Gardiner Samuel Rawson
A Student's History of England, v. 1: B.C. 55-A.D. 1509

Reduced facsimile of part of Domesday Book.

13. William's Great Councils.—Though William was himself the true ruler of England, he kept up the practice of his predecessors in summoning the Witenagemot from time to time. In his days, however, the name of the Witenagemot was changed into that of the Great Council, and, to a slight extent, it changed its nature with its name. The members of the Witenagemot had attended because they were officially connected with the king, being ealdormen or bishops or thegns serving in some way under him. Members of the Great Council attended because they held land in chief from the king. The difference, however, was greater in appearance than in reality. No doubt men who held very small estates in chief might, if they pleased, come to the Great Council, and if they had done so the Great Council would have been much more numerously attended than the Witenagemot had been. The poorer tenants-in-chief, however, found that it was not only too troublesome and expensive to make the journey at a time when all long journeys had to be made on horseback, but that when they arrived their wishes were disregarded. They therefore stayed at home, so that the Great Council was regularly attended only by the bishops, the abbots of the larger abbeys, and certain great landowners who were known as barons. In this way the Great Council became a council of the wealthy landowners, as the Witenagemot had been, though the two assemblies were formed on different principles.

14. The Gemot at Salisbury. 1086.—In 1086, after Domesday Book had been finished, William summoned an unusually numerous assembly, known as the Great Gemot, to meet at Salisbury. At this not only the tenants-in-chief appeared, but also all those who held lands from them as sub-tenants. "There came to him," wrote the chronicler, "… all the landowning men there were over all England, whose soever men they were, and all bowed down before him and became his men, and swore oaths of fealty to him, that they would be faithful to him against all other men." It was this oath which marked the difference between English and Continental feudalism, though they were now in other respects alike. On the Continent each tenant swore to be faithful to his lord, but only the lords who held directly from the crown swore to be faithful to the king. The consequence was that when a lord rebelled against the king, his tenants followed their lord and not the king. In England the tenants swore to forsake their lord and to serve the king against him if he forsook his duty to the king. Nor was this all. Many men break their oaths. William, however, was strong enough in England to punish those who broke their oaths to him, whilst the king of France was seldom strong enough to punish those who broke their oaths to him.

15. William's Death. 1087.—The oath taken at Salisbury was the completion of William's work in England. To contemporaries he appeared as a foreign conqueror, and often as a harsh and despotic ruler. Later generations could recognise that his supreme merit was that he made England one. He did not die in England. In 1087 he fought with his lord, the king of France, Philip I. In anger at a jest of Philip's he set fire to Mantes. As he rode amidst the burning houses his horse shied and threw him forward on the pommel of his saddle. He was now corpulent and the injury proved fatal. On September 9 he died. When the body was carried to Caen for burial in the abbey of St. Stephen, which William himself had reared, a knight stepped forward and claimed as his own the ground in which the grave had been dug. It had been taken, he said, by William from his father. "In the name of God," he cried, "I forbid that the body of the robber be covered with my mould, or that he be buried within the bounds of my inheritance." The bystanders acknowledged the truth of his accusation, and paid the price demanded.

CHAPTER VIII.
WILLIAM II. 1087—1100

LEADING DATES

Accession of William II 1087

Norman rebellion against William II. 1088

Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury 1093

The Council of Rockingham, and the First Crusade 1095

Conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders 1099

Death of William II. 1100

1. The Accession of the Red King. 1087.—In Normandy the Conqueror was succeeded by his eldest son, Robert. Robert was sluggish and incapable, and his father had expressed a wish that England, newly conquered and hard to control, should be ruled by his more energetic second son, William. To the third son, Henry, he gave a sum of money. There was as yet no settled rule of succession to the English crown, and William at once crossed the sea and was crowned king of the English at Westminster, by Lanfranc. William Rufus, or the Red King, as men called him, feared not God nor regarded man. Yet the English rallied round him, because they knew that he was strong-willed, and because they needed a king who would keep the Norman barons from oppressing them. For that very reason the more turbulent of the Norman barons declared for Robert, who would be too lazy to keep them in order. In the spring of 1088 they broke into rebellion in his name. William called the English people to his help. He would not, he said, wring money from his subjects or exercise cruelty in defence of his hunting grounds. On this the English rallied round him. At the head of a great army he marched to attack the rebels, and finally laid siege to Rochester, which was held against him by his uncle Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, whom he had released from the imprisonment in which the Conqueror had kept him. William called upon yet greater numbers of the English to come to his help. Every one, he declared, who failed him now should be known for ever by the shameful name of Nithing, or worthless. The English came in crowds. When at last Odo surrendered, the English pleaded that no mercy should be shown him. "Halters, bring halters!" they cried; "hang up the traitor bishop and his accomplices on the gibbet." William, however, spared him, but banished him for ever from England.

2. The Wickedness of the Red King.—William had crushed the Norman rebels with English aid. When the victory was won he turned against those who had helped him. It was not that he oppressed the English because they were English, but that he oppressed English and Normans alike, though the English, being the weaker, felt his cruelty most. He broke all his promises. He gathered round him mercenary soldiers from all lands to enforce his will. He hanged murderers and robbers, but he himself was the worst of robbers. When he moved about the country with the ruffians who attended him, the inhabitants fled to the woods, leaving their houses to be pillaged. William allowed no law to be pleaded against his own will. His life, and the life of his courtiers, was passed in the foulest vice. He was as irreligious as he was vicious. It was in especial defiance of the Christian sentiment of the time that he encouraged the Jews, who had begun to come into England in his father's days, to come in greater numbers. They grew rich as money-lenders, and William protected them against their debtors, exacting a high price for his protection. Once, it is said, he invited the Jewish rabbis to argue in his presence with the bishops on the merits of their respective creeds, and promised to become a Jew if the rabbis had the better of the argument. His own mouth was filled with outrageous blasphemies. "God," he said, "shall never see me a good man. I have suffered too much at His hands."

3. Ranulf Flambard.—The chief minister of the Red King was Ranulf Flambard, whom he ultimately made Bishop of Durham. He was one of the clerks of the king's chapel. The word 'clerk' properly signified a member of the clergy. The only way in which men could work with their brains instead of with their hands was by becoming clerks, the majority of whom, however, only entered the lower orders, without any intention of becoming priests or even deacons. Few, except clerks, could read or write, and whatever work demanded intelligence naturally fell into their hands. They acted as physicians or lawyers, kept accounts, and wrote letters. The clerks of the king's chapel were the king's secretaries and men of business. These ready writers had taken a leading part in the compilation of Domesday Book, and they were always active in bringing in money. Under the Conqueror they were expected to observe at least something of the rules of justice. Under the Red King they were expected to disregard them entirely. Of all the clerks Ranulf Flambard was the most unscrupulous; therefore he rose into the greatest favour. The first William had appointed high officers, known as Justiciars, to act in his name from time to time when he was absent from England, or was from any cause unable to be present when important business was transacted. Flambard was appointed Justiciar by the second William, and in his hands the office became permanent. The Justiciar was now the king's chief minister, acting in his name whether he was present or absent. Flambard used his power to gather wealth for the king on every side. "He drave the king's gemots," we are told, "over all England;" that is to say, he forced the reluctant courts to exact the money which he claimed for the king.

4. Feudal Dues.—It was Flambard who systematised, if he did not invent, the doctrine that the king was to profit by his position as supreme landlord. In practice this meant that he exacted to the full the consequences of feudal tenure. If a man died who held land by knight service from the crown, leaving a son who was a minor, the boy became the ward of the king, who took the profits of his lands till he was twenty-one, and forced him to pay a relief or fine for taking them into his own hands when he attained his majority. If the land fell to an heiress the king claimed the right of marrying her to whom he would, or of requiring of her a sum of money for permission to take a husband at her own choice, or, as was usually the case, at the choice of her relations. Under special circumstances the king exacted aids from his tenants-in-chief. If he were taken prisoner they had to pay to ransom him from captivity. When he knighted his eldest son or married his eldest daughter they had to contribute to the expense. It is true that this was in accordance with the principle of feudality. Neither a boy nor a woman could render service in the field, and it was therefore only fair that the king should hold the lands at times when no service was rendered to him for them; and it was also fair that the dependents should come to their lord's help in times of special need, especially as all that the king took from them they in turn took from their own sub-tenants. Flambard, however, did not content himself with a moderately harsh exaction of these feudal dues. The grievance against him was that he made the king 'to be every man's heir, whether he were in orders or a layman,' that is to say, that Flambard so stripped and exhausted the land belonging to the king's wards as to make it almost worthless, and then demanded reliefs so enormous that when the estate had at last been restored, all its value had passed into the hands of the king. When a bishop or an abbot died, the king appointed no successor, and appropriated the revenues of the vacant see or monastery till some one chose to buy the office from him. The king alone grew rich, whilst his vassals were impoverished.

5. Archbishop Anselm.—In 1089 Lanfranc died, and the archbishopric of Canterbury was then left vacant for nearly four years. The Archbishop of Canterbury was more than the first of English bishops. He was not only the maintainer of ecclesiastical discipline, but also the mouthpiece of the English people when they had complaints to make to the king. Men turned their thoughts to Anselm, the Abbot of Bec. Anselm was a stranger from Aosta, on the Italian side of the Alps. He was the most learned man of the age, and had striven to justify the theology of the day by rational arguments. He was as righteous as he was learned, and as gentle as he was righteous. Tender to man and woman, he had what was in those days a rare tenderness to animals, and had caused astonishment by saving a hunted hare from its pursuers. In 1092 the king's vassals assembled in the Great Council urged William to choose a successor to Lanfranc, and asked him to allow prayers to be offered in the churches that God might move his heart to select a worthy chief pastor. "Pray as you will," said the king, scornfully. "I shall do as I think good; no man's prayers will do anything to shake my will!" In the spring of 1093 William fell sick. Believing himself to be a dying man, he promised to amend his life, and named Anselm archbishop. On his refusal to accept the nomination, Anselm was dragged to the king's bedside, and the pastoral staff, the symbol of the pastoral office of a bishop, was forced into his hands by the bystanders.

6. The Council of Rockingham. 1095.—To this well-meant violence Anselm submitted unwillingly. He was, he said, a weak old sheep to be yoked with an untamed bull to draw the plough of the English Church. Yet, gentle as he was, he was possessed of indomitable courage in resistance to evil. William recovered, and returned to his blasphemy and his tyranny. In vain Anselm warned him against his sins. A fresh object of dispute soon arose between the king and the new archbishop. Two Popes claimed the obedience of Christendom. Urban II. was the Pope acknowledged by the greater part of the Church. Clement III. was the Pope supported by the Emperor. Anselm declared that Urban was the true Pope, and that he would obey none other. William asserted that his father had laid down a rule that no Pope should be acknowledged in England without the king's assent, and he proposed to act upon it by acknowledging neither Clement nor Urban. His object was, perhaps, to prevent the enforcement of ecclesiastical discipline by temporarily getting rid of the papal authority. Anselm wanted the authority of the Pope to check vice and disorder. The question was set aside for a time, but in 1095 Anselm, tired of witnessing William's wicked actions, asked leave to go to Rome to fetch from Urban the pallium, a kind of scarf given by the Pope to archbishops in recognition of their office. William replied that he did not acknowledge Urban as Pope. A Great Council was summoned to Rockingham to discuss the question. The lay barons, who liked to see the king resisted, were on Anselm's side. The bishops, many of whom were creatures of William, appointed from amongst his clerks, took the side of the king. Anselm stated his case firmly and moderately, and then, caring nothing for the angry king, retired into the chapel and went quietly to sleep. The king, finding that the barons would give him no support, was unable to punish Anselm. Two years later, in 1097, Anselm betook himself to Rome, and William at once seized on his estates.

7. William II. and his Brothers.—Normandy under Robert was even worse off than England under William. William was himself a tyrant, but in Normandy there were at least a hundred tyrants because Robert was too easy-tempered to bring any one to justice. The land was full of violence. Each baron made war on his neighbour, and, as usual, the peasant suffered most. Robert's own life was vicious and wasteful, and he was soon in debt. He sold the Cotentin and the territory of Avranches to his youngest brother, Henry. Henry was cool-headed and prudent, and he kept order in his new possession better than either of his elder brothers would have done. The brothers coveted the well-ordered land, and in 1091, two years before Anselm became archbishop, they marched together against Henry. Henry was besieged on St. Michael's Mount, a rocky island surrounded by the sea at high water. After a time water ran short. The easy-tempered Robert sent in a supply. "Shall we let our brother die of thirst?" he said to William. Henry was in the end forced to surrender, and the land which he had purchased was lost to him for a time. In 1095 Henry was again in Normandy. Robert of Bellême, the lord of Domfront, was the most cruel of the cruel barons. Once he had torn out with his own hands the eyes of his godson, merely because the child's father had displeased him. The people of Domfront called on Henry to deliver them from such a monster. Henry seized Domfront, ruled its people with justice, and soon recovered the possessions from which his brothers had driven him.

8. William and Scotland. 1093—1094.—William's attention was at this time drawn to the North. Early in his reign he annexed Cumberland, and had secured it against the Scots by fortifying Carlisle, which had been desolate since the Danish invasion in the reign of Ælfred. Malcolm, king of the Scots, was a rude warrior who had been tamed into an outward show of piety by his saintly wife, Margaret, the sister of Eadgar the Ætheling. Though he could not read her books of devotion, he liked to look at the pictures in them and to kiss the relics which she honoured. Margaret gathered Englishmen round her, and spread abroad something of southern piety and civilisation amongst the fierce Celtic warriors of her husband. She could not teach them to change their natures. In 1093 Malcolm burst into Northumberland, plundering and burning, till an Englishman slew him at Alnwick. Queen Margaret died broken-hearted at the news, and was before long counted as a saint. For the moment the Scottish Celts were weary of the English queen and her English ways. They set up Malcolm's brother, Donald Bane, as their king, refusing to be governed by any of Margaret's sons. Donald at once 'drave out all the English that before were with King Malcolm.' In 1094 Duncan, Margaret's step-son, gained the crown from Donald with the aid of a troop of English and Norman followers. The Celts soon drove out his followers, and after a while they slew him and restored Donald.

9. Mowbray's Rebellion. 1095.—William had as yet too much to do at home to interfere further in Scotland. The Norman barons hated him, and in 1095 Robert of Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland—the name was now confined to the land between the Tweed and the Tyne—refused obedience. William at once marched against him, and took from him the new castle which he had built in 1080, and which has ever since been known as Newcastle-on-Tyne. Robert held out long in his stronger fortress of Bamborough, which was only taken at last by fraud. He was condemned to a lifelong imprisonment, and it is even said that the Pope, seeing his case hopeless, allowed his wife to marry again as though her husband had been dead. Mowbray's rebellion, like the conspiracy of the Earls against the Conqueror, shows how eagerly the Norman barons longed to shake off the yoke of the king, and how readily Englishmen and the less powerful Normans supported even a tyrannical king rather than allow the barons to have their way.

10. The First Crusade. 1095—1099.—These petty wars were interrupted by a call to arms from the Pope. For centuries Christians had made pilgrimages to Bethlehem and Jerusalem, the holy places where their Lord had been born and had been crucified. When the Arabs conquered the Holy Land, Mohammedans as they were, they gave protection to the pilgrims from the West. The Turks, who were also Mohammedans, had lately obtained the mastery over the Arabs, and had secured dominion over the Holy Land. They were fierce warriors, ignorant and cruel, who either put the pilgrims to death or subjected them to torture and ill-usage. In 1095 Pope Urban II. came to Clermont to appeal to the Christians of the West to set out on a Crusade—a war of the Cross—to deliver the Holy City from the infidel. After he had spoken the multitude burst out with the cry, "It is the will of God!" Men of every rank placed on their garments a cross, as the sign of their devotion to the service of Christ. In 1096 a huge multitude set forth under Peter the Hermit, who had been active in urging men to take part in the Crusade. They believed it to be unnecessary to take money or food, trusting that God would supply His warriors. All these perished on the way. A better-equipped body of knights and nobles set out later under Godfrey of Bouillon. They fought their way through Asia Minor and Syria to Jerusalem, and in 1099 the Holy City was taken by storm. Godfrey, though he became its first Christian king, refused to be crowned. "I will not," he said, "wear a crown of gold where my Saviour wore a crown of thorns." The piety of the Christian warriors was not accompanied by mercy to the vanquished. Holding Mohammedans to be the special enemies of God, they treated them as no better than savage beasts. There was a terrible butchery when Jerusalem was taken, and Christian men fancied that they did God service by dashing out the brains of Mohammedan babes against the walls.

11. Normandy in Pledge. 1096.—Robert was amongst the Crusaders. To raise money for his expedition he pledged Normandy to his brother William. William had no wish to take part in a holy war, but he was ready to make profit out of those who did. Normandy was the better for the change. It is true that William oppressed it himself, but he saved the people from the worse oppression of the barons.

12. The Last Years of the Red King.—The remaining years of William's reign were years of varying success. An English force set up Eadgar, the son of Malcolm and Margaret, as king of the Scots, and Eadgar consented to hold his crown as William's vassal. William's attempts to reduce the Welsh to submission ended in failure, and he was obliged to content himself with hemming them in with castles. In 1098 the wicked Robert of Bellême succeeded his brother as earl of Shrewsbury. Robert robbed and tortured Englishmen as he had robbed and tortured Normans. He was a great builder of castles, and at Bridgenorth he raised a fortress as the centre of a group of strong places which could defy the Welsh and form the basis of his operations against them. In the same year William captured Le Mans, the capital of Maine, which had recovered its independence from Robert, which was held against him by Helie de la Flêche, one of the few unselfish men of the day. Unlike his father, the Red King often began enterprises which he did not finish. In 1099 he had all his work to do over again. He was hunting in the New Forest when he heard that Helie had regained Le Mans. He rode hard to Southampton, and, leaping on board a vessel, bade the sailors put to sea. A storm was raging, and the sailors prayed him to wait till the wind fell. "I never heard," he answered, "of a king being drowned." The next morning he was in Normandy. He recovered Le Mans, but returned to England without conquering Maine.

13. The Death of the Red King. 1100.—On August 2, 1100, the Red King went out to hunt in the New Forest. In the evening his body was found pierced by an arrow. Who his slayer was is unknown. The blow may have been accidental. It is more likely to have been intentional. In every part of England were men who had good cause to hate William, and nowhere were his enemies in greater numbers than round the New Forest. Whoever was his slayer, the body of the tyrant was borne to the cathedral of Winchester and buried as the corpse of a wild beast, without funeral rites or weeping eyes. When, after a few years had passed, the tower above the unhallowed tomb fell in, men said that it had fallen because so foul a body lay beneath it.