like to have their

names――who argued, we are told, in great fear on behalf of the faith

which was thus jeoparded.[446] As is usual in such cases, each side

claimed the victory;[447] but in any case the arguments on the Hebrew

side were not so overwhelming as to make the King become an avowed

votary of Moses. Still he did what he could to hinder the ranks of the

Church from being swelled at the cost of the synagogue. In a story

which must belong to the latter part of his reign, we read how the

Jews of Rouen began to be frightened at the great numbers of their

body who fell away from the law of their fathers. They came to the

King, and, by a large bribe, obtained from him a promise that the

converts should be constrained to go back to the faith which they had

forsaken. They were brought before Rufus, and most of them were by his

terrible threats forced again to apostatize.[448] The tale of the Red

King’s success in this crooked kind of missionary enterprise reached

the ears of a Jew father――where we are not told――whose only and

well-beloved son was lost to him by conversion to the Christian faith.

The young man had been favoured with a vision of the protomartyr

Stephen, who had bidden him ask for baptism and take his own name at

the font.[449] He went to a priest, told his tale, and was admitted to

baptism by the name which was appointed to him. His father, mourning

for his loss, went to King William and made his complaint; praying

that at his command his son might be restored to his old faith.[450]

Rufus held his peace; the argument which alone persuaded him to meddle

in such matters had not yet been urged.[451] A promise of sixty marks

of silver, payable on the second conversion of the youth, brought the

King to another mind,[452] and Stephen was called into the royal

presence. A dialogue took place between the King and the neophyte, in

which Rufus, remembering perhaps the one redeeming feature in his own

life, pressed Stephen’s return to Judaism as a matter of filial duty.

The youth humbly suggests that the King is joking. Rufus waxes wroth,

and takes to words of abuse and to his usual oath. Stephen’s eyes

shall be torn out, if he does not presently obey his bidding.[453] The

youth stands firm, and even rebukes the King. He can be no good

Christian who, instead of trying to win to Christ those who are

estranged from him, strives to drive back those who have already

embraced his faith. Rufus, put to shame by the answer, has nothing to

say, but drives Stephen from his presence with scorn.[454] The Jew

father is waiting without. His son overwhelms him with words of abuse

which even zeal for his new faith would hardly justify. He would no

longer acknowledge a father in one whose own father was the Devil, and

who, not satisfied with his own damnation, sought the damnation of his

son.[455] With this somewhat harsh way of putting matters, the zealous

youth vanishes from the story; the Jew father has yet another turn

with the Red King. He is called in, and Rufus says that he has done

what he had been asked to do, and demands the promised payment for his

pains.[456] The Jew expostulates. His son, he says, is firmer than

ever in his Christian faith and in his hatred towards himself. Yet the

King says that he has done what he had been asked, and demands

payment. “Finish,” he goes on, with a boldness which challenges some

sympathy, “what you have begun, and then we will settle about my

promise; such was our agreement.”[457] It is characteristic of Rufus

not to be angry at a really bold word. Evidently entering into the

grotesque side of the dispute, he rejects the doctrine of payment by

results; he answers that he has done his best, and that, though he had

not succeeded, he cannot go away with nothing for his trouble.[458] At

last, after some further haggling, the parties in this strange dispute

come to a compromise. The Jew pays, and the King receives, half the

sum which had been promised in the beginning.

[Sidenote: William’s defiance of God.]

[Sidenote: 1093.]

[Sidenote: His contempt for the saints.]

[Sidenote: Frequency of blasphemy.]

[Sidenote: Contrast of Saint Lewis.]

[Sidenote: Case of Henry the Second.]

A king of whom such stories as these could be told, whether every

detail is literally true or not, must have utterly cast aside all the

decencies of his own or of any other age. But Rufus, according to the

tales told of him, went even further than this. He is charged with a

kind of personal defiance of the Almighty, quite distinct alike from

mere carelessness and from speculative unbelief. When he recovered

from the sickness which forms such an epoch in his life, “God,” he

said, “shall never see me a good man; I have suffered too much at his

hands.”[459] He mocked at God’s judgement and doubted his justice――his

disbelief in the ordeal is quoted as an instance. Either God did not

know the deeds of men, or else he weighed them in an unfair

balance.[460] He was wroth if any one ventured to add the usual

reserve of God’s will to anything which he, King William, undertook or

ordered to be undertaken. He had that belief in himself that he would

have everything referred to his own wisdom and power only.[461] Modern

ideas might be less shocked at another alleged sign of his impiety. He

was said to have declared publicly that neither Saint Peter nor any

other saint had any influence with God, and that he would ask none of

them for help.[462] In all this we are again left in doubt whether we

are dealing with a speculative unbeliever, or only with one who was so

puffed up with pride that he liked not to be reminded of any power

greater than his own, least of all of a power which might some day

call him to account for his evil deeds. And though William Rufus

clearly went lengths in his defiance of God to which even bad men were

unaccustomed, we must remember that something of the same kind in a

less degree was not uncommon in his time. Blasphemy strictly so

called, that is, neither simple irreverence nor intellectual unbelief,

but direct reviling and defiance of a power which, by the very terms

of the defiance, is believed in, is a vice of which Englishmen of our

own day have hardly any notion. But, as it has many parallels in

heathen creeds, as it has not yet died out in all parts of

Christendom, so it was by no means unknown in the days with which we

are dealing. Its frequency at a somewhat later time is shown when the

biographer of Saint Lewis sets it down as one of his special virtues,

that he never, under any circumstance, allowed any reviling of God or

the saints.[463] On the other hand, we find Henry the Second, whom

there is no reason whatever to look on as a speculative unbeliever,

indulging, as in lesser forms of irreverence, so also in direct

reviling of God.[464] But the vice, to us so revolting and

unintelligible, seems to have reached its highest point in the King of

whom men said in proverbs that he every morning got up a worse man

than he lay down, and every evening lay down a worse man than he got

up.[465]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Redeeming features in Rufus’ character.]

[Sidenote: Little personal cruelty.]

[Sidenote: Respect to his father’s memory.]

[Sidenote: His foundations.]

[Sidenote: Le Mans.]

Thus far we are inclined to see in our second William a character of

unmixed blackness, alike as a man and as a King. There seems no room

left for even pagan virtues in the oppressor, the blasphemer, the man

given up to vices at whose foulness ordinary sinners stood aghast. Yet

nothing is plainer than that there was something in the character of

William Rufus which made him not wholly hateful in the eyes of his own

age. There was a side to him which, if we may not strictly call it

virtuous, has yet in it something akin to virtue, as compared with

other sides of him. There is, as I have already hinted, amidst all the

general oppressions of his reign, amidst all the special outrages

which he at least allowed to go unpunished, no sign in him of that

direct delight in human suffering which marks some of his

contemporaries. I have spoken of his dutiful obedience to his father

while he lived; and the sentiment of filial duty lived on after his

father’s death, and showed itself in some singular forms of respect

for his memory. Elsewhere the enemy and spoiler of the Church, towards

his father’s ecclesiastical foundations Rufus appears as a benefactor.

Saint Stephen’s, the monument of his father’s penance, Battle, the

monument of his father’s victory, were both the objects of his

bounty.[466] But it is singularly characteristic that the means for

bounty towards Saint Stephen at Caen were found in the plunder of the

Holy Cross at Waltham.[467] At York, strangely out of the common range

of his actions, we find him counted as a second founder of the

hospital of Saint Peter; we find him changing its site, enlarging its

buildings and revenues, but specially setting forth that he was

confirming the gifts of his father.[468] We shall see that, in all his

wars, it was his special ambition to keep whatever had been his

father’s; whatever he lost or won, it was a point of honour to hold

the great trophy of his father’s continental victories. In other

warfare the Red King might halt or dally or put up with an imperfect

conquest. But when Le Mans, castle and city, was to be kept or won,

when the royal tower of his father was in jeopardy or in hostile

hands, then the heart of Rufus never waxed weak in counsel, his arm

never faltered in the fight.

[Sidenote: His chivalrous spirit.]

[Sidenote: Chivalry a new thing.]

But one form of words which I have just used opens to us one special

side of the character of the Red King which is apt to be overlooked. I

have spoken of the point of honour. I am not sure that, in the

generation before Rufus, those words could have applied in all their

fulness either to Harold of England or to William of Normandy, either

to Gyrth of East-Anglia or to Roger of Beaumont. But to no man that

ever lived was the whole train of thoughts and feelings suggested by

those words more abidingly present than they were to the Red King. It

might be going too far to say that William Rufus was the first

gentleman, as his claim to that title might be disputed by his

forefather Duke Richard the Good.[469] But he was certainly the first

man in any very prominent place by whom the whole set of words,

thoughts, and feelings, which belong to the titles of knight and

gentleman were habitually and ostentatiously thrust forward.

[Sidenote: True character of chivalry.]

[Sidenote: The knight and the monk.]

[Sidenote: His word when kept and when broken.]

[Sidenote: His knightly courtesy.]

[Sidenote: His trust in the knightly word of others.]

[Sidenote: Contrast with Helias.]

[Sidenote: Importance of this side of his character.]

[Sidenote: He marks the beginning of a new æra.]

We have now in short reached the days of chivalry, the days of that

spirit on which two of the masters of history have spoken in words so

strong that I should hardly venture to follow them.[470] Of that

spirit, the spirit which, instead of striving to obey the whole law of

right, picks out a few of its precepts to be observed under certain

circumstances and towards certain classes of people, William the Red

was one of the foremost models. The knight, like the monk, arbitrarily

picks out certain virtues, to be observed in such an exclusive and

one-sided way as almost to turn them into vices. He has his arbitrary

code of honour to supplant alike the law of God and the law of the

land. That code teaches the duties of good faith, courtesy,

mercy――under certain circumstances and towards certain people. Was

William Rufus a man of his word? His subjects as a body had no reason

to think so; the princes of other lands had no reason to think so. His

promises to his people went for nothing; his treaties with other

princes went for nothing.[471] To observe both of these was the dull

everyday duty of a Christian man whom it had pleased God to call to a

particular state of life, that namely of a king. Holding, as Rufus

did, that no man could keep all his promises,[472] these were the

class of promises that he thought it needless to try to keep. But when

William plighted his word in the character of the _probus miles_, the

_preux chevalier_, in modern phrase, as “an officer and a gentleman,”

no man kept it more strictly. No man cared less for the justice of his

wars; no man cared less for the wrong and suffering which his warfare

caused. But no man ever more scrupulously observed all the mere

courtesies of warfare. He was not like Robert of Bellême. The life and

limb of the prisoner of knightly rank were safe in his hands. Indeed

any man of any rank who appealed to his personal generosity was always

safe. Under the influence of the law of honour, the tyrant, the

blasphemer, the extortioner, the oppressor who neither feared God nor

regarded man, puts on an air of unselfishness, of unworldliness.

Strict in the observance of his own knightly word, he places unbounded

confidence in the knightly word of others. He thrusts indignantly

aside the suggestion of colder spirits that a captive knight may

possibly break his _parole_.[473] We shall see all this as we follow

the tale of his strife with Helias of Maine, one who was as scrupulous

an observer of the law of honour as himself, but one who did not let

the law of honour stand in the place of higher and older laws. And

this is a side of the character of Rufus on which it is important to

dwell, as it is one which the popular conception of him, a conception

perfectly true as far as it goes, is apt to leave out. We have not

grasped the likeness of the real man, unless we remember that the man

whose crimes and vices the popular picture has not exaggerated,

carried with him through life a sentimental standard of filial duty

and reverence, and a knightly conscience, if the phrase may pass, as

quick to speak and as sure to be obeyed as the higher conscience of

Anselm or Helias. Without fully taking this in, we shall not easily

understand the twofold light in which Rufus looked to the men of his

own age, in whose eyes he clearly was not wholly hateful. And without

fully taking it in, we shall fail to give him his place in the general

history of England, Normandy, and mankind in general. In William Rufus

we have not only to study a very varied and remarkable phase of human

nature; we have also to look on a man who marks the beginning of a new

age and a new state of feeling.

[Sidenote: Chivalry the bad side of some princes;]

[Sidenote: Its one-sided nature.]

[Sidenote: Its incidental use.]

[Sidenote: Instances of obedience to a higher law.]

[Sidenote: Practical working of chivalry.]

[Sidenote: Bayard.]

[Sidenote: The Black Prince.]

[Sidenote: Francis the First of France.]

[Sidenote: Twofold character of the Black Prince.]

The Red King has indeed this advantage, that the other parts of his

character are so bad that the chivalrous side of him stands out as a

relief, as at least comparative light amid surrounding darkness. There

are other princes in whom the chivalrous side is the dark side,

because there are other parts of their character better than chivalry.

The essence of chivalry is that the fantastic and capricious law of

honour displaces all the forms of the law of right. The standard of

the good knight, the rule of good faith, respect, and courtesy, as due

from one knight to another, displaces the higher standard of the man,

the citizen, and the Christian. There are perhaps whole ages, there

certainly are particular men, in which this lower standard has its

use. Any check, any law, is better than no check and no law. He who

cannot rise to the higher rank of an honest man had better be a knight

and gentleman than a mere knave and ruffian. If a man cannot be kept

back from all crimes by the law of right, it is a gain that he should

be kept back from some crimes by the law of honour. It was better that

William Rufus should show mercy and keep his word in some particular

kind of cases than that he should never show mercy or keep his word at

all. But the very fact that such an one as Rufus could feel bound by

the law of honour shows how feeble a check the law of honour is. And

we must remember that the very feeling of courtesy and deference

towards men of a certain rank led only to more reckless and

contemptuous oppression of all who lay without the favoured pale. And,

at least as regards particular men, the beginning of the days of

chivalry was the falling back from a higher standard. We have come

across men in our own story who showed that they obeyed a better law

than that of honour. It was not at the bidding of chivalry or honour,

it was not in the character of knight or gentleman, that Herlwin made

light of his own wrongs by the side of those of his poor

peasants,[474] or that Harold refused to harry the lands of the men

who had chosen him to be their king.[475] But the law of honour and

chivalry was most fully obeyed, the character of knight and gentleman

was shown in its full perfection, when the Knight without Fear and

without Reproach refused to expose himself to toils of war which were

too dangerous for any but the base churl.[476] It was fully carried

out when the mirror of chivalry, the Black Prince himself, gave their

lives to the French knights who fought against him, and murdered the

unarmed men, women, and children, who craved for mercy.[477] It was no

less worthily carried out by the king who ever had the faith of a

gentleman on his lips, who boasted that he had never broken his word

except to women, and who betrayed, not only the women, but the allied

princes and commonwealths who trusted in him. William the Red at least

need not shrink from a comparison with Francis of Valois.[478] But it

must not be forgotten that one of the chivalrous heroes on our list

had a side to him better than his chivalry. William the Great

assuredly, and I believe William the Red also, would have shrunk from

such a deed as the slaughter of Limoges. But he who wrought the

slaughter of Limoges was also the patriotic statesman of the Good

Parliament. The knight, courteous and bloody as became his knighthood,

could turn about and act as something better than a knight. In such a

man we must measure the balance of good and evil as we can, and the

chivalrous side of him is the evil side. In William Rufus the

chivalrous side is the better side; it is the comparatively bright

spot in a picture otherwise of utter blackness.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Grouping of events in the reign of Rufus.]

The chief events of the reign of William Rufus fall into two classes.

There is the military side; there is the ecclesiastical and

constitutional side. There is the side which shows us the noblest and

the basest type of the warrior in Helias of La Flèche and in Robert of

Bellême. There is the side which shows us the noblest and the basest

type of the priest in Anselm of Canterbury and in Randolf of Durham.

The two sides go on together. The most striking features in both

belong to a somewhat later time than that which we have now reached.

But it is the military side in its earlier stages which most directly

connects itself with the tale which we have gone through in the

present chapter. The first Norman campaign of the Red King comes in

date before the archiepiscopate of Anselm; it comes in idea before the

administration of Randolf Flambard. On the other hand, it is directly

connected with the war of Pevensey and Rochester, with the banishment

of Bishop Odo and Bishop William. We will therefore pass to it as the

chief subject of our next chapter.