Chapter II · (continued 3)

How far confirmed. 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. The Norman dynasty accepted. 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 132 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. Acceptance of the Norman nobility in an English character. 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.

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. Rufus’ breach of his promises. 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. Englishmen not oppressed as such; 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 133 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. but the general oppression touches them most. 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. Rufus and the 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 134 at all turned back or checked the course of national advance. The mercenaries. 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. Their favour helps the fusion of races. 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.

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. Sale of ecclesiastical offices. 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 135 in date. The keeping prelacies vacant was one of the devices of Randolf Flambard, Prolonging of vacancies. 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. Case of Thurstan of Glastonbury. 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. Geoffrey Bishop of Chichester; dies September 25, 1088. 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 136 then remain vacant three years, we may set that down as the beginning of the evil practice.[373] Death of Scotland of Saint Augustine’s and Ælfsige of Bath. 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] Death of Bishop Gisa. 1088. 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 of Somerset granted to John of Tours. 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. He removes the see to Bath. 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 137 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. Grant of the temporal lordship. 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.

138 That so great an ecclesiastical change should be The change made wholly by the civil authority. 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. Power of bishops. 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. Dislike to the change on the part of the canons of Wells 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] and the monks of Bath. 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] Buildings of John of Tours. 1088–1122. But in his architectural works he was magnificent. His long reign of thirty-four years 139 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] The church of Bath called abbey. 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]

Disturbances on the appointment of Guy at Saint Augustine’s. 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] Flight of Guy. The Abbot himself escaped only by fleeing to the rival house of Christ Church. Then came two Bishops, Walkelin of Winchester 140 and Gundulf of Rochester, accompanied by some lay nobles, with the King’s orders to punish the offenders. Punishment of the rebellious monks. 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] Punishment of the citizens. 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.

Death of Lanfranc. May 24, 1089. The one great event recorded in the year after the rebellion was the death of Archbishop Lanfranc, an 141 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 Its effects.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. Position of Lanfranc in England and Normandy. 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 142 nearly nineteen years ended in the May of the year following the rebellion.[392] His burial at Christ Church. 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]

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. Change for the worse in the King’s character. 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 143 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. Lanfranc’s rebukes of William. 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.

Picture of William Rufus. 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. 144 Birth of William Rufus, c. 1060. 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. His outward appearance. 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. His surname of Rufus. 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 145 playing any. The policy of the Conqueror had kept his sons dependent on himself, without governments or estates.[400] Rufus in youth. 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] His filial duty. 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; 146 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. His natural gifts. 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. His conduct during the rebellion. 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. Case 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.

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 147 anecdote, mainly of a general kind. General charges against Rufus. 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 Little personal cruelty; 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. comparison with his father and brother. 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. His profligacy and irreligion. 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. Redeeming features in his character. 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.

His marked personality. 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 148 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. Comparison with his father. 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 alleged firmness of purpose. 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] His caprice. 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 149 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. His unfinished campaigns. 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.

His “magnanimity.” 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 150 boundless pride and self-confidence, tempered by occasional fits of that kind of generosity which is really the offspring of pride. His boundless 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] His private demeanour. 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. Trick of his chamberlain. 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, 151 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.

His “liberality.” 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 152 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. His wastefulness. 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. His reward to the loyal troops after the rebellion. 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 153 every kind of unrighteous extortion. His extortions. 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] His generally strict government. 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] His lavishness to his mercenaries. 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. Chiefly foreigners. 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 154 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] Their wrongdoings. 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. Statute of Henry against them. 1108. 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 155 ilk right fell away, and ilk unright for God and for world uprose.”[426]

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. Stricter forest laws. 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] Story of the fifty Englishmen. 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 156 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. Why mentioned as Englishmen. 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] Their acquittal by ordeal. 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 157 formally examined, they were found to be unhurt. The King in his wrath uttered words of blasphemy. The King’s blasphemous comment. 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.

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 158 time openly proclaiming himself the personal enemy of his Maker.

Contrast between Rufus and his father. 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. Old and new fashions of dress. 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] The pointed shoes. 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 159 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] Fashionable vices of the time. 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. Personal crimes of the King. 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]

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. His irreligion. 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 160 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. Coming of the Jews. 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] Their position in England. 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, 161 trembling, Jew, cringing before every Christian that he meets, is, in any age of English history, simply a romantic picture. Favour shown to them by Rufus. 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. Comparison with the Sicilian Saracens. 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. William’s vein of mockery. 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.

Question of William’s scepticism. 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 162 embrace the faith of the strangers, if they should have the better in the discussion. The dispute between Jews and Christians. 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. Jews turn back again. 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 163 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. Story of the convert Stephen and his father. 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 164 between the King and the neophyte, in which Rufus, remembering Dispute between Stephen and the King. 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. The King’s compromise with Stephen’s father. 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 165 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.

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. William’s defiance of God. 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, 1093.“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 166 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. His contempt for the saints. 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. Frequency of blasphemy. 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 167 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 Contrast of Saint Lewis. 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] Case of Henry the Second. 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]

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 168 up to vices at whose foulness ordinary sinners stood aghast. Redeeming features in Rufus’ character. 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. Little personal cruelty. 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. Respect to his father’s memory. 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] His foundations. 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. Le Mans. 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 169 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.

His chivalrous spirit. 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. Chivalry a new thing. 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.

True character of chivalry. 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 and the monk. 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. 170 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. His word when kept and when broken. 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. His knightly courtesy. 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. His trust in the knightly word of others. 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 171 may possibly break his parole.[473] Contrast with Helias. 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. Importance of this side of his character. 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. He marks the beginning of a new æra. 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.

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. Chivalry the bad side of some princes; 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 172 the forms of the law of right. Its one-sided nature. 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. Its incidental use. 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. Instances of obedience to a higher law. 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] Practical working of chivalry. 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 173 Bayard.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 The Black Prince. 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] Francis the First of France. 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] Twofold character of the Black Prince. 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 174 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.

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.

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