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.

The Council of Rockingham, and the First Crusade
Conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders

Death of William II.

1100

I. The Accession of the Red King.

1087.-In Normandy the Robert was

Conqueror was succeeded by his eldest son, Robert. 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 Lan

1087-1088

THE RED KING

115

franc. 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

His own

a Jew if the rabbis had the better of the argument. 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

1089-1092

FLAMBARD AND ANSELM

117

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. 66 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 nomina. tion, 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